Michael Sio BLog

A level I am working on for a Car customization game

Been busy...

More to come.

Interactive buildings 

Mountain area test 01

Mountain area test 02

Mountain area test 03

Just a few images of the environment that i am currently working on. I plan to get small functions like doors and dialog boxes working by the next post, hopefully have a GIF show casing the functions next post.

MAYA IMAGES

UNITY IMAGES - testing the area

Building a small environment at the moment, I had started a kids cooking game based on kids TV show...but what ever.....on to the next project.

Here are a few screen shots more to come in the coming weeks. 

Below you will find links to all the projects that I have worked on this year, they are all free so feel free to try them all out.

https://chris-b.itch.io/project-fog <---Link to PROJECT FOG

https://msio.itch.io/spelling-gamelearn-to-spell-you-name <---Link Spelling Game

https://phasor.itch.io/super-batty-boy  <---Link to Super Batty Boy

After around four to five months of planning testing and building we can say that our game is ready for release, or as this post has been out for three days. 

Looking back at at the process I took for creating prototypes for testing or the final models for our main environment, I think everything was done to a level where both of us still had something to do and production never stopped. 

I can say if we did have more time maybe we could of done more prototyping for the core mechanic we were looking to use in the beginning, or more of a focus on the code for the parkour mechanic, in saying that I think Chris did try to make it work but with my limited knowledge of code we were only able to make a jet pack work for our game to replace the parkour movements.

If I had a chance to implement any of the models that didn't make it I would of put the train system in as well as the Epic boss that would of been at the higher levels awaiting a challenger, back to the train system I wanted the train to act as a environmental hazard where both the player and the enemy drones would be able to take damage from this moving bullet as well as have the player ride on top of the train to navigate to the high levels in the environment.

Overall there has been a lot of changes to the game form the beginning right up to the very end, but the product that was produced at the end I feel we can both be proud of at this time...LOL

Wow what a journey it has been nearly at the end now, anyways over the last couple of days I have made the trailer for our game as well a done some last minute testing to make sure that the game is working well as well as made a few tweaks I will provide a picture below of the patch notes. We will be releasing the game this afternoon. HYPE!!!!

Here are some screen shots from footage that I am using to make the trailer.

We have optimized the game as mush as possible and then went about adding the volumetric fog. I have been pushing and pulling sliders to achieve the look that we so desired and I can say that the game is looking awesome at this point. 

We have also added volumetric lights to all the neon signs hoping that it would get us closer to the style/look that we first set out to achieve and I damn it is pretty close, a few more days of tweaks and it should be at the style/look that we wanted. I will provide a ref image below for the style/look we are going for.

Since my last post the team has been looking at ways to optimize our games performance, since we were having trouble testing the game. Problems that were occurring were

1/ The game would lag a majority of the time and it was hard to determine if the build was going to work.

2/ The enemies would constantly destroy them self's.  

3/ Could only have a limited amount of enemy NPC’s in the scene at one time before it broke the game.

4/ Problems with the player controller and how the player used the jump/jet pack mechanic.  

5/ How high the player was able to travel in the game.

To name just a few.

How we optimized some of the problems, these are not in any order and will not line up with the above numbers just randomly noting them.

1/ To address a lot of the lag issues we went back and and looked at all the models that were in the environment and check the colliders, if there was just a mesh colliders on that model then we had to apply box colliders to every model found not to have box colliders on it.

2/ When addressing the controller issue instead of changing the controls we were advised to try the game with unlimited jet pack fuel to address the movement controls in the air, this issues is still up in the air as we progress with more testing.

3/ Another implement that we have made is squishing the level down, making it easy to see the whole level from the ground in the main city. This still needs to be tested more.

As we do more testing I will try and keep this blog up to date with the changes that we will be making before our end of November launch.

In this post I will be recapping some of the problems that our 2 man team has come across in making this game.

Parkour or Jet Pack

Thinking back one of the first be problems that we faced was whether or not the player would be jumping around the level like in the GIF above, after testing this parkour style we found that the controls were to clanky and it didn't feel good for the player. So we went and changed the whole way the player would navigate the environment and just gave the player the ability to use a jet pack, so now the player can ran around the environment and when they need to get to higher levels all they need to do is activate there jet pack to get to higher levels in the stage.

Environment Change to suit the way the player navigate the environment and 3D MODELS.

OLD LEVEL

NEW LEVEL

The first couple of designs for the Level that the player would play in was made with the idea that the player would be jumping from building to building as they try and survive waves of enemy units trying to destroy them, but after the parkour idea was scraped and the jet pack ability was added we had to go back and make changes to every part of the environment so that players would have plenty of room to move as well as use the jet pack when needed, in doing this the level has more open spaces around the Main city(ABOVE) as well as more walkways to get to in the higher spaces of the stage. There has also been more routes to take to get to the upper level if players want to try.

3D MODELS

Not a major pain in ass but something that we had a small problem with so I thought that I should give it a mention here.Just things like making sure all assets were the same sizes as well as some re designs, cause models were to big or maybe even to small for the player to interact with.

TECHNICAL PROBLEMS

From the very start of this project there has been a lot of problems that our team has comes across, Thinking back a major problem we would have is the software that we are using is out dated or different version of the software which lead to whole scene breaking, asking for reference that were no longer around due to a change in versions of unity, other problem that we faced on our journey to make this game was just unity it self deciding to do what ever it wanted to do, whether it be added a prefab then checking unity to find its not there then resetting to find it again then disappearing again to constant changes to UI elements, MAAAN was this a pain in the ass lol.

Been working on UI elements the last couple of days the images below will show the progress being made. These images are for the pause menu screen.

Testing to start next week with all UI elements in the game.

Hopefully......lol

Here is a mech I am working on hehehehe....

Hope to be able to let player roam around then enter mech.

Just a quick update, we have put in lights and added the post effects. Lighting and post effects still need fine tuning but we are getting there. Testing starts Monday...hopefully .