Dog Detective: Dante Doodle
Dog Detective: Dante Doodle, was my senior thesis/capstone project that developed during my final year at the Cleveland Institute of Art. During my time working on this project, it transformed from a demo, to a fully realized video game, with plans for a future, full game release.
I developed every aspect of this game, which includes the following:
-
Story Development and Interactive Writing
-
Concept Art, Character Designs, User Interface Design, Animations, Background Design and Sprite Design.
-
Storyboarding and Scripting Player Interactions
-
Gathering and Implementing player feedback during play testing.
-
Creating Early Prototype builds in Unity
-
Collaborating with my programmer
Like all great games, the story had to be developed first. I knew going in there would be many dialogue trees, suspect descriptions, clue descriptions, and other information that needed to be presented to the player. I also had to plan out how the player would access this information, whether that was from exploring the environment, or presenting clues to witnesses.
I used Figma to map out all of the dialogue, as well as plan out the sequence of events, what sprites are to be used where, and what tasks had priority over others via a Priority Matrix.
Shown above in an overview of the entire dialogue system that went into creating the Dog Detective demo. Each designated section is dedicated to a specific system that is built into the game. These systems are:
-
Timeline of events
-
Clues and there descriptions
-
Character relationships to each other
-
Character Dialogue trees for presenting clues and suspects
-
Sprite matching to appropriate dialogue.
-
Questionnaire sequences and noted interactions
This is the Dialogue system for Dante and Pauline (left) and an induvial section as well (below). Each of the notes have important information displayed with them, that was directly copied and implemented into Unity.
The Dialogue features the following:
-
Note begins with (1), (2) or (0), to indicate the self, other, or item information that is to be added to clue information or character profile.
-
Green visually represents Dante, Red represents the "other" party, Blue represents important/highlighted information, White is a summary of that information.
-
Each line of dialogue has a pictured sprite and the sprite's name. Unity automatically reads the sprite name, removes it from the displayed dialogue, and renders the corresponding sprite.
-
Yellow notes represents dialogue when presenting a clue, Grey represents dialogue when asking about another suspect.
-
Pink are clues that were removed from the demo, but will be implemented in the full release of the game.
_PNG.png)
Above are the environments as seen in game, each designed to reflect the mood or personality of the occupant of each room. The overall aesthetic is inspired by 1920s architecture and dog motifs.
From top to bottom, left to right: The Gardens, Arthur's Guest Room, The Dining Room, The Study, The Master Bedroom, The Living Room (Day), Percival's Guest Room, Mansion Entrance (Day), The Kitchen, Mansion Entrance (Night), The Foyer, The Living Room (Night)
User Interface buttons, in order Clues, Profiles, Map, Settings, Submit