The Beginning

This is the start of my capstone project.

The inspiration for my project comes from browsing the Unity asset store.  Before I even knew what I wanted to make, I knew what assets I wanted to use:

This snowman

and this environment asset:

Knowing what my main character and the the setting of my game quickly helped me build the story. I want to make a game where the player is a Snowman exploring the environment and perhaps collecting something to achieve a greater purpose. Now, every story needs an antagonist, so I returned to the Unity asset store and found an enemy model that matched the aesthetics of my current assets. Here, I found the Stone Monster, who came with animated actions which will greatly benefit me later.  

But what about the goal for the player? I decided to follow the Christmas-y theme I had with the snowman. I ended up finding a Christmas tree model with Christmas lights on it.

My story is now complete:

The snowman is collecting energy to light up their Christmas trees. However, the stone monster is also looking to collect energy and will attack anyone who tries to use this scarce resource.

Ready for Development

The first step in development was handling player movement. Since the player is a snowman, I decided to emulate the movement of something icy gliding on surfaces. Therefore, I chose to add velocity to the rigid body for movement and rotation on the Y-axis for turning. 

To fight against enemies, the player should be able to attack them with something like bullets. Thus, the snowman shoots ice shards. Initially, the ice shards moved by translating their position. However, I found that when the player was moving and shooting, the player would "catch up" with the ice shard and cause a collision. To counteract this, instead of the bullet moving in its own script, the player would add a force to the bullet's rigidbody when shooting. At the same time, I could also add the velocity of the player's rigidbody to the bullet's rigidbody.

Next Step

With this, the player controls are completed, and asset research has also been completed. Next, I will be developing an AI State machine for the enemy.