About Bud the Spud

"Bud the Spud" is a potato and unlike other potatos Bud is perfectly happy to remain a potato, he has no intention of becomming "Mashed Potato, French Fries, potato Chips" or anything else that takes away from his being just a plain ordinary potato.

one day Bud discovers that the "Rotten Potato" is selling off his fellow potato people to the fast food conglomorates in a mass genocide of his own people. Now this is enough to piss off any self respecting potato. And so begins Bud's adventure to find and stop the "Rotten Potato" from this dastardy most dispicable act of genocide. Bud will have no easy task as he will have many obstacles along the way, deadly toxic mud bogs to cross, attacking Worms, Potato Beetles, rogue toy Robots, food processing machines, Hibachi BB Q's and so much more.

Thus begins the concept for my indie game development project "Bud the Spud"

Monday, June 4, 2012

Kit Cat Klock 3D Model




Kit Cat Clock made for the the kitchen level of my game. I have most of the level already made by scavanging parts from my Farmer Bob's house from my Alien Zombies game (Still in dervelopment). The Kit Cat Clock is just a decoration for the kitchen wall but I might try and look into a way to actually make the clock tell the correct time, I'm sure it can be done but I'll bet it's complicated as hell to do... just what I need so I may NOT but I have to admit it would be cool that should the player take notice of the time and say after ten minuts of game play sudenly notice that the clocks hands have actually relected that passage of time! That would indeed be a nice touch eh?

Monday, May 28, 2012

Level 03 Sandbox Exit

I finally got around to creating a level exit scenario for the Sandbox level. It took me a little while to come up with something I was happy with that fit into the theme of the other items in the sandbox. What I eventually came up with was a mound with a door fashioned out of Popsicle sticks and mouse trap parts. The mound has a hole with a black collider inside of it so that when Bud has both keys the door will open and he will be able to enter into the black collider which will load up the Tree house level, right now I just have it loading up the "Thanks for Playing Screen" just for simplicity sake for now. But yeah that's my exit for level 03 and the Tree house level you are more than likely already very familiar with if you've been keeping up with my posts ;)

Saturday, May 26, 2012

Sand Box Level Updates

I've made a lot of changes and additions to the Sand Box level this week. I played around with the Blob Shadow projectors for the Potato Beetles so now they project the blob shadow offset in accordance to the sun's position in the sky.

I added a terrain to the outside of the Sand Box, it's never really meant to be seen, it's more there as a place to put the trees which I figured made a nice touch the the scenic background detail to this level. They cast nice shadows onto the sand terrain inside of the Sand Box and on the accompanying toys inside of the Sand Box.

I'm still working on tweaking the Sand Box shooting robot's fire control a little, it's taking a bit of testing it out trial and error to see what works best. Sometimes if you just keep Bud the Spud moving and zigzag a lot you can usually get by the wildly shooting robot but sometimes he gets a lucky shot in and it's curtains for Bud. I'm trying to get it so it's that good balance between not being too easy but not too difficult.

I'm thinking about adding some more scenic details outside of the Sand Box like perhaps a row of those little garden fences from level 02 perhaps in the form of rendered images on 2d planes to save on the poly count. I'll try it out perhaps tomorrow and see if it looks good for the scene.
I'm very pleased with how this level is shaping up with the new shadows cast into the Sand Box by the trees outside of the Sand Box. I find it breaks up the look of the sand terrain very nicely and makes for a more vibrant environment.
I need to do something with these toy wind up robots that patrol the mote bridge, I need to find some way to make their patrol pattern a little more complex just so they are more of a challenge for Bud to avoid while attempting to cross the bridge. I'm wondering if perhaps I can place Auto Way points onto different layers and have them ignore way points that are on another layer, I've never tried that before so I'm not sure but if I can do it that way then it may be possible for me to perhaps make a more complex patrol pattern for the toy wind up robots to follow. Something else I'll try and experiment with tomorrow as well perhaps.



Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Sand Box Robot Fire Control

I was able to get the robot working pretty close to the way I originally wanted in that he shoots fire balls in a circular pattern, the only thing is, is that he deliberately targets my player which I did not want I wanted just a random shooting of fire balls in an off set circular pattern. But this does make getting across that mote bridge a lot more difficult which is good in many ways as it should NOT be easy! So I may leave him like this with perhaps a little more tweaking on his fire rate. Right now it's pretty good and gives Bud the Spud a good deal to worry about if he gets close to that bridge entry way. One hit and it's "Mashed" Bud the Spud!

I also added in some Potato Beetles into the Sand Box and placed a key pick up inside of the toy rubber Shark and another key on top of the Sand Castle tower. I placed a health pick up way above the toy Rubber Duck so Bud will have to do a double flip jump in order to get it and I placed an extra life heart on top of the Toy Wooden blocks. Over all I'm pretty happy with the way this level is shaping up. I still need to make the entry and exit scenario but it's getting pretty close to being finished.

I want to add the toy Chattering Teeth character but I'm having difficulty with the way the character works and I'm pretty sure it has to do with my Max 8 exporting my FBX files out as "Z" up instead of "Y" up, the exporter says it's exporting as "Y" up but when I get it into Unity 3D it shows up as "Z" up?? Very frustrating I can tell you because I'm sure this is the reason it's making my code not work as it should. It seems that if bud gets attacked with his back facing the enemy then he takes damage but if he is facing the enemy then those toy teeth could chomp away all day and do no damage??? I have NO idea why this is the case but it's putting a block on my progress here. I tried re installing Max 8 today to see if maybe that would fix the problem... it didn't, so I'll keep at trying to figure out what that Frack the problem is while I work on getting some of the other stuff done I need doing.

Monday, May 21, 2012

Chattering Toy Teeth Character

I've been putting the final touches on the code for the "Chattering Toy Teeth" character. It's almost done, just fine tuning it to match up with sounds and working out the characters death setup for when Bud the Spud jumps on him. I'm making him similar to the Potato Beetles in that it will take Bud two jumps to defeat this enemy. Because he has a top and lower jaw section I'm not sure how that will workout but I'm sure I'll figure it out.

I've been having some export issues with Max 8 lately, for some reason when I export out as FBX with the Y set to Up when it shows up inside of unity it's still Z up?? Very strange. So I've had to use my fix that I ended up using for my Alien Zombies a while back where I had to place my character inside of an empty game object and reference the animation to the model inside of that object. I have no idea why Max 8 suddenly decided to muck up my exports when they were working fine before?? 

low Poly Chattering Teeth Character Finalization

Finished up the low Poly Chattering Teeth texture mapping & made the very simple animation for him. Not really sure if he needs an idle animation or not or what would even be good for an idle animation for that matter but later on today I'll export him into Unity 3D and get him all set up to attack Bud the Spud. ;)

He has a partially detailed interior in that there is a box for the motor, and the gear plate that makes the upper jaw move. I did not place in the little cog or cam, I figured it will most likely never be seen in the game engine so why bother creating the extra poly. I will make a high poly version available and for that one I will place in the little cam or cog. I'll most likely need to make a better texture map for the high poly version as well.