Its been awhile since I’ve posted anything on any of my projects or work. Back in October I was laid off from my full time job as a Graphic Designer at a historic Theatre in downtown Lancaster, PA which was a tremendous opportunity and a lot of fun. Having focused more on that then my own personal work I had let my work slip to the way side during my time employed there. Now with a lot of downtime in between finding new work I’ve re-focused on developing my Unity knowledge, C# programming, and to finally finish this game. I’ve put a lot of work into the scripts and play mechanics and I think its finally coming along enough that maybe just maybe I’ll be able to get a developers table at a con and show off my game this summer which I find to be thrilling.
Now onto the update!
Aquatichaos Updates:
- Player Size – I’ve reduced the scale of the protagonist as it didn’t make sense for him to be as big as he was in a shooter where a large player object would make avoiding hazards a whole lot harder. I may also toy with reducing the size of the HUD so it takes up less of the upper portion of the screen.
- Death Animation for the protagonist has been implemented, I’ve redrawn the original “Deadicus” sprite I had created during Aquaitchaos’ Multimedia Fusion prototype days and instead of being a static sprite it has animation for the short period of time it is on the playfield. Getting the scripting to also move the player from off screen back onto the playfield after respawn has proven to be a little tricky though I’m sure I can figure out where my scripting is going wrong.
- Shield Power Up – I’ve recreated the shield power up from the prototype, however to go with the goofier nano-tech theme, they’ve been made into mechanical stars instead of starfish. Due to some aspects of Unity’s prefab functions that I do not quite understand the shield doesn’t work when a power up is acquired because you can’t as Unity’s log likes to remind me… “Setting the parent of a transform which resides in a prefab is disabled to prevent data corruption. UnityEngine.Transform:set_parent(Transform)” So until that is fixed the Shield is disabled.
- Boss Scripting –
probably one of my favorite parts of developing a game are the boss fights. I’ve implemented some basics for when you enter the “Boss Area” at the end of a stage so scrolling halts and the boss is initiated which is working nicely, allowing me to focus more on individual scripting for each boss as I design them. As with the original Prototype, Level 1 pits you against a giant bullet spewing Sea Anemone with smaller anemone “turrets” though I’ve totally overhauled the design and changed the background setting to fit in with my ideas for Level 2.
In the next week or two I’ll be updating again on my progress. I can’t wait to see how the new enemy redesigns will come out since I’m still using low res placeholders.
Its been awhile since I’ve posted anything on any of my projects or work. Back in October I was laid off from my full time job as a Graphic Designer at a historic Theatre in downtown Lancaster, PA which was a tremendous opportunity and a lot of fun. Having focused more on that then my own personal work I had let my work slip to the way side during my time employed there. Now with a lot of downtime in between finding new work I’ve re-focused on developing my Unity knowledge, C# programming, and to finally finish this game. I’ve put a lot of work into the scripts and play mechanics and I think its finally coming along enough that maybe just maybe I’ll be able to get a developers table at a con and show off my game this summer which I find to be thrilling.
Now onto the update!
Aquatichaos Updates:
- Player Size – I’ve reduced the scale of the protagonist as it didn’t make sense for him to be as big as he was in a shooter where a large player object would make avoiding hazards a whole lot harder. I may also toy with reducing the size of the HUD so it takes up less of the upper portion of the screen.
- Death Animation for the protagonist has been implemented, I’ve redrawn the original “Deadicus” sprite I had created during Aquaitchaos’ Multimedia Fusion prototype days and instead of being a static sprite it has animation for the short period of time it is on the playfield. Getting the scripting to also move the player from off screen back onto the playfield after respawn has proven to be a little tricky though I’m sure I can figure out where my scripting is going wrong.
- Shield Power Up – I’ve recreated the shield power up from the prototype, however to go with the goofier nano-tech theme, they’ve been made into mechanical stars instead of starfish. Due to some aspects of Unity’s prefab functions that I do not quite understand the shield doesn’t work when a power up is acquired because you can’t as Unity’s log likes to remind me… “Setting the parent of a transform which resides in a prefab is disabled to prevent data corruption. UnityEngine.Transform:set_parent(Transform)” So until that is fixed the Shield is disabled.
- Boss Scripting – probably one of my favorite parts of developing a game are the boss fights. I’ve implemented some basics for when you enter the “Boss Area” at the end of a stage so scrolling halts and the boss is initiated which is working nicely, allowing me to focus more on individual scripting for each boss as I design them. As with the original Prototype, Level 1 pits you against a giant bullet spewing Sea Anemone with smaller anemone “turrets” though I’ve totally overhauled the design and changed the background setting to fit in with my ideas for Level 2.
In the next week or two I’ll be updating again on my progress. I can’t wait to see how the new enemy redesigns will come out since I’m still using low res placeholders.