Student Project - Tips?

David Wakelin

Hello,

I'm David and about to start my final year group project at University. I've used Unity for 2 years and cannot program to save my life; although have a partner in the group who is capable with the "basics". Our game is similar to that of this:

http://www.actiontrip.com/news/the-war-z-mmorpg-revealed-/072012_3

obviously just a lot shorter, and less complicated; more of a demo.

Were looking for any information on inventory scripts or how they can be managed; as we've not done this sort of thing before.

So far we've found this: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/90871-advanced-inventory-system-example

but is there any other advice someone could give?

Cheers

Farfarer

If there's only two of you, that's still a lot of work.

As an example, for my recent student project I worked by myself with Unity to create a point and click adventure and that took me over 6 months and by the end I only had 2 low poly characters with limited animation, one scene to 75% completion and 4 other scenes in as basically grey-boxed stand-ins.

With two people, that could probably have had half to 3/4 of content added to it - and it's pretty basic stuff with mobile platform as the target.

I'd advise you look at something far smaller. Come up with a far simpler premise and ideally something that you can easily add "layers" of features to should you miraculously find you're on schedule (hint: you probably won't find you're on schedule at all - take all your time estimates and triple them).

David Wakelin

Hi,

Thanks for the reply; there are currently four members in my team, we've made games smaller then this before for our projects so its no biggie; our game project finish date is may 2013. Were not supposed to start until january but were starting early - I believe we have an easy time schedule to keep to. *fingers crossed*

Anyone else have some advice?

Appreciated Talon
(nice portfolio btw I like your style ;P)

Farfarer

Heh, sounds like you've got a handle on things then. My project was originally going to be a big third person platformy/exploration game but 3 months in it became clear that I had severely overestimated the amount of work involved so had to can it.

In that case no tips other than prototype everything with the bare minimum of art first and don't spend time optimising your code unless you need to.

Oh, but do cache everything that you use more than once.

RedRogueXIII

Third-person shooter, open world? multiplayer? rpg elements?

If your struggling just making an inventory system, everything else is going to drown you.

Take a look at an actual successful University game's design document : http://www.nuclearmonkeysoftware.com/documents/narbacular_drop_game_design_document.pdf
It's a very tight design with refined gameplay elements and style.

But if you want to be crazy and unlikely to finish - it takes a lot of dedication, and there will be studies, games, and other distractions.

Your whole team will have to learn how to do basic scripting, it'll be too much for one programmer to do handle doing systems as well as menial tasks.

How many levels will you have, and how many people working on them? Building a detailed environment from scratch will take more than 2 weeks, and you've got to get your art props together before that.

Have you identified all your gameplay systems? Animations, graphical transitions, and effects, sound and music are all things I find that often get overlooked.

Use as many middleware solutions as you can, it'll help cut down on big programming tasks. But on the downside, will you really be learning anything?

Communicate and coordinate often, it is important that all your team knows what they are doing and are not left idle.

Other than that, well good luck, your going to need it.

David Wakelin

Rather then reply to the consistent flame disregarding the actual purpose to this thread. Instead I will just reply that the problem has now been sorted and we will eventually post a WIP of our works for this project on the pimped/previews section

I understand people have suggested we're taking on alot of work; however we have started a YEAR earlier then the task hand in date, and our project is not a fully fledged game but a 20-30 minute demo of a first person adventure. Despite again, this still being a HUGE task; we have created projects exactly the same as this before for our second year final project and were very successful.

Appreciation, look forward to hearing your critique then

Team Roflcopter

Justin Meisse

Nobody is flaming - just offering advice based on real life experience. If you only wanted advice on scripts you should have just asked that BUT I'm pretty sure the Unity forums would be a better place to ask that sort of info, this is primarily an art forum.