First Playable
For this week's project development, our task was to create a playable version of our games with some of the core features included.
I struggled a lot this week with my Unity- it's like it was trying to fight me! Even though I made my map 50% smaller and removed the trees, to say it was framey and unresponsive is an understatement. When playtesting my game, it took a few seconds for it to respond to and clicking or moving. Because of this I didn't get to implement as much as I would have liked to this week, but still made some progress despite the struggles.
Eterna Hunt main menu screen
Source: My Unity project
In my Unity free tutorials this week I created a main menu for my game, which drops the player into the world when the "Play" button is clicked. I still need to implement the options button features which I will do in the near future. This took me a little while to implement and to get working but I'm really happy with how it looks and works!
View of axe and gem
Source: My Unity project
I added in a first person player camera, and decided to give the player an axe when starting the game. The axe includes C# code which allows it to swing and make a sound when the player left clicks, and it follows the player as they move. This is an important step for this playable as weapons play a big part in the survival aspect of my game.
I also added a collectable object to the game that makes a sound and disappears when the player walks over the object. The gem is just a placeholder for now until I find suitable assets to use in its place. I want to refine this more and add text to the object when hovered over, but my laptop was struggling so much that I had to leave it for now.
I used my knowledge from the Jimmy Vegas tutorials to implement these (I also had a look back as a refresher) as I find his tutorials are very easy to follow and he's also using the same version of Unity as me so it doesn't complicate things.
First person view
Source: My Unity Project
First person view of my game- I have to play around with adjusting the axe postion as I think it currently takes over the screen a little bit. I'm aware that the terrain is very barren at the minute, this is to preserve my laptop and be able to implement mechanics and features without as much lag a beefy terrain would bring.
While I do feel like I'm making decent progress I'm frustrated that I'm not really able to do more due to Unity being so slow. I have to try to find ways to combat this- perhaps I'll have to work from the college Macs instead of my laptop to get further into my development.
I'm most likely gonna have to cut out a ton of features I had originally planned to include for a more realistic project with the time I have to develop it, which is sad, but I'd rather have a functional game than one that's half broken.
Next I'm going to hopefully implement some enemies and a health bar!
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Hello there Kayleigh!
ReplyDeleteI really liked reading your blog on your first playable game. I also did not like to add as much elements into my Unity as I wanted as I underestimated how difficult Unity can be. I think you have made good progress on your game even with Unity being slow as you said. I also had to cut down on some of my original ideas as I do not think their going to be easy to do and there might not be the right assets for the items and obstacles that I need in my game. Was it hard to add the axe into your game? My character does not have any weapons so I would not know how to go about adding a weapon. I like the way the axe looks in your game and I would be happy with how your game looks. I think you have made good progress as well because you even were able to add in sounds to your collectable items which is very impressive. I think your on the right road to make a great game and hope you keep up the good work. Good luck over the next few days and I hope everything goes well.
Talk to you soon,
Aaron Hogan
Heya Kayleigh!
ReplyDeleteSo a few things I noted while reading your blog;
Firstly, I agree that Unity is a huge pain in the ass sometimes, I've had my fair share of trouble with it. Be it scripts not working or Jimmy's Unity UI being a lot different to mine, but anyway I'm rambling!
About your software running slow: I think I might have a solution, though I'm not sure if it'll work for your purposes.
It's called procedural generation and it can make(among other things) the trees only appear during gameplay, in a place you specified, rather than having them there in developer mode.
Anyways, I think that's it!
Looking forward to seeing your game in action,
~Pawel
Hello Kayleigh, I have read through your unity first playable and it looks really nice visually speaking. Sorry to hear you are having issues at the moment regarding your games frame rate issues. However, I do think its pretty cool you finally have a main menu option added into the game, I myself have been meaning to add one in myself for my game. hope you can recover from the setbacks.
ReplyDeleteHey Kayleigh,
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear you are having issues with unity but I feel everyone feels your pain because I definitely do I have had my own troubles with Unity. I really like your menu I have tried to do a main menu myself but have had some issues with it but overall your game menu looks really good.I also like that used your knowledge from previous Jimmy Vegas for your axe which looks really good so far your game looks really well even though your background is a bit plain but you did say you could not add a lot into your game as unity is very slow so I understand that I also really like your idea to add some enemies and a health bar to your game it sounds really interesting. anyway your game is developing really well hope to read more about your game soon.
-Jennifer