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 :)

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." ??

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!

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.

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.

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

Jack in a Box WIP

A sneak peek at the "Jack in a Box." This will be one of the first real clues for "Bud the Spud" about the "Rotten Potato." Bud will discover the "Jack in a Box" in the Tree House in level 03. The idea here is to have it so when Bud bumps into the Jack in a box it will automatically play a music box type of sound typical of these types of toys, then suddenly out will pop the Jack in the Box with a note pinned to it saying something like;

"Give up Bud the Spud, there is no hope!"
                                         -The Rotten potato
As you can see I've gone with a sort of twisted or disturbing looking type of Jack in a Box design to help reflect the madness of the "Rotten Potato." After all mass genocide is madness.
but there is hope;

"One Potato can make a difference." ;)

Scenic Details Added

Because bud is a small potato character his surroundings need to reflect this in some way, as you've no doubt noticed that everything is "potato character sized" in my game. In keeping with that in mind I wanted something more added to the terrain to keep that feeling of being a small character in mind, so I made these nice medium poly blades of grass that I can place here and there throughout the various levels that are outdoors and above ground. Here we can see "Bud the Spud" standing amongst some new blades of grass placed close the the base of the Tree House tree base. Thankfully the FBX file is only 175 kilobytes in size so it should not be too big of a deal for me to use a fair amount of them so long as I don't go overboard.

I was looking into how one places mass trees in Unity 3D to see if perhaps performance wise if that might be a better and maybe even more easier way to place these new blades of grass onto my game level terrain but even though I added the model as a new tree mesh it was not painting them onto my terrain for some reason so I don't know why that is, as I say it's a very reasonably sized model at only 175 KB??

Robot Avoidance Testing

As I had mentioned earlier this morning that I had planned to make the first wind up toy robot in the Tree House a bit more of a challenge to avoid. I've since made the trap door as you can see here which serves very well for blocking "Bud's" direction on the one side, I've also added a lot more toy wooden blocks to make the corridor more narrow to traverse. It's still very easy for Bud to avoid the robot though so I think I need to place something else along that wall with the toy blocks, Not sure what though as I'm trying to watch my poly counts because although those toy wooden blocks are fairly small, they do have beveled edges and angled corners as you can see if you look closely at them. So they will add up to be expensive I'm sure if I use too many of them, so far they seem to play with no problems at all in the editor and my Draw Calls are not bad at all so I think I'm doing really OK in that department. But yeah I'm wanting very much to make Bud's avoidance of this robot a lot more of a challenge so as bud will have to time running through the passageway a little more carefully before the robot turns around to walk back down the corridor between the blocks and trap door. I shortened the distance between his auto waypoints so that has helped a lot but I need to make something to place just after the toy blocks... Hmmm maybe an old kite because I can keep that pretty low poly and still have it look good and it might just be big and bulky enough to extend the obstacles along that wall just enough?? There's a thought ;)

Tweakings

Feels like I didn't get much accomplished yesterday even though I was hard at it all day. I downloaded the latest version of Unity 3D because I had read online about "Light Probes" and was very anxious to try them out but it turns out that all the cool new addition they have made to the latest version of unity like built in Path Finding, the Light Probes and a bunch of other cool stuff is all pro. only :( Oh well, at least the software is up to date and hopefully less buggy which will hopefully mean less crashes ;)

Anyways I was mostly making a lot of tweaks after updating Unity, I had to re bake my light maps because the old ones were "FUBAR" for some reason. I was toying around quite a bit in the Tree House trying to make it so the toy wind up robot in the main part of the Tree House is a little bit more of a challenge to pass since he just walks back and forth between two auto waypoints. I placed in some more wooden apple crates and arranged them so as they effectively block off the back part so that way Bud the Spud will have to go past the robot. I need to make an open trap door to use as a wall to also block off the path he must take along the side of the opening in the floor he gets into the Tree House by so that way he will have a more narrow corridor to walk through with the toy wooden blocks on one side and the open trap door on the other with the robot walking back and forth between the two sets of obstructions, and that should do nicely for more of a challenge in the Tree House. Next I'll need to do something similar on the upper deck as that wind up toy robot is just as easy to avoid. I'm not sure what though, maybe another apple crate and toy block arrangement or another type of wooden box that I'll need to make, paint cans or other toys maybe?? I was thinking about a pushable block that perhaps he will have to move out of the way covering the hole in the upper deck floor that he needs to drop through onto the branches below in order to find the 2nd key??

Level 02 Additions and Optimization

Sorry I didn't post an update yesterday but I was swamped trying to figure out some stuff. First it took me the better part of the day to work on and then texture map my exit door area for level 02 of my game. Not sure why really, I had made a good start on the actual model before going to bed on Thursday night so basically all I had to do was add a few more details and then texture map it but the texture mapping too quite a while to do for some reason. Finally when that was done I managed to make it so you have to jump on the "Potato Beetles" twice in order to kill them. I had some great help from Chad Walker of "Walker Boys Studios" on the scripting for that, he pointed me in the right direction and I was able to get it so you jump on the beetle once and you get a nice enemy pain sound a "Squishy" bug blood spurt sound as well and then on the 2nd jump he splats and leaves behind a nice gooey mess.

I had some other issues with Unity Crashing on me every time I tried to save out as a web player version. I kept getting some "Fatal Memory Error message" and then Crash!! I think it might have been due to a lot of the massive 2200 sized texture maps I had imported into Unity, I'm so used to working in the print industry where you always need the highest resolution images possible that sometime it's difficult for me to think in terms of "smaller is best" when it comes to game engines. I just always want to see super sharp detail in my textures. So I expect a good deal of the morning making then no bigger that 1024 X 1024 and smaller wherever I could get away with it.

Above Right: you can see "Bud the Spud" about to head across the final deadly mud bog in level 02 towards the exit. It's kind of had to see in this screen capture as I wanted to show the path he must take in order to get there. I promise I'll post a good shot of the level exit area later on today. But first I want to see in on my "Potato Beetle" I can make it so that after Bud has jumped on him the first time he will look damaged. Chad Walker had mentioned in his email that a change in the texture map material might be a way to go, and I have seen that done before, I just need to figure out how that is done.

Final Mud Bog Areas in Level 02

I finally got the final two deadly mud bog areas worked out in level 02. Here we can see Bud the Spud standing on top of a tin foil wrapped potato baking on the Hibachi overlooking one of the final mud bogs. You can see the key sitting on the cinder block in the middle of the bog, you can also see an extra health potato leaf pick up item as well hovering in the air over another cinder block below. In the next image you can see it as well.

In this screen capture you can see Bud the Spud has made his way onto the cinder block in the middle of the deadly mud bog and is about to grab the final key. I made these jumps a lot simpler as I know retrieving the first key from the mud bog located across the paving stones is a much more difficult jump series, getting across the first few rocks is no problem but landing on that toadstool in the middle of the bog takes a bit of practice I found. So I figured I'd give my players a bit of a break with this 2nd key retrieval scenario. There is one more mud bog to cross on the way to the exit pipe which I've still yet to work out. I'm thinking maybe perhaps a grungy wooden board in front of the pipe like a crude wall with a small door located at the mouth of the pipe with crudely painted text that says "EXIT."

I've still yet to add some direction signs and maybe those helpful butterflies I was talking about in an earlier post. I might try and do those with a particle system that has animated particles just like the Fire flies in the Underground level. Perhaps I'll see if I can get to that tonight. Oh as you can see I did make that "Drainage Pipe" I was telling you about to help justify why the Bud cannot jump off other right side of the wall, I think it turned out very well and does the job pretty good ;)

Potato Beetles Added to Level 02

I've been working hard on getting the Potato Beetles into Level 02. Could not figure out how to get my characters to work with the Way Points. The Walker Boys Scripts are set up way different than how I'm used to with my "Alien Zombies" project which was based off of the first person shooter tutorial on Unity 3D's web site. So for now I'm just going to have to settle for them working the same way the worms do in level one, on the plus side though at least I can adjust character speed, damage and a whole bunch of other stuff to make them a bit more of a challenge.

I have them placed here and there on top of the brick topped wall in the yard. These guys dish out 35 damage to Bud the Spud and are a lot quicker than the Worms. I have a few in the grass along with a few Worms as well. I was trying to figure out also how to make it so Bud would have to jump on a Beetle twice in order to kill it but so far no luck on that, more script studying is definitely in order. I did give him a more juicier "Splat Death" for when Bud does jump on them, it's quite tasty looking as you can see below. You especially have to love it if you kill one right by the edge of the wall. Because I'm using a projector it looks like his blood splatted all over the edge of the wall and ran down the face of the wall to the ground below, very yummy looking if you ask me ;)

One more thing I want to try and do today before calling it a day is do a drainage pipe running along the top of that last third brick topped wall to justify the character not being able to jump off the right side of the wall back into the yard. If I can get that done before bed time I'll be a happy little maniac lol ;)

Level 02 Mud Bogs

I've added a couple of deadly mud bogs to level 02 and worked out the positioning and scenario for getting the first key, it's located on the big rock in the middle of the mud bog on the right. This is another tricky jump. The first three stones are pretty easy but getting onto the toadstool is a tricky jump. Once you have the key getting back is much easier, you just have to jump onto the toadstool and the stones just right and you are home free.

The other mud bog right now just serves the purpose of confining the player the the game environment, although I could place something in the middle of that bog too, maybe an Extra Life Heart perhaps?

I also worked out the scenario for using the Soccer ball to get onto the thirst brick topped wall. Bud will have to push the ball over to the wall and then jump onto the Soccer ball and leap onto the top of the wall. Pretty easy but it might take some players a little time to figure that out, which is a good thing ;)

In the underground level I was using the "Fire Flies" to give players clues as to where to go or hints that something interesting was close by, but above ground in the day light fire flies would be out of place, so I'm trying to thing of something similar, maybe butterflies perhaps??