Sort It Out!

Sort packages to the left and incinerate anomalies to the right.

Collect as many points before the time runs out!

CONTROLS:

[A + D] - Change conveyor belt direction

[W + S] - Change conveyer belt speed

UTILIZING FUNCTIONS

This was a week-long project for a game development course. Here are 3 functions I used and what they are used for:

Function 1 - Spawn Items

I used a simple public function that could be referenced by the main game loop script that spawned a random box/anomaly from a list, at the position of one of three spawn locations. I used a function here because this event occurs every few seconds, allowing it to be easily accessed from other scripts (eg. in the game loop script to start/stop spawning items when the timer runs out or beings).

Function 2 (Parameters) - Add Score

When items enter the collection points on each side of the conveyor, they give various amounts of points/ deductions of points based on their type. To communicate to the main loop script about how many points to add, I created a function with an int amount parameter to easily change the number of points to add when calling the function in another script.

Function 3 (Return Value) - Timer Status

Detecting the status of the timer is important in my game because it communicates when to stop changing the score, spawning items, and allowing inputs. I created a function that returned a boolean value that I referenced within Update() to detect whether or not the timer was running.

CREATIVE REQUIREMENTS

I experimented in many areas to improve player feedback when performing actions, such as screen shakes, sound effects, particles, shader graphs, and visual instructions to better communicate controls, game states, and the game objective to players. One element I constantly iterated was the "controllability" of the conveyor belt. Having UI buttons to control something with multiple features felt too sluggish and cluttered, especially with the amount of visual communication on the screen already. Adding the ability to speed up the conveyor belt added a new "risk-reward" scenario which allowed players to collect points faster while having to deal with higher speeds and quicker reaction times.