Metal Detectorist

Inspiration

Our inspiration process started with tv show about the origins of Nintendo that was on last week. Shigeru Miyamoto's inspiration for Zelda came from his childhood fascination with the caves near his home. The creator of Pokemon's inspiration came from his childhood love of collecting bugs. One of us remembered being interested in finding strange old coins as a kid. That led him to think of the tv show "Detectorists" and the next thing we knew we had an idea. A game about being a metal detectorist.

What it does

The game puts you in a large field. You go metal detecting and when you find enough items, you get to upgrade your metal detector to a model that scans deeper so you can more valuable items. When you find something, you get a popup that gives a picture and description of the item. It's a bit of a fun history lesson. Can you dig it?

How we built it

The game is built on Unity version 2023.

Challenges we ran into

As a team of #looking-for-team'ers we each came with our own set of skills that did not necessarily mesh like an experienced team's would. Many of us did not have a lot of (or any) experience with Unity or Unreal Engine. We started with trying Unreal, but for most of us it was too large to install. One person had their computer almost blow up and had to do a revert. We decided Unity was easier to install, required less hard drive space, so we stopped using Unreal. One team member had a computer that was a bit too old even to run Unity. One team member's internet browser stopped working, making it difficult to install Unity and deal with github. One team member didn't show up the next morning. There were challenges with scripting collisions & UI Windows. More challenges with github merge conflicts: we ended up storing things in Prefab.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We kept going! We dealt with the challenges and the pains of Unity and made a thing of beauty. We feel good about the idea and the game experience we have tried to create. This is a calming, feel-good game. Chill out and find treasure. Listen to the birds sing and the wind blow through the grass. Once in a while you get the thrill of finding a gold coin and if you stay at it long enough you just might find a long lost treasure. Be diligent and you will MAKE history!

What we learned

We learned that preparation is vital. We should have all had the same dev environment set up in advance, installed and tested, and watched a few tutorials on it at least.