Email & Dialogue System!
- Kyle Cornwell
- Apr 27, 2023
- 4 min read
This week marks a breakthrough in terms of development on the core mechanics. My last update discussed my polaroid mechanics for the environmental interaction as I developed upon it from an examine system. This update brings you an interactive email system with the use of UI elements designed to create a matching gameflow and art style as the environment! I designed the email system based on a mixture with the popular indie title Emily is Away (Kyle Seeley, 2015) as well as Microsoft Windows95 operating system. I decided to choose a grayscale colour scheme to match the games emotion as I'm trying to represent a devoid of life due to the heavy impacts surrounding the character, I intend to create a colourful version of the game, as well as the computer to show a transition of positivity.
I managed to construct the email system using a similar level of guidance from a tutorial for in-game mobile system, that enabled me to add multiple emails on a scrolling view component with Unity's UI setup (SpeedTutor, 2022). This enabled me to add text to messages and created scriptable objects to hold each email that would be significant to the interactable objects. This was refined by creating two lists, emails and items. The cycle of play mode is capture a polaroid of an item, printed version attaches to spawn point. a counter detects the spawn point number and executes a spawn event for the new email to appear, as well as the new interactive within the scene. This instructs the player with the email alert to check the computer and be guided to the next item. This works sequentially so that when I implement the demon realm scene, I can use events from physical gameobjects to trigger animations and sounds.
Figure 1: GTA In-Game MOBILE in Unity (Unity UI Tutorial) (SpeedTutor,2022)
Figure 2: Polaroid & Email Test Update (Coven Interactive, 2023)
The next and final mechanic that has been implemented into the project is the dialogue system. At this point in the game, the player has gone through the uncovering of the characters past through the polaroids and helpful emails. This is where I intend the story to unfold for the player to be more involved. I wanted to develop a choice system when they transition to the Veil (demon realm). This would bring in the core feature of a win or lose state which represents the acceptance or denial of the characters uncovered depression. I first looked into multiple choice UI witht the use of button clicking on the canvas, which would give the player a set of choices to answer the question represented on a panel (Jimmy Vegas, 2017) This made me refine the setup with two paths of dialogue that lead down what would be the acceptance path, or the denial path.
I did encounter issues when writing up the dialogue itself as I underestimated the questions in comparison to the answers which became hard to comprehend. Not only that, but the overall system I ended up developing includes a range of 14 buttons for choices and 8 different texts for dialogue. I managed to solve this issue by adding a chance button to the player, where it would act as avoiding to answer the question. Once the dialogue was implemented through code and answers through Unity UI, I was able to test it through the use of coroutines which precise calculations for duration. Once I estimated the correct timers, the dialogue played clearly and correctly which put me in a positive state, knowing the final mechanic was almost pieced together. I took the liberty to record my own voice for the dialogue with edited pitch to appear more demonic when the player is in the Veil.
Figure 3: How To Create Multiple Choice Options (Jimmy Vegas, 2017)
Figure 4: Dialogue System Test (Coven Interactive, 2023)
WIth all core mechanics working to a playable and testable standard, this puts my project in a strong position. I am happy to see how the initial concept has come along. Although the remainder of development is going to be a crunch time, I intend to still incorporate the standards of a vertical slice build as I mentioned during my project proposal. I am veyr pleased with length of progress that has been made within a short amount of time. I aim to keep this level of commitment up towards my release to ensure I meet the neccessary targets I set and in result, answering my research question. Feel free to check out a further breakdown of the email and dialogue system in the development log. Until next time!.
Figure 5: Condemned: Souls of the Veil Devlogs - Email & Dialogue System! (Coven, Interactive, 2023)
Kyle Seeley, 2015. Emily is Away. [Online] Available at: https://kyleseeley23.itch.io/emilyisaway [Last Accessed 27/04/2023]
SpeedTutor, 2022. GTA In-Game MOBILE in Unity (Unity UI Tutorial) [last viewed 27/04/2023] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygYFQwvbR_g
Jimmy Vegas, 2017. Mini Unity Tutorial - How To Create Multiple Choice Options [last viewed 27/04/2023] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZNsc-jWk9g
Coven Interactive, 2023. Condemned: Souls of the Veil Devlogs - Email & Dialogue System! [last viewed 27/04/2023] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHImt-zD024
Comments