Okay, so you know how we said we'd take a break from writing devlogs for the holidays? Well, gamedev is our passion, so that didn't really stop us from continuing development of our new game. So we just have more stuff to write about! ^_^
"Table of Contents":
Title sequence
Weather effects - rain and sun
Inventory UI
Selection mechanic and player feedback
New plant models and model performance
Game Title Sequence
This time around, I decided to take a break from modeling for a few days and work on the UI a bit. To experiment with the transitions and the available UI elements in Unity, I took a stab at creating a rudimentary title sequence for our game. I learned a lot, and it turned out pretty decent, though unfinished. My favorite part is the loading screen:
Cool, huh?
Weather Effects
Meanwhile, Billy was experimenting with the rain mechanic and the day/night cycle, both of which will affect plant growth in our game.
Look at those shadows! Look at those rain drops! Look at those tomatoes!
Inventory UI
After getting the title sequence down, I had a bit more confidence to get the full inventory UI working. Before, we had the hotbar working. Now, we have 1) an expanded, full inventory, 2) a way to swap items between the full inventory and the hotbar, and 3) a way to display information about the selected item. Check it out!
Swap swap swap it out!
Selection and Player Feedback
One of our primary concerns for all of our games is player experience. We want the player to be able to navigate our game intuitively and effortlessly. So for the last few weeks, Billy focused on ways to give the player feedback through our game UI such that they know what they can and cannot do, why they can or cannot do something, and what's going on around them.
The grid cells indicate how much space an object takes (or will take) up, and the little indicators above the planted seeds indicate if the conditions are ideal. Also look at those pine trees grow!
New Plant Models
Check out the new plant models! Can you guess what they are? We're not telling ;-)
On a related note, we ran into performance issues while trying to instantiate a bunch of plant models on a non-gaming rig. Keep an eye out for our upcoming tech tip to see how we addressed those issues!
Before and after! We sacrificed very little in our optimization!
That's all, folks! Follow @AngryGoatGames on Twitter for more updates on our upcoming game! And may 2021 be the best year of your lives!
