ShockBots Dev Blog

Been finalizing a version of SP1 for another sponsor.  They are asking for tons of changes, mostly in the menus.  It’s taking a lot of work, but it’s stuff I can apply to SB2.  I am currently waiting for them to give me a yes or no on my changes.

Shockbots 2 is coming along slowly as ever.  I have the first level done, a bunch of menu tweaks in, and some gameplay fixes.

He’s a giant list of what I’ve been doing the last month!

+ 2013-05-14 ART: Animating level 0 background trex
+ 2013-05-14 TECH: Added trex boss mob to end of level 0
+ 2013-05-16 TECH: Fixed negative y in exit position
+ 2013-05-14 LD: Polished level 0 jumps and mobs
+ 2013-05-29 LD: Finished first level gameplay
+ 2013-05-30 TECH: Added checkpoint system
+ 2013-06-01 TECH: Set checkpoint radius to 500
+ 2013-06-06 TECH: Broke input into InputHandler class
+ 2013-06-07 TECH: Moved stats to GameVars class
+ 2013-06-07 TECH: Moved UI code from Cinematics and Player to UI2D class
+ 2013-06-10 ART: Added confirm restart and quit button graphics
+ 2013-06-10 TECH: Hooked up Restart & Quit buttons
+ 2013-06-11 TECH: Hooked up Quit confirm YES / NO buttons
+ 2013-06-12 TECH: Hooked up T Rex Cinematic
+ 2013-06-12 ART: Animated up T Rex Cinematic
+ 2013-06-13 TECH: Added jump check to prevent player from jumping too high through objects
+ 2013-06-13 TECH: Fixed exploding mobs – only worked if detonating now works if shot

A lot of the tech is in and so now I am trying to make the first level fun.  I am having a lot of trouble balancing the boss fight, but it’s getting there.

Shockbots2_2013.05.14.mov

Did a bunch of small things today.  I created “mob” and “object” buttons for my exporter that set all the right settings for exporting that type of asset.  I moved exported mob assets into their own folder and got the floater mob working in game.  I added a vertical offset to mobs so that bullets hit them in their center and not at their feet.  I also centered the UI target reticule and weapon projectiles.

Mobs now move towards player correctly, but sometimes the chomper doesn’t attack the player.  I am thinking the facing angle got messed up when I converted from a top down to side view.

I was reading about extending classes and thought that would be great to do for my mobs.  Each mob type is a class with a bunch of variables that define it’s HP, attacks, etc.  The mobs share many of the same variable values, so I made a mob template class.  I then added an init function to the specific mobs to only set the values that are not the same as the template.  That makes for a lot less redundant code and the individual mob’s classes are now much cleaner.

I built a squid like floater mob that will shoot at the player.  I finished the shoot animation, but still need to texture the model.

I put the main menu, sponsor intro and pause into a new menu class which helped reduce the clutter in my main class.  I broke the npc attacks into separate functions so the mobs class is much better organized.  I made some progress on the movement class, but I think I have some remnants of the old way of npc movement still in there that’s preventing the mobs from moving.  The collision checks are all good, but there is no movement on the x axis.

Over the last few days I have been corresponding with the secondary sponsor to get the Shockbots 1 working on their site.  There is a six to eight hour time difference so it’s been challenging but I think I finished all the required changes.

I created a new class for movement, controls and collision detection.  I used to have different code for mobs and the player, and it was pretty much just duplicated code.  So, to streamline things I combined them.  Of course that means I broke movement once a mob wakes up, but I’ll figure that out tomorrow.

I added item exporting to my exporter and created a template system that selects all the things I want to export.   Right now I have a map preset that exports vert positions, 2 uv sets, collision, exits, mob positions and types and Items.

I also added an item importer to the game.

I found a primary and secondary sponsor for Shockbots!  It took some rescaling of the game and I am still trying to integrate the API of my secondary sponsor, but after today or tomorrow I can finally put Shockbots to bed and focus on the side scrolling game.  Whew!

http://www.gamepirate.com/game/shockbots.html

Work’s been going slow – I’m dealing with sponsorship of my first game and it’s kind of a nightmare.  I have a second level for my game and am working on the platforming elements of the levels.

www.shockbots.com/Video/Shockbots2_2013.04.22.mov

I’ve made a lot of progress on the intro.  Overall I am going slowly, but it’s starting to shape up.  I fixed an export problem with the max exporter and now the robots rotations are exactly right.  I also created some shaders that let me see exactly what the in game realtime view will look like.  I added the ability to export alpha blending animation for dist effects.

Latest video:

www.shockbots.com/Video/Shockbots2_2013.03.15.mov