Arena Game Project: 03

Learning the particle system.

So I've spent a couple of weeks looking at my code and trying to find decent guides to making a nice particle effect. I have learned heaps but feel like it's not going anywhere fast, and since I've spent so much time on it I think I have to discipline myself and just move on for now or I'll never have this game finished. 

Time to start modelling!

I will admit I've been scared of this step. Just because this is what will make or break my project in a way. Because my game is 3D and has to look professional I need to do this well. I will be trying to find a style that looks good and doesn't consume too much time to create assets for so that it can be done with my limited level of skill. This won't be easy but we'll have to see how I go. I am also learning a new 3D modelling tool because I only have student versions of Maya and mudbox and 3ds Max. I don't really want to use student versions because I am hoping that I can launch this game and so I am going to be learning Blender which isn't really industry standard to use but it is free and more than capable of being used to create good quality work.

Arena Game Project: 02

How has the project gone so far?

So like I said before this project is a couple of months in and I despite work I have done at Tafe where I completed a diploma in game design I have found that it was really only the beginning of my learning and there is a huge amount of techniques and skills I still need to acquire to make my games great.

That's great and all, but where are we at?

The game currently is still using some default unity assets, I have spent a good amount of time refining exactly how I want everything to work. This process sounds easy but when your considering everything at code level and then trying to implement  you often find things don't quite work how you expect or aren't as simple logically as you first thought. This isn't helped by my limited coding knowledge, however I am leaning!

Right now in game you can shoot a volley of fireballs at a target and select that target just by looking directly at it. This targeting system is great, it feels smooth and is actually quite accurate for the moment, I've even set it up so that you can lock the target so you don't lose it once you have it. All of the implemented code also leaves room for skill swapping and is even setup in a way to allow both players and enemies to access the same pool of skills, this was a bit trickier than expected but I believe I've succeeded.

Sooooo... What's next?

Particles and awesome effects. I want to know how they work so that my game can look awesome. This could wait but if I don't get at least a basic understanding then the coding work I do could make it impossible to create really cool stuff and we don't want that. So that is what I'm doing right now.

My next step once I have a grasp on particles and how I can use them to make things pretty is learning a cool system for animating characters called mechanim. This system is completely different to what I know how to do currently with animation and should really step up the quality of animation I can create once I understand it.

Arena Game Project: 01

I have started this a bit late...

So yeah, I actually started this project a couple of months ago and starting a blog about it didn't actually come to mind until recently a friend of mine from Tafe asked me about it. I gotta say I felt a bit silly at not having done this already, here I am now to set this right! I have not yet used this blog to great effect, I have basically posted some of my progress while I was at Tafe but at that time I still didn't fully comprehend the full potential of maintaining a development blog. However I do now and I will begin by documenting my progress and goals as I continue to work on my new project.

This concept started simple enough.

This game is currently un-named, the basic concept involves the player controlling a character that fights waves of enemies in an arena style map. The objective is to survive the waves of opponents which is fairly straight forward, and as you do so the character gains experience and gain gains new abilities to play with.

This concept is great because when I complete it I will have some solid base combat code and by design it doesn't require an unreasonably huge amount of work to be considered complete! So here is the goals I have in mind so far.

Gameplay Objective: 

• Rounds of enemies spawn for the player to fight, may be a large boss or swarms of small guys or both!
• Player gains character experience for kills, And another experience from using their abilities in combat which is used to enhance skills.
• The player can choose from a vast array of skill sets, and adjust the power behind those skills at the cost of resources (adrenaline or arcane power) and cooldown. So by increasing cooldown duration or arcane power/ adrenaline costs the player can boost the strength of an ability.
• The player can also customise armour and weapons, the quality increasing as they gain exp in that armour or weapon type
• Weapons and Armour, might be dropped or purchased or crafted, I am undecided, but I do want the ability to break weapons down and reforge into new stuff and repaired (weapon and armour breakage system)
• Combat must feel smooth, targeting skills must be easy and feel natural and enemy tells easy to spot

• Menus and HUD must be clear and easy to navigate, HUD simple and out of the way so focus is on the surroundings and not UI elements

So many ideas... Must. Avoid. Feature creep.

So I have a good idea in mind as to how the game will play out. I have a huge amount of stuff that I have planned out already but it's a lot easier to dream up another idea to add to the game than it is to actually create it so I am thinking up alot of stuff, but I am sticking to development of only the features that contribute directly to the core game first. Once the game is able to be considered complete based on the original concept will I continue with the bonus stuff.

I Rigged a Moleman and I liked it

Today I completed a Rig on this moleman model including a transform on the jaw that allows you to adjust the value to open and close the mouth. The next step will be to skin the model and setup all the skinning weights.

More Blogs!

This blog will continue as a general blog to the work I continue to do however I have created blogs specific to the major projects I am working on. I will be continuing on Mutiny lightly, however I currently intend to work mostly on Midnight.

For my Mutiny project the following blog will continue to track the work I do towards it:

http://mutinydev.blogspot.com.au/

And for my new major project Midnight I have created this blog:

http://projectmidnightdev.blogspot.com.au/

Sonic Wave (For Iphone/ Ipad Devices)

Sonic Wave

This game is a project for making a game suited to a mobile device. It's a game where you survive an infinite wave of ghosts for as long as possible. Killing them gives you score and when you die you can see your latest score and best score.

Title Screen, pretty simple, set out to be easy to read

In game you have a mini-map radar for ghosts. the left stick to move. right stick to aim and a red Health bar and a Blue Sonic Wave bar that limits how much you can fire.

Game Over is another simple screen. I intend to patch up best and final scores colour and font to make them fit in better. But for now the idea is just to have them on the scene and functional.

Enemy Smarts

Mutiny AI

The AI in my game are going to be enemy pirates and Skeletal Pirates who are hunting the same treasure as the player.

All Enemies

• The enemy will have a large patrol path that will loop so that the various AI units look like they’re searching the location

• AI will respond to sound, if they are close enough to hear your footsteps then they may deviate from their path to look for the players last known location. From further away they may hear your weapon fire and combat.

• Because I don’t want enemies to be out of ammo when engaging the player, they will have unlimited reloads but when reloading will find the nearest location that is out of the players line of sight (take cover). Taking cover can be removed for an easier difficulty.

Pirates

• Pirate AI are hostile to not only the player, but all other pirates and skeletons as well since they are all after the same treasure. To avoid all opponents from killing each other before the player sees them, this feature will only activate when the player is within range of the pirates that have detected each other. This will mean the player has a chance to see it happen and can choose to sit back or join in. However the range from the player that allows combat between npc’s to occur must be far enough away that the player never sees them ignore each other, but not so far that things die before the players sees or hears the sound of combat.

• Areas will have varying levels of light and if the player stands in a dark corner a pirate who walks past at a distance and DIDN’T already have sight, they won’t see the player. However if the pirate gets close enough or was chasing and had sight of the player when it entered the dark spot then they can see you still.

• Pirates using ranged weapons will only get as close to the player as they need to be in range for their weapon. Some will have longer range such as pistols and can keep good distance, other weapons such as flame throwers still won’t need them to be in melee and other weapons such as swords need to get right in close.

Skeletons

• Unaffected by the lighting, they don’t even have eyeballs anymore

• All Skeleton enemies will have swords, range will always be melee

• Are not hostile to each other but are hostile to the player and to other Pirates as well, must still be in a certain range of the player to initiate combat with other enemies so that the player sees it happen.