Alonso's Development Blog

     This week was a bit more interesting in terms of project work. After pitching my suggestion for making ores random it was decided to add that into the list of things to do this sprint. And since I came up with the idea, alongside having a rough concept of how the code would work, I decided to assign myself to the task in order to make the system work.    At first setting up the actual randomization was easy. I had to add all the ore prefabs to a specific list, and then the code will randomize a number based on the amount of objects within that list. From there it will then instantiate the ore at the position of the node, though at a randomize rotation to spice up ore placement variety. This was the easy part however. The hard part was connecting our mini-game to the actual ores.    What I ended up getting to work is that ores are instantiated on the Awake frame. Shortly after that, the ores' own code will search for the mini-game UI and plug that ...

   Admittedly these weeks have still been feeling a little slow in regards to project work. This week I thought it would be beneficial to try and make a list of assets we'd need from the artists. Since I already had the first level designed out I decided to try and use that as a point to pivot off of in order to make a proper list for these assets.    I also did some helping with actually looking through my level whitebox. Though apparently there were some issues importing it into Unity but that was resolved rather quickly. I didn't actually realize my level layout was going to become a bit of a framework for our game though, which means the levels are apparently going to go a bit more into verticality due to the design I posted. Not that I mind too much about that though.    With this in mind I'm probably going to try and work on more level designs over the next week or two. Though since we're apparently getting into the actual development phase for this g...

     This week I decided to take on some simple tasks in UI development. In this case it was designing a prototype for our pause menu. This has been something we've been missing for a while now and it has been causing quite a few issues for us in the long run. Especially since we didn't have any dedicated game termination system set up at the time.    Since this menu is a prototype we lacked any proper assets for it. So I just made a simple set of flat colors and tied the buttons to a single image. That image is tied to a canvas that has the pause menu code. The code dictates that it will always be looking for an ESC button input. When the ESC button is pressed it will open the pause menu. You can then click either End Game to close the game, or Close Menu to close the pause menu.    I did run into a few problems. I couldn't set up a system that allowed you to press ESC again to close the menu, which is why Close Menu had to be added. I also had to tie...

   This week I admittedly didn't really do much. The team did meet a few times to speak with each other about plans for the upcoming week. I was originally planning to join a task that would reposition and put ores around the map in a different manner since we were altering how the map functioned.    I couldn't do my task at the beginning of the week primarily because I was waiting for stuff from Rebekah and Blake. Though they said they were going to get something done by Sunday, so I waited until then. Though apparently Michael (the other person on this task) ended up doing everything on the task. Which is fine, I guess. Though I am a little disappointed that I couldn't really do anything this week because of that.    I do think I want to pitch something later to maybe streamline ore generation. I mainly want to suggest making a system to allow ores to randomly generate. I do have a general coding structure in my mind to make it work, though I do think att...

     This week started off with me and the designers on our team getting together and brainstorming ideas for our new platformer game. One of our designers, Chance, pitched a simple collectathon platformer in a similar vein to Banjo-Kazooie. Considering the simplicity of the game presented alongside the versatility of the design I agreed that we should utilize this game as a good basis for our other upcoming project.     A few days after that meeting I decided to get to work on designing a possible first map for this game. The general idea I wanted to go for was a map that could convey most of the major aspects of gameplay that are required for a platformer. Moving around a linear plane, jumping on platformers, various collectables, etc. Though I also wanted to make the map at least seem a little interesting to play around as, again, it needs to convey the major staples a platformer requires.    I also tried to convey various important gameplay el...

     This week was admittedly another one of those dead weeks for me. We had started the week off by doing a more in-depth look on how we're going to split apart the tasks for the rest of our game. This had mostly involved everyone in the group discussing what the game needs, what those whats are to entail, and then voting on importance in regards to those things. I will admit I am a little disappointed that narrative seemed to be put extremely low on the list of things that are important to the project, but I guess this will just be one of those games where narrative is put in later in production.    After class finished and I got home, I spent some time looking for possible models we could use on the Unity Asset Store for enemies. Unfortunately there didn't really seem to be a lot of models that fit both our game theme and our game art style. If only we were making a Subnautica clone, because the Asset Store has a bolt load of scary fish models.    ...