Chroma
|
Overview
Chroma is a game I helped make over of the summer of 2015. I worked in a group with 6 other people (4 programmers, 2 artists, and 1 game designer). Our goal with this project was to have a working demo for Spark Con (Raleigh, NC) which took place in September 2015. Since we started sometime around June 2015, that gave us about 3 months to implement our idea that we had been designing over the past year.
At Spark Con we were well received and had many people play our game. In particular young kids seemed to enjoy our game especially since we took the time to develop controller support. During this project I mainly worked with the UI and input management, but as small teams go, I found myself working on all sorts of code. I had the most fun creating a system for branching conversations and an editor for our game designer to use.
In the demo you start off at the bottom of the level. To the left and up is two creatures to talk to. As you continue up the left side you will hit a point when you cannot go up and must head right into another room where you will encounter enemies.
My Involvement
During the development of Chroma I decided to take on the UI as my main task. At the time I had little knowledge of Unity 5's new UI system so I figured it would be a great learning experience. The largest task I took on was the development of the branching conversation system. My design for the branching conversations also included making a Unity Editor tool, which allowed my designer to easily add branching conversations to the game. Designing UI for Unity 5 was very difficult. I spent a lot of time sifting the forums for help with dynamic UI structures and how to use the canvas component correctly. Overall I feel I created a quality product with my team and ended the project with a lot of new information.
Other than UI, I helped the team get acquainted with Unity. I had the most experience with Unity since I had spent the previous year working for Imangi developing Temple Run 2. I assisted in debugging and looking over my teammates code, as well as advising them on best practices that I had learned at Imangi Studios.
Battle System
The design of Chroma's battle system was meant to be simple but with room for depth. As an artist named Rigby you have four colors at your disposal, red, green, yellow, and blue. There are five meters in the bottom right that represent her alpha (gray), and 4 attack colors. When alpha is depleted Rigby ceases to exist therefore she dies. When a color is depleted she can no longer use that color attack.
The mix of colors that Rigby has at her disposal also affect what traits she possesses. Blue as defense, red as power, yellow as speed, green as regeneration, and any color in between as a combo of the two (for example orange is power and speed). When Rigby uses a color attack she is depleting that color in an enemy and likewise the enemy depletes Rigby's color levels when she is attacked. Not only will her current color levels change, but also the maximum allowed color will change.
Enemies have similar traits and colors at their disposal. The enemies AI is related to their color trait, for example when an enemy is green the AI flees, but when it is red it pursues. Enemies will drop packets of color to help refill the players alpha and lost color. This AI is based off a behavior tree that each enemy implements.
Controls
Universal
Escape (on main menu) - Quit Game (Windows and Mac OSX only)
Keyboard Only
W - Move Up **
A - Move Left
S - Move Down **
D - Move Right
E - Interact *
Space - Dash
I - Yellow Attack
J - Blue Attack
K - Green Attack
L - Red Attack
Controller Only (Xbox 360) ***
Left Joystick - Move **
A - Interact *
Right Bumper - Dash
Y - Yellow Attack
X - Blue Attack
A - Green Attack
B - Red Attack
* The interact button allows you to transition screens, start and continue conversations, and pick dialog options.
** Up and down movement allows you to pick dialog options in a conversation
*** This game was made to be played on controller for the best experience
Continued Development
Since school started up in August it has been hard to continue work on this game. Personally, I still want to spend time making this game what we wanted it to be. There was a lot of ideas that we had that never made it into the demo due to time contraints and there was a lot that we learned while at Spark Con. Hopefully we will continue to work on this project during the coming winter or summer.
Chroma is a game I helped make over of the summer of 2015. I worked in a group with 6 other people (4 programmers, 2 artists, and 1 game designer). Our goal with this project was to have a working demo for Spark Con (Raleigh, NC) which took place in September 2015. Since we started sometime around June 2015, that gave us about 3 months to implement our idea that we had been designing over the past year.
At Spark Con we were well received and had many people play our game. In particular young kids seemed to enjoy our game especially since we took the time to develop controller support. During this project I mainly worked with the UI and input management, but as small teams go, I found myself working on all sorts of code. I had the most fun creating a system for branching conversations and an editor for our game designer to use.
In the demo you start off at the bottom of the level. To the left and up is two creatures to talk to. As you continue up the left side you will hit a point when you cannot go up and must head right into another room where you will encounter enemies.
My Involvement
During the development of Chroma I decided to take on the UI as my main task. At the time I had little knowledge of Unity 5's new UI system so I figured it would be a great learning experience. The largest task I took on was the development of the branching conversation system. My design for the branching conversations also included making a Unity Editor tool, which allowed my designer to easily add branching conversations to the game. Designing UI for Unity 5 was very difficult. I spent a lot of time sifting the forums for help with dynamic UI structures and how to use the canvas component correctly. Overall I feel I created a quality product with my team and ended the project with a lot of new information.
Other than UI, I helped the team get acquainted with Unity. I had the most experience with Unity since I had spent the previous year working for Imangi developing Temple Run 2. I assisted in debugging and looking over my teammates code, as well as advising them on best practices that I had learned at Imangi Studios.
Battle System
The design of Chroma's battle system was meant to be simple but with room for depth. As an artist named Rigby you have four colors at your disposal, red, green, yellow, and blue. There are five meters in the bottom right that represent her alpha (gray), and 4 attack colors. When alpha is depleted Rigby ceases to exist therefore she dies. When a color is depleted she can no longer use that color attack.
The mix of colors that Rigby has at her disposal also affect what traits she possesses. Blue as defense, red as power, yellow as speed, green as regeneration, and any color in between as a combo of the two (for example orange is power and speed). When Rigby uses a color attack she is depleting that color in an enemy and likewise the enemy depletes Rigby's color levels when she is attacked. Not only will her current color levels change, but also the maximum allowed color will change.
Enemies have similar traits and colors at their disposal. The enemies AI is related to their color trait, for example when an enemy is green the AI flees, but when it is red it pursues. Enemies will drop packets of color to help refill the players alpha and lost color. This AI is based off a behavior tree that each enemy implements.
Controls
Universal
Escape (on main menu) - Quit Game (Windows and Mac OSX only)
Keyboard Only
W - Move Up **
A - Move Left
S - Move Down **
D - Move Right
E - Interact *
Space - Dash
I - Yellow Attack
J - Blue Attack
K - Green Attack
L - Red Attack
Controller Only (Xbox 360) ***
Left Joystick - Move **
A - Interact *
Right Bumper - Dash
Y - Yellow Attack
X - Blue Attack
A - Green Attack
B - Red Attack
* The interact button allows you to transition screens, start and continue conversations, and pick dialog options.
** Up and down movement allows you to pick dialog options in a conversation
*** This game was made to be played on controller for the best experience
Continued Development
Since school started up in August it has been hard to continue work on this game. Personally, I still want to spend time making this game what we wanted it to be. There was a lot of ideas that we had that never made it into the demo due to time contraints and there was a lot that we learned while at Spark Con. Hopefully we will continue to work on this project during the coming winter or summer.
Windows
Mac OSX