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[Mephansteras]

I remember that game! I used to have a stand-alone version of it on my computer that I'd play.

[Kashyyk]

I've been sitting on a game-wide mechanic for a while, and have been trying to think of ways to make a good story out of it (possibly not the best way round to do it, but hey).

The player starts at full power, able to one-hit groups of mooks and kill most bosses without much of a sweat. However, these mobs and bosses just respawn whenever you leave, so the only way to permanently make an area safe is to seal the boss in a can by sacrificing some of your power. Losing this power could cause you have less mana or health, do less damage, lose access to high level abilities, etc. This keeps on going until the player struggles to take down a single mook and binds the last of themselves to seal off the final boss.

I was thinking it could work in a Dark Souls-esque world, but I was wondering what you guys thought of it.

[Mephansteras]

Would make for a good 'god sacrificing their divinity for the good of all' story arc.

[Parsely]

I want to make a 2D isometric RTS in Unity. It was recommended to me that, instead of just making a pure isometric 2D game, I should do a 3D project and rotate the camera to an isometric perspective, and set it to orthographic.

What is the advantage of making a 2D iso game using 2D sprites in a 3D environment, and where do I start?

E: Someone gave me a push. Anyone have good resources for making 3D meshes?

Also, here are some links I dug up while I was doing research:

[9:19 AM] GUNINANRUNIN: Resources i'm collecting:
http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php/GridMove controlling characters on a 2D map
http://www.policyalmanac.org/games/aStarTutorial.htm A* pathfinding for beginners
http://unitydojo.blogspot.com/2014/05/rts-unity-tutorial-together-part-1.html guy walks through developing an RTS
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcGWkWha2wFd5Azr14ZJjvfnAmUKM_3E7&spfreload=10 strategy game related unity videos
https://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/tutorials/creating-isometric-worlds-a-primer-for-game-developers--gamedev-6511(edited)

[itisnotlogical]

Well, if you do everything totally 2D, you have to solve some problems (depth and pathfinding, namely) by yourself. By using a rotated camera and 3D environment, you can use Unity's built-in navmesh system (which got some upgrades in the newest version!) and let the camera handle depth for you. Rendering everything on a single 2D plane just makes you do stuff that's already been done. Work smarter not harder, and all that.

I recommend Blender as a tool for making models. Not because it's better than Autodesk stuff (it almost certainly isn't) but because you don't have to jump through any goddamn hoops. Autodesk makes you sign up for an account and install a ton of shit and download the updates and it'll be hours before you ever actually use Maya. Any given version of Blender just needs to be installed and you can use it right away.

In light of Unity's built-in navigation, A* is unnecessary unless you really want grid-style movement. It's not even necessary for 2D (as in single x/y plane) projects now that NavMeshes can be rotated, which is a feature of the newest version of Unity IIRC.

[Parsely]

I've been gathering advice from people I know. I've had Blender installed for about a year now, so maybe it's time to update.

Could you recommend any comprehensive Blender tutorials? Is there anything I need to watch out for when I'm making models for a video game (in Unity)?

[itisnotlogical]

Don't bother making any complicated materials in Blender, they won't be imported into Unity. Just paint your textures in Blender and export them as images. The exception is if you're using Blender to make pre-rendered sprites, like Diablo or somesuch.

In the past I would have recommended Blender Cookie for Blender tutorials, but it looks like they got rid of all their free content and you need a subscription now. Blender Guru doesn't have any game modelling or animation content, but will help you learn the interface and maybe create some neat images along the way. The sad reality is that Blender tutorials, and even the official documentation varies wildly in quality.

The more I think it through, the more I'm leaning towards recommending you go with an Autodesk thing like Max or Maya. There's a program where students can get those products free for three years, and there's frankly a lot more support out there for those programs, even within Unity. There's been times I've kicked myself and cursed Blender for being the only totally free program out there. But now I'm not really interested in creating 3D graphics anymore I have no reason to learn Maya or Max, so I can't report to you on what it's like to learn those.

EDIT:

To compensate for my crappy, contradictory advice about Blender, I'd like to say that Unity's official YouTube channel is a great source of Unity tutorials. There's also the Tutorials category on their website which is the same thing but grouped by topic for easier viewing.

Quill18creates is the best creator of tutorials, hands-down. He tends to do more intermediate to advanced-level projects, but he goes into great detail and leaves no stone unturned when explaining things. Highly recommended.

[Parsely]

I have some kind of Autodesk installer in my downloads since I got something free from school, but I have no idea what it is.

Thanks so much for the advice itisnotlogical! This is what I was looking for. You've been a great help!

[Solifuge]

Seconding the suggestion of Quill18 for Unity tutorials, etc. I can't speak to Blender Tutorials... I've been learning it through trial and error since the late 90's, and I still haven't found a lot of good, comprehensive tutorials for the things I want to do. If you have access to Maya etc., lots of people swear by them as intuitive and pretty powerful.

If you're only planning to create very simple 3D meshes, you can instead create them procedurally in Unity too: The basic idea is here. Basically, you define the Mesh component of a Game Object or Prefab manually, by feeding it an array of 3D vectors for Vertices and Normals, an array of 2D vectors for texture-mapping UV coordinates, and an array of integers for sets of 3 Vertex Indices that make up a triangle (rule of thumb; the winding order of the vertices in a triangle should be clockwise, to determine which perspective the surface is visible from). It's easiest if you do it with simple shapes. I used that method to make procedurally generated polyhedra, for meshes of subdivided dodecahedron spheres, cubes, triangles, and the like. I programatically created the solid-color 2D planes that made up these sprites too. If you're making a tile-based Map Engine of some kind for your project, generating terrain at runtime using raw data or indexes for terrain types or such, can be a pretty useful way to go!

P.S. Different subject, but I remember you were working with collision detection and exclusion/object ejection type stuff for terrain, too. We talked about Raycasts, but I also just discovered this method for walls with simple geometries, and it's pretty intuitive. Also, it's nice to look at industry examples! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9fUV7uA2_s

[Parsely]

Thank you for the big helpful post, Soli!

[itisnotlogical]

I just found this talk from GDC about Bethesda level design, how they design the pieces of their level kits to all fit together while still allowing a relatively large amount of freedom. Pretty good since I've personally found that the technical aspects of designing a 3D level can be very, very difficult if you just jump in without a clue.

[eerr]

Are there any cool communities where lots of game design and editing gets done?

I mean, I've heard of this Undertale modding community.

I want to find that one guy that has free time on his hands to work on making stuff.

[Solifuge]

TIGSource is a pretty good community, focused on game development. I've been waffling on getting more involved there since they cited me on that article about Stonesense some 100 years ago.

Link: https://forums.tigsource.com/

If you're looking for someone else to implement your ideas using their free time and skills, though? You might have a harder time. Serious or experienced folks generally have plenty of stuff they already want to work on, and they put the time into their craft to be able to do it for themselves without needing to rely on or pay other folks. But maybe you can charm 'em?

If you're just looking for collab buddies, and have skills to bring to the table, I think TIGSource might be a really good place to look, though. It's where a lot of prominent Indies got their start. >_o

[Emma]

Can back that up, TIGSource is a pretty cool place. Nice people for the most part.

[Parsely]

I think I'm starting to sort of get the hang of scripting in Unity, but I've still got a heck of a ways to go. I'm working on a fake-2D game (environment is 3D but the camera is fixed in an isometric perspective); currently trying to figure out how to texture individual faces of a cube so that I can drop individual tiles in Unity and then make prefabs out of those.

Though, typing it out now, maybe it would be easier to just build the blocks in Blender and then just export those?

Still, it would be really cool if I could swap textures at runtime. Then I could, say, have individuals planes of a cube object show damage instead of swapping the entire block with a damaged block.