Browsing 'Programming': Posts from Game Design and Programming
15-02-2018
Hello reader(s)! Let me start by telling you a short story about a boy who decided to work on a programming project together with some of his friends. They opted to use the Unity engine and creation tool, along with its handy feature called simply ”Collaborations”. What he thought would be a nice and stress-free learning experience soon turned into a nightmare…
Yea, I guess you already know where I’m heading with this, so I’ll cut to the chase: today’s blog post […]
15-02-2018
Hello reader(s)! Let me start by telling you a short story about a boy who decided to work on a programming project together with some of his friends. They opted to use the Unity engine and creation tool, along with its handy feature called simply ”Collaborations”. What he thought would be a nice and stress-free learning experience soon turned into a nightmare…
Yea, I guess you already know where I’m heading with this, so I’ll cut to the chase: today’s blog post […]
Shield activation
Hello reader
The artifact that i will be writing about this week is the shield activation. it’s one of the core thing we have in the game and it’s one script that activates one of four shields when the player gives the right input.
the script work by being on a empty gameobject that has all the shield gameobjects as children and then accesses the sprite renderer and collider on the each of the children. The Script when the game is running […]
Shield activation
Hello reader
The artifact that i will be writing about this week is the shield activation. it’s one of the core thing we have in the game and it’s one script that activates one of four shields when the player gives the right input.
the script work by being on a empty gameobject that has all the shield gameobjects as children and then accesses the sprite renderer and collider on the each of the children. The Script when the game is running […]
Enemy and obstacle spawning!
After creating the soundtracks I decided to create a script for spawning enemies. I chose to use C# because I have more experience with that compared to Javascript.
My approach was to create an empty game object which holds the script called “SpawnController” as a component. This will game object will be placed in the game scene since that is where the enemies will be spawned.
What the script does is spawn a random entity after a certain timeThreshold somewhere between minSpawnDuration and […]
Enemy and obstacle spawning!
After creating the soundtracks I decided to create a script for spawning enemies. I chose to use C# because I have more experience with that compared to Javascript.
My approach was to create an empty game object which holds the script called “SpawnController” as a component. This will game object will be placed in the game scene since that is where the enemies will be spawned.
What the script does is spawn a random entity after a certain timeThreshold somewhere between minSpawnDuration and […]
Orbiting Fishies
So last post I talked about the big fishy, so in this post I’m gonna cover the smaller, but just as important fishy, I think it’s been dubbed cave fish(y). Since I’m the programmer I won’t be talking so much about the look, but more about the movement and “AI”.
Smashing!
An Early choice I made was to have the fish very interactable and leave the door open for more gameplay dynamics, so I wanted the cave fish to be fully physics […]
Orbiting Fishies
So last post I talked about the big fishy, so in this post I’m gonna cover the smaller, but just as important fishy, I think it’s been dubbed cave fish(y). Since I’m the programmer I won’t be talking so much about the look, but more about the movement and “AI”.
Smashing!
An Early choice I made was to have the fish very interactable and leave the door open for more gameplay dynamics, so I wanted the cave fish to be fully physics […]
Flight of the Bees
Hello again!
Fredrik here again and this week I have mostly worked on how to make the movement in our game feel better. This is because, based on the feedback we got from the alpha testing, we decided during a sprint planning meeting that the current movement we had was very lackluster. From the testers we had some people saying that our player could have been anything else and it would still have made as much sense as a bee from […]
Flight of the Bees
Hello again!
Fredrik here again and this week I have mostly worked on how to make the movement in our game feel better. This is because, based on the feedback we got from the alpha testing, we decided during a sprint planning meeting that the current movement we had was very lackluster. From the testers we had some people saying that our player could have been anything else and it would still have made as much sense as a bee from […]
Lighting in Umibozu
Context
The game concept my team and I are developing features a cone of light that reveals elements of the game world as its core mechanic. In the original concept the cone originates from the player’s avatar and and rotate automatically and the player can toggle this spot light on and off. In addition a halo of light surrounds the player, extending over a shorter distance than the light cone. Having the light cone on also depletes the player ship’s battery, […]
Lighting in Umibozu
Context
The game concept my team and I are developing features a cone of light that reveals elements of the game world as its core mechanic. In the original concept the cone originates from the player’s avatar and and rotate automatically and the player can toggle this spot light on and off. In addition a halo of light surrounds the player, extending over a shorter distance than the light cone. Having the light cone on also depletes the player ship’s battery, […]
Game Design-group Lycanthrope AI Bees part 2 I’m firing my Lasers
Hello, today I will write about how I upgraded my AI bees for our game. Our AI bees relied on circle colliders, but now they use line casting for detecting all kind of things, but mainly the distance to the player and if a point in the formation is empty. This new system will allow our bees to react dynamically to the player, the honeycomb formation, and the different positions the bees will have in the idle state. I made this […]
Game Design-group Lycanthrope AI Bees part 2 I’m firing my Lasers
Hello, today I will write about how I upgraded my AI bees for our game. Our AI bees relied on circle colliders, but now they use line casting for detecting all kind of things, but mainly the distance to the player and if a point in the formation is empty. This new system will allow our bees to react dynamically to the player, the honeycomb formation, and the different positions the bees will have in the idle state. I made this […]
Dev Blog 2, The Harpoon Projectile
This is the second part of my blog detailing what I have worked on while creating the game Umibozo together with my team, based on the designed created by another team.
In Umibozo the player controls a ship equipped with a harpoon. While usually used for fishing, it proves particularly useful when monsters start attacking. In this blog post I will talk about how we designed and implemented the mechanics of the harpoon.
The original design explained the harpoon as a simple […]
Dev Blog 2, The Harpoon Projectile
This is the second part of my blog detailing what I have worked on while creating the game Umibozo together with my team, based on the designed created by another team.
In Umibozo the player controls a ship equipped with a harpoon. While usually used for fishing, it proves particularly useful when monsters start attacking. In this blog post I will talk about how we designed and implemented the mechanics of the harpoon.
The original design explained the harpoon as a simple […]
The Design and Code of Aetherial’s Harpoon
As I have mentioned in my previous blog post, we wanted the Harpoon to be more versatile than it was supposed to be in the original concept document. Instead of being the weapon of choice for the player we decided to make it slow firing, but deal a lot of damage. This way the player still wanted to use it in certain situations, but since the harpoon also couldn’t be aimed he would have to use the beam attack to […]
The Design and Code of Aetherial’s Harpoon
As I have mentioned in my previous blog post, we wanted the Harpoon to be more versatile than it was supposed to be in the original concept document. Instead of being the weapon of choice for the player we decided to make it slow firing, but deal a lot of damage. This way the player still wanted to use it in certain situations, but since the harpoon also couldn’t be aimed he would have to use the beam attack to […]
2018.02.15 – Enemy follow/move towards Player in a 2D Environment (NOT Pathfinding!)
Topic: How to create a basic “chasing” A.I. (i.e. stupid zombie like )
Why this is NOT pathfinding!
Simply put pathfinding implies obstacle avoidance, which this method doesn’t do. In other words, using the method described below, your enemies will be running head first into obstacles and do so until they are killed or they are destroyed.
Why it is a working placeholder solution for our game?
Considering the enemies in this game are wedding-attendees who transformed into zombie-like demons, the player expects […]
2018.02.15 – Enemy follow/move towards Player in a 2D Environment (NOT Pathfinding!)
Topic: How to create a basic “chasing” A.I. (i.e. stupid zombie like )
Why this is NOT pathfinding!
Simply put pathfinding implies obstacle avoidance, which this method doesn’t do. In other words, using the method described below, your enemies will be running head first into obstacles and do so until they are killed or they are destroyed.
Why it is a working placeholder solution for our game?
Considering the enemies in this game are wedding-attendees who transformed into zombie-like demons, the player expects […]
Lighting effects in Unity
I’m Guy Dimor, lead coder for team Wendigo, and today I’ll write about my journey into the wonderful world of lighting, Unity, and the combination thereof.
After the alpha playtests, my group decided that our immediate priorities are the implementation of the ‘fog mechanic’, concealing the true nature of game objects, and lighting effects, to add to the atmosphere of the game and greatly enhance the player’s experience.
Once I was done with the aforementioned fog mechanic, which involved using sprite masks […]
Lighting effects in Unity
I’m Guy Dimor, lead coder for team Wendigo, and today I’ll write about my journey into the wonderful world of lighting, Unity, and the combination thereof.
After the alpha playtests, my group decided that our immediate priorities are the implementation of the ‘fog mechanic’, concealing the true nature of game objects, and lighting effects, to add to the atmosphere of the game and greatly enhance the player’s experience.
Once I was done with the aforementioned fog mechanic, which involved using sprite masks […]
Second Post: Mist and UI
I want to do some things that I do not feel I did properly last time. First, I wish to introduce myself, my team, and the project we are working on in more detail.
My name is Adam Olsson, I study game design and programming at Uppsala university campus Gotland. I am currently, together with my team called team Zombie, in the middle of an assignment to make a simple shoot’em up based on a concept document that was written by […]
Second Post: Mist and UI
I want to do some things that I do not feel I did properly last time. First, I wish to introduce myself, my team, and the project we are working on in more detail.
My name is Adam Olsson, I study game design and programming at Uppsala university campus Gotland. I am currently, together with my team called team Zombie, in the middle of an assignment to make a simple shoot’em up based on a concept document that was written by […]