My Role: Sole Developer

Problem to Solve:

• How to improve the efficiency (or speed) of game prototype development.

Current Situation:

• During the process of practicing game design, a lot of time is wasted on trivial tasks and repetitive operations.
  • For example, in Unity, controlling the toggle of a game object requires writing a piece of C# code, which often needs to be repetitively written many times.
• There is a lack of reusable high-level libraries (tools), including commonly used features like bags, health, weapons, etc.
• Connecting various modules is challenging, and most tools are difficult to combine.
• Tools themselves are unstable, with frequent interface changes.
• Conclusion: Building game prototypes requires wasting too much time and energy on unrelated tasks, lacking efficiency.

Approach to Address the Problem

• Select and build a toolchain to ensure stable interfaces for various modules.
• Use this toolchain to create game prototypes and verify the improvement in efficiency.

Application in Prototyping and Product Development

• Prototype design is crucial, and rapidly creating prototypes that resemble the final product can significantly shorten the development cycle and reduce the chances of rework.
• Game products, such as levels and upgrades, also require similar toolchains.

Building the Toolchain

• Choose Unity as the development platform.
• Select Game Creator 2 and its associated development packages: inventory, stats, dialog, quest.

• Choose Ability & Combat Toolkit for combat.

• Select Action-RPG Starter Kit for characters, scenes, and more.

Project Type

• An Action/Adventure RPG

Design Aspects to Validate

• How does the continuous improvement of melee weapons through forging affect player engagement?
• Is there a connection between weapon upgrades and player level increases to enhance the game’s stickiness and joy?

Process

Game Creator 2 provides data management capabilities for game design and, when combined with action and triggers, can avoid the need to repeatedly write small snippets of C# code, thus improving efficiency. The accompanying development packages offer a high level of abstraction and can be used directly, but the melee package was not ideal, so Ability & Combat Toolkit was chosen.

There are many options for the game’s scenes and characters, and a set with a cute anime-style – the Action-RPG Starter Kit – was chosen. Practical experience suggests that this choice has a relatively small impact, and other scene or character models can be chosen freely.

The construction process was completed in a few hours (not exceeding 8 hours), including two scenes: one inside a village with activities like shopping and forging, and another outside the village where the player explores, fights various monsters, and obtains treasures. 

Players alternate between exploration (combat) and upgrading through forging. Levels and combat capabilities continuously increase, avoiding monotonous battles or lengthy exploration. Experiments show that designing a complex forging technology tree can enhance the game’s joy and stickiness.

Open a box which has many material for weapon crafting

Some special items for weapon crafting

Equip the items for weapon

Crafting the weapon

Trade items including weapons and materials

After equipping the weapons