Judith on 20/10/2020 at 11:31
Yeah, the postprocess layer is cool, although it's easy to go overboard with this ;)
Tomi on 24/10/2020 at 10:31
Okay, I'm done with my little 2D space shooter training project for now. It's playable but not exactly fun, and not something that I'm interested in anymore. But the important thing is that I got to try out how to implement some common features that apply to just about any game, so this was a very useful experience.
Next I'm going to experiment with the Unity physics a bit, and try to create that ball game that I was talking about. The player rolls the ball around the screen, and there'll be obstacles and slopes and maybe little jumps. I'll try to keep it simple for now, I just want to see how to play around with the physics.
I'm already facing a little dilemma though. I've had a look at a couple of tutorials on how to make this sort of a game, and while most of them seem to follow the easier (?) Rigidbody path, there are other tutorials that recommend ditching that and using Character Controller instead. Apparently that gives you more control over everything, but having to program all the laws of physics sounds a bit too much for me for now. What is it that I can't do with Rigidbody? Of course Character Controller might be suitable for a game where advanced physics aren't important, but if I do want my game objects to follow the laws of physics, is there any reason to not to go with Rigidbody?
WingedKagouti on 24/10/2020 at 10:51
With Rigidbody you're bound by any potential bugs in the physics system. If the ball is the only moving object and the interactions are simple, you can get away with a far simpler system that you can bugfix yourself.
Pyrian on 24/10/2020 at 19:22
CharacterController really means you're not doing physics, you just want to take some of them into account without doing the heavy lifting yourself. It's ideally for things like FPS games and precision platformers. What it really does is create "hard" non-physics moves while taking into account the colliders around the character as it moves, so you can move along the floor and stop at walls without having to hand-program that.
Personally, I prefer to use physics and adjust to taste, but it certainly can be more work.
henke on 25/10/2020 at 04:59
I've only ever used Rigidbody for my physics stuff, which is pretty much every game I've made.
Your ball game doesn't sound complex enough to cause any significant physics glitches, so I say go with Rigidbody.
Tomi on 27/10/2020 at 19:50
I'm getting along slowly with my ball game. The physics stuff is quite hard to understand, and some of the properties don't seem to work like I think they should. At this point the player can move the ball around the screen, and I've made the camera follow the ball. There are also floating cubes that rotate and say bling when the player picks them up. All good so far.
The "level building" is making me crazy though. I mean, placing objects and stuff, rotating and moving and trying to snap them together. Compared to Unity, Dromed was simple and a pleasure to work with. I hope it just takes a little time to get used to.
The selection of standard 3D objects is very small. If I want to create some other shapes, like a wedge-shaped block for example, am I going to have to start making my own 3D objects? There's the asset store of course, but I haven't had a proper look at that yet.
Pyrian on 27/10/2020 at 21:24
You might want to take a look at Probuilder. It's a free package that has level design tools.
Tomi on 4/11/2020 at 11:36
Late reply here, but thanks for the recommendation Pyrian! ProBuilder is pretty much exactly what I was looking for, even though it too can be pretty damn complicated and I have no idea what 90% of the buttons do. It gets the very basic stuff done though, and that's enough for me for now. :)
I'm slowly trying to add new features in my ball game. The player can now switch between a couple of different balls that all act differently. There's the default ball, a super bouncy ball, and a red magnetic ball that attracts blue objects. :D The way how the magnetism works isn't exactly realistic - it's far from it really - but I'll tweak that later. Moving platforms that carry the player were surprisingly challenging to make, but in the end I got something that works well enough.
The built-in (ball) physics are causing me some headache too. It took me a while to figure out why any amount of friction didn't seem to affect the movement of the ball at all - apparently it's because the ball keeps rolling all the time (instead of sliding) so the friction doesn't affect it. Adding a bit of drag to the ball helps with that, but it messes up everything else! :p It's gonna take a while to tweak everything so that it works and feels right.
henke on 4/11/2020 at 11:54
Easiest way to stop a rigidbody ball from rolling is to check the freeze rotation constraints checkboxes.
Pyrian on 4/11/2020 at 17:33
Alternatively, put a distinctive texture on the ball so it's obvious that it's rolling.
