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[FINISHED] Akiro the squid <3

Discussion in 'Works In Progress - Archive' started by Mothil, May 5, 2015.

  1. Mothil

    Mothil

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    Real life caught up with me, so I'm taking a break from developing the game. I'll probably code a bit here and there, but I won't update on the devlog in a while. It's probably just for a week or so, cause I have something else I have to focus on right now.
     
  2. QFSW

    QFSW

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    Hope that all goes well
    see you soon
     
  3. Mothil

    Mothil

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    I've been sketching and trying to find out some ways to make my game look... deeper. Vast, like an ocean. Cause that's the key point here, I want my game to be very simple, yet convey a feeling of just seeing a small bit of the world... Sort of. Now, with that said, here's my current idea:



    I think this might be a bit too much, but I'll explain it. Layer 2 is where the game is played, and 3, 4, 5 are background elements that parallax at different speeds. Not much, but enough to give it a sense of depth. Layer 4 has big whales etc swimming around, giving the feeling of something big is in the ocean. Layer 3 is a smaller version of that. Layer 1 can be a tricky one. Maybe something close to the camera as particles? I'm going to try implement this soon and see how it feels.



    And there's also the "problem" with the main menu. As I said, the game is very simple, and there's no point in cluttering the main menu for no reason... It should be simple as well. The top left sketch is curtains opening up to the main menu, kind of like Super Mario Bros 3. I think it could be effective, but it's not really that suiting to the game. There should be some better way to tie it all together, therefore I tried sketch number 2. Simple, quite like what I have now, but Akiro swims over the title and lands on the "i" in Akiro, and continues the circle downwards. Simple and possibly effective, I'll try it.

    The third one is small waves sort of 'floating' the buttons. I think it'd give a nice effect, but I have to be careful not to overdo it cause it may make people dizzy. Anyone have any ideas for main menu or backgrounds ingame? Feel free to share it. :)
     
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  4. RavenOfCode

    RavenOfCode

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    For the menu, maybe have the game being played in the backround by a simple ai akiro. Then when you press play it all resets and you start playing. Or just have akiro swimming around with a simple ai for changing direction (the camera is parented to akiro), this way you get to see the environment but without the enemies.

    I like the idea of the layers, it would help make the game better. :)
     
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  5. Mothil

    Mothil

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    ohh, like a... replay, sort of, in the background? That would give it a nice depth, I'll note that down! The only issue then would be how to start the 'tutorial stage' if there's already enemies in the scene. But as you said, resetting could be a thing. I'm definitely going to try making it fluid, cause I want the game to feel like it's whole and complete. Going to test layers later.

    Edit: Oh, and thank you for the feedback! It's always appreciated. :D
     
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  6. RavenOfCode

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    Yeah, a replay of sorts in the backround. You could try it with or without enemies (like maybe just some shrimp or all the enimies).
     
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  7. QFSW

    QFSW

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    I really like the idea of the parallaxed backgrounds, keep it up
     
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  8. Mothil

    Mothil

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    Okay, here comes the hardest part. I've decided I want to make the tutorial less... written. Until now I've thought I should have "Eat shrimp" blink on the screen and some arows pointing to the shrimps, but... as a challenge to myself, I really want to make it obvious through design not text. Here are my current ideas:



    The player starts at a completely blank screen. Very quickly the first shrimp spawns at a point in the play area. This shrimp does not move, and should be rather easy for the player to get. The second spawns quickly after the first one is eaten, but this one moves. The third one is a big one that moves, and after that one is eaten - enemies start to get introduced. I haven't gotten to that part yet, but I feel like I should get this part solid first. I think it sounds like a nice start, and it might work out. When I've implemented it I'll look for fresh playtesters to see if it works. :)
     
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  9. Mothil

    Mothil

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    What a day of work, haha. I'm quite frustrated with myself for not fixing a simple problem like this. The tutorial stage is semi-functional, but I've spent hours on end trying to make it work with the player moving the wrong direction. At least I've made some progress... :p

     
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  10. QFSW

    QFSW

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    Liking the sound
    Set up the parallax and it will all blend nicely
     
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  11. Mothil

    Mothil

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    First draft of a real death animation. I think there should be some explanation here. Okay, first off... it's ink. I've been thinking to bring more ink into the game, as a way to tie everything together. I'm thinking menu buttons and stuff inspired by ink, as this would fit the theme. Here is the first death animation (not yet implemented though):



    After that has played once, I'm thinking about having something like this just linger on the screen. And when the player taps the screen, the ink blobs play the first animation in reverse to spawn Akiro again. Couldn't that be cool? :D



    I'll implement it tomorrow or so, most likely. Not sure if I'm feeling like doing it tonight, but hey... You never know when inspiration strikes.
     
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  12. Mothil

    Mothil

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    Working on the new respawn system. Instead of reloading the scene, I've been toying around with the idea that the animation plays in reverse and Akiro can swim again. This would then of course set the score to 0 again, as well as despawn enemies. It's a bit choppy at the moment, but it's a "rough draft".



    Oh! And I also changed the font and made it bigger. I think it looks a lot better, but not sure if I should find a pixel font or not. :)
     
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  13. QFSW

    QFSW

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    I really like the way that looks, youre doing great :D
     
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  14. chrissanders

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    this game is actually looking pretty cute.
     
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  15. Mothil

    Mothil

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    Thank you QFSW, it means a lot! :D
    And hey chrissanders, thank you for stopping by. I appreciate your kind words a lot! Feel free to hang out and give feedback if you want. I'm always up for improving the game, so just shout if something feels wrong! :p

    I've been struggling with the tutorial for some time now, and I finally asked for help on this forum. Apparently, the way I instantiated before gave a copy, whereas I tried to change the position of the original object.

    Very interesting, and it's something I'll keep in mind for my future instanti... instantiatons? *Googles* Yup, instantiatons. Whenever I make a "big" advancement like this I get so excited, I'm probably going to have problems falling asleep. I mean, it's working almost exactly as I imagined it to! I just need the shrimp spawn animations to play now, and it'll look a lot better. I'm way too excited now, I gotta go get some air.

     
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  16. Mothil

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    The intro post is updated with a new playable build (HERE). :)
     
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  17. Mothil

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    Guys, I'm having a design problem. The enemies have no real way of disappearing after Akiro has been killed. Here's a quick explanation of the two ideas I have in mind:


    The "Stand still and disappear":

    12699083_937296216324451_2053223889_o.jpg

    There's two main ways I imagined this. They could either have an animation like the shrimp, just in reverse, making them all sort of swim into the depths. Here's a quick gif of reverse shrimp spawn to show you what I mean:



    In that way, they would all just "poof" away from their current position just as Akiro is exploding ink. This is definitely the easiest way to deactivate the enemies, but I want it to be memorable. I want it to be fully tied with the rest of the game feel, and I'm not quite sure it is just that.



    The "Look confused and swim away":

    12695419_937296226324450_1529947796_o.jpg


    This is the idea I've been trying to implement for a couple hours now. I got it semi working with the jellyfish, but there's an awful lot of copy paste code. I got them to randomize a point (check the arrows: up/down/left/right) and move to one of those, but I struggled with the rotation.


    There's also one more way I could go about this, and that is to have them casually swim around after Akiro has died. I think that's also a viable option, but then again I stumble into the main problem - They can't be there when the Player presses "Play again". I also thought about splatting the whole screen with ink, but ... I don't know.

    Thoughts? :)
     
  18. QFSW

    QFSW

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    I like the second idea
    what you could do is find the direction from the enemy to akiro, flip that then add a random factor, that way theyre moving directly away from akiro, however accelerate to that direction so they naturally blend from their current path away from akiro, once theyre off screen despawn them

    Hows that for starters?
     
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  19. Mothil

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    Whaaaaa--- Yes! That's perfect! That's like, just a simple dir = transform.position - playerPos.transform.position or so. Great idea, QFSW. I'm hyped to get home and try it out now. :D
     
  20. QFSW

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    Haha, no problem :)
    Glad I could help someone out with their game :)
     
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  21. Mothil

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    I've been quite busy lately, but I finally got a basic outline of the "move away" script. here's how it looks now:



    Of course, the plan is to make them wait a second or so, and then move at the same speed. All in due time. :)
     
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  22. QFSW

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    Looking good. Remember to disable spawns too
     
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  23. Mothil

    Mothil

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    Color swap hyyyype!
    yesterday I was thinking a lot about what I wanted to work on, and I gave the color selection another shot. After two hours of trying I got quite frustrated and I asked a friend for help. He is an amazing coder and very good with Unity, and he told me about the AnimationOverrideController. And to be honest, that was just the thing I needed to get going with colors.

    Here is a quick test, where "s" and "d" switches between animations. They aren't going to be like that in game, but I wanted to use those buttons to just check that everything works. It's going to be selectable in the menu, of course. :)

     
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  24. Mothil

    Mothil

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  25. QFSW

    QFSW

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    Please make that happen if you get over 9000 points
     
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  26. Mothil

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    Haha, yess!
    I was just thinking about it. What if there's a 1% chance that the game starts in crazy mode?

     
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  27. QFSW

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    omg that is both terrifying and hilarious
     
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  28. RavenOfCode

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    MLG akiro time! :D
     
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  29. Mothil

    Mothil

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    This is so awesome. I mean, it's very simple, but... IT WORKS! I'm so excited I have to take a walk. There's just one thing... the code looks really bad. I mean really bad. I know there's one way I can make it prettier, by putting it in an array, and I might just do that later. That comes later, now it's time to cheer for the color options!

     
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  30. QFSW

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    At least its working, that's always a good first step. Well done
    Really loving the new UI btw, looks so stylized and nice. Hand made or fancy font?
     
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  31. Mothil

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    I found it on a website. I really dig it as well, and I'd love to have something similar to it, except maybe pixel art. I've been wondering if I should make a font very similar to that one in pixel art. I searched for "ink font" and thought it fit quite nicely. :)
     
  32. QFSW

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    Is the font royalty free? if it is you could always use it
     
  33. Mothil

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    I believe it actually was, yes. It's of course something I'm going to check before I release. I'm curious about making my own font as well, so I might just try that 'just because'. :rolleyes:
     
  34. QFSW

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    Could give your own font a go and see how it comes out, but I personally am really digging the font you are using now
    UI looks 100x better, more polished and professional than it was before. Well done
    Don't mean to undermine your previous UI, my UI is crap, I hate UI
    We all have something we hate with game dev dont we?
     
  35. Mothil

    Mothil

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    Haha, I totally get you! And yes, my previous was just a test / placeholder. I'm digging this font, but I still have no background or animations. I'm looking forward to polishing the game, it'll make everything look 10x better.
     
  36. QFSW

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    Im reaaaally looking forwards to parralaxed backgrounds and some nice particles, maybe even blur effects on the out of focus layers. That would make the deal for me
     
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  37. Mothil

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    One slice of parallaxed background coming right up! o_O



    It's placeholder art of course, but it's kind of cool that I got it working so fast. I'm soooo looking forward to actually working on the art.
     
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  38. QFSW

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    Wow, good parallaxing going there
    Think you will do defocused layers or not?
    Also, maybe having some defocused fish (a lot larger and more menacing) in the back layers would make it look awesome
    Ever played spore? Im thinking of the cell stage
     
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  39. Mothil

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    I agree there! Yeah, I do want some big scary things swimming in the background. You reminded me I should pick up Spore again, it's a good reference to what I'm going for. :)
     
  40. QFSW

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    'tis a great game, I feel you could draw a lot of inspiration from it as it has a similar feel to Akiro. Just don't over do it though, you want to keep its unique essence (for me its the pixel art. So low res yet so well done, bravo)
     
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  41. Mothil

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    The work for the day. I've been working on it for 6 hours straight now and it's not even noticable, haha! Well, here's what I've done: changed color selection code to PlayerPrefs (debatable if it's working, I have this strange animation bug at the moment...), added death music and some random sound effects, and the enemies move at a steady pace away and despawn outside the screen.
     
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  42. QFSW

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    When the enemies flee, could you make them ease into that speed? Would imo make it feel a lot more natural
     
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  43. Mothil

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    After stumbling around my own code for 6 hours straight yesterday, it has come to my attention that I should seriously fix the code. It's so full of duplication and unnecessary calls here and there. My goal for this week is to seriously rebuild most of the scripts, and start to look into OOP. Until now, I haven't used any inheritance, encapsulation or polymorphism. I also have to learn how to use arguments / parameters, which I also have not used yet.

    Because I'm planning on refactoring as much as I can, there's going to be way less updates. Hopefully after this, I will code faster and more efficient, so stay tuned. :)
     
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  44. Mothil

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    before.png

    The result after cleaning up Jellyfish script. (Left: before, right: after) I can't believe I had two methods that weren't even used... It was way worse than I thought. Ah well.
    The move forward method and the rotate method was moved to a separate script, since shrimps use those as well. This looks way cleaner, but I know I can do a lot better. Back down into the code we go! :eek:
     
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  45. Mothil

    Mothil

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    maybeupdated.png

    Okay, I just had to post this, cause this just shows how much better it actually looks! I'm amazed, and I felt really clever when I passer in that num to switch color, even though it's not that advanced, haha. The new script is actually even shorter, cause I print screened before I removed the OnLevelWasLoaded method. :)
     
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  46. QFSW

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    Good work. I love rewriting the code of my game
    Over, and over again
    You never write some perfectly first time
     
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  47. Mothil

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    I'm working a bit on the main menu today. I'm not entirely sure how I should go about this, but here is one of the ideas:



    Very simple, just Akiro swimming around on the screen. As you can see, he does not change color yet. It would be nice if his color was whatever the player chose. Maybe some enemies swim around... or shrimp. This was my first idea at least. I'm not sure if the idea comes through, but I tried to get him to complete the "i" in Akiro, making him the dot as he swims past. Really unsure how this translates to different screen sizes, so maybe I should have something simpler.

    If you have any suggestions, shoot. I'm just going to experiment with this for a while, and especially the color selection. I have four main ideas there.

    The ideas, from left to right:
    1. Rotate in a circle, 3d (deeper into the image). Sounds cool, but it'd look strange since it's pixel art I think.
    2. Like the color wheel idea I had way back. It's not a color wheel anymore, but I guess the idea still translates.
    3. In a line, and the player can tap sides or drag to scroll through. I think I like this one the best, as it's easy and seems effective.
    4. Akiro swims in a circle, and changes color as the player taps on the side. My second favorite.

     
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  48. Mothil

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    Just some quick sketching. This is just done in PyxelEdit, by the way - that's not how it looks ingame. I kind of like the highscore idea on the left. I think it'd be cool if it showed the highscore on a trophy, and shrimps jumped up from "bowl". Another small, rather cute mechanic would be having shrimp also jump when the player taps the trophy. The color selection screen is pretty straight forward.

    Since I wanted to go for more ink, I started liking how that works with the menu as well. Imagine those black spots as ink that splashed on the screen when the main menu buttons were clicked. Clicking "Back" or "select" would then reverse the ink, just like Akiro's ink does when the level restarts. :)
     
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  49. QFSW

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    Could have it when you tap the trophy, a number of shrimps equal to your highscore jump out and fall back in
     
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  50. Mothil

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    Yeah! I think it'd be cute. :D