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 ;)

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 ;)

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 ;)

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

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 II

I mentioned earlier today about needing to add something extra along this passageway in order to make getting past the toy wind up robot a little more difficult for Bud the Spud. I went with the kite as a good object because it's long and a good size to lean up against the Tree House wall and rotate it's angle a little to take up space in the passageway making it more narrow and cluttered. The robot is still pretty easy to avoid but if you are not careful you'll get Bud "Zapped!" And since they are just stupid wind up toys don't forget that they dish out quite a bit of punishment which more than makes up for their simple minded nature ;)

Note: In some future blog posts I'm going to introduce game tips like this:

Game Tip 01: You've been trying to jump from rock to rock and sometimes you end up right on the edge of a rock with no where to go, death is certain right? Not always, sometimes you can save Bud if he is too close to the edge of a rock in the middle of a deadly mud bog. Here's how:
Do a extra high jump by jumping twice and pull back on your direction pad (d pad) or [ S ] on the keyboard, while Bud is high in the air he'll actually move backwards a small amount, keep doing this until you have enough rock under you to better maneuver into a good jump position.

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.

More Scenic Details to Level 03

After tweaking my "Toy Wind Up Robots" for Bud to deal with in the Tree House I started adding some scenic details to level 03. Here you can see "Bud the Spud" with an old beat up box of Mashed Potatoes. Needless to say this is a real WTF moment for Bud. I'm actually thinking of him saying something like that first time he comes across a trashed used box of mashed potatoes. Not really sure what the best way to approach that is yet as I only want him to say it the one time, maybe a game object that activates when collided with and then destroys itself once the audio clip has completed might be a way to go here??

Next I added some "Toxic Waste Barrels" to this muddy bog filled area. Here you can see Bud standing on a hill overlooking just one of the piles of dumped toxic waste barrels. I felt the fog was a little too dense so I've adjusted that which means I'll need to go back to level 02 and adjust it there too, Unless I leave it and figure on it being like the fog has lifted a little between levels, might mean I'll need to play with my sun's azimuth as well maybe??

Level 03 Tree House WIP Continued

In continuing with yesterdays post I thought I would keep you up to date on how the Tree House is coming along. I've been busy all day mostly just adding the foliage to the tree. Because it's going into Unity 3D in my game environment I figure I might as well use the "Big Tree Leaves & branches" from the standard terrain assets pack. Because Max does the transparencies a little differently than in Unity I had to make a new reversed transparency map from the alpha channel in the unity "Big Tree Leaves & Branches" PSD files and use that in order the get the same effect you see here in my Max render using "Mental Ray." As you can see I've added some more branches to the tree and started to texture a few of the simple things like the tin roof that only needed a simple box texture mapping. I'll see if I have time to do the UVW texture mapping for things like the tree house parts and the tree trunk but that will depend on how much longer it will take me to add some more foliage to the tree, I still want to fill it out a little more in a few areas, but overall it's coming along nicely I think.

I was trying to think of things one might see in a tree house although I could not think of much outside of a few things like wooden boxes to sit on, an old cable cart for a table, a crude wooden bench, and maybe some comic books. Maybe some toy blocks on the floor and the occasional cola can. I'll have to see if I can search the Internet and see if I get some ideas from there.

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.