Blog Covering the Past 3 Weeks

Okay so I haven't posted in a couple of weeks, this has been the basic run down.

I have changed my game idea from the 2 previous ideas. Project Asteroid Escape is now in development.

Story:
P:AE sits the player in the seat of a spacecraft which, in a rather cliché way, is fleeing an enemy fleet en route to warn the rest of the Human Space Navy. Knowing you'll less likely be followed you make the daring move into an asteroid field. You mission, get as far through the asteroid field as possible, or be blown to pieces trying.

Aim:
The aim of the game is to get the highest score, you won't ever be able to reach the human navy but the game will have a difficulty curve fitting to that of a high score game.

February 19th Session:

During this session we pitched this idea. Since this pitch some things have changed, however during the pitch I proposed the following:

Controls - Two Sliders, one along the bottom of the screen, and one along the side (side depending whether the user is left or right handed), which will control the ship on an axis like schematic. So whatever the x position of the side scrollbar is will be the same as the x position of the ship, and same for the y position with the bottom slider.

Aim - get there in the most efficient manner - Have other in game objects like fuel cells and boosters, either get to the destination the quickest, or in the least amount of time, each will score points.

Platform - starting on PC and working its way into tablet once the pc version was finished.

Suggestions from Dan included having different paths, one maybe easier but takes longer, another maybe even, and a third that takes less time and fuel, but is a lot harder.

We were also shown Pivotal Tracker, a site designed for Time Management, where you split the project down into sections and then those sections down into tasks.

The week following this session I built a basic Cube that would travel continuously down a tunnel of 4 cubes and had the main cube collide with the 4 boundary cubes so that they actually acted like boundaries.

February 26th Session:

In this session I trying to sort out my time management using pivotal tracker, I split the project down into individual tasks and continued working on the project.

By this point I kind began to ignore the ideal of putting it onto tablet soon after the pc version was finished, instead I decided to change the controls to the arrow keys for now. And instead of implementing the tablet controls along with the pc controls, focus on the pc version as that's what I'm going to be delivering first. I figured it would be best to have a working polished game for the PC, than a not so polished game that works on both tablet and PC.

The following week I had other assignments that took priority so this project was put to the side for a week.

March 5th: Having not progressed much from the week before, I spent this session readjusting to the project and working on what I already had.

The following week just gone however I made some changes. Firstly I took away the barrier cubes, as my collision with them was all position based and they were rendered useless. Decided that the dame was definitely going to be high score based and you won't be able to reach the fleet, however pushing so hard to try and beat the top score!

By the time I got to todays session I had code and a project that has most of the main core mechanics functioning but not properly. By the end of todays sessions I had all these mechanics fully functional with just one or two more to put in, then it's onto the looks of the game.

Currently the game generates random asteroid fields as you progress through it, the player must use the arrow keys to avoid the asteroids and if you do collide with one it gets destroyed, the player loses life and also slows down. When player health reaches 0 the player is destroyed and the game ends.

From here I need to implement a HUD, a title and menu screen, a pause menu, maybe some options. Also I would like for the player to speed up as the game progresses to counter when the player gets slowed down.

After that it's all about making it look nice, and messing around with 3d models...

Here's a screenshot depicting how the screen is going to look roughly:

Unity 3D Project 1. Initial Ideas.

Hey Guys

For my 2nd term game development project I'm using the Unity 4 game engine to produce a game which contains standard game play mechanics with a new personal innovative twist!

I've had several ideas which I would like to implement but the development process is what'll define what I can get done. Being a newcomer to unity I don't want to take on anything too challenging but at the same time having a challenge will make me learn more. Much like the stencyl project going into this project without knowing quite how much unity can do, or how well I'm going to be able to use unity. Is going to make choosing a game to build a challenge.

My first idea is called Project Mini Racers.
The player assumes the role of a "micro machine" type vehicle racing other vehicles to the end of the level. It'll be a side scroller 3D environment moving from left to right. The player will have to avoid obstacles and debris as they race across the level and will be able to gain powerups that allow them to do more than just race. For example there will be a point where the racers will have to go through some water, now if the player picked up the boat power up they won't have a problem going across the water, for those who didn't pick up the boat power up they'll be slowed down by the water.
The art style wouldn't be serious but would be visually appealing with lots of "sparkle" as it were. The game would be easy but attractive on the eyes and look and feel playful and playable.

My second idea is quite simple yet I believe it could be effective.
As a kid I would become more and more furious whilst playing Zelda OoT when it came to kikori forest. Where I'd randomly run around the maze like set up until I managed to get to where I wanted to go. Until I realized if you followed the music you'd get there no problem. I would get a piece of paper and write down which way I've gone.
This inspired this next idea. it's plain and simple. You've been dropped into the middle of a maze, a massive maze, with no idea where to go, but some reward at the end, and the whole idea is you'll need a pen and paper next to you to get to the end. The player would be put into some scenario where you've ended up in this maze and you need to get out. The game would use only a mouse click, where you'd get to a junction you'd be presented with the options of where to go next. For example if you came to a t-junction you'd have either left right or back.
There would have to be some sort of threat or timer for the user to get out in time otherwise the user could just get lost forever. Perhaps the game could also have multiple floors and when you reach the floor above/below it gets more and more difficult.

These are just two prototype ideas and I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to go for yet. The first idea would be more time and resource consuming having to learn a whole new load of physics for racing games and then create all of the different assets, whereas a maze game could be made rather simply and not have too much too it.