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Official Rock critter

Discussion in 'Open Projects' started by Amel-Unity, May 14, 2021.

  1. Amel-Unity

    Amel-Unity

    Unity Technologies

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    Hey everyone :)

    This is the official thread for the rock critter. Take a look at the Hero card on the roadmap.

    The rock critter is a creature that moves around fast, and when the player gets too close, attacks the protagonist.

    The behavior is very similar to the slime critter, that's why we will use the same state machine later.

    We are opening this thread a bit late since we already have the assets produced by our team but we still wanted to create the thread to tell you what we've got so far and what is still missing.

    For now we have these tasks done by the team:
    These are already present in the Git repository so you can check them out. In terms of what is still missing, we would like to add the faint animation when the protagonist kills the rock critter. Later we can Create Override Animator Controller to override Slime Critter's controller.

    You can get some more info on the Critters on the corresponding card on the game design wiki, or in the cards for the individual tasks linked above.
     
    gregsolo likes this.
  2. Amel-Unity

    Amel-Unity

    Unity Technologies

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    Hiii everyone :)

    Sharing some updates on the rock critter, I have added the behavior so now you can start seeing it moving in the TestingGround scene similar to the slime critter. I have reused the same logic and most of the components from the slime critter since they share a similar behavior. I needed to do some tweaks so it works for both critters and few changes on the animations. On this card, you can see the checklist of the different steps made. All the updates are pushed to the main branch on the Git repository and here is a small video of how it looks.


    You can notice that currently we don't have a faint animation yet so I have used the Idle animation temporarily but we already have a PR open for it, I didn't merge it due to some rig incompatibility issues as I mentioned in a comment on the PR, I will merge it once it's fixed.
     
    itsLevi0sa and MortyJHin like this.
  3. aby_gamemaker

    aby_gamemaker

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    Hitting a rock creature with a stick would seem silly. So can we equip hamlet with some appropriate gear before this task?
     
  4. Smurjo

    Smurjo

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    I would consider it hardly credible if a cook carries any weapons - plus this game isn't supposed to be one of those silly mainstream violence games that all look alike.

    How about the rock critter doesn't get killed - which indeed seems unlikely - but when hit enough with the stick pulls in its legs, closes his eyes and waits - kind of like a turtle or hedgehog would behave when hit (which is the unfortunate reason hedgehogs get so easily killed by cars)?
     
    Amel-Unity and itsLevi0sa like this.
  5. aby_gamemaker

    aby_gamemaker

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    I understand we don't have realistic combat ai but if you hit with stick on a rock it is supposed to break right?
    We don't necessarily need to equip him weapons but we could create a distraction and take advantage.
    For example we are told about the rock critters in snippets from all the nearby NPCs. We use all that information to formulate a plan.
    Let's say rock critter is like ferdinand the bull and likes flowers so if we throw fragrant wreaths at it it will be confused and then we can knock him out by throwing a big coconut and get our rock candy.
     
    Smurjo likes this.
  6. Smurjo

    Smurjo

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    I like that, especially as Hamlet is a cook. Maybe its as simple as giving it a special dish and it lets us take the rock candy (? I thought we were after rock critter eggs to be cracked with the nutcracker-like utensil... - weren't we supposed to make the rock candy out of sugar-soup? Maybe rock candy is a good candidate for a rock critters favorate dish though...)
     
  7. itsLevi0sa

    itsLevi0sa

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    I don't think we have a "throw" mechanic, nor are we going to (am I right)? From what I see from the Animation Card right now our options with a Rock Critter is to either combat it, or approach it to make it follow you and then try to avoid it I guess (by jumping on a different height level perhaps? Would that make the Rock Critter stop at the edge or would it also follow you? And if it'd stop at the edge will it return back at its starting point after a while or would it remain there idle?) Thinking about the Rocky Path a bit, since it's definitely going to have a lot of different height levels to go to or from, that might help the player figure out a simple plan.
     
  8. aby_gamemaker

    aby_gamemaker

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    Hamlet has a y-shaped stick. If we pronounce the fork more can we do a catapult action? Would that be easier than building a throw mechanism?

    He could shoot small morsels or something like marshmallow tidbits.

    We could also shoot liquid filled foods building upon the fact that rock pokemon are weaker to water.
     
  9. Smurjo

    Smurjo

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    We can comparably easily do a "drop" mechanic. It wouldn't need an animation, as we need to initiate it from the inventory anyway, similar to eating (the player needs to decide how much of what to drop). If the inventory screen is open, we wouldn't see the animation anyway. So it would be perfectly fine if we click on drop and the thing we dropped appears right in front of Hamlet - to be seen once the inventory screen is closed.

    Since I think the player shouldn't open the inventory when in combat - Hamlet would have to dodge the attack first, then drop the item or drop the item before getting into combat.

    The more complicated part would be then to make the AI react to the dropped item. It should prefer rock candy over attacking Hamlet, but show no interest in any other item, e.g. if Hamlet dropped a lemon. An animation of the rock critter greedily eating the dish would be nice, but I guess it would do as well if the rock critter drops the egg we are after and runs to the place where we dropped the dish. Typically the player would be busy picking up the dropped egg and not be overly interested what the rock critter physically does with our dropped rock candy. With the rock critter eating the dish Hamlet has limited time to pick up the egg. After a few seconds our dropped dish vanishes and the rock critter attacks again.
     
  10. aby_gamemaker

    aby_gamemaker

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    Wouldn't it be easier to establish a whacko tinkerer npc who builds crazy stuff.
    For instance we could buy a slime criter jello shooter from him just for this mission.

    We just have to establish then that rock critters totally detest slime critters and that is why stay away from even the faintest scent of them. And that jello reeks.
     
  11. Smurjo

    Smurjo

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    In this case we have to make the tinkerer character, the jello shooter item (3D and icon for inventory), the shooting animation, a way to switch between stick and jello shooter, an aiming mechanism, the jello dropplets and the stinking (visible somehow, since almost no PC has appropriate hardware for stinking, nor would I want my PC to stink). Then the rock critters have to react, for some reason dropping an egg when fleeing from the stink. They also would return after some time, I assume.
     
  12. aby_gamemaker

    aby_gamemaker

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    I had suggested a tiki powered blaster earlier. So we could make this tinkerer be the guy who transforms our lantern into a blaster.
    Then we can put slime jello cubes in the blaster and tiki will fire them.
    That burnt slime creates an abhorrent substance that knocks out the rock critters.

    We will still have to do aiming, splash, reaction, shop, and add the cubes to slime critters drop list.
     
  13. Amel-Unity

    Amel-Unity

    Unity Technologies

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    I like this idea! I also love the fact that this would make the rock critters more unique compared to slime critter. So the rock critter will be the only enemy that never really dies but more like enters a snooze state and then revives after a while.

    @mitchtheriault opened a PR for the faint animation so I wanted to know what you think about this idea suggested by Smurjo?

    I also wanted to thank you all for these ideas and thoughts! Currently we are working toward the release of a v1 of the game so we can already try to include the idea Smurjo mentioned. After the v1, we can look into these thoughts again and see if we have some time to implement more of them.
     
  14. aby_gamemaker

    aby_gamemaker

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    @Amel-Unity Can we leave the v1 release open ended or patch able so we can even do big updates later like new storylines for the anniversary updates of v1 down the line?