ShockBots Dev Blog

I changed the map to be a 5×5 grid, with 3 random boss rooms.  The first boss is a giant Chomper, the second the spider and the third is a giant t-rex.  I got the T-rex model in and a walk cycle done.  I still need to texture it.  I normalized the player speed so 45 degree angles aren’t faster than horizontal or vertical movement.  I also created a minimap showing rooms the player has been in as dark green, unexplored rooms as black, and current room as either red or bright green depending on if there are enemies present in it.

I am really close to finished – just need to finish up the t-rex, texture and animate the player, and create an ending screen.

I am not a fan of texturing.  I finished the spidroid and power up textures.  I created different projectiles for each round type.  I animated a chomper sleep and wake.  I removed unused textures and consolidated onto fewer texture sheets for a one meg savings putting me back at around 2.5 megs including audio and music.  I animated the Spidroid boss walk and die.

Nearly at the finish line.  I need to animate and texture the player and add a death screen.  I need to make the map a square array of 30 rooms and make a minimap.  I also need to add 2 bosses – one will be a chomper redeco and the other hopefully a T-rex.

I created the 2 music tracks for the game – an action theme that plays when there are enemies and a calm theme when the room is clear.

I also created the last batch of sound effects for the game:

• mob bite / melee
• player hurt
• weapon over heat
• explosive impact
• mob bullet
• power up
• loot drop

I added a weapon overheated and power up text displays and randomized the spawn positions used by mobs.  There was a bug where mobs were spawning at incorrect locations instead of at their spawn points, and I think it was because the mob array wasn’t being cleared properly.  I think I fixed it and I haven’t seen the issue but I’m not sure.  Its a game breaking bug so I’ve been playing the game a lot to test it.  I sped up the boomer and added sleep and wake animations for the Boomer and Chomper.  I finally textured the doors and the boss room arrow.  Getting close to done.   Still need to texture and animate the player, texture the shooter and shooter boss.  Also I want to add 2 more bosses, if possible.

Today I added an audio class and Sound effects for:

• Player Weapon Fire
• Ricochet
• Wall Impact
• Round Impact Mob
• Mob Death

I think the sound adds a lot.  I textured the Boomer and UVed and started texturing the Shooter.

I added a mob counter that makes each room have more mobs than the last.   There is a random component, so the number isn’t fixed, but in general each room should be harder than the last.  I created a logo screen and a preloader for the game with a progress bar to indicate amount loaded.  The file is only about 2.5 megs so its pretty quick.  My last game was around 16 megs – I guess it was all the dialog and sprite sheets.

I’ve been going crazy making the final environments for the game.  I have a nice pipeline to get them built, textured and light mapped.  I have 5 rooms done so far and I am kit-bashing a lot to get a few more.  Right now I am spawning way too many mobs, but that’s going to change.

Take a look at the final environments in action:

Shockbots_2013.02.10

Today I got random loot drops, random map generation, and random player start position working.  I added a circle – line segment collision test to prevent the player and mobs from getting right next to walls and penetrating geometry.    This introduced a problem where a mob might see the player but get caught on a wall corner.  I added an unstuck flag so that if a mob sees the player but has been colliding for more than 1/3 of a second the mob will try to move a random direction to “unstuck” himself.  I added in 2 different radii – one for moving collision tests and one for weapon hit tests.  That way mobs can collide with walls and each other realistically, while giving the player a larger target to hit.

I added an arrow to doorways that lead to the boss fight – that way the player knows before going in that they better have geared up.  Overall the game feels pretty fun, but just too easy.  I need to add more mobs and the boss fight is easy to cheese past if the player hangs out behind a barrier – so I need to address that.  Overall pretty decent progress.  I need to add more room types – just having 3 that the player sees over and over is boring.

I built the boss room and my first boss – the SPIDROID DOMINATOR.  I figure a big name makes it sound more important.  The boss fight is still rough, but pretty fun.  I need to add small barriers to give the player a chance – right now it’s really hard.  I also tweaked the mob AI – I had a bug where the mobs would always try to go towards you even if they couldn’t see you.  That left them stuck hitting walls trying to get to the player.  Now, if the mob can’t see you and is colliding with a wall for more than 1/3 second, it picks a random point and wanders that way.  It makes them seem much less dumb.  Also, if they lose sight of the player they head to the last seen position, which makes them pretty decent at finding the player.

Check out the latest video:

Shockbots_2013.02.06

I added doors to the game.  It took way too long – I was setting a vector3D to = another and not a copy so all the doors were going down when only some should.  Doors now stay up if you are on the edge of the map to indicate to the player that that exit is not available.  I also added the final power ups for the game:

• LifeContainerUp – adds to the max HP
• SpeedUp – Increases player speed
• HeatMaxLevelUp – Increases max heat of weapon, which gives longer firing before overheating
• DamageUp – Increases each shot’s damage

I added a 3rd room for variety as well.  I accidentally created a recursion bug when setting the weapon’s upgrades when switching weapons.  I wanted to be sure to give the up grades to whatever weapon the player has, but in doing so I kept re-adding them and re-adding them forever.  Seeing the flash debugger just freeze was scary.  I thought it was my machine so I rebooted it and the problem was still there, of course.  Took a while, but finally fixed it.

So, next up some mob collision logic and a boss room.  Latest video below.

Shockbots_2013.02.06

Finally making some progress.  I’m still stressed out and making dumb mistakes like trying to set a variable to a value using == and setting an array to equal another instead of the values contained in the array.  Despite that I nearly finished the map system.  The player can now travel to different rooms once all mobs are destroyed.  Any weapons or power-ups persist in rooms, so going back to explored rooms is useful if the player needs some health they left behind.  Speaking of health, mobs now drop health, and rooms are randomly populated with the the available mobs.  I am experimenting with room sizes, player speed, and weapon heat buildup rates.

Check out the latest video. WordPress has a files size limit on videos, so I am now just FTPing them to a folder on my server.

Shockbots_2013.02.05