Losing a Dimension

I finally finished my Subnautica 2D adaptation project! Here's an excerpt from my adaptation document where I reflect on the project: I’m happy with the result of this adaptation. As was inevitable, Subnautica had its own unique set of challenges compared to Resident Evil – notably dealing with my idea for the layout of the world, as well as dealing with the fact that the original Subnautica has a freely-controllable first-person perspective. This has a knock-on effect on the world and level design, as well as how certain mechanics work, as the player can’t aim and interact with objects in the same way. However, the 2D perspective meant I had more control over what the players can and can’t see, and it was useful not having to design a world in which the player can look at from every angle as this would have been time consuming; instead, I could focus on implementing gameplay and mechanics etc. As I mentioned earlier, Barry Purves’ talk inspired me to go with making the game a side...

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 This is a full playthrough of the demo to give you a good idea how the game would play.! I added a decent amount since the last update, here's a quick rundown: - Added moving Peeper and Reaper Leviathan  - Added foliage - Cleaned up the UI (recreated the item bar from scratch to clean it up) - Added titanium to pick up - Added craftable O2 tank which requires titanium and increases O2 timer - Added working habitat builder which requires titanium to build a small base - Added music and sound  - Retextured UE4 mannequin to resemble Ryley from the original game I'm very happy with how this turned out!

 In my previous post, you may have noticed that in the Subnautica update video, the playable level area was a straight horizontal plane as opposed to having the player scrolling around a large cylinder. This is because trying to make that idea a reality was being an absolute pain, and was getting in the way of progress. Due to this, I decided instead to try to set up a fish-eye lens effect, to give a similar impression as scrolling around a cylinder. Unfortunately, this was also a massive pain, as the necessary post-process effect was interfering with the underwater post-process effect.  After struggling quite a bit with these two issues, I was a little burnt out with Subnautica, but I still wanted to be productive. I decided to start putting together ideas for my third and final 2D adaptation... Skyrim. Sounds like a big task, I know - but I had some ideas I thought would work really well. I knew I wanted to take inspiration from top-down Zelda games (Link's Awakening Switch ...

 Here's the second update video showing my progress of Subnautica 2D: There's a fair bit of progress in this update. First of all, I sculpted the landscape, creating the shallow starting area, a trench to the left, and an island to the right. I also implemented a working depth meter as well as working oxygen depletion. Additionally, I modelled assets for a small base, as well as a lifepod. When you enter both of these, the front half of the asset disappears allowing Ryley (the player character) to be seen inside. When you swim into the base, your oxygen gets refilled and stops depleting, and your movement mode gets changed to walking, as it's technically an inside area. That's all for this update. See you in the next one!

Semester 2 is now done! All my blog posts that were posted after the 7th of January 2022 are intended to be included in the semester 2 submission, including this one. So are the WIP posts, like last time. This semester went decently - completing the Resident Evil adaptation as well as the playable demo was satisfying and received positive reactions, which was encouraging. It also left me feeling as though I had a better grasp in how to approach my subsequent adaptations, and creating the demo helped a lot as it allowed me to see whether my ideas actually worked. Subnautica 2D started out well, but I ended up being held up at several occasions due to needing to focus on my essay, as well as struggling to get UE4 to work exactly how I wanted, specifically with getting scrolling round a cylinder working well. Being an important aspect I put a decent amount of time into trying to get it to work, but as of yet haven't got it working. I'm thinking that I might be able to fake it to g...

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