Assignment: 'Re-Grow'

Details

Platform	Engine / Language	Type	Mark
Windows	Unity (C#)	Team	75%

About Re-Grow

Animation by Greg Carter

Re-Grow sees you join the spirits of the forest, known as Gardeners, in their quest to revitalize their dying world after it was invaded by ant-like Robots. Explore small procedurally-generated maps each with different missions that have to be accomplished without alerting the invaders. Bring the plant seeds you find in the outside world back to your Biodome to plant and grow, and then re-plant them outside to restore the world to its former glory.

Re-Grow was developed for the Game Design and Development module by a team of ten: four programmers and six artists. As the Designer, I was in charge of maintaining and updating the Game Design Document and Asset List as the project evolved over time. The game’s themes and gameplay features were worked on by the team as a whole with everyone pitching in their opinions and ideas.

As one of the programmers, I worked on several project features, including:

The enemy AI - I utilised Unity’s NavMesh Components to help the AI with environment navigation. The AI has several states that it can be in which are expressed in-game using little status icons that appear above the enemy’s heads:
- Patrolling - The default state, which does NOT have an icon. The enemy moves in a random direction until it bumps into an object.
- Chasing - The enemy enters this state when near the player. Movement speed increases and the player becomes the target.
- Investigating - The enemy is drawn to a point of interest that the player has interacted with (i.e. a deactivated fracking drill, a planted plant, etc.).
- Sapped - The enemy was hit by the sap of the sap plant, rendering it immobile for a short duration.
- Spored - The enemy came into contact with a spore plant’s spores, clouding its sight. The enemy is unaware of the player for a short duration.
Saving and loading functionality - The game data is saved into a binary file; similar to the setup I had in Sinner’s Run.
Mission Data - A data structure for the game’s missions. This data is fed into the game’s procedural generation script which creates a mission with specific parameters. Having this structure allowed us to create new missions and to modify existing ones on the fly.
The Mission Select UI - Allows the player to select what mission they want to do and presents them with all relevant information, such as the biodome level requirement, objectives, rewards, experience gain, etc.
The Planting Station and Planting Station UI - Acquired seeds can be planted and grown in the Biodome, the player’s hub. The interface allows players to select where to plant, what to plant and shows how long until a planted plant is grown. It also allows for upgrading the planting station itself, which decreases plant growth times and unlocks additional planting spots.
The Overworld and Biodome UI - These display vital information such as the player’s current resources, objectives, progress, etc.