W.A.R.P. - VRJam Log #2

Friday, April 24, 2015

Since the progress of the last post, I had to take a couple days off because of a cold. That cold let up enough last night, leaving me enough energy to get going on some things. First I wanted to get some basic scripts done to allow this to even be called game. Covering a chain of events from grabbing the object, pulling it through the window, placing it somewhere, and having that trigger a door to open. Mainly I just needed to work on the trigger and the door. I decided to go with a pressure plate (to much Minecraft lately?). A giant button seemed to Portal-esq. I wasn't really happy with this idea, but I just wanted to work on something. After not having much luck getting things to animate right with scripts, I just made some animations and triggered those via the scripts. It worked. I was happy, time to move on.
Next I wanted to have a trigger behind the door load the next scene or something, haven't decided yet. But instead I did something else. I decided to comb the asset store for something free, since I still don't have the Unity store credit. I've been debating even not using assets. Doing everything myself. It's nice if you can do it, but going solo against a clock, I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't handicap myself to much. I got a nice sandstone rock asset that will work well for a alternate world that's barren. This could end up being the hot world, windy world, or just a world for the player to work with before the environmental effects come into play. I set that up to a bare minimum. Then I decided that I should refine the idea of the "key" object. Just using a Cube or other shape that you drop on a giant button/pressure plate, again, sounded to Portal-esq. So I decided to try and rethink that. What I came up with helped define some story to a degree I guess. The player needs to grab a battery from the other world, and place it somewhere to power the door. So maybe something happened, all the batteries for the doors got sucked through the windows at some testing facility, and the player needs to get them back. As plot goes, its a start. For a game jam, I would be fine without story though, as much as I prefer games that do have (interesting) stories.

Ok. Batteries! I need a battery model. I could probably find something on the store, or whip up a D cell type battery in Blender, then jumbo size that even more. But I figured I'd get creative. I came up with a unique battery that's more like a glass vial with metal caps at the ends, like a pipe bomb, but with some sort of coil around the glass. Sounded good to me, so I made that in Blender, imported it, picked out some colors for the 3 materials, and called it a prefab.

The next day I decided to even out the height of the normal world and wasteland, so that when looking through the window you more easily see the battery. I next decided that the window could look more interesting, so it was time to go back to Blender. I'm not quite sure what a science based window to another world should look like, and I don't want to do something to complicated beyond my skills. So I just went with a black stylized 4 sided frame, with 10 little emitter pegs on the inner part of each side. I finished that, imported it, and setup a new prefab. I do like it for the most part. Mainly I just think there should be more going on with the end of the portal (hate using that word, but it's going to be hard to avoid it sometimes) between the frame. Like the view of the other world should fade, warp, ripple, or discolor the closer you look to the frames emitters. Sadly, this seems like a shader issue for now, and I'm not great with shaders. I don't want to get stuck on something to trivial for very long.

The next day I figured I should get started on defining and creating the normal world. I still didn't have my Unity Store credit yet, so my hands are still tied. I decided to use whatever half decent free asset pack I could find. There's slim pickings for free stuff on the unity store, so I ended up grabbing a unity tech demo. It's not a modular level builder asset pack sadly. I liked the idea or a testing warehouse theme, and it certainly was good looking. I tried a bit to use some of the textures on new meshs, but it just wasn't working out, and it was becoming clear that I would have to spend way more time on turning the demos assets into reusable prefabs then I want. I decided to just scrap the whole idea. I'll keep the normal world simple, and less defined. I'll just take the prototyping texture I made and use that for the floor roof and walls.

I saw a free door on the asset store, but figured I'd make my own that themes well with my walls/floor, and because I was going to have to make a battery slot to go with the door anyway. I enjoy a nice contrast of doing modeling. I spent a bit on the door, shaping it, and placing the UV maps to work well enough with my prototype texture. It came out nice, to me.

I next started work on the battery slot. I thought about doing a little shelf, but instead figured a simple hole in the wall would be better. After modeling it up and being almost done I realized, it just didn't make sense with the way my double door opens. The left door would intersect with the hole in the wall. Beyond just sense, you could just see the door clipping into the hole. So I scrapped that and mocked up a like shelf box thing. Hopefully its self explanatory enough that something goes there, and that something is likely a battery.

After that, well. I often forget to do much detail on ceilings. So I wanted to make sure I made some lights that looked good with the walls/ceiling. So I mocked one up and spread it around the ceiling.

Finally, I decided to remake some scripts and get that battery slot working and opening the door, as well as telling the player controller script to drop the battery, and then attach the battery to the battery slot. Yay! It's the start of a game!