Sand Box Level Updates

I've made a lot of changes and additions to the Sand Box level this week. I played around with the Blob Shadow projectors for the Potato Beetles so now they project the blob shadow offset in accordance to the sun's position in the sky.

I added a terrain to the outside of the Sand Box, it's never really meant to be seen, it's more there as a place to put the trees which I figured made a nice touch the the scenic background detail to this level. They cast nice shadows onto the sand terrain inside of the Sand Box and on the accompanying toys inside of the Sand Box.

I'm still working on tweaking the Sand Box shooting robot's fire control a little, it's taking a bit of testing it out trial and error to see what works best. Sometimes if you just keep Bud the Spud moving and zigzag a lot you can usually get by the wildly shooting robot but sometimes he gets a lucky shot in and it's curtains for Bud. I'm trying to get it so it's that good balance between not being too easy but not too difficult.

I'm thinking about adding some more scenic details outside of the Sand Box like perhaps a row of those little garden fences from level 02 perhaps in the form of rendered images on 2d planes to save on the poly count. I'll try it out perhaps tomorrow and see if it looks good for the scene.

I'm very pleased with how this level is shaping up with the new shadows cast into the Sand Box by the trees outside of the Sand Box. I find it breaks up the look of the sand terrain very nicely and makes for a more vibrant environment.

I need to do something with these toy wind up robots that patrol the mote bridge, I need to find some way to make their patrol pattern a little more complex just so they are more of a challenge for Bud to avoid while attempting to cross the bridge. I'm wondering if perhaps I can place Auto Way points onto different layers and have them ignore way points that are on another layer, I've never tried that before so I'm not sure but if I can do it that way then it may be possible for me to perhaps make a more complex patrol pattern for the toy wind up robots to follow. Something else I'll try and experiment with tomorrow as well perhaps.



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!

Character Blob Shadow issue fixed

Although a minor nuisance I found that whenever Bud the Spud performed his "Flip Jump" the shadow spun around with him which is not accurate. I found a way around this with the option of unparenting the Blob Shadow Projector from my character and giving it it's own empty object or container if you like, placed on the ground with the projector above the character. I added a very simple script onto that object containing the projector that tells it to follow the character along like so:
transform.position = objectToFollow.position + offset;
Works like a dream!! Now there is no more of the silliness of the shadow flipping with the player.

I've also been playing around a bit with trying to add a nice background music loop for level one's underground, I've got something with a bit of a tribal beat to it, not sure if I'm totally sold on it yet. just experimenting. I also added some worms to the upper floating stone platforms for Bud the Spud to deal with. I have not added any of these changes to the online web player version of the games testing page yet. I want to do a lot more tweaks yet.