Day 79: Minimap, New meters and a new building!

Hey guys!

Sorry for the lack of posting recently (it's Christmas ;P)! But hey, Just because I didn't post doesn't mean I didn't code :D

Here's a list of new content added:

- A minimap has been adding to the top right corner of the screen
- A shield meter has been added alongside the magic meter and arrow meter - Shield takes 20 damage before being emptied and then slowly recharges.
- A new house has been added to the village

Screenshots:

The game is starting to get quite laggy on my PC, so fixing that is what I plan on focusing on for the next while.

Keep on coding!

Day 65: Magic Meter, Enemy AI improvements and attack improvements!

Hey guys!

I'm almost finished my exams (tomorrow!) so I'll have more time to work on Adventure^3, but for now, Here's what I added today!:

A new magic meter has been added that takes the place of the number of arrows you have while wielding a magic wand. The texture is W.I.P and was really a rough sketch for what the final image will look like. I also plan on adding a shield durability icon when you wield the sword and shield that will tell you how many attack points your shield can take before you begin to be damaged.

Enemies will also no longer follow you unless you are within 100 units of their location (prevents scorpions from leaving the desert etc.). I also hope to divide the map up into regions soon to reduce lag while keeping the open world feel! I've been looking at construction too, and it's extremely laggy at the moment, but I might have some kind of pre-made parts system for castles or homes (that'll be after the dungeons though!)

Finally, you can no longer spam sword attacks! The code now waits for the swinging animation to finish before allowing you to attack again, meaning you can no longer spam 1000s of points of damage in a few swings!

Screenshots:

Keep on coding!

Day 63: Scorpions and GUI improvements!

Hey guys!

That's right! We have a new mob: The Scorpion. Hiding out in the desert, it quietly scuttles around and strikes with it's deadly tail. It's pretty cute too!

I've also added a new GUI system for reading signs and talking, which can be seen in the screenshots below.

Screenshots:

Keep on Coding!

Day 62: Improved Boat controls and Magic!

Hey guys!

Sorry for not posting recently! Been quite busy lately with personal things but I'm back :D Today I started work on some new boat controls, made the wand look more magicky and made a sound play when you cast a spell! I hope to add some kind of magic bar that is refilled by potions tomorrow, so that should be pretty fun!

I've also started on a mobile game! It's a small physics based platformer for Android and iOs that I started last week and I hope to finish soon! Development has been coming along nicely and it runs smoothly in tests!

Screenshots:

Keep on coding!

Day 54: Alpha 3.0 is here!

Hey guys!

I'm happy to announce that Adventure^3 Alpha 3.0 is now available! It contains all the content I've added since the last update, and it would be great if you guys could test it out to help me balance the enemies!

Controls:

Z - Switch Weapon
LMB - Attack
RMB - Lift objects
WASD - Walk
F - HangGlider
G - Fog on/off
F2 - Take screenshots!

Download:
Download now!

Day 53: New Particles and FPS Improvements!

Hey guys!

I decided the thermal particles (the wind for the hang-glider) didn't really fit the theme of the game, so I went ahead and drew my own nice little 8x8 particle. It's inspired by games like Wind Waker and other Low-Poly style games, and I think it looks rather nice in game!

I also noticed some strange performance issues and a lack of shadows. I poked around in the settings in Unity and noticed I had (for some reason) set it to use DX11. Turned this off and bam! 70fps with shadows and running really smoothly again! The next alpha, version 3.0, will be out on friday alongside a cool gameplay video showing off all the features!

Screenshots:

Keep on coding!

Day 52: Enemy Animations and Bug Fixes

Spent most of my (limited) development time today fixing a few bugs (being able to meelee with a crossbow and fire arrows at the same time etc.) but I also managed to get the beginning of the enemy animations in place. I'm using Unity's Mecanim system with my own Enemy A.I script (Which handles all types of A.I. in one script so I can easily change enemy behaviour at runtime!). Here's a quick rundown on how it works:

Enemies are default to playing the walking animation (which is automatically located by my script/Mecanim for each enemy) at half the speed of the actual animation, giving a nice walking effect! Every X amount of seconds (100 in-game ticks) the enemies will raycast straight forward from their location. A raycast is basically like an invisible laser pointer that returns information about what it hits back. If the hit object is tagged with "Player" then it will check the distance between the Enemy and Player, and if it is less than X metres (6 at the moment but I'm going to nerf it based on enemy statistics) then it deals damage to the player, plays the attack animation and the attack sound! If it is not with in range, the timer goes back to 100 ticks and it waits for the next countdown before trying the feature again!

It's a bit hard to get screenshots of the attacks, but I plan on making a video alongside the 3.0 release on Friday!

Keep on Coding!

Day 51: New Enemies!

Just wanted to show off a few of the new enemies I've added today! There are now 3 different enemies (all the same class though) in the game, each with their own statistics and looks!

The Skeleton Grunt:

A basic skeleton that lacks any sort of armour/weaponry. It punches you if it gets within range of you and deals 5 damage. It has a total of 20 health and no armour value.

The Skeleton Soldier:

The skeleton soldier is a slightly more powerful armed version of the skeleton grunt. It holds a sword and deals 10 damage. It also holds a shield, which protects it for 10 points of damage until used up. It has a total of 20 health.

The Skeleton Knight:

The skeleton knight is the most powerful of the current 3 enemies. It deals 20 damage for each hit from it's sword. It holds a shield, sword and helmet, totalling up to 20 armour points. It has a total of 60 health.

I plan on balancing them out totally eventually, but it'll most likely be in bulk once almost all the enemies have been added.

Keep on coding!

Day 50: Enemy Improvements, GUI and 1000 blog views!

Hey guys! I'm happy to announce that the blog just hit 1000 viewers! It's not much but it's something, and it's a great source of motivation! It's also exactly 50 days since development began, which is awesome!

Anyways, I've been working on improving Enemy AI and other features! The standard "box" enemies have been replaced with some cool looking skeletons from the Oryx Lofi pack, animated by me :D They are also less prone to getting stuck at the corner of buildings. The range that they can attack has been doubled and camera glitches have been fixed! Sound effects have also been fixed to stop them getting cut off when the enemy dies!

Finally, I've started working on a chat dialog and sign GUI. it's very early in it's development stage at the moment and the textures are W.I.P.

Screenshots:

Day 49: Enemy Test!

Hey guys!

A year or two ago, I started working on a pretty cool Roguelike/Sandbox 2d game called "Goblins and Golems" - http://www.indiedb.com/games/goblins-and-golems/ . I ultimately lost the source code (Don't worry, I have 50GB+ of online cloud space now for all my game content!) but some of the features, like dungeons, are being transferred to Adventure Cubed ;). Anyways, The sprites and tiles used in that game was Oryx Lofi, famous for being used in games such as Realm of the Mad God, Delver and Legends of Yore (I seriously recommend playing them all!).

 I've decided to give the enemies a nice retro look by using these sprites for enemies in the game! It's not final at the moment but I think they look quite nice in game. Leave a comment telling me what you think about them and I'll decide based on feedback ;)

Screenshots:

Day 47: Improved Dungeons and Social Media features

Hey guys!

Spent the last two days working on some pretty cool new content! Firstly, The dungeon generation has been improved to allow for smoother generation and a new room has been added to test out how smoothly the code works (Which is well!) Hopefully dungeon generation can progress now and adventuring can start!

Social Media aspects have also been added to the main menu, allowing you to share the game on Twitter and Facebook. Google+ support will come later!

Screenshots:

Day 45: Main Menu Improved, Game Optimisation and Screenshots!

Sorry for the lack of posting over the last few days, but I think you'll like what I added!

Firstly:

I improved the main menu even further, by adding the ability to open this blog by clicking on the title, exiting the game and starting the map. There is now a custom cursor too! The level also now loads instantly instead of after a minute or so!

Secondly:

I added a fog system that increases FPS by about 10fps if turned on, similar to Minecraft's render distance setting!

Finally:

I added the ability to take screenshots in-game! Screenshots are saved as .png files, for easy sharing!
The following screenshots have been taken in-game using the feature!:


Screenshots:

Day 42: Main Menu Improvements!

Herro!

I spent a bit of time yesterday improving the main menu, and I'm happy with the current control method! (Still needs a bit of aesthetic polishing, but that will come later!) You can now exit the game from the main menu, and pressing escape at any time during the game will bring you back to the main menu, allowing you to exit!

Screenshots:

Day 41: Yer' a Wizard, Harry!

Woop!

So I finally got around to adding magic! It's still a bit from perfect, but it works and has some fancy particle effects! It fires a small projectile that will damage anything it hits, and emit light in dark areas! I've also added a (very crude) main menu, that allows you to start the game! I plan on working on NPCs next, then improving shield mechanics before going back to the dungeons!

Screenshots:

Keep on coding!

Day 37: Alpha 1.1 release!

Hey guys!

I've finally decided to officially release a playable version of Adventure^3! You can try it out below!

Controls:

F - HangGlider
T - Go to dungeon
Z - Switch Weapons
LMB -Fire
RMB- Lift companion cube

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/43137848/Dare/A3-Alpha%202.1.rar

Hope you guys enjoy it!

Day 34: Such new weapons, much improvement! wow!

Hello!

Sorry for the lack of posts over the last week (it's only been a week? feels like forever!) Anyway, The game has no been updated to the latest version of Unity3d, and now has real-time water reflections! FPS has been improved and I noticed a gain of about 10fps from 60fps to 70fps, Which I'm happy with! Dungeons are coming along nicely, and now work. I'm still working on mapping out rooms, so it'll be a few days until it's usable! Cacti now deal 10 damage when walked into too, which is a nice addition to the desert. The Pine Tree regions now have a dirt ground instead of grass, adding a nice feel to the biome! 2 new weapons have also been added! The slingshot, Which fires stones that deal 1 damage and knock the enemy back, and the magic staff, which fires magic beams, dealing 20 damage! Finally, Sand, Gravel, Dirt and Grass textures have been remade to tile better and look less ugly!

Screenshots:

Day 29: More work on Dungeons!

Hey!

I've been putting a lot of working into the procedurally generated dungeons, and it's coming along nicely! At the moment I have different rooms - corridor and an open space - that generate seamlessly between each other! Here's a rundown on how I'm handling dungeons:

1. Upon entering the dungeon, two numbers are chosen - the number of floors, and the number of rooms in the current floor before the ladder to the next floor down is generated

2. Each time you clear a floor, a new number is generated to handle the amount of rooms on the floor being generated

3. At runtime, as you progress through the dungeon, triggers are set off which generates the next part of the floor based off a number of pre-made rooms (I plan on having so many different rooms that no dungeon will ever be the same :D - i.e. if I have 20 prefabs, and each floor has say, 10 rooms, and each dungeon has 10 floors, then that's a hell of a lot of dungeons that can be generated :D)

4. When the dungeon is completed, a boss battle room will be generated based on the current dungeon (I might even make 3 similar bosses with different weak spots for each dungeon, so that the battle will change each time you clear the dungeon)

Screenshots: (W.I.P)

Day 26: Dungeon Generation

Hey guys!

So I noticed development had stalled a bit recently, and it was mainly because I was unsure of what to add next, but fear not! I've begun writing the procedurally generated dungeon code and currently have a never ending corridor working! I'll post more on how I'm handling it when it's more polished, but it's getting late and I thought I'd post this to let you guys know how things are going!

Keep on coding!

Day 21: Performance Improvements, Better health containers and support for more weapons!

Hey guys!

Didn't get too much done content-wise today, but I noticed a lot of stuttering and dips down below 30fps while playing, which was strange. I had a mess around in Terrain settings and the game is running smoothly again! not sure what caused it, but I'll get to the bottom of it soon! I also improved the hitbox of health containers and added a nice bobbing and spinning effect to it, which livens it up a bit! Finally, I rewrote the weapon changing script to allow me to easily add more weapons for each class (Melee, Ranged and Magical, don't worry, all weapons will be obtainable, it's just what ones you choose to use!) such as flintlock pistols, or wooden swords/clubs, or new spells! You can now also attack with your fists, dealing 5 damage! Finally, I arranged most gameobjects into prefabs so they can be duplicated around scenes, making for easier transitions if I ever want to divide the map up into sections á la Ocarina of Time

I've been considering also moving terrain to a voxel engine, but I still need to think it through

Screenshots:

Keep on coding!

Day 20: Damage Indicator, Cacti and health containers!

Hey guys,

Sorry for the lack of updates! Been quite busy recently and haven't had much time for development. Anyways, Today I've added a few cool new things! Firstly, a new desert biome has been added, and will probably contain a dungeon at some stage. Cacti are found scattered around the desert, and walking up to one will cause you damage! Secondly, as feedback from some beta-testers, an attack sound is now played when you take damage. Finally, health containers have been added (Small and Large). Small containers heal your health by 50hp, while large containers add on to your total max health (starts at 100)! Soon I'll be adding edibles such as bread and apples which will heal you by smaller amounts!

Keep on coding!

Day 16: New buildings, Doors, Arrows, Health, Attacking enemies, Fountains and paths!

Hey guys!

I've been really busy today implementing a load of new features that I'm sure you guys are going to love! First off, A new building has been added next to the tower. It's just a small house that will probably be the start of the storyline, but I'm happy with how it turned out and it should lead to stores and more homes popping up around soon! Next, doors have been added! Walking up to a door will let you walk through it, However I want a more interactive opening and closing method so that you can lock yourself away from enemies and so on! Next, a new arrow counter has been added in the top left corner of the screen next to the key indicator. You can pick up fired arrows and will eventually be able to get them as loot from enemies. A health indicator has been added to the bottom left of the screen, and enemies can now attack you (with a 100% hit chance, needs to be tweaked so that they miss!). If you are holding a shield, the damage is negated until the shield wears out, which is quite useful but possibly overpowered (I'm not sure whether to destroyed shields once they wear out or just have it regain health over time). Finally, A fountain has been added in front of the towers along with gravel paths which link up your house with the castle.

Screenshots!:

Keep on coding!

Day 14: Critical Hits, Thermals and Improved HangGlider!

Hello :D

Spent a lot of time trying to fix strange bugs and model a boss today, but I've managed to get some nice improvements in to controls and combat! Hitting an enemy while in mid-air will cause a critical hit, which deals twice as much damage as a standard hit. HangGliders now allow you to dive to drop quickly, and lift up to slow down! Finally, I've added a new thermal system (recognisable by gusts of wind) that allow you to gain height in the hand glider! They're only visible while flying, so they don't stand out in the map or anything! Finally, the damage indicator font has been changed slightly!

Screenshots:

Day 13: They See Me Rowing, They Hatin'

Woop! Getting closer to alpha :D


Today (well, technically yesterday and today) I added boats! If you land on water of any type, the boat will instantly appear and allow you to sail around. I've also been working on the boss A.I. and it should be ready for the alpha release!

Day 12: Hang Gliders and Crossbows!

Hey guys!

Sorry about not posting yesterday - mid term exams are keeping me busy ;) Anyway, Today, I've managed to add crossbows that can fire arrows at enemies, and Hang Gliders, which allow you to soar around the map for a limited time before landing you on the ground :D I've also begun working on the first boss in preparation for the Alpha release, and randomly generated dungeons should make an appearance too!

Day 10: We have a name!

Herro all!

I didn't get much time to code today, but I had a bit of a brainstorm about possible names, and between Legend of Cube, Cubic Legends, Legends^3 and Adventure^3, I've decided on Aventure^3. Cubic Legends is my second choice, so for the moment the name is W.I.P. Here's a nice little banner I drew up in the meantime :D

Day 9: Lifting Object improvements and Doors!

Hey guys!

Haven't had too much spare time today but I managed to do a little work on the game. I improved the lifting code slightly to make it smoother, although I'm thinking of rewriting it unless I can fix a bug that causes objects that have been lifted to turn evil and try and kill me (Don't ask :P). I've also made objects only liftable if they are under a certain weight and allowed whether or not they can be lifted to be disabled. This will be useful for a lot of puzzles and quests, so I'm happy with that. I've also added some more sound effects, particularly footstep sounds and key collection sounds. Doors have also been added (no screenshots yet) and you can press E with a key to unlock them. Tomorrow I'll probably spend most of my development time making more models that I can use, and then I want to work on the inventory.


Keep on coding!

Day 8: Keys, Purple Biomes and Control improvements!

Hello again!

I was constantly tabbing in and out of the game and finding my mouse visible on the screen again, so I added a mouse handler that will lock the mouse again, fixing this problem :D Along with this I've also added keys - They can be picked up in the overworld and in dungeons and used to open various locked doors. I've also had a mess around with different themed biomes, one of which you can see in the screenshots below!

Keep on coding!

Day 7: Carry Objects, Pine Trees, Snow and Inventory!

Hey guys!

Sorry for not posting yesterday - updated to Windows 8.1 and spent most of the day reinstalling programs (I've been using a developer build so it uninstalled them - luckily my Steam library was saved :D). Anyway, Today, I added a few new things! First off, you can now carry various items around (Source Engine style). This will primarily be used in puzzles, though it has all sorts of uses! It's based on the mass of the object too, and you can only carry things with a certain weight :). Next, I added Pine Trees. I'm still a bit unsure about the model, but they look nice, especially alongside the new snow particles (Still W.I.P but doing well :D). Finally, I've started on an inventory system that will allow you to hold different weapons, potions and foodstuff for use later :D

Here's some pictures of the new features:

Keep on coding!

Day 5: Improved Combat Effects

Hey guys! So I was trying to think of what else to add to improve combat, and then it hit me :D Enemies are now knocked back when hit, and will also emit a small amount of (square) blood particles. A number now appears, floats upwards and fades away showing the amount of damage done to the enemy! It looks really good and I'm happy with it. Tomorrow I'm going to add working shields and try to work a bit more on the A.I.

Happy coding :D

Day 4: A.I work!

Hey everyone!

Today I managed to add a proper health system to the game. Enemies have 2 sets of health - shield and health. If shield is enabled it will be drained first before the enemies' actual health is drained, allowing armour and shields to be set up on enemies without much difficulty. I still need to work on the pathfinding, but enemies will now deal damage to the player (game closes if you die, need to make a death screen). I've also added a knockback effect so that an enemy is thrown backwards when hit with your sword. This applies for all enemies out of the box, and even accounts for the size of the enemy. At the way the A.I. is layed out, one script should work on all enemies (except boss battles) while still allowing them to having their own behaviour. I can't exactly post screenshots of any of the new features, so take this instead! It's dangerous to go alone!

http://www.sanger.dk

Day 3: Crosshair and Basic A.I!

Hey guys! I haven't had too much time during the day to work on the game, but I have managed to add a crosshair, Combat and a basic A.I that follows you around the map. I'll probably start with non-hostile entities, and then move on to the more hostile enemies when I start creating dungeons :D Here's a few screenshots, with some new fancy text (Not in-game)

Keep on coding! I'll be posting some tutorials tomorrow on how I handle the combat :D

Day 2: Buildings, Dynamic Shadows and Lensflare.

Hey guys! I've been doing some more work on my game ( need a name for it :P) over yesterday and today. While I want to get the combat system ready, I was messing around yesterday on improving the lighting in the scene, and here's the result. I'll probably have some kind of multiple light setup once the whole overworld is complete, but for the moment it uses one light (The sun in the third screenshot). I've also added a small fort type thing to test how well it works, and the results are promising. I've also added bridges (seen in screenshot 1 between the towers) and ladders (inside each tower).

What do you guys think?

Day 1: Zoxel!

Hey guys! I've finally managed to get Unity3d working, and I've started on a small game (I'll be posting more on that tomorrow). Anyway, Inspired by Minecraft and Cubeworld, I decided to try and make a voxel based RPG :D Don't worry, it won't be construction based, more like a dungeon crawler on par with Legends Of Yore and Mysterie. I spent a while trying to find various modeling programs that could help me with weapons, and I've finally settled on Zoxel. It's a great little program that allows you to place multi coloured cubes as if it was 2d pixel art, and then lets you export it as a .obj. I then load the models in to Blender and export them as a .fbx after renaming the materials! The result?

Trouble in Unity Town

So recently I updated to the latest version of Unity3d (4.2) because it seemed really promising. I'm a big fan of Unity and 4.2 has better support for 2d animation and a new 3d animation system called "Mecanim". I was pretty disappointed when I updated to 4.2 however. When I launch, if I try to open an old project it crashes with no error report. If I finally manage to create a new project, as soon as I spawn a gameobject I get the same crash. It's impossible to do anything with it. I'm not ready to give up on Unity yet, because it's a great program, and it could be something on my end that's causing the crash, so I'm going to submit a bug report later today in the hopes I can get it fixed ;)

Happy Coding!

Welcome!

Hello! I'm a coder, and this is my blog. My name is Brian Whelan and I'm a coder/trying to be a game developer/modder/gamer! Here, you can check out reviews of games I play, snippets of code I use and stuff I create! I've never blogged before, so hopefully I can improve both my code and my blogging skills with your help!