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?

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 ;)

Bud The Spud Sandbox WIP

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.



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.

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.

Chattering Toy Teeth Character

Bud the Spud is going to have a new toy enemy to deal with in the Sand Box Level these comical looking Toy Chattering Teeth that will chase after and snap at Bud the Spud.

Right now just a WIP but soon to be finished. I'm thinking that this will be a toy he will be able to destroy by jumping on top of. Not sure what manor of destruction I should give the toy teeth for when Bud jumps on them though??

Sand Box Imported into Unity 3D

OK now that the modeling of the Sand Box level is completed in Max 8 I have got it imported into Unity 3D and all of the materials applied to each part. Unity does a lot of this automatically for most imported models but you usually have to tell it which materials are specular with bump and which ones are just bump diffuse, transparent etcetera. Here you can see a screen capture of Bud the Spud standing on the far side of the mote bridge overlooking the vast Sand Box level. I think I need to adjust my suns position in the sky as my shadows are bit too long for my liking.

Here you can see a shot of Bud standing close the the bridge that crosses the more to the other side where the main part of the Sand Castle is located. Just behind him and to the left a little you can see the hole in the ground that I have set for where the Toy Revolving Robot Torso will go once I have the code all worked out for when Bud gets close the robot's chest doors will open and he'll shoot fireballs in an uneven circular plane strafing the ground at the entry way. That's if I can figure out the code to do that, it's kinda complicated and I'm not very good with code to begin with, always takes me much longer just to get that aspect of my game up and running properly.

Here we can see Bud standing by the large plastic beach pale and rusty metal shovel. I've added the foot particle effects for when he is walking through the sand and also for the sand inside of the bucket. I still have to add particle and sound effects for the other surfaces that he can walk on in this game level, mostly woods, plastic, rubber, and the metal shovel that although he can't really walk on it his feet might touch the surface if he jumps at it right so I'll be sure to add a sound effect for that just for the "What if factor."

Here we can see Bud standing by the Toy Rubber Duck. Another Sand Box decoration just for scenic detail although I will add a sound effect for the Duck to "Squeak" or "Quack" when Bud jumps on him. In fact I'm thinking that what I might also do is place a Health Pick up way above the Rubber Duck so that Bud will have to use the Duck like a spring board to be able to jump high enough to get the healthy green potato plant leaf health pick up. I think all I have to do for that is tag the Duck accordingly and he'll bounce higher up when he lands on the Duck.

Here we can see Bud standing by one of the Toy Boats in the Sand Box. There are two toy Boats, this one you see here and another red plastic Tug Boat toy. Again these are more for decoration but it is possible that later on I may find a more significant use for them just to make them a bit more interactive but for now they are just for scenic decoration more than anything. This one does have a little cabin that Bud can go inside of so it may serve very well as a place to hide a pick up item of some type.

Here we can see Bud standing close to the Toy Wooden blocks area of the Sand Box. You can see the plastic Beach Bucket and Metal Shovel way in the background near by. Again more for scenic detail more than anything but it will be a good place to explore and try and out run or hide from "Hunter potato Beetles."

Here we can see Bud by the other plastic Tug Boat I mentioned earlier. Again more thrown in as scenic details and something to explore because you never know what items are going to have a more than just scenic detail orientated purpose.

Ah now we come to one of my most favorite of the Sand Box toys next to the revolving Shooting Toy Robot torso, the Rubber Shark! Doesn't he look menacing? I was going to and may still animate the shark's jaws so they open and close at certain times second intervals but what I'm going to do for now is place a key inside of the Shark fro Bud to find and just make it so as the teeth are dangerous. That way if Bud runs into or lands on the Shark's teeth he'll take a good deal of damage. I test jumped into the Shark's mouth several time to test the feasibility of that scenario and it works quite well, we'll see once I've added the danger colliders to the teeth to see if that still holds true though. In any event it'll make it a lot more difficult to get that much needed key ;)

Once all of this is done I'll need to add in the enemy characters and work out an exit door scenario. Entry will be simple though an overhead pipe leading into the Sand Box, a bit odd I know.

Sand Box Shark

I have finished all the details for the Sand Box with the final addition of the Toy Rubber Shark you can see here. I was going to animate the jaws of the shark to open and close at intervals of a few seconds or so but I thought maybe what I might do just for simplicity is to just make the teeth hurt Bud the Spud if he lands on them. Maybe I might decide to animate the shark latter on I don't know. but for now I'm anxious to get the Sand Box level built so I can export it into Unity 3D and start adding the material textures and code the surface effects for particle foot dust and sound as my character walks across the sand box terrain and other objects. I made a simple bridge that is just a slab of plastic that has a red brick texture on it for now simply because I could not immediately think of anything special to make for a bridge to cross the mote to the sand castle. If I think of something better later on down the road I'll replace it with whatever i create, but for now this plastic slab will serve a suitable albeit temporary solution to my "What to do for a bridge?" conundrum ;)

Detailing the Sand Box Continued

In continuing with adding details to the Sand Box I've added another toy boat, this time a cute little plastic tug boat. I was going to place it over along side the other toy boat but thought maybe it might be best to spread stuff out a little as I've lots of space in the Sand Box to work with. This one is more for decoration as it's not really useful for hiding stuff inside for Bud to collect. But it adds something to explore.

I started work on creating a toy rubber Shark for the Sand Box that will serve a good purpose of hiding things inside as it's hollow and will be quite large that Bud will be able to go inside of it.

You can see a work in progress of the toy rubber Shark here. I've still got some geometry to fix up a bit and then I'll have to UVW texture map it. It not animated although I did tinker with the idea of having the jaws snap open and closed so that Bud would have to time going inside of the shark just right, I may still do that as it's kind of a cool idea.??

Once the Shark is done I need to come up with something to use as a bridge to cross over the mote to the Sand Castle. I thought of making it out of Popsicle sticks but I have enough of those as fences along the mote edge so I want something different to use as a bridge, I'm not sure what at the moment. Maybe I might make it out of the toy blocks but I'm thinking something else might be a cooler idea, just not sure what yet though, Eh! Something will spring to mind I'm sure :)

Toy Boat Added to Sand Box

Even with taking a bit of a break today and going out for a nice long bike ride I still managed to somehow find the time to create this simple toy plastic boat I added to the Sand Box level of my game. I like it but i keep thinking my sand box needs something bigger in it, maybe a bigger boat that I could place this one in the foreground of and have a big plastic ocean liner behind it? I dunno, maybe that might be a bit much?? I'm liking the idea of adding a toy rubber shark though. I'll see if I feel like doing that tomorrow ;) 

Sand Box Level Details

While I'm still struggling a little to work out the code for my revolving shooting robot for the Sand Box level I figured I'd take a break from that frustration and keep working on adding detail to the Sand Box. I've added toy wooden blocks, a plastic bucket with sand in it. A good place to perhaps hide a key maybe. I've added a rusty yellow painted beach shovel.

I got some more mileage out of those numbered and lettered toy wooden blocks by adding a few more in with the new toy wooden blocks. I may take a few of these and see if I can arrange them like a small house that I can hide a key inside of also.

The Sand Box covers quite a large area so I have a lot of open space to add all sorts of toys. I might add a little more sand castle structure in the middle of the sand box. I want to make a toy boat of some kind. I was browsing on Google looking for toy boats to see if I could get some idea of what would make a cool sand box toy boat, I found a few images I saved into a folder for reference later on to perhaps create something that will look cool like a beached boat. I'm even thinking about perhaps adding one of those rubber sharks we used to have as kids because they were hollow and I'm thinking that "Bud the Spud" could go inside of the shark which to him would be like a whale. Inside I could either hide a key or place fertilizer pellets inside.

I made a place holder area in the ground for where the Revolving rusty toy robot torso will be placed. As you can see here I have him in the scene rendered in Max 8. The final export will not include him as he will be a prefab in Unity 3D that I will drag into the scene and place him in this location with hopefully by then a working code. Right now I have him performing his animation when Bud gets within range but his fireballs are instantiating inside of his chest area and exploding right away as opposed to flying away from where he shoots from. So I have to look into why it's doing that and try to fix that. I have a few ideas on what the problem might be but it's going to take some more playing around with the code to really figure it out.

I created some Popsicle sticks of varied flavors (used of course) to serve as a little fence along the mote area by the sand castle. Bud can easily jump the fence but why would he as it would be suicide to jump into the mote filled with muddy water.

Here in this scene and the one above you can see some of the Popsicle stick fence along the mote edge behind the toy rubber duck and some being used as fencing by the bridge entry area by where the toy revolving robot is placed.

I can't wait to get this model all done with all the cool stuff and more I've mentioned above and placed into Unity 3D as this is going to be such a fun level to work with with a few worms, potato beetles and one or two of those blue wind up sparking robots wandering around.

Sand Box Robot Set Up and Testing

I was hoping to have something a little more constructive accomplished between yesterday and today, but I was having some issues trying to code my robot to work properly. You can see here in my testing area, which is a simple scene in which I test stuff out before making it into a prefab to place into game scenes later on. You may recall me mentioning that I should have been able to modify the machine gun sentry script to work for my robot. Well yes and no. Seems I can get it to partially work the way I want. I have his animations all set up as:

• Aware
• Shoot
• Deactivate

Aware: is supposed to play a short animation where the robots moves and shifts a little buried in the sand and his chest doors pop open to reveal his guns as bud the Spud gets within a certain range.

Shoot: is supposed to then play the animation in which the robot torso spins 360 degrees 1 turn but is a looped animation.

Deactivate: Is supposed to play an animation where the chest doors close as the robot guns retract back inside of his chest area.

Sounds simple enough right? Until you get to start trying to code it that is, still working on it.
The other issue that might kill this great idea with the robot, is that he might be too high poly for this type of attack scenario. In making him in Max 8 I was trying very hard to keep him as low to medium poly as I could without sacrificing too much detail in the robot. But when he animates in Unity 3d's editor the whole scene slows to a crawl, so I might in the long run just have him as a nice sand box decoration :( (sadness) because I was really liking the idea of placing him right by the bridge crossing the sand castle mote. I suppose I can rework him in Max 8 and try and bring his poly count down a lot more. That is indeed if that is the issue as it could be the machine gun script rotating him as well as his rotation animation playing at the same time.

I tried making my own script similar to the "Jack in a Box" script but got really weird results like the animations would play making the robot move way below his desired location, so I've no idea what was going on there as it works for the "Jack in a Box." ??

Sand Box Level Toy Robot

I made a toy robot for the sand box level of my game. He's a broken down rusty toy robot that will give Bud the Spud some trouble if he gets within range. He has no legs and bud will find him buried in the sand up to his waist guarding the entry way to the bridge that will cross the mote to the sand castle on the other side. This toy robot will be a little lopsided so when his chest doors pop open and his cannons pop out and start shooting his torso will spin and he'll shoot deadly fireballs all over the place in a lopsided 360 degree circle. He has no aim being just a toy robot but even still if Bud should get hit by a fire ball it's curtains for Bud the Spud. Similar to the blue wind up robots what they lack in intelligence they make up for in deadliness.

I have him all rigged for animation so tomorrow that will be my next task, animate his attack sequence and then export him into Unity 3D for the fun code stuff. My thought is that he should work pretty much the same way that the machine gun turrets work in the FPS tutorial. He'll have an attack range although he will not rotate and deliberately shoot towards the player, he'll just start shooting while spinning around in circles. 

Sand Box Level 03 WIP

I have been working all weekend on the new level 03 which as you may recall from my last post that this will become level 03 and what I was working on as level 03 the "Tree House" will in fact become level 04 ;) Anyways here is a sneak peek at the sand box level in progress being constructed in Max 8. The sand texture may change once I get the final finished version into Unity 3D, right now this is a quick and dirty texture I whipped up in Max 8 just so I can better see how the overall effect will be. If you look closely you can see that I have already begun adding objects for Bud the Spud to explore in the Sand Box. You can see a toy rubber ducky that I was working on over the weekend.

Here you can see a better view of the toy rubber ducky rendered in Max 8. I created a dirty texture for it so it looks well used. In the top image you can see a toy plastic beach bucket which I figure will be a great place to hide some Fertilizer Pellets for Bud to collect. The sand castle in the corner will serve as the exit to the level once Bud has found the two keys needed to unlock the door to the Tree House level. There is lots more I need to add like some toy wooden blocks, perhaps a plastic shovel, a bridge of some kind to cross the mote and a few other sand box type toys that would be typical of a scenario like this. It's going to be a fun level to create, and best of all I'll have another cool level to use those toy wind up robots in.

Changing the Level Order

Make Room for Sand Box

Last night at about 3 AM I had a idea that woke me up about my game levels. Right now I have the Underground level & training area where "Bud the Spud" starts out and then level 02 which is the back yard and then we go to level 03 which is the muddy bog area where the Tree House is and exit pipe to the Grain Elevator level, but what I need is a Kids Sand Box level that can be right after the back yard area because the kind of go together, then have the Tree House level after that, so what I've been working on as level 03 will become Level 04 and the Sand Box Level will be level 03. I hope that made sense? In level 04 I can introduce the "Hunter Potato Beetles" I had mentioned in last night's post. 

The Sand box level can have all sorts of cool stuff like toys, a sand castle, I can do some more with my "Toy Wind Up Robots." Do a very simple terrain around the Sand Box just as a lead in and out of that area, keep it very simple with only a few obstacles. I've got so many cool ideas for toys and challenges in the Sand Box. I can't wait to get started on it. But seeing how Level 04 (formerly level 03) is nearly done I'm going to finish that up first.

Level 03 Additions and Detailing

I did a little more work on the Level 03 exit pipe by adding a nice particle effect for the water splashing the surface of the mud bog as it comes out of the pipe. I also made some new rocks just to add a bit more variety in the amount of different rocks that are scattered about the level terrain.

I've also added a lot more detail to the terrain by adding more of the medium poly blades of grass, some more bushes, new rocks, scattered some toadstools around and added a couple more trashed mashed potato boxes to the terrain. I added about 4 or five more Potato Beetles around this previously undeveloped part of the terrain. Now it's really starting to come to life more and have a lot more to explore and look at.

I was thinking about possible making a mini lookout deck on that tree you see in the immediate background as a possible location to place another game pick up item on top of that Bud would need to figure out how to climb up there to get it. I'm not sure if I will do that it's just something rattling around in my head at the moment as a possibility.

I worked out a way for bud the Spud to get over onto that little island you see in the background. I want to place something special over there but I am not sure what yet at the moment. I'm thinking about placing some special "Hunter Potato Beetles" on that island as an early introduction to them as later on there will be more of them. Basically they will be the same as the regular potato beetles only their color will be a little different and they will have a smarter AI in that they will actually hunt down Bud the Spud when he gets within range of them. I should be able to mod my "Alien Zombies" AI scripts to make them suitable for the new "Hunter potato beetles".

Level 03 Exit Pipe

I've worked out the level 03 exit pipe, as you can see it's located in the middle of another dangerous mud bog. "Oh no, how is he supposed to get to them!" Don't worry the scene is not yet complete. I still need to add rocks and stuff in the bog that Bud can use to get to the pipes. I was initially toying with the idea of introducing another non player character, some kind of bug or animal that would swim back and forth across the bog that Bud would have to hitch a ride on. I might still do that if I can think of something suitable. In the meantime I figured I would share a screen capture of how the ending to level 03 is shaping up. I still have to do some terrain tweaking and drop in some Potato Beetles and Worms for Bud to deal with on this little island but outside of that I think level 03 is pretty much done, other stuff I can add if something cool comes to mind later on down the road.

The Wall

I've already started work on the exit area for level 03. Here you can see the stone and wood wall that fences in the Grain Elevator which is the next level for Bud the Spud to deal with. In the center of that mud bog between the walls is where I am going to place an exit pipe that will take bud to the 4th level so long as he has collected the two keys necessary to unlock the door to the pipe.

Right now this little island is pretty sparse and I've not added any Potato Beetles or worms for Bud to deal with here yet either. I have added some trees and some scenic details like rocks and painted the terrain a little to give it more detail. But not much yet. The wall has been a big step forward in getting this level more nearer to completion. I still have some tweaking to do with the toy robots in the Tree House and perhaps some additional stuff for Bud to do on the Lookout deck of the Tree House but all of that is minor detail oriented stuff that can be done later.

Aditional Tweakings

I kept playing around with the placement of the mouse trap along the narrow passageway behind the trap door in the floor of the Tree House to see what would work best. It took me a while to get a placement of things that worked properly. First the robot kept walking too close or in some tweaking over the mouse trap which of course might make some say; "How come the Robot doesn't trip the traps?" and justly so I figured so I moved the trap back a little and shortened the distance between the robot's auto waypoints so that way he takes a shorter trip back and forth and does not run over the trap. The scenario makes more sense to me now.

I also added a large support column just behind the Trap Door so it has something to lean against and also to add another obstruction along that narrow path that the robot patrols back and forth down. You can sort of see it in the first image but I figured I would take a better screen capture so you can see it better. This now works very well in that bud the Spud must now take a little more care in traversing the narrow passageway. he can follow behind the robot and then duck into open spaces along the toy blocks or along the side with the trap door.

There is a new toy space ball in the main part of the Tree House that Bud can use to trip the mouse trap if he likes. It's not really necessary as he can easily jump over the trap, but if he had to make a hasty retreat from the robot it would suck to end up accidentally tripping the mouse trap during such a retreat ;) this space ball toy is smaller in size from the one on the upper lookout deck.

I have added an extra health pick up item just over top of the big space ball toy on the lookout deck, you can see it just to the left of the Sun flare. there are two way Bud can get it, he can either jump on top of the ball and then do a double jump in the air or he can jump up on top of the Apple crates and make a jump for it, while he's up on top of the crates he might as well get the extra life heart as well. You can see inside of the Apple crate there are five Fertilizer Pellet pick ups also and another mouse trap to watch out for.

Sorry for the extra long post. I was going to post yesterday but I was so busy staring at code for the toy robot all day trying to figure out why he is not dishing out damage using his "Hit position," instead he seems to be using his character controller to do damage to Bud but I want it to be if Bud come in contact with those electrical sparks. Clearly more tweaking to do on that. Now you might recall me mentioning that Bud can drop the robot down through the hole by using the toy space ball to force the robot to accidentally walk over the hole in the floor and fall down to his destruction.

1. Sometime during testing I noticed that the robot would only get stuck in the hole so I needed to make an extra "Robot Death Collider" object to tell the robot to play a grinding sort of stuck motor sound and then explode should he just become stuck as opposed to falling far below to the other "Robot Death Collider" object.
2. As I had mentioned I threw it in as a "What if" factor. but it's such a difficult thing to actually try and do I'm thinking that this would be a perfect scenario for the exploded robot to leave behind a special game object when he explodes, maybe perhaps a "Super Fertilizer Pellet" that is of different color and is worth 10 or 20 Pellets!

Mouse Traps Laid

After much frustration trying to figure out why my character was not taking damage from the mouse traps I finally got the problem solved with some help from Unity Answers. In the end I still do not know why he was not taking damage from the mouse traps because apart from not having a character controller the mouse traps are set up the same way as enemy characters, they each have a collider object set as a trigger which tells the character (Bud)'s "Hurt Collider" to take damage to the players health. now you would think that would be simple right? but nope, it was just NOT working for some unknown to me reason. Well it's fixed now by going a slightly different route in the Mouse Traps script.

So now the traps are functioning as they are supposed to and Bud gets a nasty 25 point damage if he trips one of these pesky things. The good thing is, is that if there is a ball near by Bud can push the ball so it rolls over a mouse trap and that will set it off, no more mouse trap problem because once a trap is tripped it's no longer a threat. I've placed two traps in the Tree House, I might place one more but not sure where yet, perhaps on the upper lookout deck.

Note: I tried today to see if I could drop the robot off of the Tree House look out deck so I would be able to do a screen capture of the robot exploding as he drops to the ground but it took me a long time to get it to happen just once and I was not fast enough to get to a good vantage point to quickly hit the print screen button, Oh I say him blow to bits alright but was just not fast enough to hit the capture button. Maybe next time, like I say it's REALLY thrown in as a "What if" factor and tricky to do, but it can be done and he explodes real nice too. I used the Big explosion with the fragments from the "Detonator pack" so it's really cool to watch ;)

Mouse Traps

"Bud the Spud" has a new game item to watch out for, "Mouse Traps." There will be a few of these in the Tree House in level 03 for Bud to have to avoid. I'm going to place one of these along the path the toy wind up robot patrols inside of the Tree House because getting past that robot is still way too easy and needs another dangerous obstacle just to make it less easy to just dodge by the robot. I've not really decided on the damage amount these pesky things will dish out if bud accidentally runs into one. I'm thinking a good 25 should be pretty fair, but I'll make it a variable so I can change it easily in the inspector in Unity 3D's editor.

When I was designing the mouse trap I thought about going with the classic "Victor" mouse traps but did not want any recognizable company names used so instead I came up with "Snag Em" mouse traps, a non existent company I dreamed up just for this purpose. Do you like the "Snag Em" logo ;)

Bouncing Balls and Robot Death

I kept thinking today when I was out fro my bike ride that my new space toy ball was missing something, but what was it, and then around the 5 mile mark it hit me, "My ball need sound and a bounce ability" which it was lacking. So after i got home I worked on giving the ball some bounce using the physics bounce material and playing around with the settings. Then I added the sound effect for when the ball bounces.

Next was the Toy robots in the Tree House. Now it's not likely that you can get the one inside of the Tree House to fall out and to the ground below but the one on the upper look out deck it is possible using the ball to force the robot to walk off of the edge or fall through the hole in the floor. I wish I could show you a sweet screen capture of the toy robot falling and then exploding with a nice robot exploding sound effect but it's very tricky to do and more sort of thrown in as the "What if" factor ;) Maybe over the course of game testing if I come up with sure fire method of dispatching the robot out of the Tree House I'll capture a video clip and upload it to my YouTube and then post it here ;)

Bud Spud And Toy Space Ball

A video clip showing "Bud the Spud" pushing the toy space ball found in the Tree House in level 03. The ball serves the purpose of partially hiding the hole in the floor on the upper look out deck of the Tree House that Bud must drop down through in order to find the 2nd key to unlock the door to the next level.

I think I need to adjust the size of his "Push Collider" as I can see his head cuts into the ball a little. At least I think that will solve the issue minor as it is.

LATE UPDATE: I adjusted the size of his push collider and it did not make a difference, I thought for sure it would, maybe what I need to do is give his body and actual mesh collider? I just hope that does not much with his other colliders, I'll test it and see if it works.

Buds new Pushable Toy Ball

OK I've got the toy space ball placed into my scene in the Tree House as you can see. Now the ball is serving a good purpose to partially hide the hole in the floor that Bud will need to drop down in order to find the 2nd key he needs. I also placed an extra life heart on top of the 2nd wooden apple box on top of the one you see here, you'll know when extra life hearts are near by by the sound of the beating heart, that's your clue that one is close.

So with that little job out of the way now I just need to work on the ground level stuff for Bud the Spud to deal with, fix up some of the terrain texture, perhaps add another challenge, workout the level exit for this level and then I think I'll be basically done with level 03, although I do want to tweak the scenario with the wind up toy robot inside of the Tree House as I still feel he is too easy to avoid. I'm not really sure what to do about that yet.

A New Ball For Bud to Push

You might recall from an earlier post that I was wanting to do something on the upper look out deck of the Tree House to make things more challenging. You might recall me mentioning that Bud the Spud will need to drop through a hole in the floor in order to land on one of the tree branches below in order to find one of the keys needed to unlock the door to the next level. Maybe, maybe not, but anyways yes that was something that had been rattling around in the back of my head. So what I figured was to place a new ball for Bud to have to push out of the way from over top of the hole in the floor. I figure it will give him something he need to do along with watching out for the sparking wind up toy robot that patrols back and forth across the floor. So I've made a new space toy ball for that very purpose. Why is it sometime the simplest models take a long time, the model is just a sphere I made in Max 8, what could be simpler right, even making the Unwrap UVW template was supper simple, but texturing it in Photoshop is what REALLY vampired my time. As you can see it's no simple map, the seems had to match up just right. But oh well, it's done now so all I have to do is export it to FBX and import that into Unity 3D and make it work the same way the "Soccer ball" from level 2 works, no biggie I'll be done that lickedy split ;)

Bud the Spud With Jack in a Box

After a fair amount more tweaking my initial problem with the weird "Flipped Normals" of my FBX import from Max 8 into Unity 3D still unsolved I found a somewhat workable/not too bad solution (by no means permanent). What I did was use a "Transparent/Cutout/DiffuseBack" shader which I'm sure is WAY more complicated than what I actually need but at least it's showing my "Jack in a Box" head to look somewhat normal. I still have the point light inside of it tough. When I saved it into a prefab and dropped it into my Tree House scene I had to dial back the point light's intensity quite a bit but as you can see here it looks not too bad since I can't light map dynamic objects. I did however light map the tin box, lid, hinge and front tab so at least those parts appear to cast and receive shadows from the rest of the environment.

This will do until I can find a more permanent solution to the stupid "Normals being flipped" issue.

Jack in a Box re Texturing

I figured I might as well get right to it and re texture map the "Jack in a Box" with new maps that I can use. I still pulled some google images to use as a basis for my maps but I gave them a jolly good reworking in Corel Painter so now they are original enough for me to be able to use and redistribute with my model. In some way it was kind of a shame as I had grown quite fond of the maps I was originally using but I'm very satisfied with these, they have a more hand painted look and I tried to keep the overall painting style consistent, it also gave me a chance to fix up some areas of the texture map that I was not 100 percent happy with from the first batch of textures I was using.

I'm still having that freaking import issue from Max 8 into Unity 3D with it buggering up my head of my Jack in a Box and flipping the normals in a very weird way that it also affect the direction the light hits the head part of the model as well... really do not know how to fix that. But last night I did a little experimenting and I found that if I use the Nature soft occlusion leaves material, (it's the wrong texture I know but the only one I could think of that was double sided), tweak the setting and place a point light inside of the head that I can make it look somewhat passable if I have too... but I would rather that the Fracking problem fixed. After this post it will be some more searching on the web to see what I can find out from anyone else who is suffering from the same stoooopid issue... C'mon Unity Fix your Fracking Software!! 

unity 3d Jack In a box Test

Just a quick test in Unity 3D of my Jack in a box. As you can see the Normals in the head are all screwed up, everywhere else on the model, perfect, but the head for some reason Unity 3D is giving me serious grief over. I've got the code all done as you can see and the box works great! "Bud the spud" bumps into the box, it makes a clunk sound and then the box collider gets set to false so that way he does not accidentally start the animations playing twice, then the crank animation and old music box sound plays and then up pops the creepy looking clown with a creepy giggle. Bud will see the note from the "Rotten Potato" pinned to the clown. I'm more than likely going to change the clown pictures on the box but for now they will do. Changing the texture maps will not affect the functionality of the box so that will be no problem. I just wish I can figure out what is wrong with my clown's head in Unity 3D, I would have been done this ages ago but I've been Fracking with it all day trying to figure out why it's not importing properly.

Max 8 to Unity 3D Normals Problem

OK I've run into this before a few time and the usual way it's fixed is to go back into Max 8 and select the parts that are causing the problem and click on polygons and select all and then flip them and re import the model back into Unity 3D. But this time it's not working!!

Here you can see in the "Preview pane" (Lower right hand corner) that the model looks fine but in the scene view (Upper Left Hand corner) you can see that the "Normals" are "Flipped" not only are they flipped but they are catching the light wrong too!! WTF, this must be another fine Unity bug in the latest version.
I've tried reimporting the model several different ways even just dragging in the native Max 8 file and nothing seems to be fixing this rather annoying problem. I tried flipping the normals on the head in Max 8 and re Unwrap UVW mapping the head again to no avail?? I've been at this all day trying to figure it out.

Jack In a Box Animation Test

A test animation of my "Jack in a Box" 3D model. In this video the crank only turns once, this is because in Unity 3D what I will do is split my animations up into 3 separate segments so that way I can code it so as when Bud the Spud bumps into the Jack in the Box the hand crank will start and loop for as long as an specific audio clip will play for and then I'll code it so as the box then plays the open and popping out of the clown puppet part of the animation, hopefully with appropriate sound effects to match.

I'll probably make a few more additional tweaks to the animation tomorrow before exporting it into Unity 3D.

Jack in a Box WIP II

OK we have our rather disturbing looking "Jack in a Box" 3D model completed. Now all I have to do is rig it for animation so that way when "Bud the Spud" either bumps into or gets within a certain distance, right now I'm leaning more to the actual bumping into because I'm thinking it more justifies the sudden unwinding of the "Jack in a Box", the box will spring open and give Bud a nice surprise, albeit a grim surprise with the note pinned to the disturbing looking clown from the "Rotten Potato."

I'm hoping to get the character rigging done today so that way I can either work on his animations later today or early tomorrow morning. It took me some time to try and find some google images of sinister looking clowns the dress up the box with, hopefully I can use the images in this circumstance, if not I'll just have to create my own, a pain in the ass but if I gotta then I gotta, no biggie. lol