Devlog#1 - Hazmat Hunt - Intro

Hi! This is my first Devlog, and therefore I would like to introduce myself - my name is Maciej, I`m from Poland and currently study Game Design at Technological University Dublin. As part of my course, I was tasked with creating a video game in Unity for my final 1st year project. The game has to be themed around the word "borders".

So, how did I interpret the theme? The answer is obvious - Aliens. Well, maybe not so obvious... but hear me out. 

"Aliens invade earth, crossing  the inter-planetary border through powerful and mysterious portals, and only YOU can stop them!"

That was my first thought when hearing of the theme, and in this Devlog I will explain how I began designing the game and created the basics.

I wanted the player to be able to "close" the borders between the worlds and I wanted to add a bit of an exploration / search mechanic to that aspect of the game. My initial idea was to create a radar, with which the player could scan the area larger than their vision radius to search for the portals. That idea didn`t work out, as I have encountered some technical problems when  attempting to create it, (It is a mechanic I do plan on looking into in the future, possibly for other projects). So instead of creating a radar, I came up with the idea of a "Geiger Counter" which would detect radiation emitted from the portals. The player would know if they are getting closer to the portal, based on the radiation level shown on the Geiger counter UI.

First of all, I have created an empty game object for the portal. 

Using the Circle2D collider(set to trigger) I have created zones, or areas that would have a set radiation value and an OnTriggerEnter2D function to apply their value to a Geiger Counter Script:

The Geiger Counter then takes that value, and based on the amount it triggers a certain animation and increases the pitch of it`s audio source, (and decreases when exiting the trigger).