Ice Ice Baby

                                              

(This ugly image of an ice cube is drawn by a developer who tired of using placeholder one-color images.)

Second week has passed. Sometimes I enjoyed coding, sometimes not. Anyway, I implemented some features.

Here is the list of things I did and some thoughts:

• Flixel is really cool library. For example, making fade in/out effect is just one line code. (Flash effect is that easy, too.) Also, it has a nice documentation.
• Dame is also cool. If you export as a CSV file, your code will be much smaller.
• Character controller, movements of the traps were coded. You can see those in the GIF. (I couldn't make the GIF properly. Actually, they are moving well.)

• I tried to design some levels. It was really hard. I will work on that later.
• By the way, I'm having trouble reseting the game after the ice cube dies. Deriving levels from FlxState is a solution, but I do not like that idea. Because I have to change the level switching also. If I do that, I have to add the character before every switching. (Maybe there is a solution but I couldn't find.) 

There are 2 weeks to the end of the internship. I hope, I'll finish most of the game.

Finding a Game Idea

I'm an intern in a game development company. During the internship, I'm going to do my own project.

First I needed to find a game idea and I started to think. Finding a game idea from scratch is REALLY HARD. Nothing came to my mind. Then, I decided to choose a theme and make a game on that theme. I went this site and "Ice/Igloo" came out as a theme. I got rid of the "igloo" part because I thought that it was very specific. I needed more general theme. 

I chose an ice cube for the main character. And I started to think about how the base mechanics is going to be. When we control the ice cube, If we press left for example, it's going to keep continue to go in that direction because of slippery surface of the ice cube. And the ice cube is going to melt, so we have to finish the level without melting completely.

After the base mechanics, I thought the story and found this:

Every ice cubes want to get rid of their ice cube tray and be free. The heaven for them is the north pole. They can enjoy the freedom in there without the idea of being in someone's drink.

Our character is also chasing this dream.

But it’s not that easy. You have to be so lucky. You have to wait somebody to cool his drink and take an ice cube. When he tries to take out, you have to pop out and run away instantly before the guy gets you.

After all that stressful experience, a new adventure is going to begin for you. You need to go north pole before melting completely. Also you’re going to have hard times with moving because of your slippery surface. There will be some traps which make you melt so fast. You need to be careful.

After all that difficulties, you are going to get your freedom.

(I think the story is not too bad.)

Here are the other decisions and thoughts:

• I'm having trouble designing the levels and making these levels hard.
• I tried to write high-level design document. Some part of it was really boring. It is still uncompleted.
• I'll make this game in Flixel. (Making 2D game in Unity is really painful.) For the map editor I'll use Dame.

Video and Webplayer are here

Gameplay video of the last version. Most of the problems were taken care of. You can play it here.

I'm going to take a break and I'm not going to work on that game for awhile.

I have some other ideas. Maybe I'll work on them.

Still working on

Since I've been in vacation, I couldn't do some things as I planned. In this period, I  added some codes, almost everytime it crushes something else. Finally, I made a short and playable version.

Here are the fancy properties of the game so far.

• Two different towers, rock thrower and electric thrower. I used this example to make the electric effect.
• There are five waves. After each wave, enemies are getting faster and having more health point. (Number of waves can be increased easily.)
• Requiring money for upgrades hasn't been done yet. It's disabled for now.
• Detecting and shooting the enemies is perfectly fine. (That means I haven't found a bug yet.)
• Buying and selling towers has been done. (We're selling the towers the price that we buy. But it should be less. I'll fix that later.)
• Ugly GUI that shows wave number, number of killed enemies and total enemies and number of enemies which reaches the end of the path is done.
• Going next wave is working.
• Game over condition is done. If ten enemies reach the end of the path then game over.
• Also "Congratulations" screen will appear if the game is finished succesfully.

Electric tower is shooting the damn enemies.

Money Money Money

Primary version of the buying towers system is completed. I also added a label that shows total number of enemies and number of enemies that are killed. Click the picture to enlarge.

Neater is Better

What did I do?

• Finally, I solved the problem of tower placement. Instead of using Camera.main.ScreenToWorldPoint(Input.mousePosition), I used Physics.Raycast to find the coordinates to build tower.
• I added health bar over enemies. But it's position is not consistent (Because of different resolutions). I will fix that problem.
• I deleted the ellipse-like shape under the tower to detect enemies. I used Physics.OverlapSphere, instead.
• I added enemy spawner.
• I created a transparent clynder and made y scale value very low. Thus, I obtained a circle. I used it to specify the fire range of the tower.

You can play this version of the game here.

Some improvements

Placement of towers is still problematic. I'm working on that.