Expired Code

This week I will not be writing about exciting new features, but instead of something very serious and important: moldy code.

Forgetting to Close the Fridge
Most people are more excited about fresh food than the leftovers. I’ve been implementing features at lightning speed, but not putting any hours for code refactoring.
Always hack it in. If something works, just drop it (even if the implementation is half done). If it stops working, go back and fix it.
The Mold
A couple weeks of haxing […]

Master grapher

Pop ups
In our game we use space to pick up objects. To teach the player the controls we decided to have small prompts pop up when the player approaches something grabbable. After the player has picked up the object once, the prompt will no longer appear.
The concept for the pop up window.
The red circle in the image is a trigger collider, which spawns the prompt window as a game object when triggered. But having the prompt just appear out of […]

More enemies

As we move into production the focus turns to producing a bunch of fish. This week I implemented the behavior for these baddies:
Cute couple. (The head on the top is the male).
A sleep deprived moray eel. Finalized art.
Anglerfish
We wanted the anglerfish to feel creepy. When she notices the player (or another fish) she will stalk them by keeping herself within a set distance.
The concept for the stalking behavior.
She doesn’t actively try to attack the player, just stays in close proximity. […]

Tears are made of camera zoom

The size of the camera can be used to set the mood for the player. Look at this picture:
Guy in space
And then this picture:
Lonely guy in space. Don’t you feel bad for him?
Note the emotional impact! Now that you understand the great value of controlling camera zoom, let’s talk about how I implemented it in our game.
We want our level designers to have the tools to control camera zoom for different areas, like in the image below.
A zoomed-out area and […]

Intelligent fish

In our game you play as an exploration robot that look at fish, and later avoid getting bit by meaner fish.

Since you can’t kill any fish in the game, it’s important that they are interesting to interact with and swim around like actual fish. They are state machines, which makes it easy for us to reuse behaviors and organize logic. The fish use a bunch of trigger hitboxes to sense their surroundings.
An observant fish
When something enters the sight trigger, the […]