[FINISHED] Akiro the squid <3

At the moment he targets the "next spawned one." So it sort of looks random, but he really just follows whichever is the oldest spawn... if I can phrase it like that.

It just occurred to me yesterday that I don't have to limit it to stuff that can be eaten, and stuff that wants to eat Akiro. That's kind of why I wanted to make this fella. He doesn't really care about Akiro, he just wants to find some food. I'm not sure if he is going to be dangerous or not, but it does feel like that would be the most suiting choice.
Kind of like: "I'm just going to eat in peace, but if you approach me I will eat you as well".

I also played with the thought of having that enemy start out as a smaller fish, and when he eats shrimp he gains size (Let's say he has three stages; small, medium, large - kind of like puffer) and the player can eat him.
If the enemy hasn't eaten any shrimp: he is worth 0 points
If the enemy has eaten 1/2/3 shrimp, he is worth that much points.
And if he has eaten three, he is full and will then try to escape and go take a nap or something. I don't know, I haven't figured it out yet. Messing with some floating gravity and having him pause between shrimps now.

 

I very much like the idea of him growing, maybe he should retarget if something gets close enough? That way he would chase down akiro if you get too close?

 

That sounds great! I just imagined him chasing Akiro away from the shrimps.
I also liked the idea of him having stages of growth. I'm just not sure what the purpose would be yet. On one hand, he could just gather them and get fat, probaby swim slower... for fun. Like, that's just how he is, and it doesn't make a difference in mechanics.
On the other hand, maybe Akiro can eat him and swallow all the points. I just got another idea. What if 3 shrimp isn't the limit? What if he could like eat up 10 of them, and he popped like a piñata? Hmm, the posibilities.

 

What if he gets to a size where Akiro cannot eat him? You could have speed proportional to speed, and when he's large enough every time he eats a shrimp or creature there will be a random chance of him getting full, after which he will retreat of screen and despawn? You could make different things fill him up differently, like shrimps are 1, pufferfish are 1.5?
Just some food for thought

 

Great idea, haha! Oh man, I just imagine him becoming so big he's like one third of the screen. I don't think that would be the wisest idea though... I have play around with that idea, it sounds fun.

 

you could make the retreat probability increase with size? such as size/10, that way the maximum he could ever reach is 10 but could effectively retreat straight away?

 

I like that idea! There's just one thing... He should have some sort of visual queue then, I think... I'm thinking mostly about the fact that the game is very lighthearted and has a style that could possibly cater to all ages, and I'm not sure exactly where I will draw the line when it comes to... depth.

 

Well, if there's one thing I'm certain of, it's the fact that I will practice a whole lot more before I start the next "big" project, hahah. I've spent embarrassingly many hours trying to fix the turtle movement script. The turtle basically behaves just like he did before, but now I'm at least using static colliders to check.

Speaking of other projects... I have several lined up, haha. I'm really looking forward to the day I can just sit down and polish my ideas, not work around them and duct tape like a maniac!



EDIT: Seems like they've removed the gif option in the editor, but this might work.

 

Today's been a very productive day. The turtle spawn points (green ones at the sides there) scale so it always fits the screen size (just like the others ), I've renamed 80% of my variables and cleaned up the scripts so now it's actually pleasant to work in them, and I've got the basic turtle script down (for real this time, with solid checkbox and all).

Now I'm working on the "Sillyfish", and trying to make him have a floaty, daydreamy, hungry sort of... behaviour. You know what, I'll upload my notes and explain the drawing instead, much easier.



First he will enter the screen just floating around, not even minding the food. After a while (set timer) a ' ! ' will pop up over him, and he will start chasing a shrimp. After he eats a shrimp, he will float a bit in the same direction he swam when he was chasing it. After some floating, the cycle continues.
It sounds good in my head, so I'm hyped to see it in action.

 

The only mechanic Im wondering is how will he be both a threat and food to Akiro?

 

I don't think he will be food, to be honest. For now (unless I redesign him) he will be some sort of casual enemy, whereas he will damage Akiro of he gets too close. Generally he will just swim around and eat shrimps instead.

 

I'm not sure if I should update more or not. I have been working on the game quite a lot since the last update, but it's just been small changes that aren't really noticable or exciting for other people to see. I did change the sillyfish (placeholder name) so he turns casually when he swims. And after a while he turns quickly towards Akiro (going to change it to shrimp later) and swims towards him.

Apart from that I've refactored and renamed the scripts even more, so now they are actually very easy to navigate through. I've spent a lot of time watching Unity tutorials as well, and I'm starting to wonder if there's some way I could make my enemies inherit from another script, cause there is a lot of repeated code - sort of.

 

Ahh, yes... Done with the basic main menu setup. It took me eight hours today to strip down and understand how it works, and now it's fairly decent.
Also, I've been thinking.

From the very beginning I've wanted this to be a simple game. Even though I've paid attention to feature creep, I think I now have too much. Therefore I'm putting the turtle on hold, and keep it to puffer, bigboy and sillyfish. I think making those three harder to dodge, and not more enemies will make the game more iconic and easier to get into - whilst still keeping the difficulty. Oh course by putting the turtle on hold (and possibly skipping it) I can make the sillyfish a bit more exotic. Maybe the eating system or something like that.

 

Lately I've been watching a lot of tutorials, and today I sat down to start fixing the 'tutorial'-ish startup. "Get Shrimp" blinks on the screen, and the enemies start to spawn when the player reaches 2 points (I'm going to scale this. For example have spawn timers on puffer at 4 seconds, and at around 20 points at 2, etc etc...)

Here's how it currently looks:


And here is the new playable:
http://mothil.itch.io/akiro?secret=ni8mz3YkdyUMFyYtTRiVsraNY

I'm also going to add small arrows pointing at the shrimps in the beginning, by the way.

 

After stumbling around for a handful of hours, I've finally reduced my spawner script to a shorter length.
From: 253 lines long, holds 5 enemies
To: 74 lines long, holds 3
My biggest problem now is that they all follow the same spawn timer, which is not what I want - mainly because some enemies should appear more often than others, especially the shrimps.

In two / three weeks I'm going to focus a lot more on the game, cause now I've finally found a place to live, so when I've moved my stuff to the new place I'm ready to go hardcore game development. Stay tuned!

 

Just curious what is the advantage of object pooling with unity? Can't you just instantiate/delete enemy prefabs?

 

Pooling objects is basically instantiating a set amount of enemies. Instead of deleting and creating enemies all the time (which collects garbage and slows down performance); pooling makes it so for example 10 enemies are spawned at the start of the game, and then deactivated right away. When I then want the enemies to spawn, they simply just activate instead of creating a new one, and when they die / go outside the screen, they deactivate.

Here's my script as an example:

Spoiler: The Script

Code (CSharp):

1. using UnityEngine;
2. using System.Collections.Generic;
3.  
4. public class Spawner : MonoBehaviour
5. {
6.     public float startWait;
7.     public float spawnTimer;
8.     public GameObject [] enemies;
9.  
10.     [SerializeField] public Transform [] spawnPoints;
11.     public int pooledAmount;
12.  
13.     List<GameObject> pooledObject;
14.  
15.     void Start()
16.     {
17.         pooledObject = new List<GameObject>();
18.      
19.         for (int i = 0; i < pooledAmount; i++)
20.         {
21.             GameObject puffer =
22.                 (GameObject)Instantiate(enemies[0]);
23.  
24.             puffer.SetActive(false);
25.             pooledObject.Add(puffer);
26.         }
27.  
28.         InvokeRepeating("SpawnObject", startWait, spawnTimer);
29.     }
30.  
31.     public void SpawnObject()
32.     {
33.         GameObject _obj = GetPooledObject();
34.         if (_obj == null) return;
35.  
36.         int spawnPointIndex = Random.Range
37.             (0, spawnPoints.Length);
38.  
39.         _obj.transform.position
40.             = spawnPoints[spawnPointIndex].position;
41.  
42.         _obj.SetActive(true);
43.     }
44.  
45.     public GameObject GetPooledObject()
46.     {
47.         for (int i = 0; i < pooledObject.Count; i++)
48.         {
49.             if (!pooledObject[i].activeInHierarchy)
50.             {
51.                 return pooledObject[i];
52.             }
53.         }
54.         return null;
55.     }
56. }
57.  

Over start we declare a wait timer before we start spawning, and the spawn timer. Both of these are just used in the "InvokeRepeating" at the bottom of the start function.
And then I have an array of the game objects (enemies) which will be spawned.

The Start function loops through how many times I want the enemies to be pooled, and adds them to a list named pooledObject. After they are added to the list, they are deactivated (SetActive(false)).

Whenever the Invokerepeating calls the function "SpawnObject", that then in turn finds a random spawn point from the array and activates the enemy there. I could elaborate further, but it's a bit hard when writing down. I love teaching other people, so when I am done with this script I will most likely do a youtube video on it, seeing as I would love to try teaching scripting on youtube. Hope it made sense.

 

I see so it is for performance issues.

Thanks for the detailed reply.

And good luck with your youtube enterprise.

 

I've finally settled in to a new place, and I'm slowly getting back into the project again. There's still a lot of real life events happening here and there, but I'm definitely going to work on Akiro now. I've spent a couple hours today fixing the following:

Enemies now have a separate spawn timer than the shrimps.
Draw text on GUI to help me check when the player is in the tutorial
Spawn enemies at 2 shrimp (adjusting soon, gotta check when it feels natural to introduce enemies)
Added a new type of shrimp - the fatty. I've added this to spice up the score system, so it doesn't feel too tedious to catch food. It awards 3 points, and spawns less regularly than the normal shrimp.

It feels nice to update again, and I'm quite confident I will do a lot more of just that in the coming future.

 

It's common to take a couple of years over it, don't worry. You're not a staff of 500

 

Really nice to see this project is still going, one of my favourites i've seen on the WIP
then again, i really need to update my own thread... xD

 

Hello hippocoder and QFSW!
yeah, it is indeed common to take a couple of years, and that's one of the things I've tried to calm myself with. I kind of just know that a good coder could reach this prototype in (it scares me to say this) just a week, or maybe even under. That scares me a bit, but I'm certainly getting better at coding. Just today I've fixed several things in a faster and more efficient way than before, and that makes me happy.

And thanks for the kind words, QFSW! Thank you both for commenting here, it's a good feeling knowing that people are interested in what I'm cooking up. It's just an amazing feeling to create something, and I'm getting more and more hyped the more I explore the project.

If all goes after plan, I may use this whole weekend just glued in front of the screen coding. So the chance is high that there'll be loads of updates and a new playable build.

 

No problem
Glad you still enjoy working on it

 

Mhhh, It's been such a productive day. I've now created a new script to handle disabling enemies if they get outside the screen, and updated the Spawner script to spawn random with no objects dedicated as spawn points!
That makes me really excited, cause I can now remove this bunch of a mess:



That's, like... 1, 2, 3... A LOT of objects! Poof. These scripts now handle the spawning and despawning:





Now, as you can probably see, the code in the last screenshot there is a bit... copy paste. I'm sure there's a quicker way to fix that, but for now it's a nice upgrade from my previous spawn.

Apart from that, I started the day off by cleaning up some of the scripts, as well as fooling around with the UI.
I started playing Akiro on my Android to see if everything worked okay, and needless to say it didn't. Enemies almost never spawned, and they took ages to get to Akiro (I think the spawn points were miles away). That's why I wanted to fix it, so now it _SHOULD_ spawn correctly across any device playing the game, phone, tablet or whatnot. Fun!

 

could store the different positions in an array or list, then use your randomspawn as the index of the item to retrieve from the array

 

But, if that's all it will be, no real point worrying how you got there

 

Quick update:

I've been very productive today. Most of it is not visible in the game (mostly organizing) so I thought I'd just throw out a GIF of the current state.

 

New playable build (Unity Webplayer only supported by some browsers): Akiro 22.01.2016

Fixes since last build:
Enemies now spawn when score is 3 and up
Enemies spawn correctly on mobile devices (although I can't really show that yet)
Puffer has reduced speed to make it possible to dodge at smaller screens

Puffer has a shorter trigger radius than before, but Bigboy has a larger radius
Big shrimps give 3 points, make pling sound
etc etc.

 

I've had such an exciting morning! I got local highscore working, so a highscore among friends is probably up next. This is so exciting, I just want to work on it and not leave the house.

 

Needless to say, the very first thing I did when I came home was work on the game. From that time I've fixed a spawner bug, increased the deactivate radius, and made the highscore into a separate text object. In the middle of this I started to look at how to create leader boards and social sharing, but...

I need to keep it simple. As much as I now hold this project, nay, Akiro dear - I just have to accept I should finish it soon. Maybe I will update it some day later with social sharing / friend highscores and such, but I should just not let my perfectionism catch up to me again. I'll keep it simple, no feature creeps. With that said, I'm soon approaching the stage where I work mainly on the art, animations and such. It's going to be a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to it.



explanation: What I meant when I said I should finish the project soon, is that I'm kind of stuck in the mentality that this is my first game. It just feels like a right 'first project', so I haven't worked on other projects (well, some very small), cause I don't want other projects to potentially take that place. I know it's silly, but... Yeah.

 

I searched through my images, as well as a conversation on Facebook I had with a friend, and I found out that I started Akiro 24/25. February 2015. That's soon, very soon. I've been thinking that this might be a comfortable deadline. One month to fix animations, art, music, videos and some coding sounds reasonable... right?

Anyways, as seen above, I just tried creating some 'eat animations'. It was drawn in like 10 seconds just as a test. I'm thinking the score number can sort of bulge out when the player eats a shrimp, to kind of notify the player that he just upped his score. I think I'm off to bed real soon, I'm exhausted. I just wanted to say thank you to everybody who visits my devlog - your presence is greatly appreciated!

 

I've been working all day on setting up animations, and trying to make a nice death screen. I was almost going to give up what I had in mind. I wanted the enemies to carry on when Akiro disappeared, as a sort of "leave the scene when the show is finished" type of thing.

maybe it's the music that makes me a bit emotional now, but I feel oddly about seeing the enemies just swim around after Akiro is gone. I think it has to do with the fact that I'm soon done with my first game. Here's just little me, who've had a dream about being a game developer for years... And I'm actually close to releasing my first title. It's so far from a perfect game. It has countless flaws which I have no idea how to fix, but it's my game. Don't get me wrong, I will work a lot more on it, but I can see now that I'm not at that level where I can express the ideas in my head yet. But that's okay, I consider myself a winner for coming this far, I really do.

 

Good. Thats the attitude
Keep it up, im looking forward to release day

 

Hey QFSW! That's nice to hear.



I'm exhausted, so this'll be the last update for the day.
From that last update, I've added the death screen "play again?" and hooked up functional buttons. That DS button in the top corner there is for resetting highscore when I'm testing. Apart from that, I added this placeholder icon!!
Just seeing that icon is so motivating, agghh!

 

You have way more motivation than me, I'm the kind of person that wants to learn everything super fast. I spend a few weeks making a game, then 1/2 way to finishing it ditch it for a better game and use my new found knowledge to make it way better.

As far as the game goes, its looking great! The last few updates have added in the missing thing from the game, personally I think the idea of death animations makes the game look 10 times better.

I still think that adding different 'depths' would be a good idea, and having different enemies in each one, but thats probably because I'm obsessed with having as much content as possible in my games.

Overall the game has come a long way, I'm looking forward to you releasing it.

 

Thank you for the kind words, Raven!
And yes, regarding your first statement, I am kind of that way as well. Normally. And I do believe that doing it that way (jumping from project to project) is a very quick way to learn. I am also interested in learning everything super fast, but I wanted to force myself to just pick up one project and actually finish it, cause that's something I'm bad at in general.

By depths you mean Spore type of gameplay, right? That would be so cool, and it would probably fit the gameplay very well, but... I gotta keep it simple. I just have to finish a project, just to show myself I can do it.

 

My SO surprised me with this cute crochet Akiro today. He's going to sit on my desk and watch over me as I flesh out the rest of the game. It's so cute, it's just sitting on top of a mushroom and watching me while I code. Love it!

Spoiler: Crochet Akiro

 

Seems like a wonderful person you're with, for them to want to make you happy like that with what it is you love working on

 

You know what, I don't think I'm going to try to finish the game within 25. February. I just asked a handful of friends for feedback, and there's so much I could do to make this more fun. And I'm not sure if I'm even ready to let go of this project. It's way too much fun. I know I would love doing other projects as well, but for now this is everything I need to be motivated and love game development.

So... I got some GREAT ideas from the feedback I got. Expect some serious improvement in the coming future.

 

I'm looking forwards

 

I wasn't in a coding mood this evening, so I decided to just play around with some animation. My first thought was... What if I actually made Akiro a higher resolution pixel art? The gif I've provided isn't exactly how I would imagine that to be, but it was just something I wanted to do as a practice. As you can see, it's very rough, but it was fun to just relax and draw while watching some youtube on the side.



I've kinda just settled on a very low resolution, but maybe... Maybe I should play around a bit more? It could be fun.

 

I love the music in this game, it's just so happy

 

Just curious what are you using to make your animations?

 

Hah reminds me a little bit of my underwater game (although your art is a lot nicer than my programmer art :

 

RavenOfCode: I'm using PyxelEdit, but I haven't used anything fancy within PyxelEdit yet. What I did with that squid thing was to just turn on 'onion skin' and test that. Onion skin makes it so you can see the previous and next frame sort of faded out.

And yeah, JohnnyA, it does! haha. Oh man, I dig that music. Are you working on that now, or is it an older project?

 

The sprite looks a little tad aggressive for Akiro, rather than his cheerful look, but I think you should play around a bit with higher res, you've got way more possibilities that way

 

You're saying something there, QFSW. It does look rather enemy-ish. When I tried to sleep yesterday I got a great idea for design (which again made me so hyped I couldn't sleep). I'm going to brew myself some tea and get going. Rather than fixate on one style, I'll try several now and see what works best.

 

That project was released long ago, its not great, not a lot of work on game design, but the goal was to produce something in a week, not make a great game

The music was written for the game and you are welcome to use it if you would like. There are two songs (from memory, its been a while). PM me if you want me to send you them.

 

Cool! I'm planning on creating my own music some day in the future, so I'm set. As of now I use two old chiptunes I made 3 years ago or so (Thank you for liking the music, jamster!) and I think those tracks capture the feel of the game somewhat. I'm hoping for something a little bit more energetic than what I have. Let's just see how it goes.

 

Okay, I've been drawing for one and a half hour now and I got nothing. Well, close to nothing. I just can't for the life of me make something squid-like that looks decent in a bigger resolution. After trying that for an hour I started brainstorming about other things, specifically the colors / characters. I'm thinking about scrapping the color wheel, and possibly making different characters instead. Let's make an example.

Akiro: main characters, sort of the "normal swimming"

Some other character: different speed, possibly different swim radius. I did draw one rather quickly, which looks more octopus-like. I'm really on the fence about everything I'm doing now, so if you got any suggestions - now is the time! (the 'new char' is in the gif below.)