Documentation + User Guide

REAL WORLD FISHING

CONTROLS:

[WSAD] - MOVEMENT 

[Z] - ZOOM

[SPACE] - CAST/REEL IN

GUIDE:

Upon starting a new game, move your character to the lake and cast your line into the water, if you are lucky you might just get a bite. If a fish takes you up on your challenge you will have to battle it. The battle will consist of you tapping the spacebar until the fish has left the screen through the top-right. 

Be wary, though, as the fish will attempt to struggle. This struggle is indicated by the line becoming taut and bubbles will emerge from the fish due to its intense thrashing.  While the fish is struggling you should not press the reel button as that will create tension in the line which will ultimately cause the line to snap and the fish will swim away. 

Your goal is to catch more than $1500 worth of fish within 5 minutes. Good luck!

Currently there are four fish:

Crucian Carp - $100

Whitespotted Char - $200

Rainbow Trout - $300

King Salmon - $500

ASSET LIST:

FISH - These are fish created by me to be caught by you. I made all the fish sprites based on pictures from the web and from my dreams. 

TILEMAP SPRITES - You pour your heart and soul into gimp and this is what comes out. Beautiful landscape sprites that make up the game world and boundaries.

PLAYER - The player sprite is just a good kid... never did nothin' to nobody. His purpose is to catch fish and that is all.

AUDIO - This song in this game may be the greatest tune ever made by humans and I'm not just saying that because I've had to listen to it one hundred thousand times over and it has become burned into my brain to the point where I hear it in my sleep. My good friend Evan Drumm made it, you might just be able to google him. Oh and the splash sound is a good indicator that you have caught a fish.

SOURCES:

The graphics are done by me with the exception of the lake shore, that was an asset from a free asset bundle that I essentially recoloured, but I did the shore corners myself. Oh, and the flow of animation for the main player is also heavily copied from that asset but I changed it a lot. The asset is called Top Down Adventure Assets by Ansimuz (https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/2d/environments/top-down-adventure-assets-...)

The music was done by a friend of mine and the sounds for water splashing and underwater ambience was taken from Adobe® Creative Cloud® royalty-free audio sound effects.

I got the font from some guy named CodeMan38 at https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Press+Start+2P thanks, CodeMan38!

ATTEMPTED FEATURES AND FINAL GAME COMPARISON:

I think everything in my game was preordained within the design outline. There are some features I could not get completed. I wanted a system where you have to press a button to hook the fish and it would play a cool noise and enter the fishbattle scene but I didn't have time and also I just think it works a little better without that. I also wanted objects in the fishbattle scene to move from left to right in the foreground and background to give the illusion of movement but I also couldn't get that done in time and it seemed a little complicated to do with the way things were set up. I also wanted fish animations while struggling but I just didn't have time, I started on it, though. Currently as of writing this the only fish with a struggle animation is the Rainbow Trout. Oh and I wanted a secret ending if you catch and release 3 carp but I never implemented a release system. I still want to do a secret little secret ending though, maybe if you get enough points...

FEEDBACK:

The feedback I got was mostly constructive. Most of what they told me to add was already on the cards and has been implemented, such as 'better indication of when the fish is struggling' and improved walking animation.

I did add a feature based on their complaints of not being able to reel in the fishing bobber (even though I thought it didn't need that).

The big request was to add some instructions for both controls and mechanics. I have done this.

Also, surprise, surprise most of them really didn't like the idea of a fishing game or the fishing mechanics in general. But, hey, they're not my target audience, I guess. Georgie did say my sprites are cute, though.

CHATGPT!!!:

I mostly go look up examples of code I need online such as the timer I got from some guy on youtube. But when it doesn't work or I can't figure something out I go ask chatgpt why it isn't working and sometimes its pretty informative and helpful... sometimes.

I would like to share my chatgpt logs but I have the habit of deleting them when the bot annoys me and I start over with it. Here's the last conversation I had with it. https://chat.openai.com/share/d11e9bce-b50f-4228-912a-2676afc0ebab

I also take my frustration out on the bot and that's embarrassing to read.

Oh, I just remembered. The zoom out feature was straight up GPT. I was going to change it to be a cinemachine thingy but I ended up really liking the way it slowly zooms out and I forgot. Sorry about that.

CONCLUSION:

Wow, what a journey. I can't believe how much fun it was to do this unit, and I can't believe I made that game (even if it is boring). 

Games have really been my passion all my life and it was a good decision taking this as an elective.

Thanks Lindsay for making this a really enjoyable and streamlined experience, the in-unity tutorials were awesome!