Another Long Time

Here's my newest update: A friend of mine bought me the Steam mega ultra Indie pack for Christmas, and it's awesome! But his primary purpose for buying it wasn't for my enjoyment, and he admits to this too. He wanted me to try out other indie games and compare and contrast programming styles, features, gameplay, graphics, what have you. and it's working really well I'd say. Aside from some conflicting feeling about what makes up an indie game (should it be artsy? should it have a great story? should it be something reminiscent of an early 90's arcade game?) I've come to an overall conclusion: The game is built a specific way because someone wanted it that way. That is to say that these games are so thought over and built, and rebuilt, and rebuilt that they -ideally- are released in the image of the creators true idea. So why is it that sometimes the game doesn't function the way it's supposed to, not bugs. Esc buttons for instance, why not close out of dialog windows... close pop ups, pull up a main menu by using the esc key in the right context? The second part of my conclusion is a much deeper and hate filled one, Functions are not included in games not becuase the programmer can't do it, but because they won't do it. Either it's too hard or there's too much programming involved, or they just don't care enough about how regular people play games. Frustrates me, just saying... if you're going to spend all this time making the game exactly the way you want to, don't leave it unfinished, even little features like an escape key, or a "Help" button on the main menu can be the difference between your game being played or it just sitting on someones -cloud- shelf.

I'll be updating later, I've gotta finish up some implementation of buttons and a little more escape key action :)

Time away

Spent some time out on the ship, most of it working, but a little left over to get some basics started. Here's a short list of things I added, as much as I can remember from the last update.
Bad Guy, sword wielding bad guy, usable swords, breakable blocks (movable and non-movable), spikes, rewrote the physics again, changed splash type on bullet collision and improved collisions. Health and death, kill enemies.

That just about covers it. check it out, use "E" when hovering over a weapon to pick it up, it;s just a temporary way to equip a weapon while still in testing.

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3iGA1KoiI7fb0Z6bUxfZXhCVzg

A little bit closer

A few more functions, a slightly better physics build, better animations, yeah, I like it. so all of the animations so far have been scripted, vice animated in a 3d program like blender or 3dsm. Now I don't know if it takes up more or less proessing power to do that, but at this scale I don't think it matters a lot. Hope you enjoy the build so far. 

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3iGA1KoiI7fRUMtT0tvZmE5NXM

Fun Gun Time

Got the gun to a good point, not perfect, and far from finished, but looks pretty cool anyways. All animations are scripted and not recorded. Probably going to have to record them for the final version anyways, once I figure out how to work Blender. A few collision problems when standing on bullets, you can't really jump unless you're in the exact right spot, so I may have to play around with that a bit. Alright, have fun!

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3iGA1KoiI7fWW50UEV3aUxrQWM

Quick  update to show a little bit of physics progress on Primitives. Click 'e' while mousing over the "Gun" to equip it, per-se, it will then follow the mouse cursor. It's a little hacked but I think it works pretty decent for now, or until i an figure out a better way to do it.

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3iGA1KoiI7fSDd6S29sNDA3cG8

Happy Halloween

Hope it's a good one. Quick update before I jet off to work. Got some great progress on the side-scroller game I'm toying around with (I'll do an upload later once I get a little more time.) Currently the physics are pretty smooth and solid. Added the ability to wall jump, because wall jump! it works and it's just the right amount of frustrating. hell you an even jump up slightly inclined walls as well, perfect for those spiderman types. Alright, work, then back to work!

Time for a tangent

Until I regain motivation and the necessary skills to complete my masterpiece, I think i'll work on a few concept ideas to build my portfolio. This is a basic physics build for Primitives, a game about a Ball-boy, who's trying to save the world from an evil bad guy who's destroying all the little primitives. Right now it's very basic and in fact quite broken, but to give an idea of what i want it to look like and feel like, here's the basics.
   In the future it should have the ability to pick up objects, attack bad guys, create weapons, build upgrades and build autonomous robots to help you on your journey. Working title, working idea. you get the gist, here it is.

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3iGA1KoiI7fQlVEQ2xpbUNqa0U

Keeping promises

Finally got that equipping problem fixed. Objects now successfully equip over old items while being replaced in the quickslot belt. I'm pretty proud of this one too.

BTW, anyone readying this that's not nick, shoot me an email or something, leave a comment, let me know you're alive. Just want to see if I have an audience or I'm just talking to myself.

Update as promised:
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3iGA1KoiI7fVldaQmxpMzhkRWM

Quick update. Got equipping/ unequipping objects to work, but when you try to equip an object with another it doesn't replace it, so i need to find a way to call that function long enough to unequip the old item, equip the new on and continue on with the equipped function. Out of context, that makes a lot less sense. I'll load it up once i get that little bit of code worked out. Just want to keep track if my latest snags.

I realized the last update i threw up here was a bit incomplete, as in, only the .exe file. My bad!

So this is what i have so far. A functioning inventory where items can be picked up off the ground with the use of the "e" key. They are added to the bag, which can be viewed via the "i" key. items can be picked up to the mouse with the use of l-click, then placed in another slot, the equipment area (non-functional, but you an still put stuff there), or the belt/quickslot bar.

I'm not sure how intuitive using the belt will be since there are two hand slots. You can't just equip them with the single click of a button, so I have made it so when you click the number of the item it highlights, R or L click to assign the belt item to the right or left hands (will only display when you pull the inventory up, r/l hand objects have been dissabled for the time being to work out bugs). You can also move stuff around in the belt by hitting a number key 1-6, then another number key, i like the freedom to reorganize on the fly.

Also, if you haven't checked it out, I'm really proud of the whole rotating the picked up object thing. Walk u[ to an object, use the "c" key, for carry, it picks up to hands, throwing, dropping, slinging is all still there but by use of the "c" key for dropping/slinging, and the L-click for throwing only. R-Click and hold will allow you to use the mouse movement to rotate the object around it's axis. Say you want to pick up a coffee table and block part of the doorway with it, or walk through a door with it, you'll have to reposition the table to fit through the door or block the most space possible.

Thats all for now. Upcoming, fixing R & L hand items so we can see some real results. then on to weapons!

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3iGA1KoiI7fajlYWDFWQ0lKOTA

Optimization time!

   Thanks nick for the code ideas, the array works like a charm. Added a quick for loop to assign all the bagslots to the bag array and bam! dropped almost 300 lines of code! Also fixed up a couple loose ends. instantiate a clone of each gathered object so i an instantly add the real object to the bag, and also display it being picked up on camera, for effect. (thought I removed the pickup-object/bag-too-full/ drop-object-on-ground code that I liked, and left it with a simpler object-just-doesn't-move code, which cut down a considerable amount of code.) This way you aren't limited in the speed you pick up objects. Also fixed a couple velocity errors driving inventory items off screen, but in doing so, objects no longer lerp to their respective "homes" when dropped in a bag slot, rather they just appear there, *sigh* I also liked that little touch, too bad. Other than that it's pretty much the same game. Now back to physics to fix some of those.

Edit: Not going to upload yet, because i don't deem it enough progress to to warrant going through the effort, but I got the mouse-moving/object rotation thing down, RotateAround worked perfectly.

Latest Update:
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3iGA1KoiI7fUkNiTWVUaFY1V2c

Here we go, finally some real progress. Got the inventory system working, for the most part. You can pick up objects by pressing "e", open the inventory by pressing "i" click on picked up objects to move them around, click other spaces to move to said spaces, click anywhere else to drop the item on the ground. if i had greater than 24 items on the map, if you try to pick up too many items it would redrop it to ground. So now that inventory is done, i can add the equipped item slots/ghosting to display them on the character.

apologies for the poor spelling, lack of grammar rules and punctuation. I'm more concerned with getting the program up than i am with making this all look nice.

Rev3 today, changed the layout of the inventory to fit the screen a bit better, plus added a simple layout for equipped items. oh yeah, and crouching works again too.

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3iGA1KoiI7fV0ZaNU9nMFRJNzg

So I've made several creative steps sideways in the game, not much in the way of advancement though. Due to the fact that whenever you crouched, everything you held would skew, crouching has been disabled for now. Movement is all still there, and a little taste of the basic bag interface, access it by pressing "i" unfortunately it doesn't work very well, and by that i mean not at all. still gotta work out some kinks.

    Here's what i really need to work out: Whenever you raycast to the mouse point it shoots waaaaaay off into the distance, indefinitely until it reaches the mouse cursor. then to convert that into a 2 dimensional screen presence... here's what i'm thinking. with the full inventory open, click on an object from your bag, it lifts up and sticks itself to the mouse cursor, then when you click on a slot on your belt, it equips it to the belt. simple right? the only way i can seem to move something around in 3d space to act 2d is by raycasting, thats as long as i continue to use a perspective camera... which leaves me with the option to use an overlayed orthographic camera, but i still don't know if raycasts work in that, or if it will even display correctly, what a pain.

    Food and water are still a little buggy, I think once i get the inventory down, objects will fall in place behind it. then i might get back to the basic crouching physics once my brain has had a chance to figure out a fix for it.

Latest D/L:

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3iGA1KoiI7fZEJ5YkMyckpMNjA

One step forward, Two steps back.

Not going to upload for this update, because I've regressed a little. Had to disable crouching for the time being due to technical issues. Crouching scales the main character down vertically, which unbeknownst to me at the time also scales down every child object. All held or equipped objects becomes children objects, so those got scaled as well. Now I'm working on shifting an "upper torso" block down to prevent that re-scaling  effect. Only problem I have right now is re-sizing the character controller block (which controls whether you interact with the floor or not) Turns out if it re-sizes below the ground, the whole damn thing just falls right through it.
Progress included building a rudimentary "Belt" with 6 equippable slots, Going to have to work on how to access it and how to add stuff to it, as well as a bag. Right now it's not exactly easy to do or intuitive. But I'll be updating shortly.

When I figure out what I'm doing...

First Post on my "blog." Here's the link for my game, if you an even call it that. Little jerky where the mouse is concerned and extremely limited options, but that'll all be fixed in time.

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3iGA1KoiI7fdFhfS1dyaWJ2ZjA