Update 13: Alpha 1.0

After an extended summer break, I've picked back up where I left things in June. I now have my first, very basic vertical slice of a basic tactical warfare game. There is still no player movement, but I do have cover and shooting. Everyone has a 75% chance of hitting. The player has slightly more health to give him a better chance of sticking around. 

Most importantly, I have a build that works from beginning to end. The players take turns, and if the game doesn't crash, the last team standing wins! 

There are bugs, especially when characters die, sometimes the game gets stuck and crashes.

[Link removed to upload the newer and better Alpha 1.1]

Update 11: Chipping away at the basic game

It's been a busy few months for me as I had a new baby girl, kicked off two major projects at work and worked on a variety of outside spring projects in the backyard.

I have still been chipping away, converting my characters into Unity Prefabs, working with selecting objects on clicks and finally, getting the first, very basic turns working. It's always two steps forward and then one step back. Fixing a shooting bug introduces a camera bug, which when fixed creates a UI bug.  

Tonight was typical. I rewrote the shooting mechanics, everything looked good, I fired it up, and then.... nothing. One of the downfalls of game development is that a lot of the debugging tools are still behind that of most web applications. I did figure out the issue, but my code is riddled with Debug.Log statements that track my progress.

It is coming along. Here are 4 screen shots that for the first time are beginning to show the basic workflow. Please ignore the obvious clipping and camera issues.

Turn 1 Player: The isometric camera scrolls to center over the player. The player can see two targets (ninjas). Clicking on these centers the isometric camera over the enemies.

Turn 1 Player Shooting: the player then presses/enables the shooting button, which switches to the player cam view. Here the player has 3 options. 1, shoot the current target. 2. using Tab, switch between the other targets. 3. Press escape and go back to the first screenshot.

Turn 2 Enemy. After the player has show, it's the enemy turn. The same rules apply as turn 1, but now it's the enemy. Note that I now appear in the enemy/target list on the bottom right

Turn 2 Enemy Shooting: Ditto, but with the enemy again.

Update 5: Starting the Engine Prototype

With a basic plan, and some knowledge of the Unity Development Engine courtesy of some online training programs, a few books (see references at the bottom of the post) and some videos, I'm ready to start the engine prototype. The goal of this prototype is to have a basic turn based game. No fancy effects, just a 3D map, with player and enemy objects that can move and shoot each other.

With this is mind, I created a short work plan with a list of tasks that would have me building the prototype in a few months. I know that much of what I will be developing will be brand new and slow. Shooting, moving, path finding, object selection, map building: it's all going to be a new adventure. 

So far, I've been able to replicate the same basic prototype level I created in Google Sketch-up and added a camera to examine the level. I wasn't 100% happy with the result, but I also had to look back at it and say “it’s OK, lets look at this more later”. It just seemed to me that I started with this powerful graphics engine and made things look so… BUDGET, by making it into an isometric view. I can see myself definitely going back to a Perspective view soon.

But lets look at the positives. I created a level. I added a camera that could scroll and move. I then downloaded a free model that had WASD movement (with keys) built in. It even shoots... It was progress. Next I'm going to add some enemies and some basic shooting.

The 3 books I referenced are:

Game Coding Complete, 4th Edition

Unity 3.x Game Development Essentials

Game Development with Unity