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A Tack! (3DU entry)

Discussion in 'Made With Unity' started by Bampf, Dec 14, 2006.

  1. Bampf

    Bampf

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    Sorry, no playable build yet. But hopefully in a few days. In the meantime, just thought I'd throw up a screenshot.

    It's an arcade game, a simple top-down shooter really. I had the idea for the theme a few years ago. I started working on it a few days after 3DU officially began.

    The story so far: It's 1:30am and you are about to start writing a homework assignment. Faced with the blank sheet of paper, your mind balks. You fight to keep your eyes open... Suddenly, you notice one of your pencils jump over to your paper and start doodling. Are you dreaming? You are too mad to care. You grab the nearest weapon at hand (a push-pin tack) and start defending your turf.

    Your homework assignment is doomed. But you aren't going down without a fight!
     

    Attached Files:

  2. David-Helgason

    David-Helgason

    Moderator

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    Neat! Can't wait to try this out.

    d.
     
  3. deram_scholzara

    deram_scholzara

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    wow, that's awesome! So will be be shooting tacs, or stabbing with that one?
     
  4. forestjohnson

    forestjohnson

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    That looks awesome. Iike the lighting and graphics although I hope you can get the paper texture higher res.

    How is the gameplay going to be? Looks interesting.

    Would be awesome if you could make somekind of paths script so that sometimes on high levels the writing impliments team up to draw demons and evil robots. They could even leap off the page at you :p
     
  5. Bampf

    Bampf

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    Gameplay: you just fire your tacks across the paper (towards the top of the screen) to hit things.

    The percentage displayed on the upper right tells you how much of the paper has been covered with marks. The game will end at 50% or so.

    In addition to the markers and pencils, there will be the occasional bottle of ink that you should avoid hitting, and a bottle of correcting fluid that you want to hit.

    Paths: I had all sorts of interesting squiggly paths in mind for the pens and pencils, but I won't have time to put them in for the contest. So the movements will be pretty basic I'm afraid... Having the pens draw actual pictures is a cool idea though!

    I'm also still hoping to have time to add a rubber stamp that will jump around, stamping smiley faces or other pictures on the paper.

    Paper's low resolution: Valid point. Unfortunately I found that the performance of the texture-painting script took a huge nosedive when the paper's resolution was any higher. However, that version of the game was Apply-ing the texture changes more often than necessary so maybe I'll revisit this.

    Thanks for the helpful feedback!
     
  6. deram_scholzara

    deram_scholzara

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    it would be cool if there were fingers holding a rubber band for shooting the tac
     
  7. Bampf

    Bampf

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    Beta version now available here (Mac Univ Binary):

    [EDIT: removed old link, see later messages for updated link]

    Would welcome some feedback, keeping mind that the contest deadline is only a few days away...

    Known issue: at the Fantastic quality setting, the lighting is way oversaturated where the spotlight hits the paper on my video card, and I suspect many others. Tips would be welcome, otherwise I'll play with the spotlight settings and hope I find a sweet spot. For me it's visually more pleasant to play at the Good setting at the moment.

    Enjoy!

    [Edit: I'd be very interested in hearing how it runs on various machine specs as well. Especially if there are large gaps in the lines being drawn. At the moment there is no code to interpolate the drawing between the previous frame and this one, so each item is basically drawing a dot or circle per frame. Low frame rate = gaps in the line. This will be fixed soon but in the meantime, it's a useful enough gauge of how well it's running.]
     
  8. mutle

    mutle

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    Looking great. Runs great on MBP 2,3 C2D, but I guess you rather want to know the performance on lower end machines.
    I found a small bug: When I move the cursor very fast over a menu item, and then stop right on the bounding box of the larger scaled version, it gets stuck in a very fast scaling loop.
    Other than that the game plays nice, and is a great concept, although I would love to see the lines being actucal lines instead of circles, but I guess thats not possible.
     
  9. forestjohnson

    forestjohnson

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    Looks good! I go decent performance on 640x480 fastest on my emac.

    Some things: I wish it would show me how long I lasted after I lose and I wish I could get powerups for my tack. (multi tack, rubber band tack shooter for faster tacks etc) I wish the whiteout had more of an effect.
     
  10. HiggyB

    HiggyB

    Unity Product Evangelist

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    Great performance on my end, but I'm another MBP 2.3 user so... :) Anyway, I thought the game play was fun and my only minor wish was that the rate of fire was just a bit higher. It would also be great if one/some of the pens or pencils actually wrote out a message, maybe an evil smiley ( >:p ) or something.

    Good stuff!
     
  11. StarManta

    StarManta

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    Wow! For a first project, this is a great game. Very original concept, simple to understand, fun.

    The only thing I would suggest would be some intruction as to how you lose - like an arrow pointing to the percentage saying "Don't let it get above 50!" or something when the game first starts, and/or some warning as it gets close to 50.
     
  12. drJones

    drJones

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    looks great. i'd also like to see a higher rate of fire office type powerups.

    it a cool idea - kinda like space invaders mees dilbert ; )
     
  13. Bampf

    Bampf

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    StarManta: glad you like! This is actually my second Unity project. My first was Pawns, which placed in the OMG contest last year. Still haven't done a really large game, but I at least had gotten my feet wet with Unity before.

    Regarding lines: I will try to have the lines drawing more continuously in the next build. It's just a matter of drawing the dots between the last mark and the current mark, and hoping that the frame rate isn't badly effected.

    I don't think I have time to have the markers draw pictures or sign the paper, though that would be cool. I may have time to add a hopping rubber stamp that stamps an image though.

    Whiteout: I agree, not enough effect per bottle. What I'm going to do is add a couple of stages where it's nothing but inkpots and whiteout bottles. If your aim is good, you'll have a chance to rollback that percentage a little.

    I'll also try to have some kind of warning as you approach 50%, if time allows.
    There are some other important things I have to do first...

    Thanks for all feedback so far.
     
  14. Bampf

    Bampf

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    New build:

    [EDIT - removed outdated link]

    Let me know if there are any problems. I tweaked gameplay, added a warning beep when your percentage is near 50%, a readme, some other polish bits.

    The lighting is better now. I forced the spotlight to use pixel lighting. Ideally I would get it to look decent with vertex lighting as well, but may run out of time for that.

    In the remaining time I may or may not add a high scores list, music, logic to fill in gaps in the lines if frame rate stutters, or a new enemy. Gameplay may still be tweaked. Opinions on this are welcome.

    Enjoy!
     
  15. nickavv

    nickavv

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    Oo. Nice. Fine performance over here on my 700 MhZ eMac (thank god its almost christmas), and really fun. I can usually only survive about three minutes. You should definatly add an online High Score table. That'd just be the icing on the tack!
     
  16. HiggyB

    HiggyB

    Unity Product Evangelist

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    Nice work, I managed to reach 3:47. I still have one of my original desires, a faster rate of fire, plus I'd also like to have some sort of position indicator on the bottom of the screen after I fire. Often I shoot a tack then move the mouse, but you have no idea where you've moved to until the next tack appears. Perhaps something like a faded out tack that only becomes fully opaque when it's ready to fire? That way you can aim while watching a tack fire...

    Sorry for the nitpicking, overall it's a fun game, good work!
     
  17. Bampf

    Bampf

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    That's a good suggestion about seeing the mouse position separate from the tack... Too bad I have to submit the game to the contest tonight. :)

    Version 1.0 Released! (new download address)

    http://home.comcast.net/~mpdiamond1/files/Tack.dmg.zip

    Improvements:
    - Lighting now looks good on older Macs/low-quality settings
    - Keyboard can be used to play
    - Misc bug fixes
     
  18. Bampf

    Bampf

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    Version 1.0.1 released. Change list:
    Increased firing rate a little.
    New tack will not accidentally fire immediately if previous tack hits an object close to the bottom.
    Bottles stay more over the paper, won't run into unfired tack by themselves.
    Improved lighting on Windows Radeon Mobility chip, possibly others.

    Mac build: http://home.comcast.net/~mpdiamond1/files/Tack.dmg.zip
    Win build: http://home.comcast.net/~mpdiamond1/files/Tack_Win.zip

    (The Windows build is labelled beta 2; it's just not as well tested as the Mac version and doesn't have an icon.)
     
  19. Bampf

    Bampf

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    Just tidying up loose ends before starting something new.

    Version 1.0.2 released. Change list:
    Pens and pencils now draw lines instead of points. They look nicer (especially at the highest quality setting) and bad frame rate won't cause the paper to just be covered with dots.
    Made the collision detection a little more forgiving. (But if you have a very bad frame rate, the tacks can go through things. Run at a lower window size/quality setting if this happens.)
    Fixed a subtle problem with missing faces on the tack model.
    Windows build released.

    http://home.comcast.net/~squarebin/A_Tack.html
     
  20. User340

    User340

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    Your game looks nice. I'm making a simple paint game, and after I paint for a few seconds, everything starts to slow down. I think it's because the PaintDecal script that I'm using keeps adding decals to the paper. Are you using the same script "PaintDecal"? If so, it seems like your game doesn't have the same problem. Did you modify the script so the decals render to texture, or something like that?

    Thanks.
     
  21. Bampf

    Bampf

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    Yes, the painting goes directly onto the texture. There are tradeoffs, as discussed here:
    http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=3658
    Note at the end that I suspected a memory leak in the sample paint project that OTEE had up. I never went back to verify (bad developer, I know.) Just be aware. That project is still a great starting point, not only does it demonstrate the API but it does clipping and also clones the original texture if you want so that the painted changes don't stick around in the editor. Search the forum for "SetPixels" for more info about this, and about improving performance by combining calls to Apply().

    Fair warning, I have found that performance of this game on low-end/integrated graphics is much worse than my previous game, which did not paint onto the texture every frame. My texture had to be a decent size and resolution of course because it fils the screen. There are things one could do to possibly improve performance, but depending on your needs it might not be a problem.

    Hope this helps.