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Space Farmers - Unity WIP Blog

Discussion in 'Works In Progress - Archive' started by RicheyMB, Sep 24, 2013.

  1. RicheyMB

    RicheyMB

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    Hi Folks,

    We've just announced we're hard at work on Space Farmers - a co-operative game with guns, gadgets, robots and farmers and more guns.

    I want to do some write-ups on some of the stuff I'm doing in Unity and thought the best place to do it would be right here.

    Here's the latest trailer.




    OK - I'm off back to work, but I'm hoping to post some more here really soon.
     
    Last edited: Feb 9, 2014
  2. RicheyMB

    RicheyMB

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    I thought I'd add a quick post on multiplayer as it's the first question we’re being asked when talking about Space Farmers.

    We have tried out a few different networking solutions over the last 12 months, while we’ve been thinking about this project.

    Top of our list was Photon Cloud, as that has the massive bonus of letting you connect to each other with as little pain as possible. We cannot overemphasize that we want people to be able to play together with no network hassle. That’s our job.

    However, that does come at a cost, both financially and in terms of speed, and peer to peer was always our target.

    So with an unproven product and untested gameplay ideas (apart from our acting them out in the kitchen) we didn’t want to commit to a single solution that we might have to replace later. That lead us to come up with our Network Layer.

    Basically we wrote an interface for all the networking solutions we use. At the start of the game we say ‘BumpkinNetwork.Initialise(use Photon or use Unity)’. The network object, which acts much the same way as Photon, switches in the correct interface and that’s all we have to worry about. Instead if adding NetworkViews, PhotonViews or whatever to our game objects we just add our BumpkinNetworkView object.

    Of course, this came at the cost of having to develop it and test it but, for the moment at least, it allows us to keep our options open!
     
  3. RicheyMB

    RicheyMB

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    Here's a screenshot from today's testing. I'm playing as Steve in the centre of the screen, wearing some rather funky goggles and Andy is playing as Thomas at the bottom left in his jet-pack.

    $SS2.png
     
    Last edited: Sep 28, 2013
  4. Rush-Rage-Games

    Rush-Rage-Games

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    Looks like a fun project! Good job!
     
  5. RicheyMB

    RicheyMB

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    Thanks Rush Rage Games :)

    I've been playing around with some level design ideas for the Goggles today so I thought I'd share a screen shot. The goggles allow the character wearing them to see items that are otherwise invisible.

    The effect is achieved with a combination of a depth shader and multiple camera.

    They also make our character look like a cross between a minion and Sam Fisher.

    $Goggles.png
     
    Last edited: Sep 30, 2013
  6. Adrianis

    Adrianis

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    Looks like a cool idea, looking forward to hearing some more about it

    Also, love the look of those space pigs :)
     
  7. RicheyMB

    RicheyMB

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    Thanks Adrinis. The space pigs are our version of the Portal companion cube. The plan is they're grumpy and don't like being carried around, and will moan about it when you do :)
     
  8. RicheyMB

    RicheyMB

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    Today I've been making things explode!

    In this level a large grinding wheel is constantly moving towards you, destroying everything in its path. To start the event over the network at the same time I make use of the network time. The server says 'do this in x seconds' and sends the timestamp too - when the client receives the message it works out how long it took to receive it and deducts that from x.

    $Grinder.png
     
  9. RicheyMB

    RicheyMB

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    We recorded some footage of game play testing, including our chatter. Enjoy :D

     
  10. GoGoGadget

    GoGoGadget

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    Looks fun! The custom networking interface sounds interesting as well.
     
  11. RicheyMB

    RicheyMB

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    Thanks GoGoGadget.

    It's been a busy few days for Space Farmers. The biggest news is that were going to be attending the Open Arcade at http://gamecity.org/ on the 20th and 21st of October. Anyone wants to check out Space Farmers can do so!

    Now back to making some game before then!
     
  12. RicheyMB

    RicheyMB

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    Still trying to get as many ideas playable for our couple of days at Indie City. Started adding some lighting to some scenes. Here's a screen shot of a medical bay. As is custom in space, medical bays have electrified floors and pigs boxes to carry.

    $Got The Pig.png
     
  13. RicheyMB

    RicheyMB

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    Jet packs, pigs, grinders and energy shotguns. It's the first Space Farmers game play trailer!

     
  14. RicheyMB

    RicheyMB

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    No two player co-op game would be complete without some switches to activate. The way I've done this with Space farmers is by having 3 elements. Switches, a controller and controllable objects.

    Switch is a component that is added to any game object. It has two public methods, SwitchOn and SwitchOff. If also has a int property of switchValue.

    Controller is a component that has an array of switches and a array of target game objects as properties. It looks at all of the switches in the array to determine if they switched on. If they are the total of all the switchValues is passed using BroadcastMessage to all the target game objects.

    The controller can set to trigger when any switch is down, or all switches are down.

    To help in setting up a scene I've set it up to draw some gizmos so I can see how everythings linked together. In the shot below the switch is the icon in the centre.

    $Controller.png
     
  15. RicheyMB

    RicheyMB

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    Had a great time with Space Farmers at Game City over the last few days. The response we had to the game was amazing and it's been great to see people go and post onto their comments onto our Greenlight page and help the campaign.

    Here are a couple of folks enjoying blasting some robots at the event.

    $Moss.jpg
     
  16. V0odo0

    V0odo0

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    Co-op? That will be fun :D Are you planning to make a level editor? I think that feature will give your game a long life.
     
  17. RicheyMB

    RicheyMB

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    V0odo0 - Thanks :D It's loads of fun to play. A level editor is something that we're not ruling out but it won't be in the initial release.
     
  18. AndyBumpkin

    AndyBumpkin

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    And we're back with more updates about Space Farmers!

    Since our last post a lot has happened - but I'll resist the urge to ramble about almost 3 months worth of developments - the really important fact is that the game is currently available on Desura's Alpha Funding Program with a fairly hefty discount (for now!)

    And as for added features and levels...well it's probably best to show you our latest developer video log that we released earlier this week...



    As it happens we've now released version 0.3a that we described in the video.

    Let us know what you think so far and don't forget to check out the free Alpha over on Desura: www.desura.com/games/publish/space-farmers
     
  19. AndyBumpkin

    AndyBumpkin

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    I thought I'd just post some screenshots to show how we've been progressing since the earlier shots above.

    These are from the recent update...

    $ss13.jpg

    $ss12.jpg

    $ss11.jpg

    $ss10.jpg
     
  20. AndyBumpkin

    AndyBumpkin

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    Time for another video update log! Let us know what you think...