Week 10 Advanced Game Prototyping

The week before demo, the final week. Everything comes to a head, and looking at the goals that were set months ago.... well, to say we didnt have a condition to complete the level was one thing we lacked for a completed demo.

I was able to get a decent hud, and menu system ready for use so the player can select which ship he wanted and the weapon set specific to the ship. Thanks to missing images or ones I was still waiting on.... I was not able to complete visuals for the player while within game, I think the placeholders were still in it. Anyways, 2 days later, which I spent a day and half of it with the images I finally got to program the visuals on all the weapons reloading, loaded, charging, and overheating. Even experimented on the weapon reloading or decharging while the player wasn`t using the fire button, but since it wasn`t part of the weapon code, all it was just an experiment. But the images are accurate to how my other teammate coding his weapons. Though it wasn`t easy, spent 2-3 hours to get the code for the weapons to work. But since unity said my 2d texture was not assigned while it was within the inspector. Well I had 30+ images to place pixel by pixel, and most were differently placed based on ship selection, weapon set, and the hud settings. Decided the time spent to learn how to fix the 2d texture, then fully learn how to use the screen placement detectors properly I decided to position the images myself.  And now I get to look forward to this possibly not being in the demo.

Week 8/9 Advanced Game Prototyping

This is an interesting week, no class next week with the next one the last before demo time.

I need to implement game sounds, mainly just the menu sound, but I added the ingame sound so I could test the mute button in the different scenes within the unity build.There was an issue with the sounds, the game would mute the sounds, but while in game the mute would only mute or unmute the sound after I left the pause menu. I know it was the timescale being 0 during this period, so any change wouldn`t register till after timescale was set back to 1.0. After spending 3 or so hours testing out several codes and methods to work the sound to change while within pause menu. Gave up at a certain point and stayed with the sound muting or unmuting after the pause menu was closed. I actually got a feeling that since many games take one to another scene apart from the game scene, making it easier to control sounds and menu settings within game. But since I didn`t have time or knowledge how one could program the game to go from one scene to another, while staying at the exact point and pausing it and then returning the player to that point with any changes.

I also had to work on the ships explosions some more. For this and the following week, I finished up the codings. So that the ship explodes, with a light the has a halo/flare effect expanding from the center point outward, then break apart into individual pieces with their own particle effects. Now the way to test this was to make it all happen when player hp hits 0. But for this purpose of testing and lack of another team members coding, I didn`t have something to reset the hp from 0 to something else. Of course I did try, and the code partially did something then stopped cause the condition to make the code run became false basically. So pretty much everything ran on a loop, took me awhile to fix this. I had to use a SendMessage to run it properly along with a variable that would became true after 1 explosion while still running the remainder of the codes. What was causing issues with the movement, was that even while in maya the piece was centered, in unity the center pivot was well, somewhere away from the piece. Using the full version of my movement code didn`t work, had to cut out parts of it and modify the remainder, add timing to when they disappear and the explosion to help hide any piece that did manage to rotate around a point not in it. I even also took the light and medium damaged textures, made extra ships and applied lesser damaged particles specific to the state the ship is in.

With the interface, I added functionality for the hud settings so the player can somewhat customize the hud placements, and added the alternate fire setting button to be added onto later.

Week 7 Advanced Game Prototyping

This week was greatly interrupted by my reserve duty, so I got alot of my stuff done, just wasn`t able to get a final touch done or work out some coding bugs fully. What I did get done was fixing all the base sprites so they appeared properly and got the base explosion to what I wanted it at. With working on the uv cycling on the base explosion, since it was animating to fast I experimented with lowering the uv cycle into digits and noticed single sprite effects looked better. So I made 5 single particle sprite effects, 2 fire, and 3 smoke and plane to use code to shoot them out as needed. For my ships pieces, I got everything in, rebuilt them around my ship in general placement regards, and put them into a empty game object to parent them. I added a code to the actual ship that would spawn then, and destroy itself. I added a code to the parenting object that would destroy all the sprites. These 2 worked. But when I added a movement got, I got a null reference to one of my lines that wasn`t very specific on what was null, it didn`t move the pieces around randomly but more so as one object, and it wouldn`t let me add a particle effect either. I also didn`t have the time to fix the 2 particles that were not rotating with my ship properly. For my UI, at this point, since the actual artwork itself was were it was needed I took the psd file and saved them out, or put them together as I needed it with almost little modification here or there. Mostly just deleting things that were not needed. I did clean up my code, and GUI skin and had to change my functionality to get what was wanted done. What I haven`t done yet was work on the placement or sizing portions within my code yet.

Week 6 Advanced Game Prototyping

This week, due to the ships improper scaling, alot of which was on my ignorance of the fbx importer scaling within unity`s fault, I got to work on all my made particles and has to make them 2 digits smaller. The base explosion needed that final work on its energy and omph behind its force. I added in the burning sections of the ship now that I had the damaged textures. And even used some basic primitives for the ships pieces after it exploded, and used a code to spawn them and make some particles effects. An issue for all these effects was that the particle sprite I made wasn`t coming out right. Also, wasn`t able to remove the particles on the pieces yet. I did get more work done on the mounted gun charge up, but had an issue for 2 of the particles being sucked in not rotating properly with the ship. I did finalize the gun flash. For my UI, since I have not received any of the finalized images, most of which I did get were either jpeg or what I didn`t want via email, all I did was fix an issue with the ingame pause. Hitting an arrow key and then escape was causing the issue of me not being able to repause.

Week 5 Advanced Game Prototyping

This week I got to work on the ships effects more. Fixing mainly the base explosion some more. The lack of damaged textures, scraps and even a ship that wasn`t properly scaled or properly exported made what I could do limited. I also got more work on the UI done, more in the regard of adding the final placeholder images to better explain what was needed to the artist.

Week 4 Advanced Game Prototyping

This week, I finished the majority of the UI`s functionality, more so to what was decided how we wanted the UI to work. Also added more place holder images till I receive the finalized images. Also, I had to start work on the ships particle effects, explosions and weapons. So I worked on the base explosion, the gun flash, and mounted gun charge up. Even did some experimenting with the ships engine effect. Got to learn more on how each of the particles settings worked in order to achieve the goal.

Week 3 Advanced Game Prototyping

This week, I had to continue working on my particles code, and start working on the games interface. I finally worked out on making the particles spawn once as intended and looking better. The next new bug I opened was when the victim asteriod died, instead of its own particle going off, the particle on another went off. So far I believe one or both of these 2 reasons are why it is happening. The first, and what I beleive it is, is that I am using a randomly generated interger when told to generate one and whatever it is will spawn one of 3 particles. And I am using a gameobject find to find the named particle attached to the asteriod, but since the particles on one asteriod is the same name as another Unity just picks 1 random one. But as I was writing this, when I turn on the asteriod spawn portion again, the victim asteriod will still spawn them and the particle is called upon at the same time, so the theory that the specific asteriod and not some other one is doing what it should be, dying and giving birth theory is working as intended. But the 2nd reason, is the the destroy game object happens right afterwards is that unity most likely didnt keep up and picked some random to do particlemitter.emit on some other same name particle. Or I`m wrong and the way it is coded is wrong. It took me almost 3 hours to work all this out.

The interface on the otherhand, I didn`t expect a big challenege of a keyboard only manual interface on a PC game for the player. I know I spent half a day looking at 1 interface button, trying to get it to do what I wanted to do. After 14+ hours, with input gui`s I learned it is really important to first keep what buttons are used in point A and what buttons later used in say point F must go from A-Z, or F will cut into A and unity will think yourat point F when your at point A. Though I did use an interger for the arrow keys and booleans for which point I was at, that I learned also I had to at some point stop reseting the interger and instead make it equal a higher value then the previous point to make the buttons work. Cause the main issues I had where was I could use the arrow to navigate my interface, but the buttons would not go off when return was pressed. At the point I`m at now, the player will have 7 weapons and he has to chose 3 to use before starting the level. 1-3 and 5-7 weapon selection buttons worked, and I could start the game if I selected 3 of those, but weapon selector # just wont work. Other then that, with what was discussed in class, and how I coded this I could in theory still use a radial for the interface buttons, but kinda hard till I make the animation or something that looks like a spinning wheel of buttons cause my coding does support the theory I believe.

Week 2 Advanced Game Prototyping

For this week I got to look forward to the next week of showing off an interface I had done for the Interface Design class. The feedback for why I didn`t do so well for it was making it look like a 90`s style game, which is what most of my PC gaming experience is from. I also had to set up the dust particles for when the asteriods were destoryed. Since some randomness was called for, I decided to make 3 5 by 1 textures differently sized for the asteriods. Since the example on the unity site used meshes for them, I used the instantiate coding to make my particles and ran into issues like you cant destory an object with particles going on it, or the part where even an IF or FOR would not spawn the particles form spawning again and again past 1 time. But thanks to using differently sized particles, I did notice something was up and say a small asteriod died and the big asteriod particles went off, well went off for every destroyed asteriod. I found out I coded the big asteriod hp onto the small and medium ones, and quickly fixxed it. Guess I didn`t catch it the previous week. I spent around 6 hours bitting my fingers trying to figure out how to work the particles from theory to working as intended.

Week 1 Advanced Game Prototyping

This week, I had to continue working out the asteriod code. Besides additional coding, the frame work of the previous coding was left alone. I changed the HP check code on the asteriods from a called function to fixedupdate and added a tag check and the new asteriods to spawn from the destroyed ones worked. What I spent most of my 5+ hours on was the movement issues, nothing was mentioned about a Constant Force component with using the constant force physics vs addforce physics. I learned that addforce diffenently needed a Rigidbody component to run, but with how my movement code is done I believe for the constant forces both Rigidbody and Constant Force components are needed. Though the way Constant Force is worded as a one time force vs addforce which is added ever frame, I had to add a code that would zero out the random constant force after 5 seconds to prevent the asteriods form jerking around.

Week 11/School break

For School break, I was tasked with making textures for my 11 asteriods and make a code that would spawn 3 medium asteriods when a big one breaks, and 3 small ones when a medium one breaks. For the texturing, and decided to learn Max and spent some time making the most usable UV mapping I could. With the actual texture, for the most part I could have just added a simple brown towards a grayscale color. But being a rock, and what I`ve seen of past examples even from movies thats all it is. And being an object the player will differenelty be around alot, and be looking at alot I didn`t want to make them look boring. So I started with making a bump mapping, which depending on lighting would add a good vib to it and based my texture around the bump map. Spent 3-5 hours working out the asteriod textures. For the programming portion, well the only part the worked was teh asteriods destroyed each other when called to do so. Problem was that was all it did. Also was able to get a movemenet code to work on them, but wasn`t able to figure out immediatly how to deal with the ones that moved in circles. Spent maybe 5+ hours with trying to trubleshoot the coding.

Week 11

   For this week, I made a sphere of randomly spawned asteriods using a Random.insideUnitSpere * radius, which will randomly spawn asteriods assuming the transform[] is set within whatever I make the raduis, say for example I set radius equals 5, the 3 axis will equal 5 for the maximum size of the sphere and asteriods will be randomly placed inside. Several issues with the code Instantiate (asteriod[asteriodToSpawn], Random.insideUnitSphere * 150, Quaternion.LookRotation(center)); is that the insideUnitSphere * radius takes up the spot for any transform.position/rotate slot so I had to make a separate code for the actual movement of the asteriods. Which for the most part works, except I had to us addForce and using Random.value -0.5 for the xyz and put transform.Rotate(x,y,z) into the update function, putting it into fixed update causes it to go faster then what I would want it to, and using addTorque on the rotational axis even with the random variables in update, it builds up from slow then goes fast.

    I was trying to get a randomrotate setup within the Start function but there is something missing, not sure what yet. But with what I have, when played the asteriods will go forward or backup based on the way it was facing and will also randomly rotate along an axis and each of the speeds for these is random, so some go faster then others or rotate faster.

    A minor issue that came up is an asteriod will go in a circle, not all of them will but some do. A major issue is the asteriods go thru each other, though I wasn`t concerned with asteriods spawning on top of each other yet. I put a oncollisionenter funtion with a print and nothing prints, and I did put a cube inside the sphere with a rigidbody and when I move it around, it will bounce of the asteriods but the asteriods dont do much else. Overall, took longer this done then what I had to do last week. Around 4 hours.

Week 9

These are 3 teardrop asteriods, the ones that got approved. I`d say an hour was put into them. Also I was tasked with making an asteriod spawning array that randomly places asteriods inside a grid area in unity. Not understanding the array portion, I made 6 spawn points that would randomly spawn a random asteriod. After looking at the code and making it work for me, maybe an hour was spent working it out. After seeing the new code for what I was supposed to do, and spending 5 minutes on it, the 2 areas I need to deal with is making the grid area and setting the code to spawn random asteriods instead of just 1.

Week 8 Asteriods

Here are 10 modeled asteriods, could use a little more work, and took maybe 2 hours at most to make.

Week 7&8

This includes the 3 faction symbols and the rocket and missile assets images. Overall, between the cleaning up the UV`s, and setting the textures took me 6-8 hours at most.

Week 6

This includes the concept model of the missile, the rocket with test textures, and the uv mapping on the rocket. Overall, with sketching and then modeling the missile and  UV mapping the rocket, around 4-5 hours.

Week 5

This includes a model of a rocket and some conpets of missiles. Overall, combined with the 20 some odd hi res images of space, took me around an hour to do.

Week 4

                For this week, I spent an hour to an hour and half making 5 weapon designs for machine gun turrets, heavy turrets, laser turrets and missile/rocket launchers. Instead of working towards a stage 1 weapon with what the stage 2 looked like, I focused more on stage 1 designs, since upgrades mostly add parts to the current weapon, or adding extra barrels.

Week 3

                During this week, I spend around an hour and half working on 2 ship designs and several weapon designs for medium ship classed owned by the Horizon corporation.. Goal was to make them look armed and have ad signs the corporation is paid to send around. The first ship I was thinking somewhat of a-wing, generally 2 big and powerful engines and powerful forward mounted weapons and could handle itself well even against capital ships.  The second ship, I used a long frame, somewhat popular with cargo ships similar to this, and armed it to have bigger ad signs and give nasty broadsides. The weapons designed were turrets, heavy turrets and missile/rocket launchers and possible upgrades.

Week 2

                For this week, I spent around 3 hours working up workable ship designs for the 4 ships and 2 level layouts. They were small, medium, capital, and small. The first being a fighter design to look fast and with a drill weapon to puncture enemy ship halls. The second was better armed, with drills on the bottom and the engines were designed to give the ship 360 control. The third, being capital class was heavily armed, designed to ram enemy ships and given fighter bays. The fourth was made to be much more well armed and sleek looking to look advanced, as if it was a police/corporation owned patrol ship. The level layouts, since I was confused about it, showed gravity devices containing asteroids within a box or sphere area.