Can’t Hornswoggle an Old Salt Video Game

Level of Education of Students Involved

Undergraduate

Faculty Sponsor

Nick Rosasco

College

Arts and Sciences

Discipline(s)

Computer Science

Presentation Type

Poster Presentation

Symposium Date

Spring 4-25-2024

Abstract

This project created a digital version of a table-top RPG module, “Can’t Hornswoggle an Old Salt,” developed by the Valparaiso University course English 280, that provides a single player, virtual environment in a two-dimensional grid. The project was developed in Unity to leverage a rich and robust user community, well documented reusable libraries, and a development environment that allows for easy expansion. An agile development style was used for the development effort, allowing more rapid collection of feedback and ensuring closer customer interaction. This higher level of interaction than usual led to the choice of a two week sprint period, enabling faster customer validation of technical choices. The implemented ecosystem, which includes a wide array of user collected virtual items, influences user outcomes and possible narrative flow via varied situation handling. This complexity, which enriches the experience, created several points of complexity that had to be overcome. Other challenges included the significant knowledge gap created by the need to master the highly sophisticated Unity toolchain, which tracked with the experiences of similar projects. While an expansive array of packages for the project was available, asset acquisition as an institutional purchaser also proved complex.

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