Now In 3D

Week 5/6:

The major plan for week 5 was to polish and bug fix... that didn't exactly happen.

One of the major questions at this point is, "Is it worth investing more time into this project?" blending with "Is there enough to build on for a full-marketable release?". A major part of that question was establishing a visual style and coming up with an adequate way for an art-less fellow like me to develop levels. This was a rabbit hole.

• Implemented Unity's built-in Tile Map Functions, but it turns out they are still quite buggy and unworkable.
• Experimented with a 3D style top-down city which looked pretty unique and stylish
• Built a customized tile engine that worked but turned out to be limited by Unity's 2D implementation. 
• Again, while it worked perfectly... I did have concerns regarding future performance.

So this week was a decision to "Just do things the hard way I was hoping to avoid." I've reworked the engine to be true 3D, allowing me FAR more control over almost every aspect of the game.  Everything from the level design functionality, toolsets, and shaders. 

Visually, I haven't even started on user sprites yet though I have a few things to try.

As a secondary plot plot, a system was added that would allow for far more storytelling and a second part of the game for the player to explore. Think of it as an interactive loading screen that replicates a old-school computer database. I can easily add new entries and trigger specific events depending on story missions or mission settings.

From a bug-fix standpoint, I'd suspect we're slightly further back from where we started. I've run several test runs, but there is enough combinations of pieces that I suspect issues will still exist from the transformation. 

So next week we're going to look into options for character modes/sprites/visuals to see if I can come up with a programmer-art-friendly option. In addition, we'll try to restock the levels and start improving the layouts along with those originally planned bug-fixes.