The making of Single-Use Society

Having had time to decompress from the excitement and adrenaline of finalising and uploading my completed project, I thought it would be good write down my process for critique and refinement during my next jam.

MONDAY: I started out by creating a small prototype area that the player character and NPC could navigate. This allowed me to create an AI script that would be attached to the NPC object meaning they would roam within a sphere & also create the item spawner and associated prefab objects to spawn. Once happy with this element, I implemented the player collect script, scriptable objects for the player inventory and UI to display items being collected.

TUESDAY: First port of call was to fix the UI script for item collection as it wasn't displaying the count when items were collected, line of code should have been in Update *facepalm*. After this I began to implement a management script to count the number of items being spawned that would eventually bring about the game over state if the level got too high.

WEDNESDAY: Putting aside the waste manager script for now, I moved onto creating the item converter system. This would see players interacting with an object which removes an item from the inventory, in this case a plastic bottle, and replaces it with an alternate item that will be used to "convert" the litter droppers. With this system working, I created a UI element to display to the player the countdown to item creation.

THURSDAY: As I look after my 2yo on Thursdays, today was an enforced day off. This allowed me time to take stock of where I had gotten to with the development and what the next steps to take would be. This was my favourite part of the jam, having the freedom to create at my own pace and keep to family commitments. Also, I was able to fix the waste manager script. Previously, I had been finding the items spawned by their tag but this was proving incompatible with other parts of the game. Therefore, I switched this to the item spawner script to increase the integer each time an item is spawned.

FRIDAY: With my plan of attack written out the previous day, I started by creating icons for the items. This would help the player better identify what was in the inventory. I also created a fuel gauge for the recycling machine, this would be reduced each time the green cup was produced. Next was trying to fix the rotation of the NPCs as they were not facing the direction in which they were moving. Finally, I designed a new level using assets from the Unity asset store and applied a navmesh that would only allow the NPCs to follow certain paths.

SATURDAY: With the majority of the pieces now implemented, the last stage was to ensure that all gameplay scripts were working as expected. I implemented a refuel mechanic on the recycling machine, which the player uses the rubbish bags for. I also added a count of NPCs for the player to track, with associated UI. This count is reduced each time an NPC is "converted" leading to the game win state.

SUNDAY: Deadline Day! This thought would normally elicit feelings of fear but given the flexibility the jam has provided, I went in to this final day full of confidence that I would complete on time. However, I did find myself rushing at the end as I began to try to implement other elements before finishing those I had already intended to. I finished the NPC despawn mechanic and added new scenes for the main menu, an intro and game win/lose. Final steps were to create main menu function and add in the game audio as well.

Overall, I'm pleased with the outcome of the game jam. I felt I was able to test my skills and produced a game I can continue to develop after the jam. One thing I would change from this process would be to implement menus and music earlier on as these are simple features that don't require much attention.