Note: This is content which has been migrated from fidelumgames.wordpress.com, simply to provide a history and reference point for posts to come.

SITE LAUNCH & WHAT IS ‘THE WAYFARER’

Originally posted on August 14, 2017 on fidelumgames.wordpress.com

I’ve been working on my first large project for quite some time now, and if I have any hopes of having it be successful, I figure I’ll need an official site.

So I've made one. Check it out: fidelumgames.wordpress.com.

I started blogging over on GameDev.net, but decided I needed a centralized place to put everything related to the game, so I migrated that content onto my official site as well

As I continue to add development blogs, I’ll be continuing to post the content over on sites like GameDev.net and IndieDB.com, along with any other locations that I think will help get a bit of exposure. If there are any you’re aware of, feel free to leave a comment and share it!

As for what ‘The Wayfarer’ is, let me give a bit of an overview:

The Wayfarer is the tentative title of my current game development project.

In a nutshell, it’s an open world quest driven dungeon crawler with a strong focus on storytelling, lore, exploration and looting.

Imagine Legend of Grimrock meets The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall.

I’m developing in Unity and deploying primarily on desktop platforms, with plans for mobile as a secondary platform.

I’ve got big plans for this one.

Check out the other migrated posts to get up to speed!

MIGRATED POST 1: ALL OVER THE PLACE, NAILING THINGS DOWN, FINDING MY WAY (MOVEMENT AND PATHFINDING)

Originally posted on GameDev.net on January 3, 2017

ALL OVER THE PLACE

In my last post I discussed an Action/RPG/Platformer/Diabloesque/JRPG game that I had started working on, and showed a short prototype video. As if the genre of this game wasn’t already all over the place enough, I’ve since dropped the project (for now at least), and started work on something else.

The main reason for this was simply the lack of assets available to me for the game I wanted to make. I wanted to have fully modular armor for my character, but I simply couldn’t find the assets that I needed, even paid assets, and I can’t afford to hire an artist to create the level of sophistication for the armor that I wanted. This aspect of the game was really important to me, and without it, it just wouldn’t have felt complete. However, I happened upon a large number of highly reusable, customizable, affordable and high quality assets during my search which inspired me to go a slightly different route. Thanks to the prepaid Visa cards I got for Christmas, I was even able to buy a decent number of them ;).

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been a huge fan of First Person Dungeon Crawlers. The first that comes to mind is SSI’s 1991 game Eye of The Beholder which was awesome (somehow I thought that flipping through a book to find the copyright protection phrase actually added to the fun). Even writing this I get nostalgic thinking about similar games like Catacomb 3D, Arcana, Ultima Underworld, and of course, Daggerfall. This is a genre I’m always returning to. Even with AAA titles like Skyrim and Far Cry sitting on my computer, I’ll find myself putting them down in favor of playing old Dungeon Crawlers that I’d never heard of (like Anvil of Dawn).

In the last few years, I’ve been delighted whenever I’ve found a new title in the same vein as these classics, and to see how well they’ve been received.

Legend Of Grimrock did an amazing job of remaining true to these old classics while providing the added bonus of beautiful modern graphics, and has done incredibly well in terms of reception and sales.

Star Crawlers (even though it’s still in Early Access) manages to hang on to the meat of the genre while spicing it up with Sci-Fi flavors and innovative new features.

The Quest HD , a lesser known 2016 re-release of an older game is a full fledged first person dungeon crawler in beautiful 2D with open world environments and a great story. I might even argue that it outclasses many of the above titles in many ways. Really worth a look if you’re into this kind of thing.

I digress.

The point is: I really love these kinds of games. I don’t know if it’s something about the atmosphere, the storytelling, looting and killing or just the nostalgia of it all, but I think they stand out as my favorite genre.

So I’ve decided to make one!

NAILING THINGS DOWN

Like all of the games I come up with and want to make (very few of which even see as much as a keystroke of development), I’ve been thinking about this game pretty much non-stop for a couple of weeks. I’ve got a ton of ideas for the game–some to do with how to ‘stay true’ to the genre, some to do with how to deviate to add something original and worthwhile.

A few things I know for sure:

I’m tempted to add more in the above list, but, to stay on the safe side, I’ll make a second list of potential features currently under consideration:

FINDING MY WAY

Ok. You’ve listened to me rant about this new game idea I’m obsessed about, but talk is cheap. Here come a few things to look at as a reward for sticking through this post so far.

I’ve only had two development sessions on this game so far, and I think they both went well. In both cases, I spent a full day prior to my night-time dev session thinking on and off about how best to implement a feature, and in each session, I’ve been able to successfully implement at least a basically functional version of said feature in only a small amount of time.

The first of these is a simple movement controller.

The Code:

CharacterMovementController.cs:

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;

public class CharacterMovementController : MonoBehaviour {

    [SerializeField] //How long it should take to rotate or move the camera    
    private float animationTime = 0.35f;

    [SerializeField] //The amount to move the player by. Should be equal to the size of each level 'tile'    
    private float unitSize = 3f;

    [SerializeField]  //How much to rotate on each rotation (1 == 360?). This shouldn't change unless allowing diagonal movement    
    private float rotationAmount = 0.25f;

    [SerializeField] //How high off the ground the player sits.    
    private float playerHeight = 1.75f;

    [SerializeField] //The easeType to use for the iTween animation.    
    private iTween.EaseType easeType = iTween.EaseType.linear;

    [SerializeField] //This is used to determine appropriate positioning when climbing/descending uneven terrain.    
    private HeightProbe heightProbePrefab;
    private Hashtable iTweenArgs;
    private bool canMove = true;    //Initialize itween args    
    void Start() {
        iTweenArgs = new Hashtable();
        iTweenArgs["time"] = animationTime;
        iTweenArgs["oncompletetarget"] = this.gameObject;
        iTweenArgs["oncompleteparams"] = true;
        iTweenArgs["oncomplete"] = "ToggleMovement";
        iTweenArgs["easetype"] = easeType;
    }

    void Update() {
        /* Uncomment to allow these values to be manipulated via the inspector at runtime for testing        
         * iTweenArgs["time"] = animationTime;
         * iTweenArgs["easetype"] = easeType; 
        */

        //Move or rotate the player based on input.        
        if (canMove) {
            if (Input.GetKey(KeyCode.W)) {
                Move(transform.forward);
            } else if (Input.GetKey(KeyCode.S)) {
                Move(-transform.forward);
            } else if (Input.GetKey(KeyCode.D)) {
                Move(transform.right);
            } else if (Input.GetKey(KeyCode.A)) {
                Move(-transform.right);
            } else if (Input.GetKey(KeyCode.E)) {
                Rotate(Vector3.up);
            } else if (Input.GetKey(KeyCode.Q)) {
                Rotate(Vector3.down);
            }
        }
    }

    /* Move the player in the appropriate direction. First initialize newPosition based on direction, then create 
       a HeightProbe to determine the appropriate y value for newPosition. This allows easy vertical movement along both
       even and uneven terrain. HeightProbe destroys itself after FindFloorHeight() is called.    */
    private void Move(Vector3 directionVector) {
        Vector3 newPosition = transform.position + directionVector * unitSize;
        HeightProbe heightProbe = Instantiate(heightProbePrefab, newPosition, Quaternion.identity) as HeightProbe;
        newPosition.y = heightProbe.FindFloorHeight() + playerHeight;
        iTweenArgs["position"] = newPosition; ToggleMovement(false);
        iTween.MoveTo(this.gameObject, iTweenArgs);
    }

    private void Rotate(Vector3 rotationVector) {
        iTweenArgs["amount"] = rotationVector * rotationAmount;
        ToggleMovement(false);
        iTween.RotateBy(this.gameObject, iTweenArgs);
    }

    private void ToggleMovement(bool allowMovement) {
        canMove = allowMovement;
    }
}

HeightProbe.cs:

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;
public class HeightProbe : MonoBehaviour { 
      [SerializeField] 
      private float destructionDelay = 0.25f; 

      [SerializeField] // This should be set to only detect the floor in the future 
      private LayerMask layerMask; 

      public float FindFloorHeight() { 
            StartCoroutine(SelfDestruct()); 
            RaycastHit hit; 
            Physics.Raycast(transform.position, -transform.up, out hit, Mathf.Infinity,                   
            layerMask); 
            if (hit.transform) { 
                  return hit.point.y; 
            } else { 
                  return Mathf.NegativeInfinity;
            } 
      } 

      private IEnumerator SelfDestruct() { 
            yield return new WaitForSeconds(destructionDelay); 
            Destroy(gameObject); 
      }
}

Both of these scripts are super simple and will need some updating, but they give a nice final effect: