Tidy Town
Collectathon
Collect litter to keep your business clean.
Tidy Town is a collectathon game, in which you collect and sort litter, with the goal of keeping your business clean and to learn the importance of correct litter management. Increase your high score by gathering and sorting more litter while you avoid various obstacles.
Platform
Android and IOS
Language
C#
Software
Unity
Visual Studio 2022
Contributions
Me - AI and Gameplay Programmer
Lucian Matan - Lead Programmer
Hossein Soroor - Gameplay Programmer
Mairaj Muhammad - Gameplay Programmer
Ben King - Project Leader and Lead Designer
Ben Stott - Technical and UI Designer
Daniel Slater - Level Designer
About the Project
Tidy Town was created, over an 8 week period, for our client PAOW (Pledge, Act, Observe and Win) after they came to us with a pitch for their game idea.
The aim of the game is to promote the importance of business owners keeping their business, and the surrounding areas, clean and litter-free.
Before development started, the team, of 12, split into smaller groups (a total of three groups) and each came up with an idea for the project they wanted to create that meet the client's requirements, and created a prototype to showcase. After pitching, the client chose which idea they wanted to go ahead with.
I worked with a level designer to create the prototype that eventually lead to the Tidy Town you see now.
Throughout, I was tasked with working on the AI (cars, pedestrians and customers), the litter management, setting up the initial base classes for most features (this included the base powerup class, interaction mechanics and player), as well as some classes to help further development (Audio, VisualEffect, Game and Reference managers).
Courtney Barnard - Lead Artist and Character Artist
Matthew Cowley - Environment Artist
Alex Zlotea - Environment Artist
Gabriel Lupton-Levy - UI Artist
Tom Martin - Prop and UI Artist
Images
Videos
Relevant Documents
A report on the development of Tidy Town, including: Information on the client, the development process, and a brief overview of some of my personal contributions.
What I learned
- Communicating within a larger team environment. A team of 12 is more than double the largest team I had worked with before starting this project, and it was also my first time working under a lead programmer. It was also my first time participating in SCRUM meetings (which happened once a week), and they helped a lot with keeping up to date with every member and what they were working on.
- How to use Unity's Navigation System. I have been used to working with my own pathfinding systems when working with Unity, but due to the development timeframe we had, I decided that it would be best to utilise Unity's built-in system to be able to utilise a higher-level system early on in development. This meant that I could focus more on AI behaviour.
- Utilising Sensors to determine AI behaviour and to prevent collisions. In particular with cars, I utilised sensors that would aid the cars in traversing the waypoint system, with parking, and to avoid collisions with other cars and the player.
- Working with Trello. As the team size meant that an emphasis on organisation was important, the project leader maintained a Trello board for each development sprint. This was my first time using Trello (or any similar software).
Current Goal
Currently not working on Tidy Town