I am a part of The Sixth Sense team for this project, I have opted to do the artwork, texturing, and modelling as I have a background in doing art and would like to learn more about map design and 3D modelling. Right now, we plan to make a horror game exploring the main building in UL, so I shall begin working on a model for that soon.
28th of February 2025
We split the modelling of the main building between me and another member, I will be doing the top three floors out of six.
5th of March 2025
I have finished working on the top floor of building, I modelled it in unity and plan to have every floor as a separate scene, I was originally going to have every room be a separate scene, but as we plan to implement monsters that chase the player through rooms, I thought this way would be easier.
I originally intended to be neater with the model, but I realised I didn't have to as the building will never be seen from the outside, so I could save more time by being less precise with the placement of the walls and floor, I am worried this may cause issues when texturing later, but for now it works.
12th of March 2025
Finished work on the 5th floor, this went by a lot faster as I have improved on my methods of modelling. I realised I could have just one floor for all the floor, so I don't have to worry about placing them carefully to avoid overlapping with each other, I will apply this to the previous floor to make things consistent. Now I will begin working on version control.
19th of March 2025
Getting version control working was a struggle, I tried both github and git, but my files were too large, and I could not figure out how to get around that with git lfs. I managed to get BitBucket working for our repository with relative ease, now I will begin merging all of our projects into one.
22nd of March 2025
I was able to merge all of our individual pieces of work together with relative ease, while it's not complete as I have not heard back from a few of my teammates, I did manage to add enemy AI and walking to my floors. I was also able to add the first floor to the main project, it was somewhat of a struggle as my teammate chose to make his work in blender, and it wasn't showing up when imported into unity, through troubleshooting I realised the mesh renderer was disabled on every indivdual wall mesh, so I wrote a script to enable all of them and that fixed things.
23rd of March 2025
I have made a presentation of our game to show at the next lexture, unfortunately I had to make this at the last minute as my team is quite unorganized so no one else had anything prepared, I worry this is due to our lack of an actual producer and that this will have negative effects as we try to push forward.
I made this image using binarization of a photo of the main building, I intended this to be used in the presentaion, but after asking my team, we decided it might work well for the main menu of our game.
I also decided to include a simple video of walking around in the map.
24th of March 2025
The presentation was delayed, so I am going to rework the current slides I have and add more to it, I also am going to try working on the games visuals to make it look more unique.
27th of March 2025
I made a simple brick texture for the game through as I wanted to work on shaders, and felt having textures down would be important.
I then decided to work on a full screen URP shader graph, my first idea was binarization but I was not a fan of how that looked, I then decided on a posterisation effect, and began work on that. The posterisation effect was simple, unity's shader graph has a built in posterisation node, so that did most of the work, I did decide to convert the colours from RGBA to HSV, posterise, then convert back to RGBA to get what I think is the best looking effect. After the shader was complete I also decided to lower the games resolution to 192x144p to make it look more unique, this was the end result.
I took a lot of inspiration for the visuals from a game called Lethal Company. It gave me the idea of using a posterisation effect and lowering the resolution. I gave my game has a much stronger posterisation effect with less steps reducing the amount of allowed colours, and a much lower resolution than Lethal Company as I wanted it to look visually unique from it. I also learned of volumetric fog and lighting when studying lethal company's graphics, unfortunately these aren't easily doable in my game is it's using unity's Universal Render Pipleine and this game uses High Definition Render Pipeline.
1st of April 2025
I decided to switch from unity's Universal Render Pipline to High Definition Render Pipeline as I was not a fan of the lighting in URP and also wanted to take advantage of the fog. I also made this tile texture for the floor, and the ceiling.
I had a lot of issues with converting my work to HDRP, transferrign the map was easy, but I struggled massively with converting the full screen posterisation shader graph as the URP Sample Buffer node, used to get the colour values on screen before posterisation, was missing in HDRP. I managed to replace the node with the HD Scene Colour node and it essentially served the same purpose. I then ran into another issue, after converting the shader graph into a custom pass volume, the game went black, this was thankfully a small issue, I just had to add back Directional Moon Light and the Sky and Fog Global Volume as I deleted them when switching to HDRP as I did not know what they were. This is what the game looks like now that it's using HDRP.
4th of April 2025
I decided to take advantage of HDRP's volumetric fog and lighting, while my original intention was to have the fog lower the view distance, the posterisation shader graph makes the game a lot darker, so that part is somewhat unnecessary, I do still want to take advantage of volumetric lighting. The process was quite simple, I just had to create local volumetric fog and scaled it over the map, I then placed some spotlights down as they looked exactly like the effect I wanted.
8th of April 2025
I ran into some issues with bitbucket so I switched over to github, I originally had some issues with Git Large File System but I was able to resolve these issues by paying for extra storage for a month.
13th of April 2025
I implemented some code to enable footsteps when the player walked, here's what the code looks like, it can also be found in the github.
All this code does is enable the footstep sound to loop when W, A, S, or D are held.
15th of April 2025
I had to slightly modify how another team members code for a flashlight worked as it disabled itself and was not able to re enable, I also updated how the light looked as it was originally made in URP, and did not look right in HDRP.
16th of April 2025
I placed some more spotlights around the top floor to make it easier to see.
18th of April 2025
I modeled some objects in blender to populate the map with furniture.
I was intending the models look somewhat uncanny, and I think I got the desired effect. I also made some textures in clip studio paint to go along with them.
20th of April 2025
I decided to work on a way to transition between scenes, this required some scripting again, though I am more confident in it now, I decided to make the way to the next floor through a hole.
I took some inspiration from Silent Hill 2 with this idea, there's an area where to progress you have to jump into deeper and deeper holes. The intended effect I wanted was for it to feel like you were being led deeper and deeper into a hellish world.
Here is the code I used to transition between scenes. When something with the player tag collides with the collision box, it'll load whatever scene is indexed. Once again this code can be found in the github.
21st of April 2025
I modelled the main enemy of the game, The enemy's attack and chase code hasn't been supplied to me yet, so I originally just placed it down to be ominous.
I then decided to get a little more creative and began working on a small jumpscare of sorts.
I wrote a simple script to make the image pop up and for the next input to delete the statue, the image, and play the piece of audio I made with audacity.
I decided to change how moving from the next floor from the top worked, instead of falling into the hole, I decided to add the statue again as I felt it made it scarier, however, I'm not sure how I feel and may change it back.
Once again, here is the code I used to make my scripts, they can also be found on the github.
I made this texture in clip studio paint for the hole.
Finally for today, I decided to keep the other floor I'm in charge of, the third one, completly dark as I wanted it to feel scarier after falling in the hole, I decided to make a simple tutorial on how to use the flashlight another teammate added and I tweaked how the light looked to fit my design better.
The code for the tutorial was really simple, I just placed text on the UI and had the script delete the object when F, the flashlight button, is pressed, like always, it'll be on the github.
22nd of April 2025
I made the main menu for the game, I used the image I made earlier on for the powerpoint, used a font I found for the play and quit buttons, wrote the code to load into the first scene and quit the game, and I added music another teammember made.
I had to work on doors as the team member working on them has not gotten back to me yet and the project due date is approaching. I made a simple teleporting script and a locked and normal door texture in clip studio paint, once again, the code will also be in the repository.
Finally I worked on the promotional video for the game, I didn't have a lot to work with as the members on my team in charge of puzzles and enemy AI have still not gotten back to me, so I worked with what I had, which was mostly my own work. I recorded gameplay of me just walking through the map with OBS, edited the video in DaVinci Resolve, added music made by another team member, and uploaded it onto my youtube channel where you can view it, for convenience sake you can also find it below.
23rd of April 2025
I spent all of today adding the finishing touches to the game, it is unfortunately quite unfinished as the members behind puzzles and the enemies either failed to send on the stuff or were not able to implement it into the game in time. I implemented another team members unfinished floor, and wrote a script to auto matically apply materials to it, I also threw together a quick "final boss" area.
I had to throw this together quite quickly as I was running out of time, the intended concept for the story was we were playing as a damned spirit trapped in limbo, with the statue acting as our guide to hell. While this is unrealised in the game as it's extremely unfinished, I am glad I managed to include it in some form.
Closing Thoughts
While I thorougly enjoyed this project and am glad I am now experienced with unity, I am also somewhat dissapointed. My team lacked an actual producer, leaving me to fill in that role, and while I tried my best to keep things steady, it just lead to a lot of work falling on me, this is in part due to poor communication. The issues with communication were detrimental to this project, there were very large periods of time where it felt like nobody but me was doing anything. I believe this is in part due to the fact that in a course so broad, game development isn't going to appeal to most people, leaving them seemingly very unmotivated and lost. I hope to work with people who are as equally passionate about game development as I am when I begin the game development course.
