Don't Turn... #5
- harveyjamesfleming
- May 18, 2023
- 4 min read
Interact with checkpoints
So when I read the design document our designer had put together, I actually misread the part about how the checkpoints worked. They were intended to be interacted with which would play a resting animation and while resting, would heal the player whereas the version I made would heal when you enter the area around the checkpoint.
In order to achieve this i adjusted the begin healing method to only trigger if the player is inside the checkpoint trigger and presses W (Our interact key). This also plays a small walking animation where the player moves to a point and crouches to rest. The player can also press W again to exit the resting animation.
Checkpoint heal exploits
Healing was initiated when the player presses the interact button but this lead to one of our play testers spamming the W key to initiate and stop the resting method, causing them to heal quickly every time they reinitiated resting, this was not intended so i had to add another check to only start healing the player when they had finished moving to the rest point in the checkpoint trigger.
This stopped initial spam of the key but then if the player waits until they are over said point, then they can spam the button and heal quickly.
One way I can think of to stop this would be to add a timer that starts when the player exits the checkpoint by pressing the w key and if they attempted to rest at the checkpoint again, the heal would only execute if that timer had finished.
Second playtest panic
When we went to build the game for our second playtest, there was a large number of systems not working properly, like player movement. So we made a development build of the game so we could see errors appearing in the logs, and it seemed a lot of references to scripts and objects weren't working as intended and this was because I used On Validate for some of the references as a way to clean up the inspector, however I found out after discovering these errors by reading the Unity Doc(Technologies, Version 2021.3) that it is an editor-only function and is not called on a build of the game so I had to replace all the On Validate calls and put them in Start.
Grapple Hook, The bane of a Programmers Existence
11
My task for this week was to create a grapple hook for the final section of our game.
Now there was some miscommunication when I was assigned this task, as I believe there was a difference in schema's when it came to what a grapple hook was.
I wrongfully assumed that we wanted a 'Spider-Man' like grapple hook that swung the player. Which due to the complexity of this mechanic, I spent two weeks working on this before ultimately realising my mistake.
When the grey box of the final area was uploaded, I realised that the position of the grapple 'hooks' would make it very difficult to use the current version of the hook, so after talking to the designer we agreed that I should rewrite the grapple hook to pull the player towards the hook, similar to Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice's grapple.
Before I talk about the new version, I want to go over my original process:
I did some Research online on YouTube and forums , like these https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xgh4v1w5DxU&t=0s (DanisTutorials, 2020)
https://www.kodeco.com/348-make-a-2d-grappling-hook-game-in-unity-part-1 (Make a 2D Grappling Hook Game in Unity – Part 1, n.d.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPjuTK91MA8&t=105s (Dave / GameDevelopment, 2022)
These suggested using either a spring joint or a distance joint to connect the player to the grapple 'hook'. This did produce a swinging motion around the point. However it was very difficult to adjust the possible distance range the player could be while swinging. The 3D version of the spring joint has a minimum and maximum distance variable already attached to it, however the 2D version does not. so if the player attached to close to the grapple 'hook', the player and the ''hook' would continuously collide and violently shake instead of swing.
To fix this, I had to insert my own check to see if the distance between them was too small and the bring it up to a minimum value if it was. Not a difficult fix but I didn't understand why it wasn't included in the 2D joint.
Another problem was when the player attaches from too far away, they wouldn't be able to swing as they would just hit the floor, this is when i looked online and found this article https://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/tutorials/swinging-physics-for-player-movement-as-seen-in-spider-man-2-and-energy-hook--gamedev-8782 (Jamie Fristrom, 2013), which has a lot of very useful tips on how to make a successful swing grapple and also tackle the problem i was having. The article suggested simply, checking how far above the floor the player was and if they were too close, slowly move the player up and then swing.
Before I implemented this however is when I realised my mistake and rewrote the grapple, simply using a lerp function instead to move the player towards the hook.
If the player died while pulling an enemy toward them , the player would pull the enemy with them to the checkpoint, as the grapple is only stopped once the enemy is within a certain range of the player. This was fixed by calling the stop grapple function which disconnected the player and the enemy to stop the enemy being pulled.
Overall this week has taught me the importance of communicating and checking ideas and visions, as the rewrite could have been avoided. In future I will make sure I ask how the team wants mechanics to work to avoid wasting time making a mechanic that doesn't play the way it was intended to.
References
Technologies, U. (Version 2021.3). Unity - Scripting API: MonoBehaviour. OnValidate(). Retrieved 8 April 2023, from https://docs-unity-cn.translate.goog/ScriptReference/MonoBehaviour.OnValidate.html?_x_tr_sl=zh-CN&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc
Dave / GameDevelopment (Director). (2022, September 18). ADVANCED SWINGING in 9 MINUTES - Unity Tutorial. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPjuTK91MA8
DanisTutorials (Director). (2020, March 23). How to Make Grappling Gun in Unity (Tutorial)—YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xgh4v1w5DxU
Make a 2D Grappling Hook Game in Unity – Part 1. (n.d.). Kodeco.Com. Retrieved 25 April 2023, from https://www.kodeco.com/348-make-a-2d-grappling-hook-game-in-unity-part-1
Jamie Fristrom. (2013, June 5). Swinging Physics for Player Movement (As Seen in Spider-Man 2 and Energy Hook). Game Development Envato Tuts+. https://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/tutorials/swinging-physics-for-player-movement-as-seen-in-spider-man-2-and-energy-hook--gamedev-8782
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