Week 5: Midterm Progress

Concept

For my midterm project I have decided to create an adventure mystery game where the user is taken through an interactive journey where they make decisions based on clues provided to them. The game has different paths with different possible endings, giving the user control over the narrative of the story. With the starting point being in a long hallway where they will receive their first clue before entering the room, with the use of signifiers and feedback to lead the user where they need to be. Once the door is opened they are in the first room where they are supposed to make the first choice that decides which path they will be taking. Through this project I hope to bring together everything we’ve learnt so far technically and conceptually to bring the project to life and make it as engaging and interesting as possible.

Code Design

Character.js:
Represents a simple character with a body and head that can be drawn anywhere.

Hallway.js:
Draws the hallway, handles wall scaling, door animation, and hallway character.

Room.js:
Draws the rooms (intro, basement, office) and manages buttons and room characters.

Sketch.js:
Main controller that sets up p5.js, loads assets, switches between hallway and rooms, and handles input.

Current Progress

I have created an outline of the starting path of the game, particular the hallway and introductory room where the user makes their first choice. As well as a rough outline of what the first two rooms will be like. For the hallway I have integrated sound effects and a little walking and door opening animation to create an environment that draws the user in as soon as they start the game.

Challenges

The most difficult thing to do in this project so far was the animation of walking toward the door at the beginning, which required exact perspective scaling and smooth transitions. At first, the walls were not scaling consistently, and the door animation felt unnatural, making it hard to build the idea of depth for the viewer. I had trouble related to the door opening and the player’s movement being properly synchronized, meaning that certain awkward jumps between states occurred. To get around that, I rewrote the code to include a Hallway class to concentrate all logic related to the hallway, introduced a scaling value based on wallDist to scale the walls proportionally, and smoothed out the door animation via incremental increments to doorAnim. I also centralized the movement logic so that the footsteps and perspective changes are in sync, which led to smoother and more believable walking animation. Overall, I’d say making different elements compatible is the most difficult part but with the right organization of the code with abstraction and encapsulation.

Reflections

Working on the rough outline of what I want my project to look like and creating a skeleton for my code was very beneficial in learning what is the right way to approach this project. I now have a cleared idea of the path I’d like to take with this work and what I want to focus on. My first next step would be focusing on the narrative and the different storytelling elements that I will be integrating to guide the user. I feel like I need to focus on creating a path that is easy to follow and come up with reasonable signifiers.

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