Alright, it's late so i'll make this short - I've been toying around with the idea of having a 'live' menu screen instead of the old glowing red graphic I had before. So after some fiddling with the cool ruined city scene assets and using TheMan and TheBeastie, I've mocked something together.
The idea will be to have a dialog slide in on right when you select Modify Character, Change Settings or Find A Server, Exit is pretty self explanatory. This menu is non functional, but you get some idea with the music and sound effects.
I'll be bugging my animator (Ryan) to help me add some cool loopable graphics for the beasties and also get a couple background quality soldiers in place so there will be some shooting and roaring and such things :).
Looking good IMO - but perhaps I'm a bit bias!
Check it out here: Nightfall Menu
Sunday 22 September 2013
Sunday 25 August 2013
The Story So Far!
Alright so i'll keep things on blogger.com a while longer, it's a nice setup and i'm finding wordpress to be a pita. I've been roofing, changing jobs, getting certifications (TOGAF 9 Foundation so far!) and lots of stuff, but here is the most recent build of Nightfall:
http://nightfall.logicwell.com
So for Nightfall, about the name - it's working for me atm but I have some thoughts about how the game will work as work progresses. Obviously the whole zombie/sandbox/survival theme is saturated, but the notion of "night time = uber zombies" seems a little disingenuous to me as well and doesn't quite fit with my story.
About the story, I'll post a quick synopsis of it to give some idea where this is all headed.
The game starts (single player/fresh game) with you in a cryo-stasis tube, looking out into a fuzzy laboratory as your surroundings are falling apart, it feels like an earthquake. Banging on the tube to try and escape you see a robot come over and open the tube for you. It welcomes you back as "Number 382" and assists you with leaving the tube.
After getting out of the tube and gaining your bearings, the robot refers to you as Father, and tells you there is little time to fill you in, normally he'd use the cerebral implants to confer a full situational update but at this time that is not possible with the Drones at our door.
The Drones as it turns out, are driven by a near sentient nano technology, Alien in origin. Robot explains further, telling you humanity was attacked by what are believed to be the last vestiges of a violent Alien race, three ships in total attacked earth with a bombardment that drove much of humanity to the brink of extinction. The survivors developed advanced robotics to combat the Drones which came next - like a dust settling on the earth the nano colonies would form collectives that when fused with a dead creature, could re purpose said creatures body to use as a weapon - seeking out remaining humans and eliminating them.
As it turns out, our immune systems were easily able to kill off attempts to infect living humans, in fact animals too were able to fight off infections. The nano colonies needed an intact nervous system and brain, fusing themselves to that body and in doing so animating the "dead" while simultaneously becoming susceptible to to death themselves. Once fused, the colonies become dependant on the host to survive themselves. One advantage the nano colonies have is converting bio-matter into fuel, but over time that became scarce so they had to fall back on photosynthesis to "recharge" during the daylight hours. These days, says the Robot, they are typically at their most dangerous during daytime.
The notion of immune systems gave Humanity an idea, and it was able to infect the Alien invading force with a trojan, destroying the three Alien ships. Without guidance, the Drones now stalk the earth destroying anything in their path. Robots become more and more intelligent, Robot himself is the first and only truly sentient robot and though the last of the robotic armies have finally succumbed to the Drone onslaught, he has a small memory card which he hands to you.
The lab is breaking apart it seems, daylight starting to pour in - this is no longer a safe area. The Robot tells you Humanity must step forward and cleanse the planet of the remaining Drones, while weakened by their war with the Robots, the Drones are still numerous - you must leave this lab and find remnants of Humanity to work with and save the planet.
The wall comes down and the remaining robots move in, outnumbered but able to buy you time to escape. As you make your way down through the back area of the lab a small floating robot greets you, he'll be your guide - or he fancies himself, Scout.
Guiding you out of the lab (this is tutorial section to learn movements and choose starting gear), you and Scout come by a base with an LED readout: Number 383. Scout explains you are a human clone of sorts, the base is a cloning machine, if you die you'll be reconstituted at one of many bases around the city. As you reach the exit, Drones start to enter the area - there are a couple backpacks of gear and you pick one then quickly leave out into the night ....
....
So, basically Drones will allow us to develop some cool creatures, from the dumb old shambling 'zombie' to some really cool stuff, for instance I'm thinking this game will allow for building a home base to protect and there will be a "siege drone" which has incorporated concrete barricades for hands and can smash down walls and doors quickly. Perhaps a sand worm kind of drone that can spawn inside your defences if you don't have a concrete floor.
Should be fun, anyhow back to roofing and certification obtaining, i'll be putting time back into Nightfall after the Unite 2013 conference!
http://nightfall.logicwell.com
So for Nightfall, about the name - it's working for me atm but I have some thoughts about how the game will work as work progresses. Obviously the whole zombie/sandbox/survival theme is saturated, but the notion of "night time = uber zombies" seems a little disingenuous to me as well and doesn't quite fit with my story.
About the story, I'll post a quick synopsis of it to give some idea where this is all headed.
The game starts (single player/fresh game) with you in a cryo-stasis tube, looking out into a fuzzy laboratory as your surroundings are falling apart, it feels like an earthquake. Banging on the tube to try and escape you see a robot come over and open the tube for you. It welcomes you back as "Number 382" and assists you with leaving the tube.
After getting out of the tube and gaining your bearings, the robot refers to you as Father, and tells you there is little time to fill you in, normally he'd use the cerebral implants to confer a full situational update but at this time that is not possible with the Drones at our door.
The Drones as it turns out, are driven by a near sentient nano technology, Alien in origin. Robot explains further, telling you humanity was attacked by what are believed to be the last vestiges of a violent Alien race, three ships in total attacked earth with a bombardment that drove much of humanity to the brink of extinction. The survivors developed advanced robotics to combat the Drones which came next - like a dust settling on the earth the nano colonies would form collectives that when fused with a dead creature, could re purpose said creatures body to use as a weapon - seeking out remaining humans and eliminating them.
As it turns out, our immune systems were easily able to kill off attempts to infect living humans, in fact animals too were able to fight off infections. The nano colonies needed an intact nervous system and brain, fusing themselves to that body and in doing so animating the "dead" while simultaneously becoming susceptible to to death themselves. Once fused, the colonies become dependant on the host to survive themselves. One advantage the nano colonies have is converting bio-matter into fuel, but over time that became scarce so they had to fall back on photosynthesis to "recharge" during the daylight hours. These days, says the Robot, they are typically at their most dangerous during daytime.
The notion of immune systems gave Humanity an idea, and it was able to infect the Alien invading force with a trojan, destroying the three Alien ships. Without guidance, the Drones now stalk the earth destroying anything in their path. Robots become more and more intelligent, Robot himself is the first and only truly sentient robot and though the last of the robotic armies have finally succumbed to the Drone onslaught, he has a small memory card which he hands to you.
The lab is breaking apart it seems, daylight starting to pour in - this is no longer a safe area. The Robot tells you Humanity must step forward and cleanse the planet of the remaining Drones, while weakened by their war with the Robots, the Drones are still numerous - you must leave this lab and find remnants of Humanity to work with and save the planet.
The wall comes down and the remaining robots move in, outnumbered but able to buy you time to escape. As you make your way down through the back area of the lab a small floating robot greets you, he'll be your guide - or he fancies himself, Scout.
Guiding you out of the lab (this is tutorial section to learn movements and choose starting gear), you and Scout come by a base with an LED readout: Number 383. Scout explains you are a human clone of sorts, the base is a cloning machine, if you die you'll be reconstituted at one of many bases around the city. As you reach the exit, Drones start to enter the area - there are a couple backpacks of gear and you pick one then quickly leave out into the night ....
....
So, basically Drones will allow us to develop some cool creatures, from the dumb old shambling 'zombie' to some really cool stuff, for instance I'm thinking this game will allow for building a home base to protect and there will be a "siege drone" which has incorporated concrete barricades for hands and can smash down walls and doors quickly. Perhaps a sand worm kind of drone that can spawn inside your defences if you don't have a concrete floor.
Should be fun, anyhow back to roofing and certification obtaining, i'll be putting time back into Nightfall after the Unite 2013 conference!
Saturday 15 June 2013
Long Awaited Progress Update
Awesome - a lot of bits are coming together. Of course, there's a good number of them falling apart too but that's why software development is inherently an iterative process - writing good code is difficult and requires going over familiar territory a few times. That's the way it's been for me since the last blog, but things are really looking up now.
One of the main issues I had was moving the TPC controller into a "real scene". For a while I want looking to white box my own city and while that is inevitable, i've decided to just use one of the asset store pre-built scenes - it's motivating to see how the TPC and Nightfall in general are coming along in a nice setting :).
I've been thinking about the name 'Nightfall', seems there are some publications, companies, etc... using it ... so i'm not sure it'll be an option when things are ready to brand and release. One name that occured to me was 'Homin Macabre'. If memory serves, the Spartans had something like 'Homin Noctra' (I really don't recall tbh) and it meant 'a beautiful death' .. my game centers around a whole lot of killing, so perhaps a play on that phrase to mean 'a beautiful slaughter' :).
So now I have the TPC climbing and vaulting, fixed some nasty little bugs such as running slides done on an angle caused TheMan to just keep on a' rotating. A host of animation blurps (still plenty of those, don't worry we wouldn't want to feel too self assured!) and right now I'm really trying to tweak the weapons and making them behave 'just so'.
I need to re-evaluate the whole RMB to melee/alt attack here, i'm thinking most folks would prefer iron sights and quasi-FPS zoom effect for precision, so i'll look into switching that up. Defiance the game had a good mechanic in this regard, just slap V(?) and you melee - sounds good to me.
Lot of work to be done to make control more fluid, but at this point I'm wanted to push forward again - the AI is just roughed in right now and stats/HUD don't really exist ... I'd like to tackle some of those issues as well as a game menu and such here soon.
Anyhow, need to optimize the web player here for a demo, will post that when ready (not for a bit) - my goal is to get a single player mini-game up and running before moving forward. Once I can get most of the risky bits hammered out i'd like to see about taking the kickstarter approach, i've been waiting for a game like this for a while so other like minded gamers could really help me move this game into the fast lane. For that reason i'm going to focus on fleshing out some game bits (less tech demo, more game!) and get a cutscene etc... done up.
Anyhow, here are some screen shots:
One of the main issues I had was moving the TPC controller into a "real scene". For a while I want looking to white box my own city and while that is inevitable, i've decided to just use one of the asset store pre-built scenes - it's motivating to see how the TPC and Nightfall in general are coming along in a nice setting :).
I've been thinking about the name 'Nightfall', seems there are some publications, companies, etc... using it ... so i'm not sure it'll be an option when things are ready to brand and release. One name that occured to me was 'Homin Macabre'. If memory serves, the Spartans had something like 'Homin Noctra' (I really don't recall tbh) and it meant 'a beautiful death' .. my game centers around a whole lot of killing, so perhaps a play on that phrase to mean 'a beautiful slaughter' :).
So now I have the TPC climbing and vaulting, fixed some nasty little bugs such as running slides done on an angle caused TheMan to just keep on a' rotating. A host of animation blurps (still plenty of those, don't worry we wouldn't want to feel too self assured!) and right now I'm really trying to tweak the weapons and making them behave 'just so'.
I need to re-evaluate the whole RMB to melee/alt attack here, i'm thinking most folks would prefer iron sights and quasi-FPS zoom effect for precision, so i'll look into switching that up. Defiance the game had a good mechanic in this regard, just slap V(?) and you melee - sounds good to me.
Lot of work to be done to make control more fluid, but at this point I'm wanted to push forward again - the AI is just roughed in right now and stats/HUD don't really exist ... I'd like to tackle some of those issues as well as a game menu and such here soon.
Anyhow, need to optimize the web player here for a demo, will post that when ready (not for a bit) - my goal is to get a single player mini-game up and running before moving forward. Once I can get most of the risky bits hammered out i'd like to see about taking the kickstarter approach, i've been waiting for a game like this for a while so other like minded gamers could really help me move this game into the fast lane. For that reason i'm going to focus on fleshing out some game bits (less tech demo, more game!) and get a cutscene etc... done up.
Anyhow, here are some screen shots:
Saturday 4 May 2013
AI Fun
Alright, so i've been in one of those slumps where you want to start over, try using some off the shelf asset store "fps" kits to race to the finish line. Anyhow, tried a few of them and quickly came to the realization that, to be honest, my TPC framework is a LOT further along than I gave myself credit for ... in fact, more polished than some of the libraries (much less than others). In the end, after whipping together a quick FPS demo, it became obvious to me that many of the "core" issues i'm running into with my own framework are not really resolved in any meaningful way by others.
One of the primary issues i'm facing is using a rigidbody character controller, instead of the CharacterController. But as it turns out, using the built in CC has a host of issues in an of itself, which really brought me full circle. Simply put, i'd rather deal with "sliding" on slope issues and having to fine tune grounding checks than some of the scene interaction issues that come with CC and how it reports collision events, etc.. (i.e. you attach everything to the CC or use a kinematic rigidbody as well which again, has its own issues yet).
So, time to take a step back from the TPC and make some more progress.
Couple game design aspects became apparent:
1. Weapons will allow for customization. In fact, i'm going to narrow down the weapon types as planned initially (pistol, melee 1hd/2hd, shotgun, rifle and smg). But one idea that appeals to me is that you can "level up" a weapon. This will be implemented with kill xp on the weapon, which opens up upgrade slots. Now one thought is to make this a crafting element ... but tbh, i'm not entirely sold on heavy crafting in the game right now - maybe down the road for a second iteration on the game. So i'm thinking a skill tree of sorts. Here's what is cool, this skill tree, will be more like a "wheel" ala TSW MMORPG. So you can do cool things like, upgrade your pistol to a "shotgun" style ammo for a spread effect. Maybe upgrade the trigger/firing mechanism to allow for full auto. I'm thinking there will be a few main categories for upgrades: firing mechanism, barrel, sights, ammo type, secondary attack and effect. The last will allow for DoT's, debuffs, etc... so Incindiary effect would perhaps apply a DoT on the enemy.
2. Player skill tree will interact with weapons. So if you want, perhaps you'll setup a pistol with incindiary rounds, then skill up your DoTs so that now you're approach is to "tag" creatures and let em' burn! Maybe you have a shotgun that debuffs their movement, allowing you to jump in and splash then back out of harms way, but with some survival skills to buff your movement and to enhance the slow effect, now the effect paralyzes small groups of enemies.
So, I'm going to focus now on building out a basic game to handle head, body and limb shots and some basic (playable) AI. Ideally, I'd like to get it so you can give a beastie a limp or use a head shot to stun it. Atm, head shots do 1.5x dmg, body shots 1x and limb shots 0.75x dmg.
Here's a picture of TheMan and TheBeastie together:
I'm not sure at this point if i want to go TOO crazy on limb shots. I mean, one thing I could do is allow for blowing off limbs and they keep crawling towards you. Maybe. My first approach is a bit more simple : for stun shot pause their movement and play an "ow mah head!" animation or for limp adjust navmesh agent speed to 0.5x and use a different walk animation. We'll see how that turns out.
Anyhow, most recent demo is up, excuse my budget blood effect :):
http://logicwell.com/nightfall/tpc.html
One of the primary issues i'm facing is using a rigidbody character controller, instead of the CharacterController. But as it turns out, using the built in CC has a host of issues in an of itself, which really brought me full circle. Simply put, i'd rather deal with "sliding" on slope issues and having to fine tune grounding checks than some of the scene interaction issues that come with CC and how it reports collision events, etc.. (i.e. you attach everything to the CC or use a kinematic rigidbody as well which again, has its own issues yet).
So, time to take a step back from the TPC and make some more progress.
Couple game design aspects became apparent:
1. Weapons will allow for customization. In fact, i'm going to narrow down the weapon types as planned initially (pistol, melee 1hd/2hd, shotgun, rifle and smg). But one idea that appeals to me is that you can "level up" a weapon. This will be implemented with kill xp on the weapon, which opens up upgrade slots. Now one thought is to make this a crafting element ... but tbh, i'm not entirely sold on heavy crafting in the game right now - maybe down the road for a second iteration on the game. So i'm thinking a skill tree of sorts. Here's what is cool, this skill tree, will be more like a "wheel" ala TSW MMORPG. So you can do cool things like, upgrade your pistol to a "shotgun" style ammo for a spread effect. Maybe upgrade the trigger/firing mechanism to allow for full auto. I'm thinking there will be a few main categories for upgrades: firing mechanism, barrel, sights, ammo type, secondary attack and effect. The last will allow for DoT's, debuffs, etc... so Incindiary effect would perhaps apply a DoT on the enemy.
2. Player skill tree will interact with weapons. So if you want, perhaps you'll setup a pistol with incindiary rounds, then skill up your DoTs so that now you're approach is to "tag" creatures and let em' burn! Maybe you have a shotgun that debuffs their movement, allowing you to jump in and splash then back out of harms way, but with some survival skills to buff your movement and to enhance the slow effect, now the effect paralyzes small groups of enemies.
So, I'm going to focus now on building out a basic game to handle head, body and limb shots and some basic (playable) AI. Ideally, I'd like to get it so you can give a beastie a limp or use a head shot to stun it. Atm, head shots do 1.5x dmg, body shots 1x and limb shots 0.75x dmg.
Here's a picture of TheMan and TheBeastie together:
I'm not sure at this point if i want to go TOO crazy on limb shots. I mean, one thing I could do is allow for blowing off limbs and they keep crawling towards you. Maybe. My first approach is a bit more simple : for stun shot pause their movement and play an "ow mah head!" animation or for limp adjust navmesh agent speed to 0.5x and use a different walk animation. We'll see how that turns out.
Anyhow, most recent demo is up, excuse my budget blood effect :):
http://logicwell.com/nightfall/tpc.html
Tuesday 16 April 2013
Building North Section of Map
So, the north entrance to my city for Nightfall (anyone with suggestions on names?), which was repurposed by the military as a "base" in the last days is coming along, here is a peak:
Wednesday 10 April 2013
Making Maps and Unity Logger Done
Awesome, so my first self published asset is on the asset store : Unity Logger, check it out right here: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/7928
For the game itself, the big news is i've decided to handle the map design myself, instead of outsourcing - should be fun :).
So far the military section looks like:
Need to flesh out the two empty spots and then I'll move on to the truck stop area and shopping area south of the wall.
For the game itself, the big news is i've decided to handle the map design myself, instead of outsourcing - should be fun :).
So far the military section looks like:
Need to flesh out the two empty spots and then I'll move on to the truck stop area and shopping area south of the wall.
Thursday 28 March 2013
Transitional Forms
Perfect - managed to finally get a handle on all that "pop" going from one control handler/animation set to the next.
There's still some cleanup for sure, but I had a real issue when you performed a hop up onto platform, window climb through, etc... and those are all fluid now, even switching between unarmed and armed looks great.
It all came down to how i was using LookAt and the weights being applied. Before it was either 0f or 1f - off or on, and that created situations where after a hopup you'd see the character "snap" into another pose.
Now I'm using transitional blending/weighting, so when I go from the DefaultHandler -> HopUpHandler for instance, i'm lerping back to 0 or 1 as needed. This creates a much smoother experience and i'm finally feeling like theres some light at the end of the animation tunnel.
So, its not perfect however, there is still a bit of slop with vaulting I'll have to look into and climbing ladders is busted atm, those are my priorities atm.
After that, back to weapon bloom/clipping issues and overall combat "feel".
The crouching animations need help, badly - so that's going to be the focus for my animator here is to redo these animations so they look right and movement is more fluid/looks better.
I'll need to stop being picky soon though, it's almost time to start considering how i'll be handling wearing armour in the game. Or perhaps some combat enhancements like zooming and moving right mouse button to zoom toggle instead of melee alt attack. Perhaps I'll use 'F' for melee attack (as a default of course).
I'd like to package up the TPC so I'm able to import it into my project.
One thing that's really an impediment right now is my environment. Without a 3d modeller on hand here it's getting very difficult to do more advanced testing in a potential "game environment" as opposed to my happy little playground.
There are a few other bugs to work out though, my grounding code works but the detection of being grounded while walking off a ledge is annoying - you can get multiple fall/land events if you hit the edge just right. I believe this issue comes from not giving a time buffer or some means of delaying falling a bit more so that the edge detection is not such an issue... perhaps an "hop forward" animation might seal the deal, but then what if the user is just trying to edge up to look over the roof edge and it fires :).
Another bug, which imo is more unity physics related, is the problem of capsule colliders vs an overhanging collider. So if you have something about eye height, and you run into it, the capsule collider gets pushed "downwards" into the ground. Do this aggressively enough, and you'll find yourself stuck or falling through the ground.
Ugh.
That will be interesting to deal with, it has to do with rigidbody interactions i'm sure, but for now i'm focused on gameplay elements so it'll have to wait.
There's still some cleanup for sure, but I had a real issue when you performed a hop up onto platform, window climb through, etc... and those are all fluid now, even switching between unarmed and armed looks great.
It all came down to how i was using LookAt and the weights being applied. Before it was either 0f or 1f - off or on, and that created situations where after a hopup you'd see the character "snap" into another pose.
Now I'm using transitional blending/weighting, so when I go from the DefaultHandler -> HopUpHandler for instance, i'm lerping back to 0 or 1 as needed. This creates a much smoother experience and i'm finally feeling like theres some light at the end of the animation tunnel.
So, its not perfect however, there is still a bit of slop with vaulting I'll have to look into and climbing ladders is busted atm, those are my priorities atm.
After that, back to weapon bloom/clipping issues and overall combat "feel".
The crouching animations need help, badly - so that's going to be the focus for my animator here is to redo these animations so they look right and movement is more fluid/looks better.
I'll need to stop being picky soon though, it's almost time to start considering how i'll be handling wearing armour in the game. Or perhaps some combat enhancements like zooming and moving right mouse button to zoom toggle instead of melee alt attack. Perhaps I'll use 'F' for melee attack (as a default of course).
I'd like to package up the TPC so I'm able to import it into my project.
One thing that's really an impediment right now is my environment. Without a 3d modeller on hand here it's getting very difficult to do more advanced testing in a potential "game environment" as opposed to my happy little playground.
There are a few other bugs to work out though, my grounding code works but the detection of being grounded while walking off a ledge is annoying - you can get multiple fall/land events if you hit the edge just right. I believe this issue comes from not giving a time buffer or some means of delaying falling a bit more so that the edge detection is not such an issue... perhaps an "hop forward" animation might seal the deal, but then what if the user is just trying to edge up to look over the roof edge and it fires :).
Another bug, which imo is more unity physics related, is the problem of capsule colliders vs an overhanging collider. So if you have something about eye height, and you run into it, the capsule collider gets pushed "downwards" into the ground. Do this aggressively enough, and you'll find yourself stuck or falling through the ground.
Ugh.
That will be interesting to deal with, it has to do with rigidbody interactions i'm sure, but for now i'm focused on gameplay elements so it'll have to wait.
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