Wednesday

Made some particles and associated particle effects as visual filler.

And a fair few (78) bump maps which made me work out how to record photoshop actions.

And an absurd gibbing particle made of as many photoshop shapes I could find.

Another particle effect, this time animated with cutting scissors, this is going to be used to signify an Area of Effect created by an enemy.

A proper gibbing particle effect after my desired effect with the miscellany did not work as intended.

Tuesday Afternoon II

In-progress shot of the Goldwood. Most of the assets here have been assembled and textured by myself. Working on this has led to me gaining competence in the Unity Tree Creator.

Adding to the mystical nature of the world, I added a particle effect that encompasses the entirety of the playable area.

Tuesday Afternoon

Colour and Bump maps for a ground texture, twigs, leaf litter and leaves.

Learnt the basics of rigging and set up the player character for animating. 

Goldwood Textures

Three maps used in the Goldwood. Diffuse,normals and Gloss map.

Wednesday 18th March

Mixed bag of work today. Mostly spent finishing block texturing and UV'ing Druggus Flybane, then onto a moving cloud system for the flying arena.

Finally a minor bit of work on my Worldbuilding project. Mirrored the cab half and bridged between them to start work on the cabin.

Games Mechanic - Druggus Flybane.

Finally finished UV'ing this character for the second time. Five sheets in total, that number being discussed with other members of my group.

Wednesday Morning

Reasonably productive morning, created a falling leaves particle system, finished texturing the airship, and did some more work on the leaf textures.

Druggus Flybane

Plugging away at UV'ing this bugger. Nearing the end, all that's left is the torso and arms. Things are starting to come together.

Games Mechanic Environments.

Texturing two in game environments. The Red Flughaus (top) and the Hub (bottom)
Makes heavy use of tiling textures. As working on the Unity build has seemingly been stripped from me, there are no suitable in engine screenshots available to me.

Druggus

Preliminary texturing of the Druggus Enemy. Will need to create some more detail pieces and place in and around the model.

Dummy Model

modeled and UV'd this training dummy model.

Games Mechanic - Asset creation.

 Today was spent unwrapping and texturing this wooden anvil model. Will be a small item used on the large version of the hub map. Used as a selectable model for the Titan Forge, an available arena.

Main draw for this asset is that all the textures are hand painted.

Games Mechanic Enemy Spawning.

#pragma strict

//initial copy taken from Unity Learning resources @ 'http://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/projects/survival-shooter/more-enemies'

var enemy : GameObject;                // The enemy prefab to be spawned.
var spawnTime : float = 1f;            // How long between each spawn.
var spawnPoints : Transform[];         // An array of the spawn points this enemy can spawn from.

public var minnumber : int = 1;
public var maxnumber : int = 10; 
public var enemynumber : int = 0;
var enemycount : int = 0;


function Start ()
{
    // Call the Spawn function after a delay of the spawnTime and then continue to call after the same amount of time.
    InvokeRepeating ("EnemySpawn", spawnTime, spawnTime);
    enemynumber = (Random.Range (minnumber, maxnumber));
    
}


function EnemySpawn ()
{

// Find a random index between zero and one less than the number of spawn points.
   var spawnPointIndex  = (Random.Range (0, spawnPoints.Length));
if (enemycount < enemynumber)
{
enemycount++;
       // Create an instance of the enemy prefab at the randomly selected spawn point's position and rotation.
    Instantiate (enemy, spawnPoints[spawnPointIndex].position, spawnPoints[spawnPointIndex].rotation);
    }
}

Work today was primarily on this, a script to handle spawning enemies in the arenas. Can be expanded upon later as needs be. But as is of right now it works by picking a number at random between 1-10, and in x number of seconds spawns that number of enemies at one of four positions chosen at random.

Games Mechanic, Weapon Swapping

#pragma strict

public var Sword :GameObject;
public var normal : GameObject;
public var Advnce : GameObject;

var Click : boolean;
var Swing : boolean;

function Start()
{
animation.Play("Idle");
Swing = false;
Click = false;
Sword.tag = "None";
}

function Update() 
{
if(Input.GetMouseButtonDown(0)&&Swing == false)
{
SwordSwing();
}

if(Input.GetMouseButtonDown (1)&&Click == false &&!animation.IsPlaying("Stab"))
{
Debug.Log ("Pressed RMB");
Weaponswap();
}

}

function SwordSwing()
{
Swing = true;
Sword.tag ="Weapon";
animation.Play("Stab", PlayMode.StopAll);
yield WaitForSeconds (1);
Sword.tag = "None";
Swing = false;
}

function Weaponswap()
{
Click = true;

Advnce.renderer.enabled = !Advnce.renderer.enabled;
normal.renderer.enabled = !normal.renderer.enabled;
Click = false;
}

Big addition to the weapon swinging script, additions are in blue, What these additions do is swap the visuals of the weapon the player is holding on a right click. Whilst purely a visual effect as is, later iterations will add in more functionality like higher damaging weaponry.

Also I made this sword and rack.

Just a piece of window dressing right now, but I intend to incorporate this as a form of inventory, where weapons will be placed in the hub scene when not in use.

Games Mechanic concepts

One of the enemy types on the list of possible enemies was named Box O' Rats. As this seems somewhat simple and something that is literally just a box of rats seems somewhat generic, I took it as a personal side project to work on when I was taking a break from the numbingness of scripting. As I wanted to err away from a crate full of rats, I designed this, which whilst is a crate of rats, wold work somewhat different in gameplay, instead moving around the player rapidly like a chariot. This is added to by the inclusion of a rat in stylised greek hoplite armour.

After the enemy types were signed off, I needed another side project to work on outside of scripting. As such I took on the role of making as many weapon and armorsets as possible. Whilst it's a long time away from being needed, a large library of possible concepts when the time comes will be useful. In this current Work In Progress, I am attempting to create one basic weapon and two spin offs using the basic weapon shape and style.

Games Mechanic - State of the Game address.

Since the last scripting update, a few things have been updated. The main body of text is below, hidden using a readmore for the sake of blog readability.

Navmeshes

public var Target : Transform;


GetComponent(NavMeshAgent).destination = Target.position;

Appending these two lines to the enemy script allows it to navigate the world. After baking a navmesh, the dummy object will move towards the player. This created an issue where the dummy cube would ignore colliders and sit in the same spot as the player. To solve this issue I applied a NavMesh Obstacle to the player.

As the dummy cube can now not reach the player's space it will stop just short, which is still close enough for the player to interact (read: Stab) with it. To reduce any stress on the machine later on, the portion of the script dealing with enemy death now contains the line

  GetComponent(NavMeshAgent) .enabled = false;

This means that the dummy cube will no longer attempt to path towards the player from under the game plane.

games mechanic notes - Scripting

#pragma strict

public var Sword : GameObject;
public var enemyhealth : int = 10;

function OnTriggerEnter (Sword : Collider)
{
if (Sword.tag == "Weapon")
{
enemyhealth --;
Sword.tag = "None";
}
}

function Update () 
{
if (enemyhealth == 0)
{
transform.position.y = -100;
}
}

This script deals with the interaction between the player and the enemy.

#pragma strict

public var Swing : boolean;
public var Sword :GameObject;

function Start()
{
Swing = false;
Sword.tag = "None";
}

function Update() 
{
if(Input.GetMouseButtonDown(0)&&Swing == false)
{
SwordSwing();
}
}

function SwordSwing()
{
Swing = true;
Sword.tag ="Weapon";
animation.Play("Stab", PlayMode.StopAll);
yield WaitForSeconds (5.5);
Sword.tag = "None";
Swing = false;
}

It works closely in tandem with this script, which deals with sword swings and activating the players weapon.

Games Mechanic II - Scripting

Forwards and backwards kinda day today. Made this test character controller, the sword has an animation on it so it's arguably fancier than the normal character controller.

I then attempted to rough together a combat script, but failed to get the needed interaction between the player and a rough enemy cube.

Games Mechanic - Vertical Slice

Mighty Ducks - Arena

For the second, more open brief my group has decided to produce a game that is similar to a gladiatorial arena, played from the third person. This led to me thinking about a third person character controller on the Unity Asset Store, the Third Person MMO Controller. After installing the package and testing it out in the demo scene I feel confident in what this asset offers.

With the game concept also needing enemies, pathing will be important. Over Christmas I read up on Unity's NavMesh system, and using the demo scene I baked a Navmesh using the default settings and set up a capsule to follow the player. Whilst a little janky and maybe too smooth and mechanical, it shows promise and means we will not have to use a third party addon.