Hey guys ! Lets dive right in and get started as there was a good bit of work done this week. So i will get us started with what I did this week. I started off the week creating shaders in Shader Forge and created a tornado shader. This allows us to have a Static cone with just the Shader taking care of the movement and the distortion. Shader Forge allows us to create fast prototype shaders with ease and we heavily suggest this tool for any indie designer using unity. Then I moved onto a little polish effect for the chain lift by creating sparks. The sparks will appear on the gears that are driving the machine up the chain . I have created the particle system with physics because we can reuse the particle for the early scenes in the Shop when the father is hammering molten metal and sparks will fly off and bounce of scenery. During this time I also did concept art for the lift that will climb the tower. We wanted it to fit with the other chain lift but have a bigger more epic feel and we can create a bigger even of the climb up this massive building. When on paper we design the climb up on foot with a lot of wall jumps and ladder climbs, but that would be dull, slow and take away from the overall epic-ness of climbing a tower that pierces the heavens. I started the design looking at the enemies and statues we already had in the game. Originally I had a giant spider lift sketched up. We soon realized it would not fit with the world or the back story of the civilization that lived in the Temple. On a closer look at the enemies we had in the Temple I saw that we technically had code for the movement that we required for this in the Air snake. As he follows rails and can be easily modified (script wise) into the lift. The final Design became a giant Quetzalcoatl statue with gears driving the entire life up a rail system that can not only go straight up but have the ability to curve the track and create a swimming through air motion. But when it rotates wont the player be falling off the platform??? I hear you ask. No as we have designed it as the area that the player stands on to be gyroscopic. This will solve any problems with players falling off the side that is not their fault. Then I mocked up a back drop that can be uses in the forest and the Chain climb that will show the expanse of land that is in the world and hopefully give players the feeling of " O that looks cool! I wanna go there". I started by painting one plane and layering it over and over to see what effects I could create with minimum asset usage. The effect went surprisingly well. I then created simple meshes that I textured in the same style as the planes and created a layer effect of 3D mixed with 3. This plus multiple different background layers created what I like to think off as Real fake depth. After finishing this mock up I sent Dan some assets for the fire temple that include a mine cart that he implemented this week. (that transition so smooth). Dan created the mine cart in the Air temple that the player has to fill with coal and push into a furnace. All the while enemies are assaulting you and forcing the mine cart back. If the enemies hit the cart it begins to empty and the player must keep it relatively full by the time they push it into the furnace. Dan also had fun making the Air temples functional in a white boxed mode. This required a good few new scripts including spikes that chase the player as they run across the floor. Swinging axes that the player must weave through. Re working the jumps and platforms so that the player will have an easier time jumping around and exploring. Filling a Cauldron with water that will help open a door. Dan also re-worked the chain climb to accommodate our new mode of travel . This created a a few problems that we quickly found a solution for with bridges and new meshes to be added in the future. Time for a seranadeSure it is time for the music again this week. I will start with Dan's choice this week. It is DropKick Murphy with Walk Away. I am going with I love love you from one of my favorite games Jet Set Radio Future Righteo that is it for another Sunday Musings be sure to come back next week where I am sure we will have a change in the regular billing :D.
Until then Have Fun It's been a busy week for us. While it might not have been the most productive of weeks in terms of our output, we still managed to get important things done. So with that, let's get into it. Tangled ChainsThis week, we've made some progress in the redesign of one of the previously made sections of the game. Previously, we had Evelyn running up a series of Chains on the approach to the Air Temple. After much testing and what not, we decided that it was just an insanely boring. Even with enemies, it would have just been a bit tedious. The new way feels like it could be a good bit better and more interesting to play. Instead of running up the chains, we've now got a series of lifts that move up using gears. The plan is to have enemies land on the lifts, to try and pull the stop lever. This means the other sections have to be redesigned as well which will come eventually. Adrian modelled out the new lift system which consists of two elevated sections and a main floor. The whole thing moves via gears. He also unwrapped all the parts for texturing in the future. This week's Screenshot Saturday was a Valentine's Day edition with Evelyn and Sam I did the coding for the lift platform which is similar to one of the platforms in the Fire Temple, it just required some slight tweaking of the code in order to incorporate the gear movement and lever activation. I also fixed a slight issue with the cursor hide when in the game. Initially the cursor wouldn't hide after a set time, but would hide if the mouse was in the same place when checking (didn't think it through properly before implementing it). So now, if the mouse is unmoved in the menus for more than 4 seconds, the cursor hides. Standard thing in most games. I've also been tweaking the Fire Guardian battle which I talked about in my midweek blog. Animation events may be my new favourite thing in the world. Should really have known about them before now though! More animations have been implemented for the Guardian, but they're not the final animations, it more for implementing them in the code than anything else. Plus, I really wanted to get rid of that awful Cube Salamander! Starbound Abound!This week we've returned to playing Starbound. We heard there was an update and thought we'd give it a go to see what it was like. It is awesome. Feels like they've improved so much since the last time we played which was an age ago. Needless to say we've been playing it a lot this weekend. I'd say at least 10 hours at this stage which is a lot for us lately. Really enjoying it, the devs did some awesome work on it Music Time!Time for this week's music. Adrian's gone for Imagine Dragons "I Bet My Life" which I think may be a League of Legends song...I'm not saying a word on that one. I've gone for Flogging Molly's "Death Valley Queen" Adrian's: Imagine Dragons - I Bet My LifeDan's: Flogging Molly - Death Valley QueenSo that's us for Sunday Musings. Adrian's turn next week to do some blogging, so be sure to give them a read.
Meanwhile, have a good Sunday! |
Archives
January 2016
Categories |