Wow its been a long term…Well Sparrow is “done” and here! The basic concept of the game is done and hopefully I can use this build to continue work on this personal project of mine. Originally, this concept was created around a year or so ago when I played (or watched my roommate play) my main comparable product, Skygunner. What this “game” is is a proof of concept. I wanted to get the idea and the experience down in engine to try it out. I would say that what I aimed for is what I got, even with my workload of 3 other game dev projects this term.

For the music, I sadly didn’t have a track to use from the music composition class. I did, however, have a waltz I’ve been working on throughout the term since I watched Howl’s Moving Castle and got Merry-Go-Round of Life (and the songs in the soundtrack that share its motif) stuck in my head. The waltz is still a work-in-progress and definitely needs work, but I needed something in the game and out of my current composed works, it was the closest in experience.

The general design of the game itself was mainly designed from Skygunner but as I went throughout the term I watched more Ghibli movies and thus was inspired by both Laputa: Castle in the Sky and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. I designed the glider you see in the game off of Nausicaa’s glider with some Skygunner design quirks. The main plane is mostly inspired by Skygunner.

This was a hard project for me. I’m a game designer/audio engineer. I’ve done some 3D modeling but never to this extent. I wanted to use some particle effects for my plane trails, but sadly couldn’t get any of the ones I found for free working. I learned a lot of 3D modeling from this, and it allowed me to be able to do some basic modeling for my personal projects. My most significant point of growth would probably be designs themselves. I feel the concept designs of my character and the planes from my original comparable products have gotten much better throughout the term. Animation I had a very tough time on, seeing how I had absolutely no background in it. The fact that I made my modular parts was a very good idea, because it allows me to create planes very quickly. I didn’t texture them due to the different planes but as you can see, the planes themselves are textured.

The NPC bird you see waving occasionally was originally the player character and would be in the plane itself but it was hard to see them in the plane thus they are an NPC. I was basing it off the Rito from Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker with some Laputa:Castle in the Sky designs originally but kept him more cartoonish and bird like for the final version. I decided against arms, for a style choice, I wanted to keep it cartoonish and chibi.

Here is the link to the build of the game: Build Here

Everything in the game was made by me, except the water, which is apart of Terrain Tools, a package for Unity.