Bushidours
My role in the project:
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Team-lead
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Plan tasks to be done for sprints
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Communication between different parts of the team
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Lead-programmeur·euse
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Wwise Integration
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UI
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Character Controller
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Respawn Points
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Designer CCC
Challenges:
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Convince a teaching committee of the feasibility of the project
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Dealing with teammates with different schedules
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Arduous development for central game features
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Manage the project scope
2D Platformer
Pixel Graphics
Action
Bushidours is a project carried out in the Unity engine during the 2nd semester of the BAC in Video Game Creation. The conceptualization phase, carried out by two of my colleagues and me, lasted seven weeks. As for the production phase, the team of now five student designers had eight weeks.
Description
Nounours was quietly enjoying a bowl of ramen with his best pig friend, Mr. Mercury, when suddenly the roof of the cabin explodes! A mysterious character on board a helicopter kidnaps the little pig! It's Mr. Gro who comes to kidnap his son to force him to take over the family arms factory business. Enraged, Nounours rushes after his friend to take him back from Mr. Gro's paws...
Bushidours is an action-platformer where the player plays Nounours, the samurai bear. Our hero also has the particularity of having a little anger management problem which causes him to transform into a rabid bear when his rage bar is full. This fills with each blow inflicted on enemies.
Nounours can also do dashes, slides and wall jumps to advance through the level. His katana and shurikens are used to inflict damage on his opponents.
My responsibility in Bushidours was to conceive the basic idea and flesh it out with my colleagues until the project was accepted by the various professors. Subsequently, I programmed the majority of the game and supervised the completion of the project in Unity. Two other members helped me with different tasks such as blocking, sprite integration and AI. I also oversaw the Wwise integration into the game.
*Important notice: all visuals, whether the animated background, tilesets, sprites, etc. were designed by my more artistic colleagues. However, the menu and rage music (free of copyright) are not a creation for Bushidours.*
Production
AI imagined
Type | Entités IA | Comportements | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
P1 - Ennemi | Pigeons ninjas | - Balayage / charge horizontale | - Se dirigent vers toi quand ils te voient | ||
P2 - Boss | Grosse maman pigeon | - Balayage horizontal qu’on doit sauter au bon moment (ne sait pas voler et ressemble plus à un crash qu’à un vol) | - S'écrase au sol | - Fait apparaitre des pigeons | |
P2 - Ennemi | Pingouins mafieux | - Quand ils sont proches, ils tirent sur toi en rafale (avec cooldown) + ils s’éloignent si c'est possible de toi | - Quand loin, tirent une balle à la fois | ||
P3 - Boss | Chef pingouin amateur de curling | - Fait glisser des pierres de curling (niveau animation : il frappe dessus comme s’il jouait plutôt au golf avec) au sol pour que tu les esquives | - Va au contact pour te frapper avec son balai (mais il tape dur) | ||
P2- Ennemi | Cochons avec des défenses | - Se dirigent directement vers toi pour te taper | - (Avec cooldown) Se mettent en boule et foncent vers toi | ||
P1 - Boss | Mr. Gro dans son hélicoptère | - Te fonce dessus | - Pour le blesser, il faut activer un interrupteur via du platforming | - Fait déployer des cochons des balcons en hauteur qui font des dégâts s’ils te tombent dessus | - Les cochons utilisent ensuite leur IA |
The most time-consuming was the wall jump which would have been one of the most enjoyable mechanics after the rage if there had not been problems with production. During this, we also decided that Nounours, when he becomes a rabid bear, loses access to his normal abilities (katana, dash, shurikens), kicking and biting enemies. Due to lack of time, the behaviors (in the table below) that I had imagined for the adversaries could not be executed and placed in the final product.
In the production phase, I continued to design, but this time in an applied way. By programming the different actions that our character can perform, I spent many hours testing and balancing the delays for the cooldowns of shurikens, dash and accumulated rage loss.
Also, I thought about and implemented interactivity between the different menus to make it easier for the player to navigate within them. “Speed” and “obtaining information” were the watchwords. The player should not have to dig through multiple submenus if operations are frequent and essential. This is why a reminder of the controls is located in the pause menu.
Also, for damaging actions, confirmation is necessary. Restarting the level or returning to the main menu should not be done by mistake. Along the same lines, the volume can also be adjusted in the pause menu without returning to the main menu.
Additionally, I took the requirements further to segment multiple sound sources into different groups that can be adjusted. People who are thus disturbed or who want to hear certain sounds can adjust everything according to their convenience.
