Hi everyone,

sorry for the late blogpost this time around.

To make up for it i will tell you some great news.
Our team has grown by another member!

We now have an additional developer called Andrew and he will help me with finishing the interaction system faster. He has previous experience with game development and with unity as well and supports us in other areas than developing as well.

As for a new update there will be one next week with a new map for you to explore.
Depending on our progress on the interaction system there might even be new functions concerning the gameplay, but i cant promise that.

This week we were busy planning and testing various stuff. Automapping still isnt working, custom properties arent showing up in unity yet, the maps need a little workover and the interaction system and code recreation are still in work.

Look forward to the update next week.


Thanks for your continuous support.

Best wishes

Feliza

Good evening everyone,

this week we worked on multiple things in order to improve the various methods we are using to do things.

Luna tried getting the automapping feature to work. Due to unknown reasons it isnt working though, even though she checked multiple sources for instructions and followed them. Thus we are currently waiting for the reply of the author of the article which we linked you before.

In addition to that Luna started working on a new map and i hope you are all looking forward to it.
She further explored the feature of custom properties, which we plan on using to identify objects and to save the loot and other things as the properties of the objects itself.

During that time i wanted to implement the raycast. During that process i realised that some parts of my sourcecode disappeared, probably due to playing back a backup... I then decided to implement a new backup solution, so the progress is saved each week after the blogpost.

I will work on recreating the source code which isnt there anymore(detection of the direction and stopping the walking animation when not moving) and update the game after i finish these changes.

Due to our exam period having started in real life Luna and I cant work on Noria as much as want right now, but I sincerly hope that you will stay loyal to us and check back for new updates each week.

Thanks for your continuous support.

Best wishes

Feliza

Good evening everyone,

this week Luna and I worked on testing out the Polygon Collider2d approach which has been described in the link posted in the previous post.

However there are still some technical difficulties, so we haven't really made as much progress as I hoped we would.
Nonetheless we managed to clarify what exactly we need to do to get this approach working.
While Luna will fix the issues with setting the rules next week, I will create a raycast(see my try of jewel miner) in order to detect the collision with the tiles.

The general idea is to have a collider for each group of objects(like stones, trees, etc) and then by using a raycast that will collide with it i will know what it is and can then start the according sourcecode.

I hope to finish the interaction system soon, so you all can enjoy playing Noria even more.

Thanks for your continuous support.

Best wishes

Feliza

Happy new year everyone,

i discovered an interesting article on the site of our program tiled( see here).

In this article there is an explanation of a feature called auto mapping.
With this we can simplify the process of placing colliders on the objects after setting a few rules.
Basically our rules will be like: if there is a tree on the field add a tree collider to it.

In addition to the advantages Luna has when building maps it is also possible to give the different tiles custom properties.

After i change the import script that Tiled2Unity uses the interaction system becomes a lot more simple.
By having different objects and not groups of objects in unity i can acess the custom properties of each object and thus determine what it is and what loot it gives.

Right now Luna and I are getting used to the auto mapping feature and to the script changes.
Using this approach i am sure that we will be able to finish the interaction system a bit faster than planned.

I hope you all look forward to the next game update, since it will bring many changes and follow this blog in the new year 2016.

Thanks for your continuous support.

Best wishes

Feliza

Good evening everyone,

this time there is just a small update to the game.

Luna worked on improving the collisions, however there are only small changes visible yet.
You can check the new collisions for yourself on the top forest map.
(I changed the button to walk again from 'w' to 'e' since i realized that some people might use wasd to move)
After the next week Luna will continue with her work and improve the collisions even further.

As for me: I have started planning out our individual interaction system.
I promised you some more details and here is my rough plan for it:

I will use a three dimensional array, i will save the x coordinate, y coordinate and a number corresponding to the object that is at that place in it. With this i can check which object the player is facing based on the coordinates and show the according menu.

In the background of this system there will be many classes for the different types of objects, like rocks, trees, water or flowers.( classes are kinda like instructions on how to build an object. )

So once the class of lets say a rock has been opened there is a method in it which will change the entries of a menu.
A method is kind of an action, like walking or talking. In this case it will change the entries of a text based menu.

From then on the player can decide what to do and a different class will perform the chosen action, like picking up an object.

I do believe that this will take some time to complete, so stay up to date and dont miss the time that you can see some changes again. :)

As always you can play the updated version here.

I wish all of you merry christmas and some relaxing days.
Thanks for your continuous support.

Best wishes

Feliza

Good evening,


this week Luna worked on testing new forms of colliders. Meaning she worked on the player not stopping too far from trees and other objects. Due to the fact that she is still in the middle of improving our maps there is no update for that this week.

I wanted to finish the interaction system this week. After i succesfully figured out the location of the object in front of the player, by taking the players position and direction into account i started looking for a way to figure out which object is at a given location in unity.
The result is that there is none.


There are two ways to create an interaction system in unity. The first would be to search in a list of all objects for the object you want. This is however not a good idea due to the performance suffering from it. The other method is to use colliders and once the player collides with an object a certain code is started and a program runs.

Since i want the player to be able to interact with every tile those solutions arent really suitable for this project.

I got some advice from a friend and decided to create my own system for this.
It will probably take several weeks, but the game will be faster and i can form the system to match my needs 100%.

The idea is to use a 2 dimensional array(imagine it like a table or grid) and store information about each location in my 2d world there. Once i finish planning the system i will tell you a bit more about it.

I have something else that i want to tell you today. In the week from the 21. december to the 27. december there will be no game or blog update due to the many christmas related events in this time.

Thanks for your continuous support.

Best wishes

Feliza

Good evening,


this week Luna fixed the graphics that didnt match at the edges of the maps.
In addition to that she created a new map for you to explore.

During the time that she spent working on improving the maps i finished the first step for the interaction system.
The first step was to make it possible to get the location of the player at any time.

Once i know the players location i have to check the direction the player is facing in and can then determine what object is in front of the player. This however will be implemented next week.

In order for it to be more fun to explore the map i have added a function to increase the player speed.
By pressing 'r' you start running and by pressing 'w' you continue walking.
The animation speed does not change corresponding to the movement speed though.

Please check out the new features and tell me your opinion in a comment.

You can play the updated version here.

Thanks for your continuous support.

Best wishes

Feliza