Morgan Finn - Game Designer
Fruit Loops
Over the course of July 2023, I created a Narrative Puzzle Minecraft level called Fruit Loops. Through the use of progressive Journal Entries, Dialogue, Set Design, and a ton of command blocks, I created a unique and compelling story that, in a way, tells two stories at once.
Pre-Production
Production
Milestone 1
During the first week of creating the level, I created just under 6 pages worth of story content, as well as the layout for the lab. This is where, through planning, I established the building blocks for the level, setting myself up for success to come with the next few weeks.
Milestone 2
During the second week, I finished the story for the game, and created the set design for each of the labs using the "template" I created during the last week. I also designed the gameplay section for the first room, command blocks for teleporting between cutscenes and other rooms, and used custom player heads for set design.
Milestone 3
During the third week, I spent around 17 hours creating the rest of the puzzles, the set design for the hospital, and getting others to playtest. I also created a good portion of the command blocks for the games, setting up dialogue and cutscenes.
Full Level
In the final week of development, I finished up the command blocks, making the level not only fully playable, but also completely replayable, as the command blocks actively reset the entire level automatically. All cutscenes were finished, and the player receives journals that update as the story goes on. This video is the finished product.
Post Mortem
What Went Right
The first thing that went right was the storyboarding. I was happy with how the story turned out, happy with how I made the plot twists, and happy with the dialogue. I initially made it all in a google docs, and worked around it from there, so the organization part of it was also something that went well. The second thing that went right was the puzzles. Even though some of them took me a while to make (especially the piston puzzle), I think they were all unique to one another, and straight forward enough to the point that playtesters had no trouble figuring out what to do. Speaking of, I was also able to reset the puzzles upon leaving the room, which made the entire level completely replayable without any need for manual resetting. A third thing that went right was the set design. With the help of a friend, I was able to figure out how to import custom heads into minecraft. Through this idea, I was able to place boxes, computer monitors, and cameras, which are things that wouldn't look as good if done in other ways. Each change to the lab was also according to the story, and I was happy with the block palettes that I used. All in all, I was happy with how it turned out. A final thing that went right for me was the organization. With the command blocks, I put signs on all of them detailing what they did. This saved me a lot of time that would have been spent looking for a specific command block, considering I used 211 of them.
​
What Went Wrong
The first thing that went wrong was the research for the command blocks. As it turns out, there aren't a lot of updated videos on command blocks, with most of them dating back to 1.16 or earlier. If you wanted to look up how to do something, it would either be very hard to find (5th website link or lower), or completely outdated. Figuring out how to give a player a book with multiple pages of dialogue was extremely difficult to find out how to do, and wasted a lot of my time. A second thing that went wrong came in the form of item frames. Minecraft adventure mode allows the user to interact with things, such as doors, levers, and chests. The only problem with this is that it allows the users to interact with item frames, and that includes removing items and destroying item frames entirely, since they count as entities rather than actual blocks. This means that someone playing my map would be able to destroy not only the item frames in the 3rd puzzle, but also the ones in the last cutscene. Ouch! A third thing that went wrong was the world edit. In some cases, copy pasting certain things destroys them for some reason. Item frames, armor stands, player heads, carpets, and tripwires are all extremely finicky when copy pasting over. This means I had to do a lot of replacing, which lost me a bit of time.
​
Lessons Learned
The first lesson I learned is that organization is essential. My google docs ended up being somewhat cluttered near the beginning, which took a good bit of fixing up when I got to working on the journal entries. Although I could have done better there, I think my organization with the command blocks was done pretty well, since I was easily able to locate what I was looking for and when I needed it. The second lesson I learned is that research isn't always easy. When it came to command blocks, I spent a long time trying to find what I was looking for. Examples include how to give a player a book that has multiple pages of writing, as well as how to reset the rotation of an item frame. I was never really able to find an answer for either of these, so I ended up having to figure out a solution based off of what I found. It worked out in the end, but it was very time consuming. A final lesson that I learned is that time management is essential. I've managed to finish 3/4 of my finals, one of them being this one, with a week left to spare. I plan on spending that last week focused on my last final, since I knew from the start that I would be struggling with it. As of a week ago, I was stressed realizing how much work I had. If I hadn't managed my time better, I would be a lot more stressed, and I would probably still not have much done.
Tutorial
Multiple Sets of Dialogue
With Redstone
During the creation of Fruit Loops, I had to come up with a progressive dialogue system myself, since I had no access to mods, nor were there any tutorials on this subject. The contraption involves falling sand to connect redstone signals, which allows progressive dialogue with a single button.