Brobobots

OVERVIEW

Brobobots was a video game design project made at Simon Fraser University. This game was conceived, designed and published in a team of four, which consisted of myself, Daniela Valdes, Amandeep Malhi, and Kingsley Ip. Brobobots is a 2.5D top down co-op action game made in Unity during an intensive 4-month development cycle from January 2018 to April 2018. I was the designated Audio Lead and a Programmer as well.

MY ROLE

Audio Design

As the Audio Lead, I knew that it was important for the sound effects to match the early 16-bit visuals of Brobobots. To create the game’s sound effects, I used Bfxr, a program dedicated to creating lo-fidelity sounds for video games. While creating each sound, I had to account for the game’s two protagonists, Dink and MegaPixel. This often meant tuning the pitch and length to match the visual design of each character. For example, to emphasize Megapixel’s role as a combat centric character, I mixed its sounds to be longer and harsher sounding. In contrast, Dink’s sounds were quicker and more elastic due to his smaller stature and non-lethal abilities. After creating a sizable catalog of sounds, I had to map the trigger of each sound to player input. For example, when the player decides to shoot a rocket as MegaPixel a rocket firing noise will play to provide feedback to the player.

Health System

In regards to the game’s UI, I programmed each player’s health bar so that it would flash whenever they took damage to inform the player that they were hit. To do this, I put a red overlay on top of the health bar and cranked its opacity value to 0. When a playuer takes damage, the opacity value of the red overlay would be quickly visible for a split-second, and then quickly fade until completely transparent. One problem that came up however, was that there was no way for players to disseminate whose health bar belonged to whom. To help orient the players to who’s health bar belonged to whom, I asked Daniela our Visual Lead to make some icons to represent the game’s protagonist: MegaPixel and Dink. In addition to this, I made first aid pickups to help players recover any lost heath.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Once the final build was published I was very satisfied with the effort that my team and I put into the game. At our showcase, we walked away with three special mention awards from industry professionals who were critiquing the event.