Game Project X

[gameprojectx01]

Day 11

The samurai and his sword are now fully modeled. The bear is rigged and has a very basic walking animation (which will need redoing before being added to the game). The samurai’s body is rigged.

[gameprojectx01]

Day 10

Further progress on the models today. The bear is now fully textured, and rigging has begun. The samurai is fully modeled, and the modeling of his sword has started.

[gameprojectx01]

Day 9

We continued modelling. The corrupted bear is pretty much done; the materials and textures will need some adjusting. The samurai unit has been getting more and more clothes. The belt and sword scabbard, among other things, are done.

[gameprojectx01]

Day 8

Today, we have been modelling. The samurai’s body is about finished and he is now starting to get some clothes. The base of the bear is done, but we have yet to apply the mutations, if you want to call it that, caused by the corruption. Hopefully the models will be done soon, so we can begin rigging and animating and ultimately add them to our unity project.

[gameprojectx01]

Day 7

Today, the design of the samurai’s sword was finished, as can be seen in the picture above. With this, the design of the samurai unit has been complete, and the modelling of it started, as seen below. We are rather new to Blender, so there is much to learn. In addition, the design of the first mob (enemy unit) has begun (top most picture).

[gameprojectx01]

Day 6

The turn-around for the samurai unit is now complete, as can be seen above. As the next step is to model him, we have begun researching modelling and getting familiar with Blender. His sword also needs a final design.

On the Unity front, we have made the camera moveable in real time, so that the player can move around the map to see what is going on everywhere. It does however still need restrictions, so the player won’t be able to move off towards infinity. The Navmesh, which the mobs use for their path-finding, now updates (bakes) every time a unit is built somewhere on the map. This makes it so that the mobs takes even newly built units into consideration as obstacles as they try to find the shortest path to their target.

[gameprojectx01]

Day 5

The design of our samurai unit is starting to come together. After many iterations of various value and color combinations, we settled on a dark blueish design with some red accents. To really try it out and see the character a little bit more ‘in action’, the concept sketch above was made - it is not 100% accurate regarding proportions, patterns and colors, but captures the feeling we’ll be going for. We have started working on a turn-around which will be used to model him.

We have made a basic unit class which contains properties such as range and attack rate. The unit has a function that updates the unit’s target to be the mob which is closest to it. The unit attacks using ‘projectiles’ - the idea is that even melee units will be using projectiles, except they will in that case be invisible to the player. The units are buildable: by clicking on a node in the grid, you build a unit (right now, you build a placeholder unit which is a blue cube). 

[gameprojectx01]

Day 4

Today, we started working on spawning mobs and making sure that they are all destroyed when reaching the target. The script currently spawns 20 mobs that start moving 2 seconds after spawning. We also made a script for wave-spawning. In its current state, the script starts the next wave 60 seconds after the first wave has been destroyed. There is also a very simple UI timer for the next wave. A issue that occurred during run time is that the mobs sometimes bump into each other and get pushed which causes issues for the navmesh agents’ path-finding.

On the design end, we experimented with various shapes to base the factions on to make sure each has a unique and coherent look. The first unit we are going to make belongs to the East faction and is intended to be similar to a samurai. Different looks and outfits were explored before we settled on one, after which the silhouette was refined. Next is determining values and the colour palette for this character.

[gameprojectx01]

Day 3

Today, we have learned about grids and path-finding using NavMesh. We have created a very simple gridded map across which our placeholder red sphere of an enemy can travel. We are able to specify that certain squares are not walkable and thus have the enemy object find a path which does not cross these squares. We have a specific target object towards which the enemies move, and upon reaching it, they disappear (the idea is that in the final version they will explode upon reaching their target and so cause damage). 

Other than that, we have specified the East faction, which is intended to be the starting faction, further by defining average range, inspiration sources, playstyle and hero as well as outlining a few other playable characters.

[gameprojectx01]

Day 1 & 2

The project has started.

Git repository is done, Trello cards are set up, Pinterest boards representing the East and West factions are in the making. The first iteration of a project specification and GDD have been made. The story and world in large is in place. Research regarding grid-based maps in Unity has begun.

Great fortune.