Documentation & User Guide

Final Game compared to Concept:

These are the differences between the game concept and what it ended up being:

- Firstly, the main difference is that instead of as initially intended, the player having a specific amount of time for each round, then after that time elapsing a new round starting, the next level starts instantly as soon as the player reaches the colour. This was done as I realised for a more fast paced, 2D, game, it seemed to be a better idea to have the levels instantly change when you reach the colour, to make it more fun. I instead made it so the amount of time per round was instead a player health bar (displayed within the player) that runs out the faster you make it into the game. So, the most important aspect of the concept - a fast paced challenge to get to the colour - remains; however just not quite as it was going to be initially.

- The other main difference was that I did not implement powerups. This is a good feature and makes sense if it is *slightly* less fast paced, however in the game's current form I thought that adding them would not add a great deal to the game. 

- The final difference is that instead of like the original concept, you cannot win in this game. The initial idea was to have a final round, and you win by beating it. However, this was replaced with a score for how many rounds you survive, and the objective is instead to get the highest score that you can. 

- Apart from that, the game is true to the concept - you use WASD keys to try to get to the colour in a certain amount of time, with different levels.

Feedback Summary:

I actually summarised the feedback in last weeks' devlog which can be seen here: https://addisondj.itch.io/colour-party/devlog/533752/game-testing

Some changes were made since then as a result of the testing, such as increasing how quickly the difficulty speeds up as well as there being a longer delay for instantly proceeding to the next round. I assume that the information about these changes should be included in the final devlog, not this.

Asset List:

Despite there being multiple levels, the game is entirely in one Unity scene.

This scene consists of these objects:

- Main Camera, which has a Cinemachine Brain component attached to handle the camera with the virtual camera

- Virtual Camera, which uses Cinemachine to follow the player smoothly.

- map: this is the game object for the background (the level). It simply has a sprite renderer and the Change Level script, with all the levels Texture2Ds listed. 

- player: this is the game object for the player. It has a Rigidbody 2D and Box Collider 2D attached, which is only for collision with the walls. The movement is handled through the Player Movement script, and the player object also is what holds the Game script which is responsible for most of the game logic. (this also has a Trail child object but it is disabled (RIP rainbow trail))

- wall_R, wall_L, wall_D, and wall_U game objects for the boundaries of the map. They have a Box Collider 2D so they can collide with the player (so the player cannot move outside the map)

Assets:

Scripts

- ChangeLevel: This is the script that is attached to the map object and is used for randomly changing the level to one of the map textures. It also has the logic for restarting the game, which happens when the user presses R when the game is over.

- Rainbowify: This makes the trail rainbow (RIP rainbow trail)

- PlayerMovement: This is the script that updates the velocity of the player based on what combinations of WASD are pressed. However, it first tests whether the game has started yet before running this, as when the game is not started, the attract mode is played through the Game script. This is the only part of the whole project that was not entirely my work - the code for 8-way WASD player movement is taken from the tutorials.

- Game: This is the main script that runs the game, and is attached to the player object. It contains all the logic for the GUI, starting the game, attract mode (where the character randomly moves around on the default map), and (using the method from ChangeLevel) moving to the next level, picking a random colour, detecting whether the player is on the colour, as well as updating the health and how fast the health ticks down based on how much time has elapsed and what the player's score is, and finally, ending the game when health reaches 0. 

Textures

levels: These textures (0 through to 15) are a set of 16 different levels designed by me that the game picks randomly.

playerhp: These textures (player_0 through to player_16) are a set of textures of the player which are displayed depending on what their health is.

player and map_resize: These are the default player and map textures and not of any use.

empty: This is a black square which is simply the texture used by the walls.

User Guide:

Game Name: Colour Party

Controls: WASD for movement, SPACEBAR to start the game and R to restart the game

Basic description of gameplay:

In Colour Party, you have to reach the colour (indicated by the colour of your character) before your colour drains out and you are completely black. Every time you reach the colour your score increments and a new level and colour is chosen. The further you get in the game, the faster it gets, and the game is over when you run out of colour (time)!

Title screen / Attract mode: the character moves randomly about until you start playing

Gameplay: Time and score is displayed, your health is the amount of colour you have left in your character

Game over: You have lost all of your colour. The exact time is displayed, your final score is displayed, and you can play again by pressing R.

References

1. 8 player WASD movement code from the practicals

Everything else was entirely my own work (art, code, etc). (Inspiration for the game concept is in the game concept devlog)