ShockBots Dev Blog

I implemented a weapon heat buildup system, where continual firing can overheat the gun.  Each gun has different rates of fire and max heat tolerances.  My wife and and I took our daughter to get her well-check and then eat lunch – so I didn’t get a lot done.  Later in the day I got a heat buildup bar working that lengthens and gets redder the hotter the gun is.  I added wall collision for mobs to prevent them from getting stuck in walls now that they have turn radii.

I got 2 mob attacks in. If a melee mob that is facing the player collides with the player it attacks.  I think I need to change it from collision to distance check.  I also got the boomer attack working.  It has a trigger radius and will detonate if the player gets too close.  It also loops through all mobs and deals damage to them based on distance.  Right now the explosion VFX is underwhelming so it’s not obvious why they are exploding.  I might need to shade the boomer red as it gets closer to the player?  I added a debug health text field in the corner.  I was having a strange bug when the mouse pointer went over the text – the reticule would fly off.  Turns out I had to disable text interaction on the text field.

I was using the same reticule from my last game, but found it hard to target enemies, so I changed it to more of a floating cross hairs.  I also changed the camera from an isometric view to more of a head on view.  I think it showcases the environment better.  I added a small dot in the UI to the reticule so even when it’s obscured with the environment or mobs, you can still see that dot.

Calling it an early night to get some rest – it’s only 11PM.  Take a look at the latest video:

Shockbots_2013.01.31

Tons of progress today!

I cleaned up a lot of code in the morning.  All the rendering is now in the correct class.  After that, I added weapon power ups.  By tweaking numbers I can make the guns shoot different angles, change the rate of fire, slow the player down, change shot speed and damage amount and more.  I also fixed the terrible math I was using for player shots in the process.  I modeled 3 weapon power ups, but haven’t textured them.  The power up system is very generic, so I plan on adding health packs that drop when you kill a mob.  I also need to add health to the player as he is invulnerable right now.  Then attack damage from mobs.

Take a look at some in progress game play!

Shockbots_2013.01.30

Today was better.  I finally figured out the math to get enemies to turn towards the player using a turn speed – so larger mobs will turn slower.  I also got the shooter bot in – It looks like a trap door spider.  I added sleep and waking states for enemies – so once they see you they pop awake and try to kill you.  I also did a exporter helper tool fix, so its easier to export anims.

Today was frustrating.  I had hours of no progress trying to get the boomer anims in.  I eventually reset transforms on all the parts and re-rigged the thing.  Earlier in the day I changed all the code that referenced the chomper directly to use whatever mob is spawned.  That’s a pretty big deal because it makes it much easier to add more mobs.  I also made one master texture for all mobs and the boomer and chomper now share that texture.  The boomer has been UV mapped but I still need to paint it’s texture.

Here’s a pic of some boomers walking towards the player:

So I re-rigged the shooter and did Shoot, Die, Idle, and Wake anims.  I also created the Boomer, a large cylinder bot that explodes when it gets close to the player.  I wanted to test the rig and was listening to internet radio and decided to make this anim:

Shockbots_2013.01.27

I figured out what was wrong with my anim exporter and documented the correct way to export anims.  I needed to bake down the anims and convert to point helpers and export that.  Not elegant, but I don’t have time to make it perfect.

I got an explosion animated and hooked it up so it plays when a mob dies.

One problem I am running into is a lot of stuff was hard coded – referencing a specific map or mob – so I keep having to go back and convert it to a generic function.  I guess it’s one of the pitfalls of really rapid development.

I also added the ability to scale nodes in an animation, so the fireball can expand.

I didn’t have a consistent unit scale between my environment and my characters – so I rescaled everything.

Problems: Chomper model is now having animation issues – and depending on the export I sometimes get small mesh pieces.

So no progress today and the game looks a bit worse.  I had to go into work for my last day so I can blame that.

The studio where I worked just shut down.   Yuck!  While I look for work I am going to try to complete my second game!

Here is a look at where I am since my last post ages ago.