Project Humps
This LudumDare I was hit by a blaze of inspiration. I was soooo excited by this project!!! Then the truck of problems ran me over, several times.
Build a 3D Spatial Puzzle based on a secret phrase. The phrase is revealed when the person completes the puzzle.
Then I opened Unity3D and it constantly hit me with minor irritations, though to be fair I've gotten over most of those. The real stumbling block is lots and lots of obscure Math and Niggly technical problems.
Now an interesting problem is exciting and one which you can get your teeth into and gets you excited. One example of this is the generation of the spatial puzzle. Which is awesome procedural content generation.
No I'm talking about stupid little math problems, rotations, parenting and frankly silly stupid problems. Stuff which on paper is stupidly simple. Things like smoothing out camera behaviours, improving physics performances and glitches.
I think I can safely say 90% of the project has been hung up on technical glitches and minor issues. Not sure if I'm going to continue. Taking a breather and thinking about it again.
Prototype - Click to Try
WASD + QE = Camera Controls
Space = Break-up & Rotate Drag Piece
Left Mouse = Select Object
Right Mouse Drag = Drag Object Around
LD19: Discovery
Puzzle Scrambling itself with easy Physics
SSHeart: Secrets in the Space of my Heart
So this weekend the theme was Discovery which really inspired me. The plan was simple.
Build a 3D Spatial Puzzle based on a secret phrase. The phrase is revealed when the person completes the puzzle.
The idea is you could share secrets or even send messages to people in a playful fashion. I really like the concept.
Time Lapse
Cambridge Jam
The CB2 Jam was amazing! Really helped and I would have given up much sooner without it. A great atmosphere and a brilliant lot. So plan to make plans for any Jam that is planned at CB2. Also my first real location based jam. That wasn't just with house-mates or at Uni/school.
Also thanks to CB2 to being so accommodating.
Unity3D
I'm forcing myself to use Unity3D at the moment because of work. It's not my preferred package but its very powerful but its annoying to have to learn things on the LD weekend. A key thing you shouldn't be doing.
- Shaders: Still not quite sure what I think of the Unity3D system. I understand why it is the way it is but it takes a bit of getting used to. Though I love I can go to pure HLSL if I want to.
- Event Model: mmm quite nice, like the message system and of course the mouse interaction is nice. Also the gravity on axis configurations is awesome little cheat for quick tricks.
- Debugger: Unity3D really really falls down in this area I feel. Also not greatly impressed with Mono.
The rest were minor niggles but thanks to the Jam I was helped out a lot with those.
Future Plans
I plan to finish this before the new year, make it sparkely and easy to share phrases via the web. Also to greatly improve the random generation.