PPP Week 4 - Update

I realise I have not been posting or explaining much about what I have been achieving so far in PPP. The main reason for this is that I have been trying to make sure I have my head around the technology that I will need to learn in order to properly make this game playable on a phone. This has proven to be fairly frustrating: as well as figuring out that I will need to get an Apple Developer license in order to put my games on the app store, there are a few complicated steps involved in just testing your game on an iPhone. I spent several days last week trying to figure out how to make touch controls for a 3D open world game on my phone. This was one of those things that made me feel really stupid, and I had many questions that I could barely articulate- I didn’t know what I didn’t know. After what felt like a very long time I found a tutorial that I thought was exactly what I needed and spent many hours following it. I was planning to then playtest the game using the Unity Remote 5 iPhone app, but discovered that this app would not function Unity’s Input System package which I had used to build the project. So then I found out that I could export the game using Xcode which would build it straight onto my phone. To get Xcode I had to update my laptop which took another few hours. Then finally when I had all that lined up and (I think) got it working properly, the app that was loaded onto my phone just loads a blank Unity 3D project.

Instead of pulling my hair out, I have looked back at the progression I made last semester. In Semester 2, 2020, I spent the first four weeks or so learning Unity and barely had any output, then in the last seven weeks of the semester I made several games of which I am quite proud. So it’s okay. Sometimes you just need to spend time learning the tech. Once I have figured this all out I will be able to quickly work on the narrative and design elements of the game. I have made mood boards and taken several pages of notes on the different characters and the storyline, but as I haven’t put them into the game world, I occasionally feel like I’m making zero progress. I will persevere a little longer with getting the game playable on my phone before I give up and go back to my comfort zone.

Above I have some images of moodboards for the designs of the American and Australian schools. I have also made a few important decisions regarding gameplay. For example, I know that I want the game to play out over a finite period of time- probably three days- with each day representing a new chapter and location.