Hello everyone!  

Just a short little update about what happened the last couple of days! I will try to make this entry fewer words and visual stuff.  
Since this week was kind of hectic for me I did not make that much progress. I mainly tried to work on creating a couple of basic models and implement a simple first person controller.

First Person Controller

For this, I basically copied some stuff from earlier projects. Since I don't really need any fancy stuff this should be totally enough for this project. Currently, the controller supports the standard movement with the keyboard and controlling the camera with the mouse. You can press E in order to interact with stuff and press the left mouse button to fire your weapon. I might add jumping and sprinting at a later time if I feel like the map design needs those two features. 

Energy Blaster

This weapon will be the main weapon for the player. It shoots simple energy projectiles that deal damage on impact. I might add the ability to charge up the projectile in order to deal more damage. 

The first image shows the energy blaster on a small pedestal from which the player will be able to pick up the weapon. Yes, I know the particle effects are super ugly but I just throw them on there in a couple of seconds in order to make it look more interesting. The second animation shows the player equipped with the Energy Blaster and shooting at the basic robot enemy. Currently, the AI is only able to look at the enemy while bravely taking all the shots and dying on the third hit.   

Energy and Portal Crystal

I already mentioned these two items in my first part. The Energy Crystal will be used as the main credit of the game. It can be used in multiple ways like restoring your own energy, upgrading weapons, or buying other items at some kind of vendor that I have yet to find a specification for. The second type is the Portal Crystal. In each "dungeon" level you have to find this crystal in order to activate the portal that leads to the next dungeon. Different actions might be required in order to get this Crystal (Killing a boss, solving a puzzle, complete a platforming challenge).

Switches and Laserbeams

Another thing I started working on is a simple system for switches. I tried to implement them in a pretty unspecific way in order to allow switches to control a wide variety of objects. Because of this switches can also interact with multiple objects. I am currently trying to get used to using Interfaces a lot more. I realized that this makes a lot of stuff easier. I simply created a general switch and switch target class. The laserbeams implement the switch target interface. This allows the actual switch to interact with every target in only one line of code.  I will also use this for different types of weapons, enemies and items.

This short animation shows the player interacting with a standard switch which toggles the three laser beams blocking the player's access to the portal. Yes I know everything looks ugly. Especially the laser beams and the portal. I have yet to find a way to create an interesting laser effect. The model for the portal is a basic placeholder and has no function yet. 

Next Steps

For the next steps, I want to focus on creating more map objects in order to create a first basic level that contains the very core gameplay elements. I also need to find a way to push this project more into the direction of an actual dungeon crawler. Yes, I said I want to go a little bit abstract but I really don't want to fail the basic requirements of this challenge.  I think I will go for a pretty basic map design in order to make randomly generated dungeons more easily. Currently, I am thinking of "The Binding of Isaac" kind of Rooms that are connected on a grid. Afterward, I could fill these rooms with different elements in order to support puzzles, fighting and a vendor type of room. I have done randomly generated levels on this basic before so it might be a good idea to do it again. 

My biggest fear is still that I made the scope for this project WAAAY too big in order to finish in time. All the progress I have shown in this entry was from two evening sessions of Blender and Unity. Guess I have to stay focused and use the next week which will be free of work. So I got a lot more time for GameDev stuff at the moment.  But as I said. I currently like this project idea a lot so I really think I will continue working on this project after the challenge is done. 

Guess that was all for this week.

Thanks for reading and until next time!  

- Znippy

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