QUADRUPED SYSTEM
April 2023, 2 weeks | Solo Project | Developer
This project was made for an assignment for my Systems & Experience Design class. We were meant to create a system that immersed the player in an altered state of being. I chose to make a player controller that emulates a four legged spider in Unity.
Accomplishments
Planned, developed, and delivered a demo of the system within the span of 2 weeks
Programmed a unique controls system to emulate controlling a four-legged spider
Created a testing survey and accessed feedback
Wrote a comprehensive systems design document that covers the projects intent, a summary of research done for the project, mechanics, and a post mortem
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Overview
Here is a video I made demonstrating the movement system.
This is the Visual Design Document I made to explain the basics of the game. I think it explains the basics of the game pretty well. The only thing I fail to mention is that the first button you hold down will pair the leg associated with that button onto the left stick first and then the second button you hold down will pair the associated leg to the right stick.
Documentation
For the documentation on this project, I first came up with the thesis:
"By creating a system for players to control individual spider legs to move around, I
intend to create an experience that allows players to feel what it might be like to walk
around with multiple legs, or feel like they are a spider."
After this, I did some research on altered states in games. I looked into immersion and flow and what can contribute to these experiences in games.
To briefly summarize my research, I would say the big parts of altered states is giving players a complete and congruent sensory experience through pairing visuals and audio with gameplay that is sufficiently challenging - not too easy nor too hard. You can find more details in my design doc.
You can see how I set up the system for moving the different legs in my documentation. This was my first time setting things up with bones in unity, and it was pretty cool to get working with code!
Postmortem
I am happy with how the controls for the quadruped came out in the end, but I wish I had done more to add feedback for the players actions. A specific feature I think would have gone a long way would be making it so that when you pressed the button for a leg, that leg would change color, and would remain that color until you let go. This would have helped a lot with acclimating players to controlling the quadruped as oftentimes players would loose track of what button was for which leg. The game also lacked much in terms of obstacles for interesting level design; however, that was out of scope of this iteration of the project.
This is a picture of the full level layout. I made it using a tileable web texture and a bunch of black circles and a few squares for walls. The players head actually doesn't have collision - just their feet do, so you can pass over holes/walls.