Epic Challenge – StoryLine 360 vs. Unity PT.1

February 14, 2021

Alright, sounds nuts, right? I’ve been asked to create a sort of educational game that teaches people about basic freshwater aquarium information. This game will involve A LOT of animations, variables and calculations, as well as different levels of complexities. My son is heavily questioning my choice to design it in Storyline 360, and has been touting how easy it would be to design the game in Unity (a program he can code in pretty easily).

LET THE CHALLENGE BEGIN! Never one to skip a chance to draw my kids into my world, or to let a challenge go unanswered, I challenged him to create the same game in Unity. I’ll provide him all the assets that I am making (or that my graphics artist kid is making), and the exact design needs of the game and he makes it in Unity.

This is NOT a challenge for speed, as time isn’t of a concern on this project, and we have to wait for all the fish illustrations (what the graphics artist kid is drawing) to be complete anyway. It’s simply a test of which program is better for this type of project, and to learn from the experience.

Is Storyline 360 up to the task? Will Unity beat it? I’m excited to find out!

Here is the basic layout of the game…

This intro page has animated bubbles, and will have animated fish swimming around. The Rule of Thumb sign animates as well, popping up from the bottom of the tank to sit where it is. Click Setup to continue. (If you click on the Freshwater Fishtank sign, you get the credits)

The setup screen asks users to input the size of the tank they want, and then to turn on any difficulties for the game that they want to have. The basic game is about how many fish you can have in your fish tank based on it’s size, and then we can add on fish compatibility, level stacking and whether the fish will eat your plants as well. Hovering over the difficulties gives the player some information on what they are.

Clicking the ? brings out the instructions again, Clicking the fish in the bottom left corner brings out the choose your fish menu. The upper right corner will have the PH range and water temperature for the fish in the tank. You will select the fish from the fish menu and then they will appear and swim around the tank.

The game will need the following:
1. Calculate the size of each fish and determine how many and what size are needed to overpopulate the tank. If the users have too many fish or too big of fish, the game will give an error.

2. Minimum of 10 fish to choose from – The 10 most common for small sized hobbyist freshwater fish tanks. (These are Betta, Danio, Dwarf Gourami, Molly, Neon Tetra (shown above), Rainbowfish, Fancy Guppy, Goldfish, Killifish, and Louches.) It will also include plants.

3. To know and check for compatibility of the fish and the fish to the plants. Incompatibility will have the player try again.

4. To know and calculate the PH range and water temperature range of each fish. Display this information. If fish aren’t compatible due to PH or water temp, display error.

5. To determine if the fish will eat plants. (If so, error).

6. To show a pictoral graph of fish compatibility (a different slide)

7. To show a slider graphic of which fish will live at what temperatures, and a slider graphic of which fish at what PH levels.

Interested in finding out how we’re doing?

Follow along with my Review 360 as I publish it!

Pt.2 will have updates from me, and updates from the Unity side (with screenshots!) Stay tuned!