Polish, Implementing scripted events, and general ramblings of design ideologies...
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Not posted in a while due to crazy work amount and really not too much to show with fixing all the scripting issues that were occurring. Anyway, lots to show and talk about so I created a video for viewing - bare in mind it still has a lot of polish to get it a better working state: Skip to around 1 minute ish mark for gameplay start (I had published the game so I recorded accessing it through the client)
On with the ramblings. A few people have tested the map and reported similar issues, the controls being clunky and it being difficult to shoot, though the movement is out of my control due to the engine being an RTS (and my limited coding knowledge) I've forced the movement to work in WASD with W always being North facing in the map etc etc. This works fine, but takes some getting used to for the most part.
Some additions have been made for enemy placement and polish to some of the areas with limited assets. I've added additional doodads into make the areas slightly different to hopefully tell some more narrative:
Zerg Holding Pen
For this section I thought adding some blood decals and dead marines/zerg would start help with telling the story. In the previous room there's a few sound queues about the laboratory. The holding pen door opens to release the remaining zerglings to help with the first encounter for the player.
Attention to detail (depth n stuff)
Zerg Holding Room Breakout
This room got overhauled quite a bit and I placed the enemies in. I figured the pool of water would look better with an acidic vibe to it, though I needed some logic to explain why: For this I simply added in the zerg biomass on the ledge that seeps into the water. Makes sense? Right!?
Lost facility
The facility is fully overrun at this stage, with more enemies being place. Though I'm still tweaking their aggressive states and behaviors, as well as their leash range.
Big bad boss room
This is the boss room. Trying to script this guy is proving problematic. Especially due to the issues I am having with combat scripts.
Scripts! Scripts! Scripts!
Right, two majors ish issues with the scripts/combat etc. Firstly, I want the player to be able to shooter easier/better - at the current state, the player just shoots in the direction the unit is facing - makes it a little hard to shoot at certain angles. However, I have not been able to fix it so the player faces the direciton of the mouse click - I thought a simple variable with XYZ coordinates of the mouse in the game world and then issue order for target unit to face the XYZ would work, but no deal noel.
Additionally, combat! I can't get this to work how I had envisioned, lack of scripting/coding knowledge here. I've adjusted the data values of the spells to be quite high (and everything between low/high) to kill enemies, but one of two outcomes is occurring, the attack animation isn't interacting with the enemies/environment, or it takes ages to kill the enemy unit, regardless of damage dealt. The work around is just to have the trigger set to kill unit if they take damage from the effect of the players gun (which is mostly for visuals) it's not a bad work around, but this brings up problems with the bigger enemies I wanted to place and especially the boss. One hitting a boss is no fun...
Movement Logic script (half of it anyway)
Here's a small section of the movement with WASD - relatively simple to get work, but not as fluid as I'd like.
A simple script for a scripted event (zerg breakout)
Again, the simple stuff often tends to be the most irritating. The logic for the script seems simple, especially if you break it down, but then there's always an issue -in this case, the zerglings are stuck in the holding pen and don't interact with the player, Even with a forced unit command. I need to fix this!
Another short update as my module progress. As usual the pre-production stage is underway and as such I'm still in the process of adding assets (doodads) throughout the level. As previously I'm aiming to help aid the simple narrative with the use of in game props and their changing style as the player progresses through the level. In contrast to previous updates I've started implementing destroyed assets to push the narrative forward, as my primary goal is to avoid too much repetitiveness through multiple use of similar assets. Continuing on from my last update I've refined the long hallway with hints for the player, via placing certain assets down: The hallway is easy to navigate at first glance, but as the player progresses parts of the ceiling will begin to fall down causing for avoidance based mechanics. Though my aim for this level/prototype is not to create revolutionary mechanics or level designs but simple to test my ability regarding these design
A small update considering the state of things, rudimentary AI has been implemented, simple debug spawn and they will run to location of newly placed building and perform the "build" task. I'm still deciding on the initial ideal of the game, Main premises are: Large world Random Encounters (Feral Animals/Weather/Other Civilizations) Resource Depletion Sense of wonder! To get these implemented might prove challenging, though with some better assets the sense of wonder can easily be achieved with "the money shot"* Designer Note: The "money shot" for lack of a better idiom is generally used for that awe-struck moment a player sees something cool, this is generally easier to do in First Person or Third Person games due to lighting/player vision and forced direction for the player (mostly linear, but non-linear works too). Now, I've never seen this in RTS style games, as generally the environments are static and there's other th
Embed The Narrative! And the mechanics I guess! Something I enjoy doing a lot with assets is to embed them into the narrative, again this is simple stuff but often times it goes unnoticed. If done well it pays off in the long run, though this is often limited to assets available when creating levels (in this case I don't have loads). This method of asset placement or mechanic introduction can help teach the player without being intrusive about it. Here's an obvious example: Now this is the most rudimentary example of embedded narrative; a dead corpse propped against a wall. First thoughts on seeing this from a players perspective are generally: "eh a dead guy" or "that's interesting" - a few other thoughts are likely related to why the corpse is there/what happened to it/can I loot this etc etc. This can be used to a heightened degree later on, and be more inconspicuous, for example - if you were to create a boss room later on with say a l
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