I'm bad at pixel art. I'm especially bad at animation in pixel art. I just can't do it. I went through 3 variations of the crouch pixel art today, being (mostly) happy with one of them. It took me over 3 hours of messing around with it, but there we go, it's something. I still need to work on it some more, mainly the back leg which looks a little odd, but other that that, i'm happy with it. Guess I've got to add it to the game next!
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There was a large problem with BattleBlade where you could win by just spamming regular attacks whilst in front of the enemy. There was a chance you could lose but also a chance you could win, it basically depended on who had less health and how fast you were at clicking. I found a fix for this.
I added some knockback meaning when Kaiku or Rabga is attacked with a melee attack, they will go flying back a bit in a diagonal fashion. This means that after being attacked once, the game basically dodges for you, so you can't be attacked again unless the player can get back to you. This also makes attacks feel more satisfying. As well as that, it makes the game a more vertical-centric game, more like how I want it to be. I fixed some animation problems where certain animations would play later than they should. I did this mostly by turning off exit time for some animations. I also changed the code for Rabga that determines when to play animations and when to stop. I fixed and added some more things but those were the highlights ;) I spent the majority of today working on the juiciness of Battleblade and making it more fun to play. As well as that, I also did some work to the AI and improved it somewhat. Firstly, I added screenshake on melee attacks in order to make them more satisfying (and more obvious if you are taking the damage). As well as that, I also made it so the music continues to play in the background if you restart the level as otherwise I feel due to the game's difficulty, you will go mad listening to the start of the song over and over again. I still need to make the game harder but I'm definitely getting there difficulty wise. I also worked on the particles some more and added some particles when the shadow attacks spawn, hit the opponent, and are destroyed. I find particles to be the best way to add visual flair to the game at low cost. My only fear is the game's graphics are starting to get overly busy. Today, I improved the AI by making to so Rabga will only move and run towards Kaiku if Kaiku gets closer to him. This allows the player to have different strategies of do you sit there and do shadow attacks (the safer but slower option) or run and attack Rabga with your sword (the more dangerous but faster option). I would like to make it so if Rabga loses half his health, he will go in and attack Kaiku regardless of proximity.
I FINALLY MADE PARTICLES STAY IN THE TOP LAYER. It was a dumb bug I should have fixed ages ago. Especially since it turned out to be such a simple fix. The two largest buildings in the environment were set to layer 0, and so were the particles. Changing those two buildings to layer -1 fixed most of the particle layer problems, but not all. My death particles still were not working properly and were hiding behind anywhere it could. And once again, it was a dumb reason. My death particles material was set to "Wall".... don't ask my why but it was as and as a result it simply didn't work. I changed it to a normal particle material and it worked fine. I also added some particles today and changed the graphics of them all somewhat, the game is actually looking quite nice now, much more juicy and less rigid than before. Animations are still awful but there we go. I also fixed that World Map level selection bug meaning the loading screen now displays. One pretty big bug regarding the World Map is that for some reason, the object defaults to some weird area meaning you HAVE to rotate it to access the first level. As well as that, you can select the only level there is from behind the map as long as you click where the collider lies. This is pretty bad and will get annoying as more levels are introduced to the player. I want to fix this somehow, add a description and a name to each level avaliable on mouse over and add some screenshake to the game over the coming days. I need to do the pretty major thing of making it so the player and enemy can look and move the oppisite way but to be honest i'm delaying that since that will break A LOT and i'm tempted to add some mechanic where you can't rotate for some reason.
Today, the main thing I worked on was... the world map! Exciting times. I managed to create a 3D Model in 3DS Max and a texture in Photoshop and after some work managed to import these succesfully into Unity. The idea is that you can choose what level to play (only Rabga as of right now) from the world map. You can hold down right click to rotate the earth and left click to select a level. You know where to click from the slight mountains that protrude from that area. I want to improve the earth texture in the future and make it so it displays the character you will be fighting there (either as a sprite with the enemy or as just some text). I managed to make it so clicking on the mountains will take you to the Rabga level but this generates some problems where you can click on it from behind or the side. As well as that, the loading screen which I also developed today, would only work if I used a button and not a 3D model with a collider. As a result, I may need to rethink the code or perhaps rethink the 3D model part entirely, and put a button near the mountains that somehow follows the earth rotation. Either way, world map works mostly, so for now it's fine. As well as that, I also did some light bug fixes,animation fixes and difficulty changes. Biggest difficulty change is that short range attacks are now a lot less powerful, you can only use them once per second now as apposed to before where you could use it about once every half second. Finally, I added particles when an attack hits Rabga and when one of Rabga's attacks hit Kaiku. I will change the particle effects in the future as right now i'm just reusing the death particles which don't really fit.
I spent the last two days making Rabga animated. Sounds easy, right? Haha, no, apparently not. I animated the animations in Piskel and moved them over to Unity with no problems at all. However, the problems came when I actually had to code and develop the animation controller for Rabga. It was painful to make them all work and fit together since my method of detecting movement for Kaiku didn't work for Rabga. I don't really know why (something to do with inputs or something probably) but nevertheless, after great frustration, I got it working. It doesn't work great and is fairly glitchy, but it works for now and i'm happy. The game still feels a bit slow so i'm thinking of adding a jump attack animation as right now it just plays the animation after the jumping animation is done, which looks a little odd. Also want to mess with the AI because it jump's too much, even in close combat. May even continue to increase HP because right now even with the increased HP from the original HP, battles still end to quickly and are too easy.
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AuthorMy name is William Hughes, and I study Games Development. I also am learning Web Development and general programming. Archives
May 2018
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