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[Ingshtrom]

This is the first full-featured game that I have done.  I have tried some XNA development and made a basic pong clone, while also implementing some basic platforming things.  Now I am working with Unity to create my game.  I use C# as my scripting language and I am not using any other framework inside of Unity.  I do know Javascript, but I prefer using C derivatives in any development that I do ( just a personal preference).  
 
Finding Home
Now for more on the game itself.  I grew up playing on the SNES and when I gathered enough money on my own, I bought a Gamecube/Metroid Prime.  Needless to say, I fell in love with the game.  The Metroid series and 2D gameplay is where much of the inspiration came from.  From there, I will add a major twist to the game.  The main feature will be that all types of actions that require use of the gun will also drain the life from the player.  I am still working on a good way to regain that health (instead of just picking up items that enemies drop--like coins in Mario, or energy in Metroid).  

In Finding Home you play as a young nerd, Excellion, whom is an outcast in the real world, and searches for a different life.  With his extreme intelligence, he creates a time portal device.  Of course, we all know the world will be rules by nerds, geeks, and/or robots in the future, so why wouldn't Excellion be happier in the future?

Anyways, things are in very early stages of development but I am very excited about this game.  I have been mostly working on some basic Unity development, art, and story.  Below are some sample images that I have made.  I got some of them from the following post along with some basic changes: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=28225.0 .

Keep in mind that these are very early images:

           

[Ingshtrom]

So I wanted to make the character more "mine" than just a slight change of what someone else had done.  I worked off of what I liked in the old character and came up with the following.



Also, as for programming, I have gotten some basic movement worked out.  I have my own animation script that is attached to every sprite.  So I have the following:

- sprite animations
- main character run
- main character jump (variable based on the amount of time the player holds down the jump button)
- collision with world tiles

In Progress:
- the ability to hang on a ledge
- the ability to slide on the ground ( some added mechanics to that in the future)
- shooting in all directions (already have a script for shooting, but I may rewrite it)

In The Future:
- HUD
- first level

[Ingshtrom]

10.19.2012
   => changed the point from which raycasts are sent out for ledge hanging detection
      a. used to be from the corners, but now it goes from the center of the character
   => added _isBlockedRight and _isBlockedLeft logic and properties for the character
   => mapped xbox controller buttons to Unity Controls
      a. enabled the use of the D-Pad for character movement
   => allowed the character to shoot diagonally if the player is holding a modifier button
      a. implemented two modifier buttons. Left Bumper: diagonal-down; Right Bumper: diagonal-up;
   => the character must be much closer now to "lock" onto a ledge
   => created the first testing "room" with a door
      a. door is not functional yet.
   => added all directional shooting for when the character is airborne
   => added all directional shooting for when the character isGrounded (except directly down)
   => implemented the character opening a door
      a. the door will disappear and just become a trigger to wait for the player to walk through
      b. when the player walks through, the room will change to the adjacent one in that direction

Also, here is the latest shot of my character:

[Ingshtrom]

Another day (few hours) of game development has gone by and I got some basic--and I mean really basic--rooms put together.  Nothing is smoothed out at all and the graphics are place holder.  I just got really excited when I got the transition from one room to another figured out.  I will obviously make it smoother in the final version, but you get the idea.

Another thing worth noting is the ledge hanging.  I worked on that for a while as well, but as you can see from the video there are plenty of bugs in that part.  Anyways, here is a short video about it (1 min):

[pluckyporcupine]

Are those Metroid-inspired shoot-to-open doors I see?

It's a bit early in development for me to really comment, but I definitely like the pose (and coloration) of the character shown two posts before this one than the one in your avatar. Having his right arm straight down like that bothers me for some reason.

[Ingshtrom]

I haven't posted in a while, and just wanted to send a little change-log:

- I now have enemies that don't collide with the player, but cause damage to the player.
- Shooting an enemy will do damage and eventually kill the enemy.
- The player can now die if he takes too much damage.
- When the player "hits his head" on the ceiling, he begins descending instead of just hanging there.
- When the player "collides" with an enemy, he gets a small push-back and has a cooldown for which he is immune for that time.
- No video this time, but maybe after a few more features

[Ingshtrom]

A lot of today was spent on doing research and working on some cleanup of the code.  I also created an external application that comments/uncomments out Debug statements. If you are interested, I can post the code and a short tutorial on my external blog.  I am using Unity, but a transition to any other debug-type statements wouldn't be difficult at all.

# 11.9.2012

    * found an article that I am using to make the project cleaner and more robust

          - http://devmag.org.za/2012/07/12/50-tips-for-working-with-unity-best-practices/

    * began keeping docs

          - found KompoZer for creatin HTML-based documentation
    * smoothed out the character movement
          - now has a bit more of a "floaty" feel to it
    * began creating and using what I call Property Classes
          - these are only there to clean up the inspector
          - create a class that is public, have an instance of that class in the primary script.
          - make sure the property class is [System.Serializable]
    * created Debug Disabler--an external tool for enabling/disabling debug statements
          - an external tool that searches all files in a directory for lines starting with 'Debug' and comments them out
          - also goes the other way
          - easy way to enable/disable any sort of debug mode that you have

[amidos2006]

I liked the art style (as I love Cellious art style and u are inspired by him) Good Luck with the project

[Ingshtrom]

I haven't posted in a while, and honestly I just haven't had time.  I kind of took a week off of development since I was a bit burned out (I am a part-time game dev).  I have done a lot of back-end things that can't be shown visually, but I think the engine is coming along nicely.  I have created, with a bit of help, a robust state machine for everything and am currently in the process of porting my early prototype into this new state machine setup. 

The biggest thing I did recently though was switch to Sublime Text 2 for my text editing.  I used to use Visual Studio, but I absolutely love ST2 now and have customized the crap out of it.  I even got code-completion/intellisense working in it.  It wasn't very hard, but it did take some time so I wrote up a post on how to get what I think is a good development environment for C# scripting in Unity.  You can check out my personal blog at http://ingshtrom.tumblr.com/ if you are interested in this.  I should have the port done in the next week or so and then it will be off work on possibly a level generator/parser.

[Ingshtrom]

The other day I watched the artist from OwlBoy draw on Twitch.tv.  It inspired me to work on something much like what he did.  Here is what I came up with after 5+ hours on my iPad:



It's not the best nor am I very efficient, but this is one of the first fully colored and shaded pieces that I have done start to finish.

I like the character a lot and am debating doing something like him for my main character.  He will have guns instead of swords though

On a side note, I decided that if I want to get into the game industry some day, I should really be coding in C++, so that is what I am doing now.  I think I bit off a little more than I could chew with this project.  Instead of Unity, I will be using C++ and for a while it will just be small games until I feel comfortable enough to come back to this idea.