Fight Garbage With Garbage [devlog]

[drierplease]

Hello Wizard Jammers!

 

I don't how active I will be with the devlog this time around, but I at least wanted to get something up here as I start up the project.

This'll be my second Wizard Jam, my first being Wizard Jam 5 where I made a Twin Peaks first person exploration game.

 

The Meme Scream is to be a first person arcade-ish game. The player will be walking through a crowded area (like a mall or something) and be trying to avoid running into NPC's that are wandering in the direction of the player. The hook is that there is a big phone in middle of the screen that is always fixed in the middle of the view, so using the mouse to look around and change direction will move the phone along with it, blocking the view. 

 

On the phone I want there to be a scrolling feed of images. There will be memes and news. Memes are good and must be selected and shared for points (and screams of joy), news is bad and if selected will deduct points. I'm thinking that the feed will be scrolling fast enough that picking memes instead of news will be difficult because of maneuvering through a crowd. 

 

Honestly I don't know how well this will work in execution, but we're going to find out!!!

[catherine]

This sounds amazing and also exactly what my actual life is like. I'm really looking forward to seeing it!

[Ben X]

One of the images should be an advert for the AI app in @supasheep's jam entry!

[drierplease]

I have changed my mind... no longer doing my Meme Scream idea... because I failed! And I had a more fun idea. 

 

Now it's Fight Garbage With Garbage!

 

It is a type of Katamari Damacy rip off. Essentially you are garbage. And you roll over more garbage to pick it up, becoming more... garbage. I am also taking inspiration from games like snake.io and slither.io. 

 

I want the player to start as a small garbage orb and collect pieces of garbage to grow. There will also be enemy garbage orbs doing the same thing, trying to roll you and each other up. 

 

If you are rolled over, that's the end! The goal is essentially to get as big as you can. 

 

So far I have done the following:

- Made a working third person camera and controller

- Made pick up-able objects that stick to the player via joints on contact

 

The issue I am running into right now is getting more objects to stick to the player without getting caught on each other and bouncing around too much... I have it so that on collision with the player they attach to the player with a joint. Whenever the player picks up another object I have the sphere collider slightly increase in radius. This works... kind of. I'm sure there is a better way so if anybody has input I would appreciate it!

[drierplease]

Made some progress today!

 

I came up with a better system for handling picking up objects! I have a trigger collider on the player that detects garbage in range. When that happens the garbage forms a spring joint with the player's rigidbody. This results in some weird springy motion that doesn't feel great.. but I kind of like it. I'm sure with more tuning it will be better too! 

 

Here it is...

[Nappi]

Good progress! Katamari Damacy mechanics are so satisfying.

[Teljoor]

Looks good! My brother did something similar a while back (a puzzle game where you grow a ball by rolling over objects). If I recall correctly, he had made it so that the picked-up objects wouldn't actually stick to the point of contact, but would be moved somewhere in a predetermined configuration so that the the player object always remained spherical, and he just used a growing sphere for physics. So if you can't get the motion to feel right with just physics, you can always cheat! Having kind of erratic movements might be more fun in a game like this, though .

[drierplease]

I’ve always loved the feeling of Katamari and always wanted to try it! Hopefully I can make it feel somewhat good, will take a lot of tuning!

 

Having a predetermined connection would make it a lot smoother! I was trying to go for that kind of movement and look when I started, but now I am liking the weird sloshy movement I am getting with spring joints. It may be a mess if I have different sized objects and a lot more of them... but that will come after enemies!

 

Working on enemies now that are essentially the same as the player, just rolling over the object nearest to them (including the player and other enemies). Not quite working yet, but will show it off when it does!

[drierplease]

I got enemies working! (mostly)

 

They will roll around and pick up the nearest piece of garbage, even if that piece of garbage is on another enemy. When they collide they will be destroyed!

 

I eventually want to add that the bigger garbage collector can only destroy a smaller one, so I will be working on that next.

 

I am having issues where if only one enemy is destroyed the object that were attached to them act strangely. They unchild themselves and disconnect their joints with the parent, but they sometimes interact oddly with the object that destroyed their parent. They often form a joint without attaching to the new rigidbody, or they child themselves to the new object, but don't form a joint. This makes them bounce around a little and then just fall through the floor... I'm guessing this is because of trying to do things with different object in different scripts on a single collision so wires are getting crossed... I'm just not sure what the wires are...

 

Any tips are appreciated! I'm kind of in debugging mode which... sucks.