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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsReturn to Mario Party - Despair Festival
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dgidney
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« on: January 20, 2017, 05:30:53 AM »



If you've spent as much time playing Mario Party as I have, you'll know that the series has changed a lot in the last decade. While the formula remains reminiscent of what it once was, the atmosphere is nearly completely gone. The Mario Party series was a great balance of positive and negative emotions; players fought savagely to be the superstar and the contrast between the whimsical music and characters, and the absolute despair of the players was fantastic. I'm working to recreate this party series.

So far I have the GDD completed and am currently working on model sheets and mini-games. The basic action controller will be similar to that of Mario Party's, however the ground pound is replaced with a "Dive Attack" which brings the character forwards slightly and also pulls them to the ground faster; there is no delay in falling like there is with a ground pound.

Here's a preview for an alpha "hide and seek" type mini-game where the solo player also has to catch the player(s) they find:


« Last Edit: March 27, 2017, 05:57:53 AM by dgidney » Logged
breakfastbat
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« Reply #1 on: January 20, 2017, 01:15:23 PM »

As early on as this project looks, I'm totally into the idea of a new party game in the vein of the old Mario Party games.
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dgidney
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« Reply #2 on: January 27, 2017, 11:58:00 AM »

^Glad to hear it! Smiley

This week I've worked on six different mini-games. They're scripts are mostly completed, but they require a lot more testing and the AI is still pretty wonky. There's one called "Tumbling Down" where the goal is to simply fall down a tower of platforms while being pelted by cannonballs. It's a mildly long course so I didn't want to create a huge array of "points" for the AI to look for to help them navigate the maze-like platforms. Instead I have them run in a specified direction which randomly changes if they approach a wall, fall off a platform, etc. It took hours to do, but they can reach the bottom now, albeit a bit slowly. I do have them beat me sometimes but it's too rare to offer any sort of difficulty.

Another tricky AI was for my "Locked Out" knockoff from Mario Party 3. It mostly consists of making decisions based on whether they have a key yet, whether they've checked all the blocks that a key could be hiding in, etc. Once I add difficulty levels I'll also have them keep track of how many keys are left on the higher difficulties. I ran into a lot of problems here getting the priority for decisions in the right order and having the if/elses set up correctly. For example, for a long time I had them giving up suddenly because I forgot to reset the array of furniture that has been checked for keys. Here's a screenshot of the mini-game below. I'm the one going through the door and the computer players are fighting over the remaining two keys:


Here's a very simple mini-game where everyone stands on a tilting platform and must punch each other into the water:


Here's a soccer mini-game where you have to jump around in sand which slows you down. Trying to get the AI to hit the ball towards the right net was a bit of a process. I ended up having it check which team the player was on and have them only punch the ball if they're rotated the right way. This isn't very convenient though because it's very random whether or not they move around the ball to the right side. I test using a red player and interestingly the blue team has little problem scoring goals but my red teammate sucks. Here's a screenshot:


I'll return with more mini-game updates next week!
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dgidney
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« Reply #3 on: February 03, 2017, 02:02:21 PM »

I now have all of the regular mini-games completed for demo purposes!

Here's one of my favourites:


It's Mushroom Mix-Up! Actually, it's Sinking Feeling! The water is electrified so don't fall! The AI for this mini-game isn't too complicated, but the computers still fall too easily. I'm gonna have to give them some extra padding somewhere...

This one's based off "Fowl Play". It's called "No Kidding" and instead of a chicken, two players chase a baby goat. The loser gets trampled by a stampede.


The AI for this one is working really well.

This one is another duel called Despair Roulette:


You spend the first 20 seconds collecting bullets to give to your opponent. In the second phase your bullets are shuffled in the chamber and you take turns pulling the trigger! Edgy, right? The player with the most "disadvantage" has to go first, but I'll introduce that concept later.

There was one other mini-game I wanted to get done this week, but I didn't have time. It's a boss battle! Depending on whether certain players decide to ally or not, they will be able to fight a boss together. But if either of them lose, they both lose. This isn't the only change I'll be making to the formula. You can expect to see an experience that's both fresh and familiar!

Next week I'll be finishing the mini-games, and after that I'll be working on the board. There will be one board for the demo version. After I finish the controllers and such for the board I'll hopefully have enough time to integrate the mini-games into it too and have a fully functional game, minus menus, options, and such.

« Last Edit: February 07, 2017, 06:05:12 AM by dgidney » Logged
dgidney
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« Reply #4 on: February 15, 2017, 06:53:17 AM »

So I didn't quite finish the board, but I'm almost finished integrating the mini-games in. I have the Game Manager created and a Board Manager as well. This has taken much longer to do than I envisioned. Allowing multiple controllers really complicates things!

I decided to skip ahead this weekend and start working on modeling.
Here's the first character I've created:



I was hoping to make it a little simpler, but it's still under 10000 tris so I'm happy. I'm currently in the process of rigging it and have been working on it for two days. This is my first time creating a 3D character model with animations from scratch so hopefully after I complete this one I'll be able to make the other ones faster.

I decided to skip out on facial animations for now to make things easier. I'll add them in a future release, but for the first version no one gets eyelids!  Smiley
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dgidney
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« Reply #5 on: February 21, 2017, 06:45:54 AM »

I now have the first character fully rigged and animated. The board is still not finished, but I'm hoping to finish it this week. I've been trying to figure out the best way for the computers to determine the distance between themselves and another space. I have the board split up into different routes, and each route has spaces numbered from one and up. This system has worked out so far in keeping track of where character are, but now I need to apply math to it. I don't think I'm going to be able to figure out a all-encompassing equation. I might instead have to use if statements that give different equations based on the shortest route between route A and route B.

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dgidney
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« Reply #6 on: February 27, 2017, 06:33:58 PM »

I THINK I'm through the harder parts of programming now.  Shrug I still have a lot to hammer through, though. I still have yet to fully integrate the mini-games and the board game, even though I said I'd have that completed awhile ago...That being said, it will definitely be done soon!

I'm sort of working on the character models in my downtime. I've decided to make them all at once and split the work into steps instead. (By this I mean make all the models at once, then texture them all, then make bones for them, etc.) I think this will reduce my stress level a lot. Instead of thinking about how many more models I have left to do after spending so many hours on just one, I can instead think about how few steps I have left to do.

Finally, I made a number of sound effects that I'm quite proud of. I'm also going to be doing some voice work for the characters, along with someone else. Speaking of sound, I have a number of royalty free songs put together for the demo version of the game. Once I begin working on the full version sometime in the future I'll make original tracks. I have a lot of research to do on composing before that, though!  Coffee
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dgidney
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« Reply #7 on: March 06, 2017, 12:26:56 PM »

Almost done building the framework for the board! This was supposed to be done by now, but anyway.  Coffee I'm also fixing a lot of bugs at the same time. I just did some playtesting with gamepads and found out that the Y-Axis is backwards in Unity and I had to invert it in the input manager. I also found out that the "keyboard and mouse button" option for inputs should actually read "keyboard and buttons", because that's what it needs to be set to for buttons. >.>

By the end of this week I plan to have a smooth, playable board (without UI). If I have time I'll continue modeling. I plan to have 6 playable characters, an antagonist, and boss modeled and animated by the end of next week.

Here's a bug I ran into where "raccoons" are instantiated infinitely. Smiley

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dgidney
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« Reply #8 on: March 20, 2017, 11:53:28 AM »

I have all of the character models complete now! It was a lot of work but I finally have six characters, an antagonist, and a boss animated and ready to be imported. I should be able to get them all working by the end of tomorrow. On top of that I need to go through each mini-game script and set up the animation transitions. I was able to get them working in the debug player controller, so I shouldn't have any problems getting them to work in the other controllers.

My main goal for this week, after setting up the models, is to set up the HUDs and menus. I was originally going to model mini-game objects and scenery but I have decided that the UI is more important. Currently the game has no pause function at all, nor does it have any user menus. I also need to set up a Sound Manager and integrate the music and sound, which I predict shouldn't take more than a day.

This project has been a great learning experience for me. I feel much more confident with programming and modeling than before. I still have a ways to go with sound design, but I'm confident that I can become proficient if I cater another personal project towards it, much like I catered this one towards Unity in general, programming, and modeling.

I plan to finish working on this project sometime in April. I do plan to make a full version of Despair Festival someday, but for now I plan to move over to different projects. For now I am going to complete this version to the best of my abilities and will hopefully at least have a working game that can be played from start to finish.

Also, if you have never used Blender and are not sure where to start, look up Darrin Lile on Youtube. He is an excellent tutor.
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dgidney
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« Reply #9 on: March 27, 2017, 05:57:41 AM »

Menus and UI is now complete! I also added some assets to make the board look nicer. Below is an image of the board. You can see the player stats in the four corners.



Each mini-game scene has a MiniGamePauseController now, a single script that is standard for each mini-game. I implemented a "forfeit" option in the mini-game pause menu for now, just in case. Shrug I have decided to forego polishing the mini-games visually for now. I also decided to take out options because I'm not going to have time to implement them.

For the next few weeks I am going to be fixing remaining bugs and glitches, most of which are in mini-games. For example, in certain mini-games the AI either has trouble reaching a destination, or never reaches it at all due to objects being in the way. I didn't use A* or Nav Meshes, so that would be why. A* and Nav Meshes are very useful. If time permits, I will also be polishing the AI to make it more fair in some areas (for example, making it less aggressive in games where it targets other players), and smarter in others (such as navigation).
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dgidney
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« Reply #10 on: April 03, 2017, 05:09:55 AM »

There are still a number of stray glitches, but you can almost get through a whole game without running into a major one. Hopefully I can get rid of all the major ones before the end of this week, as I believe this will be my final week working on this project. It has been a wonderful journey and I've learned a great deal.

One of the most important lessons I have learned is to always plan ahead. A lot of my glitches and backstepping were the result of a lack of planning. Before beginning a project you should always make a full list of your assets, including scripts, models, scenes, etc. Of course, this list will be tentative, but it's very important to have a detailed idea of what you're doing from the start. Optimizing code becomes a lot easier when you know what you have to work with. It is difficult to use methods over putting if/else statements in Update() if you don't have any managers planned right from the get-go. That's not to say that you should create the managers right away, just that you should have them planned.

I have also learned a lot of scope and what I am capable of within a certain time frame. When I created my schedule I gave myself a week to create the AI for the board. It ended up taking around 3 weeks, and even then I was working for about 12 hours a day. The more detailed your asset list is, the easier it will be to envision your scope.

With that, I bid this project farewell for now. I hope to someday start it over again, but at the moment I wish to move on. In order to make it the quality game I envisioned I will need to recreate it from the ground up. The code is just too unoptimized and the models are far too rushed. Thanks to everyone who has followed this project! Good luck with your games!  Coffee
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