Crabity

Vertical Slice made for the CMPM 171 class at UCSC, Winter 2024.

Team members

This vertical slice was made possible thanks to Akhror Rakhmatov, Daniel Do, Ernani Raffo, Jentsen Maniti, Jordan Reavis, and Lukas Licon.

Download

The game is available to download for macOS Intel-64bit, macOS Silicon, and Windows 64-bit computers at the link: Crabity releases. Please download the zip file from the latest release. The latest release will have a green logo marked as "Latest". Lastly, uncompress the downloaded file and play the game!

Crabity Trailer

Below is the trailer for our Vertical Slice and upcoming CMPM 172 game: Crabity!

Crabity Trailer

Game Constraints

Our game was designed under the following externally imposed constraints:

• Accessibility:
• Limited Vision (Seeing)

  Requirement: the game needed to be completable even when simulating vision limitations such as constrast and color sensitivity.

  Team's design:

  • To highlight interactable elements, we used continuous motion on objects to make them stand out to the player. The motion made the objects go up and down, hinting to the player that they are items that have purpose in the game.
  • To fulfill this requirement, we also made our game indepedent of color. For example, there is no point in the game where the player needs to grab a blue key or a red key to go through a blue or red door, respectively.
  • The in-game camera rotation UI element that appears in the second puzzle in the bottom-right is a product of careful design from the team. At first, we wanted to create a UI element that highlights the platform you are on with a color, but by thinking of the limiting vision constraint, we came up with an arrow that points to the house and follows it around so that the player does not need to depend on color to understand where they are.
• Limited Dexterity (Touching)

  Requirement: the game must be completable by a player using just one hand of the controls at a time.

  Team's design:

  • Our game does not require both mouse and keyboard input at the same time.
  • While playing the game, the controls are all of the left side of the keyboard, and can be played with only one hand.
  • In the main menu, the player can use either a trackpad or a mouse to click on play, settings, or credits.
  • By keeping our controls simple, we were able to make a game that feels good to play with only one hand.

• Limited Audition (Hearing)

  Requirement: the game must be completable by a player who cannot hear any sounds from the game.

  Team's design:

  • To make our game completable by a player who cannot hear any sounds, we designed our game to not be depedent on sound cues.
  • We have included background music in our game for ambiance, but the sound can be turned all the way off and nothing would change in terms of the gameplay.
  • To communicate controls and story with the player, we used a dialogue box on the left of the screen that the player can interact with. By having this dialogue box with no voice attached to it, our game is completable without any sound cues.

• Limited Energy and Attention (Resting)

  Requirement: during a completion run of the game, gameplay should always reach a natural resting point within two minutes of active play without the player needing to take an extra action to pause the game.

  Team's design:

  • We designed our game to not have enemies, as you are your only enemy when it comes to solving puzzles. With this design philosophy, you can rest at any point in a level.
  • In our next capstone course, CMPM 172 (Game Production Studio), we are planning to adding enemies, where we will need to introduce some rest areas in between levels and in a level itself. For example, this could come in the form of a platform where no enemies can come near you.

• Localization:

  Requirement: the game must support two different written languages. At least one language must use either a logographic script or a right-to-left script.

  Team's design:

  • To fullfil this requirement, we included a button in the main menu that switches the locale of the game to Arabic.
  • We downloaded a font specificially for Arabic characters, and used Unity's RTL editor to port Arabic sentences properly.

• Game Format:

  Requirements:

  • The game must be completable while the player's device is disconnected from the internet.
  • The total data transfer involved in downloading the game must be less than 100 MiB.
  • The game may target the platform of the team's choice, however if Windows is supported, macOS must also be supported in principle.

  Team's design

  • Our game is supported for both macOS and Windows, and both are below 100 MiB when transferred.
  • By using Unity's crunch compression tool and compressing the assets used, we are able to achieve this file transfer constraint.

Rapid Prototyping

Minecraft Prototypes:

• First, Jentsen and Daniel began our rapid prototyping in Minecraft; with the quick installation of the mods Freecam and Gravity Changer, we were able to create a basic prototype of what would be our game.

  

  We quickly noted that by changing the gravitational axis, the controls of the game can feel a bit challenging to understand. Thus, we made sure to keep the controls the same regardless of the gravitational axis which helped alleviate player confusion in future builds.

Unity Prototypes:

• Lukas was also able to generate a quick idea of what the camera switching would look like in Unity using primitives. This first introduced the idea that players would ONLY be allowed to move left and right.

  

  However, we weren't completely sure if the snappy camera movement was exactly what we wanted.

• Ernani generated another prototype revolving around smoother camera rotations. This ended up being the main script that we used in our final build. At the same time, he was able to use Github actions to auto build our Unity prototypes; this allowed us to expedite and test our games faster on our site compared to having to manually build the game over and over again.

  

• Lukas also created another protoype that centered around the idea of pushing objects onto a platform to reveal new parts around the level. This opened the door for the idea of secret passages and easter eggs. However, this ended up being a bit confusing for some players as we saw during playtests they weren't sure exactly what to do with the spheres. Also, the rigid bodies on the spheres made it difficult for some players to guide around.

  

• Jentsen was working on a seemingly 2D prototype for the gravity mechanic we wanted to include in the game. At this point, the x, y, and z rotations of the player object were not locked, allowing players to realize that this was actually a 3D game viewed through a 2D camera. This unlocked a plethora of new level design possibilities for us to explore in the future.

  

• Afterwards, Jentsen quickly threw multiple aspects of our prototypes together and we ended up with the base for our mechanics in our final prototype.

  

  But there were bound to be a few bugs while we were developing the game.

  

• Lastly, after adding some free assets from the asset store, we gradually began crafting the narrative of the game. Jentsen noted that he came up with the idea of centering the story around a crab, as they are known for primarily moving left and right. With a few more assets, we decided to pursue our initial idea of a steampunk environment for the robot crab to explore, seeking objects that would enable it to survive in the ocean like a real crab. Finally, the game was starting to come together.

  

Contributions

Our team was able to divide and conquer the work in a way that allowed us to work on our strengths and learn from each other. Here are the main contributions of each team member:

• Akhror Rakhmatov:

  "I worked on the main menu, options menu, some of the sound as well as the background music. I was able to create the background music from scratch using Native Access's Maschine DAW. The main menu was created with the intention of making a menu that's not too basic and fits into the same theme and genre that the game is played in. The options menu continues on from that same menu. I also implemented the sound effects for the platforms and the player's movement."

• Daniel Do

  "I worked on level design that involved intricately integrating the mechanics of camera rotation to create cohesive and engaging gameplay experiences. I also developed the key and door logic to follow the player once collected and to then enable the exit to be accessed. Additionally, I contributed to designing and delivering a total of four presentations with slides that showcased Crabity's ten week-long development and progress stages. During the final week of designing and developing our vertical slice, I put together a vertical slice shortplay trailer along with its longplay video component that emphasizes Crabity’s in-game experience. Lastly, I came up with Crabity's main concept of a puzzle-rotating platformer game. I essentially catered all of my contributions towards the visual, polish, and game feel side of Crabity."

• Ernani Raffo

  "I worked on the camera rotation mechanic and contributed to prototyping player movement. I contributed into the deployment process of our game, as we wanted an easy way to automatically create builds through Github actions that published the game on our site. I also contributed in level design, specifically levels 2 and 3, to create a fun experience for the player. Lastly, I worked on integrating Unity’s Localization Tool to make the game playable in both English and Arabic."

• Jentsen Maniti

  "I was the Co-Design Lead as well as the Production Lead! For level design, I worked on Level 1, but my primary focus was on the game's core mechanics, such as gravity shifting, restricted side-to-side and situational up and down movement, as well as reworking the camera rotation to prevent motion sickness. Additionally, with the use of a few simple mathematical equations, I was able to make the movement feel snappy and responsive. Furthermore, I implemented the fading object shader that our game uses to allow players to see inside the level. I also worked on a large portion of the game's debugging. For production, I ensured that our team stayed on track by implementing Notion into our workflow. This allowed us to easily keep track of what was being worked on and by whom. After listening to players' feedback during playtests, I helped alleviate confusion by adding a minimap to indicate level orientation. I also ended up working on the fading audio when the player stops moving. Lastly, I was largely responsible for maintaining the aesthetic of the game by importing assets and creating the environment and narrative."

• Jordan Reavis

  "I worked on the in-game dialogue system as well as coordinating in-class playtests of Crabity, collecting and passing along user feedback collected via Google Forms to the rest of the team. Additionally, I assisted Ernani with localization efforts by ensuring the dialogue system was available in both US English as well as Arabic. I also assisted Daniel and Ernani with creating and delivering end-of-sprint presentations detailing the development status of our game throughout the quarter."

• Lukas Licon

  "I worked on the pause menu and various UI aspects of the game. I also added assets and level design to puzzle 3 to make it look interesting artistically. I built a lot of pipes from scratch to make a level that would be fun to play from multiple angles. I made sure the pause menu could be fully accessible using one hand through hotkeys such as 1, 2, 3, and 4 for resume, menu, restart, and exit. I also implemented audio control, mute, volume slider, and UI assets. I also did bits of debugging to improve the overall functionality and polish of the game."