Unity 3D Class

I have been taking an online class for Unity 3D.  One of the other students asked me to shoe them how I did something in Unity and their Project Information section is not a convenient place to put a bunch of screen shots and info without making a big mess of my page.  So for lack of a better option I am going to place it here on my Blog.

SkillShare Class: Week 2
Here we have an arial view of my Scene.  I only decorated the area that the camera would be showing the player.  The Soldiers that run by the camera are done in the worst way possible!  To save time since I was so late to make the project deadline, I just duplicated him a bunch of times and lined them all up into the distance.  If you wait long enough, they will run out and stop walking by.  Next time I will figure out how to make the Soldiers die off screen and respawn and then I would only need 5-6 of them rather than 20.

Here is the FMS of the Clock. I have 4 directional lights (3 are turned off) for Dawn, Noon, Dusk, and Evening. When the Clock first is set, it is at Dawn and it sits and waits for a MOUSE CLICK.  The iTweenRotate is set to rotate to the position of the current light, in this case the Light_Dawn.

Now that I have learned about how the Variables work (from Week 3 of the class) I think I would have used a Color Ramp and stored the Color Variable, then used that with the Set Color.  This would have created a smooth blend of color instead of the harsh pop.

 The scaling of the rock was a little tricky.  I have an empty FMS that waits for a MOUSE CLICK.  Clicking it goes to the next state where it will shrink to a scale of 0 over 3 seconds.  It will then wait for 5 seconds before going to the next State where it will grown then then return to the Wait for Mouse Click state.

First off...this is all fakery! The King is not really "Walking"...he is playing an animation and he is moving, but its just an illusion.  The King is already set up to use all of his animations so when you use the Play Animation Action, you are given a list that you want to run.  I couldn't figure out how to make the Animation Loop, so I just had two FMS Nodes that bounced back and forth to each other.  Then I just set the Controller Simple Move to a point in space off the screen to the Right and kept adjusting the speed so his feet didn't slide.

And here is the final scene with the Clock set to Noon.  I also played around with the Screen Shake so when you press the space bar the screen will shake...also there is a tree that is not labeled that will shake and play a sound when you click on it.

Something new is coming...

I have been working on a new personal game project.  It's not a board game, but I could see doing a Card Game version of it.  I have a really neat Dice Mechanic that could be a lot of fun to explore with this idea.  I have been making good progress with the game design and I hired an artists to get some traction on the visuals.  So far I would say that is has been going really well.

Here is what the Elite Unit started out as.  On the right you can see my art direction making suggestions of the parts of the design I was not happy with.

The second round was much closer to what I was looking for.  I didn't like the head design or the size, but for the most part that was it.  There was a third version where I was still not happy with the head design, it was so similar to this version, its not worth adding another image.  In the end Nick came up with this head design that I really like.

The final version he added some darker shadows and additional details, but the major shape didn't change.  The total time was about 2 days of back and forth emails (mainly because Nick lives in Greece).

I have been posting the final images to Facebook, but this is the first time I have talked about the Art Direction and the whole process.  I have really enjoyed working with Nick.  His rendering skill and ability to interpret my insane direction is amazing. 

You can find the original posting here: Facebook.com/pages/Gorgon-Interactive

A very Zombie New Year

Now that my work on Aliens: Colonial Marines is done, we got a much needed break for the holidays. These past few weeks I have been working on a new game...not a board game, but a personal video game project I am very excited about.  I am not talking about what it is just yet, but hope to have some info that I can share soon.  If you are interested go check out the Gorgon Interactive FB page to see some early concepts of the project.

I sent out and played some games last night.  I was lured by the promise of Zombicide, but when I got there the group had left to go get dinner.  I went over to another persons house and we played a game of Ticket to Ride.

This is easily my least favorite 'Great Game'.  Its so easy it is presented as the 'Gateway" game for people looking to get into board games, but in reality it is a brutal cut thought game where every move has to be concealed so you don't give away your intended route.

I did OK.  I took second.  A good game if you are not playing with hard core players..otherwise this game is to much of a 'Screw you' game for my tastes.

After that I finally caught up with the original group and played Zombicide.  This is a co-op game where the player have to work together to complete some goal as dictated by the mission they choose to play.  Because we had 6 players the people teaching us the rules decided to go with one of the bigger and more difficult missions.  What were they thinking?

Were good.  We have half of our objective markers....we got this.  We just need to cross the street, get into that building...and then get to the north part of the map...no problem.

OK, we got across the street...and lost Dave to a pack of runners.  We wiped them out and are still in good shape.  We spend a few turns gathering supplies to hopefully get a Molotov Cocktail to kill the Abomination....this was not a good plan.

What idiot thought it was a good idea to barricade ourselves in this death trap?  Needless to say, this did not end well.  We killed the Abomination, fought out onto the street, and died in the middle of the intersection just to the north of where we are...it was not pretty.

Its been way too long

After working way too many hours at work, I lost a lot of my momentum in working on Taipan.  In an attempt to regain some of my Mojo I have started working on some of the changes that I have been meaning to do since my last play test over a month ago.

The first change is to reduce the number of Combat Cards from 32 to 12.  This is an attempt to fix the issue where players can get screwed when one player can have a bad round of combat leaving the Combat cards in the favor of the following players to do combat with little worry of loosing

I am slowly working on building a new Victory point system.  When players turn in cargo they will have a choice to collect Coins they can use to buy more cargo or upgrade their ship, or they can receive a victory point card based on the number of a specific cargo type delivered.

For example: If you deliver 3 Silk Cargo Cubes you may choose to receive the Coins you would normally receive or you may take the single 3 Silk Victory Card.

I still haven't figured out how to trigger the end of the game.  I am thinking it will be the depletion of some or all of the Victory Cards.  In the mean time here is what the Victory Cards look like:

Taipan sales and new Link

I have just made a few minor changes to the Description section of Taipan in the Store to help point players to the two different versions of Taipan on the Game Crafter.

Taipan: Merchants of the Far East
This is the full version that has higher quality parts, a 10'x10' box and divider to help keep the parts organized.  There are also high quality Micro Cards to represent money and Cubes to represent Cargo.

Taipan: The Play Test Version

This is the less expensive Play Test Version.   There is no box or divider.  Coins are represented by Paper Money and Cargo is represented by Plastic Poker Chips.

I have also added an Image of Taipan in the upper right of my Blogg.  You can direct link to Taipan in the Game Crafter store by clicking the image.  Please share the links with your friends and help support the Play Test of Taipan.

Come One Come All....

I have opened the store on the Game Crafter site.  If you have $50 extra bucks and want to help test Taipan, go and pick it up at:

Look for this image in the list of games.

https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/taipan


You might have to do a search for Taipan, it seems like the link only takes you to the list of games, not the actual Taipan page.


It takes about 10 days for them to print and ship it out to you.  I need a lot of feed back on the Rules.  No one but me has read them so I am sure there is a lot that doesn't make any sense.  I need your help smoothing out the bumps, so please send notes and feedback.


Thanks for your support.

Playing Again!

Tuesday night I went to my friends house to play Taipan.  I brought over the newly printed Game Crafter version of Taipan and set it up.  We BSed and ate dinner for about an hour and go started around 8PM.

I blame the bad picture on the 21 year old Scotch. Mmmmm...Glenfiddich!

I had two new people who had never played (TJ and Sean), so it was good to get some fresh eyes on the game.  Right out the gate I got very lucky where I fought off 3 pirates and got two gold cargo.  This would have resulted in me earning 22 coin on the second turn of the game.  In my continued attempt to minimize the huge random swings of the game I adjusted the rules only allowing players to choose 1 cargo from any Pirate victory.

The Start of the game using the new Game Crafter set.

Over the course of the game we found several other issues that need to be addressed.  TJ got himself into a bad position where he had no money and lost most of his cargo when he got into a fight with Pirates.  We came up with a new rule that allows a player to stay in port on his turn to earn 2 coins.  I might change this to if he takes no Port Actions, he gains two coin.  This will prevent players from loosing a turn and falling behind the other players who are earning much larger amount of money.

In addition, TJ also took Rasheed which did not help his situation any.  After talking about it we have determined that his ability (Repair any two damage for free) is purely a defensive ability and playser can rarely win a game by playing all defensive.  I will be revisiting that character to change his ability in some way.

Clearly Sean and Bryan have had way too much to drink.

I had a good lead for a long while, but in the end, it was Bryan who won.   While I spent the game slowly paying off my debt, he built up his ship so that he had Max Sails and Hull.  In combination with Markus Seawell (Move into and out of Port once per turn for free), this allowed his to make big buys and massive sells and pay off his debt in the last four turns of the game.  This is a good strategy and the one I think all expert players will take, but it makes it very binary and appears to be the only correct choice.  We talked about reducing the number of Ship Upgrades from 3 to 2, but my fear with this is that it will slow the game down.  The game took 2 hours, and that is the perfect amount of time in my mind.


I think I am going to change Marcus Seawell so that he will be able to take advantage of specially marked short cuts on the Sea Map and Rasheed will become the Harbor Master allowing him to move out of Port for free, but not into port.  There where a few other issues, but nothing to major.  Some art issues on the cards, and some missing details and typos in the rules.


Cant wait to have time to make the changes and do it all again.  Maybe this weekend I will get to dive back in.   Until next time, happy gaming.