Enigmatic Inheritance

This was a research project sponsored by Meta and Unity in the summer of 2023. It was an 8 week(10 hour per) project in which a team of 5 students, including myself, were provided a Quest 2 headset and access to Unity pro. During this time, we were expected to develop a concept, create a timeline, and execute the tasks on this timeline to create a functioning prototype. We were also expected give a public presentation showing our process and the final product, which was intended to be continued by a second group of students in later years.

During this week, we crafted the idea of a classic puzzle/escape game. It would have several levels, each of which would have a unique puzzle required to move on to the next. We began drafting stories and creating a timeline that we would follow for the remainder of the project.

It was at this time, that I was informed that I was the only member of the group that had used Unity, was one of two that had ever programmed before, and the only one that had used version control. It was at this time that our professor, who was acting as a consultant/manager in this faux-company, suggested that I start to take the lead in the project and teach the other students the various skills and programs that would be needed for the project. The rest of this week was used to do just that and by the end, almost everyone had all the software needed and I had begun teaching C# and 3D modelling to the team. During the project we used Unity, Visual Studio 2019/22, Blender, Audacity, FL Studio, Trello, and Github.

This week was mainly used to learn about licenses, project management, and developing skills. I also learned and ran planning poker, burndowns, and ran daily standups, all of which we would continue to use throughout the project. Unfortunately, much of our working time from this week was lost due to some confusion about stipends and compensation which took some time to correct.

This lull gave us some time to refine and flesh out our ideas for the design, flow, and story of the game. At this point, we knew we wanted the game to be set in a hidden mesoamerican temple, which would be introduced to the player in a short cutscene at the beginning. The player character's grandfather would leave a key to said temple in his will, as well as a letter explaining it's backstory. The first level would be a walk through a stormy forest to find the temple, as well as a short tutorial explaining the basics of gameplay(movement, item manipulation, etc). This first level would require the player to carry the key and a flashlight to the temple, find the door, and open it.

By week 3, the team had settled in and begun to understand our niche roles. I had become more of a manager than developer, helping people with any issues and giving direction, as well as delegating tasks. We had one person who handled music and sound effects, another who created and sourced 3D models(meaning much research into licenses), one who handled overall level design and story direction, and the last who worked on programming everything. Obviously, with such a small team, there was a great deal of overlap between the roles, but these roles seemed to fit everyone's individual interests and skillsets.

Weeks 4 and 5 blur together- as does much of the time after this point- but I'll try my best to recount and accurate order of events. During these weeks, I increased my work hours to between 30 and 40 hours a week, as it would stay for the rest of the project. I would stay for up to 4 hours after the others left to correct errors and troubleshoot engine errors and Github conflicts. This tended to be what I spent most of my time doing while the others were actually creating things.

During this period, we mostly finalized the intro level and designs for the other levels. We ended up having roughly 1 level per person, with each team member providing a design for the team to critique then create. I worked together with our sound/music engineer to create the second level which consisted of a few riddles containing clues for placing books onto a shelf. The main programmer designed a level in a sewer where the player had to chase away bats as they raced through a dark tunnel. I designed a level in the bottom of a well, where players have to knock a key out of a bat's grasp as it tries to avoid them. Later two more designs were put forward but we will cover those later.

While we had a number of level designs, we were still working on the macro-elements of the game, namely the character controller. From the beginning we wanted a utility belt in which items could be stored between levels. This, along with a general struggle with VR/AR development, proved to be an ongoing problem until the day before the presentation. These game-wide systems were what the main programmer and myself worked on for the majority of weeks 3 through 6.

We finally made it halfway through the project, but it was far from finished. About this time, our artist and modeller stopped showing up. Apparently, he had some issue with housing and gotten a new job but none of this was relayed to us until the end of week 6. Because of this, we had to work under the assumption that he would be returning and would be willing and able to make up the work and hours that he had missed.

Aside from this setback, the second level had been completed and our musician turned level designer had a new idea. He proposed a foggy maze level. We worked together on it for a little while and we ended up with a complex, shifting maze with multiple levers that would move walls. He said he wanted to try creating and coding this entire level by himself, so I proposed a swap. For this level, I would write the music and do sound design while he did the more mechanical parts. I spent around two hours in LMMS(an open-source DAW that I ended up making a second track in for this project) and brought forward an eerie track that he thought fit perfectly with his level idea.

After my brief, two day tangent, I went back to finish working on the player controllers, level swapping, and a dynamic fire system for lighting certain items on fire.

We finally had the ability to change between levels and a mostly finalized player controller. Additionally, we were running out of 3D assets, so I bought us a license to use Kenney's Game Assets and made a dozen more assets from scratch. Unfortunately, this is what most of my time was spent on this week, aside from the end-of-day tradition of resolving Github conflicts. I also did the modelling for my well level during this week.

This week, our level design/writer put forward her design idea for the final room which would hold the credits and one final puzzle. This room would require a lot of 3D assets, which is why she was hesitant to suggest it, but we assured her that we would make it work. She started doing research on Blender and shaders that would allow her to pick up the slack of our missing team member and complete the room on her own. Additionally, at this end of the week our programmer had finally figured out how to create a utility belt that would allow travel between levels. With this final, major piece complete we could finally begin working on the final presentation.

In the middle of Week 7, we had a surprise visitor from our missing member. He gave us some updates on what was going on and revealed he had still been sneaking in after hours to work on 3D assets and a level design without our knowledge. Unfortunately, we were just squeaking by with the existing levels so we eventually had to cut his level from the game despite the work he put in.

Thankfully, his secret work allowed us to quickly put together the last rooms with some extra hours from all of us and begin putting test builds together before the presentation.

After a grueling 8 hour day of resolving version conflicts and rebuilding assets, entire scenes, and more, the game was ready for some external testing and bug fixes. We recruited some engineers from another research project on campus to test our game and give feedback. After a lot of crunch hours, the game was a fully playable prototype and our presentation was ready to go.

I'm searching for a copy and/or recording of the presentation so for now you'll just have to believe me that it went well.