Gameplay video showcasing Day 1 of our current beta build.
Social commentary on the pandemic and front line workers_
For my third-year Game Production &
Planning course, we had to select and research one of many social issues of
inequality. Using that issue, we had to plan, develop and ship a game
centered around that topic within the school year.
My group and I, AKA The Minimum Wagers, looked
to create a narrative simulation game about being a grocery store cashier
during the pandemic, similar in mechanics to Papers, Please (2013).
Using the first semester for the pre-production phase, me and my group mates
outlined the necessary production plan and documents that showcased our
vision and design process.
The second semester was spent implementing our ideas, playtesting and fully
developing our game project in engine.
Originally, the group featured
2 programmers
, including myself. Due to unforeseen personal circumstances, our
other programmer had to leave from the project,
leaving me to work as the sole programmer
on the project.
Roles: Sole Programmer, Technical Lead, Technical Artist, Audio Designer, Game Designer
Team Size: 3
Timeline: 2 Semesters
Course: Design Practice 4: Gamification
Tools:
- Unity
- Photoshop
- Aseprite
- Github
Work In Progress Screenshots_
My experience as a Solo-programmer & Technical Production Lead_
Having been working on the project for one and half semesters, it was a
shock to our group when our other programmer had to depart. For me, it meant
that I had to
pull up my pants and get to work restructuring all of the project's code and
programming all of the unfinished systems myself.
Originally, my main responsibilities on the programming side focused more on
the interactive gameplay systems, such as picking up products, scanning
them, using physics to
make them move around the game world and implementing the audio and item
pricing systems for the game. Now, on top of all that, I had to work on the
customer generation algorithm, dialogue system, level manager
and quite literally,
everything,
programming-wise.
As this was a huge undertaking so late into production, I had to make a lot
of adjustments to the scope of the project and later implement all the core
features for upcoming playtests.
The techniques I used had to be designer-friendly, meaning
that my other group members (who are not programmers) could easily add
content to the engine with little hassle/conflicts.
I implemented a class for Customers as a
ScriptableObject, allowing for better-optimized memory usage and the
ability to create/organize multiple Customer assets easily, that could be
loaded through a custom script.
I did the same for the Dialogue class, allowing us to
easily implement dialogue for each individual Customer's ScriptableObject.
Working as a solo-programmer has its upsides, as there is less version control conflicts and no time wasted trying to understand someone else's code.