Unity Day 48 (Tanks Project)

What I Did:

     This day I am creating the game manager to manage the games game play. The first thing I did was created two empty game object and renamed them as spawn points. And then changed their transform to serve as the two spawn points. Then in the hierarchy I created a new canvas UI element. I added a text component to the canvas and resized the text to fill the screen. On the Text component I set the text to "TANKS!". Then I used the circle=select button to change the Font to BowlbyOne-Regular (Supplied in the assets) and changed the Alignment to center and middle. I then enabled best fit and set the Max Size to 60 and also set the colour to white. After I added a shadow component to the text and set the effect colour to brown. I set the effect distance to (-3, -3) to give it a bolder shadow. I created a new empty game object a named it game manager, that attached the game manager script to it. I then populated the references on the script before editing. I also looked at the already completed tank manager script that will be given to any thank that spawns by the game manager.

What I Learned:

     I didn't learn anything new this session that I didn't already know, since I'm setting up for spawning in the tanks.

What I'm Doing Next Class:

      Next class I will be finishing the game manager and mixing the audio so the game sounds smooth.

Unity Day 47 (Tanks Project)

What I Did:

     Today I begun making it so the tank(s) can shoot. The first thing I did was selected the tank and created a new empty game object and named it FireTransform. I then right clicked on the existing canvas attached to the tanks and created a new UI element slider. I deleted the background and Handle Slide Area from the new slider because they will not be needed. I then reselected the aim slider object and unchecked intractable,  set the sliders transition to none and changed it's position. After that I multi-selected the aim slider and fill area game object. In the the Rect Tansform components i clicked on anchor presets and made it so the game objects would stretch vertically and horizontally over the canvas. I then changed the art for the slider and applied a new script to the tank which I edited to tell the game how the tank should shoot and under what conditions.

What I Learned:

      I learned how to spawn and launch a game object from another game object when certain criteria are met. I also learned how to make a UI element stretched on command.

What I'm Doing Next Class:

     Next class I will be creating the game manager that spawns both tanks in and controls how the game should be played.

Unity Day 46 (Tanks Project)

What I Did:

     Today I begun the creation of the tank shells. The first thing I did was go into the models folder and grab the shell model and then drag it into the hierarchy. I then added a capsule collider to it and made sure that the collider was checked as a trigger. I also resized the collider to properly fit the shells shape as best as possible. I then went to get the shell explosion object in the prefabs folder and dragged it onto the shell to make it a child. I also added an audio source component to the shell explosion object. I then began editing the script for the shells. After that I began the shell game object still selected I dragged the child game object called shell explosion onto the explosion particles and explosion audio public variables. I then made the shell game object a prefab.

What I Learned:

     I Learned how to make a game object effect another game object with the total effect varying depending on distance and if it's in range.

What I'm Doing Next Day:

     Next day I will be making it so that the tank will be able to fire shells.

Unity Day 45 (Tanks Project)

What I Did:

     Today I began making the tank health bar work properly on its own. I first began by getting the short premade script called "UI Direction Control" and attached it to the health slider game object. I then got the tank health script and attached it to the tank which required coding to complete the script.  This script told the game how the colour of the health bar should be handled depending on the value of the tanks health, it also handled what it means for the tank to be dead and when it should and shouldn't be dead.. After completing the script I added the required references needed to make the script run properly.

What I Learned:

     I learned how to make a UI element change its colour depending on its value.

What I'm Doing Next Day:

     Next Day I will be adding the tank shells that will later be shot by the tanks and will deal damage to the opposing tank.

Unity Day 44 (Tank Project)

What I Did:

     This day I set up the camera, by creating a new empty game object called camera rig. I then dragged the main camera on to it making it a child object of the new empty object. I had the camera rig rotate and the main camera normal rotation, and lifted the main camera up so it was looking down at the game again. I then added an already completed script that was given to me to the camera rig which makes it do everything it was supposed to, which I think was stupid to do and the half hour spent explaining what it does could of been used to create the script. After watching half an hour of explanation on a script that wasn't really that hard to understand I started work on the next tutorial which was making the health for the tank. I started this by creating a new slider game object from the UI section of the hierarchy create. I then Deleted the slider handle as it isn't meant to be interacted with by the player. I then unchecked intractable to make sure it couldn't be played with by a player. After that I resized the entire UI to be fit square around the tank. I then changed its shape to the health wheel sprite that was given with the project.

What I Learned:

     I learned how to set up a basic UI object that is in the actual 3D world and is attached to an object such as a player.

What I'm Doing Next Day:

     Next Day I will be adding code that will make the health bar change colour as it goes down, and the way it will function.

Unity Day 43 (Tanks Project)

What I Did:

      Today I unity 4.3 was released so I spent today installing it which really just consisted of me sitting here waiting for it to finish, but i did finally install! So next class I will do what I said I'd do this class in my last post.

Unity day 42 (Tanks Project)

What I Did:

     This day I wrote the code for making the tank move, and listened to a lot of explanation to what the code did since this tutorial is intended for teaching all levels of unity knowledge.

This is the code that was typed which is telling unity how to move the tank and when to play certain sounds.

     This is the final product of the tank after this tutorial, which now moves and plays the engine sound depending on its movement state.

What I Learned:

     I learned how to make a  game switch an audio sources depending on what the game object they're assigned to is doing.

What I'm Doing Next day:

     Next day I will be making the camera move properly with the tank(s) that will eventually be in the game.

Unity Day 41 (Tanks Project)

What I Did:

     Today I began working on the tank. I began by dragging the tank model into the hierarchy. I then added a rigidbody component and a box collider to the tank. I adjusted the collider to fit the tank as best as possible. After that I added 2 audio source components to the tank, the first I added the idle engine sound and the other I left blank. After that I dragged the model into the prefabs folder to create a new prefab. I then grabbed the dust particle effect and dropped it on to the tank model. I duplicated the particle effect and changed their positions so it looked like the tank treads where creating the dust effect when they moved. After that I added the movement script to the tank model by dragging and dropping it on to the model. I stopped here during the tutorial as I was running out of time.

What I learned:

     I learned how particle effects that become active during movement work.

What I'm Doing Next Day:

     Next day I will be adding the code to make the tank move.

Unity Day 40 (Tanks Project)

Update:

     I spent the last few classes trying to figure out why the nav mesh won't generate properly and couldn't find anything on it and since it was driving me crazy I decided to take a break from that and do the next project in the mean time. I'll probably restart the survival shooter project when I'm done with the tanks project.

What I Did:

     To start off the project I created a new 3D project named Tanks. I then imported the game assets from the asset store into my project. After that I dragged the level art prefab into the scene. I then had to delete the default lighting since the level art came with its own lighting. I then went to window and selected lighting to change some of the settings. The changed I made where setting the ambient source to colour and changing the colour to a dark blue. I then Changed the cameras position and set it to orthographic view from perspective. I then changed the main camera's background colour to brown.

What I Learned:

     I learned how to change the background colour of the scene and how to change the colour of a scenes lighting.

What I'm Doing Next Day:

     Next day I will be adding the tanks and giving them their controls to move.

Unity Day 39 (Survival Shooter Project)

What I Did:

      Today I begun working on the first enemy that will be in the game. The first thing I did was drag and drop the zombunny from the characters folder into the scene view. I then grabbed the fluff particle effect and dropped it onto the zombunny's parent object so the particle would become a child of it. The Particle will be for future use when the enemy is hit by the players shots it will create fluff coming out of the enemy. I then added a rigidbody component and two different colliders to the enemy. I then begun making a mesh navigator which helps ai's traverse areas that have obstacles. To do this I went to window and selected navigation. From the navigation window I selected the bake tab and inputed the setting needed to make the mesh. However when I clicked bake at the bottom which generates the mesh I saw holes in the mesh which is a problem because the enemies wont move through these random holes in the map.

What I Learned:

     I learned what a mesh navigator does and how it can help with ai's navigating areas.

What I'm Doing Next Day:

     Next day I will be figuring out why I'm getting these holes in the mesh and hopefully will finish the first enemy.

Unity Day 38 (Survival Shooter)

What I Did:

     Today I did manage to fix the issue with the animations i had. I had to uncheck a box called "Has Exit Time" on the transitions and it worked fine after that. So I then moved on to the next part of the tutorial which was to make it so that the camera would move by being attached to the player and following it. However I first needed to fix the cameras position so it is higher up and looking down on the game. Also I changed the camera view setting from perspective to orthographic. I then wrote a smaller script telling the camera to behave and then referenced the player game object.

 What I Learned: 

     I learned how to make a game camera follow a game object efficiently around when the object moves.

What I'm Doing Next Day:

     Next Day I will be creating the first enemy that will be in the game.

Unity Day 37 (Survival Shooter Project)

What I Did:

     Today I have returned to unity and began the next tutorial on the survival shooter project. I began by dragging the player model into the hierarchy and reset its transform to make sure its centered. I added an animator in the animations folder and dragged and dropped it on to the player. I opened up the animator and added the 3 animations provided to it. I then added the 2 possible conditions and added transitions between the different animations and gave them the conditions. After doing that I went to the scripts folder and dragged the movement script on to the player. I then opened the script and added the code in the 3rd screen shot below. After I finished and hit play I noticed that the movement animation does not play when I move so it does not transition. I didn't have time today to figure this out, but next day I will find out why this is happening.

What I Learned:

     I learned how to use unities animator and apply the animations to game objects and how to transition between animations when different conditions are met.

What I'm Doing Next Day:

     Next day I will fix the animation issue and begin working on setting up the camera so it follows the player when it moves and so its facing more downward from a higher position.

Day 36 (Review)

     So this day i managed to keep all of my colonists alive, and i got the self sufficient milestone meaning my base was essentially able to run its self as it had all the necessary facilities. I also achieved the survive 1 day milestone and I believe I've survived at least 3 days so far. A problem I had at the beginning was I forgot to build a power storage so over night all my rooms lost power, fortunately I did have a wind turbine so I did manage to get some power when the wind picked up. Currently I have a lot of facilites to attend and not enough people to work so I have to get a robotics facility and a landing pad built to get more hands working around, currently building anything takes way too long because of this.

 - running low on resources

 - base at night

- self sufficient base

Day 35 (Planetbase Tutorial)

     So today I played the tutorial for Planetbase and here are some of the things that may be helpful or interesting that I found. The first thing when setting up a colony is to get a source of power by building a solar panel and a wind turbine. You'll also need a source of water so build a water plant. Make sure  to connect you buildings or they won't get built. After you get an airlock so that your colonists can enter the base. You'll also want an oxygen source so build one of those as well, it uses water to make oxygen. As a side note you can press the r and f key to make a bigger or smaller version of the selected building.

 - starting base with tops off

 - basic power set up

Day 34 (Planet Base My First Impressions)

Update:

  I'm currently having issues with unity not launching right now so I'll be working on a planet base review project for this week.

Planetbase Reveal Report:

     What is Planetbase? Planetbase seems to be a sims style of game where you need to build up a colony on a new planet. You'll have 3 planets to choose varying from normal, hard and challenging. Each planet has a 10 milestones that seem to serve as the only objectives in the game from what I can tell, which could be like have a certain amount of colonists or have 100 robots, you can unlock the next planet by completing 5 milestones for hard and 10 for medium. Each map that is created is randomly generated meaning no two maps will be the same. When you first start off in your planet you will have a ship land with colonists and a few working robots and from this point you're on your own to expand and keep your colonists alive. You'll have to deal with game elements such as power, hunger, thirst oxygen levels, maintenance and more. You can get more resources from the different facilities built such as a mine giving ore, then using the refinery will refine the ore and give you metal. From what I can tell this seems like a fairly solid and polished game for what it is and will be fun to try out tomorrow.

     The Planets to pick

The Colonists and robots

In Game Screen Shots

- Picking colony location

- First starting out

 - Beginnings of an established base

Additional Screen Shots

Information From:

http://planetbase.madrugaworks.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwK86aipHLk

http://store.steampowered.com/app/403190/

Day 33 Windows Updates

     So today I had to wait for windows to install updates and as fun as it was I didn't actually have any time to do anything on the project after, so I guess I'll have to work on it next day.

Unity Day 32 (Survival Shooter Project + Update)

Update:

     So last i missed pretty much all last week due to having to go up to Whitehorse for a funeral, then the last couple days I have been using the time during this block to help catch up from work i missed plus new assignments that where given. Now I have officially caught up so i will be back on track with unity.

What I Did:

     Today I set up the environment of the game for the survival shooter. What had to be done was dragging and dropping the environment and lighting prefab into the hierarchy so they would be added to the scene. The prefabs where found in the prefab folder of the objects I downloaded and imported last time. After doing that I added a quad and named it "Floor" and resized/rotated the quad so it would cover the whole environment's floor. The I deleted its mesh renderer so it would be invisible but its collider would still be in tact. I then added an empty game object and renamed it "BackgroundMusic" and added an audio source component to it for its music. I the added the background music into the audio clip section of the component.

What I Learned:

     Today I learned how to use a quad to be the collider for an object with an uneven surface.

What I'm Doing Next Class:

     Next day I will be setting up the player for the game.

Unity Day 31 (Survival Shooter Project)

What I Did:

     So today I decided to skip converting space shooter to mobile as its fairly difficult to set up the sdk and my phone on a school computer as i have to mess with drivers and etc. to make it work properly with android. So I'm moving on to the next project and may revisit this later. So today I will begin working on the survival shooter tutorial. So the first thing i did was go to the asset store to download this projects assets however I needed to upgrade unity because it was out of date for the projects assets so i had to take a bit of time to update the software. To update the software I had to go to help in the engine and check for updates. This took me to a webpage that had me download an installer. After the software had finished downloading I unfortunately didn't actually have time to do anything else aside from downloading the assets from the unity asset store.

What I Learned:

      I Learned how to update unity for future reference in case a newer version comes out at some point.

What I'm Doing Next Class:

     Next Class I will finally begin working because I have everything ready to begin the survival shooter project.

Unity Day 30 (Space Shooter Project)

What I Did:

     Today I simply waited for the android sdk (software development kit) to finish downloading so i didn't really do a whole lot today, however next day I will be finally starting on the mobile development.

What I Learned:

     I learned that an system specific sdk is required for developing software/games for devices such as smart phones and consoles.

What I'm Doing Next Day:

     Next Day I will finally begin mobile Development for space shooter.

Unity Day 29 (Space Shooter Project)

What I Did:

     Today I finished off this tutorial finally and now have a working game, the error from last day was very simple it was simply a typo. Now after adding the amounts for each variable in the inspector of the enemy ships evasive maneuver script I dragged the enemy ship into the prefabs folder and made it a prefab. I then dragged the new prefab into the game controller's array that it uses to randomly pick a hazard to spawn. the game is complete for PC. It has a new and improved scrolling background, new types of asteroids, and a new enemy that moves around the game and shoots back at the player.

What I Learned:

     I Learned how to make a simple ai that allows an object to move and shoot on its own.

What I'm Doing Next Day:

     Next Day I will begin development for making this space shooter game into a mobile game. The tutorial for that is also very long and will be most likely posted on for 4-5 days. This is however the final tutorial for this project.

Unity Day 28 (Space Shooter Project)

What I Did:

     Today was a shorter day so I didn't do too much, however I did start work on the evasive maneuver script which should be finished but I'm running into an error CS1922 so I will try to fix this next day. The evasive maneuver script is designed to make the enemy ship evade while its in play to add a bit of life to it rather then have it be just another asteroid with a different model. Script was added in order to make it move from left to right and right to left only so it won't actually leave the game screen. I also clamped it as an insurance in case it misbehaves at some point.

Tutorial Started: 01:08:20
Tutorial Stopped: 1:29:00

What I Learned:

     I Learned how to use the Mathf fuction in scripts for more complex position changes.

What I'm Doing Next Day:

     Next Day I will hopefully be finishing this tutorial.

Unity Day 27 (Space Shooter Project)

What I Did:

     This day I was unfortunately met with a problem in the game that prevented me from making much progress today. The error was making my enemy ship completely rotate to the direction it was moving which essentially made it go in reverse towards the player which wasn't acceptable. The problem took a bit of searching but it turned out to be a fairly large error in the mover script and i'm not totally sure how i didn't notice this applying it to the asteroids and bolts, i'm assuming it is because you can't really tell the difference between front and back on them. The problem was that the mover scripts speed variable was a Vector3 rather then a float and that the line...

rig.velocity = transform.forward = speed;

should've been...

rig.velocity = transform.forward * speed;

and i'm assuming that it caused the the way the ship moves to equal the way the ship faces.

What I Learned:

     Today I didn't learn a whole lot, but I did learn how to make objects turn and move in that desired direction for future reference since i discovered this on accident.

What I'm Doing Next Day:

     Next day I will be doing what I was setting out to do today, sadly I couldn't because of the error I was met with but I will be doing it next day.

Unity Day 26 (Space Shooter Project)

What I Did:

     Today i made then enemy ship be able to shoot. To do this I first created a new script called weapon controller from the add component section of the enemy ship game object. In the weapon controller I added code telling it how to shoot. I then dragged the bolt prefab that I filed from the player ships bolts and attached it to the enemy ship so it would be a child game object of it. I added another empty game object call ed shot spawn and set it as a child object of the enemy ship, and set the bolt as a child of shot spawn. I adjusted the enemy bolt to a cyan texture so it looks different, I also reversed its movement so it would fire towards the player instead of away. After that I edited the destroy by contact script so the bolts would ignore the enemy objects if it was fired from the enemy ship. I created a new tag in unity named Enemy and tagged the enemy ship, the enemy shot and the 3 asteroid prefabs. I then filed the enemy bolt as a prefab. The enemy ship now fires and can destroy the player. Because both bolts from the player and enemy are supposed to destroy any object it touched with exception the two bolts can eliminate each other on contact.

Tutorial Started: 00:45:01
Tutorial Stopped: 01:08:19

What I Learned:

     I learned how to create an object the shoots other objects independently, and how to make the object it fire lethal to some objects and not others.

What I'm Doing Next Day:

     Next day I will be making the ship move, able to evade and possibly adding it to the random spawn rotation.

Unity Day 25 (Space Shooter Project)

What I Did:

     Today I begun by finding out that the project from yesterday did not save! Fortunately the script changes and new script was still there so i must not have saved the scene last time. I was able to fairly quickly redo the work from yesterday but it did cost me half an hour of time. So on shorter time I wasn't able to do as much today as I wanted, but I did finish making the enemy ship. I did this by creating an empty game object and renaming it enemy ship. I then added the enemy ship model and enemy ship engine effect as child objects of the new game object. After doing that I started adding physics to the enemy ship game object with the rigidbody and sphere collider components. I then added the destroy by contact script to it and set the score its worth to 20, filled the player explosion space with the player explosion effect and the explosion space with enemy explosion.

Tutorial Started: 00:34:21
Tutorial Stopped: 00:45:00

What I Learned:

     Nothing new was really learned today since I did essentially what I did to create the asteroid and player ship, I did however learn to check to make sure I saved the scene more carefully.

What I'm Doing Next Day:

     Next day I will be making it so that the enemy ship will shoot and evade.

Unity Day 24 (Space Shooter Project)

What I Did:

     So today I figured out that the problem from last day was simply me dragging the asteroid prefabs to the wrong location, I needed to drag them directly onto the array that war created in the inspector. So now that this problem was fixed, in play mode 3 different types of asteroid models are now spawned. So now I began making it so that the background would scroll during the game play. To do this I first started by adding the star field particle effect by dragging its prefab into the hierarchy from assets/prefabs /VFX. The star field effect was already set upon taking it so I left it as is. I then duplicated the background and tweaked the duplication's y position to -1 so it is exactly touching the previous background. I also made the duplication a child of the original so that the script i was going to create and attach to the original would also apply to the duplicated background. Then I created a new script on the first background and named it BGScroller. Upon doing that I added code telling it how to make it move. This simple code gave me two variables to tweak in the inspector. The tile size was set to 30 because its the same as the background and the scroll speed was set to -0.25. Now the background scrolls along, and stars twinkle along with it.\

Tutorial Started: 00:12:01
Tutorial Stopped: 00:34:20

What I Learned:

     I Learned how to make a cinematic background with different effects.

What I'm Doing Next Day:

     Next day I will be implementing enemy ships into the game that shoot and dodge.

Unity Day 23 (Space Shooter Project)

What I Did:

    This day I decided to skip building the game since their are tutorials after adding on to the game so I will build it afterwards and deploy it on mobile devices. The next tutorial is 2 hours long and adds much more to this simple game. To start off I created two more asteroid prefabs containing two new asteroid models for the game to spawn. I did this by taking my original asteroid prefab and then switching the model that the object was parenting to the two new ones. I then added them to the prefab folder to turn them into prefabs and deleted them from the scene. After that I opened up the player controller script and changed some of the code to spawn randomly one of the 3 models. However I ran into a problem where I the 3 slots for referencing the prefabs wouldn't show up.

     The problem has something to do with turning the gameobject into an array but why its happening i don't know.

Tutorial Started: 0:00:00
Tutorial Stopped:  0:12:00

What I Learned:

     I Learned how to add an array that will spawn random different objects that are assigned to it.

What I'm Doing Next Day:

     Next day I will try to figure out what is causing this error and move on to whatever is next in line.

Unity Day 22 (Space Shooter Project)

What I Did:

     Today I am making it so the game can end by breaking out of the infinite loop. To do this first of all I had to create two new labels for the game over text and the restart text. I then created a new empty game object to parent the three label objects to clean up the hierarchy. After that I opened up my game controller script and proceeded to add the variables for the two new scripts and code to define them and give them their proper functions. I then went to the destroy by contact script so to add script to where the player ship can be destroyed, then added the script so that it would display the game over text and end the game when the player is destroyed and the current wave clears the screen. So now the game is a working playable piece of work. When the player is destroyed by the asteroid hazard the game over text will appear, then after the wave clears the player will be able to press the R key to restart the game and a prompt in the top right of the screen will be there to say so.

Current Destroy By Contact Script:

Current Game Controller Script:

Game Upon Reaching A Game Over:

 

What I Learned:

     I learned how to call a script when certain circumstances are met and how to end an infinite loop within the game.

What I'm Doing Next Day:

     Next day I will be building the games standalone launcher like the roll a ball game, and then I will move on to the first of the 2 long tutorials the extend this space shooter game.