Gem Glitz update and one-year retrospect

I renamed Gemswap to Gem Glitz, sounds cuter. Also it'll probably not be in Stella's cottage in its final location. Too fancy. But it'll be in there for now.

Tada! Added in a user interface and made everything look much nicer. It's almost done. Dropping down new gems works, adding points works, mechanically speaking everything works.

I just need to add buttons for "Send score" and "Exit," add a twinkling gem hint if the user hasn't made a selection in a while, add some audio effects, and some sparkly particle effects when a match it made. Basically just make it more exciting to play. I'm also lazy and decided it'll be like the classic untimed Bejeweled and just have a game over when there's no more matches.

It's been one year and one day since I made my first post on this blog. That first post was just three drawings of fruit trees. Since then, so much has been done — a 3D pony that walks around, interactable objects like fruit trees that have their fruits fall and bounce, basically an entire mini-game, the manifestation of a quirky NPC and her cottage, the beginnings of a town called Merryville, a bit of a user interface, an item editor that reads and exports XML, particle effects, the start of an inventory system, and so on.

I'm pretty proud of what I've accomplished. It's been fun. I hope someday I can make a game that others can enjoy playing as much as I enjoy working on it.

Gemswap mini-game

I decided to work on a mini-game. It'll be a match-3, currently called Gemswap. I was trying to think of something that would fit in Stella's cottage, as it will be the first interior I do, but I was coming up blank. I decided match-3 games are decently fun.

A game within a game... but at least this game is much more do-able.

So far what I got working:

• Generates a random board
• The board generated does not have any matches right off the bat
• You can swap the gems around properly

What I'll need to work on:

• Removing matches and adding them to your score
• When a match is removed, the board is filled up again

I'm not sure if I want to do a game where the game is over when a timer runs out, or if I want to do one that ends when there is no more moves. 

After I determine that, I'd need to work on those specific tasks. And once that is complete, I can work on prettier gems, particle effects, a graphical interface, and other fancy stuff.

Item Editor

Haven't been working on any fun art or visual stuff lately. But I am learning how to use WPF to create an item editor.

It was pretty interesting setting this up. It doesn't look super great, but it gets the job done.

The next hard part for me will be to actually sync up the XML file generated by my item editor into Unity. Fingers crossed that it isn't too difficult.

What I want to accomplish:

• Get my items.xml working in Unity
• Get a working scene/game manager
• Create Stella Portabella's cottage interior
• Create one simple mini-game
• And lastly, once I complete all those tasks, maybe work on some networking. Dun dun dun

Trees!

Hehehe, trees!

Inspired by maples, downy birch, and silver birch.

Future tree types: oak, elm, magnolia, and dogwood

So many things.

I like to do things in spurts. So here's some things that have been done lately:

Animations and particle effects! Also notice that little location marker the pony walks to? It's a small thing that needs a bit more work, but... razzle-dazzle.

And transparency when going behind large objects. And some regular trees! And an iron fence. And Stella' cottage!

I figured transparency would be pretty important with a game with a perspective like this. Everything being flat, and with some objects being tall and big, it would be pretty annoying to have your character hidden behind these things. It'd also result in wider level-design, as without transparency you wouldn't be able to see anything behind large objects, so there'd be no use placing objects behind one another.

Some things I'd like to progress on:

•  Interiors, specifically Stella's, since she has story and character, which would make it more interesting to work on. However, with multiple scenes I would need to work on...
• Scene/game managers. Currently I just have this once messy scene that I test everything in. In order to make new scenes right now, I'd need to copy and paste the player and camera into each scene. I should probably make a script that spawns my character automatically in every scene where I want characters to spawn.
• The town of Merryville, where Stella lives. Town name's semi-undecided. Laying out a whole map of what the town looks like would be a good idea, to properly gauge size and playability. This game isn't going to be fast-paced, it's meant to be a chill, fun, pony-filled land. A Ponyland, you could say. But because the ponies move at a rather leisurely pace, I want to make sure the maps are condensed and interesting no matter where you are. I'd rather avoid vast, empty maps. 
• Inventory system would be a great first piece of interface work. But alas, with inventories come XML files and thinking about how things are going to communicate with servers and bleh. Maybe a cute saddlebag inventory icon could be enough to work on for now.