SANTIAGO CASTANEDA M
Unity Developer
E-CHARGE
SUMMARY
E-Charge is a 2D Puzzle Platformer which utilizes Electricity as a source to generate Chain Reactions.
Players are given the ability to shoot lightning bolts to interact with the game world. In the game as well as in reality, electricity behaves differently according to the surface of contact.
It was developed during the course of a month as an individual effort. The game features electricity interactions as a way to overcome obstacles and hazards.
DETAILS
E-Charge was a solo task prototype I created for one of my Game Design classes. Although the game does not showcase too much concent it was my first approach to more Advanced and Efficient Scripting Techniques. In this prototype, one of my primary tasks was to experiment how confident players felt when being introduced to a new concept. From this project, I obtained a lot of knowledge and ideas that would influence my future approach to problem-solving, and overall Game Design. The most important areas that were influenced by this project were my Scripting, and Designing Skills.
In the game, Electricity behaves differently according to its interaction with different materials:
Rubber: When interacting with rubber, it will bounce off, causing it to take a new direction and continue moving until something else gets in its path.
Glass: This material has the ability to cancel electricity effects. As a result, when the Lightning Bolt interacts with glass, it will disappear from the player's sight.
Steel: Steel has the ability to conduct electricity around. Players can take this at their advantage to trigger mechanisms and other interactions to overcome obstacles and other hazards in their way.
These are some of the interactions present in the game. However, in order to achieve these effects I needed to implement the following techniques:
Scripting: This is the area that got most influenced by the project. Thanks to E-Charge I learned how to implement Raycasting techniques and Layer masks to properly create interactions between different objects. One of the areas where this can be seen is the reflection of the Lighting Bolt. Although this effect could have been applied by just adding a Bounce Physics Material, thanks to the Raycasting techniques I was able to obtain a more accurate and efficient functionality. Additional to this, having to create a simple Enemy behavior that followed a determined task was a task that I never attempted to achieve. However, I was able to obtain the effect desired by utilizing some of the tools offered by Unity's Nav Mesh agents.