Turtle Town (WIP)
January 2021-
Director, Designer, Programmer
Art by Laura Littleton
Turtle Town is a 2D PC strategy game that tasks the player with constructing and managing a city on the back of a moving turtle as they explore a dangerous forest and rescue their animal friends.
My role in the Turtle Town project evolved over time. I started off as the designer/programmer of a 2-person team in the spring of 2020, then pitched the game to the USC faculty and am currently working as the creative director of a 30-person team.
Design and Directing
As creative director of Turtle Town, my goal is to create a game that blended the city-builder and survival game genres in a unique and interesting way. I am working closely with the department leads to make sure that the two systems are integrated well with each other, and to create a game experience that instills senses of ingenuity and discovery for the player.
My work includes:
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Systems Design
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Design Documentation
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Faculty/Guest Presentations
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UI Layout Design
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Production Coordination
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Enemy Design
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Design Scoping
We plan to have our gold master finished and ready to show off by May of 2022. We hope to include 12 buildings for the player to construct and 4 biomes for the player to explore. As creative director, I check in with every part of the team on a regular basis, making sure that each department is in line with each other and working towards the same vision.
To communicate my ideas, I create and maintain design documents and spreadsheets to be given to the team's design and engineering departments. Another important task of mine is the creation and presentation of biweekly updates to a board of faculty about the progress of the game and the goals of the team.
Work Examples
Faculty Presentation Slides
Resource System Diagram
Building Design Documentation
Building UI Layout
Programming
While I have recently been granted the privelege of working with a very talented team of engineers who are helping me expand on the game, I was the main programmer of the game from January to May of 2021, implementing all of the various building, combat, and menu systems included in the prototype that I presented to faculty in May.
My work included:
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Systems Programming
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Enemy and Turret AI
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Enemy and Resource Spawn Systems
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Build System Using Scriptable Objects
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Dialogue Triggers
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UI Programming
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Art Implementation in Unity
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Audio Implementation in Unity
Work Examples
The BuildingManager script was central to the strategy of the game, and used a variable system and scriptable objects to keep track of every building placed, then interacted with a variety of other scripts to cause changes when new buildings were placed. It made what would otherwise be a daunting task of mixing scripts together and creating spaghetti code into a much cleaner and easier process.
The BuildingManager script was central to the strategy of the game, and used a variable system and scriptable objects to keep track of every building placed, then interacted with a variety of other scripts to cause changes when new buildings were placed. It made what would otherwise be a daunting task of mixing scripts together and creating spaghetti code into a much cleaner and easier process.
Build Script
The current script goes through several steps to find and fire at enemies. When an object with an "enemy" tag enters its firing radius, the turret object adds that enemy to its array of detected enemies. The turret then finds the nearest enemy in the array and draws a raycast to it. If the raycast makes contact with an enemy, the catapult fires until the enemy is defeated or a new enemy becomes closer than the first.
The current script goes through several steps to find and fire at enemies. When an object with an "enemy" tag enters its firing radius, the turret object adds that enemy to its array of detected enemies. The turret then finds the nearest enemy in the array and draws a raycast to it. If the raycast makes contact with an enemy, the catapult fires until the enemy is defeated or a new enemy becomes closer than the first.