InkRain DevLog #1
I’m still here…
Previous devlog: here.
This week wasn’t filled with events, but I have a couple of topics to discuss.
Grabbit
Finally, Grabbit has fixed the most annoying bugs, so it’s useful now.
It’s an exciting tool for composing natural-looking scenes. Grabbit still buggy but allows creating awesome locations without tiresome position adjustments.
Fire
For me, sales in Unity Asset Store are like Black Friday. I just cannot resist. There is a special term for people like me: asset hoarder. So, we have another sale. It’s not fantastic, but you can buy some overpriced assets at a reasonable price.
If you don’t have your own content-creator, you have only two options. Use different and not always matching assets or be limited by “ideal” one. For example, I use 3 “stylized” packs for vegetation, ~10 for props (stylized and low-poly), and ~7 low-poly bundles for characters/enemies/weapons. I assume it looks okay. With low light. Suppose you aren’t very picky.
But if we are talking about VFX, dissimilar effects hurt the eye. Fortunately, there is an awesome huge pack of low-poly effects: Polygon Arsenal. It’s wonderful for magic but not for the environment due to contrast with stylized props and trees. Well, now I have the second asset pack for VFX, Cartoon FX 1 Remaster. Yeah, it’s a little too cartoony. But in my opinion, its fire is much better than the low-poly one.
I’m still thinking about the proper style for my game. I am inclined to substitute my low-poly assets with stylized but good packs for monsters and characters worth a fortune. In any case, I will try to finish my game even with eye-bleeding assets =)))
Smarter NPCs
This week I did a lot of work with my NPCs. Actually, now I have only one “full-fledged” non-player character, but there are also several more specialized guys. What does it mean?
For example, my enemies (technically, it’s also NPC) consist of:
- CharacterData (health, stats, items, effects, skills)
- MovingAI (self-explanatory)
- SensorModule (enemy/allies detecting)
- CombatAI (chasing, attacking, casting, death)
Their function is simple, standing in place and attacking player when you are too close. But human NPC should be more natural. From my point of view there some necessary abilities:
- Not standing at one place like a dummy
- Cycling animations
- Interacts with other NPC, the environment, and the player
So, now my MovingAI has the following modes: idle, chase, single waypoint, path (consecutive waypoints), patrol (looped path), wandering (random waypoint from the list). Also, I made an NPC module to control behavior. I use Bolt (visual scripting system) to build and store unique logic for each character. For example, Kevin, a traders guard, can wander among ten waypoints or do a sequence of waypoints with idling and staring at the player. Also, when he is close to Jennifer, the trader, they start conversation animations.
Furthermore, NPCs can be interactive. Obviously, Jennifer will trade with you if you try to chat with her. Or you can rescue orks hostages, Robert and Tailer, and they will run away at full speed from the place of their imprisonment. It’s fun to direct such little scenes.
And you need many custom animations. Idling, sitting, speaking, standing up… It’s natural for us, but they cannot perform any of these simple actions independently. I use Mixamo (a vast choice of animations but with poor search) and Everyday Motion pack (also cartoony but okay). And it’s a huge pain to deal with different packs of characters (even from one creator) and several sources of animations.
I know, all of these changes are too little to be noticed by players. Only a very attentive person will notice them and shrug. But for me, it is very interesting to create and very important to have in my game. Because I would have noticed and understood how difficult it was to do it.
