Bryan Nguyen
Pet the Dog
Project type: University team project
Engine: Unity
Languages: C#
Primary Role: Designer, Programmer
Team Members: Bryan Nguyen & Nicholas Olsen
Pet the Dog is an abstract narrative game told through mini-games in a "dream-like" environment. The themes are nostalgia and accepting the loss of a loved one. This was a 2-person team project at the University of Southern California, USC Games.
Design
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Designed a space that evokes a feeling of nostalgia using the key phrase, "A museum of memories."
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The space contains paintings on the wall that reference a specific memory that the player will play through
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To further elicit the idea of playing through memories, the player "enters" into the painting leading to a new scene, similar to Super Mario 64
Programming
I coded all the mechanics for the game in C# and also animated the items and characters. In the main area, I combined scripts with Unity's animation feature to trigger room transformations at the end of animations. The screen fades in and out for scene transitioning. Objects appear on pedestals in front of the paintings once the players have finished the particular mini-game memory.
This is the fetch game memory inspired by the Pachinko machines from Japan. The balls dropping will be deleted once they hit the bottom. If the player, controlling the dog, catches the ball by colliding with it, a counter will increase.
For the other mini-game memories:
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In the Hide-n-Seek game, the player has a 2D character controller script that moves the player object through its rigidbody component. It uses a state machine to check if the player is grounded to check if they can jump
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For the Tug-of-War game, the player character, the dog, and the rope connecting them is one object. Every second, the object is translated to the right in world space to simulate the dog pulling the rope. The player then pulls in the opposite direction until either one wins the game.
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The Walking game is more about the emotional aspect. The character controls the character to move across the screen. When the player reaches a tree, a collider triggers a squirrel animation to play.
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The Petting game is the simplest one. The player gets to express their full love for the dog after playing the other games. They press the spacebar 100 times to pet the dog.
