Prototype 1
So, for the actual prototype we wanted a mini game in which one character (the little grubby turtle from the narrative) creates chaos around the library and you as the player have to organize the trail of mess that has been created. It was a very basic idea that I had to prototype but there were a lot of different design decisions that I had to take in order to make sure that the prototype had more gameplay to it than it just being boring. I took ideas from all the discussions that we were having together as a team.
Setting up
First of all, I am not very good at code but I do like a bit of a challenge. I chose Unity Engine to work on the prototype as I have a lot of experience with it also Unity is usually very quick to compile simple prototypes. I set up a little scene with the idea of having a small cube which represents the little turtle and a bigger cube which represents the octopus.
I wanted the turtle to be an AI that goes around the library, leaving a trail of books but I couldn't figure out how I could make the AI move to certain spots. I used a trick to make it so that the it moves towards a random empty game objects that I placed all around the little area.
After making a structure for the little cube to follow, it was moving everywhere without any issues. It was a little random and I wasn't entirely pleased with it, but it was a step into the whole process and I was ready to make the AI leave a trail of books as it was moving on its path.
I struggled with this bit for a while. Me not being in touch with programming for a while basically made it so that I could not remember what certain functions do. I looked into Unity Docs to learn more about C# and I found out about the "Instantiate" function which is used for instantiating a spawn feature, particles, animation and all sorts of things. I used that with some logic to make it so that after some delay, the AI drops a book.
void Spawn() is called in the update method everytime Time.time is greater than the variable spawnTime and adds a little delay to when the book should spawn. It makes it so that this does not happen.
I remade the movement layout of the AI so its a little more organised. I added different colored walls to the scene which represented bookshelves and made the layout so that the turtle runs from one bookshelf to the other randomly, while dropping the books. I added a simple movement script for the octopus so it could chase around the little turtle.
We had a discussion with Adam later about the prototypes, and since all of us were not enthusiastic about taking this idea further and wanted to work further on the Upside down Island idea, he wanted us to stop making more progress on prototyping other ideas as we already had made a few prototypes for them and just focus on the island idea.