Dinosaursssssss

[DevLog] Gravity Wolf / Dino's Side Project Circus

Recommended Posts

GRAVITY WOLF will be the third release from Fun Ghost's Haunted Fun Factory. It's a first person shooter about orbits, lasers, and recycling. While floating in space, you can orbit planets, fall to their center of gravity, or lock a movement vector to move in; you use these mechanics together to conserve fuel, which will allow you to explore further star systems and gather resources. There's a fair amount done and it's feeling good, but of course there's still a ton of work to do.

 

This'll be my first real PC/Mac release after doing mobile for a bit; it's still very early, but I'm shooting to be on Greenlight in the spring. I'll probably start showing it at some local events around then as well.

 

Anyway, we're all really here for the gifs, right?

 

MctEUlI.gif

 

First iteration of a message / log system.

 

vh0xEbW.gif

 

This is in my test level, and shows off the movement system a bit. The player and the satellites are both affected by the same gravity system that keeps them orbiting. 

 

8qiYxHq.gif

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Update time!

 

I've been struggling against the Unity Perforce integration recently, supposedly because I've been using P4 Helix, their new cloud hosting solution. The P4 Connect plugin is hot garbage, and the official Unity P4 tools don't support Helix due to being built on an old version of the P4 SDK (from 2013 I believe). I was sorta hoping I'd be able to wait it out and Unity would eventually update their P4 version but I hit my limit dealing with editor slowness and P4 crashes so I'm now switching to GitLab, which uses gits new large file system (intended for storing binaries) and has a buncha other pretty nice features (unlimited private repos, repos up to 10gb).

 

Fun stuff.

 

I've also been working on more overarching game structure stuff. The basic loop of the game is that you'll go on short expeditions out from your home base, destroy enemies and structures to harvest their metals, then return home to use the resources you gathered to improve your base (and by extension your character). The current format of those expeditions is teleporting from your base to a random star system, completing an objective there to unlock a portal to the next system, then moving on to a more difficult system. In each system you'll have to fulfill a specific goal to progress, like destroying a specific large enemy, exploring a structure, or destroying a percentage of the enemies in the system.

 

This ties into the orbital movement mechanic in that you have a limited amount of energy that you can use to move your character; by using orbits to your advantage, you can conserve fuel and thus have longer, more productive trips out. You can also use enemy projectiles to your advantage, as rockets and other explosions will push you, so you can line yourself up to get knocked into a new orbit (or get closer to the gate to the next area) if you have the health to spare.

 

I've also been working on implementing StrangeIOC, a dependency injection/inversion of control framework for Unity that seems promising. As this project gets bigger I'm finding myself writing a mess of dependent monobehaviours, and Strange seems like the best option for decoupling things and getting closer to an MVC structure. If you're curious about it, this tutorial is a good place to start. I regret not starting with it earlier, as retrofitting everything will probably slow things down quite a bit for a week or so.

 

Anyway I wrote this up while doing a bunch of git/p4 nonsense so I couldn't really run Unity to grab and screenshots, but I should have some new fun new art and UI that's in progress ready to show off soon.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

i just wanted to say that i had seriously considered calling the game that i am working on "gravity wolf" and that that is unexpected because when i checked to see if those words existed on the internet already there was exactly one character from something i'd never heard of called that and so it's remarkable that the second thing to be called that would show up at this very forum

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

i just wanted to say that i had seriously considered calling the game that i am working on "gravity wolf" and that that is unexpected because when i checked to see if those words existed on the internet already there was exactly one character from something i'd never heard of called that and so it's remarkable that the second thing to be called that would show up at this very forum

 

Ha, that's funny. I spent a while writing names in a book, and of the dozens (maybe 100+ actually) I scribbled down it was the one that stuck out to me, I quite like it. Out of curiousity, what's your game like / where did the name come from for you?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

oh the main character is a werewolf (see my avatar) and the game world is made of small planetoids that he basically sticks to and runs around

 

it was very literal

 

your game looks real cool though, i do like unusual movement systems

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Been slow recently but here's some updates.

 

Movement/grav system post math-fix (thanks Osmosisch). Both objects get a little push at the beginning, then settle into their orbits.

 

8lDK5PX.gif

 

An oil well. Particle could still use some work, I think the trail ought to be a little tighter on the end. Gif compression also doesn't do it any favors.

 

jRgCXpK.gif

 

idk this was mostly me messing with pbr and trying to make glossy plastic look right (and failing at it)

 

KKqj9Cs.gif

 

On the docket for this weekend/next week, I'd like to flesh out the players home area and some of the progression tied to it, and maybe add a new weapon.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Hard to tell that you failed at making the Dr. Kepper look glossy in that gif. Looks good at gif-quality. This is really impressive with every update!

 

Random fact: The Food Lion generic Dr. Pepper was (is?) called Dr. Perky.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I've been messing with rendertextures trying to get my UI to show up properly on a curved surface, and I think it's finally working! This was attempt #3 I think. It's not perfect, and in particular there's a weird issue where the elements will...sort of flicker? in the editor, but it runs well in a standalone build. The UV on the curve mesh needs some love too (you can see the bottom elements are out of alignment 'cause of this).

 

Anyway here's a quick shot showing the camera setup. On the left is the camera that generates the render texture, the right is the UI camera which is pointed at a flat, curved mesh with the rendertexture as its material. And the bottom is the view in-game.

 

l4CyTva.png

 

I'm glad this is finally working, but I can't help wondering if there's a better solution; another possibility might be to render onto a flat plane, and write a shader to perform the distortion.

 

Also here's a gif showing the flicker I mentioned, and if uh anyone has seen this before please PM me or post potential solutions.

 

kMwvg4N.gif

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

God yes! :tup: :tup:

 

Love all the UI stuff, all the colors, all of it! Little targetting rectangles/triangles indicating the enemies are the best! How are you doing the glitchy stuff?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Oh yeah yeah, I've seen his repos before. Nice! He has some amazing stuff in there.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

After implementing a more robust camera system to handle that 3D HUD, things kinda went to shit. I started having issues with some cameras not showing at all (mainly the camera I was using to show the players weapons), camera effects not showing, and other weird behaviors (camera smearing, line renderers disappearing).

 

There was nothing that struck me as odd about the setup; it was 4 cameras at different depths (HUD > weapons > game scene, plus one more for the render texture with the HUD on it), all using deferred rendering and HDR, and with the camera effects on the topmost hud camera. Not sure what was going on there. It got significantly worse after updating to Unity 5.3.3, and started crashing pretty consistently in the editor, plus showing that flickery effect I mentioned above. Those two issues (the crashes + flickering) didn't happen in full builds, but the other problems were enough that I dropped that hud for now.

 

Anyway, much as I think it added to the game, I unfortunately don't have the time now to spend debugging Unity rendering issues. Sorry this was actually the opposite of an update, where I baaasically just removed a feature I already showed off. That's how it goes sometimes.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Thanks!!

 

It's looking good and coming together, but there's still a lot to do! The things I am focusing on right now are fleshing out the UI to teach the movement mechanics better and building the game structure out so it doesn't just feel like a tech demo. I'll be showing at a small event in here in Boston on Monday with an aim toward nailing down the specifics of what that means. I think it probably mostly means some button prompts.

 

I also finally found a decent asset on the store that'll get me the curved UI that I've been trying to build for a while; it's a little bit slower than what I was building out, it doesn't handle resizing UI images (like my health bar, which is now broken) but I think the curve helps make the UI feel more unique and it doesn't have the weird glitches my method had.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Keeps looking better and better! 

 

(I missed the original huge gif, which is sad.)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Small update. I showed the game at a small event here in Boston and had about...oh, I donno, 10 or 20 people play. It went well, mostly; the issues that came up were the ones I expected, mainly related to the orbit/movement mechanic being a weird new thing that I don't tutorialize at all (yet) or explain through UI well. I took about a little over a page of notes and I think I can probably make this into a thing people can understand and enjoy in the next month.

 

But not tonight! I just did my taxes so I'm gonna play Darkest Dungeon I think. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Did a fair bit of UI work this weekend; a lot of it was just organizing the HUD and making things more obvious to people who didn't make the game, but I did a little general sprucing up as well.

 

rIHI0TE.png

 

The biggest thing (to me) that I updated was I was looking at some screenshots of the upcoming game Strafe, and really liked their helmet-hud thing:

 

Strafe-2015-02-16-2.jpg

 

Metroid Prime and ADR1FT also kinda do this and I think it looks fantastic in both those games as well, so I tried something similar. I tried to be really unintrusive with mine, but I think it adds just a hint of claustrophobia which I really like. ADR1FT actually models their UI in 3D because it's an oculus game where you move your head independently of the helmet; I don't think I want to go that far, but adding just a tiny bit of delay so the helmet has to catch up to quick turns would go a long way I think. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

wooo PAX is here almost! One more full night of work, then setup day and PAX parties and chit chattin' for days. Game's looking alright, Greenlight went up over the weekend and is...slowly ticking along. I've been cramming features in as fast as I can to prepare for the show, here's a short list:

- Attract mode

- Pause menu with controls

- Tutorial

- Player upgrades (right now just health and ammunition maximum increases, but the system is pretty flexible)

- A boss who shoots many lasers

 

Also had to spend a while getting video assets together (for the magnificent ZeroFiftyOne, who cut a top notch trailer for me!) and screenshots for print assets and Greenlight. 

 

Greenlight ended up being a big pain in the ass, mainly due to how little info Valve provides. You're not told the dimensions or size restrictions on any assets, and nothing about how to format a Greenlight page is explained anywhere. And then of course the process itself is pretty opaque, although they do provide you with an OK set of metrics to track your progress.

 

qbcjEkL.jpg?1

 

Anyway, pins 'n flyers came in today, just in time. Though actually I accidentally had the pins shipped to the wrong address (Chrome autofilled my parents ZIP code in). But my mom went over to the place and grabbed em for me! Aren't moms just the best?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now