Dev Log #6: week 52-2014/01-2015

Just to decrease boredom, in this post, I’ll try to write less text and put more images!

Ladders and one-way platforms

  • The support for ladders was already existent, but there were some things still to complete, like unsticking from the ladder when arriving to the destination, top or bottom.
  • When you reach the top, if there is a plarform, it should not collide. The collider is disabled, but we should reenable it somewhere. It’s done on the player state change, when it changes from INLADDER to IDLE or WALK.
  • We should also let some degree of freedom when the player wants to unstick from the ladder when it’s almost on the destination. I used 3 types of AREAS (triggers) Ladder_Top, Ladder, Ladder_Bottom.

ladder

Prefabs support in HUDEditor

I worked on a kind of prefab system for the main editor.

Prefabs are a cool way of instancing data across your work.

If you are editing a Menu page, you can create a button prefab, then use it on several pages, and then change it’s appearance, size, color or whatever and all the pages where this prefab is used will suffer this modification. In our case, I can start populating the rooms of the world with prefabs like torches, ladders, doors or whatever, and later polish them, adding particles to the torches (for instance). This way I’m avoiding having to add the same particles to all the torches of all the rooms in the world.

Curious because, as a lonely developer, I preferred investing some time (2 days) on a feature which will help me improve lazyness : )

Prefab support is only at Editor level, not Engine. From the Engine stand point nothing has changed.

Procedural texture creation using Neo Texture Edit.

I started working with Neo Texture Edit. I created several materials with it and seems a good way of creating materials and variations for levels.

  • I had some problems with the save files. They didn’t load after 4 hours of work. I had to tweak between versions just to recover the work.
  • I  found difficult to create some materials because the result was really artificial. I think it can be a good base to start working on some materials, and later modify them under the image processing application of your choice.
Neo texture edit in action.

Neo texture edit in action.

Some materials

Some materials created.

Room with new materials.

A room with new materials.

World projected UVs in Sprite Editor.

I added support for world projected UVs in the Sprite Editor. This simple technique has some interesting benefits.

  • Keeps the pixel density constant.
  • Improves variety in the level edition.

This system is similar to the level mapping used in the old Quake2.

World Projected UV Coordinates

World Projected UV Coordinates

We use only 1 sprite, a brick, but the system, gives you many variations and they fit seamlessly.

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