In a slight change of plans I am taking the game down an action game direction. The first thing I wanted to do was play with keyboard and controller input. This brings me back to a problem I have faced more than a few times: What are the most natural controls for a game with an isometric camera but fps movement mechanics? The biggest problem is strafing. If you aren't looking in the same direct...

Let's start off with the death mechanic: If you land on a tile that is not above ground or adjacent to a ground tile you will fall and die. The red and white tiles explain which are safe to move to and which are not. so there is no hp? There are more than a few games that I've criticized (rightfully or wrongfully so) for harshly punishing a player who takes risks. My argument (more a wager than a...

Here's the first demonstration of my ideas for combat. I'm desperately trying to stay away from number based combat. Health bars can remove an opportunity for excitement. As a unit's health aproaches zero a player may experience excitement and tension. But the killing shot instantly ends the moment. I wanted to offer a second chance to pull yourself out of a tight spot. The hope is that this will...

I often find myself in need of a simple 3d quad that displays a texture from a sprite sheet. Unfortunately if you use an actual Unity Sprite you are going run into weird batching and drawcall issues in 3d. On top of that Sprites have very specialized shaders. first a word of caution The context here is important. This post describes a script that will take a Material and customize it for a sprite...

The image says it all. I took the leap to the Unity 5 beta since their CloudBuild service now supports it. They are on their 19th stable build and I've only experienced a few crashes. auto upgrading is magic Unity 5 will auto-upgrade your project if you allow it too. It will also update your 3rd party assets. This is sort of scary as I don't want to be in the business of maintaining all of these a...

Behold: little rows of square dots! Note how they disappear when their associated little avatar is attacked. I've decided that the assets are in a good place for now and I'm back to combat. A priority that was obvious once others played the game is they want feedback from the combat. Aka, "did my dude hit that other dude?" Furthermore, "am I winning?" vigor, stamina, or stability... but not healt...

What a small technique for such a great effect. The image shows each model with and without the emissive layer. Note the how the red lens of the camera model is all lit up. Since I'm finally using textures instead of solid colors, I decided to upgrade the models to incorporate an emissive layer (they are robots after all). The shaders have been upgraded to support this. multiplicity But now there...

I loath feeling defensive when demonstrating an early version of anything I'm working on. This is especially the case for games - they just look like shit for so long. And everyone notices. All too often I have to guide the player's eye back to the point of what I'm demonstrating or requesting feedback on. temporary assets are distracting "So are those always going to be cubes?" The answer is st...