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Second Year University Game
Freelight is student led second year University project, we showed our game off at the GA Expo, Geekfest, and EGX. We won two awards for our game at the GA Expo for "Best Second Year Game" and a Narrative through World-Building Award "Brave New World".
I worked as a Programmer on:
See more below
FreeFlight at EXPO 2022
Glider Upgrades
Depending on the crystals collected throughout the levels, players would get different types of upgrades automatically assigned to their glider. I would track the crystals detected through a file called "playerPrefs", each time one would be collected it a level an invisible count would go up in the background. This invisible counter, the overall number of collected crystals of that type, would be visible inside the cockpit at the upgrade bench.
Achievements
When upgrades were triggered in-game, I programmed small achievements which would pop-up from the bottom of the screen, stay for a few seconds, and then disappear. This allowed the player to understand what got upgraded.
The achievments would be triggered once the playerPrefs corresponding counter reached a certain amount, setting an animation parameter bool to true, this triggered the animation for the achievement to move.
Compass
Inside of the levels, since they are so large, the player needs a way to track the location of the crystals. To combat this I developed a Compass which the player can view whilst flying around levels, the compass takes the player's position and places the crystals on the compass corresponding to the position, as well as their size corresponding to how close the crystals are.
Loading and Level Select
A simple but very important part of our game was the levels, and players needed a seamless way to travel between them, which would also feel diegetic. I designed and programmed a simple level select which worked within the cockpit screen. Players would select the new level between the narrative, a fade animation would play, and the level would start.
Another key interaction - exiting the level, I implemented a simple crystal limit, which meant the level exit would only open once a certain amount of crystals were collected.
Animations
To improve the feel of the game and add polish, I added many different animations. Animations can completely change a game, even minor animations. So throughout the cockpit I animated the chairs, the cockpit screens, the upgrade workbench and the doors.
Team Information
This game was produced for Windows, in a Team of 12:
- 4 Programmers
- 3 Designers
- 1 Writer
- 4 Artists
- 1 External Audio Composer