Hello all! Welcome to this week’s edition of the Untouched Earth development blog. I had a semi productive week, which is great considering I had family visiting and various other things that required my attention. One of the things I love about indie game development is the flexibility it provides in terms of production. However, that doesn’t mean producing a game is without short and long term goals. I recently set the goal that I will complete one level every two weeks until I’ve completed 12 total levels. It’s really helped keep me on track doing updates on a daily basis. Which brings me to my next point, this week’s updates!
Updates this week include:
- Continued developing level three (about 75% complete)
- *Spotlight* Fixed a bug causing the player to jump endlessly when performing air combat
- *Spotlight* Obtained logos for the game
- *Spotlight* Added new coins to the game
- Play tested levels one and two and fixed errors with world rendering and enemy behavior
- Added NPC’s who help the hero on his journey
- Fixed a bug that prevented bullets from causing damage to enemies
- Fixed a bug that inhibited the hero’s ability to land on certain terrain
- *Spotlight* Created a falling bridge obstacle
- Updated input manager to allow keyboard input for basic actions
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Spotlight 1: Fixed a bug causing the player to jump endlessly from air combat
I had this terrible bug pop up out of nowhere that allowed the hero to jump in midair as many times as he wanted when I pressed one of the combat buttons. This bug obviously allowed the hero to be more of a superhero, and had to go. It only took about 30 minutes to figure out what was going on, and I believe I have the bug ironed out. It turns out I caused the error when I gave the hero the ability to transition to his jumping animation from any air combat animation. Once I removed this code, it worked just fine.
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Spotlight 2: Obtained logos for the game
I love these logos! They looks fantastic! Every time I see them I feel like there’s adventure on the way and danger to be dodged. They were created by Jacob Garren, and really bring the adventure to life. Thank you Jacob for making great logos!
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Spotlight 3: Added new coins to the game
The coins I was using in the game looked a little out of place. They were bright colors and looked like they belong in a children’s toy chest rather than an exciting and adventurous 2D jungle game! I decided to investigate other options, and came across a great set of coins in the unity asset store (thank you Rexard for making great assets). I didn’t alter the coins in any way except for changing the colors. They look fantastic!
While the implementation was relatively straight forward (drag and drop the new sprite into the sprite renderer) I did, however, struggle with a clean switch from the old coins to the new ones. For some reason, many of the coins didn’t resize correctly and weren’t responding to a prefab alteration. I had to go back over all of the old coins and reset their size. It wasn’t one of the more glamorous parts of game development, but it was necessary. Luckily these new ones look so fantastic that I harbor no resentments.
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Spotlight 4: Created a falling bridge obstacle
The hero often goes over bridges as he moves from piece of terrain to the next. I thought it might be fun to have the floor unexpectedly fall out from underneath him (sick and twisted, I know). It turns out it is fun so long as the hero doesn't plummet to his death too often. It’s a relatively simple obstacle developed with the animator and a small script.
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As always, thank you for reading. I would love to hear from you and would love to hear any comments or ideas you have. Feel free to leave a comment or email me at watermoongames@gmail.com.
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