Trying to make an attempt at being more update-y about the game so here’s a quick update of what I’ve done so far.

bomb item implementation

I’ve fully implemented the bombs. The player needs to press a button to spawn one in front of the VR Player, which they can grab and throw onto the scene. I feel like this could be used a lot for puzzle purposes. Even something silly like ‘bomb-bowling’.

I’ve made the beginnings of a bomb-able wall. Right now, they can be destroyed by a players bomb explosion but should the player leave the scene and come back the boulder will be back from nonexistence.

I’m thinking of adding something like a boulder ID for each boulder that I can set in the inspector, then on explosion, save that string ID to the game manager’s saved file. This way, when loading the scene as the player comes and goes; the boulder can check whether or not the player has already blown up the boulder.

keyart start

I kind of touched on it the last post, but I’ve started working on the keyart for the project. For those that might not know, this is like the main art that will be used for practically any kind of promotion or graphic.

For example, below is the header art and cover art that’ll be used on Itch. Both images are made from the higher quality keyart that’ll be finished up.

shield/guarding

I wrestled a bit with the unity input system to get a shield button going. So far it does nothing but i’m adding a slowed move/turning speed when having your shield up. Also gotta model something for it because for now, it’s small cube to signify guarding.

polishing enemies

it is also about that time i start giving a face to the programmer art enemies. Currently I have a ground-grub enemy, a cube enemy that digs, and cylinder that can throw spheres at the player. So got some sketches done for the enemies.

Something that I have to keep telling myself; Even in Zelda 1 there weren’t like dozens of enemies in one screen. At the most, you’d have 2 or 3 different enemies and those were used all over the world and had recolors.

For some reason, there’s always a feeling in me that I need to have dozens of enemy designs fully designed and thought out when in reality, I just need like 2 for the alpha build of my game.

Now that I have the antagonist thought out too, I can start designing him. When I first made the keyart for the game, I drew something like a grasshopper as the big bad. Sounds pretty cool but for a simple story, I felt that a bullfrog taking your brother was something that could be conveyed faster.

So anybut, I have drawn a more workable version of turnaround sketches for the first few enemies to be in the alpha build. Just need to find the time to model/texture/animate them.

more heightmaps

I have also finished up on the remaining preliminary heightmaps of the first ‘biome’. I took care not to overdesign the heightmaps since I work on the terrain in blender with the sculpting tools for the decorative parts.

Also I find it a good way to stop myself from sinking waay too much time on a single terrain that I might not even like in-game. (I liked to stamp terrain heightmap stuff and draw nitty gritty details into the heightmap for minimal returns of results).

modeling and uv-wrapping props

I’ve modeled and uv-wrapped the bits I did for foliage to decorate the prelim (5) zones the player will be able to walk around.

This way it doesn’t just feel like the player is walking around lifeless same-y zones and it will at least have some plants and a couple of objects to give the player a sense of direction.

While uv-wrapping the props and basic foliage, I’ve decided on keeping a flat-shaded look to everything. Even though I really want to fully texture everything, the amount of time I’m saving is unreal. Another thought is using color theory in the same way that spriters/tileset makers do with their work.

Maybe it’s just more rambling but in the same way that shapes are used with ‘darker’ colors for ‘further’ elements in a sprite, geometry could be make for VR using the same color theory philosophy and I’m thinking the scene will work just fine with adjusting fog and environment colors.

alpha build

anybut that’s it for this post, I’m super duper close to having the ‘alpha’ build up for people to test the game and give feedback from. Really all I want to have in this build is for the player to waltz in 4 connected zones and fight an enemy. I just don’t want it to be super plain is all.

So. Until next post!