donderdag 21 april 2016

Main menu

It's been a month since my last post (lots of work) but I finally managed to work on the project again!
This time I made a main menu containing a play, highscore, settings and quit button! The play and quit buttons are already fully functional (the others don't do anything so far).
I put the menu within the same scene as the game itself so the player doesn't have to wait for his phone to load a new scene.

Another small update, I added some big rocks in the background of the game to make it look a bit better.

zondag 20 maart 2016

Environment update

I created a ground, ship and some rock models and made a first environment with them. I'm pretty sure about adding more / better props later on.

I also adjusted some render settings and added fog to get a more underwater like feel.


Gameplay update

I adjusted some features in the gameplay:
  • I changed the leveling formula, from now on the exp you need to level equals:
    level * level - (2 * level - 1)   (mathematicians will get it)
  • From now on you will start with a small amount of fish being able to spawn in your game (5 at the moment). The higher your level, the more fish will spawn.
  • Not every kind of fish will spawn from level 1. Every x levels (currently 3) you get, a new kind of fish will be added to the possibilities to spawn and/or be the fish you need to eat.

zaterdag 19 maart 2016

Character eating animation + Animated squids + Blood particles + Fangtoothfish

So a few days ago I started with creating an eating animation for the main character, which looks like shown below:


After that, I started rigging my squid character and added a swimming animation to the game.


After that I tried adding some blood particles when eating fishies, but it didn't really work out.
The red didn't fit the surrounding colors and is was more distracting than subtle, even when darker.

And last thing I did this week was modeling a new fish species. I chose to create a fish based on the fangtoothfish.


woensdag 16 maart 2016

Character swim animation

Today I rigged my main character, the angler fish.



After I was done I made an animation, the one you get when touching the screen to get an impulse.


dinsdag 15 maart 2016

Lighting, max velocity, target UI and target changing updates

To begin, I made the scene a lot lighter so things are easier to see.

Second, I added a maximum player velocity to the mobile controls.

Third, I updated the target UI by sprites.


And as last, from now on, each time the timer to change target is round, you also change target. No more having the same target twice.

Squid movement + Fish collision update

I updated the squids behaviour script and they now move with impulses (like in real life). It looks a bit weird right now but I'm sure that with some good animation it will be okay. ;)

Also, from now on fish will be able to move through each other without blocking the way or despawning. Only the player can collide with them.

Squid and JellyFish model + Update Unity project

I made some other models to put into the game as fishies to eat or avoid.
First of all I made a squid looking fishy:
And seconfly I made a jellyfish looking fishy:


I also started a new Unity project (a copy of the prototype) and started cleaning up my code.
I imported the player and 2 fish models as well. One other thing I changed is that now the light of the player won't change color anymore. Instead the target fish will be displayed in the top left corner. This was because I thought it wasn't looking that well on my models as thought.

zondag 13 maart 2016

Art style + Anglerfish model

I decided to take the low poly art style without smoothing, like in the underlying examples.
It's simple, optimised, and I haven't done it before so it seems kinda cool.












I tried out this art style a bit and made this anglerfish looking model. I'm thinking about making the colors adjustable in-game.


zaterdag 12 maart 2016

Gameplay prototype

So first of all, my friends thought the mobile_03 controls (touch the screen to give the player an impulse towards the touchlocation) was the most fun, so that's going to be how the controls work.

Second, I made some gameplay prototypes during the week!
I tried out following features:
  • Simpelest gameplay, just eat the right fish to survive.
  • Eat the fish with the same color as your light. Your light will be changing over time.
  • Eat the fish with the same color as your light. Your light will be changing by eating fish.
  • Your light will grow bigger when eating (the right) fish, so fishies will be easier attracted to you.
  • Spawn more and more fish faster and faster according to how many fish you ate.
Some worked out better than other. At the end, I had the crazy idea of combining them with a level system to keep the player motivated. 

It goes as following:
The player will start at level one. After eating a certain amount of right coloured fish, the player will level up. The amount of fish to level will raise each level.
The higher the player's level, the bigger his light (and attractiveness) gets and the more different kind of fish (and light colors) there will spawn. The color of the player's light will change over time.



If you want to try it out yourself, here is a pc build (arrow keys to control):

,and here is an Android build (tap to give the fish an impulse):


Next on my todo list is the art, starting with the most important ones, the characters! :)

zondag 6 maart 2016

Controls prototype

So today I managed to get 3 different ways to control your fishy with an android device working.
I'm going to have it tested by some friends tomorrow and let them decide which one I'll put in the game.

If there would be people that want to test it themselves, here are some .apk files (Android builds) with the different gamemodes:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/l0l1gfa4pxiav83/LightThroughTheDepts_AndroidBuild_01.rar?dl=0

Oh yeah. I didn't test the builds on other devices than my phone (Acer Liquid E2)  yet, so I can't promise it will work on yours.

zaterdag 5 maart 2016

First prototype

So I made a first small prototype (windows build) with the very basics of the game.
Next steps int the prototyping progress are to first get some good mobile controlls and then optimise the gameplay a lot by trying out new features in different builds.

Here's a look of what the prototype looks like:
note: the gif is looking darker than the actual game

You can also download the Windows build and try it yourself (arrow / WASD controls):


vrijdag 4 maart 2016

Intro + Game concept

Light through the depths is a small side project of mine. The goal is to make this a mobile game on the google play and maybe later on the app store.

Well what is this game going to look like you ask?
I'm going to take the basic principle of the "fishy" - like games lots of people probably have played once in their life already. (You are a fish eating smaller fish to grow bigger.)
Fishy1 by XGen studios

There already are a lot of similar apps on the play store so what I'm going to do is add some of my own features to make the gameplay differ and give the player a totally new experience.

The main character will be an angler fish (you know, the ones with a light bulb hanging in front of their face) which will, guess what, try to eat other fish and survive. (I know, the originality level is insaaaane!)


Now how am I going to make this differ from the already overly created fishy games? Well I was thinking about making the map really dark, so you can only see well around the character's light bulb for example. And maybe give the other fish different color to see if they're edible or poisonous.
You'd only be capable of seeing the color when they're nearby, but when you get too close, the fish will start chasing your light bulb.
These are just some examples, I don't know yet how it'll turn out, that's where the prototyping phase is for. ;)

The art style is not decided yet, first thing to do is prototype and see if it's worth putting lots of effort in and having a good concept.

Software I'm using is Unity, Visual studio, 3DS max and photoshop.

I'm not going to put a release date on it yet because appart from this I also have a lot of work to do and I can't really predict when I will have lots of work and when won't.

Well that's about it, wish me luck!