Intro to Unity

Learning The Ropes

2/11/2022

While researching about the RE engine, I learned that in the early stages of development for RE7: BIOHAZARD that they used unity to develop alot of the core mechanics like the shooting and moving and base enviroments. My dream is to work on games in some capacity for a living, and so i have downloaded unity and begun to watch some of the tutorials and have started trying to tinker around with a 2D platformer, just trying to get my feet wet. The UI is alot to learn, but there are plenty of tutorials I can find that will show me the ropes.

Brackeys Tutorial

2/24/2022

Spent a few hours working through Brackeys Youtube mini-series "How to make a video game". The objective was to create a sort of obstacle avoiding flat plane game. I was following along but ended up steering a bit in my own direction and throwing some bowling pins at the end for some satisfaction upon reaching the end. Throughout this tutorial I learned the basics of the unity UI, learned how to add objects to the game world and how to use the rigid body and collider components, as well as wrote my first scripts for some movement and collison effects.

Package Deliverer

3/01/2022

I've enrolled in Udemy's subcription service, which has given me access to courses like GameDev.tv's popular "Complete C# Unity Game Developer 2D". During the first section of the course I made my first little 2D game. The objective of the game is to collect the pink squares(packages) around the map and deliver them to the various houses. There are yellow speed boosts around the map, and when you run into an obstacle your speed decreases. While making this game I was able to toy around with some map design as well as got some more familiarity with writing scripts for movement and increasing speed. I was also able to get a first look at trigger effects, which is when you run into an element and that triggers a reaction.

Editing Splines On Sprites

3/07/2022

Up next in the 2D game dev course, I am making a simple snowboarding game. The only objective is not to hit your head, other than that just have fun. In the first few videos i learned about how you can edit some sprites with a spline editor, and i was able to make this short little snowboarding track. My level design stills are still developing and they will get better with time!

Snowboarder Progress

3/14/2022

Had some fun(trouble) getting a cinemachine added into my heirachry while following along with the 2D game dev course. In the video after installing the necassary files, i was supposed to be able to just right click in the heirachry and add a new cinemachine that way. However it did not mention that somewhere along the line in one of the updates for Unitys UI, the cinemachine feature had boon moved to the tool bar on top for the UI. Took some figuring out but it up and working now!

Back in the saddle

3/20/2022

Had to take a bit of a break from working on the game dev Udemy course due to my winter quarter wrapping up and preparing for finals. Okay you got me, and elden ring. But with the quarter just about over and elden ring as well, the journey shall resume. Over spring break, I intend to complete the 2d game dev course i started, and then before winter quarter starts I plan to get started on GameDev.tv's "Complete C# Unity Game Developer 3D", also included with my Udemy subscription.

Carlos's Colliders

3/20/2022

My character "Carlos" is all set up and ready to hit the slopes. It was a bit tricky to be able to get the collider for the snowboard to fit around it properly, and if you look close you can see its still not perfect, but it will do. Struggled to find a way to rotate the collider, the only options were horizontal or vertical. I tried to delete the collider and retry a few times but it always looked a little skewed. This will suffice for now, maybe towards the end ill double back and see if i cant fix later.

Player Movement

3/20/2022

To get Carlos to fly down the slopes and be able to also rotate himself, i was taught to create a sort of conveyor belt that can work with an edge collider called a Surface Effector. With the surface effector i was able to add an effect to the snow which made it so any time the player was touching its collider the Carlos would be propelled forward at 15(not sure 15 what yet) speed. Then i added a PlayerMovement script to enable the player to rotate using Input.GetKey and AddForce and then formating it for the right and left arrow keys.

Trigger Trouble

3/20/2022

Its the littlest things that cause the biggest headaches! Spent about 30 minutes trying to figure out how come my Debug.Log() message wasnt coming up when the player hit his head on the ground. I tired switching the ground to a trigger and the player fell into the abyss. Then i tried adding another edge collider to the ground and making that a trigger, but then it was going off anytime the player hit the ground at all. I finally solved the issue by adding a second circle collider and making it a trigger then added it to the head of the player, and moved the component above the one with the collison collider on it, so that the trigger would activate before the collsion stopped it... and boom it worked!

Patricle effects

3/21/2022

Had my introduction to particle effects this morning, and i can tell im going to have some fun with these moving forward. I was able to create a little white and red explosion that occurs when Carlos crosses the finish line, as well as a blue and white effect when Carlos's head hits the ground. I did so by adding a particle effect system to the finish line and to Carlos. I toyed around with the size of the particles, the rate at which they are dispersed, how many are dispersed, how long they are dispersed, amongst other things. I dont think its part of the lessons, but at the end of this project i am going to add a particle system to the snowboard so that as the player rides through the course, snow flys off from the back of the board.

Oh No! An Avalanche!

3/21/2022

My snowboarding game is almost complete. I was mistaken when i mentioned earlier it that it was not apart of this tutorial to add particles effects to the snowboard when it is on the ground. It was in fact a part, but i was able to impliment that feature without watching the tutorial, which i am proud of. However i decided to take things a step further and use my newly learned particle system knowledge to simulate a avalanche as Carlos rides through the course. Right now it just follows the character but with some more tweaking i could probably get it to be just a bit more realistic!

Mission Status: Complete!

3/21/2022

Well every story comes to an end, and for my little snowboarding tutorial experiment that time has come. It has been fun, i have learned alot, such as particle systems, asset resizing, the bloody cinemachines, i also got to play around with Surface effectors and made a little conveyour belt for Carlos to ride on. After completing this portion of the tutorial, im starting to get more comfortable with Unity's UI, and i can defientley see my background in C# coming in handy as i progress. Id imagine not having knowledge of C# would make this learning process much more difficult. But 1 year into my computer science program i am really starting to feel confident in my ability to code in C#. This game may be complete, but their will be plenty more to come! My next project will be creating a game called "Quiz Masters". Stay tuned for more details :)