With the release of Unity 4 I've decided to rework my code and make it more modularized again, just like what happened with Star Gen 4. This is partly to do with the fact that I've written myself a design doc streamlining and shaping my ideas, which in turn made me realize that the way my project was written made it unsustainable for a large scale development beyond a proof of concept. And it's a great way to learn how to do things properly as well, or at least better than before.
In my new iteration I'm planning on having the ships pretty much assemble themselves within the script instead of pre-assembling them in the editor as complex prefabs, as part of the modularization.
With regards to art and style, I've been examining XGRA for inspiration since, like Extreme G3, it has some incredible race tracks, probably some of the best I've ever seen. And it makes me wonder what a game like F-Zero would be like in those types of levels. There is only one way to find out! Nothing like getting inspired, and wanting to reach the final product so you can play it!
Now time utilize the available time properly and make things happen :D
Oh yeah, and I haven't given up on Star Gen 4 either, I just need to figure out a decent renderer, one that won't take a month to render a full skybox. It makes iteration and debugging rather painful!
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Monday, November 5, 2012
Descent controls
This is just a quick post about my recent experiences with Descent 2 and 3. While I don't think I've ever played Descent 2 all the way through, I must say that it's an interesting experience playing both games with an Xbox controller, and more or less at the same time.
Some of the key things I've noticed is that a proper controller setup makes all the difference in a game, even one as complex as Descent. At first I thought that the whole 6DoF would present an issue, but it didn't, especially with standard FPS controls. After a while it became pretty intuitive.
But one of the biggest differences that I felt was in how different the two games felt in terms of their movement. D2 (and probably D1) feel a lot more loose and floaty compared to D3 which has a damped and rigid feel; the ship doesn't drift as much. Now mind you that might have a lot to do with joystick deadzones and how they're setup in both games, but this goes back to how it affects the feel of the game. Something so simple having such a large effect.
Not that I don't mind D3's controls, if anything they feel a little more refined. At the same time, D2's controls just seem to fit the game just as well. Just goes to show how the whole package makes a game what it is :)
Yay game design!
Some of the key things I've noticed is that a proper controller setup makes all the difference in a game, even one as complex as Descent. At first I thought that the whole 6DoF would present an issue, but it didn't, especially with standard FPS controls. After a while it became pretty intuitive.
But one of the biggest differences that I felt was in how different the two games felt in terms of their movement. D2 (and probably D1) feel a lot more loose and floaty compared to D3 which has a damped and rigid feel; the ship doesn't drift as much. Now mind you that might have a lot to do with joystick deadzones and how they're setup in both games, but this goes back to how it affects the feel of the game. Something so simple having such a large effect.
Not that I don't mind D3's controls, if anything they feel a little more refined. At the same time, D2's controls just seem to fit the game just as well. Just goes to show how the whole package makes a game what it is :)
Yay game design!
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