Pizza Chef: Journey for the Best

Pizza Chef: Journey for the Best is a third-person, action-adventure platformer with fantasy, role-playing game elements. My group, Pixmoly, was inspired by games like Dragon Ball Z Kakarot, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Genshin Impact to create a unique experience of both collecting and cooking the best ingredients. Below lists all the things I completed within this project.

Animation Controllers

I was responsible for animating the main character, the farmer, and the cows. This was done by importing animations from Mixamo into Unity and customizing an animation controller that would respond to player input. This required some programming within Visual Studio to set up the animation parameters and make character actions smoother. The farmer was a little different as I had to learn how to utilize the NavMesh agent system. Having the NPC's actions respond to the player's location and having the animations switch based on each situation. Even though I started on this process for the enemy AI, ultimately it was our Code Team, specifically Moses Kim that completed that task. From here, every other enemy AI or NPC was a collaborative effort between the two of us. The cows were the only NPC that I animated within Unity. All the other ones were created by our Art Team animator, Skyler Swagart.

Camera Controller

The third-person camera set-up was created through the CineMachine package. The camera is set up on a three-tiered staging component that would increase or decrease in radius based on the player's camera angle. To avoid clipping, a collision sphere was placed onto the camera to avoid objects with specific layer names.

Dialogue System

Separate from all other UI, the dialogue system was set up to respond both by entering into a trigger box and interacting within them. This way, conversations would only occur within a range of another NPC and avoid long messaging by having the interact function continue the dialogue. The NPCs I had to create the dialogue system for were Totino (Raffa's father) and the Cloud Goddess. However, the dialogue system was also used within the hub to let the player know what ingredients they would need to collect throughout their journey. Also, placed within the farm level to inquire about a statue within the barn.

Documentation

Along with the game design, much of what we had to complete was documentation. On my part, that included the README, Game Design Document (GDD), and High Concept Document. From what I learned, this documentation was not only important in detailing what we wanted to complete at the time but help in listing out what we were able to accomplish in the future (for instance creating a portfolio). The document above starts with the GDD, Concept Document to the README.

UI Implementation

Where most of the Main Menu and Pause Screen UI was done by April Dean, I was responsible for the Options Menu and HUD. I created an audio mixer to allow for volume control over all sounds. Programmed a way to toggle fullscreen and choose between various resolution options. For the HUD, I added a health bar and task list to keep players up-to-date on current objectives for each stage.

World Building

This was the part that took up most of my time and why I would title my position as Level Designer for this project. I had the task of designing every level. That included the Volcano hub, Farm level, Cloud level, and Beach level. Each one started with a level blueprint, that would go into asset integration. At this time, I was unaware of the importance of white-boxing, but Art Team was good with regularly adding new assets to fill the space as I went along. Definitely, one of those aspects of game production that I got better with over time, but I'm proud of what I was able to accomplish in my first group project.