I just realized I never linked to the test version of Void(). You can download it here, if you want. Some firewalls or anti-virus software will complain when you start the game, because it tries to install some dwmapi.dll, but sadly I have no idea what this is caused by. I haven’t noticed anything bad happening. But I also haven’t noticed any functionality missing from the game if that request is blocked, so do that if you want to be safe. If you want to be super safe, don’t play it.
I finally started creating some levels. Currently I have the three easiest done: arenas for the 3 existing bosses. They still need some tweaking, to have them balanced, but I will do this when I have the other levels done, so I can estimate the player’s level and equipment.
Additionally I changed the sequence for the crystal’s lasers, so they are not as predictable. Also it will choose a different sequence when it is down to 50% health.
Some other small changes include single-use platforms, that disappear when the player steps off them, but I am not sure if I can use them with the player having 3 lives, since they would block his progression when he dies after walking over them. Alternatively I would have to limit their use on optional areas.
Lastly I changed the algorithm for the grid boundary, so I can now create levels from multiple grids.
And here are the arenas:
I know I should be doing level design, but I fail to make progress there. Instead I added some more enemies, a new boss that uses heavy hitting melee attacks and a sensor tower that will alert every enemy in the level of the Player’s position, if he is in range. The last one is a replacement for the flamethrower mesh.
Additionally I changed some small details that are hard to show, like right-click on some buttons of the options menu or minor improvements to some algorithms. Oh, and I created a textbox system. If the player enters the trigger of a textbox object, it displays some texts on screen. I hope to add some voice-overs for these later. And projectiles can now play sounds on birth and impact. If only I had some sounds now…
I created a main menu for the game. Now the Player can start a new game, restart the current level or save and load the game (it always saves the state at the beginning of a level). Furthermore it is possible to change the resolution, render quality, audio volume and toggle between full screen and windowed.
Next up: sound FX and level design.
I just completed the Alpha of my game.
List of changes since the last post:
- GUI works (WIP)
- Added markers below the player and enemies to show their position and health
- Added a ‘finish line’, that is accessible once all enemies are destroyed (spawned enemies don’t count). Once the player reaches the finish line, the next level is loaded (currently the same level)
The red barrier tape will disappear, once every enemy is killed, and the little red ticks turn green.
And here is a screenshot of the game in action.
Haven’t done much this weekend that can be shown in images. Mostly bugfixing and improving some algorithms. Had some nasty crashes that I needed to resolve. In terms of AI, the situations where an enemy would just stand still and do nothing are reduced. As a side effect, they now are even more aggressive, since they don’t interfere with each other so much anymore. Lastly I changed the shader for Player and enemies and now their silhouettes are rendered in front of other objects. This way the Player can see where the enemies are, even if they are behind obstacles.
One new object, though. A spawnpoint for Powerups. It will create a crate after a couple of turns, and ,once the Player has destroyed the crate and picked the item up, it will spawn a new one, again after some turns.
Here is a new video showing the current state of the game. The two bosses from the last post are not in this build.
This is not a real level, only the test scene where I put everything I create to see if it works and behaves correctly. I haven’t started designing levels, yet.
I added some more enemies to my game. From left to right these are a plasma-wielding walker, a flamethrower tower and two boss encounters. The first one is unarmed, but has plenty of health and spawns Spawners. The last one is more of a automatic defense mechanism. It spawns smaller copies of itself some tiles away and then shoots them with lasers. The small crystals scatter these lasers in all six directions. If one of the small crystals is destroyed, it will be replaced after some time. In the actual encounter I plan to place some additional small crystals that won’t be replaced after destroying them.
The Player will get his own laser weapon from destroying the crystal. Where he will get the other weapons (apart from the sword and blaster) is yet to be determined.
After a too long absence, I started working on my game again. I created some new enemy models (the spider is not yet rigged). The two on the right are Spawners for the Spider and the Disc from an earlier post respectively.
Also I created some buildings, for decoration and mainly to allow me to create different levels. They block all kinds of projectiles, the fence is destructible.
Lastly I also delved into scripting again. The buildings have their own behavior to control the blocking of projectiles and actors, as well as their destruction. Additionally I added a simple calculation to the enemies’ and other placeable objects’ scripts to make them find the closest tile to their world-position on start, so I can now place them directly in the Unity viewport instead of having to manually determine the tile number I want them to start on. Makes level-design easier. Having to dial in every tile by hand would have put me off level-designing entirely, to be honest.
Did some (extremely) small changes to the GUI. Still Photoshop. Lives conter is now left of the lifebar (which is a bit smaller now) and I made the icons for the main weaponry. Still need icons for the special items.
