Sand Box Imported into Unity 3D

OK now that the modeling of the Sand Box level is completed in Max 8 I have got it imported into Unity 3D and all of the materials applied to each part. Unity does a lot of this automatically for most imported models but you usually have to tell it which materials are specular with bump and which ones are just bump diffuse, transparent etcetera. Here you can see a screen capture of Bud the Spud standing on the far side of the mote bridge overlooking the vast Sand Box level. I think I need to adjust my suns position in the sky as my shadows are bit too long for my liking.

Here you can see a shot of Bud standing close the the bridge that crosses the more to the other side where the main part of the Sand Castle is located. Just behind him and to the left a little you can see the hole in the ground that I have set for where the Toy Revolving Robot Torso will go once I have the code all worked out for when Bud gets close the robot's chest doors will open and he'll shoot fireballs in an uneven circular plane strafing the ground at the entry way. That's if I can figure out the code to do that, it's kinda complicated and I'm not very good with code to begin with, always takes me much longer just to get that aspect of my game up and running properly.

Here we can see Bud standing by the large plastic beach pale and rusty metal shovel. I've added the foot particle effects for when he is walking through the sand and also for the sand inside of the bucket. I still have to add particle and sound effects for the other surfaces that he can walk on in this game level, mostly woods, plastic, rubber, and the metal shovel that although he can't really walk on it his feet might touch the surface if he jumps at it right so I'll be sure to add a sound effect for that just for the "What if factor."

Here we can see Bud standing by the Toy Rubber Duck. Another Sand Box decoration just for scenic detail although I will add a sound effect for the Duck to "Squeak" or "Quack" when Bud jumps on him. In fact I'm thinking that what I might also do is place a Health Pick up way above the Rubber Duck so that Bud will have to use the Duck like a spring board to be able to jump high enough to get the healthy green potato plant leaf health pick up. I think all I have to do for that is tag the Duck accordingly and he'll bounce higher up when he lands on the Duck.

Here we can see Bud standing by one of the Toy Boats in the Sand Box. There are two toy Boats, this one you see here and another red plastic Tug Boat toy. Again these are more for decoration but it is possible that later on I may find a more significant use for them just to make them a bit more interactive but for now they are just for scenic decoration more than anything. This one does have a little cabin that Bud can go inside of so it may serve very well as a place to hide a pick up item of some type.

Here we can see Bud standing close to the Toy Wooden blocks area of the Sand Box. You can see the plastic Beach Bucket and Metal Shovel way in the background near by. Again more for scenic detail more than anything but it will be a good place to explore and try and out run or hide from "Hunter potato Beetles."

Here we can see Bud by the other plastic Tug Boat I mentioned earlier. Again more thrown in as scenic details and something to explore because you never know what items are going to have a more than just scenic detail orientated purpose.

Ah now we come to one of my most favorite of the Sand Box toys next to the revolving Shooting Toy Robot torso, the Rubber Shark! Doesn't he look menacing? I was going to and may still animate the shark's jaws so they open and close at certain times second intervals but what I'm going to do for now is place a key inside of the Shark fro Bud to find and just make it so as the teeth are dangerous. That way if Bud runs into or lands on the Shark's teeth he'll take a good deal of damage. I test jumped into the Shark's mouth several time to test the feasibility of that scenario and it works quite well, we'll see once I've added the danger colliders to the teeth to see if that still holds true though. In any event it'll make it a lot more difficult to get that much needed key ;)

Once all of this is done I'll need to add in the enemy characters and work out an exit door scenario. Entry will be simple though an overhead pipe leading into the Sand Box, a bit odd I know.

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 ;)

Detailing the Sand Box Continued

In continuing with adding details to the Sand Box I've added another toy boat, this time a cute little plastic tug boat. I was going to place it over along side the other toy boat but thought maybe it might be best to spread stuff out a little as I've lots of space in the Sand Box to work with. This one is more for decoration as it's not really useful for hiding stuff inside for Bud to collect. But it adds something to explore.

I started work on creating a toy rubber Shark for the Sand Box that will serve a good purpose of hiding things inside as it's hollow and will be quite large that Bud will be able to go inside of it.

You can see a work in progress of the toy rubber Shark here. I've still got some geometry to fix up a bit and then I'll have to UVW texture map it. It not animated although I did tinker with the idea of having the jaws snap open and closed so that Bud would have to time going inside of the shark just right, I may still do that as it's kind of a cool idea.??

Once the Shark is done I need to come up with something to use as a bridge to cross over the mote to the Sand Castle. I thought of making it out of Popsicle sticks but I have enough of those as fences along the mote edge so I want something different to use as a bridge, I'm not sure what at the moment. Maybe I might make it out of the toy blocks but I'm thinking something else might be a cooler idea, just not sure what yet though, Eh! Something will spring to mind I'm sure :)

Toy Boat Added to Sand Box

Even with taking a bit of a break today and going out for a nice long bike ride I still managed to somehow find the time to create this simple toy plastic boat I added to the Sand Box level of my game. I like it but i keep thinking my sand box needs something bigger in it, maybe a bigger boat that I could place this one in the foreground of and have a big plastic ocean liner behind it? I dunno, maybe that might be a bit much?? I'm liking the idea of adding a toy rubber shark though. I'll see if I feel like doing that tomorrow ;) 

Sand Box Level Details

While I'm still struggling a little to work out the code for my revolving shooting robot for the Sand Box level I figured I'd take a break from that frustration and keep working on adding detail to the Sand Box. I've added toy wooden blocks, a plastic bucket with sand in it. A good place to perhaps hide a key maybe. I've added a rusty yellow painted beach shovel.

I got some more mileage out of those numbered and lettered toy wooden blocks by adding a few more in with the new toy wooden blocks. I may take a few of these and see if I can arrange them like a small house that I can hide a key inside of also.

The Sand Box covers quite a large area so I have a lot of open space to add all sorts of toys. I might add a little more sand castle structure in the middle of the sand box. I want to make a toy boat of some kind. I was browsing on Google looking for toy boats to see if I could get some idea of what would make a cool sand box toy boat, I found a few images I saved into a folder for reference later on to perhaps create something that will look cool like a beached boat. I'm even thinking about perhaps adding one of those rubber sharks we used to have as kids because they were hollow and I'm thinking that "Bud the Spud" could go inside of the shark which to him would be like a whale. Inside I could either hide a key or place fertilizer pellets inside.

I made a place holder area in the ground for where the Revolving rusty toy robot torso will be placed. As you can see here I have him in the scene rendered in Max 8. The final export will not include him as he will be a prefab in Unity 3D that I will drag into the scene and place him in this location with hopefully by then a working code. Right now I have him performing his animation when Bud gets within range but his fireballs are instantiating inside of his chest area and exploding right away as opposed to flying away from where he shoots from. So I have to look into why it's doing that and try to fix that. I have a few ideas on what the problem might be but it's going to take some more playing around with the code to really figure it out.

I created some Popsicle sticks of varied flavors (used of course) to serve as a little fence along the mote area by the sand castle. Bud can easily jump the fence but why would he as it would be suicide to jump into the mote filled with muddy water.

Here in this scene and the one above you can see some of the Popsicle stick fence along the mote edge behind the toy rubber duck and some being used as fencing by the bridge entry area by where the toy revolving robot is placed.

I can't wait to get this model all done with all the cool stuff and more I've mentioned above and placed into Unity 3D as this is going to be such a fun level to work with with a few worms, potato beetles and one or two of those blue wind up sparking robots wandering around.

Sand Box Robot Set Up and Testing

I was hoping to have something a little more constructive accomplished between yesterday and today, but I was having some issues trying to code my robot to work properly. You can see here in my testing area, which is a simple scene in which I test stuff out before making it into a prefab to place into game scenes later on. You may recall me mentioning that I should have been able to modify the machine gun sentry script to work for my robot. Well yes and no. Seems I can get it to partially work the way I want. I have his animations all set up as:

• Aware
• Shoot
• Deactivate

Aware: is supposed to play a short animation where the robots moves and shifts a little buried in the sand and his chest doors pop open to reveal his guns as bud the Spud gets within a certain range.

Shoot: is supposed to then play the animation in which the robot torso spins 360 degrees 1 turn but is a looped animation.

Deactivate: Is supposed to play an animation where the chest doors close as the robot guns retract back inside of his chest area.

Sounds simple enough right? Until you get to start trying to code it that is, still working on it.
The other issue that might kill this great idea with the robot, is that he might be too high poly for this type of attack scenario. In making him in Max 8 I was trying very hard to keep him as low to medium poly as I could without sacrificing too much detail in the robot. But when he animates in Unity 3d's editor the whole scene slows to a crawl, so I might in the long run just have him as a nice sand box decoration :( (sadness) because I was really liking the idea of placing him right by the bridge crossing the sand castle mote. I suppose I can rework him in Max 8 and try and bring his poly count down a lot more. That is indeed if that is the issue as it could be the machine gun script rotating him as well as his rotation animation playing at the same time.

I tried making my own script similar to the "Jack in a Box" script but got really weird results like the animations would play making the robot move way below his desired location, so I've no idea what was going on there as it works for the "Jack in a Box." ??

Sand Box Level Toy Robot

I made a toy robot for the sand box level of my game. He's a broken down rusty toy robot that will give Bud the Spud some trouble if he gets within range. He has no legs and bud will find him buried in the sand up to his waist guarding the entry way to the bridge that will cross the mote to the sand castle on the other side. This toy robot will be a little lopsided so when his chest doors pop open and his cannons pop out and start shooting his torso will spin and he'll shoot deadly fireballs all over the place in a lopsided 360 degree circle. He has no aim being just a toy robot but even still if Bud should get hit by a fire ball it's curtains for Bud the Spud. Similar to the blue wind up robots what they lack in intelligence they make up for in deadliness.

I have him all rigged for animation so tomorrow that will be my next task, animate his attack sequence and then export him into Unity 3D for the fun code stuff. My thought is that he should work pretty much the same way that the machine gun turrets work in the FPS tutorial. He'll have an attack range although he will not rotate and deliberately shoot towards the player, he'll just start shooting while spinning around in circles.