Okay, I've hooked up all the UI, in a functional form, and I've started work on the asynchronous loading code. The Game Session is implemented, it's a playlist of scene names with a bit of game state that steps on level complete. I'm pretty happy with it.
I've been researching classic arcade titles such as Bubble Bobble and Super Monkey Ball, and I'm super inspired to create a rich system of unlockable play features based on the things you do in the game. Those games used so many aspects of the player's performance to spawn secrets and collectables. I recommend reading good GameFAQ FAQs for inspiration. It's surprising how much logic was packed into seemingly simple arcade games.
The Unity 5 Beta was released, so I thought I'd spend an evening porting it and trying it out. It was working within 30 minutes. There were a few scripts that required a bit of attention. But most things reimported from the Asset Store and worked immediately. High five to the people responsible, great job. I'm also using UnityVS/VS2013 and I can't recommend it enough.
I've added a vignette and a little vintage filter for the time being and it feels nice. The default skybox popped into the scene once I started asynchronously loading the level, and I love it! The chopper body is the same geometry from Chopper Mike 1, but with a mesh smoothing modifier applied. It lets the specular highlight slide all over the model, and the reflections catch all over the place. It's lovely!
All the materials in the scene are using the Unity 5 Standard shader, and I'm impressed. Specular takes a bit of getting used to, it blacks out the material if you set it too high, and there's interplay between specular colour and Smoothness that'll take a while to get used to fully, but I like it.
I'm applying anti-aliasing as a post effect as the game is using the deferred rendering path, (I plan to make good use of lights). I've also enabled Linear colour space, it adds to the general loveliness. I had planned to add a subtle DoF effect, but it's such a pain to manage with transparent effects that I'm probably going to avoid it. Unsure right now as it does add a depth cue, although I am going to experiment with simple fogging, perhaps that will give the player enough of a cue. Cues, I'm obsessed with notifying the player of *everything*. I want to make a game the player can tune into and totally 'get'. We'll see how I do.
Game looks like this at the moment, although the drive isn't the looks, despite my ramblings. Although I am super hyped about the image quality. If you look at the small square section containing the bottom of the chopper, the skid, and the chopper shadow, that part of the image has all the elements I'm aiming for: high quality metals, soft, nicely realised shadows, and the softened legs of the chopper, all looking like an image, rather than polygons and pixels...
I'm a great fan of fixed aspect ratio games, and CM2 is presently fixed to 2.35:1. This is not for performance reasons, it's so I can control what is presented to the player.
A small aside, as I stated on Twitter, (follow me:
https://twitter.com/jamielowesdev), ASCII Art comments make your code run 20% faster, fact!
I'm going to get the game session working fully next, so that I have the playground set for level-to-level bonuses and secrets, and then I'll probably work on scoring. At that point I'll have a core and secondary game loop.
Take care, and go make cool stuff!! :D
-Jamie