clyde

Amateur Game Making Night

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That's looking pretty slick, yo'.

 

Today I added stairs:

 

https://vine.co/v/OKjWhzPibgT

 

so you can ask the computer to put stairs in a room and that room becomes a staircase. You can stack 'em and do tall ones. Currently they can only be in one rotation though. Other than that just fixing a bunch of problems with the vertical building and trying to keep my code from getting too convoluted 

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Hey Twig, how do yo make something follow the edge of a collider like the creatures in your platformer? You know, so if they are on a box, they get to an edge, climb down the side then they crawl upside-down, back up and start over.

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!

 

If you remind me later, I can share the code, which is probably quite messy. I'm at work right now.

 

It's been a while, so I can't remember exactly off the top of my head, but the basic idea I tried to follow was I have a surface detector transform as a child to the main spike object, and every frame I check if that surface detector is actually colliding with an object. If it is, I keep moving forward. If it's not, I rotate toward the last surface I detected (after I move far enough out into empty space that I would no longer be colliding) and my new forward direction follows the surface in its new direction. So that's for moving into empty space. For moving into a surface, like a wall right in front of you, I listen for collisions, and if I detect one where the collision point is in the direction of my current movement, I rotate away from that surface and my new forward direction follows the surface I just hit.

 

I think because I knew the game was tile-based, I ended up doing it slightly differently than I otherwise would have, since I know it should never move past a certain position if it finds itself in empty space, but using MATHS it's definitely doable elsewise.

 

If I were going to do it for non-tile-based systems - or, more specifically, non-90-degree-angled surfaces - I would probably have it check the surface normal of the nearest surface (again,  using that "surface detector"), and have it move forward at a ninety degree angle to that surface. It'd definitely be more complicated. But again MATHS makes it doable.

 

So uh... I hope that helped?

 

There are definitely other solutions, but that's the one I used.

 

One thing I would say is don't use the physics engine. Move the object yourself. Don't use forces or velocities. That has the potential to make things realllly messy.

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Thanks, that will get me started. I am working with non-squarish shapes, so that normals idea is one I'll look into.

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After writing that post, I also thought it might be kinda cool to just use the physics engine, despite what I said, and have the gravity for that object always point toward the surface it's "attached" to, so that it sorta hops and jumps as it's pushed forward and hits bumps and goes over sharp corners.

 

But that's just a weird experimental idea and I wouldn't recommend it because I want to do it now.

 

Also also for what it's worth, regarding using the surface normal: I think it's doable that way, but I haven't given it a whole lot of thought. I'm not even sure how easy it is to get the surface normal of an object at a collision point in unity. I'd have to look it up I guess. EDIT: Oh! Looks like RaycastHit and its 2D version both have the surface normal built in as a result of doing a ray/linecast! Well that's easy enough, then.

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Oh! Sorry. I linked it in the playtesting thread a couple times a while ago.

 

 

Speaking of a new build: http://www.twigbits.com/wp-content/uploads/ijaspy/2014-09-05/Web.html

 

Keys are a bit different than last time, but only by addition:

 

Movement: Left and Right Arrow Keys

Jump: Space or Z

Shoot: Ctrl or X

Activate Lever: Down Arrow Key

Exit Level: R while alive, Any Key while dead

 

You start in a hub. When you enter a level through one of those two doors, pressing R will kick you back to the hub. Dying will also kick you back to the hub (after pressing any key).

 

Take the left door first, it's much easier, and you can see most of what's in the right door without having to experience an absurdly huge level.

 

A couple things you probably shouldn't read for pure playtesting's sake, but whatever I'll tell you anyway:

Springboards have been reworked to be timing based. Press the jump key slightly before hitting it to jump higher.

You need to collect all the crystals to unlock the exit.

 

I've actually since changed a bunch of stuff but haven't uploaded a newer build... There are three more test levels, and a few new objects/mechanics, as well as a completely reworked springboard mechanic (EDIT: wow this is really old they feel nothing like this anymore). Suppose I should do that tonight.

 

Anyway both levels have those rotating spike thingies that move along a surface.

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Ahhh I get it.

 

I really like this kind of stuff. Is the jump height invariable? It's very challenging and more about timing than twitch.

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Yeah jump height is always the same.

 

Also thanks! That's what I'm going for. Specifically like the older Apogee/DOS/shareware platformers. Very specifically like Crystal Caves. Just navigating a level slowly but methodically and picking up all that sweet sweet junk.

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Welp, I was laid off from my job on Wednesday, and rather than go through the crushing application process again, I'm electing to graduate from amateur game maker/game-making-support-staff to professional broke-ass indie. My plan is to first port Surfenstein (my Public Domain Jam Unity game) to iOS, then depending on its success, either make a more fleshed out follow up, or shoot to get a smallish  PC game out on Steam. I'm cautiously optimistic about this...I think that at this point in my life I have the skills and the network to get this game released and in front of people, but I certainly don't think I'm a better designer than all the other struggling folks out there, and I know nothing about marketing/PR/business so I'm a little scared to be a small business owner.

 

But I have that feeling in my chest, that cavernous yearning somewhere just south-east of my heart, that I need to give this a shot.

So, here we are. I'm young, got decent severance, and know I have the support of my friends, family, and of course, the Idle Forums. So I'm gonna give this thing a go! I'll be posting dev logs and such to this tumblr I threw together last night http://fun-ghost.tumblr.com/, so please, join me on this weird adventure, and look for my game in the playtesting thread in hopefully a few weeks.

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Today and yesterday I pretty much re-did every blueprint in Spacething so that it would be much much tidier, more legible, easier to build on, and particularly so that it would be easy to save and restore ships. So now you can load up a cooked build, renovate the ship all you want, press F6, quit, go back in later, press F9 and your ship is back like it was. Siiiiiiiiick.

 

You can also save edits made in play-in-editor, so I can, in the editor, start playing, renovate the ship a bunch, press K, and jump back into editor mode, keeping all the changes I made "in-game". So you can just use it as a quick level design tool thing. Best!

 

15615713992_338f4938b7_b.jpg

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Today I saw that Codemasters are making a spiritual successor to Micro Machines called Toybox Turbos.

 

I briefly panicked, but then realised theirs is mostly similar to the shitty PSOne Micro Machines, with wacky powerups and weapons. So I'm good. I'm good!

 

Lacabra, that looks brilliant still. I need to try it out on my sweet, new PC rig!

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@Lacabra If potted-ferns could he placed, it would pretty much double the fun-factor of your game.

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