Become Unbearable
Become Unbearable
A narrative driven RPG following Otis, a former criminal who is just having a drink at the tavern when the law arrives. Otis is defeated by the Sheriff of Rexia and brought in front of the Baron. Baron Alden requires Otis’s help as something strange has been happening in a local mine. Otis is to find out what’s going on, and handle any inconveniences for the Baron. However he is unaware what lies in stake for him, and how solving this inconvenience will bring him many, many more.
During my junior year of college I worked on an Independent Study with one of my professors at UF. Working on my own, with guidance, I built a short narrative driven RPG in the Unity Game Engine. Throughout the semester I modeled characters, props and environment features. I also programmed all of the systems and mechanics.
Modeling
One of my main focuses for this project was creating unique character models. I wanted to create characters with a stylized appearance but also appealing. I emphasized my low poly art style, focusing on enforcing a core poly count. As reference for the different animal head shapes, I found paper masks online with distinct low poly shapes.
Programming
This project had me programming new systems I hadn’t worked on previously. I developed my own combat, enemy management, and inventory systems. These tasks had me exploring part of Unity I hadn’t learned before including Scriptable Objects, Avatar Masks for animation, and State Machines.
My largest hurdle in this project was creating a combat system that felt fluid and fun. I researched by playing other games including Souls-likes and older RPGs. Eventually I developed a system that gave the player strong feedback and felt fun to use.
My inventory system gave me troubles including controller support and building a modular system I could add on to later. I learned how to create scriptable objects to store items that would be used in the inventory, attaching them to their models the player held, their icons for the UI, and their stats and functions when they were used. This allowed me to create a modular system to add as many items into the game as I needed.
Conclusion
This project was quite the endeavor. I started this thinking it would be an easy project with an entire semester to work on it. However I was quickly shown how many things I hadn’t done before, and with such a large scope, I was struggling to focus on making the core mechanics actually feel good in gameplay. Overtime I scoped the project down and was better able to achieve my major focuses.
From this project I further familiarized myself with the Unity Engine, and bettered my programming fundamentals. I became more interested in creating systems that were modular and reusable rather than strictly hard coded features.
