originally, when given a project brief about an untitled goose game-inspired mischief game, I immediately thought about raccoons. little hands and a penchant for mischief makes for a fun idea! the direction I hope this project goes to is a ways similar to untitled goose, but with its own raccoon spin to make it separate enough to be somewhat standalone. we’re aiming for a number of unique mechanics that make use of the raccoons particular skillset, like their little hands and climbing skills.
overall, making a fun raccoon experience is top priority for this project, and its still very early in development, so the details are subject to change.
First things first – welcome to our blog! Whether you’re here because you like games, raccoons – or you’re grading us for our qualification (hi!), we thank you for checking us out! Your interest is certainly appreciated, and, we’re glad we caught your eye!
Raccoon Game will be a game inspired by Untitled Goose – in which you play as a raccoon, and cause all the chaos possible when you have tiny little hands and a healthy appetite for mischief.
Of course, its very early days at current – so its hard to say how our game designing adventure will go! But, we hope you will join us on it, and follow our journey as we move forward – one paw-step at a time!
Before this UI Update, the Player’s health was displayed in the bottom left with a coloured square, which changed from green-yellow-red, So I was tasked with creating a proper UI for the Player, Meaning a Health Bar, Stamina Bar and an indicator for the cooldown of the growl/screech.
So I got to designing them, And it was pretty easy to think of an idea, Health bars are usually red, Stamina is usually Blue, Green or sometimes Yellow, and the Growl Cooldown shaped the UI because the idea was for the cooldown to be a picture of the Raccoon’s face, which went grey when you couldn’t growl.
After deciding these things, I started designing, I started with the Raccoon Face, I originally wanted to make it look like a circle, but I couldn’t figure out how to do that so the best alternative I had was an Oval shape, after I got this Shape, I started designing the Bars, And I thought it would be a good idea to have each bar connected to the Raccoon Face, with 1 Bar above and 1 Bar below, so then I ended up actually shaping the Bars around the Oval, which took some Warping work, But then I finished!
After I finished, I had more work to do, I had to create the empty versions of them all, So the versions that would indicate loss of Health, Stamina or the inability to use the Growl, So I had to darken and slightly fade the colours of the Stamina Bars and I had to change the Raccoon Face to a grey image, which is basically the same as Darkening and Fading but with the addition of subtraction of colour.
This is what I ended up with.
I then had to save each image individually, then figure out how to implement them into the game and make them functional.
This required me to scour YouTube for a tutorial, I then found a tutorial, and proceeded to find the process quite easy. The hard part was integrating it into the existing code, As I had to understand what any/all of the code in the Raccoon does, with only a basic knowledge of C#, But I did manage to do it, It only took around 3-4 hours in total.
Originally the Growl Cooldown was meant to just turn grey and light back up when you could growl again, But I ended up making it another Bar that goes in a circle to let you know how long you have left until you can growl again.
I then created a video tutorial on how to implement the UI into the game, which was needed because I did not have the main version of the game, there is no collaboration mechanic with Unity, and if there is, we are unaware of and not using it, So the video was needed to help the team member with the main version, implement it.
Over the past several weeks, I have been working on a massive overhaul of everything within the Raccoon Game – so much so, that simply writing it all out wouldn’t do it justice – so, here is a video, showing the gameplay so far, within a minigame
This, obviously, isn’t the puzzle game I set out to design – however, a simple food collection minigame has helped the development of both myself, and the game, in several ways.
First of all, it has given me the ability to test multiple aspects of the game – from the more obvious things, such as item collection and npcs, to the things you might not think about – edits to the movement and camera scripts, for example
It has also allowed me to create a fun, finished product, while waiting on other team members to create the necessary pieces for me to continue onto the main game.
Now that that’s out of the way, you may be wanting a breakdown of what all has changed since my last update; while the above is a good overview, below will be an in-depth analysis of everything I have done for this game!
Movement:
First of all, I completely redid the movement script – changing from a badly constructed script, to the standard assets pack script – before fully rewriting my original movement script. I did this, because my first script was buggy, difficult to read, and often unreliable. The standard assets script also had many faults, and relied on many things that I either removed or repurposed – as such, a new script was necessary. My new script is far cleaner, and more reliable, than any of my previous ones.
On top of accounting for everything from walking, to jumping, to sprinting, the script also contains handlers for various other features – including the ‘scream’ you hear in the video, used to warn off enemies.
Camera:
Much like the movement script, the camera script has also gone through many changes – starting with one I found online, moving to the standard asset pack third person camera, before being completely rewritten for purpose. The original camera script I chose was functional, but not without its bugs; the standard asset pack script was very useful, but overcomplicated, and had many bugs – the worst of which included flipping the camera around every time the player jumped – which could make it difficult to navigate mid-air.
The new camera script is cleaner, far shorter, and very easy to understand – its simplicity makes it easy to fix and edit, and ensures that its reliable.
Getting to this point was extremely complicated, and included a lot of trial and error…
…A lot of trial and error.
NPCs:
The games NPCs were one of the most complicated, but most useful, elements I managed to create; while they can, at times, behave unpredictably, they work the majority of the time, and the errors now are, thankfully, insignificant.
I created the NPCs using Unitys NavMesh functions – building a NavMesh from my game world, and making each of the NPCs Agents of that Navmesh. I used the standard asset pack NPC controller as a base, and built my own AI controller script – changing its targets based on different situations.
The majority of the time, the NPCs positions are randomized from multiple possible positions – once a certain amount of time passes, their position is randomized again, causing them to wander around the ‘park’. If they spot the player, they will give chase – and, if they reach the player, they will kick them away – dealing damage, and throwing them a distance. If they player continues to run, they will eventually lose interest, and return to wandering.
The player also has one more choice – they can press E, to screech at the humans – startling all humans in their radius, causing them to run away for a time – though this, again, wears off.
Pick-Up Items:
Pick-up items are another addition to the game – using the mouse, the player can click on pick-up items, which the racoon will then hold in their mouth. Upon letting go of the mouse, the racoon will drop the item. As such, they can only carry one food item at a time
Points:
With pick up items, they player needed something to do with them – this is where the point system comes in! In this minigame, the player must throw away the food items – gaining points based on how big the item is
Spawning Objects:
In order for the game to continue, I needed to spawn objects – currently, all food objects spawn randomly, and fall from the sky. This uses a simple instantiate script attached to a spawner, which would randomize a position, and spawn a random food item, after a random cool down – the enemies are spawned according to a very similar script
Animation and sound:
Next, I needed to make the game look a little better – using animations! I started by making some animations using Blender; I used blender, as I had some experience using this program from last year. I made animations for walking, running and jumping, and plan on making more animations in the future. I’ve thus far managed to make the animations work for the player – walking and jumping animations triggered in the movement script for each action
I used the same strategy for the sounds – I took some royalty-free sounds off of sound library SoundBible, and cut and stitched them together using Adobe Premiere, as this is a program I have lots of experience with. After this, I exported each sound as MP4, and placed them into my game files – using those clips and various audio sources, triggering them in the movement script in response to each relevant action.
I am currently continuing to work on the game – and will be uploading a video later today, to show my progress and explain where I am in the development process now. I’ve made a lot of progress in that regard – but, that isn’t what this is for. This is to outline all of the other progress I’ve been making, outside of pure game progress.
First of all, I’ve been doing some work in blender – mostly animation work. On top of the animation I’ve already shown here before (the racoon), I have also animated a walk cycle for the human, and some basic animations for on the title screen
I’ve been using Blender, as this is the program being used to make the models in the first instance – and, this is the program I am most familiar with in terms of animation, having used it last year. It uses keyframes, which can be assigned quickly and easily – and the animation is easy to play back and edit as necessary.
I am currently working on bringing these animations into Unity, but, am still working on making progress in that regard – I don’t yet know how to trigger animations at the correct times, but, am doing research into that to bring in soon – I feel like it will greatly improve the feel of the game
I am also using Photoshop at points, in order to create UI elements, or other 2D images for the game. I am using Photoshop, as this is the industry standard art program, and, as such, it is important that I become familiar with it – when I work at home, however, I use Painttool SAI, which is more artist-oriented. Both programs work well for what I need, and allow me to make the pieces that I need.
Overall, I have been making great progress, and only plan to continue to do so
As you’ve probably noticed, this blog has been quiet recently – and that’s because I have been working on unity!
Unity is a game development program, and its free! Its a little complicated to start with, but, thanks to a wealth of information available online, I’ve been making great progress in game development
In order to illustrate everything Ive worked on over the past month, please view the video below! It demonstrates a test level I built for the game, including a killfloor (below) and a handful of pickup objects
As you can see in this video, I have done a lot of work – I have fully functioning menus, including a pause screen and task sheet that can be accessed with tab, with the full ability for upscaling, changing and reusing them as necessary – I have a character, with a following camera, and the ability to move, sprint, jump, and pick up objects as I want.
However, there are many issues, as can be seen in the video above – sometimes, the objects let themselves be picked up correctly, and are counted – other times, they get deleted at random – either all at once, or whenever I approach them – for reasons that I have yet to work out. As I cant determine the cause, it’ll likely be best to rebuild the system completely – and I currently have plans to replace this pickup system with a ‘holding object’ system – it just might take some time to build, and will require some research to create.
Also, as can be seen at the end, the sprint key occasionally breaks, and causes rather severe issues – the racoon speeding up unstoppably in a single moment, and flying off into space so quickly the camera cant follow – breaking the game completely. I could rectify the game-breaking by putting kill-floor walls in – but, this wouldn’t fix the game attempting to launch the player, and would still be a major, and common, game-breaking bug
Obviously, there are a lot of things that need to be fixed before I can even start assembling the actual game – but, for someone who has never worked with unity before, I feel I have made a lot of progress, and learnt a lot in the process – and will only continue to do so!
i wanted to test if the style we wanted for the game would work in 3D, and i wanted to test my blender skills some more. so i made a raccoon model! for now its just a test until we decide on permanent assets.
first, i sculpted a basic shape in zbrush, then re-topologized that and imported it into blender. i lowered the poly count as much as i could without destroying the whole shape (which was just under 900 polys or so) and added eyes and a nose.
then, i textured the model using the material editor in blender, and the knife tool to get the shape i wanted. this allowed me to colour different faces with different materials, so i could get a good texture without having to use any uv editing. this also allowed me to easily make shiny eyes (made a black material with loads of specular and metallic effect, and no roughness.)
next came the rigging! this one took me a while to figure out, as after i created the initial armature, i had an issue where the eyes and nose didn’t interact properly with the mesh and the armature. i eventually fixed this but merging the eyes + nose with the initial mesh, and creating armature after that. i also edited the armature slightly.
and, voila! this is my finished test model so far, and an idea of the art direction for the models in game.
In order for the game to be playable, there must be a series of puzzles for the player to solve, before the can finish a level – or the game itself. Below are some ideas for possible scenarios, puzzles and tasks that could be included in the game
Task ideas: Meal – Collect various food from around the map – Cook
New house – Find and steal a better bin – Get into house – Get new bin out of house
Protect your home – Scare the humans away from your home – Lead several different humans away from your bin
I have never before attempted to make music for a game, but, for the sake of practice, I spent some time messing around in a simple online music box – known as ‘Beep Box’. This allowed me to quickly and easily make a simple tune, despite having no prior experience!
I am very proud of the song I made, and feel it could work well on a title screen, or in a minigame
Raccoon Game 