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.

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 ;)

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??

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??

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??

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!

Level 03 Developments

I've had some good stuff happen today and I've had a lot of frustrations as well. First off I spent a good deal of the day today trying to figure out why every time I baked my light maps using the Beast light mapper in Unity 3D that all of my materials that are being effected by the light maps seem to loose not only their specular properties but also the Bump mapping or "Normal Maps" as Unity calls them get lost, deactivated or no longer seem to have the desired effect?? I spent a lot of time searching for an answer to that problem and I think it's just another one of those if you want light maps and bump maps it's a Pro Only feature... another way to stick it to us struggling artist who are desperately trying to accomplish something half descent on a next to nothing budget Grrrrr. Maybe I'm wrong but none of the answers I managed to find so fare point otherwise :(

I did however FINALLY manage to figure out how to get that blasted lens flare effect for the sun. That was another thing I thought certain was a pro only feature. So I'm somewhat happy that I can do that cool effect at least.

I did a lot of playing around with lighting today using Beast, adjusting my directional light and playing around with my setting trying to see if I can get my level lighted nice before I go too nuts adding all the other stuff into the level. Here you can see "Bud the Spud" standing on the top lookout of the Tree House with that nice sunlight lens flare behind him. I added some more trees, rocks and some bushes to the terrain and placed in an extra health pickup just to work out his jumps across the rocks to get it and get that part working right. I'm still trying to figure out how to get him to make a tighter turn around for when he is standing on small rocks or branches as this would greatly improve his being able to climb up the ladder boards of the Tree House.

Tomorrow I'll see about getting the "Wind up Toy Robot" happening.

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 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.

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 ;)

Cartoon Potato Beetle

Just finished the texture mapping for the Cartoon Potato Beetle which is Bud's new enemy to deal with in level 02. Just like all of the other characters I've given him a decidedly hand painted texture map. I'm just now in the process of giving him Bones in Max 8 and rigging him for animation. I thought I could use a Biped, I was pretty sure there was a horse or dog biped option but buggered if I could find it, character rigging and animation is not really my strong spot. lol

I ended up just creating individual bones so I'm hoping that will work. Once I get him rigged I'm going to scope out YouTube for some insect footage and see if I can determine how six legged insects walk so I can better mimic his motion in Max 8. It does not have to be exact, in fact if he's a little more original and animated when I'm done that will be perfect as it will give him a more characteristic walk I figure.

Next will be his attack animations and killed animation which will no doubt precede the "Splat" when "Bud the Spud" jumps on him for a nice meaty "Squish!" Then will come the scripting in Unity 3D and character controller so he'll be able to perform his animations and interact with his environment.

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??

Bud the Spud with Baked Potatos

Here we can see "Bud the Spud" safely standing on a tin foil wrapped Potato baking on the Hibachi. This is the ONLY safe way to cross the BB Q's one step on those hot grills and it's one big burn out for "Bud the Spud." Just like his Mud bog death I'll have to make a nice "Burning Death" for when he ends up on a hot grill. Maybe something like he runs around in a frantic circle until he busts into flame and then turns into a pile of ash lol :)

You can see a little more of the yard in this screen capture. Also note the Soccer ball on the grass in the background. Bud will need this ball in order to get on top of the next wall. ;)

Bud the Spud and Tin Foil Box

As "Bud the Spud" navigates his way across the top of the garden wall he'll not only come across the Hibachi BB Q's but also boxes of tin foil, a grim reminder that his fellow Potato people are being turned into Baked Potatoes. He'll even have to jump on Baked Potatoes in order to safely get across each BBQ. I still have to make the tin foil wrapped Baked Potatoes, but when I do and add them into the game scene they will cry out in pain each time Bud jumps on one. It's a little twisted I know but then again I like things with a little twisted humor ;)

The Hibachi WIP

A sneak peek at one of the Hibachi's that "Bud the Spud" will have to deal with in level 02. I have not yet created the tinfoil wrapped Potato's that he will have to jump onto in order to safely cross the tops of each Hibachi BBQ. The plan is to have each tinfoil wrapped Potato shout "Ouch" each time Bud jumps on one in order to cross. There is still a lot to do and workout in level 02 like the Soccer ball he will need to get up on top of the far wall. Placement of enemy worms, Placement of the Keys, Extra Health and Life pick ups and placement of a few good old Mud Bogs. I also need to create his new enemy "The Potato Beetle" as they will be introduced in this level as well.

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. ??