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So I'm working on my next game....

After I finished my last game The Bad Platform I starting prototyping a Bitcoin mining adventure game- after I built a rough prototype of that I realized that the game wasn't very fun so I stopped work on it- I'm following a lot of the design guidelines from this book- so I built the toy- it wasn't fun at all so I move on to something else-

Now the whole plan for me moving into games was to eventually create video games with the same atmosphere, visual quality, feeling and depth as my animated films- 

I wrote up the outlines, script and a basic design document for what is to be my first big game project a few months ago- I was really excited about it BUT that was before I did Magnetdroid so I didn't have the knowledge and/or experience to take it on at that time- and Magnetdroid actually started as a prototype for one of the game mechanics I need for my big game idea- the magnetics system-

Since I'm not going to do the Bitcoin game and since I've learned a TON in the past few months I chose to take on the big project now- 

I love taking on big tasks- I love challenges- I love being like WTF?! HOW DO I DO THIS?! And google grindin until I figure out the solution- so this big game project offers a ton of all that!

I've been working on the prototype for a few weeks now- at this point I have the untextured player character with all of the locomotion animations done- so you can control and he'll run, jump, shoot, interact with buttons and all that- here's my mecanim setup for the player

That controls what the player can do and when- I created all the animations in Cinema 4d then exported them to Unity- I use events in a lot of the motions to switch off of players movement controls like in the button push state so the player can't slide around while pushing a button- so in the animation I add an event at the start called "make_immobile" and one at the end called "end" these trigger an event to shut off movement until "end" is triggered-

This is what the prototype that I'm working with looks like- just the basics needed to get everything working correctly-


"Rock" is the object the player is currently holding in his right hand- you can pick up and throw items- "Sparkshooter" is the weapon that is equipped- I just finished setting up the weapon switching system - there's 8 different projectile weapons and a blade weapon- and they all have charge states as well because I like weapons you can charge-


I used an arraylist called "PlayerWeapon" to manage what weapons are held/active- Only one of the projectile weapons has its own firing/charge animations- So in the mecanim setup I use an int called "WeaponSelector" to determine which animation should be triggered when the player pressed the fire button

I'm designing the player controls around an Xbox360 controller as thats what I've read a lot of people use when playing PC games and the like- 


It's really fun to design the game logic on paper and have it work in the game AND get to test it out with a joystick- I guess these sketches of state machines and mecanim setups are my new storyboards-

Speaking of state machines I'm using quite a few on my Player 0_0


There's no real performance hit though as I've been following guidelines I've found on forums and stuff to keep things light- if I was a coder I could probably have all this stuff in a few scripts but I'm not so hella state machines it is!

So as of now this is what I have finished for the prototype-

-player controls (created my own with Playmaker and Mecanim)
-camera controls (bought the asset Adventure Camera for this)
-targeting system (created my own using ArrayMaker for Playmaker)
-player health/damage system
-weapon management/switching system (created my own using ArrayMaker for Playmaker)
-Object pickup/throw system (created my own using ArrayMaker for Playmaker)
-Object interaction setup (pressing buttons, pulling levers)

Here's the stuff I have left to do for the player before I can move on to the enemies and levels and all that-

-projectile setup for weapons
-pooling system for projectiles (Still undecided whether to make my own or buy an asset for this)

So I'll start on that stuff next- I've also been reading/researching a lot about AI for games- its SUPER interesting 0_0 I'm really looking forward to creating my own more complex AI setups as I've only made super basic ones so far- 

I came across these posts on reddit which were really inspiring and informative when it comes to ai

I've used the asset RAIN in the past which does most all of the work for you- they just came out with a new version so I'll take a look at that of course OR I might use A* for the pathfinding and create my own behavior tree's with the asset Behavior Designer as that sounds more fun but I'll choose whatever is best for the game-

My first big goal with this game is to create a playable prototype like a "demo" version that I can use as a proof of concept to power a crowdfunding campaign along with some suite cinematics but I'm probably a few months away from doing that-

So yeh I'll be grinding through the night for many months to come- when I have the first promo art and site up I'll announce the game's name and all that- until then its a rough prototype with a bunch of big ideas on paper....in other words this is the exciting part as the potential is unknown.


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