December 2018 Week #1

We completed the basic weapon and equipment systems, started work on the vehicles and made a starter building. We also discussed about multiplayer mechanics.

ADITYA CHANDRA (Lead Developer)

Sorry for the delay for this blog... I had a science olympiad thingy (nailed it). Other than that, I completed the basic weapon system, started work on equipment mechanics and also began coding the logic for the vehicles.

WEAPONS AND EQUIPMENT

First of all, I textured the assault rifle Diwangshu sent and gave it a classic look. I also wrapped it in dirt so it kinda looks a bit hardcore-ish now. Cool.

I coded some cool logic into the gun. I have an EquipmentManager now which holds all guns. It's responsible for the switching as well. Here's how you switch guns: you pick up a gun, you open your inventory, you click on the slot with the gun and it will show up in your equipment list (that is still to be U.I.'d). The gun can either fire automatically or non-automatically (for semi-automatic and single-shot firearms). It also has a changeable fire rate. It needs to reload and I can set the max clip ammo. I added muzzle flash, smoke, impact effect, impact force and audio as well.

And when I was playtesting, I got defeated by a CRATE (not all game developers are good gamers though, am I not one?):

So then I got some ragdoll bugs fixed, and I added another weapon: a sub-machinegun. It has higher fire-rate but less damage than the A.R., and the sound it makes is too loud (ugh!). I also got the unarmed and melee combat done (currently it's so useless no-one will do it as long as they don't have a gun).

I also made a base TakeDamage script. Every game object which can be hit and subsequently destroyed will have some or the other script which derives from TakeDamage. You can see that script in action in the crates in the above GIF and the video below.

Also, pressing [L] now no longer makes the character go limp and prolonged airtime or experiencing excessive force no longer triggers the ragdoll. I decided to remove this functionality just because I decided it was superfluous. I didn't of course remove the ragdoll mechanic though... I'll trigger it on death only, I think.

The following playtest recording sums everything up:

EDITOR WORK

I made some quick editor extensions to make life a bit easier for me. I did write some code, and I hope that it can evolve into an extension that can bake a city? We'll see..., but I didn't invest much time into it. I will of course keep doing editor work all through the development.

VEHICLES

I also started work on the vehicles. I didn't do any texturing... this time I decided to do functionality first, because texturing isn't gonna be a problem since I now have a Blender plug-in called Sprytile! It was recommended to me by an amazing friend of mine, who also linked some awesome learning resources. Awesome!

I'm using the awesome (but white, for now) dune buggy model that D.K. made for getting the functionality of the cars incorporated.

Here's my task-list... I really have lots to do!

MULTIPLAYER

Unity is discontinuing uNet and 2019.1 will be an upgrade to a new rewritten version of uNet, that won't give you crashes and memory leaks after you surpass something like 500 CCUs (here are my thoughts on that). Of course, I want A Thug's Ascension to be a multiplayer game, but the instability of the current environment kinda forces me to wait until uNet's replacement is out. Probably I won't even use it, I like Photon much more than I like uNet. But what's wrong with waiting? :D

DIWANGSHU KAKOTY (3D Artist)

I modelled a really basic building for the game, and sent over the different components (walls, ceilings, staircases, doors, etc.) separately. I want to improve it, but I'm sure it's enough for the prototype world we're gonna need. I'm also quite sure the final builds of the game won't have these:

I designed the components so that they can be used in different combinations to get different types of buildings, and since everything can be resized and stuff, I plan to keep sending more components like these which fit together well to get awesome new architectures in no time.

I also took care of the small stuff like the hole in floor to allow the staircases to pass, the height of the human body to be constant in terms of all components in ratio, and you get the drift.

Thank you for reading this, and sorry once again for missing last weeks' posts. We'll try to get the cars up and running by next week, and also get more work done for the buildings. Until then, cheers.