Ok, overdue for a Day 1 update. Bare with me this will be an image dump...
Things have progressed well with that Day 1 momentum in full swing. Unfortunetly I work fulltime (other than the weekend) so I'll be cramming as much gamedev for this jam into my spare time as I can. I may have stayed up a bit too late last night... but it was a good deal of fun as youll see :)
Things I have going so far:
- Test area with a PSX/N64/Retro shader (to be tweaked, its not looking quite how I want yet but its a start for the visuals as its very dark, this game needs to be bright and happy) Shader being used is freely avaliable for Unity using the Universal Render Pipeline (here)
- Some very early movement controls a few hours in to day 1 (plus the worlds best Shiba model!)
- The all important dogecoin (I'll be fixing the texture tomorrow, these look pretty horrible...)
- I also imported and messed around with some Banjo Kazooie/Banjo Tooie assets. Im basically using these to study, since BK is the style Im looking for in the 3D models. Theres something to be said about pulling apart models from your favourite game. Ive seen Banjo a billion times but never at this level of detail. For anyone wondering, he's 422 polys!
- This was also a good test and warmup for texturing and style, it wasnt *just* a simple matter of importing the model unfortunetly.
- As well as Banjo I also processed and imported the entire Mayhem Temple level from Banjo Tooie (yes this is excessive). I got the character controls working better and dove in, it was a really odd experience running around in this level with my budget-Shiba. Im hoping to make a level or two of this size and hopefully half as good (Id settle for 1/4 as good as these levels tbh).... I did also start on my own level design for the starting spot of the game. Its pretty rough though, ill spare the images and show it when its looking nicer.
*Note that none of these Nintendo models will be used in the game. Maybe as an easter-egg... but Im showing these because theyre interesting and guiding me as I design my own levels and character(s) in a similar style. Im finding this is a great way to study learn from in terms of level layout, texturing techniques, scale... etc
- The final thing towards the end of Day 1 (and going into Day 2 a bit) I worked on getting a Shiba model up to spec! Im very happy with how this turned out, it ofc took way longer than I hoped for but its the main character (and Ill potentially base other characters off this model), so its worth the time.
- Here is a doge with Banjo.
*As a bonus I also screen recorded the entire Shiba modelling session, so if it turned out ok I should be able to post a timelapse of that process sometime
- Finally here is the doge in-game with the movement system as of Day 1.
Pretty happy with how the movement system is coming along, its (surprise suprise) Banjo Kazooie inspired so I had to fire up the emulator to remember how BK's controls and camera work. Basically all player movement is relative to the camera angle, the camera can also be controlled by the player to rotate around. I'll also probably add a toggle to lock the camera behind the player, since it was always annoying in BK to constantly change the camera or hold R to auto-align.
I also have a basic jump implemented with some test platforms you can see in the background... but its pretty rubbish so far, a few more constraints are needed to keep jumping through the air under control. That will be a lot of work to balance I expect.. but not a day 1 problem. Movement should also look a lot better when the shiba is animated. Something I'll hopefully get to tomorrow if I have time (altho unfortunetly Friday and Saturday dont look great for gamedev). But it will look a lot more natural and alive rather than a sliding statue once some animation is happening...
Thats all for Day 1, a massive post, other days will be shorter since I shouldnt be spending this time typing things up and making gifs, Ive just gone crazy this past 24+ hours getting some intial progress on the board.