Posted September 04, 2024 by unleashedraptor
After I received some feedback on the initial movement test I released 2 weeks ago, I made a few changes...
The one that I spent the most time on was adding an indicator on the ground for where the player is in the air. This. Took. So Many. Hours.
I intially tried using an object that would stick to the ground annnddd....
Yeah it looked terrible. The object would work completely fine on the plane that is the ground but as soon as I hit a ledge or a slope it would then just look awful.
I then tried A light and that is eventually what I ended up using but it was a lot of trail and error. I went through different types of lights, different shaders and just a light itself. The shadow creation with an object worked to start with but also had clipping issues and an issue of causing the a lighter area to surround the player, so ultimately decided to not use itI then tried using a different shader and projector system but these systems are both way beyond my understanding and most modern shaders plugins refuse to work with Unity's Projector system so I ultimately just gave up on that approach.
It was then that I got the idea of just using a light. Since the game is at night, I can use the fact that there is less light in the scene to use it as a visual indicator for where the player is. I tried it annnddd... It gave the effect that I wanted but did it take some time to tune.
I also have added skidding to the dashing. If the player decides to go the opposite direction while running, they will skid across the ground and the shoot in the direction that they were holding. This was a nightmare to add since I needed to keep a good idea of rotation while so it wouldn't just be activated by spinning in a wide circle. I ultimately got it working but still feels clunky at the moment. Luckily, this is something that I could fix with animations rather than trying to brute force it in code.
I also changed the lighting of the tech demo to help understand what the actual environment of the game will look like in the end. I like the general shape of it and is better then anything I was able to make previously with the last projects.
Anyway, I'll wrap this up here, It's only a short one since I have mainly been bug fixing. Feel free to play the updated version I have on my itch page!
Next Update: Actual Game Mechanics.