Posted August 22, 2022 by AWy
Hey, I'm here to talk about the development of We Are Not Islands.
We Are Not Islands is my first interactive experience / complete history game. It was also made as my entry to my first ever GameJam - 10:10 WIGJam.
When I first heard of the GameJam and the theme I got very interested, thinking about what kind of game I could make. I had lots of ideas, a platformer in an office where you have to fight the patriarchy to win, and a maze where you have to fight yourself to get to the other side...
But after some thinking, I decided that I didn't want to make something where you have to fight. I wanted something that passes the feeling of people helping each other, especially women and members of the LGBTQIA+ community help each other. That's when I had the idea of We Are Not Islands. A game where you do just that.
After having decided what type of game I wanted to make the easy part was writing the game script.
When I finally started to code in unity things got complicated. Initially, I was going to have a stationary camera that follows the player. And that was how the player moved. That is until in the middle of development when I decided the camera was too restricting and had to re-do almost all the PlayerController with only 10 hours left.
Another thing that gave me a big headache was the dialogue between the NPCs and the Player. It was my first time working with NPCs and dialogue in games so I had 0 idea what I was doing. I tried having the NPC and the Player exchange messages and send them to the GameController, but that just didn't work for long lines of dialogue. In the end, I separated the dialogue by story part and used a 2D array to control who was saying each line.
On that note, I got quite sad that I had to cut "NPC talk" out of the game due to lack of time. My idea was to have an NPC do the central plot talk and while there were no changes on that have the NPC say random stuff. I feel like it left out a big part of the characters personalities. ( I will leave the miscellaneous lines at the end in case you go curious.
I had some problems with the rotation and movement of the NPCS, but that was mostly because I don't really understand how Quaternions work. This seems small but it really ate a big chunk of my time.
Even with these problems I had a lot of fun with this project. It was my first time working with a tight schedule and I feel like it gives you a bigger motivation to sit and work on your game. I love the feeling of spending hours working on something and then seeing it come alive when you hit play.
Miscelaneous Lines for each Chracter:
Anna:
-Exploring is about discovering new things! Some are good and some are bad.
-You can explore in a lot of different ways: traveling, self reflection, doing art, getting lost, changing yourself, meeting new people…
-There is nothing wrong if you don’t want to explore scary things. Maybe in the future it won’t be so scary.
Leila:
- I’ve lived here for a long time. It is a beautiful place to live.
- Do I ever feel sad living alone on this island? Don’t be silly. I’m not alone.
-The first ever gift my partner gave was a purple flower. It’s my favorite flower ever.
Lily:
-This island is almost perfect. It is the best one to play hide and seek, it doesn’t have any flowers.
-Everyone knows you can’t play with strangers. That’s why you need to make them not strangers anymore!
- I know all the best hiding spots!
Hea:
-[Silence]
-[Low humming]
-[Loud headphones noise]