Update 43: Rebooting again

As I said at the beginning of the project, "this is a personal project and there will be breaks..." Sometimes it was days. Sometimes weeks. Occasionally a month. This time it was a lot of months. However, one of the interesting things I found about this project is I never stopped thinking about it. Most of the delay was caused by work and family commitments, but everyday I thought about what I should be doing next... 

Today, I'm back with a new reboot, using some assets from a "Simple Military" unity package, made by a New Zealand company called Synty Studios.

This in combination with a new design idea, (Hovertank Wars is dead again), still based on turn based combat (and XCOM), but set in a new environment that drastically reduces the scope of the project. and I think makes it all possible. Over the past three (!!!) years I've now created a turn based system with pathfinding, a UI, a dynamic camera system with killcam, loading/saving, destructive environments, random levels and even a basic AI. 

It's time to take all of this and create a complete game. I look forward to (re-) starting this journey again!

Update 42: Unity 5 and Unity Cloud Builds

I knew I would vanish for a few months eventually - the Christmas break last year was apparently the trigger. I haven't posted for a while, but I started development again about a month ago when Unity 5 was released.

Along with this was a new cloud build system that works with GitHub. 

This is a pretty neat feature that allows me to automatically build and deploy web versions of my game.

This is big news for me as it means I have a more repeatable and independent process. I have a few more hours left to transfer over the content into my Unity 5 project, and then I'll start implementing some new features.

Update 41: Code Reorganization

This last week has been productive and I have almost completed path finding! This involved a complete reorganization of the code files to implement namespaces. The new structure really enabled me to connect all the pieces together so that I can now click around my levels, moving my units from side to side. My new namespace structure looks like this:

Characters
--Actions
--Pathfinding
--UI
Common
LevelEnvironment
Main
--UI

I debated having UI at the root level with "Main" and "Character" children, but ultimately decided that these UI elements would be completely different. The diagram below should what the code map looks like after the new reorganization:

I've also developed a process to implement new features in a safe and comprehensive way, using several levels of prototyping. This is similar to branching, which many software development processes use (but I do not). My process usually starts with an almost blank level. Once the feature has been implemented, I usually integrate my new feature up to one of my intermediate test levels, testing in a controlled environment with a few buttons to test movement and shooting. This is typically my 'tank test' level which has a few static objects and buttons to constrict movement, almost in a unit test sort of way for regression testing. The final step of my process is to integrate in the feature with my actual game levels. This means it can take a while for a new feature to make it into the game, but it's also a comfortable way for me to test new features and not put them into the main game until I am ready. 

I've been using this with path finding really successfully, which is why I'm confident I will have it complete by the end of November.

Finally, I have the bug of the month. In the top design view panel, you can see an in progress picture with a sample level. All of the red nodes indicate areas that are not-walkable, generated by my path finding. In the bottom game view panel , you can see that... I have no grass/ground. Where did my ground go? It turned out it was a relatively simple problem, my camera had turned off the option to show the ground, but it did create a few interesting levels...

Update 40: Dynamic Pathfinding

The last two weeks have been focused on getting a basic dynamic path finding algorithm to work. This includes getting the object to follow the seeker path, and allowing for dynamic environments.

The first screenshot shows where I've been up until today. The path finding is 'baked' into the screen and there is a path from the beginning (green gate) to end (red gate).

The second screenshot shows me what it looks like with some dynamic objects added to the scene and dynamic 'baking'. Here I can see that my green path adjusted to avoid the new dynamic obstacles and created a new path to the end gate.

The ultimate test of this is to move the end gate to the other end of the screen. 

This is all good news. Now that my prototype is working, I can integrate the path finding within my game.

Update 39: Exploring Pathfinding

Another week, another round of bugs fixed.

• Added some basic sounds for explosions and shooting
• Fixed some bugs around shooting when I missed. The bullet would stop at the target, instead of continuing into the sunset. 
• Upgraded the shooting range modifier using the formula:
• RangeModifier = 50 - ([tiles between source & target * 5)
• Upgraded the AI to choose the best target based on the difficulty, instead of taking the first enemy off the list
• Started work on creating a path finding solution. I'm using the Aron A* Pathfinding Project. You can see an early prototype below. The first screenshot shows no smoothing, the second with smoothing.

Update 38: Adding messages and more polish

This week I added a messaging system and fixed bugs. The messages show a status with showing a hit or miss with each shot . This really ties each action to a result, which I think is important.

I also have a few bloopers. This is a result of my very simple movement AI. When two tanks get close to one another, the physics pushes one of top of another, in a manner very similar to a tectonic plate in the earth's crust, but creating some humorous situations.

Next week I'll have some initial path finding results, after having some success this week using Aron's path finding plugin.

Update 37: Polishing the new UI

Another productive week, where I created more prototypes than I ever have before (in game development). When we last left off, I had created a GUI with a very discrete representation of health. 

The next step was to try and use the parallelogram design that so many modern games use. Fellow Turn based development enthusiast Stew Trezise (His website: boymeetsdinosaur.com) mocked up the following design: 

My first attempt seemed to have the health cells a little tight together. It looked great in the mock up, but needed more room. 

It also needed a slightly bigger border to give it more definition. The next revision was starting to make sense, but the empty health cells were not quite looking right as a white color.

I experimented with different colors before settling on no color. Here is the (current) final version, with transparent empty health cells.

As soon as I integrated this in the game (which was very easy since I was working off a GUI prefab), I noticed that having so many GUI's visible was a bit distracting. My solution was to show the selected player (and target) with the normal brightness and lower the transparency of everyone else by about 50%.

This works well, especially when there are a lot of units piled on top of each other.

Next, I'm going to work on creating a little hover to indicate status (and health) changes.