A forum thread for the little game project I'm working on and where I can talk with you all about its development progress.
Current version release v0.26, you can play try it here:
http://kraftzone.net/forum/index.php?page=SnowdenHailThe game is actually based off another 2d flash game made a few years ago called in effin hail. I wanted to recapture the fun while doing it in 3d... seemed like a good idea at the time, however having spent hours with getting the right numbers to use for things like snowball mass, gravity, forces etc its proving to be tougher project than I ever thought it would be.
The unity game engines provides rigidbody dynamics and its own gravity system, it takes care of a huge portion of the physics code. Of course getting realism and then trying to make gameplay elements that defy realism create for some pretty clashing outcomes and a lot longer to get right, though it feels like its finally getting to the point where I could see a fun game being made out of this.
Also balancing the game performance of potentially hundreds of snowballs that each have there own scripted properties and exploding. The snowballs and buildings all fracture and explode on hit, or at least they should, you might notice that it doesn't always happen.
The object mesh fracturing and exploding code is actually all done at runtime, meaning everytime a snowball hits the ground or a building, its fracturing is calculated in realtime and then all the little pieces are pushed away from the impact point. It's cool but also very unfinished, you will notice that a lot of snowballs especially the larger ones once they reach a certain size don't always fracture and explode. Its because the time it takes can often take a while more than just a few frames which makes for some very bad framerates if it were to be done.
As I haven't even gotten onto making the code performance friendly, or doing proper artwork and 3d models. Having found the fracturing costs only really work for a few explosions at a time, it looks like I'll be 3d modelling snowballs/hail for different sizes with a pre factured version to swap out on impact and explode that instead. Also the building will have to be designed and fractured the same way. The fracturing and exploding you see right now in v0.26 is just a unity store asset I've used for prototyping, it looks like it won't work that well for this game in the long term. Still it was a lot quicker to implement in the game than doing all the lengthy pre facturing stuff.
Current plans....
Pre factured snowballs, so instead of fracturing occurring everytime it hits, it will just swap out the mesh for an already broken up snowball and reuse that in object pool.
Completely missing stuff that I do intend on adding:
-Particles.. Haven't even started on particle effects.
-Decals.. things like a large snowball smashing the ground, should leave some sort of crater effect, like you see when you throw a snowball at a wall.
-Textures
Later on doing buildings, with there own health system so they can't just be destroyed by anything, it will take multiple hits, and some large hail to do it.
-Multiplayer (though in the short erm it would just be a chatroom to talk to other players who are also playing the game)
Future ideas:
- Alternative gametypes like playing as a person in the world at street level, trying to dodge or shoot down hail
- trust me this on high up on the list of things I feel like doing for this game once I get the main gameplay elements done.
- coop one player controlling the wind and hail, and other players on the street trying to save the city from total destruction.
so many ideas, so many distractions
Things I could use feedback on..
-Game name ideas (I kinda like current name though it was really just a codename for the project)
-How should the camera system work, the forcefield that you see right now in v0.26 is kinda center in the middle of the scene and that pushes the snowballs further up, the intention is this will be hooked to the mouse position, and you control the camera, but given that this game is in 3d space it poses a bigger problem of how controlling both that forcefield and the camera. I have thought about maybe just making this a 2.5d type game where the camera is locked from rotating around the middle of the scene.. and instead the camera just follows the mouse cursor.
- Style of the game? Right now its aiming for semi realistic, though not really detailed.. though the idea of going fully cartoonish might be worth looking into.
Probably worth checking out the original game (
http://www.kongregate.com/games/aeiowu/effing-hail) that this one was originally based on to get an idea for how it worked before. And all the gameplay elements in that which I do want to try reimplement into this 3d version, though the entire '3d nes' of it sure does complicate things with camera view and controlling of hailforce, and realism (while baring in mind the performance costs) The scene could easily go to using fully generated terrain, mountains in the background for more realist view distance etc.. its a style choice, but one I could easily waste hours working on only to find it simply not in the scope or performance budget for the game. So I'm thinking the game should try to remain not too detailed, so keeping mobile friendly shoudl I ever port it to that.
Known bugs (as of v0.26):
- Camera can go below the ground and above the surface
- The web version of the game sometimes resets the level, and all snowballs no longer dissapear or explode.. fps lag soon increases rapidly (I recommend reloading the page before it lags your pc out)
I can do release builds for osx, linux and windows to run natively on desktop (performance is much better than the web browser version) post a message here if you would be interested in running any of those versions instead. Pretty much just keeping this project to KZ members for now, so if you are wanting to test desktop builds you'll need to let me know you're on board with testing it, otherwise it will just be the web player version that I'll be updating.
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