Monday, December 8, 2014

PHI - DEVLOG 3

THINGS STARTING TO TAKE SHAPE


What a week, folks! So much progress again... Sorry for being a bit late with this log. - I really try to be on time, especially for the #screenshotsaturday (yep, following me on twitter is really worth it), but since I work the whole day on Friday and Saturday that is often a bit hard. Besides, this weekend I had to post about Courier of the Crypts, which REALLY needs YOUR support during its last days of the indiegogo campaign!

Anyway, as planned, I spent most of the time I had during the busy last week on building out the level - or rather area - of my prototype. In its current state I’d say about 18% of the basic building process is done and I think that’s pretty good progress. As explained several times before, what I am doing now is just the very basic foundation of rooms and tied together sections, also still with a high degree of experimentation regarding preliminary looks. Just after all the rooms and sections are completed I will start to work on details like placing objects, refine lighting, making tons of decals and stuff that really increases the atmosphere.


Next to a very basic introduction to jumping, as seen in the screenshot (above) - along with one of the rooms described in my last devlog - I am already playing with rooms with depth beyond the area the actual game takes place. This might still not look like too much, but we're getting there (can you guess what happens when you miss a jump on those pillars?).


THE STATUE ROOM



This next room - also tastelessly called the statue room - is what was keeping me busy the most during the last week. It's supposed to be one of the early “wow effect”-rooms, showing gigantic statue hidden in the mists of the background together with lots of sand falling from the ceiling. Wow? - I know... but we're getting there... the texture of the statue is pretty lame for now, but since I need to remodel it anyway (because it doesn't have toes yet!), that will come later.

Why was this room taking so much time, you might ask... Well, first of all since this room is gigantic, building it with my smaller prefabs took a bit longer and secondly there is much more going on in this room than you might think (video - as always - at the very end of the post): Yeah,... again spend some time on the sandfalls, still not cool enough,... but one thing you surely didn't notice is the sand on the floor! This time I actually did it directly in Unity as terrain. What, a terrain inside! - Is he crazy? - Why not? Nobody tells you that you can't resize it and use it inside of your levels! And real terrain is very important for my sandy passages because I think that it is much easier to handle heightmaps with infused particles to get a sand surface than anything else... coming way later though! - Althouhg making the simple terrain was pretty fast and there are a ton of other benefits with actual terrain compared to an imported mesh, there also came along a few problems; the major problem was that I wanted the sand texture to have a nice and natural decay at the end/corners of the terrain "mesh". To achieve that it took me quite some research and a bit of shader coding to make the terrain texture transparent, where I wanted it to... like I said... doesn't sound like much, but trust me, it was a very time-consuming yet still necessary step! Also, I am afraid, it will still take a bit more work later on, since it's not 100% working as I want it to.

Ok, so besides being "pretty" the room also introduces the player to a certain important knowledge in this game: Sand is your friend. - Well, for the most part. But the general rule is that it can be used to descent safely without taking damage. - There will be a roll animation on the sand dunes later on to visualize that.


MOBILITY UPGRADES - NO PLATFORMING WITHOUT THESE


By again confronting the player with a closed door and therefore refreshing his memory and cementing the fact that he has to search and activate a switch, the very same room is also supposed to teach the player other even more important mechanics which I also had to script during this week:

 1. GRABBING AND CLIMBING UP LEDGES (or was it edges… sorry, that’s where my English stops)


Yeah… what’s there to explain about? For the super critical eyes out there I should probably mention that I am not planning to make a super quality script for that feature at the moment and that I am quite happy with how it is now.

Why? - Because at some point the hideous black stickman is going to get replaced by an actual 3D model and therefore climbing will be a completely different animation/script/process… whatever you want to call it.


2. GRABBING, CLIMBING AS WELL AS SWINGING ON ROPES

Ropes are actually more interesting and at first I was really amazed how easy it was to create them in Unity just by sequentially putting together some joints and adjusting their behavior a bit. Unfortunately programming the script that takes care of how the player can interact with the rope was pretty hard and I think it took my about 20 hours just to get it almost right and at least avoid physics going crazy... seriously... those damn ropes! I was never able to climb them in school when I was young and to be honest, I think I could do it even less in my current state of physical decay. At least my videogame character can. :) I am sure my gym teacher is proud now!


Alright, that's it for this devlog. Hope you had a great time reading and I wish you also a very productive week. Whatever you're doing (university, working, making games,...), hang in there just a bit longer. Soon the Christmas vacations are here and you can get some well deserved rest! Enjoy the short video:




Take care, cu in about a week.

Play more! Climb more!

No comments:

Post a Comment