Koobazaur's Domain

This week of gamedev brought the concept of illegal behaviors and suspicion into my game, as well as some graphical tweaks and models!

New Features

As I mentioned in my last post, there is a good bunch of social-stealth features I want in the game. The highlight of this week is addition of what I dubbed the “Illicit System” where NPCs can spot and remember the player doing illegal stuff like trespassing into a room, picking locks, or stealing . There’s also now support for NPC ownership of said objects, so I can easily have a conversation open with “I saw you snooping around my room…”

Now that the system’s in place, time to figure out all the fun ways of using it – just an innocent mention in conversation? Or perhaps a bunch of guards coming out of the closet and beating you with sticks?

But nevermind core gaming features, the game now has potplants. yes. POT PLANTS!

Hey, any bit of extra air they give you is so important when you’re so high up right? High up where? Well… you’ll see ;)

I also started learning myself on Unity’s Lightmapping – even with the free version, the tool is quite powerful. The difference is subtle, but it definitely adds character (especially when I add non-crappy-placeholder-textures eventually).

Also I now have fully functional picking up / dropping / equipping items as well as crouching. YAY for crouching!

Annoyances

MonoDevelop. Dear got this program annoys the hell out of me. I can excuse the arbitrary formatting rules it took me forever to figure out how to disable, but the constant weird UI bugs (like tabs not responding to clicks, opening the same file twice, rendering glitches etc.) are driving me nuts. It’s like that friend you really want to like but each time you meet he punches you jokingly because he thinks it’s cool. But it’s not. It hurts. And I bruise easily.

Also realizing the limitations of the Unity’s default FPScontroller, which totally breaks their own collider system. Might need to look at a different one, or code one myself. And I am still considering an Isometric/TPP angle to the game as well..

Some Musical Inspirations

I’ve also been listening to some steampunk-ish music for inspiration and setting the mood, here’s some of my picks:

Mix N Blend & Narch – I Got… (Beats Antique Remix) – bizarre tune that sorta reflects the mood and complexity of the setting I’m going for

Steampunk Opera Overture (The Dolls of New Albion) – another great moody pieces

Impartial (The Clockwork Dolls) – little too “battle”-y for what I’m aiming, but a great piece nevertheless

No, don’t ask me what these explanations mean, they are too artsy for me to understand either.

Next Week Plan

So what’s up next? I want a few more tweaks to the Illicit suspicion system, and maybe get started on a Quest/Journal framework as well. Also considering adding an extra level and transitions so I can get an idea of how Unity handles preserving game state and player stats between those. Maybe I’ll do some GUI too just for the hell of it.

And I should probably get started on writing my character conversations, now that I have an idea of my core cast and some good scripting hooks (like the illicit history).

Thanks for reading!