Time for volume 5 of my video development blog series following development of Besus: Journey for Vitality!
Updates focused-on in this volume include:
After discovering everything that the Complete Physics Platformer kit has to offer, I knew the time would come that I would have to emphasize the “starter kit” aspect of it and expand on its functionality. Although the kit offers the essentials such as movement, jumping, enemies with basic AI, health system, and a coin collectible all integrated with the physics system in Unity, any platforming game since the mid-90’s has offered more. Be it wall jumping, ground pounding, powerups, or even just swimming, these are all items that I eventually wanted to add to this starter kit.
I knew the logic behind how I wanted to approach this right from the start. Specifically I would use the ‘grab box’ already attached to the player (used to determine when the player can pick an item up) and if it was touching an object with the ‘Wall’ tag, it would let the player perform the wall jump. Being fairly new to C#, translating this logic to in to code proved to be quite intimidating at first. After combing through Google search results, most notably Unity Answers and forum posts, I dove in and began to implement the code. Line by line, the logic began to come together. The most difficult part was working with the rotation, specifically rotating the player 180 degrees after jumping off of the wall. Eventually I found the transform.RotateAround function which allowed me to do just that; rotating around the Vector3.up axis.
I present volume four of my video development blog series following development of my 3D Unity Platformer – Besus: Journey for Vitality!
Updates focused-on in this volume include:
Here we are with video development blog volume 3 for my (now working titled) 3D platforming game – Besus: Journey for Vitality!
In this development blog I share the updates made to the swimming mechanics, new animations, abandoning Playmaker for good old fashioned C# scripts, progress on the first level, and my failed/abandoned attempt at a “dynamic” ledge grab system.
Although the video was uploaded a few days ago, I just now realized that I never created a blog post for it… With that being said, here is the latest video showcasing the current most-recent enhancements and additions made. Among which are:
With all of the changes and updates made to the game mechanics, I figured it would be the perfect time to create another video development blog detailing all these updates! It took me far more time than I would like to admit to get everything working as I envisioned. Needless to say, I feel that the end result is more than worth it!
Volume 1 (of what I hope will be many) video blogs documenting some of the features and functionality recently implemented to my (yet unnamed) Unity Platforming game.
After having discovered the potential of Unity (namely in a web demo for the Complete Physics Platformer Kit) while working with UDK, it didn’t take long for me to jump ship. Upon opening the Unity editor, between the hierarchy and the lack of the standard quad-window layout used in UDK and Hammer, I was definitely intimidated. A handful of video tutorials later and not only did it all make sense, but I felt quite comfortable navigating the application. A few more tutorials and I understood GameObjects and how scripts are used create actual gameplay. It wasn’t too long thereafter that I felt as comfortable in Unity as I had ever felt in UDK or Hammer.
My next task was making up for “lacking” functionality I had come to expect. Namely a visual scripting editor and a way to manipulate the camera for cutscene purposes. It was then that I found out how addicting the Unity Asset store can be – it was amazing seeing all of the potential in the assets for expanding my project. Eventually however I did acquire the base assets that I needed: PlayMaker (visual scripting) and Camera Path Animator. With a base game foundation, knowledge of Unity, and the assets that I know would be required to accomplish what I envisioned, I set to work.