Some Updates

Summary

If you can't tell from the gif above, I started to get sick of looking at probuilder basic shapes whenever I would go into game dev mode. Therefore, I spent some time the last few days looks for some affordable asset packs to start populating my scenes with. I am imaging the intro level of the game will take place in an interior apartment complex, so I felt these assets fit the best! It still doesn't look great, but it is an iterative process.

I also spent some time trying to get the first version of the character model going in Blender. It is definitely not the final iteration, but it is great adding my own assets to my game. Finally, I thought it would be practical to spend time today focusing on the health mechanic. I did a basic 4 hit health system and added a placeholder cube to do damage anytime I touch it to test. Overall the health system works as intended and I was able to lift a lot of the work I did on Planet Recovery Force for the seed shot mechanic for this.

What Hasn't Gone Well

It has been a few days since my last post. Sadly the majority of those days were spent working on a feature that I actually just scrapped entirely. I was focusing way too much on a feature that actually would have had no impact on the gameplay and would have been a visual nice-to-have. Realistically I should not have spent that much time on that feature and should have waited until the game was further into development to try and build it out more. Therefore, I scrapped the idea and went back to trying to implement a few things into the game that NEED to be in the game (like health and a scene manager) rather than some visual features. 

While it may be that I did not implement the feature, I do still find the time I spent somewhat valuable. The feature dealt with the Unity Shader Graph and I had never worked with that before. I got to then spend about three days in Shader Graph trying to get an effect. While I never actually got it, I have a bit of exposure to that tool now and will for sure leverage that down the road. At least once more of the core game is developed of course!

More Mechanics and Some Fun

Mechanics Added

I spent more time than I would have liked the last few days adding more base mechanics for combat in the game, but essentially the base mechanics I have been able to implement for the game include:

• Long ranged ammo capacity
• UI feedback when projectile is fired
• Projectile ammo pickup
• Animation for feedback when projectile ammo is picked up
• Improvements on health system and also added healing to the system

After these updated, I am going to want to work out the player attacks some more. I want to have a light/quick attack and also a slow/heavy attack that the player will be able to utilize in combat. With this, I will try and create some unique animations for feedback during these attacks to really sell the combat system.

Some Fun

I refined the player intractable script with the world and added physics components to the scene. Now I am able to go wild and see the destruction unfold in front of me. This makes testing the game more fun. Now if I am stuck on an aspect of the game and need to let off some steam I can destroy the entire environment!

Game Dev Update

It's been almost two weeks since my last post. With this silence you may assume that I have given up on this initiative. However, I can assure you that is not the case! The past two weeks at work have been busier than usual and I wasn't able to develop as much as I would like. Although I haven't been able to allocate enough time to game dev, I have been trying to work on my 3D modeling and other art skills. You can see some of my recent nightmare fuel experiments on my twitter @cedar_cat. 

With this two week hiatus, I am now excited to get back into full game development! However, I am not going to jump right back into my larger project that is Game #5. Instead, I am going to jump to Game #6 which will be a game jam game for the 7th Brackeys Game Jam! I am really looking forward to kicking this project off tomorrow and will be sure to post regular updates here. Stay tuned!

Game #5: Brackeys Game Jam

Overview

Taking a break from the longer project that is Game #5, I decided to jump back into the game jam world and have some fun with the Brackeys Game Jam. The jam theme is "It Is Not Real". I tried to think all morning about what I wanted to base my game on, when all of a sudden my fiance was telling me about this New York Times story she was reading about people backing a conspiracy theory about how birds aren't real. This of course fit the topic of the theme wonderfully!

I then brainstormed this idea quite a bit and came up with the following idea. You play as a bird who overhears some people talking about how they believe birds aren't real. This obviously upsets you, so you decide to make it known to the imbecile humans that birds are in fact real. So what do you do... you poop on them of course! 

Gameplay Idea

Playing off the idea of pooping on the humans, the gameplay loop will be to fly around the environment and poop on the humans to ensure they know that birds are real. Sometimes you may not have enough poop though. Therefore, you will need to ensure you eat some worms to refill your bowels for the ammo needed to poop. I also will try and make a background story to unfold as you fly around and poop on the humans. I haven't figured out this idea fully yet, but I feel like there is a lot of potential to tell a quirky fun story while you accomplish your goal of showing humans how real you are with your poop.

Progress

So far I have been able to buy a quick asset pack to put a scene together and also added the basic player movement and flight controls. Further, I added a "glide" mechanic so you can glide and stay in the air a bit easier. Next, I will work to make the stamina and poop meters. After those, I will start to try and put a non placeholder in for the bird and also add some humans to the scene. Looking forward to building this out futher!

Game #5 Completed!

Overview

The 5th game in my challenge and the Brackey's 2022.1 game jam submission Birds are Real is done! 

First off, I am sorry for not providing any updates on the Brackey's game jam submission over the course of the week. However, as it was a pretty quick game jam I didn't really have the time I wish I had to document my progress. That being said, I did try and provide updates on my twitter account. I highly recommend you take some time to look at my past tweets to see the progress I made over time on this submission!

This was actually a really fun game to work on and I feel like I have really improved since the last Brackey's game jam I did. I was able to complete this game with just a few hours to spare, but I feel really confident in the end product. I spent a lot of time working on aspects of game development I lacked in the past and feel I really grew along the way. For example, I spent a lot of time making sure I got the core mechanics built out before I started developing the game out further and I put a lot of care into creating a smart and effective tutorial to educate the player on the game. I also added a lot of sound effects and was able to effectively inject my humor into the game.

I do wish I was able to spend more time modeling for this game; however, I am not good at 3D modeling in the slightest. Therefore, I decided to opt for a Unity Asset Store pack for my 3D assets. It really helped me complete the game in time, but I wish I was able to work on this skill some more. I would like to see me work on this more in the future and try to become a better 3D modeler to support my game development journey.

All in all, I had a blast working on this game and I am really proud of the end product!

What's Next?

In deciding to take a break from the longer running game to finish this jam submission, I actually found myself wanting to scrap my original idea for the long running game. I think I was trying to stretch myself too thin and make something that I am not ready to at the moment. I still want to make an episodic game, but I think I need to rethink the scope and scale of this project. That being said, I am going to take this long running game back to the drawing board and see what I can come up with to scratch my itch to develop a longer and bigger game, while also being within my own capabilities.