Frederic Kümmel | Game Dev

This game was the second semester project I worked on in a team, consisting of 7 people. Our task: Create a vertical slice for a Point&Click-Adventure game, settled in a SciFi/Western - Setting. Our project did come out quite successful, not only did we pass with flying colors, but also won 1st place of the "HNU Games Kickstart" - Event taking place at the end of each semester, where all game projects from every semester of the University Of Applied Sciences In Neu-Ulm are presented to an expert jury and public visitors.

So, what is the game about? You play a seasoned Bounty Hunter named... Hunter, who has been hired to find a group of rebels on a desert planet owned by a large conglomerate. To be able to search the desert though, he needs a vehicle that can transport him through the desert first, and that's what you do in the demo. To get all the parts needed to repair a scrapped sand speeder in the local workshop, you have to combine items and talk to people in classic Point&Click manner, but you can also try to shoot stuff up with your arm cannon, and scan the environment with Hunter's enhanced Cybervision. Even though Hunter isn't going to shoot every thing you see just because you tell him, you'll at least get a funny reaction if you try.

As one of only two programmers in the team, my job mainly included the implementation of mechanics and assets, but I also contributed to the conceptualization of the mechanics, mainly the shooting feature, and puzzle design. I also implemented the character navigation, item interaction and inventory systems.

The dialogue system of the game was coded by scratch instead of using an add-on, since we weren't sure whether a 3rd party plugin would satisfy our specific needs. We wanted the dialogue of each character to be able to change depending on the player's progress and their possessed items in the inventory, just like in the classics. The solution was relatively simple: Each dialogue is represented by a container holding a set of dialogue choices, who each hold a dialogue sequence and a reference to another dialogue container. They can either lead back to the previous set of dialogue or yet another layer of dialogue choices, or simply end the sequence if no refernce is given. Now, each character just needs a blacklist of dialogue choices the players is currently not allowed to see, that can be altered as they progress through the game, e voila: You have a satisfyingly dynamic dialogue system to work with.

Another thing I'm especially proud of is the technology behind the visual representation for the shooting mechanic. The game is in 2D, yet Hunter turns in the direction the player aims, as if he is in a three-dimensional space. This effect was achieved by covering each level with special colliders, holding a script that returns a depth value for any two-dimensional coordinate on the screen depending on its type.

Background Walls return the same depth for each coordinate, Floors hold a minimum and maximum value for depth and interpolate the return value depending on the y-value of the given coordinate within their boundaries. Side Walls do the same thing, but with the x-value of the given screen coordinate.

Now, you only need to read the depth value of the point where the player is standing and the point they're aiming at, and you can tell exactly in which direction Hunter is supposed to look, adding a sense of depth to the shooting mechanic.

Try the demo on itch.io!

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