Ever Expanding Dungeon

So I’ve been a little silent today but I’ve been working on it.  So I’ve got a name.  Story.  I also changed the color characters.  Added a HUD.  I think it’s actually fun.  I added a new mode.  Puzzle and Infinite.

So much stuff.  I fixed all the bugs I know about.  Controller works.  I’m happy with it.  Some things I would like to do not sure if I’m going to get there.

• Animation
• Sound Effects
• Rotating characters

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Shitty Art

Oh man this art is terrible.  No animations either at the moment.  But something that gives the game some life to it.

Complete Game

So I added puzzle pieces.  Along with 3 riddles that let the user know where the puzzle pieces are.  When you collect all 3 you get a winning screen. WOOO.  Losing and winning creates a complete game!

This took me forever because there is some weird behavior in unity where a prefab cannot instantiate another version of itself without using itself as a reference.  So what happens is that the object instead of being (clone) ends up being (clone)(clone) the more you use that prefab.  The only I found around it is to use a 2nd class to instantiate it.

So now to they gym for a little bit next steps when I get back.

• ART ART ART ART
• Fix bug where Levels get cloned on top of each other.  Stupid ray tracing is being a dick.  Maybe I’ll just keep what levels have been instatiated and prevent new ones in those positions.  This will work.
• I added hints to the riddles.  I need to add a button to show them in the pause menu.
• Find the fun.  I want to add guys and see how that changes the game.  Right now its pretty boring.  I’m want to full with how fast you and enemies go based on how big the level is.  This should add some fun.

Alright till next time.

Auto Zoom out

So I’ve got an algorithm that zooms out the level.  Autogenerating new levels. Enemies with a sword to hit them with. One more thing that is a basic requirement for the game I need are puzzle elements.  I want to give a riddle that will tell you where a clue is and once that level is generated you can pick up a new clue.

Now saying that there are a ton of bugs.

• Autozoom out is rather ambitious.  It zooms out rather far and even if the level would be on the screen it tends to zoom out.  It likes to keep things in the center.
• the auto level generation has a bug.  Sometimes the new zone just isn’t there.  Not really sure what is going on.
• The Negative sword swipe is not in the right spot.  That needs tweaking.

Once I fix these bugs and add a puzzle I need a HUD.  This will have the number of clues obtained and your health.

Then I will work on art.

Enemy and Sword Attacks

Got some naive enemies working.  They just go right after the person.  Unfortunately my command pattern didn’t work due to trying to move toward the person.  I feel like there is a way but it was just way easier to use Vector3.MoveTowards().

Some problems so far.

• Enemy not killed from sword for some reason.  Writing this I think the enemy needs a rigidbody to collide but I’m not quite sure.
• When the enemy collides with the human for some reason the human starts rotating and then the camera also rotates.  This is a very annoying thing.

Only managed to really knock off one thing off my basic checklist.  Too tired to keep working.  See everyone tomorrow.

Character and level creation

So I’ve got character movement and autolevel generation working.  I think my code this time around is actually rather good thanks to this book Game Programming Patterns.  I’m about 70% of my way through.  Most I already knew but it is nice to get some refreshers and quantify things.  I want to have more in depth posts about these patterns in unity.  Once I get some time.

The Command pattern is super awesome and I spent some time implement for movement of my person.  So hopefully Enemies will be super easy to make.  Maybe after this weekend I can implement replay.  That would be awesome.  One of those things I’ve always wanted to do.

So now the next steps are:

• Move camera back to see whole game
  • This is going to be some rather difficult math maybe.  It is going to require some thought and probably some data around that is the size of the world so far.
• Enemies
• Different Levels
  • With Enemies
• Puzzles

I may just tackle the enemy thing here first.  Not sure.  Will force me to have an end condition so that will be good.  I also need a win condition maybe.

Ludum 31

Super excited.  I came up with a couple ideas and I think I’ve landed on one.

So my first idea was to have a metroidvania game where the map view would be the whole game.  So you would zoom in and the game would be very pixelated while you traversed the world.  The problem I have with this is it isn’t unique.  It doesn’t really use the theme in a very good way.

Another idea in the same vain was to have more of a mystery/detective game with the same map as the overworld.  This would allow you to travel between places and try and put clues based on the map.  This has the same problems as the last idea.

An Idea in different vain was to have a puzzle game where it would slowly reveal an overworld that would end up on one screen.  So you would beat a level and it would show up in the overworld and eventually all the levels would spell something out or solve a puzzle.  Again this had the same problem as my previous ideas.

In my game you will play as an adventuring detective.  You will play in a zelda esque view and dungeon where you travel from screen to screen however whenever you go to a new screen the world gets smaller because all the screen ends up staying on your screen.  Can you solve the mystery before you are too small?  

I like this idea because it uses the theme to provide the constraint of the game.  Now some challenges with this idea.

• Is this going to be fun?  Having yourself get smaller and losing focus on yourself is not necessarily fun.  The game will have to be tweaked a lot. Maybe fast speed so the game is quick.  You get stronger the smaller you are.
• Is this more of an adventure or detective game?  This will have to be tweaked.  Its hard to tell at the moment what is going to be fun.  I will probably try a mix of both and see which one turns out to be more fun.
• Can I get this done in 48 hours?  Isn’t this always the challenge with these things.  Sound and art are always tough for me to get in these things.

So the next things that need to be done
Moving person
Level
Generate new Levels

That shouldn’t take too long but you never know.  Got my caffeine and the tunes pumping so with any luck you will hear from me soon.