Work Post

4:23am - Well I'm down at the McDonalds again, since I'm pretty well rested and sort-of got up really late. I was working earlier as you might have noticed, and I guess I'm going to work some more, but I'm a bit troubled. The call ended around 2:30am and I tried to have some fun playing games instead of working, and I just couldn't. I'm not sure what's wrong but none of my games were appealing to me, except remotely, and when I went to play something all interest in it would dissipate immediately.

I guess I'm in kind of a strange place right now; introspective and thoughtfilled. I'm not sure what I really want to do with myself. I mean, I'm probably going to open up Unity and make some games, and that's great, but I guess I'm feeling a bit lost in the larger scheme. Now that I'm talking about it, it's flooding back a bit. My obligations. I'm waiting to hear back from the Job Developer about my interview reschedule, so there's that, and I haven't heard from Zax so I'm still kind of up in the air on the game we were supposedly making together. Right now I'm getting ready for Ludum Dare 40.

But what else? Mmm... Mostly I've been dealing with getting ready for Christmas. Buying and organizing presents for some of my friends. It's my brother's Birthday today; Happy Birthday if you're reading this! I expect to visit for dinner on Tuesday. I was dealing with the emotional fallout of the negative reaction to that post I made a week ago, the non-work-post one. I'm mostly over that now, and I made a new friend, so that's good.

I guess that's everything.

The video games I've been playing lately are Disgaea 3, Final Fantasy 15, and Sonic Forces. I worked myself into a grindy hole in Disgaea 3 and I have to grind my way out of it so I'm a bit 'not wanting to play' there, but I'll probably get back to it. I finished Disgaea 1 and 2 after all. Final Fantasy 15 is okay, it hasn't really blown me away yet but I've only been playing for around 20 hours. Sonic Forces was pretty good until the last few levels, which are really long and complex. I got to what I think is the second last level of the main story, and then my interest kind of fell off. I really enjoyed the game up to that point but those last three levels were so long and difficult it was frustrating. It's kind of weird in that it's not that I'm failing the levels exactly, I'm giving up because I didn't get a good enough score. That's the only game I've played like that, even back when games were meant to be played like that.

4:52am - I finally went and got something to eat to justify my presence at the McDonalds. Their computers were down for a bit, thankfully their internet wasn't! It's nice to eat. I guess I should get started?

5:04am - Yes I should definately get started, and stop reading Twitter too. ;)

Now the only things remaining in the base code for this game are the main 'menu'/splash screen and the enemy brains. Hmm... Interestingly, I'm not sure I'm even going to make the player take damage/get killed by the enemies. The specifics of that will depend on the game I make from the base code. I just want to write the code to have them walk around. Maybe I'll even make a third one that jumps? Maybe not. We'll see.

6:59am - Well that was an interesting two hours. I made the title screen with a button that, when pressed, switches the scene to the next. It's a bit awkward though. There's no class for the Scene so you can't drag a scene into the inspector, you have to refer to it by name or path, and it has to be registered in the build. Very perculiar. Anyways I overcomplicated it and did a lot of research into the SceneManager class only to make a very basic SceneLoader component.

Now I'm going to make the brains for my enemies.

7:19am - Alright the sun is rising and I'm getting very tired, I might go home soon. Also I've run into a problem with my enemy brain. Well, a few problems really.

Problem 1: Unless I make the brain divorced from the Enemy's state, I'll have to create a brain instance for each enemy, it won't go with the prefab.

Problem 2: I'm not sure how to get collision data from the Enemy to the Brain's Think function.


Hmm... Maybe I can do it after all. Now that I've written down my problems, the gears are a turning.

I have access to the mobileController in the brain, and through it, everything on the gameobject where the brain is injected. So I should be able to do raycasts and shapecasts from the mobile. Or I could make more components for checking like my GroundCheck.

I think I'll do that. I'll start with a wallcheck.

Oh but the facing becomes a concern! I could check both sides for a wall collision, I suppose, but at some point I have to face the problem of finding forward on my mobiles. Hmm...

7:35am - I'll think on the problem of facing for now. I'm getting very tired and also thinking about doing other things. I'm getting really dissatisfied with the Unity physics based movement for my player and enemies and thinking of switching to a non-physics solution. There is a really good non-physics based solution I downloaded a while back. But I'm too tired to start that now.

The other thing on my mind is that I want to make a wider variety of game base code!

I want to make an Adventure Game, a Beat-em-Up, a 2D Space Shooter, a Top Down Action-Adventure Game, and perhaps to crown it all a JRPG, and a 3D Space Game.

But I was already working on a JRPG! And that was going slow. And I don't think I could make all those games in base code form in the time before Ludum Dare. It's a bit funny since I said two Ludum Dares ago that I wanted to make Base Code for a bunch of different genres and publish them for others to use, but I haven't done that at all.

So we'll see how it goes.

For now I think I'm going to pack up, and head home.

Work Post

9:26pm - FACING! Oh facing, my old nemesis, we meet again! So where shall I put the facing data in my 2D platformer base code?

Let's see... I could make it a component or I could put it in the MobileMover since it's pretty intrinsically tied to movement.

9:32pm - Alright I put it in the MobileMover. It's a bool. True if it's facing right, false if it's facing left. It's set by the Move function based on control input, so it'll face the way it's moved, but not the way it's moving. So you can be pushed back while still facing the opposite direction.

Now I have to do wall detection in the facing direction.

10:04pm - Well the wall detection was detecting the floor, which is a problem. But also I realized I was doing physics raycasts in the update method rather than the fixed update method, since think happens on update. I'm not sure what to do about that.

The consideration of what to do should definately be in the brain... But maybe I can extrapolate the senses? If I make a sensor component with a public boolean flag if it detects a wall, the brain can poll that data. The facing is public data so the sensor can focus on the direction it's looking. That should work.

10:45pm - Alright! The sensor works! Now I just need to check it in the brain...

10:50pm - Yes! It works! The little green man walks into the wall, turns around, and now he goes up the slope too. The cost is that he might bump his head on the ceiling, but it works.

Now for the other type of enemy AI, the red turtle.

11:41pm - Well I've got a red enemy who sort of works, but only at slow speeds, 'cause he doesn't slow down fast enough to keep from sliding over the ledge. ^.^;;

I was trying to make a maxvelocity script earlier but it wouldn't work, but it might do if I only cap the horizontal speed? Hmm...

11:56pm - Alright I think that's good. It looks a lot better now that they have max velocities, and I made the player a little faster so he can outrun the enemies.

That should do it for the 2D Platformer Base Code.

Now what?

I'm going to eat some pizza.

12:19am - Pizza consumed!

Now I've got to decide what I'll do as my next project.

"I want to make an Adventure Game, a Beat-em-Up, a 2D Space Shooter, a Top Down Action-Adventure Game, and perhaps to crown it all a JRPG, and a 3D Space Game." I could also make a Roguelike.

Hmm... I think a 2D Space Shooter would be the easiest, but they're all pretty complicated compared to a 2D platformer.

5:07am - I ended up chatting with the guys, then curling up in bed and falling asleep for a bit! Well, more than a bit. I guess I was down for three hours or so?

5:48am - I've started working some more. I'm going to do some experiments with Kinematic Rigidbody2D's and the collisions between them when useFullKinematicContact is set to true. I might be able to use this for movement instead of normal physics for things like RPGs and Adventure Games where the player and NPCs should really be bouncing around/off eachother. Or other gametypes too. It depends on how well the collision system works. It won't be automatic like with Dynamic objects, I'll have to manually stop them when they collide, and keep them seperated, I expect.

7:06am - I think I'm ready to give up on making a kinematic player. I might be able to make it detect collisions but I'm not sure what to do with them once they happen. I was thinking I'd move the player away from the collided object but when there's multiple collisions going on, it seems like it would just flip out, bouncing back and forth.

7:10am - I'm going to take another look at the Estheria prototype and see if I can get decent movement speed without bouncing in Unity's physics.

7:19am - It looks okay if I massively increase the mass of the other body. Hopefully that'll work. Also, looking at the Estheria code again made me feel bad, because it's so different from how I've been coding lately and I feel like it's so inferior. I've got to fix it up, soon, but for now I'm not sure that's what I want to work on.

Heck, I'm not sure I want to work at all right now. Maybe it's time for a break? Well I'll try...

7:31am - My brain's shootin' down every game I look at again. :/

Ah, I remember my Cognitive Behavioral Therapy group. I'm "Shoulding all over myself". I should do this or that, it's not good. If I don't want to do anything I don't have to.

I think I'm going to curl up in bed with my lappy and write about game ideas until I fall asleep.

7:39am - There we go, nice and comfy.

So, I'm not really sure what I want to do next now that I've got that 2D platformer base code done. I did list all those other games I'd like to make base code for but I'm less enthusiastic for them because they're more difficult.

Beat 'em Ups and Adventure Games both use pseudo 3D movement, in that there's a height or depth component to them. Adventure Games are generally less complicated, mostly dealing with wandering around environments rubbing things on other things until something happens. If I made one it would probably be more like a visual novel... Beat 'em Ups on the other hand have vastly more complex enemies compared to a platformer. Usually. So there's a lot of work to go into one of those.

Now that I think of it, a top-down adventure game like Zelda isn't that different from a Beat 'em Up, under the hood. The perspective's different but it's got similar combat. The main addition is puzzles.

Taking a step back, the reason I'm interested in making a Beat 'em Up, besides the fact they're fun to play, is that I have this great big idea for a randomly generated Beat 'em Up where the levels, themes, and enemies are randomized. You create your character with a robust character creator (that's also used for the random enemies) and you also create your 'special one' to rescue. I thought it would be fun to let people rescue their spouse or friend or whatever. The main problem with the game would be the content. I mean, there's only so much you can randomly generate, and it has to be built from parts. I'm thining something like Scribblenauts in terms of complexity. So, probably not going to actually happen.

I mentioned wanting to make a 2D Space Shooter; something like Asteroids but with enemies. Sinistar? Anyways the reason I'd want to make one is to then expand it into a 2D space exploration/trading game, something like Star Control. But that might be doomed; if you've been following me for long you probably know how I get with space games.

One thing I've thought about is mixing up the setting for a space game to be something else. I've got this great weird sci-fi setting idea about a bunch of digital people exploring the virtual space inside a Jupiter Brain. But I'm worried that setting would have the same problem as space games, where I try too hard to make it realistic...

Of course, I'm working on a JRPG with Zax (theoretically) already so that's going on. I've been thinking of bringing the World of Thardomhainn forward using some of that code, or possibly switching designs with it and making it a Roguelike.

Of course if I made a Roguelike it would probably be more like Dwarf Fortress and then we're getting into huge scope creep again. XD

Another game rattling around in my head is the Frontier Game. A mix of city-builder and wilderness explorer.

I'm suddenly reminded of a game I liked quite a bit, Azure Dreams. It was a roguelike on the PS1 where you were using the loot you brought back from the dungeon to build up a town. That's not too far off from what I was thinking, though I wasn't thinking roguelike. I was thinking more like the wilderness in Monster Hunter games...

Hmm...

I was just thinking I could do THAT with World of Thardomhainn but tha might be a bit too over the top. Heh.

I keep thinking, the biggest problem with turning WoT into a roguelike is that Roguelikes are usually done solo, with a lone protagonist... and that's not entirely true. Nethack has its dog, Azure Dreams had monster pets, probably my most enjoyed Roguelike, Shiren the Wanderer on the DS, had you get joined by a few others on your journey... Geez. I guess I can still have the accompanyment of a party in a Roguelike. But, that would make balancing the difficulty a lot more trouble.

Oh yeah I just remembered, I also like Tower Defense games and I could make one of those.

Also God Games. I always wanted something like Black and White but MORE, you know?

Ahh well. I'm not sure what else there is to say. I think I'll end this post here and maybe read a bit more about roguelikes then go to sleep.