Monday, February 28, 2011

Alien Zombies Unity 3D Game Progress

OK so I found a script on "Unity Answers" that is making my Alien Zombie at least animate vertically, only I'm having trouble with this one too, !!!???!!! Seems my Alien Zombie will now run on the spot and the tail end of his "Run Attack" animation seems to "Stutter" for lack of a better description. I also still cant seem to figure out how to get his to chase after me when I get close and how to have him give my FPS controller damage when he attacks. I'll need to make an animation where he is ripping and biting but for now I REALLY need these issues solved before I can start with the fine tuning. The script on the right is what I have attached to my Alien Zombie now.




Sunday, February 27, 2011

Unity FPS Game Development Progress

I got some simple animation for my "Alien Zombies" done, they'll need additional tweaking once I figure out how to get them to work properly in my Unity game. Right now I have so many issues I'm trying to figure out:
1- When I import my Zombies in their eyes don't match up and fit to their heads the way they are supposed to, don't know why that is because in Max 8 they seem to work just fine?!?
2- When I try and have them animate in Unity 3D they animate horizontally and face down, this happens when I add the "Robot AI" script from the FPS tutorial on unity's website so that could be the problem, I've been trying to modify that script to work without weapons as my zombie aliens will have no guns only teeth and claws.

3- My muzzle flash on my machine gun is STILL NOT WORKING!! Now this has been an endless source of stress as I'm sure the problem is something simple but I'm just NOT seeing it, I've been upwards and downwards all over that FPS tutorial trying to see where my gun might be set up differently from theirs and I can't seem to see where the problem is

4- I have created a "Sliding door" animation in unity 3D using their built in animator as it's just a very simple animation that I can add sound to later when it's working, note that fun word again, "When it's Working" Oh the animation works fine, my problem is in trying to find a script that will open the doors when I get close to them, or even on a Key press would do nicely if I can find such an animal that is?!?! More hair pulling there I can tell you!!

In the meantime while trying to sort those issues out with no such luck yet I figured I would spend a little time of some of the terrain details like adding trees, setting up my trails for the player to follow and trying to block off areas of the map I don't want players to wander into as they are supposed to follow a choice of paths that will lead to various areas of the map where they will find clues on where they need to go next. I started work on Farmer Bob's house which is basically the starts of the game, yes I know I'm kind of all over the place on this project, but that is because I have it pretty much in my head what I want to do at this point so it's a matter of just sitting down and getting things going for 12+ hrs a day.

Friday, February 25, 2011

Alien Zombie Run Attack TestAnimation

Zombie Alien Death

My Unity FPS 3D game progress

OK so I figured a use for my on just Idle Zombie Alien because in the beginning part of my game I figure I'll have one live alien walking or just standing around all dazed and confused, maybe "Shell Shocked" is a better word, he's not supposed to attack, but he can be shot, I gave him the character damage script and his "dead replacement" which is one of the "rag dolls" but I notice after he's shot his eyes drop out of his head for some reason, I don't know why that is??? But he dies real well, even gave him a cool alien death sound when he kicks it too. lol



Also a continuing frustration is my blasted muzzle flash on my machine gun is on all the time, I can't seem to figure out what is going on there, I keep comparing the way my setup is to the FPS tutorial on the Unity 3D web site and they both look the same so it's REALLY starting to piss me off not being able to figure out what is going on there!?! I think what I might try and do is see if I can copy their FPS Controller into my project folder and just add my weapons and see if that is where the problem is, if that doesn't work I'll try the same thing with the machine gun, if that fails I just don't frakin know!!





Thursday, February 24, 2011

My Unity FPS 3D game progress

Ok so I'm trying to figure out how to get my Zombie alien into my Unity game, right now I've made an "Idle" animation, this is for when we have our "Alien Zombie" just standing around doing nothing until he sees you and then I'll need to make an animation for that, right now I just threw him in to test him out. I think I still need to tweak the Envelopes on his Biped in Max a little as his geometry looks a little messed up in a few places. I also need to see if I can either get an AI script or somehow tweak the ones from the FPS tutorial for the robot sentries, hopefully that will work although I'm not sure how because the zombies have no guns, I've hear ed of using "Ray casts" and that might be what I'll have to read up on next... greeeeeat... more of that fancy book learnin ;)

You might enjoy the video uploads on a few of my animation tests for this pose of our Alien Zombie ;)

AlienZombieIdleTestAnimation.avi



This hopefully will be my Idle animation for one of my "Alien Zombies" that are to go into the FPS Unity 3D game I've been working on. Animation is not really my thing and I had been trying to figure out if I needed to have all of my animations in one file or time-line or if they needed to be separat?? I could not seem to find any good tutorials anywhere explaining just exactly how to do that so I've opted for a seperate animation for each of his states, this is his "Idle" animation for when he is just standing around not doing anything, I need to make a "Zombie-like" walk cycle, and an attack cycle... not really sure how to approach those yet.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

AlienZombieTestAnimation.mov



A test animation for a Zombie alien which is to eventually go into my Unity 3D FPS game I have been slowly developing, I say slowly because it is very much a learn as I go process which is painfully slow as I don't have a clue what I'm doing most of the time. lol



Even animating characters is new to me, I've usually just been happy to make models and leave the animation to those with way more talent in that department, but since I'm on my own with this game project I have to learn it, and slow going it is ;)



Wednesday, February 16, 2011

FPS Game Development Progress

Here is a little update on what I've been able to do in my game so far.

I did add the GUI by following the FPS tutorial on the Unity 3D web site but I could not get the script figured out for adding my Grenade launcher, you see in part one of the tutorial they show you how to make a grenade launcher, so I made a custom one with custom grenades as the tutorial yours just shoots spheres that explode, but mine I made nice custom grenades and tweaked the explosion using the "Detonator" add on pack in Unity. But in the later parts of the FPS tutorial series the don't use the grenade launcher any more for some strange reason so it's difficult for me to try and figure out how to add it, I have figured out how to add it to my player weapons list and I can easily select it when I want it, but I just can't, for now anyways figure out how to add it to my GUI script.






Next up on that Oh so fun list of game creation issues is the robot, for now I'm using the tutorial's robot as a learning too which I'll replace with my own crap later on when I feel comfortable enough with what I'm doing, but right now I can't get their blasted robot to work properly, as you can see in my top example he looks all sort of squished down for some reason, I've gone over that part of the tutorial 5 or six times following it to the letter and I still get the same problem... He follows me on sight OK and shoots and all that fun stuff, just when I add his animation script he ends up all fraked up??


While that hair puller has been giving me stress I did manage to get my exploding crates, just the big one to leave a nice damaged and burned out crate behind when they explode, big crates have more hit points so it takes a lot to destroy them, seemed logical to me.


I also added some nice light poles to my military base and added lights inside of the light hoods in both the hangar and Barracks.


My Machine gun's muzzle flash Is now working properly, something I'm not quite understanding in the tutorial which is probably something simple, but I'm missing it


Overall it's been both a frustrating and productive week.

UPDATE!! This morning I had an Eureka moment and figured out what was wrong with my robot. I figured that maybe if he gets all fraked up when I add his AIAnimation script that maybe the scale in my animations is not matching the scale of my robot in scene.... and yup, wouldn't you know it, that was it, problem solved on that hair pulling issue.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

FPS Game Development

So in the spirit of trying something new that I have long, long been interested in is video games. Ever since I was a wee lad and had played my first coin operated video game I was interested in them, as the technology progressed I got even more amazed at how they were made but had never really had the chance to get into that industry even though I now many years later make 3D models that have sometimes found them selves in a game that some indie game designer has created.

Well now technology has finally caught up to me where now even someone with my limited technical expertise can make a game. I stumbled across this very cool game creation software from Unity3D.com that allows you to do just that, it's AMAZING what I have been able to do with it these last few weeks, I'm still green as hell and learning, that Java Code is no picnic but I'm beginning to understand some of it a little the more I play around with it.

I started out by importing my spooky graveyard model into Unity 3D originally just to see how my stuff actually looks or even if it would work in a game environment. It took me quite some time to figure out why my FPC (First Person Controller) kept falling through the floor, but figure it out I did. After texturing the model and adding collision detection I was hooked, I thought; "Hmmm... what else can I do with this? So I browsed through my vast collection of 3D models I have made to see what else I could throw into this stew pot.

So I added my Creepy UFO crash. The aliens didn't import in but the saucer went in perfectly, my guess is, is that my aliens need to be a little less heavy polygon count wise. But I figured out how to add fire and sound so my crashed saucer wreck is burning, emitting sparks from the control console and crackling fire sounds emitting from the fire, glowing console elements the works. I even added my derelict barn in there too which looks like the UFO crashed into it on the way down as there is fire on the roof.

The landscape in Unity 3D is huge, it's a long walk from the Spooky graveyard area to the Crashed UFO. What started to happen was my landscape started to tell a story so now I'm thinking if I can figure out how to get "Zombie Aliens" to fight in this game that will be super cool, but I'm a long way off from figuring out quite how to do that as of yet. At this stage all my FPC could do was run around and explore my 3D world I have created, fun but not super engaging. But adding all the scenic element to my game will take a long time so I'm kind of "Learn as I go" with this project.

Thinking a lot more about my game environment I went back over to my spooky graveyard area and added in my "Old Hill Fence" model which kind of separates my graveyard and spooky old haunted house area from an Ancient stone circle which I added also because you just know that UFOs and ancient stone circles go together like bullets and guns, lol



More and more my landscape is starting to take shape. I figured I needed a cool area to really have a fun time shooting Zombie Aliens in, a "Kill Zone" if you like? So I created a derelict factory or refinery of some sort with 3 floors, a nice grungy restroom, pipes, ducts, a stair well, all kinds of areas for which nastyness could be awaiting around every corner.

I have that imported into Unity 3D way over on the other side of my game terrain. Right nest to my "Roswell" Like aircraft hangar complete with a crashed UFO inside. The way I'm figuring things so far is that the secret military base has one or several crashed saucer, something went wrong and now there are Zombie Aliens have overrun the base.

I eventually figured out how to give my FPC a grenade launcher by following one of the online tutorials. So now I can shoot objects in the game. I added a toxic waste dump close to the spooky graveyard area and added toxic waste barrels that I had to create.

The default grenade for the tutorial is just a simple sphere, which I think they call "Game placeholders" which are what is just put in place until you replace it with your actual intended prop.
But for now I was very impressed with the fact that I was able to get a gun going and some interactivity with my game. By adding "Ridged Bodies" and "Capsule Colliders" to my Toxic waste barrels you can blast the dickens out of them and they fly all over the place, I boosted their "Mass" in the property inspector so they don't fly around like paper they actually have some... well "weightiness" to them more like actual barrels filled with toxic waste.

As you can see in my sample, my grenades are pretty simple, I eventually figured out how to replace them with a new grenade prop I made.








They kept launching from my grenade launcher vertically, but I fixed that. For some reason I had to go back into MAX and rotate the model 90 degrees, but that fixed it.

Next I needed some wooden crates I figured for inside my Hangar since the tutorial for the grenade launcher gave you just boxes to shoot, I figured I would get ahead of myself a little and make wooden crates instead.









Everything in my game terrain I figure must sort of tell a story and help the story along a little. So I'm thinking for fun. You were not originally supposed to be able to get inside of the saucer wreck but playing around one afternoon I discovered that if you blast the crates around in just the right way you can jump on top of them and gain access to the wrecked saucer. So inside I'll have to hide some sort of super weapon of clearly alien design for those gamers mad enough to muck about with that very idea of getting inside of the saucer. I remember playing video games and having endless fun hunting for just such "Easter Eggs" and hidden game bonuses.

My crates have a nice heavy mass on the big ones and smaller Mass setting on the smaller ones so they blast really nicely. I was having issues with my HUD (Heads Up Display) for my Games GUI (Graphic User Interface) it always wanted to load up in the upper left hand corner whenever I tried my game out full screen inside of the Unity 3D editor but I eventually found out why that was so it didn't need fixing, just the way I was viewing my game tests did lol.

I've been trying to get my crates to make a nice crashing sound when they hit the floor or crash into each other but I'm not having much luck, I got them to make a sound when they collide with each other but not when they hit the ground, I need a good tutorial on this because I'm clearly missing something in the java code when I do it.

Mean while I've been adding more scenic details like crazy, I added a devastated guard shack for my military base. Another detail to help sell the story of "Alien Zombies" that have gotten out of hand and overrun the base. The guard shack has blood on the floor, UFO document's scattered about, a bulletin board with UFO pictures of recovered UFOs stored in the "Roswell" like hangar. Even a military CB communications radio that makes a Psycho interference sound the closer you get to it so it sounds like it either not receiving properly or just malfunctioning.

I added a fence around the military compound so the only way onto the base is by way of the guard shack entrance. I also managed to make my grenade explosion a lot more dynamic given that it's a futuristic type of grenade the explosion is super powerful and way more realistic, I used the "Detonator pack" at Unity3D.com and tweaked the "Fragments" so they are more fire-like and glow. That explosion is so wicked that if you are too close the force from the explosion will actually push you back, AWESOME!! frakin AWESOME.

So that should bring you all up to speed on what I've been up to this past month. I am so impressed that I have been actually able to do this in just a little under a month. I might actually be able to make a game out of all of this, who knows maybe I might be able to lease the game and actually make some $$$ for a change lol. Anyways now I'm off to try and finish up my Barracks for the military base, in which is a grisly scene ;)