Creating Portals and Pastries

Hi,

This is a quick devlog to describe how I made my game (Portals and Pastries) for the GameDev.tv Game Jam 2023. The theme of this jam was "Life in 2 dimensions". A list of tools I used can be found at the end of this devlog.

Day 1 (19/05/2023):

Not much happened on this day because the theme was announced near the end of the day for me. However, on this day I did manage to come up with the concept for the game. The concept that I came up with was a game where you go from 2D to 3D. I also came up with the story of a bakery where they sell food from another dimension (this was originally the 2D dimension but I changed it to 3D in the next couple of days) and that the player needs to be in the correct dimension when an inspector comes.

Day 2 (20/05/2023):

On this day I created the project in Unity and got started on making the game. I created the 2D and 3D player game objects and movement script. This was the first time I created a 3D movement script so I was surprised to have it working on the first day of development. I also created the portal and its script to switch between 2D and 3D; as well as the script for the camera to follow the player.

Day 3 (21/05/2023):

I made quite a bit of progress this day. I first created the ingredient box model and the script for it to hold ingredients and display messages to tell the user if they can interact with it or not. I've never used 3D modelling software before (its on my list to learn, I've just got to stop putting it off XD) so I ended up just making all the models in this game out of Unity game objects. I also created the oven model and it's script to accept and give player items as well as display if it is interactable or not. I created the 3D portal animation in GIMP. I did this by using some of the built-in effects and tuning them until I had a result I liked (I also created the 2D portal partial system on this day or in the next couple but I forgot to make a note of when). I created the 2D player's idle sprites (at some point in the next couple of days I created the 2D player walking animation but I must have forgot to write when that happened) and the script for the 2D player sprite to change direction. One of the other things I did on this day was make the 3D room.

Day 4 (22/05/2023):

On this day, I decided to tackle making a 3D player model using Unity game objects. I used the 2D player sprite as reference and started making it. I think it turned out looking alright. I then spent time creating a script to merge the individual cube meshes into one mesh. I managed to get this working but currently it removed all the materials.

Day 5 (23/05/2023):

I spent a lot of time trying to get the mesh merger script to automatically apply materials to the meshes but I as it was taking so long I ended up giving up on that and just merging the meshes of each material separately. Despite this taking up most of my day, I also managed to create the 2D room and till. I added colour to the 3D room on this day as well.

Day 6 (24/05/2023):

On this day, I created the bear customer, speech bubble, and cake sprites (I also created the cake sprite that goes on the ingredient box). I then created the customer script so that the customers could walk and request and receive items. I then created the 3D player walking animation and the 3D portal particle system. I also altered the 3D room so it didn't seem as far way from the camera. I never made a note of it but I probably created the bear's walking animation on this day.

Day 7 (25/05/2023):

I mostly created UI on this day. I created the UI to display what the player was holding and the UI for how much money the player has. Because I created the UI and sprites for the player holding and money systems, I implemented these systems as well.

Day 8 (26/05/2023):

I created the panda customer on this day (including their sprite, animation, and game object). Due to the way I coded the customer system, it was easy enough to add in more customers. I also made the 3D player face the direction it was moving in. I then created the inspector sprites, animations, and script (however, this wasn't fully functioning at this point but everything was in place to link it up). I also created the dialogue system so that the inspector had a way to tell the player if they where being fined and by how much. It was on this day that I added the timer for the day to end and the inspector to spawn; I also made it so that the customers leave when the inspector arrives. The day now ends when the inspector leaves, however, it was on day 9 that I implemented the day over scene.

Day 9 (27/05/2023):

This day was spent making the main menu (although I hadn't linked the play button up by the end of this day) and day over scenes. I also created the rabbit sprites and animations.

Day 10 (28/05/2023):

I started by creating the rabbit game object and its dialogue (and dialogue UI). I did have to rework the dialogue system on this day so that it could display more than one piece of dialogue at a time. I also created the cookie (as well as all sprites and game objects related to it) and linked it up so that customers could ask for it and the player could bake it. I made sure to make the play button on the main menu start the game and spawn the rabbit.

Day 11 (29/05/2023):

This was the final day of the jam and I tried to get the most out of it. I started with creating the timer UI (for the day and the oven) and creating sound effects for when the customer enters, footsteps, and coins being added or taken away. I added these sound to the game and got started on the music. I don't have much experience with creating music (all my other experience comes from other game jams) but I was happy with how it turned out. I then had to change all the fonts from the default font to a custom font I made in another game jam (I made some changes to the font for this jam). I then created the banoffee pie sprites and ingredient box and added them into the game. There wasn't much time left in the game jam at this point, this is where I discovered that there was issues when the player played more than one day. I managed to get this fixed but I didn't have much time left so I quickly created the WebGL build and the itch.io page. I had just enough time to add a quit button to the main menu and create a Windows build of the game as well.

Conclusion:

This was a very fun game jam to be a part of. I learned a lot of new things as I haven't really created a 3D game up to this point. Things went (mostly) smoothly until the last second. I think this was one of my favourite games to create.

Tools used:

• Unity
• Visual Studio
• GIMP
• Inkscape
• Glyphr Studio
• Bosca Ceoil