WOTS_2 "Loading maps in-game & basic player movement / animations"

One of the main things I didn't like about the map editor was how unfriendly the UI was. It was straightforward as I had intended it to be, but it just felt claustrophobic. So I redid the bottom bar:

I modeled the new bottom bar UI after SimCity 2013 which I thought was a great way to do it. You now also have "Nodes" although the only one is the player's spawn point.

Most importantly, I wanted to be able to test these maps out so that I could start working on gameplay. So I worked on making so maps could be loaded in-game instead of just the map editor, along with a test player:

So far this should all be mostly synced over the network which is important to work on as I make the game. I also worked on polishing the player's arms which included making the weapon swing when you moved your screen around:

And also both walking & running animations were implemented:

So that's it for this update, new UI, maps can be loaded in-game, and the player has some basic polishing done!

Also if you're curious about the map, this was a map made in the map editor so that I could see what it was like to try and make a map with it & where the editor needed improvement. It's made up of 254 objects and not very big. Because the map editor uses up so many objects it's likely I'll late have to work on a system for combining objects for optimization but that's a bit of ways off.

Sincerely,
Blake Gillman

WOTS_1 "Things so far"

Wow has it been awhile since I used this blog! I decided to come back to it for a few reasons, but one of the big ones was memories. It feels good to go back through the blog and see the projects I've worked on over time & how I worked on them. Another big point is that with the release of They Can't Stop All Of Us (which I never posted about on this blog) I have a brand new audience of people interested in what I'm working on & what's coming next which gives me more motivation to share my work publicly.

Not every update is super exciting, one week maybe all I did was add a couple features to the map editor that no one cares about, but I think that it'll still be a lot of fun, and very engaging for people who are interested in seeing what's going on.

So with that out of the way, here's the new game I'm working on. It's a gang shooter inspired by Police Stories & Payday called We Own These Streets. In this game you play as a member of a gang. The story is linear, you take on missions after mission attempting to grow the strength & influence of the gang. The game will also feature a map editor so players can make their own custom missions with their own story. The map editor is being designed for both official maps & custom mappers which means all official maps made for the game will be made with the same map editor that workshop users will have access to, meaning whatever tools are created for the developers the workshop community will also have access to.

This map editor will allow you to be extremely creative. You will be able to pick what outfit the player starts with, what enemies there are to fight, what weapons will be available to the player, etc. With this in mind I can imagine amazing maps such as zombie survival or military compound raids. It's likely I'll have a few example maps made when the game releases.

So with that all out of the way, what exists in the game right now?

Right now a basic main menu with a detailed background:

This is the second version of the main menu background, so it's likely it & the UI itself will change in the future.

But most of the work so far has been on the map editor:

It's still very much a work in progress, but a lot has been done so far. You can place down objects from a list and view objects by their category. You can select an object in the scene, to the left you can see all of the objects you've placed down & to the right you can see the properties of the object which lets you adjust its position & rotation:

Loading/Saving maps also works, you can save the map to a file with any name you want:

And you can also load the map. On most games there's one universal setting for how objects should load, but I decided to do something unique that I don't think any other game has done before. You can select how intensely you want the map to load. Most modern computers will be able to handle the "Fast" option, but for lower-tier computers you can select the "Normal" and "Slow" options.

By handle I also mean see increased performance. For example my computer loads the map at the same speed for both the "Fast" and "Fastest" options since my computer can't keep up with "fastest" and slows it down while using up more processing than had I just selected "Fast".

Maps can't yet be loaded in-game only in the map editor, but I'm working on that right now. By default maps in-game will load at the speed "Normal" as a balance between fast & slow computers although this may end up being an adjustable setting in the future.

So that's what there is so far, a map editor with some basic object placement/functions & a system for saving/loading. You can also snap to the grid by holding left control and place multiple objects by holding left shift. And a basic main menu with a cool background! Definitely a lot more to work on, so I hope to see you all in the next updates!

Sincerely,

Blake Gillman