Hello there. Welcome to 3rd week’s update!
TLDR:
- Added some free 3d assets and applied post-processing effects to make the game look better.
- Created a see-through shader from scratch so that player is visible even if it goes behind walls.
- Now the egg has a trail and kicks off a cloud of puffy dust whenever it moves around
- Replaced the visual of the Jump-pad from a simple box to a low poly flower, which really pushes the object up.
Visual polish with free prototyping assets
I started the week by downloading a bunch of free 3D assets from the Unity Asset Store. That was a god-sent gift because I didn’t have to waste time modeling game assets when I wasn’t even sure what the game’s look would be. I have to spend some dedicated time tinkering with Blender and Shaders in unity to decide on the game’s look. But for now, the free 3D models and some tinkering with the Post Processing effects gave me something to work with, which was beyond grey boxes.
For prototyping, working on the visuals is not a necessary step but offers some excellent advantages.
- I can share this for playtesting, and testers will have a much clear understanding of what they are looking at
- As a developer, I’ll have to manage all sorts of assets (3D models, textures, codes, music files, etc.) Handling all that from the beginning forces me to think about those aspects from the start and streamline it as best as possible.
- Last but not least, it makes working on games a little more fun for me!
First encounter with Shader Graph
The game camera is set up in a way that, when you take the egg under or behind some land features like bridges and stones, you won’t know its position while it’s there. So I needed a way to see the egg when other objects hide it.
Brackeys came to the rescue. I found a tutorial on setting the render pipeline to render the egg separately and apply a particular shader when the camera can no longer see the egg directly.
It was my first attempt at working with Shader graph, and therefore it was exciting. In few minutes, I got it working and was very satisfied; sort of…
It looked great, but all was not well.
Because of the way the post-processing was applied, the egg sometimes gets blurred and appears out of focus when the foreground or the background is out of focus. I need to look into this and fix it.
Making the egg grounded
Speaking about the egg, I added a trail and a puff of smoke to appear when it moves faster. Currently, the trail and the puff of smoke look the same, irrespective of the kind of surface it is on. That needs to change, but for now, it looks good enough to make some sense. It’s fun to see the trail and the smoke behind it when it moves around the beach.
Jump-pad design
Last week I had implemented the jump-pad mechanic, which throws the player up in the air. At that point, it was a simple box. But now it’s a flower, which on contact throws the object up in the air at a certain angle. It looked extremely cool in action.
It still needs some design improvements and animation to indicate which side the flower will throw the player or any other object. I’ll work on this in a later iteration.
Up next: Audio Sprint
Next week the target is to release the game with audio effects. As of now, I need to add sound effects for egg rolling on the surface, jump-pad, the landing of egg on surfaces, sounds of the wave, birds flying around, waves. It will be great to have background music too.
After this, I can move on to work on releasing the build. I will have to create a Scene manager which can load and unload the suitable scenes and a rudimentary UI system to handle the prototype like — entering the game, exiting the game, restarting the game, etc. A piece of lovely music for the background will be a bonus!
So that’s the update. See you in the next one!
I wish you well!
Originally published at https://www.theearlyowl.com on September 4, 2021.
