To start this week I started by fixing the camera issue I was having last week after doing some research and talking to Adam (course leader) and Maddi (Ph.D. student) I found that the reason it wasn't working was because I had to change the properties of the UI canvas so that it scaled with the screen size. Later on in the week I heard back from a Music Student called Robin Clark who I had emailed a few weeks back about the possibility of being a Composer for my game and he sent me the initial prototype that he was working on for the music based off of the prompts/ideas I gave him for what I wanted which was a main menu sound similar to that of Fallout 4 and this below is what he made.
Screengrab of an email between the Lead designer of Kessler (Max Clay) and the Musical Composer (Robin Clark) stating that this is the first draft of the song and more is on the way
You can hear in the background (0:50) the notes similar to that of my Fallout 4 inspiration which is just amazing as well as the piece being unique and fitting for a game like mine aimed towards a rating of E10+. I had neglected to tell Robin about the game's age rating however, he had smashed it out of the park making a piece not too graphic without me needing to. I then took this music file and using Unity's timeline system added it to a timeline connected to the UI canvas and looped it using the options the canvas gives you as well as creating a fad-in and fade-out effect to better loop the sound.
Screengrab of Game Development Engine Unity showcasing the timeline window with the above menu sound created by composer Robin Clark imported
I added the timeline to the UI canvas so that it doesn't stop until the UI canvas is disabled meaning that when the player clicks on the options menu and the buttons available to them change the music that's playing doesn’t stop or have to restart it can just continue from the place its at because the UI canvas is still activated. Further on in the week I also used the same timeline system I used within the main menu to create a new scene that helps transition the player between the main menu and gameplay by giving the player some backstory that they can read, this makes it so the player docent just gets chucked straights into gameplay without no idea of the worlds story or a moment to think.
Gameplay video showcasing the Intro cinematic created in Unity timeline window
Gameplay video showcasing the Intro cinematic created in Unity timeline window
Above is the finished product that the player sees once they click the main menu button as you can see in the image below I again used the timeline system however this is more intense of a use. I made this effect work by adding a UI canvas and then adding text to that canvas and putting each line of text into the timeline and extending it to 5 seconds meaning that after the five seconds it had was up the text would disappear and let the next piece of text appearing creating a little movie story in short snappy paragraphs, the large active block at the end seamlessly transitions by to the next scene which I accomplished by creating an empty game object that when activated changes to the next scene in the build allowing the intro to only play once. I designed the intro to be this way to add interest and depth to the transition instead of the player just staring at a wall of text and with the target audience and accessibility in mind because for people/players with learning disabilities like Dyslexia and ADHD reading a long intense wall of text can be difficult and easily boring. In terms of designing it this way for my target audience it's for similar reasons because Kessler is aiming for an E10+ rating with its design I know that my players will be anyone 10 years old and above, with most kids at that age don't have massive attention spans.
This week I fixed the camera issue found last week and received a first draft of the main menu music from composer Robin Clark. I then used Unity's timeline system to loop and fade the music and also created an intro cinematic using the same system to transition players from the main menu to gameplay.