I’ve been playing around with iTween some more and got the iTween editor working which should makes things even easier. I also added some title text. This video explains how to prevent text from becoming blurry in Unity (scale up the font and scale down your text).
If you ever need a font then http://www.dafont.com is really handy. It has loads of different types but make sure you check the usage restrictions as not all of them are free for commercial use.
Added Tchaikovsky – Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy as the music for the first stage. It’s suitably whimsical and fits well with the theme of dreams. I just dragged it in to the Hierarchy and I didn’t even need a line of script to get it to play! (Although that’s only because I’m fine with it playing immediately right now) .
I’ve installed iTween and got one of the flies moving using iTween.MoveBy.
This looks like a handy demonstration of the commands: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeIvUfK1PMQ
I tried and failed to get the fly scaling as well so that’s something for tomorrow!
Finished the ground:
Mmmm, earthy.
And added it in game:
I need to investigate the best way of creating bumpy terrain with good collision. and preferably some good way of texturing it too despite a non uniform shape.
Level 1 now loads when you click on the button thanks to http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/ScriptReference/Application.LoadLevel.html
Started drawing some ground using: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/ChrisHildenbrand/20111015/8669/2D_Game_Art_for_Programmers__part_1.php
Now off into London to watch Zelig at the BFI with Marion and Ian.
I’ve added a Level Select screen with one level to choose from…
Next task is getting it to load the level. I can do this but it will have to wait until another day as I’m off to bed now – although I did drop in some other level buttons, as it’s easy to do, despite the fact there’s only one level in the game at the moment.
Choose Your Level
I used this to get the buttons and labels working: http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/ScriptReference/GUI-color.html
I need to decide whether each level will be a different dream entirely or if I’ll be using dreams as themed worlds that each contain multiple levels that you work your way through. The difference being having five forest sections and then five ice as opposed to one forest, one ice, one fire etc (to use some videogame world theme clichés as examples).
Another thing I need to decide on is how much each dream will be related to the music i.e. whether the dreams are directly about the music or they’re just abstract dream concepts. As I’m writing this down now I’m swaying towards having more abstract dream concepts, which give more creative freedom and save me from the fact that I almost definitely can’t afford to licence any of the music I’d like to.
Just been talking to Cat Burton who recommended that I try out iTween, NGUI or EzGui for all my GUI needs. I’ll have to look into these tomorrow to see which to use.
I’ve added a Level Select screen with one level to choose from…
Next task is getting it to load the level. I can do this but it will have to wait until another day as I’m off to bed now – although I did drop in some other level buttons, as it’s easy to do, despite the fact there’s only one level in the game at the moment.
Choose Your Level
I used this to get the buttons and labels working: http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/ScriptReference/GUI-color.html
I need to decide whether each level will be a different dream entirely or if I’ll be using dreams as themed worlds that each contain multiple levels that you work your way through. The difference being having five forest sections and then five ice as opposed to one forest, one ice, one fire etc (to use some videogame world theme clichés as examples).
Another thing I need to decide on is how much each dream will be related to the music i.e. whether the dreams are directly about the music or they’re just abstract dream concepts. As I’m writing this down now I’m swaying towards having more abstract dream concepts, which give more creative freedom and save me from the fact that I almost definitely can’t afford to licence any of the music I’d like to.
I got the urge to listen to some Oasis tonight, which then made me message an old friend on Facebook, James King, who was always a huge fan to see what he’s up to now.
Just been talking to Cat Burton who recommended that I try out iTween, NGUI or EzGui for all my GUI needs. I’ll have to look into these tomorrow to see which to use.
Had a great night last night – my friend Spud and I met up with some old school friends, Joe Clark and Chris Elliott. We went down the King’s Head pub in Stutton for a few drinks, after which we went back to Joe’s, broke out the N64 and played some four player Mario Kart, GoldenEye and Mario Tennis just like we used to when we were at school!
I got the HUD working today, (with a little help from http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/35562/score-with-gui-text.html) which increments each time you catch a fly:
Not sure I’ve done it the best way though because I added a HUD script and added it to a GUI Text object and the fly collection is done inside in the playerController, using some indiscriminate trigger based collision detection which I think is a pretty dirty way of doing it!
I’ve been working on Dad’s laptop seeing as I’m currently home for Christmas (from the 23rd to tomorrow, the 29th) when I’m heading back to Guildford. Dropbox has been really useful in helping me work from different locations, allowing me to easily sync my Unity project between multiple computers and make changes on any of them, which then will be automatically synced up when I carry on working elsewhere.
I’m thinking that my next task should be some menus to allow level select. I need to get the bedroom scene working that you can exit, at which point you’re presented with the level(/dream) select screen.
While I wanted to do a bit of development on Christmas day, as working on Christmas day is pretty dedicated, I didn’t get round to it until today what with all the family stuff, Skyward Sword and Skyrim to compete with. On Christmas day my brother and his wife told my parents and I the fantastic news that they’re having a baby – so I’m going to be an Uncle! Can’t wait 🙂
My goal for today was to get collecting the flies working, which I’ve done with plenty of use of the Script Reference (http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/ScriptReference/Collider.OnTriggerEnter.html). When that wasn’t too hard I added collection particles (some placeholder example fireworks seeing as I’m not sure what I want here yet) and also some snow seeing it was also inside the example files and I was feeling a bit festive.
Next I’d like to get some HUD working – with a fly counter that shows how many you have left to get.
Converted the SmoothFollow2D.js example script file to C# with a little help from http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/71409-SmoothFollow2D.js-to-SmoothFollow2D.cs-is-giving-me-a-no-render-ship (I think the issue was that you can’t directly access each part of a vector in C# like you can in JavaScript). This revealed a bug that saw the camera slowly sinking through the ground, which bizarrely seemed to fix itself :S I’m always dubious of miracle fixes as they also tend to unfix themselves later on.
I got a rope sort of working using the http://www.unifycommunity.com/wiki/index.php?title=LineRenderer_Rope, http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/9705/tie-objects-together.html and http://www.unifycommunity.com/wiki/index.php?title=3D_Physics_Based_Rope, which linked me to the rope editor from www.reverieinteractive.com that I’m now playing about with.
Rope! Sort of.
I’d like to write my own but I’d rather make the game now and worry about doing it myself later. Perhaps not the wisest way of doing things though, however I wouldn’t be surprised if getting it to do what I need is as hard as doing my own version.
Worked late tonight but wanted to do something towards my game so I drew a rubbish tree just now:
Rubbish Tree
I realised that if I can go for one day without doing anything, I can easily go for seven days, and if I can go for one week without doing anything then I can go forever, so I want to try and make sure I make some progress whenever possible, no matter how small.