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.

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??

Bump Map & Beast Solution

I don't know if it's a correct solution but it's a solution that works. My problem was this; every time I ran the Beast Light Mapper I would loose my bump map or "Normal Maps" as Unity calls them. Now you can just imagine how very annoying that can be as bump maps I feel are crucial for giving a game a nice look of realism. I searched for hours, days for a solution to this issue figuring I can't be the only one who is having the same issue. Well this person suggested that and this other person said try this as it had worked for them and so on and so and so on, and either they were not explaining entirely well what exactly it was that they were doing or I was just missing something?? In any event nothing no one said was working for me. So today I thought;

"OK, what if after I run Beast I make a new Directional Light and set it at the same position and rotation in the sky and just tell it to be a real time light?"

Well Frack Me Freddy that worked!! As I say I don't know if it's the correct way but it seems to be a way that at least is simple and freaking works!! I had to adjust it's intensity a little but at least I have my specular materials & normal map effects back along with the beast light mapped shadows. HooAh! Now that's what I call a real KISS operation lol

Toy Wooden Blocks Added



I added some toy wooden blocks to the Tree House for bud to use to help avoid the toy wind up robot in the main part of the Tree House. They are more for scenic detail than actual use although I think if I was to make it so the toy robot just patrolled back and forth along this one side of the Tree House then they would serve more of a purpose in helping Bud avoid the robot, maybe I might experiment a bit with that just to make another challenge to overcome in the Tree House. But they turned out very nice and I'm sure I will no doubt find more practical uses for them later on down the road as the game develops.

Robot Character Tweaking

I thought I would take a little time today to tweak my Toy Wind Up Robot Character a little more. You see because he is using a projector for his "Blob Shadow Effect" which works very well for characters that are on the ground but because my toy robots are in the Tree House one of the things I noticed when I was testing out my game is that the projector casts the "Blob Shadow Effect" right through the floor of the Tree House and onto not only the tree below but also the ground. On the ground you do not see it very well because it gets wider and more dispersed the farther away in projects, you can see it clearly projecting through the floor of the Tree House. So I thought I would use my old method of a plane under the robot with the "Blob Shadow Effect" as it works better for this character who is above ground level.

I also added a couple of "Point Lights" to his arms with a "Flicker Script" attached so his lightning bolts will have a bit more of a realistic look to them. I'm going to see if I can find a nice sound effect for little electrical discharges to REALLY make him sweet!

Wind Up Robots Added to the Tree House

It took me a little while to play around with their waypoints but the Toy Wind Up Robots are now on patrol in the Tree House in level 03 of my "Bud the Spud" game. I was having some problems trying to keep the robot on the top look out deck from wanting to walk towards the waypoints in the actual Tree House, I had to do a lot of experimenting moving them around so as they would not be in line with the ones below. After much tweaking and playing around I think I have something workable. The robot in the Tree House walks along 4 waypoints arranged in a sort of box pattern of 3 sides;

_____
|        |
|        |

Sort of like that across the floor of the Tree House. The robot above walks a similar pattern, it took me some tweaking to get it so as he passes very close the hole in the deck that Bud must fall through onto the tree branch below. That way if he's not looking out and takes to long trying to figure out which angle is best to drop down from and is not aware then a sparking wind up robot will zap him.

Tree House Placement

Took me a while to add all of the foliage planes to my model and then once I got the model into Unity 3D I had to change each material to the "Big Tree" texture materials in unity manually which took a while as I had to do each one separately and there are close to 200 of them. Then I had to go in and remove their colliders as they are not needed here.

While giving it a testing to see how difficult it would be for "Bud the Spud" to climb up the ladder to get into the tree I found it a bit difficult with just the mesh collider alone so I created a few empty game objects and gave them box colliders, tweaked them into position and scaled them to fit each ladder board. It makes it a lot easier to climb now although once he is at the top of the ladder it a bit tricky trying to jump onto the branch so I may need to make a small wooden board nailed to the tree branch to serve as a place to jump onto just to make that a lot easier because although it can be done it does not feel or look quite right as he kind of lands on the side of the branch which looks a bit awkward. I'll see about making a small extra model that I can just import and place into position and adjust as needed.

I place the 2nd key pick up in the location I wanted for it. You would really have too look for this one which is just what I want a bit of a hunting challenge for my players. But I'll mention a little clue here. On the lookout platform there is a hole in the floor that Bud can drop down through onto branches below ;)

I have to add a lot more decorations and things to do in this level but I'm trying to keep this one as simple as I can, that last level was much larger than I had expected it to be which kind of surprised me because there is not really that much to do in that level.

• Explore it a bit
• Find the two keys
• Pick up a Health pick up
• Pick up a Extra Life pick up
• Kill Worms & Potato Beetles
• Jump over two Hibachi BB Q's
• Use the ball to get on top of the 3rd wall
• Find the exit

See not that much at all. This level it's more get across the mud bogs safely, kill Worms and Potato Beetles, climb the tree into the Tree House and find the two keys, make it the rest of the way across the mud bogs to the exit and you're done level 03 :)

Level 03 Treehouse WIP

Here is a sneak peek at the Tree house "Bud the Spud" will have to climb in level 03 of my game. Level three takes place in a muddy bog filled area with a tree house located at the center. Bud will have to fight worms and potato beetles on the way to the tree house along with trying not to fall into deadly mud bog goop, climb up into the tree house and find two keys located inside that will unlock the exit door to this level. Inside of the tree house bud will also have to deal with a few rogue toy windup robots which should be not too much trouble as these robots are only stupid wind up toys that patrol back and forth across the floor, they will however on occasion emit sparks that can hurt Bud if he gets hit by them. Well that's my basic scenario for level three. I figured I'd share a sneak peek at the tree house model's work in progress (WIP) exclusively here on my blog.

Character Control Note: Based on the opinions of some of those who have test played my game I've been looking more closely at the character controller system, I've made a few tweaks, (not yet uploaded) and he seems to have a more tighter control now.

Level 02 Completed!!

Level 02 is basically done, I was hoping over the weekend to have it uploaded to the game test site but I was having some issues with it every time I tried to export the game to a web player. I just don't get the problems, my game is only two levels in size!! What about when it starts getting to around 10 or 20 levels in size?? Are they trying to tell me that the "Indie version of Unity 3D" cannot handle a game bigger than 1 or two levels?!? I just can't see that being the case I think my problem is in the optimization area still, or perhaps in the way I have it set up to handle all of my games assets. Still so much to learn with this stuff.

• First I kept getting an "Out of Memory Unity Editor Host View On GUI ()" error every time I tried exporting my game to a web player.
• Every time I tried to add the mud bog haze particle effect to the mud bogs in level 02 they would act strangely, they kind of "Wink" on and off for lack of a better description. At first I thought it might only be in the editor so when I was finally able to get a web player version exported to test I noticed it still did this strange "Winking" in and out?? So I may have to just NOT use the haze in that level. :(
• When I was finally able to get a web player version exported my file size is now a whopping 60 MB in size!! How the hell is anybody ever supposed to play that on line?? I went through and optimized my textures to a low a resolution as I could before they start to look really crappy, I've nothing bigger that 1024 X 1024 and 512, 256 and smaller wherever I can get away with it. My music is all set to "Stream From Disk" except for my sound effects (I'm not sure what the recommended practice is for small sounds like that)

So those are my BIG GIANT ISSUES right now other wise you fine and somewhat patient folk would be having a good go at level 02 of my game by now :( I can attempt to upload the 60 MB file and see if that works but I just can't see that.

The other issue is that blasted "Load Bar" which I still can't seem to find any help on whether or not it's doing what it's supposed to which I don't think it is because it does not go all the way to the end, it just suddenly loads the game after only moving a little ways along?!? Should it not go all the way to the end at a certain speed to indicate how much of the game is remaining to be loaded?!? At least the freaking load bars I've seen perform that way!!

Sorry for the rant it's just so many things about these projects tend to REALLY piss me off and frustrate the living crap out of me.

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 ;)

Potato Beetle Testing & Set Up

OK I've made my animation for the Potato Beetle, they are pretty simple nothing too complicated. I was checking out some insect footage on YouTube last night before I called it a day and hit the hay to check out a little about how beetles actually walk. I've got something pretty close I feel. I gave him his attack animations, idle state, die, target enemy, run, and walk. So that part is done. I've set up his character controller and added his foot effects for when he walking on various types of surfaces his feet will make sounds and kick up a little dust as he moves. I gave him his blob shadow projector and assigned his enemy controller script. I'm trying to figure out his Auto way points because ideally I would like this lil guy to wander back and forth between two point across the wall tops in level 02 and attack Bud when he gets near. Right now it seems like that if I assign the way points script he ignores his attack range and leaves bud alone except to run right over him like a run away truck! lol If I remove the way points script then he performs just as he is supposed to from an "idle state." Hmmmm I think I might have to take a look at how I did the AI in my "Alien Zombies" game which is on temporary hold right now until I can get some help with that project as it's super complicated compared to my "Bud the Spud" game.

But yeah, just gotta work out those little issues which I think are minor and I'm hoping to have this lil guy placed into Level 02 by the end of the day. I have to make a nice bug splat for him just like the worms but different, bigger and juicier if ya know what I mean ;)

Character BlockerWalls

I added some more eye candy to the scene in the form of these functional "Character Blocker Walls." I originally thought just having the bushes there was justification enough for why the character could not go over the other side of the wall but it just seemed kind of funny when I was testing out the game so I thought maybe I need some kind of fence or railing, or wood structure, maybe even more brick walling that is higher in the back, just something to really justify the characters restriction of movement within his 3D environment. So I came up with these boards of wood mounted to the back of the wall on long metal posts. I got the idea when I was out for my walk and looking at various fences in people's yards. I remembered seeing something like this last year when I was out on my bike doing some garage sale hunting last summer and thought; "Yeah... that's what I need here." It works very well for this portion of the wall but over on the 2nd Hibachi BB Q that Bud will have to cross on the 3rd wall I have it on one side but I need to come up with some way to justify restriction of not being able to go off the other side of the wall?? Maybe a drainage pipe or something?? Not yet sure on that.

I need to start making the "Potato Beetle" as they are introduced in this level as a new enemy for "Bud the Spud" to have to deal with. I also need to make a few bricks to use as character blockers in some areas as well like in behind the backs of the Hibachi BB Q's.

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??

New Training Ground Level

I made a new beginning to the game level where "Bud the Spud" now starts off inside of a small training level just to introduce players to some of the things they will need to know in order to better understand the game. You can still go inside of Bud's house only now its just a silly game extra, but there and can be explored never the less ;)

There is a slight bug though because if you have collected game objects like Fertilizer Pellets and Keys and lets say you have even killed the occasional worm or two. If you go into Bud's House or the training level and then return to the game's main level 01 you loose all of your collected items, this is because the level re sets itself. I think I know how to fix this. With that "Do not destroy on load." code. ??