Design Blog 1 - Sunshine RV

Hello players and readers,

I am extremely happy to be here to discuss bootleg studio's first project. Sunshine RV is a 3D simulation game where the player roleplays as a brewer in a trailer park called "Bar Nunn Mobile Estates". Originally, the game was called "Moonshine RV" where the player brews moonshine for the trailer park. However, due to legal restrictions from Chico State Game Studios, the game cannot portray any use of alcohol. So, as the designer, I was met by my first project obstacle and had a choice as which direction I wanted the vision to go. So, instead of keeping "Moonshine" in the title, I talked with my dev team and we came up with the idea for "Sunshine", a direct wordplay with the term, so that we could still portray the use of the substance that is now called Sunshine. 

This change in title brings another obstacle in our way as we have to make sure that each of our players are able to understand that sunshine in this game is not the light casted from the sun, but instead, is a special concoction that the player character, Bill E. Bob, brews to sell to his neighbors at the trailer park. Since, the player will be selling sunshine to customers out of a window in their RV like a taco truck as seen in the image below, I believe a solution to said obstacle would be to include a menu board next to the window at an angle that allows the player to see while also making it seem like the customers can see it as well. One thing I want to be sure of is not to expedite the background of the game too directly, I would want the player to understand what they are doing in the game and why they are doing it simply by playing the game so that we can immerse the player as much as possible. 

3D Art

Here we have the wireframe for the RV that the player is going to be spending most of their gametime in. In my years of making games, I noticed that a lot of my peers had an extremely high scopes for their games which made for a very stressful production and I want my team to have fun making our shared vision instead of being stressed to make something they aren't even interested in. So, in order to keep the scope low, I designed the game to cycle between five different camera positions instead of giving the player the ability to walk freely. The way movement works is that the player will start on the inside of the RV towards the hitch where they can see down the RV and interact with objects in the RV. To the left of the player's starting position is the order window where the player interacts with customers and sells moonshine. When the player clicks on the cash register on the counter of the RV,  the camera moves to the window section of the RV. One feature I really like about interacting with customers is that sunshine orders are time limited and randomly generated and include glass type, sunshine flavor, and coloring which the player can choose whether or not they want to accept. Since orders will often be generated with requirements that the player does not have (for example, if the player does not have the right glass type for the order) they will need to be careful when accepting orders or be stuck with an order they cannot fulfil and be forced to cancel the order.

Next to the order window is the distillery where the player will be making the sunshine for the customers. The player can get to this section by clicking the respective arrow on the player's HUD while at adjacent sections or by clicking on the still object from the starting point of the RV. The interaction of the brewing station takes inspiration from Minecraft where the player drags and drops specific components into the still UI menu. In order for the player to brew sunshine, they need to have a glass type (shot glass, double rocks glass, mason jar, and liquor decanter)  a sunshine flavor (lighting, cherry, apple, and honey) and a coloring for the sunshine (clear, red, green, and brown). Once the player has added all mentioned components into the UI brewing menu, the brewer automatically starts creating sunshine. Our 3D art team has just finished making the shot glass, double rocks glass, and the mason jar and will begin moving on to the stickers that will be placed on the glasses so that the player knows what type of flavor the sunshine is.

Level Design

I am so excited to have a block out of the trailer park for Sunshine RV! This helps add vision to the game for the other developers. As you can see, I did not want to have too much of background for the game to render so the background will end at a tree line so that when the player is in the order window, they really only pay attention to the other trailers (represented by brown rectangles) and the driveway when they want to look at the background. The area where the player is going to be is at the top of the parabola that is the road into Bar Nunn Mobile Estates and, as you can see, the player will have a backyard where the player will be able to grow trees for the flavors and colors of the sunshine. In further versions of the block out, the other RVs will have fences in their backyards as well so that the player does not feel isolated from the rest of their neighbors in the trailer park.

 Engineering

One of the biggest accomplishments that the engineering department has made is the camera transitions. As I mentioned earlier, the player does not directly move wherever they want to go, rather, they click on specific objects in the scene and the camera moves towards a fixed angle in front of that object. I thought this task was going to take a rather long time for our engineers but it was made very quickly and so effectively because the way the code works is that when you click on an abject with a certain tag, the camera moves in front of that object no matter where it is in the scene. That way, when we get the RV imported from the 3D art department, we can move the interactable object around and will not break the code.

Another huge step in the engineering department was the general set up of the game UI screens so that the player can transition between screens such as the main gameplay screen, the main menu, the pause menu, and the status window where the player can view all their in progress order and their inventory. On thing that I wanted in the design was so use smoke and mirrors in screen transitions to avoid using scene management because I know that scene management takes up a lot of resourced from the project and, if not executed properly, makes for rigid transitions. So by keeping everything in the same scene, the game feels more smooth and seamless.