[serpentworks]

Alexis Barta on Twitter

“Hey listen! I just released a small game I made on https://t.co/QseoovIRgg! Maybe go play it? :3c https://t.co/xNMTyWfOs8 #gamedev #indiedev #madewithunity https://t.co/gBq0Np1R0s”

I just released a game on itch.io! 

Go play it, its cute!

[serpentworks]

This is my portfolio page, where I list the games I’ve worked on! Jam Games: Vampire’s Paper Route was built in Unity for Ludum Dare 41 with the theme of RPG meets Bullet Hell meets...

Hey I updated my portfolio page! You can now see a bunch of games I’ve made as well as learn a bit about them and go play them if you want!

[serpentworks]

Mayu’s Lantern Devlog #2

Hello again! It’s time for another devlog! There wasn’t one last weekend as I was out of town and visiting family and there wasn’t much to report by itself anyway.

This past week was all about enemies. There’s not a lot in the way of combat in Mayu’s Lantern; Mayu can’t harm the enemies for some very specific in story reasons. Yet the stealth aspect wouldn’t work if there weren’t something for her to have to avoid. After trying to fix the attacking trigger on my larger enemy, and looking at my code and going “oh dear gods what the heck” I ended up redoing my AI.

Again.

For the 3rd time.

(I never said I was efficient, people.) 

I acquired the asset Behavior Designer during the June asset store sale (when I bought the art assets) and went “well what the heck lets try this instead.” Turns out, it’s a lot easier to understand your AI when you can see why it’s not going after your player, because it can’t see it. It’s a bit hard to get at first (and the documentation sucks) but it’s powerful once you figure out how it all functions together. 

Anyway. ML currently has four enemy types, introduced below!

Wanderers

[fake New York accent] ‘Ey! I’m walking ‘ere!

These are the large lumbering patrol enemies. They dwarf Mayu, but they’re slow, stun able, and distract able. Currently, they’re represented by giant golems, though this may change in the future. Of the four, these have the most complicated AI tree. If alerted to Mayu’s presence, either by seeing them or by a Watcher, they will converge on her presence (as best they can) and punch her into oblivion. They’re one of the most common enemies, and the first type you’ll encounter.

Watchers

They have angry eyes.

These stationary bats are stuck to walls and can only really turn and watch the floor below them. They have a decent range, and you can see this by the light they project on the floor. Their one eye is not all seeing though, and Mayu can sneak around them if she pays attention to the direction of the bat. If Mayu is caught in the Watcher’s vision though, all of the Wanderers in the area will be alerted to her presence and seek her out. You encounter these second.

Lurkers

Tasty, tasty souls...

Lurkers are an odd sort of enemy. They’re relatively stationary, but will lunge at Mayu if she comes within their sight. They hide in the shadows, with only their eyes and growls to let Mayu know they’re there. More of a ‘hazard-type’ enemy, Mayu can stun these to pass, or can place something in front of them to block their lunge. Lurkers won’t stay behind blocks forever though so you need to be quick.

Spitters

The ‘I need a new name’ enemy type

These enemies are pretty neat, as Mayu can use them to effect things in the environment too. Modeled here by this lovely lava golem, these enemies shoot out projectiles. They move in a straight line in front of them, and either can be on all the time - forcing Mayu find a way to disable them or turn them - or only when Mayu is in front of them, meaning she has to move quick to get out of the way! Or sneak beneath their sight line. If Mayu stuns these, she can turn or move them. Some doors and locks will need a darker power than what Mayu’s lantern contains, and these enemies are just the right fit for it. They definitely need a better name though. 

Now with Proper Idles!

Mayu now doesn’t always care her lantern, and her animations work with her movement and crouching. Given she might not always have her lantern with her, it’s a good idea to have a selection of animations that don’t have things in her hands. 

Level Progress and Camera Changes

The quality.... weeps

The first part of the demo level is almost all fleshed out with meshes, save some grass and trees or knicknacks. I found I did a lot of detail work in places you couldn’t exactly see, given the camera. So now the camera pans when Mayu is farther away from it, and rotates to look down as Mayu get’s closer to it. I had a script that did this before, but I changed over to Cinemachine (which makes cuts for environment things soooo much easier) and wasn’t sure how to do it at first. A little tweaking on the Confiner Extention as I got something I really like.

That’s all it for now! Got some more fleshing of the enemies to work on and setting up more interactions!

Until next time!

[serpentworks]

Mayu’s Lantern Devlog #1

Welcome to the first real dev log for Mayu’s Lantern! 

First off, I made a not so small investment in assets off of Unity’s Asset store. I’ve been eyeing Styny’s set of assets for a while now, and the Adventure and Dungeon packs are perfect for what I’m looking for with Mayu’s Lantern. So above, you can see the beginning of the demo level using these assets! I also acquired some rigged monster assets, to use for the monsters in the game. Mayu is still just a red person but I do plan on modelling her properly. 

A good portion of this week after this was building a game plan for the next few months. I’m at a point now where I have most of the system built in at least a simple way, and really need to put together a playable demo/vertical slice. That’s now the plan! By the end of August, I am planning on having a fully playable standalone demo, that’s hopefully about an hour or two of content. To do this, I’m using an awesome project management website called HacknPlan.

It’s a lot like Trello, if you’ve used that, but with a lot more organization (in my opinion) than Trello has. It’s free to use, doesn’t have adds, and you can create your own tags and categories for whatever you need. Moreover, and what really drew me to it, was the ‘Game Design Model’ section. It allows you to create a living, breathing GDD (game design doc) that you can reference in your tasks or create tasks for. I am terrible at keeping a GDD, but I’m hoping this is much easier to keep up to date!

Once that was done, I implemented a simple system to show objects the player can interact with. Input prompts in most games show up when the player is in a place they can do something, so I put simple world space canvas’ into the interaction trigger zones. The only issue is that they’re way too small, even at the standalone size, and I’m tempted to move it to over the player’s head instead. 

My final task for the week was implementing foot IK and, well, it kind of works? I have to rebuild a lot of logic for the player controller before I can really get it working though. The player won’t hold herself up if I move the collider up to allow her legs to move. Which leads her to crumple or not be effected at all. Rather hilarious if completely unnecessary.

A light week this week; spent the few weeks prior working ‘overtime’ - I set myself up to work 6hrs a day Monday through Friday, and ended up working weekends and late just because I could - and needed to recharge.

That’s it for now! Please look forward to the next dev log!

[serpentworks]

Nothing like a fresh bunch of assets to bring new life to a project #madewithunity #gamedev #MayusLantern

[serpentworks]

Welcome to the new site~

After much thought and consideration, I’ve transitioned the site over to an almost identical version, but one that’s much easier to update and use! To most people who watch this blog on the outside will see almost no change. Those on Tumblr will need to follow this blog instead of the old one! 

I will slowly be transitioning some older posts over here (probably in the form of reblogs) and filling out the pages. Included will be a devlog for Mayu’s Lantern, which has had a lot of updates in the past few weeks!

Now with less flailing!

For those of you who are knew, read on!

Welcome to my little corner of the indie dev community in the California Bay Area. I’m Alexis, or Lex, or Dragon depending on where you know me from, and I build games in Unity. Been doing indie work in my spare time since I graduated college in 2015, though I’ve been ramping up dev time in the last year or so. My day job consists of baby-sitting self driving cars and taking in depth notes on it’s behaviors. 

Outside of that, I try to do yoga and gym to fight the gamedev’s hunch(tm), play video games, and cuddle with an adorable kitten.

Please look forward to more posts!