Shaian Khan’s ePortfolio

05/15/2023

Shaian Khan

ENT 4499

Culmination Project

Culmination Project Reflection Paper

 My academic major is Emerging Media Technology and my concentration is Game Design and Interactive Media. If I have to choose a direction for a career, I would say I am quite interested in finding a career opportunity in the media industry. My choices are filmmaking, acting, video technology and game/content design projects. I also enjoy working with coding and programming related projects but sometimes I feel a bit overwhelmed with this. So, I want to keep the programming related career interests as an optional choice. 

The culmination project helped me to enhance my creative skills and opened up an opportunity to build the entire project from scratch on my own. I believe that I am very confident about my creative skills that I learned throughout the production period. And I am looking forward to finding a related job or an opportunity in the media industry where I can express and enhance my creative skills to develop my career goals.  

My culmination project is a 2D top-down shooting game built on the Unity Engine. The title of the game is Project Alienixor. And my technical advisor was professor Hosni. The plan is to build one endless level in the game and the goal is to include an addictive nature that should encourage players to return to this game over & over. Project Alienixor features a hardcore score based gameplay experience. The enemies will keep spawning and attack the player until the player dies. There will be a kill counter and a timer mechanic to determine the players’ performance. The player will be able to shoot enemies from long range and be able to perform melee attacks during close combat situations. The main objective is to kill the demons to set a score and survive as long as possible. 

In game development conflicts & challenges are common. As a solo developer I had to come across several technical difficulties whether it’s about setting up the codes or adding a complex in-game mechanic. This is the part where I would like to appreciate the support & assistance that I received from my technical advisor Prof. Hosni. There was a moment when I was struggling to set up some in-game scripts that were not working as I expected. I have reached out to Prof. Hosni and asked for his assistance. He provided me with the full support to resolve each conflict one by one and helped me to understand the logic behind each troubleshooting that we have done throughout the development period.  

In conclusion I would like I would like to state that working on this project indeed was a great experience overall. My main focus was to produce a product that I can modify in the future as I continue my research with Unity Engine. This culmination project should reflect my ideas and skills that I have acquired and practiced throughout the journey.

04/18/23

ENT 4499

Shaian Khan

WIP Report #3

The mid progress clip: https://youtu.be/6Vrxwv1JL5E

Here is the first prototype of the project: https://youtu.be/hMi7KDL1agc

3/28/23

ENT 4499

Shaian Khan

WIP Report #2

After adding the basic top-down player movement I started working on the player shooting and enemy AI mechanics. I have worked on the C# scripts such as player shooting script and enemy AI script.  

For the beta version the enemies are following the player position and can collide with the player. 

The player is able to shoot bullets by pressing the spacebar. If the bullet hits an enemy, it will get destroyed. 

Here is the work in progress #2 clip: https://youtu.be/rxavf-V2LG0 

My next step will be to add enemy spawn scripts and some attack variation for the enemies.

3/7/23

ENT 4499

Shaian Khan

Game Project WIP #1

I am using the Unity Engine 2021.3.18f1 to make a 2D top-down shooting game. The game will feature 1 large level to explore. The main objective of this game is exploring the area and shooting the aliens. There will be a score and timer counters to determine players’ performance. 

(I also have a side idea to implement a roguelike procedurally generated level design, the idea is on the list)

This project idea is inspired by games like Returnal.

Work in Progress Report #1:

The first step was establishing a plan to build the first prototype on Unity. I have started doing the research to collect the royalty free 2D sprite files and top-down map tiles from itch.io. I was running a test to import the files on Unity and checking if all the files are functional.

The assets links:

Rogue Fantasy Catacombs by Szadi art. (itch.io)

Top down robotic enemies by Tyst (itch.io)

Top-down Map tiles.

Once I had checked the essential files, I started working on the first prototype. I have created the player and added basic top-down movement mechanics. To make the 2d top-down movement much more polished and have a diagonal move, I added additional codes on the player movement script.

Here is the progress clip: https://youtu.be/CbJTBG_fo18.

My next step will be to add the shooting mechanics for the player.

Note: This is just a mockup version of the estimate budget for a game design project. I have worked on my culmination project as a solo developer and used the royalty free assets and contents for my project from various open sources.

This budget is just to replicate the possible cost for a game development process.

2/08/2023

Shaian Khan

ENT 4499

Culmination Project

Culmination Project Proposal

Project Description:

I am pursuing my bachelor’s degree at City Tech. My major is Emerging Media Technology. In my time at City Tech, I have learned about experimental game design and development. I have worked on several game design projects in the Technical Production course. My aim is when I complete my graduation, I would like to get a job as a game designer. But I feel I don’t have enough practical experience on the field. That is why for my culmination project, I would like to use my skills to the test by acting as a lead game designer for my own solo game project on Unity. 

This is going to be a 2D platformer shooting game. The game is about an agent and his goal is to save the planet from the evil alien invasion. As a lead game designer I will be able to work on the budgeting, storyboard, management, in-game assets, artstyle, gameplay mechanics and coding. This will give a real-time experience as a game designer since I will be working with a technical advisor throughout this semester.

Methods:

• I will be working on the Unity engine. 
• The project will be 2D formated.
• Working on C# scripts for the in-game mechanics.
• Using visual studio to write the codes.
• Collected copyright free 2D sprites from open sources.
• Using 2D Unity tilemap editor for creating the level.    

Project Deliverables:

For the culmination project I will be producing the following list of things by the end of the semester.

• The game design concept.
• The storyboard for the game.
• Assets and materials.
• Development plan.
• Schedule.
• Research notes.
• Alpha prototype.
• Documentation of the development process.
• Poster.
• OpenLab Portfolio.

Required Resources:

I will be using the game design notes that I have saved in my archive from previous game design projects. YouTube is a great platform to find unity-based beginner tutorials. To implement an in-game mechanic that I want to have in the project, I can research online or look for a YouTube tutorial to learn and find the solution. I will be using the Unity Assets Store to find and use assets for the project.

Proposed Table of Contents/Portfolio Outline

• Introduction
• Unity engine research timeline
• Development timeline
• Project estimated budget
• Project development calendar
• Finalize storyboard
• Research on the artstyle
• Finalize assets and materials
• Building levels
• Script writing process
• Documentation notes
• Conclusion

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vdtaC2g8WuVMRDROZHOCvHUkidjkLfjl/view?usp=sharing