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[Devlog] *Insert Deep Title Here*

A topic by Trueavid created Jul 23, 2017 Views: 594 Replies: 14
Viewing posts 1 to 11
Submitted (7 edits)

Entry 1:

Hello Reader, this is my team's first Game Jam and we are excited to be participating.

The main portion of the game is a Platformer as well as a couple of cutscenes to develop some sort of story.

Today we worked on the actual gameplay portion as well as working on music and character creation.

We should probably add more here but I'm to lazy to do that at the moment.

BTW our title is not "Insert Deep Title Here" or at least we don't plan it to be that although that might change.

Entry 2:

Here's a video of a prototype for the gameplay, it might as well be its own game honestly...

Entry 3:

So now that I have more time, let me put some more information down here.

Our plan is to make a 2d/3d mixed game in which a player is put in the scenario of a dreaming child. I don't want to reveal too much of the plot, as it would make the game meaningless, but let's just say, it takes a pretty dark turn.

The three main components of the game will include:

Cut Scenes - There will be multiple cut scenes to help develop the story and eventually reveal the truth of the game.

Platformer - This is where the bulk of the "actual game" will be.  As you can see in the video above, there will be jump scares and a buildup of tension (definitely better than what is in this prototype) but the background might not be so lively.

3d Walkaround/Platformer - I really don't know what to call this part. I'm guessing it'll look sort of like the crash bandicoot series(I couldn't think of any other ideas)  with the third person perspective of a character in a 3D world but that may change since we have just begun to make the game.

Obviously these three components may or may not be in that specific order since they need to be put together to effectively tell a story.

So that's about it for this entry on our devlog, but if you got this far, congrats to you(and to me for being able to keep your attention).

Oh also, we used Unity to make this if it wasn't obvious.

Entry 4:

I know my last entry was like 20 min ago, but I realized that there were some things that I forgot to mention and may help people using Unity.

Saying that we ran into a couple problems while building that prototype would be a BIG understatement. I'm just gonna list out the problems we encountered and maybe it'll help one of you out when you are building your game.

Triggers not working

One big problem we ran into was the face that Unity has a separate method for triggers when you are using 2D shapes then when you are using 3D shapes. Before working on this, I had only used the Unity for 3D purposes and the rest of my team had barely even touched Unity previously. So if you run into the problem of your triggers not working, try and check whether you are using the right method.

For 3D the method is:

void OnTriggerEnter(Collider other){}

And for 2D the method is:

void OnTriggerEnter2D(Collider2D other){}

It's a very small difference but it won't work at all unless you specify. I spent almost an hour trying to figure out why my triggers are working.

Using AudioSources

Another problem we encountered was how to access AudioSources in our scripts. This may have just been our fault though for not reading up on the documentation for Audio.

Playing Audio is actually pretty simple. Instead of being able to access AudioSources through scripts, you have to access them as seperate variables.

For example you cannot access AudioSources just through the GameObject Variable

public GameObject audio;

You have to also create a separate variable for the AudioSource

public AudioSource audio;

So hopefully that helped you out, that's all the entries for tonight. I think I'm just gonna relax for a while now before our team gets back to work tomorrow.

Entry 5:

I think I'm gonna start doing entries in the comments from now on because its too much work to keep scrolling up and down to change the font and stuff in this main post. I'll continue this Entry in the Comments.

Submitted

BTW, you should check out my YouTube channel. I'm doing videos everyday over the summer just for fun.

Yes... This is shameless self promotion. :)

Submitted

Hey it's not shameless lol, your always your biggest promoter haha no one else will know all the details yet! What are you using to make "Insert Deep Title" (No knocking the title my user name on other forums is sometime "InsertGenericNameHere" haha)? I'm also making a platformer using Unity + the corgi engine.

Submitted

Just looked at the corgi engine and it looks really cool!!! I'm assuming you already figured it out but we are using Unity for this project. Maybe we could help each other out if we run into any major problems! Have you made a devlog because I'd love to check it out!

Submitted

Yep! Check out Red and the Golden Orbbit Devlog! Yeah I went with the Corgi Engine because I didn't want to reimplement raycasting for the physics haha. Yeah sure I'd love that! If I run into any issue I'll make sure to let you know! And make sure to do the same with me haha

Submitted (2 edits)

Entry 5:

continued...

Refined the character and made the wall jump more fluid.

Yesterday we had a problem with the player sticking to walls and today we figured out that we could fix that by making the walls friction less through 2D physics materials.

Additionally we've been having a problem that you can just climb up a wall by continuously wall jumping and moving towards the wall so we decided to make it into a feature of the game. Although, if anyone has any suggestions on how to fix this, ideas are welcome!

"It's not a bug, it's a feature"

This is what we live by.

Submitted

Entry 6:

Upping the creep factor to...

over 9000!!!!!

Now that we have the old meme references out of the way...

So today, as the header states, we upped the creep factor from pleasant mountain scenery to "scary" room. Scary in quotes because it really isn't that scary. The music is now also a lot creepier, but there's no more level, its just a giant hallway at this point.

Here's a video

I think this is pretty cool, but I'd like feedback from others as well!

What do you guys think, is this creepy or not?

Submitted

Awesome work! I'm liking the eerie vibe the music is bringing into the game. Also love the fact you're showcasing all the problems you're running into during the development!

Submitted

Entry 7:

Smoothing out the movement and animations for the character

So today we smoothed out the movement of the character and also implemented some zooming features. The jumping looks a lot more fluid in this one, I'll put a video up later to show the changes.

Problems with zooming

So when I first tried to implement the zoom in and zoom out feature, I ran into a huge problem. I was telling my camera to be positioned in a specific location, however the camera would be moved up for no reason on play. I finally figured out the problem and it was because when xyz points are shown in the hierarchy, they are shown as addons to their parent, however when you edit the xyz points through scripts, it uses them as if the object did not have a parent. This through me way off and now it finally works. We also decided to add a power meter type mechanic sort of like in FNAF, where power goes down the more zoomed out you are.

Then we wasted time trying to make the character backflip...

Other then that, we didn't get that much done today but we did make some progress with finding and making some sprites for enemies.

Submitted

Entry 8:

So here is the video of the work from today.

It showcases the problem that we had with zooming and the smoother animations and level compartmentalization.

Host

ooo i really like your video walkthrough of the level. it's pretty cool to see it in editor and discussing your thought process. i think it would be pretty cool to have interpolation/lerp between the zooms if you can manage it as a stretch goal. it would make the camera changes smoother and easier to orient to! this is a really solid devlog so far--keep up the great work!

Submitted

Thank you! I really like that idea of adding interpolation/lerp and I'm already coming up with ideas to implement it. Thanks for the feedback!

Submitted

Entry 8:

And finally come the scares...

even though I don't know if they are scary and/or will scare anyone at all.

One problem I ran into during the process of making jumpscares was the fact that many objects needed to appear and disappear. For some reason I kept putting my scripts on objects that would disappear or become deactivated and though it might seem obvious that the scripts would also get deactivated if the object was, it wasn't obvious to me at the time.

DON'T JUDGE ME, I SEE YOUR JUDGEY EYES OUT THERE.

Don't get offended, I'm just joking around. :)

Anyway, here's the video that shows the stuff

Submitted

Entry 9:

Making the scare more fluid and adding obstacles

So today we added some obstacles and made the scares more fluid. That information can be found in this video

Additionally we encountered a bug where the camera would be extremely jittery at the maximum zoom.

What we found out was that it was because the position of the camera was being dictated by both the code and the the fact that the camera was a child of the character moving around. So instead we had to fix it so that the camera could follow the character around without keeping it as a child of the character itself. We used the x and y values of the player at rest position and added and subtracted to give the correct position to the camera.

Submitted

Entry 10:

So, it has been a while since my last entry here.

A good amount of things have happened since then. We have finally decided on a final decision on how to make the game a playable thing rather than just a story line type thing. Instead of the zooming, we now have different layers of cameras that will allow you to see different monsters. If you were to run into a monster, then you would die, so to say. Anyway, here's a video to explain it better I guess: