14 year old making 3D Wizard game

Hello everybody , i'm new to the forums and this is my first thread. im working on a science project for the moment and its for the annual school science fair. guess what? its a game P). so i spent the last 6 months or so studying scripting languages and practicing game developing. started out with 2d now im in 3d. this particular game im making talks about a wizard living on a deserted island with huge forests and all kinds of animals and so on,who accidentally travels to the future as a result of a mistake while casting a spell and he found himself in a desert-like drought land and everything was gone and the island had become a horrible desert of emptiness due to the human races disregard for their only home planet (global warming , pollution, etc). long story short, you have to use your "magic" to restore life to the island , left hand to cast a water spell, which will spawn water and the right hand to cast a forest spell which will spawn big trees. i added walking sounds and beautiful spell sounds for when casting a spell, though the game is still very bare bone as you will see in the video i uploaded to YouTube (game-play):

so i wanted to post this on here to get some advice on what to do next and i just wanted some fresh ideas, criticism is welcomed and i would also like to know what i could improve. i recorded without any sounds, but i have basic walking and spell sounds like i said earlier. The map is also kind of small but i'm just experimenting and it will get bigger soon.
I hope you like it guys!

 

What is up with the need to tell everyone your age? Should people be impressed? Should they cut you more slack? I'm confused.

 

I think it serves a purpose stating his age, it should mean people cut him more slack. Also yes, people should be impressed making a game and following through with a project over 6 months at that age is impressive. A lot of adults can't follow things through for 6 months.

The project looks good so far so well done with that! In terms of improvements you could look at improving the overall terrain and environments to be a bit more interesting as they seem rather empty currently. Some form of interface to indicate anything the resources the player has or is consuming might be an idea as well (HP, Mana, etc).

Keep up the good work and keep working on it, I'm sure it'll be a great learning experience.

 

What's up with the UT forum where some can't give appropriate feedback and just posting nothing of value and just wasting time? I'm confused.

@topic: I liked your story, looks like you even came up with a hidden critical message which not many games have.

Regarding gameplay: have you thought of some enemy's? I imagine plating forests and watering them could be a bit boring for some players. Maybe you can somehow combine the wizards spells to defeat them.

-the hands are a bit static maybe you can animate them a bit to give then more life
-it looked like in your video that it was possible to plant trees with out water. Also let the trees "grow" and not plopping out


Besides it has an interesting touch keep it up!

 

Ah, thank you for your confirmation Chambers. Here it goes:
- cutting slack: you are 2% on the way to project completion. Don't worry, you will have the rest finished as well.
- impressed: hey, you have a controller, a pair of hands, 2 types of projectiles and a tree spawn in 6 months! Well done!

Now all flower-power-hippie bullshit aside. Don't tell us your age. We don't give a flying crap. Being 14 makes you a teenager, that's all.

The project has a nice idea in it and good story as for the rest, you still have a lot of work (and I don't mean graphics wise, but mechanics wise).

@0tacum, that single line, was feedback. In fact was me requesting some more feedback so I can understand how someones age would fit with a video game project. If he didn't wanted that type of feedback, maybe he shouldn't provide that type on information.

@on topic agan: Good luck with your science project Tony.

 

just a note primus, i spent 6 months STUDYING java and C++, this game is no more than a month old,plus its for a school science fair so,... yh im not going to be 30 years old, but thanks for the constructive criticism, helps a lot. thanks Otacun and Chambers, i will be adding a health and mana bar soon, and a new damage spell which will be a combination of the two spells.( thanks Otacun for the idea )
later on i will have to see what form of enemy to spawn on the map,... maybe some black pollution clouds in the sky or something like that.... what do you guys suggest i put in the map to fill up the emptiness?

 

Some trees and rocks would help with the emptiness

 

May I ask how this has to do with science? I mean to me it looks more like a simulation//game of the earth than an observation of such and such. How do you expect to present this? I did something similar for a History Class, I made something related to WWI and my teacher told me, "Okay, cool, you showed me WWI, now can you explain it to me."

@primus88 I agree with you primus, age shouldn't be presented, but we shouldn't look down or up regardless of age.

@Topic Other than that, looks good so far. Should make the place more lively. Addition of say... Educational aspects, should be included, say a sign that says "This is so and so, and is bad for the earth!" So you are explaining and understanding, since this is suppose to be for your science fair.

 

I like your game message which help to the cause of global warming, pollution, etc.
Well, I guess it's a science project anyway.

 

I think it's a very cool concept. Rebuilding what humans destroyed instead of being about more destruction. I get the idea behind the barrenness is because everything is gone. But like some others said add some more rocks and possibly you could add some remnants of humans. Maybe that is something you could transform into energy to cast your spells. In this way you also are cleaning up the crap we left behind.

On the age discussion people will have different views as you can see. Some see it as a reason to expect less. Some see it as bragging. Some others (well myself anyway) see it as excellent to actually stick with it and yet also how nice it would be to have that kind of free time again. Months of summer vacation. Anyway good luck with your project!

 

Woopty doo, I was 12 when I made an online tile based mmo harvest moon fan game. Lol. Kidding, good work. But age doesn't matter. Just be happy you have gotten an early start so in a bunch of years you can be a pro making some awesome shiit

Point is, don't expect gratitude for you being young and developing games. We all started at some point, but when it comes down to it... quality is quality and if a game is great its not because of your age but rather the skill and time you have put into it.

 

I know you didn't spent 6 months on the project. I was making fun of Chambers who was too busy flaming me and acting high and mighty than actually reading your post.

Again, your project idea is good. You can do a lot of stuff with it and still having a lightweight project on your hands which you can actually finish successfully.

 

Flower power isn't bad when your Super Mario! I'm actually 4 1/2 yrs old and I can read and write at a college level. Impressed, anyone?

Anyways, exactly how can the human race destroy the planet without any regard but not restore the planet with the power of... oh, let's say... magic? You know, the same magic that this wizard just so happens to wield? Did the power of magic just magically disappear from the planet and no one has been able to rediscover it over such a period of time?

 

the exact plot is that the mage who lived far from human civilizations accidentally opened a black hole while spell casting and traveled to a horrible future. the game is called The Circle : Nature's Guardian because the mage is part of a secret circle of 12 mages sworn to protect the Earth from ill fortunes. this gives me the opportunity to do a sequel and improve by making another game where you play as another kind of mage you see...as for improvements : added regenerating mana and health system( with a nice skyrim mage portrait on the side) and 3x bigger map, ONE PROBLEM though, how do i disable the spell casting script when mana = 0 ?

yes i will have to add an educational aspect eventually...

 

If you actually read my post I wasn't flaming by any stretch, I might of been slightly on a high horse but definitely not flaming. I did read the post, which is why I commented on how he could improve his project but oh well.

I think there have been some fantastic suggestions in the thread so far and I'm looking forward to how you implement some of the ideas that have been suggested. In particular putting more emphasis on the educational aspects of the project.

 

yes i am uploading a short video on YouTube now, showing the basic mana and health bar, although i still need help with the spell casting to stop once Mana = 0. can any good coder help me with this? this is the video(notice how the mana bar regenerates slowly):

and about the educational aspects of the game, im thinking about making future enemies( black pollution cloud, or something that represents pollution) drop some kind of doohikies which you must collect lets say 3 of those to receive some kind of reward (new spell?)and info about these pollutants, how they pollute the Earth and the method by which they can be stopped in the real world. aslo thinking about making three kinds of enemies: Water pollutants( they hang around places your supposed to spawn water), Ground pollutants( same for trees), Air pollutants(the generally fly in the air pretty much)

 

To have it disable spell casting when mana = 0 you would put an if statement for example,
if(mana <= 0 && Input.GetButtonDown("CastSpell"))
{
//Do the stuff
}

If your looking for help post on the scripting section of the forums or on unity answers. You should consider adding walking animations and spell casting animations, as well as arm swaying.

Edit: You would use mana>=0 not mana<=0

 

"if(mana <= 0" Will perform only when mana is "Less then 0" You want "> 0" This will check if the mana is above 0. Also, You want it set up like this so you are only check when the user hits the input and not so it is checking every update frame..

(<=0) could be used to disable mana yes, But itd be better to check if you actually have mana.

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. void update(){
3.     if(Input.GetButtonDown("ManaButton")){
4.         Debug.Log("We pressed our magical button.");
5.         if(mana > 0){//change this to > whateveer if you want the magic to take so much mana.
6.             //do some magical S*** cus we have mana baby!
7.             mana-=1;//change this to consume amount of mana.
8.         }
9.     }
10.     mana+=5*Time.deltaTime;
11.     if(mana >= maxmana){
12.         mana = maxmana;//mana regeneration. Regenerates at a speed of 5 * the time between frames.
13.     }
14. }
15.  

Also put in mana regeneration for ya. Best of luck!

 

Wouldn't you want mana to cast a spell because right now you're saying that if mana is less than 0 than cast the spell. So you would want >= but forgive me if i'm wrong about not having mana to cast the spell.

 

You're right.

 

Not constructive, why do you have to do that?? Every thread. No I'm not impressed at all, at the level you write I could write better than you when I was in 1st grade in elementary school.

As for the developer: good job keep it up. I'd suggest using L3DT for terrain creation and lux for tree shaders. L3DT has a free version. Then export the heightmap from L3DT into unity terrain using the import terrain on the Unity terrain.

 

Ok cool

 

I would actually suggest not using the unity terrain at all. It is really bad with performance.

 

Using a lower res heightmap helps, and Ambient Occlusion helps. Also turning down the max mesh trees help.

 

thank you guys for all the advice and help! some improvements made today, added crosshair, spells cant be cast when there is no mana, added slight animation to when casting a spell + hands move when turning with a nice realistic looking effect, and i also started making the enemies. i came up with one kind of enemy, its a toxic chemical barrel with feet ( i know its kind of stupid, i researched main ground and water pollutants and saw waste and toxic chemicals was number 1). it should be enough for now , lol. i managed to animate its running animations using blender but i came to a dead end. i need an AI script. a simple one that just makes the object move in a specific pattern and follow the player when he gets too close( i will modify it so my health decreases on collision with the enemy). any help with the AI? all i need to do now is to use an AI script on the enemies and spawn them throughout the map, and i think this project can be called a game. check this video out to see the improvements :

its currently uploading and will be available about half an hour after i post this(yes, very crappy internet)

 

For the AI you can use navmesh. Use google and find out how to do it yourself.

 

Just wanted to say... You should wait til the video is fully uploaded and published and available to the public til you post it on here.. Only because, people who are following this post will get the alert when you post in this thread, but if the video is not available they will most likely NOT stop back to check it when it is. So you are losing views and feedback .

Just saying xD

 

yeah no worries, unfortunately i dont live in a very developed country and our internet is craptastic, the vid is still uploading even now :') thanks Samuel411 , i will look into that...

 

new improvements here :

currently working on enemy AI and a new damage spell to eliminate the enemies.

i researched navmesh and i was trying it out but i bumped into a problem, the navmesh bake area wont show on the terrain. help?

 

Mark the walkable areas as static.

 

i did... i didnt get any indicators about where the bake area is. strange...

 

listen when you're instantiating the trees and water dont instantly pop it out maybe some bright lights fading out

 

What ROLLERBROCK said and for the trees you could slowly scale them up and for the water have it move up slowly.

 

Don't listen to all the jerks on here. Whether you are a kid or a woman or just some guy who has big dreams, they like to slam people. Not sure why, to be honest. This should be a place where we support each other, not tear each down. Listen to the cool people who are giving you great advice. There are many more of them.

You are doing a great job! 14 and already making games and coding! I wish I could get my 14 year old to stop playing games and make them. Get your friends to check out your game and see if they like it. You may find you need to make changes and better to do it early on.

Good luck to you!

 

A couple of little improvements added ( Power bar, used to cast the new damage spell ) this new spell has a much higher consume rate then the other normal spells, making future battles against enemies more challenging , for the damage spell must be used wisely( not spray and pray) forcing you to actually aim before you cast. Improvements to the aiming system coming soon( atm it is inaccurate at close range) as well as adding enemies and spawning them strategically to defend places where the player needs to grow trees and etc, and better textures. here's a vid showing the improvements and some typical game-play:

thanks for the support Teila, even jerks help make a game better, the criticism is important.

yes that is a good idea, although i dont think i can do it. i will try to get some particle emitters to activate and give some kind of sparkle or green effect when spawning trees, but other than that i think it would be hard for me to make the trees sprout out of the ground like real ones. same goes for the water. i will work on that once im finished with the AI and enemies, which is proving quite hard to pull off.( Animation, problems with navmesh etc )Since school is starting very soon my time for game development will shorten, but i should be done with AI and enemies in 2 weeks time MAX.

 

You are most welcome. Criticism is always welcome. But attacking someone for their age or even mentioning their age is not constructive at all. Not sure what it is, really. lol

 

You can lerp the scale to its regular scale when it starts.

 

Ok Telia, you can let it go now. Everyone else already did, you are late to the party.

@Tony252 you can create a coroutine on the tree. There you can do two things:
1. instantiate different models to represent the growth stages (sapling, small tree, big tree, dead tree etc)
2. lerp the model size between the stages

This should turn out quite alright

 

Hmmm, I responded to Tony and the didn't post again. Seems like you are the one not letting it go! Glad you guys are helping him out.

 

While I appreciate the effort and applaud the use of games in school projects, I'm confused as to what a time travelling wizard that uses magic to save the world has to do with science - particularly science education.

 

I like where its going so far. Its looks really good! One idea I had was what if the enemies could destroy the trees or the water? Then you could add a defense element and a strategic element with where you place trees and water. If you just placed it everywhere the enemies would destroy it. Just an idea. Again really good job!

 

Well, the main objective of the game is to educate people about how exactly the Earth is dying slowly and it's resources are being depleted and the ozone layer etc. everybody knows that humans are polluting the Earth and that our planet is not going to last for long, but my objective is to show them how exactly that is happening. I will be programming different kinds of enemies, each representing a main pollutant and cause of this problem. I tried to make the game as fun as possible without it going all scientific and whatnot, because i think it wouldn't be fun anymore playing a game that is completely about , well, science. didn't want it to be boring you know, add some fantasy and action , and being a mage and shooting colorful orbs out of your hands to kill the bad guys and turn a desert into a forest was a suitable idea. Again, the game is still very incomplete, not sure if i can call it a game, but i will be focusing on the educational aspects once i have the basic mechanics, graphics, and animations set up.

 

okay i was able to get a lerp going but bumped into a problem, the trees keep growing endlessly. how can i set a maxscale in the script? never used maxscale so i will need some help.

 

transform.localScale = new Vector3(transform.localScale, (targetScale), speed * Time.deltaTime);
You have to look these things up.

 

Computer science.

 

That's fair - it just feels disjointed to use fantasy and magic to explain science. Especially since you're going the time travelling route I'd think it would make more sense to send a scientist back in time that has to build - say a condenser or something - that will make it rain in the desert again. This would open the door to explain the science behind climate change along with the lifecycle of plant life and how it impacts the ecosystem.

I'm not telling you how to make your game - just telling you that when I come into the concept cold it doesn't make much sense to me.

 

"I'm not telling you how to make your game - just telling you that when I come into the concept cold it doesn't make much sense to me."

Can I use this and quote you directly? It seems like nobody understands me when I say the same thing.

 

You do have a point there, but i just don't see the fun behind walking around as a normal human who happens to be a scientist and and just building stuff. i hope you understand where i am going with this , and yes i do know the main reason this game exists is for the actual educational aspects, but im trying to reach a sweet spot where there's a fun/science mix balanced with both, each equal to the other. What i could do is rewrite the story line so that when the wizard pops up in the future, he finds out that his old house was turned into a laboratory by a scientist who discovered the island and wanted to conduct research, then the two guys would team up to save this desert island , the game would allow you to switch between the two, each has his own abilities and one can solve a problem or kill a kind of enemy the other can't( i will arm the scientist with some kind of futuristic gun that shoots a green lazer).it would add some nice depth into the game. Please do reply and tell me what you think.

 

What you've written sounds like you've tried to shoehorn fantasy into some other setting - so I actually think that's worse.

Part of the issue is also that you're, in essence, making a shooter because you want to make a shooter and not because it's the best way to show the things you've learned in your class. The crux of any game is the friction or conflict held within it. I believe you've got a perfect conflict in trying to save the ecosystem of a desert before it's "too late" so the wizard and the killing of enemies etc feels superfluous. Who are these "enemies"? Are they future people? Did they cause the climate change? Why are they trying to stop the wizard from making the world better?

To that end - who are you saving by turning the desert back into a forest? You should be letting all of these things inform not only how your game plays but how it conveys its message. Since this is for school I would imagine that you could make the greatest game ever to feature a tree-casting wizard but you'll get dinged if you don't teach anyone anything.

I'd suggest looking at the science behind ecosystems and climate change and letting what happens in nature inform the mechanics of your game. If the player is actively "doing" and the "doing" is fun then they won't realize that they're actually learning anything.

With what you have now I don't see how you're going to teach the player that trees pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and create oxygen when a wizard pops a tree into existence - unless you plunk some kind of message on the screen to tell them. In which case - you've killed the immersion and told me that this is an educational game. Ask yourself - what do trees do? They make oxygen. What do they need to live? Sunlight and moisture. How can I turn that into a game mechanic? I need to figure out how to make a lake so I can plant trees around it. As trees create oxygen they clear the atmosphere which allows in more sunlight. If they don't have enough of both then they die. Maybe I have to start with smaller plants that require less sunlight and build up to trees once there is more oxygen. Maybe "making" a tree spikes the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere initially so I have to be careful about building too quickly. So now I've got some kind of basic mechanic that I can go build and play and tweak. Who knows - maybe I'll throw it out, maybe I'll use it. But notice how I didn't mention time travel, or a wizard, or enemies, or anything about the setting at all. I haven't even mentioned if it's first-person, third-person, overhead strategy style. All I'm interested in initially is building a mechanic that is fun to play.

 

How you say it goes a long way in how it is received.