Week 1 - The Very Start

Daring Diamond Defence

Week 1 of development

Daring Diamond Defence has entered it's initial development stages! For this first week of development, our focus has been on implementing designs for levels that we have made, creating a range of models for player equipment and weapons, and introducing the very basic elements of functionality to the game. From this base established in the first week, we hope to be able to expand easily to creating more content.

Our progress so far

1. Level Design

While plans for the first level were being drawn up, a test level was completed to allow for quick development and testing of early functionality. This level was constructed using the ProBuilder package, an extremely handy tool for creating and manipulating 3D models totally from within Unity!

The level mostly consists of 2d planes for the outside walls of the environment, since the player will only ever see one side of them (unless something goes very wrong). 3D shapes are used for the props within the level which players will navigate around, and so far these props are just soulless grey shapes representing were something more fancy will eventually take its place.

For the first level design, we have created a floor layout and the implementation of that layout can be seen below. Some changes were made when implementing the level, mostly in the form of simplifying the geometry of the environment. This design will be added to and developed over the next week until we have what should be a completed layout. 

2. Functionality

To hit the ground running, we decided to use an asset we found on the Unity Store for the player movement - Mini first person controller. This allowed us to quickly start developing other aspects of the game functionality without worry too much about the finer details. Once we have the basics set up, we will go back and revise the player movement as necessary.

For enemy movement, we want the goons to follow fairly rigid paths which have been predetermined. We need this in order for the enemies to move in predictable ways that the player can anticipate and plan for, rather than enemies always taking the path of least resistance and taking non-obvious routes. To do this, we simply placed a series of "nodes" around the level (just empty game objects) which cover the path we want the enemies to take and add them to a list. Enemy objects will then simply cycle through the list of nodes, travelling to whichever is next.

Above is the list of nodes included in a particular path. Upon spawning, enemies are assigned what path to follow, after which they will cycle through each node in order, travelling to the location of each one. Once an enemy has reached the final node, they will simply move along the path in reverse order back to the start.

Here you can see a green line which is drawn between each of the nodes of a path. This helps to visualise the paths for debugging purposes and during level building.

In addition to basic movement along paths, enemies can also grab the diamond and start taking it with them back to one of the exits, as seen above. In the demo above, you might also notice a bug where the enemy will double back on themselves before going to grab the diamond - the cause of this error is known and will be fixed... I promise.

As we iron out the bugs in the basic functionality of the game in the coming weeks, we will need also need to think about how enemies behave once the diamond has been grabbed. Should they keep spawning? Should they all turn around? Should they continue as normal? With more and more testing, it remains to be seen.

3. Models

Right from the start, we've been hard at work getting various models ready for use. In the early stages of the project, we are mainly focussing on developing weapon and equipment models which will be used in the project in the coming weeks. In addition, models have been created for the diamond and various shapes of vases for simple decoration.

What Next?

By this time next week, we aim to have implemented:

• Level Design
  • One completed level layout
    
  • One prototype level layout
• Player
  • At least 1 weapon, including its model and functionality (ideally 2)
    
• Enemies
  • Refined movement - little to no bugs
  • At least 2 types of enemy
• Models

  
  

  • Water bucket
  • Power washer
  • One enemy model (this might take more time then expected)

Come back next week to see how we failed to meet these goals!

(hopefully not...)