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.

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.

Feedback from Deviant Art

I was checking out my "Deviant Art" this morning and got some feedback on my game from another DA member and figured I'd share it here as it's here that it would do the most good I feel.

~RealTimeBrush2 hours ago

An interesting little game but I believe there are some problems with it in my opinion.

1) The controls are difficult to use, the independent camera rotation and movement takes quite some getting used to, I 'suspect' with its casual nature and delivery people may not give it the time to get used to the controls.
2) The way the character circles when reversing makes it impossible to backup if you get too close to the edge of a rock or platform. I found alignment with the jump target difficult with the degree of turn too.
3) Even in this demo the lack of a save or check point is quite frustrating. In the puddle again back to the start.

 

 

I agree with a lot of what the poster has said and I do sort of have plans to change a lot of these issues as the game develops. That having been said, while testing out the game I've gotten quite used to the way the controls work and myself using the keyboard controls which in my opinion are no match for a good control pad with dual controls for both player and camera. I've had no problem learning how the character works and have adapted just like any player would to any game situation or play type scenario. I've played plenty of games that I hated the way the controls worked. For instance the original Mario on regular Nintendo I just hated that the character did no stop on a dine, that he would kind of keep moving after he landed. I eventually got used to it but at first I just hated it. I really loved the Super Nintendo versions of Mario that cam out much later. And even though I've only played it once the 3D Mario I loved. It's the 3D Mario that my game is basically based off of BTW ;) At least as far as character control and independent camera controls go. And yes it does take a bit of getting used to. But that can be said for so many games yes? I personally think it just adds to the challenge of the game. I find that when I'm just testing it out I can't help but keep playing even if I dye in a puddle it's like "Oh Drat!! I gotta do that again!!" And off I go to try for that key again.... "What am I doing?!?" I keep saying to myself... I only wanted to test out my new Bug Splat effect near that far Hibachi BBQ! Doh... But yeah, what happens in most games, you die because you mucked up, you start over right? At least in most of the games I've played. But he is certainly right about a save point about half way up the level... I can do level 01 usually with no problems but an auto save point of some kind about half way up would be pretty handy I would imagine... and who knows... maybe I'll make one, maybe not??

Potato Beetle Damage

FINALLY!! Some headway today! With Chad Walker's help from "Walker Boys Studio" I was able to get my Potato Beetle characters to take two hits from bud before they are killed. The first hit makes them do a nice little gooey blood spurt and then they look damaged, the 2nd hit kills them with a bigger blood splash and they leave behind a nice gooey mess. I'm using a projector for that still as it makes the blood splat go over the bumpy terrain more effectively than the instantiated plane with a transparent texture map that I was using several weeks back on my enemy worms. So that little bit is done, took me all day to figure it out. Code stuff that an experienced coder would just buzz through in seconds takes me all day to figure out Grrrr...!! Oh well... we live and learn ;)

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.