Project Pass-Around ... Let's Build A Weird (Single Player) RPG Together!

Yep, it works!

I modeled a simple tree.
Created a models folder in my MergeTest project.
Put the tree model and materials file in there.
Opened the project.
Refreshed to see the new folder (I have auto-refresh disabled)
Deleted the child cubes from 1 of the trees in the Project View.
Added the tree model as a child to that tree.
Went back to the model and adjusted the size (because it was massive)
Positioned the child tree model GO on the Y so it lined up with the other trees correctly.
Dragged that modified tree GO down to the original tree prefab and instantly all trees were replaced from the cube based to the new low poly model trees.

These are now the model-based trees... which in reality I "modeled" just by using cubes because this was only a workflow test.


And that's how easy it will be to swap in new graphics should we reach the point where it is worth hiring some custom art to be created. Just need to always be sure we use a top level empty GO parent for all objects and build them visually with child objects beneath.

 

Maybe I will spend tonight knocking out some low poly models just for fun. Get a few different trees. A few different rocks.
Instead of programming. Not sure really. The only thing I know for sure is I am about to go to the fridge and get a beer.

 

Why not abuse the volunteers?

 

Well yeah I agree with that absolutely.

If there are people who actually want to knock out some low poly art for free definitely knock yourself out on it!

Here are some ideas to get you started:

• An Inn-Tavern (I was originally thinking this is a small place... one building handles both functions... but I am not set on it. We could have both an inn & a tavern)
• A Blacksmith shop
• A few different trees
• A few different rocks
• A few different plants (think herbs)
• Player cubeish character (probably a warrior mage/cleric type since it seems they can use both melee weapons and cast magic)
• Creeper cubeish character (some little critter that can be killed. It is also a local favorite the tavern serves.
• Dead Creeper cubish character (they can be collected after being killed... and sold if freshly killed)
  
• Probably a few different colored crystals
• A sword
• An axe
• A wooden shield
• A metal shield
• Leather armor (this needs to overlay on the player cubeish character)
  
• Chainmail/Ringmail (this needs to overlay on the player cubeish character)
  
• Mithril/Magical armor (this needs to overlay on the player cubeish character)

The buildings should have a doorway. I don't care if they really have an inside. Originally I was thinking they would. But for scope as soon as the player passes through the doorway the menu could appear. And I think that would work fine for the same basic gameplay experience and lower complexity all around by a good amount. We don't need the actual walking around inside stuff just the functionality of what the buildings represent.

 

I was going to use a basic Unity inspector for the unit stats, but I'm going a little deeper into the editor GUI, I'm going to make a very nice GUI for editing unit stats that is very clear to use so anyone can open it up and create a unit with ease and confidence. I think a free-standing window is in order with a table layout for the data, and allowing things like learning abilities at certain levels or even adding an element of RNG to stat gains.

So, since I am planning on doing some quality work, the idea of a nicer looking game seems fitting to me.

 

We need a mountain range as well. I just got back to dabbling and knocked out a quick one.



I was just going to knock out some simple stuff that doesn't matter how it looks at this point at least it would look a little more like the object it represents. And that could be used to prototype out the level. Quickly build it up. Then worry about the "real" graphics later. Because they can be easily swapped in.

A lot of this is me still just playing around and learning Unity and how to best work in it.

I am also thinking maybe the camera should be adjusted. I'm not sure about going FPS/TPS style but maybe. TPS style might not be bad. Mainly just thinking a different camera angle might be better. Even if one that hangs further back but allows more of the world to be seen.

I guess we can always change that at any time later though as well and just stick with the best combo of is best for gameplay + looks interesting.

I don't know though. For me personally the more time spent on "looks" early on the more I lose interest in a project because it feels like a lot of time is being spent and no actual progress is being made. By that I mean there is no more game than there was before. Can't actually do any more after the focus on graphics than we could before it. lol

I was happy with cubes because that allows the game to be made and the focus to be on the gameplay experience. And we can still swap much better "looks" in later. When it comes to actually getting a game done I am definitely in the focus on the functionality first & foremost camp. Slap the graphics gloss on later.

But it is fun to just spend time messing around with the looks aspect. To a degree anyway.

I'm not sure what in heck I am going to actually work on. I'd like to get started on something. Keep it all in a separate project and then I will merge it in after I do a pull at some point.

 

@Master-Frog just a "heads up" you may have already answered but last time I checked out Trello someone had asked you a question over there.

 

Just saw that, took care of it.

 

Just figured out how to create a new gui window, and pass in a reference to the game object, so that I can use a whole window to layout the data for the units instead of cramming it into the side bar in the inspector. Needless to say, it gets pretty flexible what all I can do from here.

 

Honestly nothing looks bad at this point. I wish the characters had discernible limbs, even if they were minecraft people. At this point, the graphics style is not a realistic one, it's just "you know what it is" based on the shape and color. Why don't you make some monsters in the "crossy road" style, with blocks/primitives and focus on modeling birds, squirrels and NPC's wandering around. Create an environment.

The data is going to drive the role-playing aspects, as in progressively harder monsters, leveling up, etc. that's how you manage player progression in a game like this. They can't go too far from the happy town they start in because they'll get their asses kicked. Story is nothing more than a quest-chain.

 

Submitted keypress interaction. Hoping for others to come in and utilize these interaction methods for their own purposes.

For any newcomers interested in joining, we have an active Trello page.

View: link
Join: link

 

Can the rest of you try to run as desktop or WebGL? When I do that the signs do not show up. Not sure what is going on. Thought I remembered that issue being tied to things being on the default layer but I think that was the default order layer for sprites.

I dunno. I only know I don't see the signs outside the Editor.

 

Wasn't that a feature?

 

Maybe it was. I thought the signs were to use in the actual game. I'm not sure what we'd use them for only in the Editor?

 

It is a feature. I went ahead and pushed one more commit into the pull request enabling most of them in builds.

Only in editor signs can be used to add extra information or just for fun.

 

I remember one of the signs saying we could use them to leave messages for each other but I missed the part about them being only in the Editor. Is there a reason why you were not wanting them to show up outside the Editor? They are great signs I think for the game itself.

 

They are intended for the builds. Making them only appear in the editor is optional. The signs have a toggle.

I'll put a bit of effort into the documentation on Trello when I get a chance.

When you created your signs, you must have copied my (editor only) signs. If you use the prefab, they are included in the build by default.

 

Aha! That is exactly what I did. Alright cool.

 

I played around with changing the camera. I think the top down view camera is okay considering many rpg games use that at least in 2D. But I wanted to test a sort of 3rd person type of camera although granted the angle is not like most.

But this does allow the player to look ahead and kind of puts them into the game a tiny bit more.
Of course, I changed the controls as well. This now controls like an FPS.

Well I shouldn't say that because everyone will be thinking I mean the mouse. In FPS I never use the mouse. If they only have mouse for turning I generally don't bother playing them. Anyway what I mean is the left and right now rotate the player and camera.


Any preferences on going with the top down camera or something more 3Dish like this?

Could also try it with the camera at same position as before only rotating around for turning.

 

I think it's fine because we can have multiple cameras\controllers anyway if we abstract them out, then we can have options to set and tweak based on game-play preference per person.

I would also like to suggest that we have documentation in Bitbuckets wiki or in a folder marked documentation in the repo itself with mark down files. Trello cards aren't as good as those for displaying documentation for APIs and features IMO.

 

I actually thought about having different camera setups as an option while playing around with the camera. I think it would be a cool thing to do.

I don't care whereever you want to put the docs is fine I think. I agree that Trello doesn't seem like a good choice.

 

I find myself starting to think why isn't this game done by now or at least at a playable point? Seems like we have been working on it for quite a while.

Maybe that simply means I need sleep.

I dunno though. Treasures of Ali-Gar took 42 hours to complete as I recall. Might have been 38.

I hope this Unity Way is not a slower way to make games!

 

The problem is what kinds of things are people doing?

I noticed somebody wrote a unit tester for my stats.

As well as the scope of the game.

The moment you said, "RPG" what that meant, was, you need stats, experience, abilities, different bad guys and at least some kind of progressive quest arc, or at least 4 hidden gem stones that you need to find. Something like that.

If you didn't want an RPG, then you would really want an adventure game, where you can walk through nature and kind of just go from point A to point B without the character ever growing in power. Maybe you get a stronger sword toward the end, or something. But it's not really an RPG unless there's growth.

I can't speak for everyone else, but when I began I planned on just knocking out a basic combat system, and getting things rolling, but then the Trello page was created and people started claiming things so I figured I'd step back and see what happens. While I'm doing that, I've manage to make this beauty:



And it actually works really well.

Keep in mind, in the same 2 days, I worked a full day of work, built mouse-based fireball casting, experience and leveling, me and my wife had a child, while I was watching 2 kids under 4 years of age, slept on a couch/bed thing in a 100-year-old building in my street clothes, then packed up all the stuff and situated everything at home, went out to eat to get celebratory dinner, and still figured out how to build a custom editor window for making unit stats using nothing but the docs and trial and error.

If you really want an interesting show, I have one for you.

Take a team of 5 volunteer developers and have them pick a game they want to make.

...Then have them see if they can make it faster than I can by myself.

The reality is that just because you have more resources and man-power available, doesn't mean more stuff is going to get done, and it definitely doesn't mean that all of that activity is going to be productive toward the end goal.

 

Ha ha! That was great reading but I was just being silly. We actually just started getting things going last night. It was about 6 PM when I pushed the very tiny beginning work up on Bitbucket. lol

I think it will come together. The reason I can make games so quickly by myself is because I have a very clear idea what I want to do. Not everything. But I definitely have concrete things I want to do and I have an overall high level concept that sort of guides everything. So I think having that to some degree here would help a lot.

Of course, a big part of not having that is because I wanted to see what we could all do without having it and just doing what we wanted to do.

I also spent my time tonight trying out different things to learn more about Unity. It was time well spent though. I now know I can work even adding stuff to the Scene while someone else is working on the project and can easily merge those updates in later. And I know low poly (or even super fancy) models can be easily swapped in. I figured that but I wanted to be absolutely sure it could be done in Unity. So I tested both of those things tonight. Also tried out a different camera and player control system.

So yeah I did very little overall but it was all useful stuff.

Tomorrow I will buckle down and get into my serious game dev mode.

 

It looks like you evolved this into a fantasy RPG. Not too surprising.

Dang, man.

 

Well you know I called it an RPG and in my mind I was thinking more of an action adventure with some light quests and battles and ability to buy & sell gear. Basically that would be the character leveling up. Although I did kind of think about proper rpg with stats it wasn't on the forefront of my mind and wasn't completely off my mind.

So I think it was more me calling it an RPG that set certain expectations that I probably didn't actually intend. But we can do it. I see anything as doable. Because you can always implement in smart ways. It won't be Skyrim and it doesn't have to be. But it can certainly have some solid RPG elements.

Really a great foundation would be just being able to battle some enemies and gain XP. Then collect the Creepers freshly killed bodies pack them to the Inn/Tavern and sell them for silver/gold. Then eventually head to the Blacksmith and get some better gear. That is basically the core of most RPG games. The grind.

I'd like to get some light quests in here. Not constant running errands but some of that. I'd like there to be secrets. Areas to explore.

It doesn't all have to be done in this project though. Just do what we can until we get bored then wrap it up.

 

Add a secret portal that sends the player 4000000 years into the future, maybe only accessible through some crazy quest in the future when the quest system is in. I mean, it's a game where people add what they want (Without breaking others!).

 

What's your guys' plan for hashing out the story/quests?

I may have some suggestions you could take or leave.

Obviously they'll be suited for the low poly, light-hearted, style rather than some boring up-its-own-ass "epic".

 

Not really. Some of us haven't actually made a commit yet.

 

I don't understand where you guys are coming from at all. If 100 uncoordinated voluntueers were working on something for a month I'd be amazed if it even has the vaguest semblance of a proper game at all.

Things like these always remind me of something I once read: "If a woman can deliver a child in 9 months, it doesn't mean 9 women can deliver one child in a month.

 

Even pokemon has stats.

I'm just going to create a system that you choose a max level, max level stats, beginning stats, and the stats are just interpolated each level along on each level up.

The abilities can be their own system, they can check what level the player is on their own.

 

Just spent 20 minutes chasing coding bugs that didn't make any sense, turns out writing lots and lots of unit tests on an in-development project where classes are subject to change are basically the meanest thing you can do to a person.

I was getting debugger errors in comments. My favorite was "must have a return type" in a comment.

If you're going to do it, do it to yourself.
Add to the rules: No Unit Testing on other people's classes.

That wasn't fun. I thought my debugger was bugging out.

 

Low poly doesn't have to mean light-hearted.

I was thinking of a quest where an old man sends you to kill a monster, and you go to attack the monster

Spoiler

and find it was the old man's son, who he experimented on.

I was also thinking of a quest where a parent sends you to save their child who has been "kidnapped" by a bunch of monsters, and when you go into the forest or wherever and start attacking the monster

Spoiler

the child appears, and says the monster is his friend, and then starts blocking your attacks on the monster in battle, so you would be forced to kill the child to kill the monster. Of course you can stop too if you want.

Maybe I've been playing too much Nier Automata, though.

Edit: it would actually be cool for @GarBenjamin to clarify the tone, because I was thinking about making a little music.

 

[QUOTE="Master-Frog, post: 3015619, member: 867970"]Just spent 20 minutes chasing coding bugs that didn't make any sense. If you're going to do it, do it to yourself.

Add to the rules: No Unit Testing on other people's classes.[/QUOTE]

Yeah I see the golden rule for a project by a team as...

Don't mess with someone else's stuff unless you absolutely have to.

The purpose of that is not because I want to be an a-hole or control freak. It is because when a person doesn't follow that it can cause problems on multiple levels from adding complexity to changing the code itself to really annoying the hell out of the other developer(s).

Particularly for things like Unit Tests. I'm more interested in working on the actual game than I am things like that but I think whoever wants to write Unit Tests that is fine... just definitely work on the game first. As you write the code for your additions you can write your Unit Tests for your code.

In fairness, we've already had this discussion and in this case these Unit Tests were already added. That's actually why it came up in the first place.

I do some organization stuff from time to time in the project view. Like wrapping up loose additions into a folder with the contributor's name on it. Even then I need to test to make sure I didn't break anything doing so because if they were relying on that specific hierarchy it could break. Anyway, I do this just for organization.

Ideally everyone could just put their additions inside the appropriate folder (in Code area or Project view) with their name on the folder of course creating the folder if it doesn't already exist.

 

That's awesome you want to contribute. Honestly, let's just give it a few days or so and see how it develops. Personally, I'm not focused on this being some kind of epic serious type of thing. I'd be perfectly fine if it was an amalgamation of various themes and things. If someone wanted to add a band of robbers that were all shiny red apples for example that'd be okay. If someone else decided there should be a dragon that is fine.

Some people might think this would ruin things. For me it is refreshing. There are many rpgs out there. Why not just have fun with this project and add crazy stuff? Perhaps downright stupid stuff even. Not take it so seriously because that is at least unique & refreshing.

Maybe by Wednesday we'll have enough going on in there that you can work with it.

 

WE COULD DO THIS...

To get a little structure and at the same time reduce scope way down...

We could work on a waves principle. Small hamlet. Surrounded by different areas that hold different kinds of enemies.

Maybe there is a Dark Forest which we could name The Darkest Forest Of Them All! And certain type of enemies come out of that place heading toward the hamlet. Then maybe another area that is a cave. Perhaps it is The Cave Of Absolute Kick-Ass Wickedness. And some other type of enemies come out of that place heading toward the hamlet. And so forth. Have 3 to 6 such areas around the hamlet.

That would give a "heart" / core to the game that is small & easily manageable once we get the ability to actually fight with the enemies. Then we really focus on the player movement & combat so it feels damn good. So just moving around & battling enemies is fun in itself.

Then we can move on from there to other stuff like quests, etc.

Just throwing that out for consideration. It gives some direction. The scope is very reasonable. And it provides some core gameplay.

 

Decided to make you all an Inn if you want it. I'll get to painting it tonight.

It is functional, so you the roof will be hidden when the player approaches the building.

I give you "The Frogar's Hold Inn"

 

More on Game Design Type Stuff

We should also keep in mind we can do this anyway we want to. And I highly recommend we always favor simplicity over complexity. Let complexity & depth naturally come about just from there being so much to do. But any one thing should be as simple as possible.

When making a game we are constantly faced with decisions... combat for example... it could be move around the map and fight the enemies in the same view. It could be when the player and an enemy get close to each other the battle area is entered and it is now a closer view of that area, it could be side-on like 2D, it could be purely top down.

More than that... it could be the battles are arcade (action) oriented or they could be turn-based. Heck they could even be automatic and purely based on stats.

No one of these is the right way to do it. One smart way to do it would be to start with the simplest way to implement the combat and then over time add in other means of implementing combat that take more work.

Then we'd end up with a refreshing thing... when a player gets into a battle they don't know if they are just fighting them in the main map or will the battle arena pop up and if it does pop up will it be action-oriented or will it be turn-based. Of course, we could also simply make these options.

Or we could just stick with one and be done with it.

It's a game. And it is creative. There are no limits as far as what and how the game is from a purely game perspective. We are creating a little world. Creating laws to govern our world. Populating it with things to interact with. Populating with things that may be funny. Others just that make it look more "alive" & interesting. And then we bring it all together and it lives.

I am just throwing this stuff out as to how I think about games.

 

That's awesome! Thanks.

 

Pretty unique stuff right here. You usually see a game stuck with one type of combat system (and half the time it isn't even all that good). Providing options would be really neat, would let players experience different styles at once.

 

I slept in til about 12:30 today. Spent some time playing with the dogs. Some time reading & writing on here. Spend some time checking FB.

This is the annual city wide yard sale day. I'm going on a quest to see what all I can find that I don't need. Then will get food. And finally at some point later maybe 3 to 4 hours from now I should be back and ready to get some stuff done!

 

So far a new sharpening stone for my knives (have a nice little collection at home), a couple cord locks (gun locks), 3 PS2 games, 1 PS3 game still in shrinkwrap and two of those game collection CDs for Windows. I used to by those collection CDs often 10 to 20 years ago. Not bad got all of this stuff for $18.

There are 1,200 freeware & shareware type games on just the one. A lot of games for me to check out in the coming months. I love checking out these hobbyist games!

Actually I think it's time to return home unload this stuff then come back out to eat.

 

Ultimately, you're going to need a way of designing and modifying your combat units in data so you can tweak their relative strengths, or you will never be able to create more than a handful of units and adjusting the balance of the game is going to be like moving a boulder up stairs. Abilities and spells should also be defined in data, so that they can be easily defined and modified and attached to different units.

So all this talk of "no progress" or "nothing going on" has no actual meaning in my mind, because anything you create that isn't grounded in some kind of consistent data structure, shared by all different units, is going to quickly get bogged down through each iteration and revision.

When I made Meteor Crush (or remade), one thing I realized was that what kept me from being able to make levels more/less difficult and made it hard to define new meteors, was that I couldn't properly model the levels in data. Once I found a way to model everything in data, everything was just tweaking data values until I had a lot of control over the levels with minimal effort.

What I am hearing described is the difference between taking the time to assemble the parts to make an automatic car with power steering (in a factory with all of the parts already available for free--Unity), versus manually powering the car like Fred Flintstone because the Fred Flintstone car is easy to make and technically moves, so it's just as good as the automatic car with power steering?

If you really want to make your game so flexible and have 10 different combat types, you need to focus on modeling the data for your game so that it doesn't care how its being used, that's why I'm starting with the unit stats, because even if @BoredMormon makes an item system... what do your items do? How do you define your items? Do they recover Hit Points? Do they recover MP? Can you have an enemy unit that uses potions? Does your sword that you've created make the character stronger? How? Just a magic number appended to damage, based on a boolean "Has Magic Sword" or is it applied to a stat bonuses data object, and you can create 10 similar swords with different stat buffs in less than 20 minutes?

That's where I see a lot of people falter.

 

Yep I agree.

The "no progress" thing wasn't serious. I was just being silly.

This project kicked off less than 2 days ago.
No hurry for it to be done anyway.

 

Hi,

I just made some lowpoly trees. I'll need to download correct unity version and import those models and make a pull request. How about moving to unity 5.6 as it's now released?

 

Awesome. We wouldn't want to jump to 4.6 (well I don't for sure and I think the others probably feel same) as we all just got on 4.5.2 or whatever it was.

More importantly you never want to jump immediately to the very latest version of something particularly complex software. They made a lot of enhancements and that means a lot of bugs will be in there. They removed many previous bugs too which means different bugs may have been added. Wait til they release one or two patches.

 

Finally I am heading home. Think I will be in the majority of the evening and night. So I can get some work done on this project.

Maybe add the Arkanoid style mini game for when the player attempts to smash through fences and blockades.

 

My plan is that anybody will be able to pop into the game editor and modify stats/create an enemy or maybe even an ally, or even a neutral character (like an escort mission sort of thing) that you need to protect.

As of right now, the foundations are laid (in code) for bonus stats from equipment, buffs (item and spell) and also debuffs, but as of right now I don't know how the item / ability systems are going to look and I have no need to get too crazy far ahead of myself or cut into anyone else's territory.

The end of this portion of what I'm doing will be accessible methods so experience points can be fed into the Unit Stats (that reminds me, I didn't put in the exp required code for next level yet) and the whole thing handled automatically by the single Unit Stats class without the user/other developer having to even think twice about it. Something like

Code (CSharp):

1.  
2. using UnityCommunityProject.RPGUnitStatistics;
3.  
4. ...
5.  
6. UnitStats myStats = GetComponent<UnitStats>();
7.  
8. myStats.GainExp(100);

Will just result in your unit gaining 100 experience.

I hope that in this way, it becomes easier and easier to do more stuff so that people can have fun *making* the game not only *making components* for a game

I know that making a game from complete scratch is a daunting task, and the earliest part of the game is basically entirely advanced-level stuff since there is literally *nothing* to work with, so maybe if there are some tools people can really contribute their creativity.

 

For the exp required per level thing, are you planning to make it kind of exponential like some games do, or constant like in other games? Or are you just making the basic component for someone else to decide the design? Just curious.

 

Sounds good. I think to a degree the rest of us may need to wait just to see exactly what you are doing. It sounds great. I just mean we probably don't know the full scope of what you are doing. It sounds like you are saying you are creating the complete system for Friendly characters, Enemy characters as far as defining their attributes and leveling. But I thought I remembered you also saying something the other day about doing the combat system as well.

So I am not sure if you are building everything for enemies, friendly NPCs and the playable characters (because they will be basically the same just a little checkbox in Inspector as to whether they are player controlled or not I think?) or exactly how much you are building. Like are you also implementing all of the behavioral states or just the underlying stat / leveling and control methods? I am guessing you mean the underlying stuff and then the rest of us can build on top of that with specific behaviors to customize enemies and so forth.

Anyway whatever in hell you are doing it sounds like it will be useful! lol