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DEVLOG - Omnipoof

A topic by Matt Colón created Aug 28, 2021 Views: 446 Replies: 25
Viewing posts 1 to 22
Jam HostSubmitted

Hello!  I'm glad to join in on the CGDC Speedgame: Hardmode again this year!  I'm leaning towards a combination of the "Light vs. Darkness" and "Reflection" themes, with some mechanics revolving around reflecting and refracting light in order to drive back darkness.  In addition, the story will be a reflection of the player characters life.  Now let's see if I can pull it off. :D 

Jam HostSubmitted

Player movement up and running in record time! 😊
Jam HostSubmitted

lol, Mr. Speed they call you. I'm still figuring out a direction with my ideas.

Jam HostSubmitted

I got the ability to break a beam and basic reflection working!
Jam HostSubmitted


Recursive reflections are working!

Jam HostSubmitted

Wrapping up for the night.  I tried some refraction mechanics but they ended up being hacky and still not working.  However, that'll stray a bit further from the "reflection" theme and I need to focus on the 4 of my 4:44 (as Burnerknight Studios told us :) ).  I submitted what I had so far if you'd like to try out the reflection mechanics!

https://mattcolon.itch.io/cgdc-speedgame-hardmode-2021-reflection-tbd

Jam HostSubmitted

Looking good Matt, really enjoy seeing the light just whizz around and bounce everywhere as I move. Was that with a raycast and then visually showing the raycast?

Jam HostSubmitted

Yeah, it's using LineRenderer and then raycasting from an origin point until it hits a surface, adds the hit point to the LineRenderer's array of points, then figures out the reflection vector and does another raycast, and so on until the raycast doesn't hit anything and adds a point in that last direction off beyond the screen.  I've never worked with raycasting before, so I'm learning something new!

Jam HostSubmitted

Added the ability to focus fire down dark objects on the screen with the reflected beams.
Jam HostSubmitted

I added the ability to move fast to quickly move around the map and to move slow to better control the light bending.  Also, dark objects will visually show that they are being focused on until they are destroyed, but they also will heal if not continually focused down!
Jam HostSubmitted

Ready for some playtesting!  The core mechanics are in there other than pushing objects, but that's just adding a rigidbody to some shapes.  Now I'll be moving onto making it look and work better!

https://mattcolon.itch.io/cgdc-speedgame-hardmode-2021-reflection-tbd

Jam HostSubmitted

Love the progress, Matt!

Jam HostSubmitted

I spent a lot of time getting my mechanics ported over to a new scene that makes use of Tiled maps and added animations to the player and dark objects.  Now it looks a lot different but brings over the core mechanics!
Submitted

This is looking like a system you'll be able to iterate on for some really nice gameplay with a nice learning curve and a steady progression of increased difficulty all while having a pleasing look.  Can't wait to see what it becomes.

Jam HostSubmitted

Yeah, it's a simple mechanics but there's a lot you can do with it based on the shapes you can reflect off of and the environments you have to work around.  I'm hoping to introduce a new facet of the mechanic on each level so players can slowly get the hang of what's possible. :) 

Jam HostSubmitted


I got another level done, adding in the reflective objects to the scene to show what's possible with the beam of light!
Jam HostSubmitted

Level 3 down!  With all the mechanics saved in prefabs, it makes creating levels quick and easy.  Here we're showing a little more about the use of reflective surfaces.
Jam HostSubmitted (1 edit)

Uploaded a build with four levels to the speedgame page.  Also, holding both the "slow" and "fast" buttons now make you go extra slow for that added precision.  Enjoy!

https://mattcolon.itch.io/cgdc-speedgame-hardmode-2021-reflection-tbd

Jam HostSubmitted

I made a simple message system for the story that doesn't block gameplay.  Now I can set some context for the game!
Jam HostSubmitted

The message system has been great to add a simple story to the game.  Now, the ending is done, the title and credits screens are good to go, and now it's down to the last bit of testing and touch ups!  Next, I need to start adding music to the game!

Submitted

I've been using a lot of prebuilt asset/tools to help make mine..... I probably should have figured out the Narrative text display part of the FPS Narrative Puzzle package, I could have told much more of the story but I opted to just record the main voice over dialogue and have it play it at the start.... it works, but is far less flexible - These type of things are often a trade off from one aspect (utility vs simplicity etc.) of one thing for another!  Your's is looking good, can't wait - well I didn't wait, played through the already posted version, a bit touchy, but I enjoyed it!

Jam HostSubmitted

One of the things I've learned from game jams is that it's a great way to identify what types of reusable systems you might want to create so it's easy to drag and drop things into future games.  Some examples for me are overlays that fade in and out on command and audio sources with additional controls like fading out when switching to another background song.  I made all those manually this time, but I'd love to get them into my Unity utils repo and done well so I can easily make use of them in the future!

Thanks for playing!  If it's touchy, make sure to use the Shift+Space or W+S gamepad buttons together to move extra slow.  I added that because it's hard to bend the light accurately after bouncing it a few times off of surfaces. :) 

Jam HostSubmitted

One of the things I've learned from game jams is that it's a great way to identify what types of reusable systems you might want to create so it's easy to drag and drop things into future games.

This.All.The.Way. Definitely going to do this!

Jam HostSubmitted

I should have posted this last night, but as of 10 PM PDT the game is done!  It now also has a name, Radiance.  Because light plays such a big factor in the mechanics and the story, it seemed like a good fit.  You can play it here:

https://mattcolon.itch.io/radiance

I won't be able to work on it more today due to work, but this ended up being a nice little exploration of reflection mechanics and how they can be expanded upon.  If I had additional time, here's what I would have liked to explore:

  • Moving enemies
  • After the ending, making the player the source of the ray of light
  • Light reflection for combat beyond puzzles
  • Refraction of light through objects
  • Refraction of light into colors

Something that I aim for in each game jam is to learn and do new things so a grow as a developer beyond making use of the skills I've developed.  For this one, there were two things I focused on: raycasting/line rendering and scene management.  I hadn't used raycasts before in Unity, but it seemed to be perfect for this type of gameplay.  Paired with Unity's LineRenderer, it made it easy to use a raycast to determine the lines for the ray of light and find its reflections around the room, then translate that into points of collision to add to the positions of the LineRenderer.  I also made use of tags to determine whether a hit should be reflected or cause damage.

I've played around with scene management in the past, but my game jams had still been single screen games.  For example, Unveil, my CGDC Speedgame: Hardmode 2020 entry, was a dozen maps on top of each other lined up such that the exit for one was at the same place as the entrance to another to make it easy to simply disable the previous map and enable the next.  However, this time I went all in on scene management, and it made it much simpler to deal with.  In some cases, I could do a "scorched earth" approach to a scene as I was getting ready to leave it, destroying objects as needed to pave the way for the player to head towards the scene transition.  I also made many more prefabs than I have before, and that made it incredibly simple to start a new scene by dragging in all the common things (e.g. the player object, the ray of light, the darkness creations, the darkness manager that makes the room lighten up after darkness creatures are destroyed, etc.) and then pulling in the new map.  I also learned about DontDestroyOnLoad(), which allowed me to carry over the background music through scenes.

Overall, this was another great experience, and I hope you all enjoy the game!

Hi Matt, I only just discovered this - but this game is AWESOME! I love it - good job. Andy Geers.

Jam HostSubmitted

Thank you!  I'm glad you enjoyed it!