Current Events > I've been working on a 3d platformer game (in unity)

(+) Yeah! (+)

Did you add the fart button yet? You could use this as an opportunity to learn particle effects (for a green gas cloud).

Trumble posted...

Did you add the fart button yet? You could use this as an opportunity to learn particle effects (for a green gas cloud).

no but rest assured it's on the todo list along with sound effects of any kind

I've done some work with particle effects before in a previous project where I had explosions

It is very annoying coming from flutter (which I use for work) where you can make a change and hot reload and see your changes instantly, to having to wait two minutes for everything to re-compile every time you make a minor change in Unity

running into a problem with saving.

I have 8 objects tagged "Collectable" and in code I use a FindObjectsWithTag("Collectable"), and it's always returning 7 objects instead of 8. It breaks my serialization and saving.

Can't figure out what's happening. I tried deleting the problem object and creating a new one and copy/pasting a working one, but it still doesn't work

TheGoldenEel posted...

running into a problem with saving.

I have 8 objects tagged "Collectable" and in code I use a FindObjectsWithTag("Collectable"), and it's always returning 7 objects instead of 8. It breaks my serialization and saving.

Can't figure out what's happening. I tried deleting the problem object and creating a new one and copy/pasting a working one, but it still doesn't work

Did you make a typo somewhere in one of the Collectable objects and its different from the orhers?

divot1338 posted...

Did you make a typo somewhere in one of the Collectable objects and its different from the orhers?

No, that wasn't it

After I typed that out I had somewhat of a eureka/d'oh moment. I was setting the objects as inactive when they were collected, and FindObjectsWithTag() only finds active objects. So I have to keep the parent object active and deactivate the child which contains the trigger and mesh. Also, it wasn't even necessary to do a FindObects where I was doing it, because all I have to do to save is save an array of booleans, where the index of the boolean corresponds to the ID of the given collectable.

So, on loading the game, FindObjectsWithTag, set each collectable status to active/inactive based on the boolean value of the saved array, and then I just update that array in-game as the collectables are picked up.

After a bunch of fiddling and testing, I got it working:

https://youtu.be/YgHe_ewUtdc

next: i think i'm going to continue with the enemy AI training I had started a few weeks ago, coupled with implementing an attack button

Tag this is a very helpful topic

Tag

josifrees posted...

Tag this is a very helpful topic

cool, if there's anything you're working on feel free to post it

this sort of came from me not being able to find any documentation on the full process of making a game

Man, every little new addition is a whole new set of problems to solve

to add enemies you need
-models and animation
-ai behavior
-attack scripts with hit box triggers
-the ability to track health/remove health in the enemy and player

I'm currently struggling with boss AI as well. it's easy to have a stationary boss that just shoots out a bunch of projectiles but as soon as I consider making it move around (and then having to choose moves based on position in room / relative to player / amount of space) it gets so much more complex

kirbymuncher posted...

I'm currently struggling with boss AI as well. it's easy to have a stationary boss that just shoots out a bunch of projectiles but as soon as I consider making it move around (and then having to choose moves based on position in room / relative to player / amount of space) it gets so much more complex

Yeah I made a simple boss fight for my last project

it moved back and forth and shot three different types of projectiles at random intervals, so nothing in reaction to the player, all deterministic

https://github.com/dm-2028/scrolling-shooter/blob/main/Assets/Scripts/Boss.cs

I'm doing this Unity tutorial on ai for beginners

https://learn.unity.com/course/artificial-intelligence-for-beginners?uv=2021.3

it's getting real heavy into the A* algorithm for waypoint finding which I can conceptually see how it applies to game but I'm having trouble imagining how it would actually be useful for the case I'm trying to learn AI for (enemy behavior)

TheGoldenEel posted...

I'm doing this Unity tutorial on ai for beginners

https://learn.unity.com/course/artificial-intelligence-for-beginners?uv=2021.3

it's getting real heavy into the A* algorithm for waypoint finding which I can conceptually see how it applies to game but I'm having trouble imagining how it would actually be useful for the case I'm trying to learn AI for (enemy behavior)

Now I got to the step of this tutorial where it basically says you don't actually need to know any of this; here's how Unity handles it all for you (NavigationMeshes)

I appreciate learning the underlying ideas behind things the engine already handles but it went super in depth into the algorithm only to blow it all away

working on creating an NPC to go along with the AI course I'm taking. It's gonna be a basic enemy

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/3/3cf8cef6.jpg

don't like how the legs and nose look yet, and of course there are no feet but imo it's off to a decent start. I'm "freehanding" this one--not using any reference images or drawings

not bad?
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/3/332fa688.jpg

with smoothing applied
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/6/6b11a1d0.jpg

wow, this has come a long way since the first time i checked this topic. Keep it up!

solosnake posted...

wow, this has come a long way since the first time i checked this topic. Keep it up!

Thanks!

just realized its been a month since I started this topic. Doesnt necessarily feel like a month worths of work but I only get a few hours max to work on this at night after my kid goes to bed. Any progress is progress

man, animation is really hard to make look natural

https://giphy.com/gifs/9UwjtyTpvZXipJIMdn

https://giphy.com/gifs/hPFX5ZVdKCqjWCT5z1

I made my own engine.

It's been a rewarding experience but I wouldn't recommend it.

RetuenOfDevsman posted...

I made my own engine.

It's been a rewarding experience but I wouldn't recommend it.

Sounds like an insane amount of work.

what kind of game are you making it for?

i just discovered some of the bones in the rig must not have been set up correctly because I tried pasting a flipped pose and it got all wonky. now i fixed that and it broke my other animations

https://giphy.com/gifs/GENxKzX1cqxt5ulFzN

TheGoldenEel posted...

Sounds like an insane amount of work.

what kind of game are you making it for?

Turn based RPG.

But it's meant to be reusable for any genre.

got it textured and imported into unity now

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/1/166436f6.jpg

RetuenOfDevsman posted...

Turn based RPG.

But it's meant to be reusable for any genre.

nice

how long did it take to custom build a game engine?

TheGoldenEel posted...

got it textured and imported into unity now

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/1/166436f6.jpg

nice

how long did it take to custom build a game engine?

Well, I didn't sit down and do that part all in one chunk, and I'm not done yet either. I've spent a lot of time on the game itself, assets and supporting tools.

But FWIW I've been at it for almost eight years lol.

I'm pretty happy with how this turned out. Obviously it's not the most detailed thing ever, but I didn't use any reference models or drawings for it or anything, I created it from nothing. I started with a sphere and molded it until it's what you see now

in future iterations I would fix some of the weird edges but it serves the purpose I need it for now which is to implement a basic enemy

RetuenOfDevsman posted...

Well, I didn't sit down and do that part all in one chunk, and I'm not done yet either. I've spent a lot of time on the game itself, assets and supporting tools.

But FWIW I've been at it for almost eight years lol.

yeah I'm expecting even this that I'm working on now to be a many years project, can't imagine just completely starting from scratch

Dammit, I have the day off actual work and was going to try getting through the rest of this ai intro course on the unity learn site and it looks like theres some issue with loading videos on the site today

As usual, there are a lot of ways to implement simple enemy AI and Im not sure whats best

i think I want to aggro the enemy of the player is within a certain trigger area. I want them to attack somewhat methodically, I.e. not just swarm the player. Once they get within a certain distance theyll strafe around the player and come in for hits.

thinking of using a combination of a trigger area, with the navigation mesh to help with path finding for the enemiesbut Im not sure if thats a lot of overhead for a simple enemy

Sounds like a variation of the dining philosophers problem. With all the instances sharing the same code, coordination is oddly difficult. One solution is to use an external control. Either an invisible object or something that's tied to the player. This would tell the enemies where to go and when to attack.

RetuenOfDevsman posted...

Sounds like a variation of the dining philosophers problem. With all the instances sharing the same code, coordination is oddly difficult. One solution is to use an external control. Either an invisible object or something that's tied to the player. This would tell the enemies where to go and when to attack.

I wasnt familiar with that problem but I think thats beyond what Im trying to do here at the moment

i do think Im going to try with an invisible trigger object that handles spawning the enemies when they die. But handle their individual behavior wholly independently in the enemies themselves

Not much progress today. The unity videos are back up, seems like it was an issue on the backend that got fixed, so still working through the basic AI lessons

It's going into setting up a state machine for enemy movement right now which I basically already had set up in my code, but it looks like it'll get in to a little more complex behavior trees. Don't want to try and get too far ahead of myself only to find there's a way easier way to handle it

Bumping this

haven't had time to get much done the past couple days but dont want it to die

fuck, i went to create some attack animations for my main character and it turns out i must not have saved the last time i exported, so I'm missing a bunch of the animations I had created

and I can't reimport back from unity because unity doesn't save the armature connections properly smh

Its real demoralizing have to re-do work

i know its not that big of a deal, but its caused me to just put off doing any more work for the past few days. Well, that plus Ive been very tired with my kid not sleeping well overnight

not in a rush or anything just in a bit of a funk the past week or so when it comes to new development on this

What I do is set a time and stick to it. An hour a day, usually.

RetuenOfDevsman posted...

What I do is set a time and stick to it. An hour a day, usually.

I try. The problem is the only time I usually get is after Ive my son down for bed, and hes been fighting bedtime recently so that isnt usually done until about 10pm

some days of work is lighter I get an hour or two at the end of the work day

TheGoldenEel posted...

I try. The problem is the only time I usually get is after Ive my son down for bed, and hes been fighting bedtime recently so that isnt usually done until about 10pm

some days of work is lighter I get an hour or two at the end of the work day

That's a problem I've yet to have. Both of mine are in bed like clockwork. They love bedtime for some reason.

You know, once they passed the newborn phase and actually had some sort of response to the day/night cycle.

RetuenOfDevsman posted...

That's a problem I've yet to have. Both of mine are in bed like clockwork. They love bedtime for some reason.

You know, once they passed the newborn phase and actually had some sort of response to the day/night cycle.

Hes almost 2 and a half and it just started a few weeks ago. He slept like a champ for like a year before that

TheGoldenEel posted...

to having to wait two minutes for everything to re-compile every time you make a minor change in Unity

in case you haven't found a fix for this, split your code up into assembly definitions. that way, for example, if you make a change in whats defined as the "character" assembly, only those scripts will recompile rather than everything in the project.
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/ScriptCompilationAssemblyDefinitionFiles.html

lots of great progress, btw. keep it up!!

BucketCat posted...

in case you haven't found a fix for this, split your code up into assembly definitions. that way, for example, if you make a change in whats defined as the "character" assembly, only those scripts will recompile rather than everything in the project.
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/ScriptCompilationAssemblyDefinitionFiles.html

lots of great progress, btw. keep it up!!

oh this is great, thank you

I didn't come across this when I was searching for a solution to this.

got a very simple enemy spawner going with some dumb AI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjZ_OjKfndA

enemies will wander randomly until the player is in their line of sight, at which point they'll chase. It's very easy to break their line of sight right now; I'll have to add some kind of "memory" for that purpose. The random wandering can also cause the enemy to wander right into a wall as seen early in the video, so I'll have to address that as well.

No actual attack yet, although I have the animations ready for that I need to look a little more into how that's implemented

now with attacks (that still don't do anything)

https://youtu.be/9eJQYgm7tc4

do you mind if I share progress stuff here too? seems like a good anti-procrastination strat

kirbymuncher posted...

do you mind if I share progress stuff here too? seems like a good anti-procrastination strat

Go for it

yeah thats part of the motivation for this topic haha. I keep wanting to have something new to post

So I was having a problem where the player could just push NPCs by walking into them, and it would break their navigation and make them just float around

I had made the NPCs collider and navigation mesh agent (the collider used to determine where they can travel) exactly the same size. To fix the problem I made the collider just a smidge bigger than the nav mesh agent. So now the player cant push NPCs

Im also looking into how to how to do hit boxes. Think Im going to just add a child collider that only gets activated during certain frames of the animation. That seems to be a way that people do this

TheGoldenEel posted...

Im also looking into how to how to do hit boxes. Think Im going to just add a child collider that only gets activated during certain frames of the animation. That seems to be a way that people do this

that's basically how I do it. got some base classes EnemyHitbox and EnemyHurtbox and just attach them to enemies + resize as needed. Also makes it convenient to build an enemy out of multiple hurtboxes to have them do different effects or have weaknesses or whatever (though I haven't actually used that feature yet, but I might)

I'm actually stuck in hitbox land as well since I've been trying to design boss attacks. I've played so many 2D action games that have bosses yet somehow it's so hard to think of ideas for interesting attacks

kirbymuncher posted...

that's basically how I do it. got some base classes EnemyHitbox and EnemyHurtbox and just attach them to enemies + resize as needed. Also makes it convenient to build an enemy out of multiple hurtboxes to have them do different effects or have weaknesses or whatever (though I haven't actually used that feature yet, but I might)

I'm actually stuck in hitbox land as well since I've been trying to design boss attacks. I've played so many 2D action games that have bosses yet somehow it's so hard to think of ideas for interesting attacks

haven't played around with it too much yet but I'm looking at using the animater for this purpose. It'll look something like this:

https://giphy.com/gifs/Y7Z7Jkuw8ZuPr7XHFO

I think I like the way this tutorial I found implements things but I haven't actually tried it yet:

https://strangewire.blogspot.com/2018/05/hitboxes-and-hurtboxes-in-unity.html

Very basic right now but I implemented some hitboxes based off that link I posted. Haven't worked out activating it in specific times in the animation but as a 'proof of concept' it works the way I want it. I have an "arena" where 2 enemies will spawn at a time up to four enemies; when you kill all of them the door to the next area opens

https://youtu.be/A-PejVdrsWg