Friday, September 28, 2018

Interview: Christie - Development Lead and Co-Producer

Hey guys, Adam here again. It's been a few weeks, and we've been hard at work. While I'm working on a full on blog post showcasing what we've been doing, I took the time to sit down with Christie, our Development Lead and Co-Producer and talked about her time with unity, the process of coding and how she feels the project is going.

A - You're the main coder for this project. Can you give us some examples of things that might entail?

C - I am basically responsible for everything that has to do with the project going into unity. So I've done a lot of the layout so far. I've done, well, coding. Daniel has complained to me a couple of times saying "you're not coding, you're unity developing" and that's really really true, because I have to learn language that's specific to unity, and unity only; so I've... made a lot of the mechanics, I guess. everything from walking to picking things up to the score system to being able to shoot other people with your chickens; that's a lot of sitting down and typing.

A - Fair enough. Well coding is a notoriously finicky undertaking. what have your main difficulties been so far?

C - Well, I think it's, my difficulties mainly stem from not being a programmer [laughs], if you understand what I mean. Cause we're all in the arts course and... though I've had unity experience before the project, I didn't really have the expertise, I guess, to do anything really [laughs]. I'm actually taking a new unit devised this year by Brad to fix this problem of students not knowing how to do unity and I'm learning a lot of things as I'm going and sometimes it's just a tad too late. So sometimes I will have already coded it a certain way, for example the score system, the old score system was done, 100% using nested IF statements. Now if you're a programmer you just head "tonne of nested IF statements" and you're like "NO!". So the week after I finished the score system we learned how to do arrays in this other class and then I was like "oh gee, I should have done arrays" cause, basically nested IF statements are "if its this - this, if its this - this" and if you continue to do that it's very hard to keep track of where things are. So i had to rewrite it basically with this new array system that I just learned and that's the same with all the mechanics that I have done for the prototype. so I just had to remake them and, I think I'm gonna have to remake the collision system yet again.

A - Sounds very complicated.

C - Yes. I mean prototyping is one deal right, I mean you can just bash things out really really quickly and it works, it "works" and that's all that you need but when you kind of have to factor in that people are actually gonna play this and if bugs come up in between play-tests, especially because we're going to show at a convention, its not something you can afford. really. You cant let your game break down half way through, so you need to think all the code mechanics through so none of it clashes or anything.

A - On a more positive note, i was wondering what you would consider to be your greatest achievement so far in terms of coding or unity development?

C - That's hard to say. I'm learning so many things from the ground up.

A - Is there any one thing you're particularly proud of?

C - Ooh... I guess, I was really, I was kinda proud of the score system. So the score system basically that player has their own inventory in their barn, it needs to have a list and track what all the animals are in order from what was put in first to second to third, if there's empty spaces after it, the animals in total. Also I've got a combo system working; if the first animal was a cow and then the second animal was also a cow it can read what the previous animal was. So if you have two cows in a row you get a double bonus, and stuff like that. If you get a continuous thing, you get a herd bonus. I also got it to look for if the person has at least 2 chickens, 2 sheep and 2 cows, give it a Noah's Ark bonus and stuff like that.

A - So sort of like the after game bonuses in Mario Party?

C - Yeah exactly yes. So i got that working and I was pretty proud of that one I think.

A - Well, you've been hard at work for over two months now, there's still so much to do though, whats the next thing you're working on?

C - I've been trying to work on the missile system for a very long time now, but I still need to do a lot of tweaking on the mechanics we already have. Just because, as I said before, I might have to restructure the things I've just restructured. I'm thinking of moving away from collision based detection to ray-casting; and that's basically, instead of having a box which says "this box has entered this other box" its basically shooting a laser and being like "if i hit this particular object then do this". So I'm thinking of moving to that and then probably implementing the missile system or the animal power system where animals shoot things, to do certain actions and I think probably after that would be particle systems.

A - Fantastic, do you have any other closing thoughts or anything else you want to mention?

C - I would not get a job as a unity developer [laughing]. It's been a tough journey, again having to learn everything from the ground up, and it just kind of, I just feel like this isn't my job [laughing]. But, you know, I think it was a good experience and I learned a lot from it, and I can do a bunch of things in code now that I would never have been able to do otherwise, and I think its made me grow as a person. Coding is something that I never thought that I'd be able to do and I guess when push comes to shove it kinda shows me that I can do these things even though I think that I can't. In the end its a good experience. Though, if you guys ever start a games project make sure somebody in the group has learned some coding stuff before.

A - Have an actual programmer basically?

C - Yeah. I think that next year it'll be much better, just because we have the unit now, and most of the people going into games project will have already taken that unit; but yeah, its been hard. It's good though, its good.

A - So, given the chance, you wouldn't do this again?

C - Argh, Its hard. I would do it again, probably-

A - But it's not top of your agenda?

C - Yeah, you know what, its not something that I would actively seek out. If the next project, I needed to work as a programmer I might just, you know c'est la vie and do it, but its not something that I'd actively try and get for myself.

Thanks Christie for your time. Over the next few weeks, I'm going to interview the rest of the group working on the game and glean some insight on their parts in the creation of it.

Thanks for reading guys.

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