In this blog we’re sharing how Jasmine, Onash, and Gowthaman from the Digital Team at the University of Exeter are developing their very own digital game to help solve student problems while experimenting with our in-house capabilities.
Developing Campus Quest
Early in the Digital department’s creation, we were looking at quick and fun ways to show in-house capability and digital development.
Two things were clear from our time helping students on the campus Digital Hubs; navigating campus as a newbie is hard, and people love playing games. This was evident from the number of people asking us for directions during Welcome Week on campus, and the amount of interest we got in our annual Mario Kart tournament.
We got to work on developing a simple 2D game, playing as a character walking to different spots on campus. The concept was simple, walk around a cartoon version of the Streatham campus and collide with buildings to find out the name of the building and a bit of information. Campus Quest was born!
Using Tiled map editor and Unity game engine we slowly built up the first version of our map, which took far longer than expected. For reasons that seemed exciting at the time, we eventually scrapped it and spent many hours on the next version, using isometric license free tiles instead. This gave the map more texture and perspective. From our original player, the stick person, we moved to a ginger cat. Streatham has a notorious campus cat named Napoleon, and he of course had to feature.
Showcasing Campus Quest
During the Times Higher Education Digital Universities UK event (DUUK) that we hosted on our Streatham campus, we showcased the game and let people have a go. The game is playable, but it is conceptual. It doesn’t yet have every space or building on campus and is still in a test phase. The point of the game was to create something outside of our usual responsibilities to start conversations, and that it did! We had a great conversation with a Geography professor who was showcasing 3D geospatial mapping with drones. We also had interest from some current University of Exeter students who wanted to get on board and help continue developing Campus Quest.
This really demonstrates the effectiveness of ‘show not tell’ – generating engagement using interactivity always seems to work well for digital concepts.
For now, the future of Campus Quest is unclear. We have confidence that Napoleon will be back on screen one day, searching out campus information… Rumour has it a game logo is bubbling away, and no doubt Napoleon needs some NPC friends too!
– Written by Jasmine Barton, Content Designer; Onash Maharajan, Developer; Gowthaman Ravindrathas, Developer
Find out more about the work of the Digital team on our website.