I started with this quick prototype, also featuring a couple of large exploratory levels (but the enemies lacked the AI to navigate them) and a basic "dialogue" system.

Then, mainly because I wanted to do at least hotseat multiplayer, lots of raycasting for FOV and camera zoom+rotation, I realized I had to leave Stencyl behind.
I decided to move on to Unity3D.
Porting character movement and logic was straightforward, but Unity has no built-in solution for tileset based level creation, something stencyl excels at.
So I opted for the not so fun task of writing a mess of a custom importer to read levels made with Tiled in Unity.

e.g. this shape, previously drawn in Tiled:
is actually composed of those game objects:

Notice the shape and the way the tiles are cropped matches the marching squares algorithm, for which I previously decided to redraw my tileset  . More on that on the next post! Going back to gamedev.

What you ended up with is very cool. I've never liked the type of ship controls it looks like it's going to have (with the exception of Solar Winds), but the art style is fresh enough to me that I would certainly give it a fair try.

My levels were being drawn, but without any kind of colliders!
I tried the one tile / one collider route, but the ship got it´s nose stuck on the line between colliders often. Besides, it would really hurt performance on large levels.


After finding this VERY helpful article on getting contours:
http://devblog.phillipspiess.com/2010/02/23/better-know-an-algorithm-1-marching-squares/
I did some tests and a couple headaches later I got a working "Marching Tiles" algorithm. Instead of working on pixels, it got it´s step direction straight from the tileset.

Next, I added a LUT function on top of the algorithm, which would tell the algorithm where to look for direction given any tile in any tileset.

On red, superimposed, are marching squares cases (the tileset of the previous image)for each tile.

The big amount of small squares will be explained soon.

And here is how it looks like:




Unity is still generating a lot of unnecesary polygons, but I don´t know if I can help it anymore without doing ugly hacks or I´m missing something. Still, I´ve been building large enough levels without problems.

At this point, the algorithm only supported 45º angles, as traditional marching squares does.
90º angles generation on the next post, then hopefully we´ll be done with The Boring World of Level Building for a while and catch up with real gameplay dev!

Thanks, the first colliders image is the result of the algorithm without any postprocessing... Not sure  if that does answer your question ...?

The post processing is just applying linear interpolation to a set of points in space, and then erasing all collinear points. Generating the polygon colliders in the last step directly from the postprocessed list of points was my key to not overcomplicate everything.

linear interpolation (somethimes just lerp) it´s kind of splitting the difference in values between sequential data (in this case a series of points in 2D space).

both methods (bolded) are kind of standard procedure, you can google them in your language of choice with high chances of a jackpot, or you can try wikipedia if feeling adventurous.

just curious are welcome!

Oh, hey, that sounds cool. I'll have to bookmark this; always good to see how procedural / code-based approaches to things are done.

P.S. I hit the bandwidth limit for Photobucket, which is why it crapped out on me. :p I'll start switching over to another host from now on.

This seems neat. The perspective in those first gifs is pretty awesome.

The effect works well. At first I was thinking how I don't usually enjoy games that limit view in 2d, but it works very well here and definitely makes you feel like ah man I can't wait to get to an open area! Looks nice too.

Getting closer to actual game dev!

Recap #5: Hotseat splitscreen + multiplane

I´ve got splitscreen working, up to 4 players.
I´m reusing the original ship´s sprites through a hueshift shader.



Also, all the derived objects use the same shader and it´s color it´s passed to them when created. So, a green ship, throws a green laser that on impact creates a green explosion,and accelerates with green thrust, despite all three objects being originally red.


Notice the extra amount of space confetti today, with planets and lo-fi glare.
I´ve just put together a multiplane object, that allows me to easily setup as many  background and foreground objects and their parallax as I wish.
I went overboard with it, and messed up the color scheme [EDIT: re-upped gif, fixed], but it´s nice to know I can easily set this up on a per-level basis now.

Also, while doing it I noticed that each of the players must have a duplicate of all parallax objects for them to give the illusion of space! So, all the games with parallax you played in multiplayer had duplicates of it´s parallaxed backgrounds, never thought about it before.

The little zeros are placeholders for scoring. More on GUI and giant induction chargers tomorrow!

While there are still plenty of things already developed I haven´t showed, they are mostly half-implemented. Since I´m sure I´ll have to revisit them for fixes, I´m confident I´ll introduce them  here in that moment. Being at a point where I can start posting current development, here´s finally with you:


I plan the conservation of fuel to have an important impact on gameplay and level design, with throttle and firing eating up your fuel, giving way to emergent situations, e.g.

-The most fiery combats will most likely happen close to refuelling points.
-Having a full tank will allow you to outlast an opponent in a chase.
-Getting lost evading another player could leave you stranded without oxygen  .
-You´ll drive your ship more carefully to preserve momentum and economize fuel.
-You´ll only shoot when really needed.
etc.

Behold the giant friction charger of ships!


The number on the top is the remaining amount of fuel your ship has, note how it progressively recharges the ship when you grind the charger. The faster you grind it, the faster it charges, simulating charging by friction (like lighting a matchstick).
Also notes how it stops flickering random colors and turns to red, giving feedback that you are actually being charged. When many players charge at the same time, it flickers with the color of all players being charged.

The number is just there for debugging, I´m thinking on using a super minimal UI, only noticeable if you know how the game works. For example, flickering pixels over your ship indicates your weapon is ready to fire.
An the las gif, notice the rate of the flickering is different before/after grinding the charger, the rate of the flickering indicates your fuel level.

It´s still pretty hard to read, but I´m thinking on delving deeper in this direction with UI for the moment.

Back to gamedev!