{"author_name":"mtthwcmpbll","cat":"LD #25","comments":[],"epoch":1355794920,"likes":0,"metadata":{"p_key":"47547","p_author":"mtthwcmpbll","p_authorkey":"3178","p_urlkey":"83212","p_title":"Status with the Jam Deadline Passed","p_cat":"LD #25","p_event":"LD25","p_time":"1355794920","p_likes":"0","p_comments":"0","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"3178","us_name":"mtthwcmpbll","us_username":"mtthwcmpbll","event_start":"1355443200","event_key":"14","event_name":"LD25"},"text":"

Man, yesterday and today were pretty much a lost cause. \u00a0I got sick on Saturday with a head cold of ever-increasing intensity, so my productivity for yesterday and this evening pretty much dropped to zero despite spending a bunch of time staring at the project thinking I was working.<\/p>\n

With all of my assets created on Saturday, I planned on spending all day Sunday on gameplay mechanics and programming, things I figured I was much better prepared to jump into. \u00a0With such a good day of progress on the first day, I really thought my game idea was within reaching distance for the Jam. \u00a0It’s sort of a bummer to have crashed halfway through when I was having so much fun with it, but in the end I got what I wanted most out of this round – a better understanding of how to model something in Blender and how to put together a basic music loop without spending a hundred years one either. \u00a0I’ve got some questions to look further into on these, and there’s plenty of things I didn’t have time to do (like texture and rig any animation). \u00a0Overall, though, I feel much more confortable with these tools. \u00a0It’s amazing what a dedicated day of sitting down and playing with them will do.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>

An in-game screenshot showing an active character in the movement phase, with movement radius visualized.<\/p><\/div>\n

I did get some basics implemented, but in the end I don’t think it’s enough to consider an actual gameplay loop so I couldn’t submit it to the jam in good\u00a0conscience. \u00a0So what worked and what didn’t?<\/p>\n

What Worked<\/strong><\/p>\n

Assets first<\/em> – Working on the models and music first let gave me a few early endorphin bumps seeing my progress on stuff I don’t normally even get to. \u00a0It was a lot of fun seeing these very “physical” things come together instead of seeing a bunch of grey boxes moving around.<\/p>\n

Pathfinding in Unity<\/em> – Once I got a chance to play with it and look through the documentation, the API is pretty simple and getting it up and running was super straightforward. \u00a0This is a really nice feature for rapid prototyping any kind of indirect movement (either AI controlled or, in my case, executed by moving a unit from one spot to another).<\/p>\n

What Didn’t<\/strong><\/p>\n

Visualizing the movement radius<\/em> – I really wanted this to be something similar to XCOM’s movement area, but I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to calculate that region without having a literal movement grid for characters to move around on. \u00a0If I had a discrete space like that, I could have just brute-forced the problem and checked each cell. \u00a0I started this whole concept with the goal of\u00a0not<\/em> having a discrete space, though. \u00a0I tried things with the built-in pathfinding in Unity and raycasting out potential paths from the character, but eventually I pretty much punted to move on to other things and just drew a circle around the character using the excellent Vectrosity library<\/a>. \u00a0I’d like to revisit this after the jam to figure out how to do<\/p>\n

Unity projectors for user interface stuff<\/em> – I honestly didn’t expect this to be a big deal going in. \u00a0I wanted to project a contextual pattern on the ground to signify selected units and potential actions. \u00a0I remembered working with a projector way back when I had run through some Unity tutorials to do things like slap a blob shadow on the ground under a character. \u00a0Hey, thats exactly what I want to do here! \u00a0After ages of playing around with texture import settings and possible shader combinations, I realized that the projected texture (even at all white) was way too dim, that it was taking light from the scene and there wasn’t a shader that would ignore this and just show the pattern the way I drew it. \u00a0I haven’t had a chance to look into writing custom shaders (maybe for the next jam), so the projectors were pretty much a dead end. \u00a0I ended up slapping the texture on a Unity plane and moving it around the scene. \u00a0Crude, but it worked. \u00a0Unfortunately, it doesn’t conform to the terrain and has other issues.<\/p>\n

I’ll be working on this idea for a while even with the jam over with. \u00a0I think it has some potential, and I’d really like to implement some of the artistic and thematic elements I didn’t get to. \u00a0Here’s one last look at the scene:<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

A birds-eye view of the scene at the close of the jam.<\/p><\/div>\n \n

Tags: gamejams<\/a>, ld25<\/a><\/p>","time":"December 17th, 2012 8:42 pm","title":"Status with the Jam Deadline Passed"}