Rise of Dagon: Dec 27 2014

This week I mainly focused on a process to create inventory armor icons for the players. I was able to previously purchase some weapon icons but I have as of yet not been able to get a good resource for the armor sets.

So I was able to work out a process that got a little faster as I went along which is really important if I'm going to create a bunch of icons by myself it can't take a really long time or the game will take too long!

So the chest armor took the longest being about two evenings to get it where I liked it.  The pants took a day. And then I was able to get the boots and gloves done in one day.

What I hope to do now that I've been through those pieces is to use the low poly version to sculpt additional armor variants very quickly speeding up the process even further.

I realize these are not incredible sculpt's that would look great in Thief game or something but they come out as armor icons very nicely.

Otherwise as time permitted I focused on some troubleshooting I had been putting off.  Previously I had to manually hit a 'load level' button once the main scene loaded ; given some of the changes I made this week now the level initializes on its own when you either start a new game or hit continue.

- Got automatic level loading in; previously you had to click a 'load level' in to the game once the game started
- You can now swap between different character inventories without having to go out of the inventory and back in
- added GUI "X" icon to close out inventory
- added supporting code for X icon to close out inventory

I also made some improvements to the inventory code to support swapping in between characters.

This next week I will probably work further on some armor icons and inventory code.

Thanks for reading, hope you had a nice holiday and a happy new year!

The Rise of Dagon; Week of Dec 20, 2014

This week I got to enjoy sculpting in Mudbox on my new system.  I definitely noticed the difference.  Things seemed smoother and I was able to work with much higher sub-divisions without having any kind of performance issue.

Skull VDM I made in Mudbox

It was a little weird, previously I had to sub-divide until just before I noticed a performance problem and do my sculpting just below that level. 

Now with my new system I just subdivide to the level needed for the model and everything is much smoother.

So firstly I made a skull on a plane and then used it to make a template to do further carving with called a VDM.

So the VDM once made properly can then be used as a brush to scuplt with so I made this pillar that might be used on a wall panel as part of a decoration for architecture to add atmosphere.

I was really pleased with both how much easier it was to do the carving and then the use of the VDM was smoother/easier too!

Pill stamped with VDM skull

 I also did some further experimentation with a block and some painting in Mudbox to make this block of stone that has skull's embedded in it.

It looks pretty neat but practically speaking its not a prop I would be likely to be able to use in the game. 

Finally I spent some time further on the inventory system.  Now if you click on any of the character portraits to launch the inventory it will open it for that specific character and in the upper left it will show the characters Name, Character class, character race, and character level. At the moment I haven't implemented leveling so everyone is set to level 0 in case you were wondering why it shows this guy as level 0.

On the right side I made the inventory icons a little smaller to fit more inventory in a smaller area and then I used a test bit of code to randomly insert up to 50 1h or 2h weapons in to the inventory - or occasionally it will leave a blank spot.

I currently don't have any armor icons so I'm definitely going to need to work on that soon!

So that's it for this week.  For next week its Christmas holiday weekend in the United States where I am at - so I will probably either skip the update or do a very small one.

Thanks for reading!

Rise of Dagon : Dec 13 2014 Update

Wow what a week!

Firstly if you had not already seen I participated in Ludum Dare 31 last weekend. I did the 48 hour competition version which means I had to make a game from scratch in 48 hours all by  myself.

I was really pleased at the theme "the entire game on one screen" and I was able to quickly and efficiently utilize Unity 4.6 to make the game idea I had planned on.

I really didn't hit any roadblocks in the process and the 4.6 Unity GUI went a long way (in my opinion) towards making this a really smooth process. I have been using the 4.6 GUI since it came out in beta so I don't blame you if haven't gotten up to speed on it yet; but I think most developers will find it reasonably easy to work with and suitable for many purposes.

I think it still has room to grow - but as a 1.0 version of the new GUI I'm very happy!

In other new I also found out last Friday (the 6th) that I was not going to get the house I was trying to buy and the people who had been selling it had a lien against them so they could not legally sell it.

So I ended up doing some house hunting on Saturday and Monday this week; and found a house I liked.  Then I ended up spending the rest of Monday evening filling out paperwork to put in an offer on the house.

In addition to all that the new parts for my PC I ordered from Newegg (two weeks ago!!!!) finally came in and I spent Friday night and this morning (Saturday the 13th) putting it together.

Everything went smoothly but it was a complete new system build as I have an old PC from about 5 years ago it was time to do a complete refresh!

So effectively I had about three evenings to work on the game; in which I did get a few things done!

Firstly I have expanded the players UI.  Particularly I have blocked out the area on the page for the player to have their personal attributes displayed when you hit the "i" button to go along with the inventory, character stats and the 'paper doll' to equip your armor.

Right now it looks a little bit too 'techno' (see screenshot at top of post) but I am still working on getting the first pass done and working from a programming standpoint- I'll polish the UI later.  Polishing before functionality is complete is often wasted time I have learned from previous experience.  (Yes, yes, I still can't help myself sometimes but I pat myself on the back when I can behave- and I'm doing that now!).

I also spent some time with Unity's 4.6 demo UI project where they have implemented a Draggable and a Dropable style script.

I learned quite a bit by doing so ; but at the same time their implementation stops short of being fully a drag & drop system.

In fact you can only drag in one direction!  And once you drop it; you can't drag it out.

The I combined the scripts in a new way to make what I thought would be a drag & drop script for any inventory slot - and it doesn't work!

So I read their all the code they have; and it all makes sense to me. I read it again; and it still made sense.

I assume something is intercepting one of my calls that I'm not aware of or something; but in any case from a 3-day productivity standpoint that's about all I had time for!

So this week I am settling in to my new PC and reinstalling programs, but I was careful to get Unity 3D , Photoshop, Visual Studio 2013 community edition all up and running first so I should be on track for continued development of The Rise of Dagon

Thanks for reading, see you next week!

Death Police 3000 my Ludum Dare 31 entry is up

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=31427

DEATH POLICE 3000 is a satire based on the current social issues in the USA ... shooting of unarmed civilians by our police force most frequently black males but also homeless and mentally ill men are targeted as well, and combined with the old movie Death Race 2000 where sport was made of killing people. 

WARNING: Features blood, killing innocent people including cartoon violence. 

Gameplay is very simple; attempt to underprivileged people while avoiding kill

ing privileged people. As long as you don't kill too many privileged people you will probably win! (AKA satirically the game is somewhat rigged like in real life) 

There is no way to die; just try to get the most kills you can in 30 seconds. 

If I had more time and was able to work more in to the game I would attempt to make a better challenge for the player than just a timer, some threats to avoid; perhaps try to kill people while not being filmed or to try and break iphones and cameras to destroy evidence and such but those were things I did not have time to get in! 

The satire comes in at the end depending on if you "win" or "lose" you get slightly different messaging about your actions. 

Thanks for playing, I hope you enjoy and please vote and leave feedback! 

NOTES/BUGS: 

- Made with Unity ; requires a browser that can run Unity web plugin and permission to do so 

- QUIT does nothing in web mode 

- there is nothing stopping you from running out of bounds of the screen at this time 

LD31 - Menus / Title

So my #LD31 is coming together with polish this afternoon.

I have gotten in a sound track and a couple of basic sounds.

I have also been working on all the menus - most of those are done except for the game over win/lose condition screens have to be polished with text / info.

So the title of my game is DEATH POLICE 3000 which is a satire based on the current social issues in the USA ... shooting of unarmed civilians by our police force most frequently black males but also homeless and mentally ill men are targeted as well, and combined with the old movie Death Race 2000 where sport was made of killing people.

Obviously in a limited time span of 48 hours I can't really go in to depth here so the satire is pretty blunt.

LD31 core game loop in!

So it took a while, I had a really tough time making my bullet collisions work.

I am using manual movement (translate) my 2D sprites; and in Unity when you do that the normal physics collision boxes wont work.

I couldn't use their physics because I don't want all my sprites falling off the screen .. so I had to do a Physics.OverlapSphere  , which yes means I have a physics sphere instead of a 2D physics circle..

Whatever its a 48 hour challenge, hack away!

So now that the core loop is in its all about polish tomorrow!

LD31 NPC + Character movement in

I was able to get some basic player and NPC behavior scripts in and now the player can move, as well as the various NPC's move across the scene as intended!

Going to take a break for a bit; combat will be programmed in next!

LD31 - character sprites in

So I decided to go against the 3d objects I had as placeholders and did some quick character sprites (only one frame of animation right now but if time permits I can enhance that after I have core game play in)

Unintentionally they look a little bit south-parky to me, which I like. I may play that up a bit more if I'm able to spend more time on it later.

In any case now I'm ready to program in the core game play!

LD31 scene composed first pass

Okay so Ludum Dare 31 going well so far tonight!

I was able to create the basic player prefab, GUI layout, a level prefab, a enemy prefab, and a civilian prefab.  Here's a quick shot of how it all came together in the unity editor:

I did create the first C# file but I'm tired enough after a long day of work I'm going to stop here and get a good nights rest and work on the first pass of game play tomorrow. 

Signing out!

LD31 level texture in progress

I am designing with a retro-pixel style for this game to keep it ultra simple.

This is a work in progress of the 'level' texture for the game where the player will be at a cross roads in a city street area with a park in the upper left corner and some sort of shops or business areas in the other corners.

Using photoshop I've been able to get a nice 'pixel' effect very easily by doing some flat block out areas then:

• apply noise filter (heavy)
• apply Pixelate > Mosiac filter

 I'm using with a  size of 12 squares as I want the pixels to be fairly large for this.  Then I'll start tweaking some hand pixel touches here in a few minutes.

LD31 Idea + Tools + Laying out UI

Okay got my idea; circles around social justice issues current today. I haven't named it yet though.

 

Will be using some of these (maybe not all if I don't do any 3d then cut those out):

Photoshop

Unity 3D

Audacity

Figure

Blender 3D

Bxfr

Silo3D

MusicStudio

And maybe Substance 3D.

I started my new Unity project and have been laying out my UI for my idea.

Obviously not much going on yet but its nice how quick the UGUI can be put together!

It also looks decent enough I can probably use it for the final game unless I have extra time at the end to add UI polish .. but I doubt thats going to happen!

Rise of Dagon : Inventory System - Dec 6th 2014

This past week I updated to the new Beta 16 of Unity 5 and have been also house hunting.. despite that I got a really nice amount of work on the players inventory system for the Rise of Dagon!

So things are looking really good at the moment but I need to put the code together on the back end for this to all be useable .

This week I focused on the layout and trying to get it to scale right at different resolutions.

I also watched a few tutorials which were generally decent but I noticed that people don't seem to know about the ability to add Layout components to your UI.

On the left portion where the 'paper doll' slots for inventory is I have manually positioned the inventory slots; but on the right hand side the grid of actual inventory slots is done with a Unity Grid Layout component.

This is super handy; you do not have to spend a lot of time messing around with making things line up in code.  You add the component and put in a few parameters .. and bam! You have a working grid layout.

There is also a nice horizontal and vertical layout components; the menu bar at the bottom in the shown screenshot uses the horizontal layout!

Definitely check those out if you are using the new 4.6 unity GUI.

Other than that I will continue working on the inventory this week hopefully with the ability to drag & drop icons between slots this next week. I have never done that before so it may take a little work. .Its also not something in the new UI so I'll have to probably make my own IDragable interface or something to that effect.

As a side note I am at least tentatively going to do Ludum Dare 31

I should probably post a series of posts on my blog here and posts on the wordpress blog there as well as I go along.

Thanks for reading, see you next week!