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.