Under The Dune

Outline

This project is my postgraduate final project, my research background is a kind of permanent physical communication systems in closed nuclear waste. This game is to present a future world but in a more primitive social condition. People do not have the ability to understand the concept of nuclear, in this situation will make the waste disposal site more dangerous than a higher-tech society. A permanent physical communication system will be required, this game in order to present such communication system.

Game Design

This communication system is based on an existing facility called WIPP in the US, but it is just a plan because this facility is still running. In the report of WIPP, all information should be carved on the stone panels, steles and stone kiosks. This system aims to deliver warning information clearly and efficiently. In order to achieve this by game, I referenced a video game called "DREDGE". The player plays as a linguistic scholar who is hired by a contractor, player can record information on the stone and dig evidence from the mound to reduce the "Research Value" limitation and increase the "Research Progress".

To present a future world, because in my world settings the sociaty is more primitive so current language must be changed in the game. To present this I designed a font to express texts on the stone.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 !

Game Design

Basic systems include the dialogue system and state system, most optional behaviour will take place in the dialogue system, it is just like a mini menu and also be used in item interaction like reading the text on the stone panel. In order to make the game not too boring, I added a little survival elements like a basic hungry bar and stamina bar.

The grid system is another essential system in this game, it sets a limitation on the number of inventory for one journey to extend the gameplay time and increase the gameplay of resource arrangement. Research value limitation can be increased by sending evidence and discovering new information. This is to restore the situation in real archaeological operations that must be interrupted due to too little evidence.

The time system is another feature of this game because I added the state system so I needed to make the values decreasing reasonable so I added the day and night effects and calendar system. I also let the environment change with time such as the campfire and lights.

Information visualization is considered as well, I used an object pool to handle the record data and display them in a notebook UI. I also added a global control module like volume setting, story mode and restart button. I used the observer pattern to add audio into the game and they can be controlled globally by the UI panel through the event system.

Gameplay
Video

UD_Dialogue

UD_Store

UD_Scream

UD_Dialogue

1/10

In Game
Screenshots

Tech Stack

Source Code Link

Grid System

The grid system is my core system and is mainly used in inventory and its relative windows like the mailbox and excavation points. This system's basic method is from a YouTube tutorial video and I added more functions such as trade, use and discard. I also make it sync with UI.

Tutorial Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ajD1GDbEzA&t=3905s

Dialogue System

The dialogue system is used as a menu for many features such as NPC and Steles. I used text files as the simplest data structure. I edit the data in Excel and make it Tab-delimited. In the C# script, I used the Split method to split words using tabs as the delimiter. In the display, I used coroutine to present words like the typing effect.

Screen Overlap UI Syetem

The overlap floating UI uses an object pool pattern, it creates all floating UI objects when the script life cycle has begun. It is called the Unity rendering method to calculate the game world position vector into the screen position vector. When the interactable objects appear in the view and close to the centre the relative UI object will be activated and update the position in real-time. I also added a simple animation by coding.

Audio System

I did not use Wwise for the audio system, but I created a simple audio system like Wwise which plays sound and music by event system and control them globally.