Vid 37 - Blender level design

Finally have another video up.  I go into the basics of Blender and how we will use it to make levels.  It is pretty rudimentary at this point and I am definitely not a modeler, but it should get you started.

Yay! Major milestone - basic mechanics finished!

It feels good to have a big portion of the game done.  That selector was the biggest pain and probably why I did it near the end.  The basic mechanics are done.  Now we need to spend some time playing the game.  There are other things I want to add, but for now, you can launch the ball, bounce it off stuff and make it to the goal.  I feel pretty good about that!

Finally finished the selector!

I have to admit, this little problem kicked my butt for a while, mostly because ShiVa was not behaving the way I expected.  Here is how I got it all working and the end result.

Trig lesson

If you are like me, it has been a long time since you learned this in school.  Here is a refresher so that you are ready for the next video.  It's pretty much the basis for all the changes I made on this iteration.

Adding the object selector tool to the HUD

In this video I finally import the HUD element that we created a week or so ago.  Originally I ran into some issues with the imported image looking pretty bad.  It turns out that when you import textures they resize to a multiple of 64, i.e. 64x64, 128x128, etc.  For a small image with a lot of subtle alpha settings to blend the edges, the resizing can really screw it up.  Once I resized it in Gimp to be 128x128, it looked much better.  So from now on, we will be making our texture sizes multiples of 64.

Using Gimp to create a HUD element

I am definitely no expert in Gimp, so please keep the laughing to a minimum!  Since I am not an artist, I really appreciate the way programs like Gimp can make it easy to apply 3D effects like emboss.  In this video I create a basic image that I'm going to import as a texture and then put in the HUD of the game.  This will be the control to handle the rotation of movable objects.

Some great feedback!

So an important part of iterative development is to get good feedback during testing and then incorporate it into new iterations so that, over time, the game continues to improve.  This video discusses some of the feedback I have recently received and where you can go to leave feedback.  Although I have not implemented all the feedback yet, I will make sure that I call attention to changes that are the result of feedback when I do the videos.

Beam me up, Scotty! Adding a teleporter to the game.

I think it turned out pretty good!  I still need to change some of the mechanics like moving the camera with the ball so that there isn't such a jarring change in the view.  Kronos gave me some great feedback in the forums and mentioned the way the poly trail pauses, so I will be fixing that as well.  I encourage everyone to read his feedback because it brings up a lot of good points and demonstrates how critical it is to get the input of people outside the project. Thanks for the excellent feedback, Kronos!

Bug fix and AI re-design

Sorry its been about a week since my last post.  Here is a video documenting the fix for a bug that I accidentally introduced to the game.  Basically by adding a ceiling that is a collider, the game could no longer find objects that you click on to move them.  I fixed it by moving the ceiling in edit mode.  I also moved some code around to segregate AI functionality a bit more.

Flame on!

 

Video showing what happens when the ball gets too close to the fire.  I also include a switch to turn the flame off.

Fire and smoke - Particle effects in ShiVa3D

 

Finally something flashy!  It is pretty easy to implement a particle effect in ShiVa3D, but you will want to spend some time tweaking the settings to get exact look you want.  I still don't feel that I got the fire exactly right, but I feel good about the smoke.  At first I didn't like that some of the fire particles lifted off the main body of the fire because it didn't look very realistic, but when I added the smoke, the fire particles now look like the light of the fire reflecting off the smoke.  I think it looks pretty cool.  Next I will add some sensors so that the ball catches on fire when it goes through, which will be very cool if it works out right!

Emulating a trampoline in ShiVa3D

 

Not going to write much on this one because I am at work =)  Watch the video and see how to implement a trampoline like object.

Installing the Corona SDK and looking at the demos

 

I'm not getting bored!  I'm just interested in a lot of different things all at the same time.  I wanted to start doing something in Corona so that I could see exactly how different it is to working in ShiVa3D.  This video just installs the SDK and then we look at some of the demos.  I will be developing a game in Corona and documenting it along the way similar to what I am doing in my ShiVa3D video series.

ShiVa 3D - Adding a poly trail to the ball via a helper object.

 

Here we are adding poly trails in ShiVa3D so that we can see where the ball has gone.  I was finding it difficult to position objects in the level when I couldn't remember exactly where the ball had traveled.  This makes it easier because we can see the path of the ball by using poly trails.  I love how easy they are to set up and they just work. I also add a helper object to make the trail work right.

Fixing a small issue with the object move

 

Ok, I guess I am a perfectionist in some ways, but the initial jump that an object would take when you first start moving it was really annoying me.  It is not a huge change to the code, but the concept can be a bit muddy if you don't have a clear picture of what's going on.  So if anyone needs clarification, let me know.

Code cleanup and github repository video

 

 We already talked about this stuff on the blog, but I also put up a YouTube video demonstrating some of the code changes I made and what the github repo looks like.

Moving objects in two parts!

 

 So we are now able to move objects within the game!  This is the first inkling of what the game may be like. Of course there will be several different types of objects within the game, but we will have to make due with the pillars for now.

More bounce!

 

Ok, we have an overhead cam and a chase cam in place...let's add some objects!  Ok, so it's only one object because I found that by making the ball more bouncy, I also made the chase cam more bouncy.  As a result, I adjusted my chase cam code.  The result is simpler code and better behavior, so I think it was a win.  I like the iterative process that allows you to catch things like this along the way when it is easier to fix.  Keep your eyes open this week for more objects and maybe even the end target!

Overhead Camera

Ok, so we are getting close to having the basic mechanics worked out.  We will still have to do some tweeking to the physics and other behaviors, but that's ok!  The overhead cam is probably the biggest change we have made so far just because we have to tie it in to the other two cameras.

I also consolidated the code to hide/show the crosshairs into a function. Once we get the basic mechanics worked out, I am going to clean up the code a bit, so there may be some more consolidations.

Heads up!

Cliche, I know...oh well.  Here we add a basic HUD component in the form of a crosshair for aiming.  Then I work some trickery to make the crosshair disappear when we aren't aiming.