Postmortem: Wands and Warheads

The project has come to a close. We nailed our pitch and did the best we could for the playtesting session, but at the end of the day, Wands and Warheads was not chosen to go forward into the next semester. It's unfortunate. All that work we did to setup the game for success, and have it stopped before it can truly manifest. It was a long, fun trip, but it's one that ended before it was finished.

Wands and Warheads was originally made by accident. When the semester began our two potential games were a Guild Management Game and a Hardcore 2D Survival Game. As placeholder for the ranged weapons in the survival game our designer used a fireball effect, which was an unexpectedly huge hit in class. This led us to rethink our options and games, and from that came Wands and Warheads, which replaced the Guild Management Game.

For me this jump was a big switch. The Guild Management Game had been my piece of the conception phase, so it was hard to let go of. However, it would have been much harder to make work than Wands and Warheads, so it was ultimately the right decision, Once we chose Wands and Warheads to be our game going forward, I took over the map and navigation systems as my main focus, with little additions to other systems based on time and need. I also contributed to the art in the game in the form of spells and a few items.

Working on the map was an interesting graphical challenge. I had very few issues and bugs pop up that weren't graphical in nature, which is unfortunately my weakest area. I couldn't add a new feature to the map without the graphics bugging out in some way. It was also an interesting design challenge. I was left mostly alone to make the map as I please. As the game world was updated, so to was the map. However, I had to constantly reference John's plans to make sure I revealed enough info for the map to be useful, but not so much it was trivial to navigate and showed all the world's secrets. This eventually led to the balance of towns being marked while single houses were not. Since the map was so closely tied to John's work, I created the map with the intent of being easily adaptable. This worked well in the long run, since there was one week were the map was changed in some way almost everyday, and updating the map was simple since most it had handled most of it automatically.

There were certain key decisions we made this semester that pushed the game the direction it did. The biggest one was our decision to drop the Guild Manager and double down on the Survival Game with Wands and Warheads. Without that one decision, we would have ended up in a much different place, and I don't think the whole team would have been as happy with it as we are with Wands and Warheads. The next big decision is our switch from Fantasy Survival to Survival RPG. Originally Wands and Warheads was just a less punishing version of the Hardcore Survival Game with fantasy elements. This was a quick change in focus and a very easy one, but one that worked out very well and without it we could of had a very different game. It also helped differentiate the games and gave us a much more defined goal for Wands and Warheads. The last was our choice to move away from a most standard progression system and switch to an option based system. Instead of having certain weapons be better than others, they are balanced around specific playstyles. The high damage weapons carry much more risk compared to the lower damage weapons, in the form of resource use and how much you expose yourself to danger. This gave our combat a much more refined focus and made the game more fun. Being contained to a single level did make this choice easier and stronger weapons would have shown up down the line, but it would be sets of weapons instead of single ones, to keep that balance of playstyles.

Going forward into next semester, I've been placed on the team Superfluous Amounts of Spectacular. They're making Dan Shredder. While I plan to try and avoid the graphics side of things, I learned plenty about Unity shaders during the creation of my map that I could maybe apply to one of my tasks in the new team. I also learned plenty about working better with a team. We of Chimera Inc worked very well together, possibly the best team I've had in any production class, and as such I feel I learned more of what is the right way to work with others as opposed to other teams were I learned what not to do more than anything. I hope I can be a valuable asset to SAoS going forward and we make a damn good game.

Week 10: Final Progress

We have entered the final week. No more major changes are being added by the team to minimize risk. Everyone is focusing on polish and bug fixes, myself included.

To start off the week, I found a multitude of tracks for the team to pick from to replace our current game music. Our placeholder music has been replaced with something more official and rights free. Should we choose to do so in the future we can compose our own score, but this music will keep us from running into any legal trouble.

I made a few more fixes related to the marker system. The text on the markers is finally working, however a new bug has popped up related to the shader. It is incompatible with the text and only renders the text as a black box. Currently I have not been able to pinpoint a fix so the text is currently disabled. If a fix can be found before the final pitch then it shall be applied, but only if it does not break anything further.

I also worked on a quality of life change of being able to delete specific markers using the marker menu. I almost had a solution within the current system, but it would not find the markers it was supposed to. However, it is applicable under a new, marker specific system that can be done should our game go forward. The backend work required means this needs to be put on hold for now to minimize the risk at this point in development.

Should anything new pop up that is game breaking I shall work toward fixing it in these last few days, but for now all looks well from my end and I can lend more assistance to my team in their endeavors should they require it.

Week 9: End in Sight

The game is starting to wrap up in preparation for our final pitch in a few weeks. We have brought together all our necessary features and the bugs are being squashed.

One particularly stubborn bug on my end, lighting showing up on the map, has finally been fixed. Last week I got a shader to remove the lighting, but it distorted the colors of various props. Nothing seemed to work. Fixing the colors caused the lighting to return while removing the lighting would just re-break the colors. At one point I had even removed some colors and rendered them as just white with a black outline. My final solution ended up being a simple one, instead of trying to keep the map's normal colors I applied a color filter to the whole thing. I gave it a sepia tone to look more like an old, faded paper map. The color issues were masked and the lighting was completely removed.

I also fixed another bugs related to entering buildings, where the mask applied to the player camera also applied to the map. My last change directly to the map was adding and removing specific structures from the map. This is to give the player something to find and keep track of with their markers.

Onto the markers themselves, I have completed their final iteration for the time being. I would have liked to do more, but fixing the maps bugs was more important since the markers at least worked as intended, they just lacked extra functionality. Some of my original goals are in place, but the rest has been put on hold. If was are chosen to continue development after our final pitch, I will give the markers the full functionality they deserve.

Week 8: Unity Documentation Woes

This week, I was pretty much going in blind for all my tasks. Having done very little with Unity's UI, I needed to learn a lot from scratch. What I couldn't have predicted is how little Unity 5 seems to have out there. I've spent up to an hour just to find the replacement for a method found in every Unity answer and tutorial. Others are so vague it takes incredibly specific searches to finally find that single answer that actually explains what is happening. Unity 5 seems to have shaken up more than I expected, and I lost a decent amount of time to searching in circles.

The marker system is finally resembling what I envisioned it as. Markers are limited on the map. They are given a unique color to be easily differentiated on the map. They still require names and I'm considering a warning popup to let the player know a marker is going to be removed when they hit the cap. Choosing which marker to remove would be the ideal situation, but this simpler system works for now.

Lighting bug is still a problem, though now for different reasons. I was able to get replacement shaders working, but all the ones I have tried so far distort the colors of the objects that are visible on the map. I've tried a few different edits to fix the colors but they make no difference, so I'm probably missing something in relation to how these shaders are working. As soon as I figure out the color issue I will probably use it to apply a "map" look. Just having them working as mostly intended is a great start though, and it can be easily tinkered with going forward.

Week 7: Adventures in Unity UI

A new week, a new task. This week the team decided it would be a good idea to add the finial systems and refine those we have already completed to be in a more complete state. I was to look back at the map and refine the markers system. The way they work now is a rough implementation, and it makes it too easy to navigate. The bug with lighting also needs to be removed so the player can no longer cheat with the flashlight to find their position on the map.

First, the markers. Current implementation lets you spam markers while also placing an infinite amount of them on the map. If you spam placed them while moving you can create a trail that lets you know the exact path between different points. You still have to remember the general landmarks along the path, but it's a power that can be abused. Under the new system, you would have a limit on the markers you can place, but the markers would be nameable so you know exactly what each was for. This requires a lot of UI work, something I'm not very good or familiar with. The marker keybind needs to open a menu instead of just placing the button. The menu will have the name of each marker with a second way to identify it on the map, probably by color. It will also have a button to add a new color and a box to enter the name for that marker. This is all new ground for me, and still requires a lot of work to complete.

Next, the lighting bug. I've looked around a lot, but something I did not anticipate was that almost all my searches would turn up outdated info. In the switch to Unity 5, Unity also made drastic changes to its shader system. None of the previous solutions exist in Unity 5, so I need to create my own solution. I have the advantage of not know shaders in previous versions of Unity so it's all new for me, but I still have a bit to learn and tinker with. If I can't come up with a working solution through shaders, I can fall back on the pre-render/post-render functions for the map's camera.

Going into next week I will continue working on these problems and have them complete in time for our next stage challenge.

Week 6: Onto the Next Step

We have successfully completed our first stage and begun to work toward stage two. We have gone forward with out Magical, more RPG oriented survival game; Wizards and Warheads. The team is all incredibly excited to turn our full attention on this game. We have great plans and we can't wait to see them all implemented and functioning.

Last week I made a map. This week I made a better one. The previous map worked as a proof of concept, but was ultimately useless for what we wanted it to achieve. This new map is much more robust and adaptable to our level. It's easily editable by the designer as he makes changes to the overall map. It was done using the layer system in Unity, a system I have never used before and honestly did not know existed. By creating and setting layers, the camera used to display the map can ignore specific objects in the playspace that should not be shown on the map. The same applies to the player camera, map specific objects are ignored while the rest are displayed.

I added a marker system to the map to take advantage of the layer system. Players can place these on their map to mark important landmarks they might find along their travels. This can be used to help a player navigate the level and keep track of their target, the large boss monster terrorizing the towns. I had planned on using a different marking system that allowed the player to draw directly on the map, which would have made tracking the monster easier but much more fun as well. Unfortunately it was buggy, imprecise, and ultimately did not work with the way I was creating the map.

I also did some more rune art. Two runes made it in based on the style of the current fire rune, but I have decided to remake all the runes in a new style to work better with our magic system. The current rune style is not easily expandable beyond those we have now, but my new concepts will allow for a much greater number of spell runes.

Week 5: Plans in Motion

The prototypes are finally coming together. We have completed our discipline reviews and are on track to enter the next stage of development with one of our games. The team is in full agreement on which we will take forward starting tomorrow as we bring in the finishing touches for both games.

This week I had a goal that seemed simple on the outside but in reality was much more complicated, especially in a 2D space. I was tasked with making a map for the player to reference during gameplay. The map itself was simple. However, the hard part comes with our secondary goal, making the map slowly reveal itself as you explore. For 3D games this is easy since you can use multiple layers and remove a mask using ray casting. In 2D this is not possible in the same way, though perhaps it can be done off screen using relative coordinates. This will be a goal for next week.

I've also volunteered my non-existent art skills to help with some assets for the game. Having no artist we have to work with what we have, and I'm confident enough in the little ability I have to make a few assets for the game.

I think we are finally not only on the right path but a unified one, and I can't wait to see where we will take our game in the coming weeks.