So it's midweek on a second week (or is it a first?), so that means it's time for a blog from me. Just a quick Disclaimer, there are no further mentions of Butterflies in this post. Sorry to disappoint any Lepidopterists, amateur or otherwise. So I'm writing this on Tuesday night, as I'm not up to much at the present moment and I'll probably finish it on Wednesday Morning...Possibly during our morning meeting but don't tell Adrian. It's been a relatively quiet enough week for me and for the company thus far. Adrian has a cold and is, by all accounts, delirious but still plugging away like a trooper and I've been adding little bits here and there into the game, as you do. Nothing major being done at the moment. More white-boxing is due this week though. Yay! "I didn't break the game! It was Unity!" In an surprising, yet predictable turn of events this week, I spent an hour or more scouring through a script for an EXP Rock, trying to figure out why it was destroying itself on the first impact with a spirit ball. Upon an initial search through the scripts relating to it (I say "initial" but, as I said, it took an hour), I decided it was clearly Unity messing me about. I even took to closing Unity and reopening it, as I've recently has problems with an error failing to clear itself when I had fixed it and, of course, it was still broken. I started trying to get creative with the script, adding all manner of bools, debugs and generally anything to help me see what was going on. Turns out, in my infinite wisdom, that I had added a small script to a part of the rock which said 'Destroy(this.gameObject)" rather than "Destroy(other.gameObject)" when a spirit ball hit it. Yep, I'm an idiot. I think the plan is to switch to object pooling eventually anyway, so that script won't really be needed in the future. More just testing at this point. On a related note...Unity did break the game, I think. My conviction on that has been slightly shaken by the above. But I will say this, you have not lived until you have seen a Firger plummet to the ground and then, for reasons best known to itself, disappear through the ground. It rivals David Copperfield and that shuttle. In slightly better news this week, I've managed to get the aforementioned EXP Rock working to a degree, although it needs some work. Lots of work to do but it's doing what it's supposed to. Also managed to get the Firger working a little better, he no longer just stands there like a massive standing thing. Like the EXP Rock, he definitely needs to some work which I've to do today. Hopefully I can get him working well enough for him to be in the next build and possibly the next DubLudo so people can actually test him out. All the GUI!! The new Unity 4.6 GUI is out. Well, it's in beta, but still out so to speak. After a night of being more confused than a man watching a Sasquatch ride a bicycle with a donkey on it's back, I managed to get it working. I was even more like a grumpy old man than usual before I figured it out..."The old way was better" and so forth. There's still some issues with it which are either my own or just slight limitations. It's more than likely the former. After the initial "What the hell am I doing?" phase, it's ridiculously easy to use. I've now got the entire main menu working off the new GUI and it's working nicely, it must be said Kudos to Unity. This week I've been Mostly... ...sitting. I hope we all read that word right, otherwise that is a strange way to start this part of the blog. So, away from actual game development this week, I went to see Luc Besson's "Lucy" in the cinema. Just yesterday, in fact. It was quite a good film from an action point of view (kind of what you'd expect from a Luc Besson film, really). We played Risk of Rain for this weeks game night. Not the first time we've played it and it certainly won't be the last. So addictive to play, never feels the same...naturally enough, it's a roguelike. Although, on reflection, when I say "We played Risk of Rain" what I actually mean is "Adrian played Risk of Rain, while I died, then watched him play while drinking Bulmers and talked with him and Oisface about a project". That's a far more accurate description of the events that unfolded on Saturday night. I also preordered my PS4. Only 5 months after I planned to get one. I've decided to get the white one with Destiny. Needless to say, I haven't been this excited since I built my PC. Really, really looking forward to getting it and playing Destiny. Should be awesome. So Long and Thanks for All the Shoes... ...is a good album.
That's my lot really. Oh, before I actually finish this blog, Adrian mentioned us playing an awesome game called "Deep Space Viking" in last Sunday's Sunday Musings. It's now available to play for free on their site. All you need is 2-4 friends and some Xbox360 Controllers. It's ridiculously fun. So I'll leave it there and get back to working on EXP Rocks, Firgers and generally blaming poor defenceless Unity for any problems that arise. As usual be sure to check the Facebook for Screenshot Saturday and then here for Sunday Musings...which will probably include the screenshot anyway. But you'll be a whole day behind. You don't want that, do you? It's been a strange but busy week thus far. Lots of work to get through, programming 3 games at once which has, of course, been great fun. Said with the utmost sincerity, in case that read sarcastic... "Sure the controls will take a few minutes..."We've been working on two new proof-of-concepts on the side while working on our main game (which is certainly keeping us busy).. So far, I've managed to get a working version of one of the games on my phone as we needed to try out different control systems to see which worked best. Touch to move definitely seems to work well thus far but it was after hours of this.... ...that I managed to get it working right. For some reason the Unity Remote App, which allows us to play our mobile games from our PCs decided to flip the game's up and down controls which made me think I'd programmed it wrong. Took me a good few hours to realise it wasn't the controls "I've done this before, it should work..."We've also been working on and off on another game, which is an isometric puzzle game. It's early days on this one, so not much news on this one apart from the above quote which is what I said to myself when I had to do something camera related. Managed to break the camera movement in one fell swoop... Won't be much happening with that one for a while either way. But stay tuned. Save Puzzle Box. All the SenseSo what of the main game? This week we've been doing....MORE WHITE BOXING. Yep, the first section is now just about completely white boxed. Needs some more work before it's playable but it's coming along nicely at the moment. I've also managed to fix a loooooong standing bug that's pretty much persisted since the very first build of the game. Basically, Evelyn would spawn in the wrong position when a save game was loaded. Not really a massive deal but it's been driving me mad since I first noticed it. Today, I'm in to some puzzle shenanigans. I can only hope it's more successful than the last time with the tile puzzle because that, ladies and gentlemen, was an unmitigated disaster! Robin Williams 1951-2014 This week also had some sadness this week with the sad news of the death of Robin Williams. I've always loved his films, some of which were my favourites as a kid and I still love them today, like Hook, Ferngully, Aladdin and Mrs Doubtfire. and then in later years Good Morning Vietnam. I also loved some of his more dramatic work, like One Hour Photo. Although I've yet to watch some of his other more acclaimed performances like Dead Poet Society and Good Will Hunting. His performances in comedies lit up the screens and people's faces and his dramatic performances moved people and showed his acting prowess. He will be sorely missed. I think I'll finish this post with, in my opinion, the most moving tribute to him from The Academy: "Genie, you're free."
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Dan's Dastardly DictionSo, I'll try keep this somewhat updated. If anyone reads this and has a question or whatever, just comment Archives
January 2016
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