#fmpidea2

[badvertex]

Non-Playable Characters

This thread is about the NPCs, who use the NavMesh to move around the scene.

The NavMesh itself is a zone of the floor plan that dictates where the NPCs can move and where they cannot. This is shown as a blue sheet over the mesh of the map, and certain objects can either be ignored, so NPCs can move through them, or registered so NPCs will need to move around them. The script below shows how the NPC communicates with the NavMesh:

The origin point of the NPC allows them to roam the store when they are not chasing the player. This uses a blank gameobject as a reference point the NPC can move towards, which moves around to random points within the scene at random intervals.

Spawning the NPCs

When the player enters the store, they trigger a countdown that will tick down to zero. At changeable intervals, gameobjects that contain extra staff members or customers can be set to spawn, making the game more difficult the longer players play.

There is also a system to convert the seconds the counter is built with into minutes and seconds separately.

Scoring and friendly NPCs

Finally, to score the player must deposit their stolen goods in their ‘nest’. These goods are then stolen goods are then collected by the baby pigeons, which use a modified version of the NPC controller script to collect all of the objects. The objects are added to the score the moment they are dropped in the zone, so players get instant feedback on how much they have scored.

[badvertex]

This thread is about the player character, the pigeon. They’re quite a complex little fella!

Walking Mechanics

First, the walking system has been revamped so that movement is the same whether your walking or flying. The fly feature has also been replaced with a jump that increases your height, but must be tapped to maintain flight. This whole system not only is more intuitive, as players seem to instinctively mash jump, but also more chaotic and faster paced. The code can be seen below: 

Grabbing Mechanic

The grabber has also seen a big rework, so now players can pick up and drop multiple things easily. It also allows enemies to force players to drop things if they get caught, and a pickup zone gives players feedback on what they can pick up. Code below:

Animation

The animation is more complex now, triggering off of the player’s button presses to be more exact. Above, you can see how each button press causes the animation to transition between a variety of states. This triggers off of booleans (a yes or no), which are modified in the script below:

Particles and Effects

Finally, a shadow (which is actually just a plane with a texture) follows the pigeon around to give the player reference on where they will land. Along with this, @bvic made a particle effect that launches feathers out whenever the player jumps.

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Showing off the modular assets made by @bvic and @cb-art-blog, and how they fit into the Unity scene. Because of the way these models have been made, it is both easy and quick to build new environments

[badvertex]

I’ve taken over the whitebox from @bvic, working off her great work on the isometic camera/character and getting them to move and function. So, going off of Becky’s code, the character has two control modes; Walking mode where the character is slower and connected to the ground, so only able to get things off of the floor or low shelves. Flying mode where the player can move faster, but have less control over the character but can reach higher objects and are faster. I still need to work out the transition between the two, but it will likely be a button press that elevates the pigeon to the flying height or activates gravity, sending them crashing to the floor. Might have some feature where its easier to get caught when flying or something.

[badvertex]

Get Me Snacks by Heckin Games

Pigeon robs local corner shop

The final game, demo ready and everything! It even works for MAC! (not mac and cheese but that is planned for the future)

[badvertex]

The whole Unity scene, in all its glory. The modelling and texturing was done by the hugely talented @cb-art-blog and @bvic, I then took their input and put the scene together. I really like taking screenshots, its such a pretty game -w-

[badvertex]

The current method used to allow the player to see around the store in an isometric view. It uses a similar as before, with the large cuboid detecting the walls. This time, however, the opacity of the walls is changed to half.

First, the material for all of the walls is set to transparent, so that it can have an opacity.

Next, a script on the cuboid will check for the items tagged as “CullingMesh” (or the objects with the materials that can become transparent), and assigns that object to Temp. From here, the opacity of the object renderer can be accessed and changed, changing it to half when the cuboid enters the object and changing it back to full when it exits.

This new method allows players to not only see themselves, but also other NPCs, which was a problem with the original method which resulted in players not realizing that an NPC is in a corner because they are hidden by a wall.

[badvertex]

The was the old shader that gave the player a “keyhole” through which to see the character when they walked behind a wall. It was built with a shader built by Toocanzs, and works through a variety of inter-working parts;

As seen above, the system was made up of a large disc with a hole in the center, a plane that was layered on top of it and a long cuboid that extended from the player to the camera.

All of the objects in the scene that the player would need to see through were assigned a special shader (referred to as shader A). This special shader rendered them invisible when look at normally.

The disc and plane were assigned another shader (shader B), which would allow the player to see the objects with shader A attached when the camera viewed them through shader B. This interaction was then triggered by removing the plane when the long cuboid intersected one of the objects with shader A on, thus allowing the “keyhole” shape of the disc to essentially ‘cut’ a hole in the rendered geometry.

While the final game does not use this system anymore, it is still noteworthy as part of the development. The shaders can be seen in action and downloaded here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SySnHIhiVgM