Tag: Isometric Game

PROCESS 4: Game Mechanics

This is further into the development we have got going for the interaction.

I have managed a few things here:

  1. Rotating objects on mouse over
  2. Making objects move out and move back on mouse clicks
  3. Slider that makes objects appear and disappear according to the  position of the slider handle
  4. More to come…

Don’t mind the fog, I was just messing around with the particle effects for fun.

So this has been an interesting development because like I mentioned in earlier posts, our game has to show the passing of time. The timeslider element we have now will allow players to control that. If you notice above the slider I put the year in which this is happening. So at a certain year the thief would have obtained a certain object and then the object will go away after some time. So visually it creates this sense of power for the player in the controlling of time. But however they will need to click around to discover objects, listen to the stories and piece the entire world of the game together through that sort of scrutiny.

Which is what we really will need to sort out in the recess week: What is the overarching story here that we want to tell?

PROCESS 3: Isometric view in Unity

This was what we had in the video I uploaded the previous week. Top view is game editor, bottom view is the screen during gameplay.

It is isometric view but as you can see, formed out of these small images which you see in the image viewer i opened up on the right that we have to piece together in that angled fashion in the game editor. Which is quite a hassle. In fact the video I uploaded had maybe had 200 of these images??

So I found an alternative that achieves the same effect.

So now we can use 3D models to give us a accurate sense of space and really have the flexibility to arrange things the way we want. And the camera will be able to render them in the  isometric view. Hence we can look to having more intricately designed spaces and have objects placed in many different ways.

More to come…

PROCESS 2: Intro to Unity Game Engine


In sourcing the technical aspects of the Interactive Narrative project my team has embarked on, I am decidedly looking towards Unity Game Engine and what it can offer as a platform to shape and tell our story.

So our story is currently about this thief who has a house full of objects he has stolen and each object has a story to tell. These branched out narratives will eventually coalesce and lead to the capture of the thief. So in terms of plot for the game itself, the players start off at the time when the thief is already caught, so they kind of are looking into the past to see what and how these things all come together.

We decided on an isometric view for the game. Because of the players ability to ‘time jump’ which we will give them, I feel that it is appropriate as the isometric view has this sort of god-like presence to it and it is very much like in the Sims games. So will be sticking with that for now.

And here is a preliminary tryout at the game engine. I have created an isometric view by locking the camera vantage point to a certain angle. But the images are like these 2D images of small blocks that I need to piece together which is quite a lot of work. But because of the angles of the placement you will see it as an isometric space.

We can already see the potential of placement of objects, how they might be revealed or hidden due to the isometric restrictions for the player’s line of sight. And here I am only just interested in trying out the simple interaction of mouse over to make the objects rotate. Which I can then further extend into click actions, button actions, etc to maybe play audio, highlight objects. So that will depend on how we move on from this point.