Devlog 3 - How I trapped myself into making a 3D Halloween game

Hi everyone! Jeea84 here, aka S&I Games. Let me tell you the story of how I trapped myself into making a 3D Halloween themed game.

I already have a 2D game on Steam, and a Pixel metroidvania in development. What I don't have under my name is a 3D project. Yet.

One fine day, I just said to a friend with common interest, "Let's make a small game that has a short gameplay on Halloween theme."

By chance, she agreed. And the result was Creepy Collectibles - which started out as Pumpkin Escape by the way.

The idea was very simple, a little boy has lost his toys and he has to dodge ghosts and obstacles while looking for them out in the graveyard. What started as a simple idea, started to take shape, little by little, as my friend started work on the design and I started working on the development. There wasn't much to do. The player only has four directional movements, which means no real complications in the code. The enemies, had no attack, they only move from one place to the other and "catch" the player when he comes in range. There's no chasing either, which makes the game a tiny bit less exciting than ones that have enemies chasing the player.

I had planned to add a pumpkin pick up and throw action for the player, but there wasn't enough time. BlueSeas though she is really good when it comes to level design, she only has basic knowledge of game development. She did not know to go inside prefabs and change properties so property of that particular game object will change throughout, for example, and I had to do a lot of cleaning up - and a lot more teaching. Fortunately, she's a keen learner and picks up quickly.

We encountered a bump in the middle of our journey when we started working on level 2. The scarecrows I had worked so hard to prepare for a "farm" environment, were not working for my partner, and we both were just short of going insane trying to solve the problem. There was a problem with the player, he kept flying in mid air for my partner, whereas I had implemented gravity. And the toys collecting logic was not working for her either. We had newly started to use Unity's Version Control at that point because GitHub requires a project to go public if it's bigger than 500MB, and our project is way bigger.

Then we both managed to calm down, and decided to stop using the UVC in-editor and instead start using the Plastic SCM Desktop app always. Every time we closed the project, we would check in from the Plastic SCM and then Update our Workspace from there too. It worked miracles. We have decided never to go back to the in-editor version again. Dealing with discrepancies and problems with the differences in our assets was a big pain in the neck. We cried, whined, grumbled, scolded, each other and nothing all at once, but we did not stop supporting each other and working dedicatedly.

Level 1 had been good. Simple level, simple scene, only 10 toys in the scene, simple ghosts. The player travels through a small area collecting his lost toys, avoiding ghosts, running to catch time. We were in sync, I had been working in a separate scene for the backend so it didn't get in her way, and she made us a beautiful level in return. We continuously discussed small design features, small improvements, stayed on one page. I implemented the player actions, the enemy patrol and detection of player, and the item pickup script, slowly and completely relaxed. Courses from Udemy, Alex Dev's and Single-Minded Ryan's 3D game courses, helped me get through, and though they seem small things comparatively, for me, they challenged my confidence in being a real programmer.

That done, my partner relaxed, got overexcited and decided to do a Level 2.

I wanted to have scarecrows somewhere in the game, so I agreed readily.

While I worked on improving the controls and some movements of the camera and overall gameplay of level 1, she set out to create the farm of her dreams.... or her nightmare, since it was a horror game anyway. She wanted all sorts of things in there. Barns and village houses, vegetable patches, animal stables... She has quite the creative mind, and I had thought I was the insane one among us. =)

While she was creating the 2nd level and we were still discussing ghosts, I decided to work on my own dream, and make another level with dungeons. Dungeons have been my fascination ever since I played Wolfenstein and Blakestone (I played Doom a only year ago for the first time), I'm not sure why, since I was pretty young when the former two were released, and remember very little. So then I set out to make the dungeons of my dreams - or nightmares... And though they turned out pretty good, and I enjoyed myself immensely making them (I didn't want to stop!!), they complicated the game in that we couldn't find the right camera setting for a few days!! After my partner (literally) forced me to stop already, I handed the level over to her - putting the camera on hold - and took a long needed break. 

While she decorated my dungeons, I went back to the basics and started watching different videos for an effective Loading Screen. I had to apply a few to find the one that would suit our game. After that it was time to DESIGN the screen. After unsuccessfully trying to set up the progress bar, I removed it completely and added a simple animation instead. 

The camera in Level 2 and 3 still needed to be adjusted, and I set about to watch a few tutorials, follow them all and see what results they were giving me before deciding to use anything as is. My non-technical partner, BlueSeas, tried on her own to create different animations for all her goats and sheep she had spread about in Level 2 and almost succeeded - well 99% anyway, I corrected the remaining 1% for her. Next up was the fox I had added for a bit of "life" effect in Level 2 and which refused to stay on the ground.... She kept climbing the air and rising up, while walking. It was hilarious to watch, but I was unable to figure out what was wrong, so I removed her from the scene. It was a pity, though - she was a cute thing, and would have added some drama to an otherwise spooky "still" scene.

There are still a few glitches in the game, the camera keeps losing its height and perspective, the player falls through the ground at some points, and we're working on them. But for now, we are launched and free, and taking a short break. A few things are in pending, I still need to adjust the camera in Level 3 - the stairs are a mess, you'll find it a miracle if you can run past them and not be caught by the pesky ghost there - and more than a couple of things in Level 2.

However, it's the weekend, and I have a lot of pending tasks waiting at home, including a custom art project, and won't be back for a while. Meantime, I would appreciate comments and feedback from whosoever is downloading the games, whether it's the free level, or all of them, so that we can work on improvements when we come back.

For now, Happy Halloween, and happy playing!