Crayons

Unai Rodríguez Ferrández

January 9, 2023

Introduction

Crayons is an online multiplayer drawing game, initially developed on the Crayta platform. This undertaking posed both a technical challenge and stood as a significant personal milestone, largely due to the inherent limitations of the platform and its lack of native support for certain UI features. The project originated as an experimental endeavor aimed at maximizing both the Crayta platform and my skillset.

Note: This game was initially hosted on Crayta, a platform that has since been discontinued. The following sections provide detailed information and media to showcase the project.

Role & Contributions

I had the privilege of singularly developing a unique game, responsible for every aspect excluding the environment. This project marked the introduction of unprecedented mechanics to the platform, eliciting surprise and commendation from the platform developers, who acknowledged, “This is a really unique game, we’ve never seen this before but someone managed to build it.”

My role involved the meticulous crafting and implementation of innovative game mechanics, addressing and overcoming diverse challenges that will be elaborated upon subsequently. The technical components of the game were brought to life through my proficiency in Lua, HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. The uniqueness and groundbreaking nature of this game not only pushed the boundaries of what’s possible within the platform but also contributed to expanding the creative horizons of the gaming community on the platform.

Tech Stack & Tools

Engine: Crayta (Built on Unreal Engine 4)
UI Engine: Coherent Gameface (Compatible with Unity)
Programming Languages: Lua, HTML, JavaScript, CSS

Game Features

Drawing Mechanics

The central gameplay mechanic focuses on drawing. Players can freely express themselves on virtual whiteboards, and their artistic creations are visible to other participants. The game includes a variety of tools for adjusting pencil color and size.

Game Modes

I designed multiple game modes, each with unique logic and objectives, a skill set readily applicable to crafting diverse and engaging gameplay experiences in Unity:

Freestyle Drawing: A laid-back environment for free drawing.
Guess the Word: A competitive room where players attempt to guess the word being drawn.
Create Your Animation: A feature allowing the creation of simple animations.
Themed Contests: A specialized room where drawings are based on a specific theme, followed by a voting phase.

Contest Room

A dedicated room allows players to cast votes for their favorite artworks during seasonal contests. Despite the platform’s limitations in terms of persistent data storage, I crafted a robust voting system that retains data across multiple game sessions. This capability is highly transferable to Unity, which provides more sophisticated options for data storage and retrieval.

Challenges & Solutions

Canvas Support

The game significantly relies on the HTML canvas element for its drawing functions. Although Crayta did not officially support this feature, I devised an innovative solution that successfully incorporated it into the game. This demonstrated strong problem-solving skills and creativity, attributes that are directly relevant to addressing complex challenges in Unity projects.

Data Persistence

Given Crayta’s limited support for data persistence, this was a particular challenge. The platform’s data storage mechanisms are restricted to numerical values accessible via predefined IDs. To overcome this, I developed a modular system that leverages these IDs for event-driven data storage and retrieval.

Transferable Skills

UI Development: Extensive experience with Coherent Gameface for UI design, a tool also compatible with Unity, illustrates the direct applicability of my UI/UX skills to Unity projects.
Data Management and Persistence: Engineered a voting system capable of maintaining data integrity across multiple game sessions, an ability directly applicable to Unity’s more advanced data-handling systems.
Problem-solving and Creativity: Devised a workaround to incorporate the unsupported HTML canvas element, showcasing problem-solving and creative skills that are highly relevant in Unity projects.
Cross-language Implementation: Managed gameplay mechanics and UI through the use of Lua, HTML, JavaScript & CSS. Experience in multi-language development is readily transferable to Unity.
Version Control and Project Management: Utilized Git for version control and Trello for project management. Familiarity with these tools is beneficial for any collaborative development, including Unity-based projects.

Category:

UGC

Tags:

UGC