Game Mechanic Plan - Week 0 Task

The mechanic I have decided to add is weight. This would be clamped to one hundred and start at zero. The player would increase in weight by 5 for every object they collect. The higher the weight, the slower the player moves. I think, depending on the weight threshold (e.g. 25 or 50 or 75 etc) the player would be set to a new speed; with maximum weight making the player's movement barely a crawl. I think this could work well because the objects can then be expanded on in the future to be craftable or to get dropped by enemies. Perhaps a certain amount of these objects is required to upgrade a weapon or purchase something etc...

Here is a GIF of the weight-increasing mechanic.

Perhaps I should have the weight increase more with each object but if this is ever expanded on I would want the increments to be small so the player's speed is balanced and not incredibly slow after merely ten objects. At the moment each object gives ten weight, which equates to a 5% speed reduction per object.

Game Prototyping Project Plan

 

Initial Ideas

·       Platformer

·       Zombies [W]

·       Jetpack [X]

·       Phasing through enemies/objects upon dash [Y]

·       Weight mechanic – you can’t jump as high or move as fast with high weight [Z]

·       Jumping means you can avoid zombies

·       Objects you can collect are fuel and med kits

·       Zombies drop ammo

·       Zombies can also drop med kits

·       Fuel and med kits can be dropped by holding v

Task	Time Estimate – minutes	Effort Estimate 1-10	Actual time	Actual effort	Status
W	240	6			Not started
X	60	4			Not started
Y	90	4			Not started
Z	20	2			Not started

 

Implementation

·       Jump mechanic would be basic without a jetpack and would then consume fuel the longer you hold down space

·       Dash mechanic with invincibility to prevent damage via zombies

·       Hover mechanic (for different enemies and attacks)

·       The med kits have weight to prevent the player from holding to

·       Some zombies may do more damage than other

Formative Feedback

I need to improve my plan and burndown chart. So I made a Trello board to keep track of my progress.

Update

 

Initial Ideas

·         Platformer – Level design [Z]

·         Zombies [W]

·         Jetpack [X]

·         Phasing through enemies/objects upon dash

·         Weight mechanic – you can’t jump as high or move as fast with high weight

·         Jumping means you can avoid zombies

·         Objects you can collect are fuel and med kits[Y]

·         Zombies drop ammo

·         Zombies can also drop med kits

·         Fuel and med kits can be dropped by holding v

Task	Time Estimate – Hours	Effort Estimate 1-10	Actual time	Actual effort	Status
W	4	6	8	6	Finished
X	1	4	12	6	Finished
Y	1.5	4	5	5	Finished
Z	0.2	2	11	3	Finished

 

Implementation

·         Jump mechanic would be basic without a jetpack and would then consume fuel the longer you hold down space

·         Dash mechanic with invincibility to prevent damage via zombies

·         Hover mechanic (for different enemies and attacks)

·         The med kits have weight to prevent the player from holding to

·         Some zombies may do more damage than others

Game Prototyping Project Plan

 

Initial Ideas

·         Post apocalyptic

·         World-driven story

·         Pizza focussed

·         Zombies

·         Delivery sim

 

Ideas Expanded

·         Design World

o   Pizza hub/lobby

o   Carpark

o   Tunnel

o   Road

o   Body of water

o   Supermarket

o   Residential area

o   Industrial area

o   Scrapyard

o   Commercial area

o   Hospital

o   Things on fire

·         Shooting

o   Pizza would be fired from a shotgun. This would kill the zombies which arrive mid-delivery

·         Movement

o   The movement would be a basic. It would all be a top down so all I would have to do is ensure the sprites are flipped correctly since only the van has an asset which can be used along the Y axis.

·         Delivery System

o   You drive between locations and upon arrival you have to get out of the van, grab a special pizza out of the van (pizza carried on head or dragged behind like a floating trailer), get past the police zombies and post the pizza through the door.

·         Score System

o   This could be ammunition or a separate system which is linked to the deliveries. Both systems could be linked - pizza could be rewarded for a successful delivery so zombies can be fended off at the next delivery. This makes the deliveries progressively easier. Thus, more zombies would have to be added each time to ensure balance. Checkpoints upon delivery completion and a melee mechanic would need to be implemented to account for death and a lack of ammunition. If both systems were linked, then the game could end after a set amount of deliveries.

·         Timer

o   This would deplete between deliveries. It may affect ammunition, fuel or just be a pure time which cannot be elapsed.

·         Zombies

o   These would arrive in a police car at the end of the delivery, before the player reaches the door to the delivery location. These would get progressively harder, and more would spawn in as the game goes on. This would include different types, some of which may have more range and do more damage etcetera.

·         Tutorial

o   After being introduced to the special pizzas for the survivors at the beginning of the game the tutorial would begin. This would be a gradual introduction to the combat mechanics, with a few zombies scattered about on the way to finding the delivery truck.

 

Game Overview

This would be a pizza delivery simulator with zombies in a post-apocalyptic setting. Pizzas would need to be delivered to survivors, whose only source of food is you. If you do not deliver the pizza on time the survivor dies and you get set back to the last delivery checkpoint. This will rely on a lot of worldbuilding to give the impression that all is lost and you are one of the last ones left. Infected hospitals, derelict buildings, damaged roads and scrapyards will be used to convey a sense of emptiness. The main menu will feature a gif of the planet. To give the impression of a nuclear war the planet looks brown and decayed as opposed to looking green and lush. This should set the scene well for the rest of the game. You would start out next to a pizza van on fire and then some sort of explanation about why the people need the special pizza from that van should be played. You then eventually find the delivery truck after killing some zombies with your starting pizza ammo, this will gradually introduce the player to the combat mechanics before the game actually starts. Deliveries would have to be made before the timer runs out, this may change depending on how many deliveries you’ve done. The game would then end after a set amount of deliveries are completed potentially ten but this may be changed in the future

Just spent ages getting the sprites to look right, finding the right tile map and getting it slices and imported into a pallet. I had to leave the PC running for hours because it was such a big tile pallet. I should've probably broken it down into smaller pallets but I would've had like ten different pallets then so its easier a singular large one. I had to use photoshop and the tool that lets you fill multiple similar objects to speed up the process. Now the player looks alot more like a pizza delivery driver.

Edited April 3, 20251 yr by Jake Astles
Grammar and clarity

This is the full gameplay video for my- first project. The zombies damaged you and can reduce your health. When you go black your supposed to be dead but that feature was never implemented. The rest of the game is just some parkour leading to a purple win condition in space which would quit the game if it was built correctly. 

I setup a sprint system and a burndown chart creator with a Trello powerup called Corrello. This powerup is great for sprint because it allows you to track and measure your cards in the lists and then generates a chart for you deepening on what has been done. You can even tell it when every sprint starts and how long each one lasts for. I also added some automation to improve the way card are labelled and marked complete.

 

 

Edited April 5, 20251 yr by Jake Astles

Half-term Progress

For the past two weeks, I have spent over 56 hours developing this game. Incidentally, I measured this by adding Unity as a game on the AMD Adrenaline software so I could fine-tune it for my GPU setup.

 

After every development session, I would make an activity post on Trello and would then give a brief summary of any changes made when uploading to GitHub. Between these two areas, and using the data from Corrello, mentioned in my last post, I think I have kept a precise log of exactly what has been done and what has changed on each session.

Here are the results:

 

I included the burndown chart, however, it doesn't really tell you much compared to the CFD because it doesn't seem to care about tasks that took less than one day or more than two weeks to complete (which covers most of them). It's also just hard to read because it's in 1-week intervals and isn't colour-coded like the CFD, which is far more useful to me because it has different overlays to display where there have been bottlenecks in my development.

Some simplified CFDs, making my point about bottlenecks and overlays clearer: 

I think the work-in-progress (WIP) and backlog views are both useful for a quick overview of how the project is going. For instance, at a glance, I immediately identified that on Tuesday (April 15th) it may look like I've made progress; however, if you compare the two charts, I actually just moved the two cards from "In Progress" to "Sprint Backlog". You can also see that the Wednesday after (April 23rd), I made good progress because there was no testing and a marked change in items which were "In Progress". The bug amount also went up that day, which is a good sign that work was done and checked thoroughly enough to notice. You can't make good progress without encountering some bugs along the way.

 

 

Trello Activity Log

 

Final Post

I have added in a few features to top the game off. The tutorial is now complete and allows you to collect pizza to instigate the van. The van can then be entered to get to the first level. The first level was also fleshed out.  A zombie spawner was implemented, which can be activated by the van or player, when entering the area. This then spawns several zombies on repeat, at intervals. The systems behind the zombies were perfected so they follow you properly and can block and go idle. More content was added to the area including buildings and a football field. Lastly, a respawn menu was added, along with a main menu. These all work fully when the game is built.

Edited May 13, 20251 yr by Jake Astles
Clarity and video