Forgetful Insomnia (Unity)

About

Forgetful Insomnia was created over a couple weeks of a game jam hosted by Grads in Games. We were given a very basic project to work with that included and A* search algorithem, tile based grid generation, character models, a few terrain objects and a main menu. Our task was to make a playable game using the assets we were given using the Unity Engine. This game jam was a solo creation.

via GIPHY

Introduction

My best idea that I wanted to try was a game that used two cameras to play, I’d done some work previously creating stereoscopic applications so I wanted to see if I could make a game using the same techniques. My first few attempts failed massively which lead to me settling on a smaller camera and a main one. After some testing with the camera culling masks and layers I decided I wanted to make a horror game.

Start Scene - Video

After some tweaking of the character rigs in Unity I could place any Mixamo animation onto the character model given. I wanted a video as a teaser to introduce the game before you would play it to give the game the correct atmosphere for the player. Using the assets from Snaps Prototype and the fog from Aura 2 I created a scene that would be the base for the video. After placing in the characters given, adding in the animations from Mixamo controlled by the timeline I could try the Cinemachine Plugin. This took some trial and error before I was happy with the result. Due to time restraints I didn’t have time to learn how to create cutscenes in Unity, so I recorded the play footage from the scene and placed the video in HitFilm Express. After overlaying some music from the Music Bundle I bought and cuts for text information, the intro video was finished.

Main Scene - Game

This scene where I spent most of my time. My first big change was to improve look of the environment. Using the floor prefab, I added in a wall and randomized the rotation. Changing the pathfinding to not walk through walls was the biggest challenge I faced. After many days of trial and error I improved the pathfinding to check the rotation of neighbouring tiles and work out if it was facing a wall. Next came improving the atmosphere, I created a torch and a backpack in Blender to give to the player while reducing all lights so you can only see using the player moved lights. To increase variety, I added in a counter for randomly rotating tiles and enemy movement that used the path finding previously created. The final addition was the sound design, for me choosing the right music plays a huge part in aiding the atmosphere created by the environment and story. After searching through the music I owned I settled on a cheerful piece for the menu and a dark background for the main game. After some splicing of miscellaneous sounds and randomizing the start of the enemy sounds, to stop additive sounds, the sound design was at a level I could be happy with.

Second Scene - Puzzle

The most important part I left to the end of the project. This was not intentional as during playtesting of previous scenes I found that there was no goal, no reason to keep playing. Just surviving was not enough. During this phase I added in doors with numbers on, these numbers linked between scenes and were vital. Using a water shader from the standard assets as the floor and randomly placing doors to get the player to search for the correct numbers. To create a sense of urgency the walls close in and increase in size. Due to time restraints I decided to use the first-person controller for movement, I wanted to make one but creating my own would not showcase any programming skills and I could spend my time improving the rest of the game. After this I added the doors with pedestals and keys into the previous scenes as a form of progression.

Out Scene - Video

After some tweaking of the previous cutscene I added in a zoom into a zombie den. Creating the audio during the cutscene was a lot of fun, using HitFilm I spliced 4 different sounds from the Music Bundle with changes in volume to fade out into the music for the outro.

Third Party Assets

Animations from Mixamo
Audio
Door Texture
First Person Controller (Plugin)
Aura 2 (Plugin)
Snaps Prototype (Plugin)