A Portfolio for Your Perusal
Roomba
My first game project where I was given a smidgen of creative control! :,) Leading up to this final project was a series of assignments where we were given starter assets/systems and were instructed to come up with different creative challenges using Explorational Game Design without including additional content. Surprising play opportunities arise when you stretch basic assets to their limit.
From the 3 bare bones projects we designed, we were allowed to choose one and develop a theme that aligned with the discovered gameplay. The project I chose worked around waypoints and an “endless runner” system where the player character is automatically dragged through sequential waypoints and the player themself is only in control of jumping. Thematically picking something that would make sense to be automatically dragged towards a waypoint (and did not need 2018 Megan to tackle Unity’s animation system) was of the upmost importance. Hence, the birth of Roomba! (Fun Fact: the idea came from my Japanese professor who was gushing about the roomba, or “Roomba-san”, she received from her family on Christmas earlier that year.) I figured roombas hone-in on dirt, so those concepts would make a perfect themed asset stand-in for my project.
Roomba
(It's Their World and We're Just Living in It)
After swapping the starter player character asset for a roomba and the waypoints for slabs of dirt, it was easy to design and populate further levels around areas in a house.
Gameplay Video
As you can see, I took open floor plan very literally. I approached my thematic design with a floaty, abstract aesthetic as that worked best with the base level design I already constructed.
Postmortem Thoughts
Cute as my first game project is, there are glaringly obvious things to address after my additional 3 years of experience. Also, later in the future, I assisted in the instruction of the class that assigned this project, so I have to cover my bases for any of my students (hi, guys!) that may stumble upon this. Let’s get into tearing my beloved apart! Whoo!
Where to even begin? Colliders were a mystery to me at this point, so the colored flooring was a simple plane placed precariously close to the original asset blocks that had working colliders. A reboot of Roomba might see just the floor on their own with proper colliders. Although, I do enjoy the various prismatic slabs, so it’s more likely that I would create my own model to work with the flooring texture or create a seamless texture that wraps properly around the already present models.
Asset replacements for the goal and red “death blocks”. In hindsight, the base goal and death blocks assets stand out starkly against the rest of the assets. Oops. For the goal, I would either replace the green block with a roomba’s charging station or nix the physical goal altogether and make an invisible goal at the delineation between level changes. I have less concise ideas for swapping out the red death blocks. Perhaps puddles of water (unless there is a mop roomba?) or, if we want to get out there, LAVA. Nothing says danger like some glowing puddles or rivers of lava.
Reworking the dirt waypoints. I’m not completely satisfied with how the dirt looks as it doesn’t work for every scenario. I placed some waypoints in the air and they look strange. Nowadays, I would probably make a dirt particle effect instead of using a model. If I were to keep with the model approach, then I would remodel the dirt to be more cube-like and animate it to hover in place. Either of these would draw the player’s eye and contextually make more sense than the present iteration.
New elements I would add includes sound effects upon dirt collection and simple HUD UI to keep track of how much dirt has been collected vs how much remains in the level.