Unity
4 weeks
Group project (6)
Spring 2022
ASSIGNMENT
The assignment was to make a mobile game using Unity. The time limit was 8 weeks working half-time, and we were six people in our group. Everyone was assigned a role, but they were quite open and everyone had to do a little bit of everything.
CONCEPT
The idea was to make a rhythm-based game with heavy emphasis on music. Many ideas were bounced around, but we landed on a Guitar Hero-inspired game where you had to catch blocks in time with the music by moving your character to the correct lane in time.
MUSIC
Every level had to have a unique track, which we decided to make on our own. We wanted songs with a runtime of roughly one minute, to avoid player fatigue mid-game. The songs also had to have a clear melody, with good spacing between each note, because the blocks to catch were (most of the time) in sync with this melody. If the notes were too far apart, the player had nothing to do, and if the notes were too close together, the player wouldn't be able to catch them all. Here is an example of a track (more can be found at the bottom of the page):
DYNAMIC MUSIC
The music was also dynamic. Depending on how well the player was doing, different tracks were played to give the player feedback. In total there were four possible score levels, demonstrated below:
FANTASTIC:
The player is doing amazingly! Both melody and backing instruments are playing at their fullest, nothing is excluded.
DOING WELL:
The player is doing well, but not the best. Synth stabs and a panning arpeggio are lost, especially noticable at around 0:24. It just feels less energetic.
DOING OK:
The player is starting to do poorly, but it's still within ok levels. The bass volume is lowered, and the shaker is removed. It now feels quite stale, nothing is really driving it forward.
LOSING:
The player is living on the edge, about to lose. If it keeps going this poorly, it will be game over. The melody's pitch is off, with a delay out of tune to make it really jarring. The bass has a fluctuating pitch shift as well. Not a good time.
WORK PROCESS
I used Logic Pro X to make every track. Time was short, so recording many live instruments were out of the question, with a few exceptions. A MIDI-keyboard was used for almost everything. Here's an example of how a project could look:
The player began at the "Doing OK" level, which meant that the beginning of each track, before the player was able to gather enough score, had to start the same. More instruments were therefore added after each track was "able to level up".
None of the tracks hade to be loopable, since the level was linear and when it was done the song was finished. Furthermore, because the game was made for mobile, the main menu music and similar tracks were highly unlikely to be looped. Who stays in a mobile game main menu screen for more than a minute? One exception is "Win Screen", which was played when a level was successfully completed. Here the player could see their high score, and maybe wanted to show that to a friend, so we wanted it to be loopable because of the time it could be played.
SONGS
Here is a list of most songs, that hasn't been presented above, in the game:
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