Day 3 Progress, AKA "Enemy design? What enemy design?":
Today was unfortunately a bit less productive than yesterday and the day before. I started the day remodeling my weird creepy giant sun because I was bothered by this:
My sun keeps getting these weird fuzzy edges. I was getting an error message in the console about the model having a poly count that was way too high, so i figured that might be the problem. I lowered the poly count significantly but it ate up a pretty big chunk of time because I had to remodel it completely! (It's a simple model, but hey, I'm a perfectionist). Turns out that fix didn't help, so now my sun still has that weird little fuzzy problem. If anyone knows where this problem comes from, let me know! It's not a huge deal, doesn't affect the visuals too badly and obviously the game still plays well, but if there's a solution out there that would be cool too. (Did lots of googling, to no avail). OH, also, the fuzziness only comes up when I test the game. In the scene itself, the model looks great: no fuzzies involved.
Good news about that ordeal, though: the sun actually looks a lot cooler than before! I'm not sure players will notice a difference but his smile is a bit wider and his eyes look a bit more deranged. Good stuff!
Other Non-Enemy stuff I did today:
- Arranged the clouds so they don't look absolutely random and scattered.
- Made a much nicer title screen! It should work well for now- eventually (if I still end up liking this game enough to keep working on it) I may want to add other modes to the game and this minimalist screen might end up not cutting it, but for now, I'm happy. I was thinking of implementing the same code I used for the tennis ball marker to the text so it'll float up and down as well, just for shits haha.
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Turns out, they actually look really lovely coming up behind the trees! I still need to implement some simple code so the clouds will move slightly, but that can be pushed to tomorrow.
I got a lot less done today than I wanted to, but man does it feel good to have the very first steps towards a working enemy. With the following code done and dusted, I've got a few very specific next steps on my mind:
- Design, model, and do some simple moving animations for an enemy. This has to be the top priority now!
- Code that has the screen fade to red if the enemy reaches the player. I have a tutorial lined up for the fade part and code in mind for calculating enemy/player interaction, so it shouldn't be too bad.
- A timer. This isn't a necessity if it gets down to the wire, but honestly I do really want it. None of my previous games have replay value (as I'm very guilty of prioritizing giving off a feeling/telling a story over hardcore game design/mechanics), and I don't want that to be the case with this game. Just the idea of people wanting to beat their record time on my game sounds legit amazing, so, yeah. Timer.
- Also think a death counter could be a good idea. At the end, I could have the game display the time and the player death count side by side?
- Cloud code!
- I just got an urge to find out if I can have wind blow through the trees. That would look really cool.... 🤔
I hope you other jammers had a more productive day than I did! But hey, it's good to take breaks. Keep at it guys, but try not to overwork and/or over stress!
I also wanted to real quick thank everyone who's commented and/or read my devlogs thus far. I didn't suspect anyone to pay attention to these, really, and it makes me so happy to read what everyone has to say (and to just see the view count, too, for those of you who are shy!) If you're reading this and have any critiques, comments, or questions, let me know!