Research
Proposal
Out of all 3 games, a first-person shooter stood out as a fun project that would provide a technical challenge and further expand development and technical skills, which has always been an important personal goal when producing any project. Also, due to prior experience with a wide variety of first-person shooters, it’ll come naturally to know how to make gameplay feel responsive and enjoyable, though it’s still imperative to gather player feedback and research to understand how to make it accessible and enjoyable to a large player-base.
The initial idea takes heavy inspiration from Doom (1998), and whilst Dooms legacy can be found throughout most first-person shooters, many games in the modern age have strayed very far from the simpler game design of Doom (1998). This project intends to focus more on level exploration and returning to a classic style to evoke nostalgia through visuals, sound design and gameplay, seen in Figure 1. However, much of Dooms design was limited to the technology of the time, such as the inability to look vertically and the lack of jumping. Both stand against the vision of the project, which places a heavy element on the exploration of levels and discovery of secrets throughout, which will require players to have full range of vision and ability to parkour, putting more enthuses on vertical movement and platforming, like Ultrakill (2020).
Figure 1 - Doom (1993)
Figure 2 - FNAF World trophies on menu screen
Considering the exhibition, the idea of splitting the game into two versions was proposed. One which tracked save progress via changes to the menu screen, inspired by Trophies from FNAF World (2016) seen in Figure 2, being the original vision for the project. The other, saving times to a scoreboard and displaying them on the home screen, like classic arcade games, incentivising players to compete for faster times and encouraging replays. Whilst this would more precisely satisfy the brief, it heavily compromises the intended design of the game, as I want players to take their time to explore the levels. It also vastly underestimates the work that is required to implement such an idea, needing to not only save and display the fastest times but sort them. So due to this, the original idea for saving progress to be more in line with achievements was chosen, as it was the original creative vision, and splitting up the project will only create more unnecessary work.
Systems
As for how the game will save progress, initially using Unity’s PlayerPrefs seemed promising as it was easily accessible due to it being built into Unity and the lack of encryption isn’t an issue as there are no plans to store sensitive data (Unity Technologies, 2024). However, PlayerPrefs are very limited in the data they can store seem more catered to saving graphical or audio settings (Zgeb, 2024). Of most potential save options, saving to a JSON file seems ideal, as it’s a readable format allowing for easier debugging, with the caveat being that it uses more memory and is slower to load (Zgeb, 2024). Though, with the small amount of data that will be saved, it shouldn’t pose much of a detriment. However, if that doesn’t work, premade save systems such as the one by Vladislav Kinyashov (2020), can be tested.
With a heavy emphasis on level design, it is important to have the world feel dynamic, and each section of the map feel to unique in its own way. For this, the project will be utilising Unitys ProBuilder (Unity Technologies, 2025), as it allows for quick and easy modelling inside the Unity editor alongside advanced texture mapping tools. It can also allow for major optimization in the way of back-face culling and polygon reduction, allowing for large parts of the map to be built out of edited planes instead of whole 3d cubes. However, given the lack of experience with these tools, this may need to be scaled back to a more rudimentary way of designing the level.