DevLog Luke Rooney

<span class="NormalTextRun SCXW35749485 BCX0" <the="" theme="" that="" was="" given="" to="" us="" for="" this="" game="" the="" of="" ‘borders<="" span="">The theme that was given to us for this game was the theme of Borders. So, our thoughts for this game were a prison style game, where you are stuck inside a prison trying to escape from the police. In this DevLog, I’ll tell you about this game, what our goal was, and how we carried out everything we set out to do.</span> 

Original ideas: 

Our original plan for this game was to make a multiplayer escape room type game, where the game was a bit like ‘A Way Out’, where you both have to work together to try and escape, rather than being against each other and the first to escape wins. You can see the original starter sketch for this below. 

In this sketch, the idea was two identical chambers, in which the characters would start, and would have to escape from with each other and help each other get to the exit. This is as far as that idea got before we decided to change direction, and go with a different idea, still in the same theme of cops and robbers. 

Final idea: 

Our final idea, which is the one we went with, was to only have one player. That player would be a prisoner, who is running away from the cop, and trying to stay away from the cop for as long as possible and get a high score. The cop, instead of being a second player, would be AI, who would chase you around trying to catch you. So, we completely scrapped the second player idea and made it a solo game instead of a co-op or 1v1 game. We laid out a map of the prison that we wanted to make using probuilder inside of Unity. Below you can see the sketch we made compared to the build we made in Unity. 

So here you can see the sketch turn into a reality. I think we did a really good job in bringing the sketch to life. It looks exactly like the sketch we made so I am really happy with it. 

Making the AI: 

Making the AI was probably <span class="NormalTextRun SCXW35749485 BCX0" <the<="" span="">the hardest part of this whole project. We used NavMesh which is built into Unity. Programming the AI was alright, as we could use NavMesh to show where the cop should and should not move. The problem came when trying to balance the AI. We didn’t want to make him too fast, so he catches the player instantly, but we didn’t want to make him too slow where you are just going around forever. It was hard to balance it out, took a long time but it was hard to get it perfect, but we tried our best. I do kind of like the comedic nature of the AI, with him not being very good at his job, but I would’ve liked to get him working better than he is.</span> 

UI: 

The UI is simple but effective. We have a button called "Let's Go" which starts the game and runs the AI program so the cop starts to come after you. 
We have another button at the end of the game which lets you play again. On this panel, it also shows you your score that you got in that game. The score just increases by 1 every second, so if you get caught after 30 seconds, your score will be 30. Screenshots to show this are below.