Update: Long way to go but starting to improve over time tonight… I am making pieces 8 units long ot interlock.. and so far so good.. =)….
Working along the path of art… Looking devent but a bit to go -=)…. getting there I need to make a bunch of small interlocking pieces so I can easily make larger pieces that make rooms =)… loving this part!
Update:
After sleeping on it I think I will still use the level generator for a starting level. IE it generated the level in the editor. Then I work on it from there…. I already have the code done and it would save me a LOT of time to have a level setup and then add my own touches here and there =).. So I need to convert the room manager to the editor…First while I ponder that I want to produce 4 more rooms. So five rooms to create a level mixed mashed and rotated etc… I will also have the same rooms with different lighting further down the road as that really is what makes the game. The lighting is going to be key.
More later!
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I need to make some ice cave rooms as this is Europa… so here is some of the looks I want to acheive with smaller parts.. So I need to make some parts to be able to achieve the below…..
So now time to make pieces =)….
Ok I am going to go ahead and hand make the levels myself with rooms I create. So I will be doing the randomizing. I have just had FAR to many problems with the levels auto generating. Unity does not seem to like this without a LOT of re-hashing. I personally think I will like creating the levels by hand anyway as I will be able to hand craft some items. I have wasted DAYS trying to get this or that to play nice with generated levels. The last hurdle is lightmaps and bringing in a level then offsetting it pre-run. The lightmaps got screwy…. So now it is time to create level one and quit with all the back and forth =).. I am going to make some more rooms. Then I will look into occulusion culling baking (Another thing that does not work with loading additive levels. ) . This will REALLY help. So off I go to make some cool rooms! After I get 5 rooms done I will put them together in a level and off we go to the story manager which will still be random or guided in my plans. IE everytime you play the level will switch around a little.
More later!…looks like a good work night tonight.
First Reply to a post by Proto
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1. What are the names of the last boss in Europa 2?
–Not decided yet really. =). I have a couple of endings in mind and have not settled yet.
2. What weapons would you expect the hero to use on the final boss? (Maybe you could add an image of them so I have a general idea of the workings of the weapon)
–A combination melee left hand and single handed DPS on right… along with tons of abilities…
3. What are the names of the spells and abilities you would expect the hero to use on the final boss also?
–Summons, Slows,Dps,, the whole bag of tricks.
4. What items would you expect the hero to use?
–Void grenades. Potions
5. What attacks, abilities, weapons does the final boss use?
–Undecided but very strong single hits with a secondary multi missle hit.
6. What happens after you beat the final boss in Europa 2? (As detailed as possible please)
–Still not decided I want to get more into the story and see how it feels while playing.
7. What is the Alien Gate?
–A device that teleports the traveler to another plane of existence and possibly back.
8. Do you have any names for the Protagonist in Europa 1 and 2?(If not I could probably make them anonymous)
–Sadly I cannot remember I think the last boss was beezlebub (sp?)
9. Could you give me the general dates of the events that transpired? ( Defeat of the final boss, The events that happen after, When the Protagonist of Europa 2 gets the message from his little brother, when he decides to set out to save his brother and when he reaches Europa.) I know those are a lot of dates so if you don’t have them it’s fine, I’ll work with as much as you give me.
–You searching for your brother while ME1 is going on. Your seperated by a great distance on the surface. However, the VAST under ice network should get you there.
Wow now that I look at it those are a lot of questions 😀 . Don’t worry if you can’t answer any of them. I know it would be better if I finished the game myself and learned all the answers but the game would probably be finished and you’d already be developing Europa 3 by the time I actually finish the game. I know answering these questions will take a lot of time so if it eats into your development time feel free to disregard this. I’m also aware many people may want to find the ending out themselves so if you prefer it, you can send the answers via email. (prototypicalemail@gmail.com)
Oh I almost forgot the most important question! Would you allow me to write an extract describing the events leading up to Europa 2?😀
Oh and if you need help with planning the story for each level I’d love to help with that too! 🙂
–Would love it.. First I want to see how powerful the story delivery system is =-)..
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I am now finally creating the story mode. Everything seems to be running great now and I am develping the level gen to deliver the story.
Update: I think I found it!… It seems the lights are causing the batching to fail… So I need to reduce the lights that are real time of course I know this. However, I though lights marked as baked will not cause any slow downs and not be included. It seems I need to create lights soley for light mapping and then disable them for the game =)…. All good! So more light mapping tonight and then on to bigger and better!!!
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For some reason the room I have constructed will not BATCH… all my experiments work out.. so I am dissecting the room into pieces to try and get it to batch properly.. I do not want to start over on that room. Somewhere along the way the meshes got disturbed into a mode that they will not batch together even sharing the same materials. I think it has to do with the light mapping. It seems it is burned into the mesh. So back to work!
I am looking forward to a full week of work…. I have shipped two out of my three day job projects so I will not have to work the extra hours!….I am looking forward to a good work week!
Update: Experimenting going well.. I am spending time organizing the whole project so klevel creation can go as fast as possible.. =)
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Ok shipped 2 out of three work projects after spending the last 5 weeks doing overtime and weekends..Now Finally I hope to buckle down on ME..
I am experiomenting currently fidning out the right combination of settings to enable static batching.. which I HAVE TO HAVE for mobile devices… The old school AAA game maker in me cringes when I see high numbers of draw calls =)..
I will have more later!
I may have found a reason to choose Unreal 4 over Unity… But that depends on the tools and research I have yet to find…
I am sure I will find the right path to resolution it will just take time and again I am home 3 hours after I am usually due to being relied on to much at the day job. However, I am working now soooo lets get at it….more later…
Hmmmmm.. the mroe I look the more I see I think Unity really wants a created level to process not the dynamic stuff I want to do … BUT I am still looking..
It might come down to me self rolling a combiner which is not to difficult…the wild card maybe occlusion culling. Which is not a big deal for me as my doors can perform that for me easily.. open? ok then have both rooms on… not open.. have the room your in on… =)..anywho this is definately something I need to work out now before I dig to deep a hole… =)..
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Possible other Item:
What happens is, when something has been lightmapped, and then made not static, its lightmap atlas tiling and offset values change. You need to manually set them to be 1 and 0 again, even though they’re worthless at that point. It’s a horrible bug, but they know about it, judging from that thread.
SO that means if I re-Lightmap I maybe ok… we shall see!…. I have to have batching working right for IOS.. there is no question about it… Hopefully I am through this hurdle soon.
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Update: Solution:
From a post last July…Wow… why is this not included in unity?
Just to let you know, this was a success. I don’t own the code so I can’t post it. Here are the steps:
Renderer.lightmapTililingOffset to grab the UV scaling and offset into the Lightmap. Then you grab its mesh and rewrite the UV2 so that it takes that tiling offset into account.Next you want to disable Unity’s lightmapping on that object. To do this, set the lightmapTilingOffset to (1,1,0,0) and thelightmapIndex to -1.
Finally, write a custom shader that takes the UV2 channel and uses it as a look-up into your own texture. Use the level’s lightmap as that texture.
This will ensure your prefab can batch and you are using the lightmapping functionality to achieve better, baked lighting.
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Update:
Uh o….. thats not so good… sooooo.. I will have to do some creative visibility culling… that is a HUGE weakness… that does make Unreal a more tasty option… argh..
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Once I test a few more batching ideas I will move back to making the game happen. I am told it only builds static meshes at compile time.. .which is not so good. I was hoping prefabs would be the answer. So far I am not seeing batches increase over standard draws in the editor. SO I will do a few more experiments then move on and go through the usual process of getting the game fully playable and then comeback for optimizations.. Unity has a pretty good profile so that will REALLY help the situation…More later..
Once I get back to the story gen I will go through and answer that great post earlier =)
Update: According to this it should work…with a bit of a rework out of load level additive.
http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/65030/static-batching-on-dynamically-instantiated-conten.html
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I think it maybe still possible…Well almost anything is but possible with the least amount of time. I am looking into prefabbing the rooms and batching. The problem is on mobile devices especially when an object is drawn it requires a batch call. This sends it all down the pipeline and is generally the most expensive call by far. So if objects share materials but different verticies they can be put together into one model and sent together as one. Combine tons of models and you can draw QUITE a bit more. Unity is supposed to do this automatically. However, upon reading this only happens at compile time not load time. Thus I may have to batch myself or find another solution. I am looking into prefabs currently. I already have a primitive batcher but I would rather a prefab solution……So once I figure it out I will post it here! more later
Update well crap dynamic levels are not being friendly in unity. I may have to make a editor tool to create the levels and not have dynamic levels……. which makes more sense really… BUT I need to reduce the workload for myself so tonight I am doing some research. It seems I have found the way maybe to build the levels in the editor and build as many tools as I can to make it to where I can make the levels quickly… basically do what it does now in real time… But more research is needed…..
But I am determined to work tonight no matter how tired… more then! =)
After some day job ovetime I am at it again. I am walking away from the web based player. The game will be too big anyway. I will release test builds to PC and MAC as I go during testing and once the game is done port it to IOS.
Soo back to work for now…
I had a business trip to Hawaii so the last 4 days were mucked. I expected to have wifi but forgot over the water will not have wifi so instead of an eight hour flight of me working. On me. 2 I had a tough 8 hour flight both ways 😉
However, I hope to be back at it this weekend. Thanks for the great comment posts with great ideas please keep them coming I will try to answer in the next day or so as I am still adjusting to the jet lag and no sleep on the overnight flight home 😉
Good times Hawaii was awesome but I am ready to work on me2!!!
Update:
I have it running on all platforms except the Mac web browser. There are some unity issues with inter-platform items IE upside down images when using certain filters I am working out. However it is close to operational on all platforms that I can test on currently. It costs 75 a month to be on the IOS so first the game will be completed then ported to IOS..
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I have the stand alone working fine..The web version is giving me could not initialize content error which is no help what so ever =)
I will have a ton of work time the next few days for Mission Europa so hopefully I can get a lot done..More later!
Still working on web player =)
Update: I am moving to make the web player play the whole game now. It could save me a lot of time later when I am further along.. I have to get the last stages working where the level is constructed for some reason it is not rendering right.. Probably due to not encapsulating some files… we shall see!
Now I will be working on the story mode… after I get the first levels first mission in I think I will start looking at the web player to start getting a test bed for all… Please do not expect much. It will be more of a testbed then a game at first but it will evolve =)…And with lots of input hopefully evolve to a better place then I even expect =)… more later.
Well again Unity is awesome… I simply set it to web deployment uploaded it and whammo… I have a web playable game..
It is not ready for the lime light yet though but when I get closer I may put up builds to run around and look at the levels for review =)….Good stuff!
Wow..
From head to wiki and blog =)….
Desires:
1. A level has 4 missions delivering one story per level each a bit its own while still following the greater story arc.
2. When a level loads the story manager looks at the story elements (missions with tiers) and plans the AIs placement, environment effects, triggers, boss placement, possible RARE mini-boss placement, treasure placement, and triggered events. This is done randomly in a way as the missions get closer to the end of the level MORE of the triggerable events go off. Tiered events ALWAYS go off.
3. The story for a level has X number of tiers and X number of missions containing those tiers. Each tier ties into the story. A tier can Place a prefab at the location with An effect, A script to alter a room, A sound, A Spawner to place one of 5 types of the levels minions. These deliver story.
Example level data.
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Tier 4: is X rooms away In the direction of the entrance.
It tells the room to spawn A scream and threat from this boss.
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Tier 3: is X rooms away In the direction of the entrance.
It tells the room to spawn A scream from the boss prefab warning it will find you.
A spawning of 4 enemies.
A room shaking effect with dust falling from the ceiling.
And wall sparks.
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Tier2: is X rooms away In the direction of the entrance.
The warning is so violent your vision blurs a second.
5 enemies spawn.
All triggerable explosions in the room go off.
Dust and sparks fall from the ceiling.
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Tier1: This is THE room for the boss.
He blasts you with a taunt slight vision blur.
Minions spawn around him.
Sparks fly
quake and dust rises.
Possible initial slow for the player.
ITS ON!
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That is pretty much it. The levels will have the data for the story manager to look to. I will save those off to individual levels and in those the AI manager and Story manger will reside. The settings for the AI stored in AI manager for the level and the story Manager stores the X number of missions with X number of tiers each. Tiers spawn prefabs that do the rest… =)
Seems VERY extensible and awesome as far as randomly but story driven gameplay to me… If anyone thinks of more please post. I will add more as I go… posted on the wiki also here.
http://missioneuropa2.com/wiki/index.php?n=Story.StoryManager
More later
Now to get the story telling systems in!
Here you see the ai lumbering in a dead animation… 
Then I shoot one down where the ragdoll effects only take a little movement to the limb last hit..and crumple to the ground…
Here a slow bolt has more punch and sends one flying…
Hehe I love seeing them fly… now tomorrow I need to get the levels loading again with the new Unity 5.0 engine. I do not see much problem there. Then I need to buidl thes system of having quests and bosses which I do not see as to much of an issue as I have done it so many times before. Good times… After the story engine is done the only thing left is polish to get a playable first level up and to the best level I can…. part of that will be AI and more assets.. I hope will not take long. =)…
More later!!!
I had to work some more on the AI and it is back to running.. I have a few small item use things to fix but over all she is good in about 30 min of work… Now it is time for the story driving code! =)… Fun stuff! More tomorrow its late tonight…
I brought the project into Unity 5 and I am really excited about the upgrades especially the Physics 3.x upgrade. It will really help mobile devices along with now 24 platforms supported! I plan on moving forward cleaning up the AI and a few bugs that popped up with the upgrade then going right into the story manager!!! Its getting close to a playable level. After the level is competed I will move on looking into a web based testing system so everyone here can add their two cents and test the game out!….
More later!
My abilities have leveled up!!
DROOL! Downloading now…
I still have a very difficult project at work but I am managing dev time at home. I got a TON done over the weekend though. I need to fix the bots AI,skin, and rewire the rag-doll for when they die other then that combat is functional!. I also decided that the summons this time are not a one off thing but once summoned will walk beside you as a team mate defending you until they die ! =)…. With RAIN that should be simple. There will be tank like summons with high hp and low damage and nukers like Reyem Neas with high damage and low hitpoints I most probably will only allow one summon at a time for performance though. More later!
Ryan Mitchell Games - Mission Europa 2 