This is a bit outside my usual area of expertise as a programmer, but seeing as world- and character building is often central to a game’s development, it makes perfect sense to dive into these topics. And what better way to start, than with character design! While the topic may seem fairly subjective and touchy-feely, there’s quite a few ground rules to go by, to ensure that you are doing a good job. With that being said, what is mentioned…
I previously covered how to connect your Unity client to a Google Drive spreadsheet and upload your telemetry data. Which is cool but not very useful if we can’t retrieve that data. One solution is to go into your Drive and download the spreadsheet manually, but that’s not really awesome. What we want is a client which not only downloads the data directly, but formats it and does cool telemetry-analytical-things to it! Downloading the data: Luckily, accessing the data stored…
During GDC 2019, there was a talk which particularly caught my interest. Originally because it was a postmorten for the game Subnautica – one of my favorite titles – but most importantly because I realized how well the game had been doing in early access, and how well recieved it was. I had originally just thought of it as luck. Sometimes you just make the right thing at the right time, and the market carries you on. A harmful assumption,…
What do games using loot drops and games using AI driven by behavioural parameters such as sleep, hunger and happiness have in common? At first glance, not much. But it is very likely that both of them deploy the same algorithm. Let’s start by example: There’s plenty of games using loot drops today. It’s an easy way to implement a form of replayability in a game, where character progression is tied to the gear they are wearing. By not guaranteeing…
This post is going to be a little bit different than what I have written so far, as the project presented here is a work in progress. However, it is for that reason exactly, that I thought it would be interesting to write about. Instead of presenting a fully functioning prototype, I will submit what I have done in the process so far, and update the post as work comes along. This will hopefully give you an idea of how…
Working on our Ecosystem student project, I deemed it appropriate to use a finite state-machine to dictate the logic of our animals. An implementation of the theory can be found here, although it makes little sense without the explanations from this article. Download the Unity Package file here A finite state-machine (FSM) is a way to graph and control AI behavior. While it is less commonly used in game development vs behavior trees (which facilitate more complex behaviors with longer…