A Shiny Shirt
I thought I did well two weeks ago, I figured out how to say friend in elven and the door to the mines opened and in I went. This past week I felt like I got stabbed by a cave troll! Luckily, my mithril shirt saved me.
(Cue the flashback music and imagine the scene has an ethereal, old-timey feel to it.) The crazy, wild-haired troll gave me this quest to build a game. I tried to interject, however, he stopped me and before he disappeared he said, “your road is perilous and filled with many dangers and wrong turns. You must protect yourself. Take this shiny shirt, you’ll need it. Go forth and quest!” Shortly after he disappeared a fellow traveler, Mike@PAUSED, gave me all his support & best wishes. I have to say those two things really helped this past week. I don’t know if you’ve ever been stabbed by a cave troll but it’s weird.
Odd Jobs – DevBlog #1
I decided on a code name for my project, Odd Jobs, it fit. I planned several tasks for the past week, however, I only worked on a few of them. Life happened, so I made the most of it.
Monster Prefabs
September last year the Humble Unity Bundle appeared, this was Unity’s first Humble Bundle and I hope they have more of them. I got several hundred dollars worth of assets for a great deal and I supported a charity. Among many other asset packs I received the Heroic Fantasy Creatures Full Pack Volume 1 by Protofactor. I finally got a chance to test drive these assets and let me tell you there are tons of them, each with their own 3d models, materials, textures, prefabs, and scripts. I included a full list of monsters after the GIFs below.
I didn’t know where to start there was so much stuff, so I started with troll butt (oh my god Becky, look at that troll butt) and went from there. I added two trolls to my dungeon, a physically based rendered (PBR) version and a legacy version. I added the PBR troll first, which was too large to fit into my dungeon so I have to move him around and scale him down, I fixed the legacy troll before I made the GIFs below. I realized I needed a new sandbox to test out my additions.
PBR Troll 
Legacy Troll
The pack contained the following monsters:
- Chimera
- Cyclops
- Darkness Spider
- Demon Lord
- Dragonide
- Evil Watcher
- Fantasy Wolf
- Ghoul
- Giant Rat
- Giant Viper
- Goblin
- Golem
- Griffon
- Harpy
- Hobgoblin
- Hydra
- Kobold
- Lizard Warrior
- Manticore
- Mountain Dragon
- Mummy
- Ogre
- Orc
- Skeleton Knight
- Tree Ent
- Troll
- Undead
- Vampire
- Werewolf
- Wyvern
ProBuilder
Mike@Paused wrote about ProBuilder last week in his article Day 20: ProBuilder. I had heard of ProBuilder but I never looked into it, so I watched a Brackeys video MODELING IN UNITY?! – ProBuilder Tutorial. Woah! I need this in my life, especially after scaling down that troll butt. Next week, I will build a new sandbox environment so I can test my designs without having to miniaturize my trolls and dragons and such. My Trello board got a new task created tonight!
Game Design Document Research
The last thing I worked on last week was reading over a few different game design documents (GDD). I found four GDDs I wanted to read and learn from, namely the Diablo GDD, Grand Theft Auto GDD, Play With Fire GDD, and read Level 4: You Can Design a Game, but Can You Do the Paperwork? from Level Up! The Guide to Great Video Game Design, 2nd Ed by Scott Rogers. Scott said great things about GDDs and I suggest grabbing a copy of his book if you can. I enjoyed reading the various GDDs and learned quite a bit, in fact, did you know that the pitch for Diablo described it as a turn-based game? I sure didn’t.
Well I certainly didn’t write an entire GDD last week, however, I wrote out some bullet points for my Overall Description section.
- I like choose your own adventures and RPGs.
- I want to reverse the RPG stereotype.
- You are not a hero on a daring quest to save the land or a prince/princess.
- You need money to pay the bills and put food on the table.
- You do a series of odd jobs around town by checking the Town Hall Job Board or the Council Members.
- The Job Board allows town residents to post various jobs they need completed.
- The Council Members have specific quests they need completed to help expand and grow the town.
- The jobs reward the player with a multitude of different items, gold, food stuffs, equipment, etc.
- The odd jobs involve a branching RPG structure where decisions made alter the player’s path while doing the job. Not all options are available along all paths (like the original Wasteland game).
- A well-designed odd job resembles a Choose Your Own Adventure book from the 80s/90s.
I think I have the core of my game, Odd Jobs, defined here, the rest I will define in the coming weeks. What do you think of my overall design idea?
Keep on questing!
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