SECRET KEEP - Dev Video 6, 7, 8, 9 - Building Towers & Flattening Land

Catching up on the past few weeks!
It's been the lead up to Christmas and New Years, and now both are done!
But I was also very pleased to get a bunch of things done on the project.

• Taking stock of the project, before embarking on a stint of development coming up!
• Tweaked the player controller. Integrating a more grounded player with blackjack, sword, torch, etc. Swimming.
• Thinking about plans for building towers, flattening the land, etc.

• Basic terrain flattening code working!
• Thinking through all the steps that need to be done to get this working "automatically" for each tower built.

• Got automatic building of  towers and flatting the land working.
• I can now build towers of rectangular proportions, and it automatically flattens the terrain, with padding and falloff.
• Not yet reserving the land for the building, so currently still getting grasses, trees and other objects being spawned inside the buildings.

• Tweaking the tower generation system. Smoother code. Updated Blender kit pieces.
• Talking about my ideas for a Reserved Land system.
• Talking about ideas for a tower generation system that's more formalised and contextually aware.
• Was still working with 8m x 8m x 3m kit pieces here. Thinking about 10m x 10m x 4m room size instead.

SECRET KEEP - Dev Video 5 - Menus, Save Format, "Find the Flag" Mission Stub!

It's a real joy to be getting back into proper development of SECRET KEEP.

I had to take time away to learn more programming (making MUZTEK Base Game systems), to figure out how to fully Pause and Unpause the game properly, and how to do Save & Load of game state.

Now I'm back, and I've integrated these concepts into SECRET KEEP in a basic way, with a Menu System in place, a basic Save & Load system working, and a basic Mission Generation loop in place from the menu, into the game, and back out again.

Here I show the basic menu, save, load, mission generation loop in action...

 

It's great to now have this in place, as I can start to actually work on game systems, mission types, NPCs, player abilities, etc, all working within this foundational framework I have in place.

Here's a bunch of screenshots I also took at this point in time!

SECRET KEEP - Dev Video 4 - Mission Structure Ideas

I've pulled away from the hand-crafted idea of Secret Keep, and I'm leaning back into the procedural generation systems I've been working on.

Here I discuss the broad concepts behind how missions will be generated...

 

Here's a series of screenshots I took at this stage...

7DRL 2020: Broken Signal - Challenge complete!

I've finished the 7DRL Challenge for 2020!
BROKEN SIGNAL is now available to download and play. 

Get Broken Signal on itch.io now!

https://muzboz.itch.io/brokensignal

Broken Signal - 7DRL Release Trailer

• Jetpack & Overclock your way to the top of the radio tower and Break the Signal!
• Unlock 3 difficulty levels, with increasingly tough towers to overcome.​
• Super explosive, super fast paced, super hard.
• ​See if you can beat all 3 modes!

7DRL 2020 - Broken Signal - Dev Vids 5 - 9 (Day 2)

Dev Vids 5-9 cover my development on Day 2 (Sunday)

• 5: Making towers of variable width, depth and height.
• 5: Spawning the Radio Tower (goal) at the top of the tower.
• 6: Explosion Bonanza!  (A particularly explosive snippet of gameplay).
• 7: Destructible Crates, Interior Walls, Rotated Rooms.
• 8: Building the tower shape based on desired total rooms.
• 9: End of Day 2 - Guaranteed path to the top, playtesting mayhem.

7DRL 2020 - Broken Signal - Dev Vids 3 & 4 (Day 1)

On day 1, I get straight into Procedural Level Generation!

• 3: Level generation basics -> Building a fixed dimensions tower out of room prefabs.
• 3: Floors, Walls, Lights, Barrels, Enemies, Pickups.  
• 3: Playtesting!
• 4: Quick playtest of the end-of-day build!

7DRL 2020 - Broken Signal - Dev Vids 1 & 2 (Day 1 Preamble)

I'm doing the 7DRL (7 Day Roguelike Challenge) for the first time!

I've decided to use an existing FPS project called BROKEN SIGNAL, and make it into a Roguelike(ish) game!



I've been making some Dev Log videos as I go, to track the progress, features, playtesting and thoughts along the way.

Dev Vid 1: My plans & intentions for the jam!

• Making procedurally generated towers to jetpack up.
• Player must reach the radio tower at the top to win.
• Action packed gameplay - more of a Spelunky-like than a traditional Roguelike.
• Think Quake-meets-Spelunky, but going up instead of down.  :)

Dev Vid 2: We examine my existing Broken Signal project

• Existing FPS project with slow motion, jetpacking, some AI enemies, key and locks.

World Generation Project - Screenshots

Here's a few nice screenshots from my progress on the World Generation Project in Unity.

World Generation Project: Exploring generated islands on foot

Continuing work on a World Generation Project in Unity!


I've got it to the point now where I'm fairly happy with the basis of my world generation.

It's generating X number of islands on startup, grabbing from a randomised selection of Biome profiles I've made, so some might be Jungles, others full of Medieval Buildings, some with Cottages, another with Autumn Trees.

I've also got some basic wildlife happening, although they don't have much in the way of AI currently.

World Generation - Exploring a variety of generated islands on foot!

World Generation Project - Generating Islands at Runtime

I'm working on a World Generation Project in Unity!


I began working through a bunch of tutorials and information about creating terrains in Unity with code, instead of by hand.

I then got that code running as co-routines (somewhat) so that it could generate them at runtime, before your eyes, rather than only in the editor, or all in one frame (freezing up the realtime aspect while it did so).

Here's a video of my island generation working in realtime for the first time.

"World Generation in Unity - Generating Islands at Runtime"

Werewolf in the Wild: Birds, Humans & Mood

I enjoyed doing another weekend's work on "Werewolf in the Wild", adding better Bird AI, and modeling, animating and bringing to life a simple human.  These humans scour the terrain with crossbows.

You can download the latest build here (version 2016-11-20th-2200 as of this post)!
https://muzboz.itch.io/werewolfwild

Here's a video of the Birds coming to life...

 


Currently, there's still no interactions between the elements, I'm still working on mood and basic navigational AI.  Because I'm generating the terrains and level objects randomly each time, I can't use NavMesh, so I'm using a roll-your-own approach with Raycasts to avoid obstacles, and Sin waves to have the players move more organically and scan their environment more like real creatures.

Here's a video of the Humans coming to life...

 


I'm enjoying learning more C#, it's making me feel like I'm really starting to grasp the underlying language of games.  :)

It also features more ambient sounds, especially around the towers.  I'm very interested in exploring ways of imbuing the world with narrative, without it actually being specifically scripted.

And here's a video of the overall mood of the world, shot from the perspective of the creatures themselves, at the end of the 2nd weekend working on it.  :D



More updates to come!  

I'd love to hear your feedback and thoughts, so drop a comment below for me.  :D

Vista Pro: Procedural Landscapes - Images & Animations

In 1999 I spent some time making Vista Pro landscapes, and rendering them out overnight.

It took ages to render!  But it was really exciting to see how they'd turn out.

20th Sep 1999

22nd July 1999

19th May 1999