20 June 2016 - 20 July 2016
Cauldron is my third independent Unity game, developed with Steve Engels from the University of Toronto as part of a summer volunteer program to promote education in a school environment. Cauldron attempts to teach basic mathematical operations such as fractions, division, multiplication and percentages, masked behind the premise of managing an apothecary shop.
Though the game is partially completed, it has been cancelled since creating all of the graphics is taking too much time in this project in addition to writing all of the code. As another factor, the educational aspect was too simple when compared to the relatively more complicated controls/mechanics that this game expects from a younger audience.
Caps toggle - Opening the inventory menu Tab - Open the recipe menu Shift + tab - Navigate to previous page of recipe menu A/D - Move left/right S/W - Interact down/up on the menu Space - Interact with menu Left click - Interact with (pick up, select menu, etc) Right click - Deselect (drop item, remove pot)
You take on the role of an apothecary shopkeeper who responds to customer requests to create potions. Then, you must gather the correct ratios of ingredients and dump them into the pots. For the mathematical component, you recieve a recipe that randomly contains 2-4 ingredients, each depicted in a reduced fraction. For example, you could recieve a recipe that requires "2/9 berries, 3/18 powder, 15/18 root branches". Then, you'd need to be able to pick a "pot size" that perfectly fits the ratios, such as 36. Finally, you need to pick up (36 / 9 * 2) berries, etc, and complete the recipe.
All art assets were created by me (whew, took a long time), with .psds and certain time milestones included. Sound effects and music credited in the /assets/audio text file.
I initially had larger expectations of myself coming into the development of this game, but after actually working on it, I've made hackarounds while learning more about Unity and personal workflow. Like, I started a script with the goal of dynamically tracking the UI's location to the fire pit. That script eventually evolved into (somewhat of a) mess as it tracked potions, cauldrons and many other features. All in all though, it was a fun learning experience and I hope to create something better in the future.