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Ragespline

Just watched this longingly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzRJosAiD98

Thing is, I can create graphics like this easily and import them in, but this video makes it looks so easy (and sexy?!)  to do it in Unity. Also, whenever I import them in they look like ass. So I need to figure a way to fix that.

Still haven’t got changing jump direction mid air sorted yet. This guy is having the same issue: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/85796-Side-Scrolling-Platformer-Change-Direction-in-Air so I replied to see if he ever managed to solve it.

I need to start on the rope physics soon too. Then I can start making some puzzles/ levels. I watched this really interesting talk from Jonathan Blow and Marc Ten Boch yesterday: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=OGSeLSmOALU. It’s especially relevant for me seeing as I know what my mechanics are, but not my puzzles.

Double Trouble

Now have double jumping working, which I did yesterday. I feel a bit hung over from Sarah P’s house warming to do any meaningful coding today, although I really want to add the ability to change your direction mid jump.

I’ve looked up some cartoon references for the spider and the fly characters and have drawn them in Flash:

Boris

Collectible/ Edible Fly

I will create some different versions and see if I can improve on them another time but they’ll do for now.

The Script Bible

http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/ScriptReference was very useful this morning for checking all the things I probably should know but don’t.

I used: http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/ScriptReference/CharacterController.Move.html to redo my movement and get jumping working. I painstakingly deconstructed it and wrote it out myself to make sure I understood it and I’m now playing about with it to get double jumping working.

I’ve updated my player character so its now just a plane. Initially there was an issue with needing to rotate the plane so it was facing the camera, which messed up the movement controls. I solved this by adding the Plane as a child of the player object so that its rotation doesn’t affect the Player.

Jump around. Jump around! Get up! Get up! Get down! And so forth.

Setting Rigidbody Constraints

Thought this was going to be an unproductive lunch but I managed to find an easy way to lock the Z position and stop the cube from rotating about. You can also lock the rotation in each axis which solves the problem of the cube falling over:

Setting Constraints

I also found an amended version of the  example of the Unity 2DGameplayTutorialProject Lerpz project here: http://vonlehecreative.wordpress.com/2010/08/26/unity-resource-langmancontroller/

This strips out all the fluff and is just the useful movement bits. I’m going to try and learn from this to help me add jumping to my game, as if you just lift an entire script you never understand fully how it works, which will come back to bite you later on when you come to add more features or need to fix bugs with it.

Another useful thing from this example is that it showed me what type of shader I need to add to utilise the transparency on my character PNG:

Transparency Shader

It also uses a plane instead of a cube for the character, which probably makes sense for me so I’ll switch this out later.

Watch Where You’re Colliding

Got collision working. Just need to improve the movement so it’s locked to the x and y planes and so you can jump. Currently your cube can easily topple over and then your steering will veer you off in crazy directions.

Ship it!

 

In unrelated news, I’ve been listening to lots of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABYnqp-bxvg while I work. It’s a great feel good song and also has a brilliant video!

Finished the Book

I have now finished reading the book and am back working on the game. I’ve also been jotting down lots of ideas every time they pop into my head – which is usually as I’m laying in bed. I have two potential names, a bunch of ideas for levels, a fist pass control scheme, a load of songs I want to use but probably won’t be able to get licences for and some other random ideas for various bits of gameplay.

I also read some of the older posts on here and can’t believe I started this in July! Time goes way too quickly. Especially as you get older.  Was quite interesting to read though. It’s amazing how much of what you’ve been up to that you forget without a record of it.

Book

I realised that it would help me to make a better game if I know more about Unity so I started reading an ebook but it turned out that Will Goldstone, who I met at LUUG, was looking for proof readers for his new book on Unity. Seeing as he works for Unity he seemed a pretty good person to learn from so I abandoned the other book and began reading Unity game Development Essentials. I’m really enjoying it and can’t wait to utilise some of things I’ve learnt on my own project. I’m currently on Chapter 9 of 13.

I also attended LUUG 7 and met the guys from http://wootcomms.com/which is a great site if you’re an indie and looking for some marketing tips (which most indies are!). Definitely worth checking out!

Hiatus

Ok, so it’s been three months. Back on the wagon now though. In that time I did go to a Unity Meet Up (LUG 6)  and have made some useful and inspirational contacts. Now to put that  inspiration to good use! I have come up with an idea for a game and have got a moving character and a physics rope so far. Just need to combine the two to make an awesome grappling hook! Here goes nothing…

Hello World

Not too much to write home about just yet. I spent an hour or so last night, and tonight, continuing on through the tutorial, playing about with variables and changing textures and stuff just for the hell of it. I’ve now finished the main part of the tutorial and am in the final section when it goes into more detail on the scripts. It’s been a while since I did any scripting and I’ve never used Java before but it seems pretty similar to Lua and the little C++ that I know.

I’m gonna have to start coming up with some ideas for something to make pretty soon! I’ll have to dig out my “crazy game design ideas notebook” and start coming up with some concepts that I could knock up in Unity with my not-too-advanced skill set.

Day 1

I’ve been reading The 4-Hour Body recently, in which the author, Tim Ferris, outlines four principles of failure proofing behaviour:

1. Make it conscious.
2. Make it a game.
3. Make it competitive.
4. Make it small and temporary.

While he talks about these in terms of getting fit, they apply to achieving pretty much anything. I’ve been meaning to make a game in my own time for ages so now I’ve decided to Make it Conscious by creating this blog. Measurement = motivation. This will let me see how far I’ve come, which will help motivate me to see how far I can go. I can’t wait.

Today I spent a few hours learning the basics of creating a game in the free game engine Unity (http://unity3d.com/) by doing the 2D game tutorial found here: http://unity3d.com/support/resources/tutorials/2d-gameplay-tutorial. I got about halfway through before getting sidetracked by downloading the open source 3D modelling package, Blender (http://www.blender.org/), and trying to import objects from it into Unity, which I managed to do although I found that they appear at the origin as soon as I run the game. I posted on the forums so hopefully someone has faced this issue before and knows a solution. All in all not a bad first day – I’ve learnt a bunch of new stuff already. For Day 2 I want to finish off the tutorial.