This week, we've been focused on reorganization as well as working on a new area that just opened up. Exciting stuff!
Model Redesign
A lot of focus this week has been on getting the aesthetic of our game right as well as figuring out a better workflow regarding the assets.
One big ticket item we've been working on concerns the scaling of world. We want the game to have a cartoony feel so the sizes don't have to reflect real life, but we don't want it to feel too out of place. For example, before:
Yes...That is a jumbo strawberry, towering over the tomato plants and squaring off against the pine trees.
Not only is the main character far too tiny, the size range is unmanageable, and the overall aesthetic is just a mess. Now with everything resized:
Much better! Also...notice anything different with our main character? She's colored! And she has hair now!
New Area
Title speaks for itself! Take a look! What could this be???????? We're not saying yet :-)
A machine? How could such an advanced technology be found in a treehouse????
New Database System
With the original prototype for the game, we were using XML to hold our database items. After a complete redesign, we moved all the data to inside the components of individual prefabs. When we want to create a new prefab, we just add 5-10 components to the prefab, set the data, and we're all good! :sweat drop:
This posed a lot of problems and was super complicated to remember all the steps just to add one plant. This lead us to Unity's ScriptableObject class! We will write a full tech tip on this later, but now adding a new plant is as simple as importing the Blender Model, setting all the data in a _single_ ScriptableObject instance, then hitting the button "Generate" on the plant!
Saves us a lot of time.
To create a new plant we just click "Generate Plant". All the components we need are automatically added to the plant based on the "Object Data DB" which is a ScriptableObject!
All the properties of our plants are in one ScriptableObject. Each one will trigger adding new components to our prefabs during the "Generate Plant" button click!
Adding a new item data is as simple as a few mouse clicks in the Unity editor!
Stay tuned in the future for an AGG Tech Tip on ScriptableObjects in the future!
And that's all, folks! Follow @AngryGoatGames on Twitter for more updates on our upcoming game!
