#spaaacedev

[spaaacedev]

Xenorelic Trailer!

[spaaacedev]

Slice Neaaarly done and boom goes my hearing!

So, the final level of the slice for the game is nearly done. After that I'll be creating a sprite for the AI hologram, and start to put things together in Unity (as soon as Casp shows me the proper way to do so, right now I'll just make a mess). 

I will also be making a second enemy to the game. there'd be more if sprite making and sprite animating wasn't so time consuming.

The second enemy is an 'evolved' version of the first. The idea being that the mask that controls your fellow ex-crewmembers takes over more and more. So it should be relatively fast work creating it.

I've also made the HUD elements, as soon as we can implement those we can see if they need tweaking. I also tried my hand on doing a fancy start menu, but it looked a bit rubbish so I canned that and will have to try again later.

In more personal news I had an ear infection, which damaged my ear drum, and hurt like hell. Between that and the feeling that the game hasn't progressed much lately I feel my work flow has been pretty slow. But as we absolutely have to do part 3 of our school project, which is kind of a summary on how the work went etc (Casp can tell you more about it, as he took the helm on doing that, giving me more time to create graphical assets for the game, which was hella' smart). Anyways, I'm still hearing impaired but the doctors said it'l heal over the course of a month or so...

Oh, and a giganormous thank you to Anthon E. for creating all the sound assets for the game!

Until Next time! //Mike

[spaaacedev]

AI Problem SOLVED!

This Week has been real productive! The problem with enemies walking through walls is solved! After some tutoring this Tuesday we got the the tip to check out unity's asset store where plugins to the program are offered some for money some for free. After some browsing on this incredible lifesaver I found a FREE AI plug-in with a pathfinding feature. This plugin allowed me to create an AI to a object in the game world and then create a waypoint system that this AI would follow, genius! It took some time to learn how this plug-in worked but after some trial and error I got it woriking. Now our enemies are a little bit smarter! I'll link you to the plug-in: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/6563

I also found some great tutorilas on how to use this plug-in on the youtube. I'll link some of them!

With this problem of my head I could move on and start work on apply all the new and crisp 3d objects and textures that decorate the first level. With textures in every room of the level it really looks more attractive than it did before.

This week have been real good and I'm satisfied with how far we have come. What's left to be done? Well we've got some more graphics to do on this level and I'll leave that up to Mike as he is the one with that skill. We will start to let people test different solutions and varieties in the design of interface and judge by the result from these test how we best can optimize our way of suppling information to the player.

Peace!

// Casp

[spaaacedev]

Work work, a report of what has been done this week!

This week I've been working good, have gotten a lot of things done and I'm satisfied with my effort. I'm back by my main workstation computer which is good, going back to a 28” monitor from a 11” is quite a change though but a good one.

I've been coding up a new enemy type that can shoot and does so in the direction of the player. The procedure of coding this feature was surprisingly simple and left me with the feeling ”why didn't I do this to start with”. An enemy that recognizes when the player is nearby and shots at him, right now it's stationary but that can simply be altered with a string of code.

Mike has been a good chap and provided new decorative models complete with crisp textures, I have decorated the level with these models of chair,tables and shelves. The result looks kind of nice and I'm positive that this will at least be a pretty looking game.

I've also been writing the dialog that will guide the player so that she knows what to do and why she'd want to do it. The manuscript is halfway done and I think it will suffice as a first draft that we can use in-game.

Lights have been put in to the level so that we can start to think of how we best can take advantage of their illumination for the right aesthetics and effects. The point lights in unity are a bit tricky if you don't know that they have a render priority setting you'll soon notice that some of the lights that you put in your level won't work. This problem could be easily fixed by setting their priority to important instead of “auto”.

I would really like to have some people test our early build of the game soon but I feel that some things must get done before that. The problem with enemies moving through walls is one of them. A alternative to fixing that problem would be to activate the 30 days trial for unity pro and make some a navigation mesh, but I'm not sure about that just yet.

Well that's it folks!

Peace!

// Casp

[spaaacedev]

Hello spring!

This week I have spent most of my time making sure functions and elements of the game which do not have their contents ready yet all work as they should. The tricky part in this process is knowing when to stop and move on to the next thing at hand and how much to leave for when the content for that function or element is ready.

I've developed a system for different keys and doors. Different doors have a designated key asigned to it and only when the player have gotten hold of that key will the door open. The keys have different public variables that can be toggled to easily create different keys, saving both time and effort for future usage of keys and doors.

The gui text elements of the game have been further improved with a method of placing them in the same place on the screen independent from the screens resolution. A trigger volume system have also been created to let the game know when to release story related content to the player via a gui text.

The enviroment in which the player navigates have been properly collision fixed, now the player can't escape using see through walls. I did this using a set of box colliders that I matched to the see through walls, it was pretty easy but took some time to actually do. There is a lurking problem with the simple enemy that currently inhabits the game, the problem lies in this enemy's ability to move against the player through walls. I suspect that this can be fixed by using some sort of navigation mesh, though I came under the impression while searching the web that this is a pro only feature in unity, that is bad news...

All in all this week have been quite hectic with me being forced to change locations twice but I think it won't effect the end result too much.

Peace out!

//Casp

[spaaacedev]

Planning

After some tutoring last week we pulled some of our act together when it comes to planning. During the tutoring we were told that it's very important for a production such as ours to have some sort of plan on when things are to be done. We sat down to process this information and came up with a priority system as suggested by our tutor. The most essential elements of the game we set to priority 1 while the thing we wanted to be in the game but not judged essential we put in priority 2. Priority 3 we reserved for the polishing stuff, elements of the game that we consider to be the frosting on the cupcake (not a fan of cupcakes though).

Having listed everything we could come up with we started to estimate the amount of time each element would take to produce. Doing this gave us a better perspective on how long this game would take to make.

//Casp 

[spaaacedev]

The process of choosing different elements to our game

In the pre-production of our space adventure game we have to set some essential game elements and mechanics that we want our game to contain. Health indicators, movement and pickups are some of the elements we've been discussing. With all suggestions of what to include in our game we must ask ourselves questions that determine if they fit into our game. The questions can be both many and few. Is this retro or is it modern? Where does this idea come from and why did we come to think of it? How did others use this idea and how did it work out for them? Is this element a part of today’s games? Would this element do our game any favors?

If we take health bars as an example. They have been around for a long time and their origin isn't that important in this consideration. They used to be popular but have recently been replaced in many of today’s games by the “bloody screen” health indicator. We believe that some sort of health indicator that displays the health situation plain and simple would be to the players benefit and satisfaction.

This process is repeated on all the different aspects of our game. If a element's answer to our questions prove to disappoint us we have no other choice but to ask that element, aspect or idea to go home without an invitation to our game. The failed element may come back for an other audition further along the line and we may take it back in to consideration.

Peace!

//Casp

[spaaacedev]

Quantity met!

Ok so last I've been bad at updating this workbook so far but I think it'll get more natural as we move in to production in this bachelor degree work. Here's a reflection over the last TWO weeks.

Last week I did much work in the text we're supposed to write in order for this to be a academic endeavour. In this text we tackle some of the subjects that relates to our question of issue. Last week most of the work were spent on finding articles that related to our text, finding great textes from a finnish professor Jaakko Suominen whom had great research about retrogames as an influence on digital culture and another great text where he discuss the difference in how the console companies (Nintendo,Sony and Microsoft) make use of their own history in their development and how they have handeled the retro-trend. I got some great material out of these textes.

Here's a link to his website: http://www.tuug.fi/~jaakko/

So this week I've scrambled up enough material to meet the minimum quantity requirement for this part of the essay and it feels great. Being able to concentrate on quality over quantity have made me feel less stressed out and enabled me to start thinking of improvements in our essay.

That's about all I have to say, I will ask some people read the text for input this coming week and we'll see how that turns out.

PEACE! // Casp