Posted May 20, 2024 by AdamBalko
Date: 20.5.2024
I'm sorry about not updating the Devlog for the last month. I had a lot of deadlines for programming projects at the same time. I wanted to put the energy into the actual game, instead of this Journal.
I had actually quite a lot of fun implementing the mechanics I wanted to implement. Putting together levels, designing prefabs and mechanisms. At least until day before deadline, when work on anything took 2x longer as the levels were getting bigger. Especially creating level 5 became a slog, I was getting lost in the objects i put into the scene (maybe because lack of sleep). I was really careful about organizing the resources, so that any change becomes as little tedious as possible. But my scene was organized for a mechanic I didn't end up implementing, so I just inconvenienced myself. I spent first 2 days of coding by creating PlayerController, but it felt extremely wrong, so I found a free package on YouTube, and modified it to my liking. Maybe I should post credits somewhere 🤔
I have to complain about the engine once again. Once you add a single event to an object made from prefab, changing the events in the actual prefab won't apply changes to the derived objects. You have to assign the same event to every object that derives from prefab and override it. Fortunately I used prefabs within prefabs, so the problem didn't grow as much as it could. On the other hand, I learned quite a few things, better (although not perfect) organization of scenes with templates, prefabs, events and ScriptableObjects. I looked a bit into the ParticleSystem, I created my own tools. I still think I'm using the animator wrong. It seems pretty unflexible to me. Saving a new clip for each subtle change just stinks to me.
The whole point of dividing the level into boxes was to play more with them. Moving them and rotating them with switches and buttons, moving the warp portals etc. etc. I was kinda inspired by the Czech game BLACKHOLE, but I put much stricter limitations on myself. So although there COULD be potential of jumping between boxes and changing gravity, i think its too ambitious for me. Designing levels is hard as it is.
Activity:
PlayerController boogaloo: 2 days
Importing and modifying Tarodev's PlayerController: ~30 minutes
Implementing Gravity: ~1.5 hours
Setting up Level template and Scene hierarchy: ~1.5 hours
Creating UI: ~5 hours
Implementing warps, flags and other mechanics: ~2.5 hours
ParticleEffects, animations, other cosmetics: ~1.5 hours
Adding SFX and BGM: ~1 hour
Builiding Level1: ~10 minutes
Building Level 2: ~20 minutes
Building Level 3: ~40 minutes
Building Level 4: ~1.5 hours
Building Level 5: ~ 2.5 hours
Playtesting (by myself): ~3 hours
Creating Logo and Trailer: 3 hours (Thanks Flowernal so much for help with the trailer <3, he did most of the work)
I have posted this project on GitHub, so more detailed work overview can be found there.
https://github.com/TenIdiotZInternetu/Unboxxed