Capstone Project
War Support
War Support is a top-down line-drawing puzzle game, where players create flight paths for their support helicopter to assist refugees in need of aid. Players will need to solve open-ended puzzles that revolve around choosing the appropriate paths to help all refugees within the allotted amount of flights. They must also make real-time decisions as they fly through hazardous areas occupied by turrets and floating mines.
This was made by a team consisting of myself and eight other students in a four month period of time. It shipped on mobile devices in 2018.
The Pitch
This is the initial pitch for War Support, created by fellow teammate Chris Ballenger. We used this as a launching point for the work on our game, and further built upon this base.
Features I Was Responsible For
There were several features in this project that I was responsible for. I worked on the prefabs and behaviors for our game’s enemies, a countermeasure ability, and bomb refugees. I provided additional player feedback with notifications that appear above the helicopter, an animation for collecting or starting with care packages, and improved refugee icons. I set up a reward system that scales with each successive level, and provides bonuses to the player. I added SFX to the menu buttons, and maintained button consistency between our menus and levels. And that’s not including some of the main levels I worked on, and several other odds and ends I helped with along the way. But perhaps the biggest two tasks I worked on for this project were the game’s tutorial levels, and HUD.
Tutorial Levels
Initially, the tutorial levels were going to be separate from the main game. However, Chris and I felt it would be better if they were implemented alongside the main levels, so we reworked level progression to better help the game's overall flow. I was responsible for designing all levels that teach the player new skills, the hints on the side of levels, the tips screen, providing "donations" so that players have money to try out new abilities, and the animated arrows/fingers that guide the player through using new skills.
User Interface
Most of my time on this project was devoted to designing and maintaining the HUD for the game. Our initial attempts at a HUD didn't do a good job at presenting information to new players. We also had the inconvenience of the player having to go back and forth between the levels and a separate store scene if they wanted to purchase additional supplies.
I designed, prototyped, and implemented an all new HUD that better organized all related UI elements, added a results screen for winning and losing, and added a visual for deactivated HUD elements in early levels. I also incorporated all equipment purchases, so as to prevent players from having to go back and forth between the levels and a separate store scene.
Postmortem
I love that our project stands out as a non-violent war game. I also feel that the changes to the game’s HUD and integration of our tutorial levels directly into our main levels worked great for our game. In retrospect though, I think more time could have been spent finding alternate solutions to some of the Unity bugs we came across, rather than stubbornly wasting time every other week on temporary fixes. But in the end, I learned a lot about how to better provide in-game feedback to players, as well as designing engaging user interfaces.
Downloads & Documents
Some members of the team have continued updating the mobile versions of the game, but I have since moved on to work on other things. However, the design documents and Windows build for the final version of the game I worked on can be found here.