3D Game Development
Complete C# Unity Developer 3D (GameDev.tv)
Naturally, after trying out raw code writing 2D games, one would think about trying modern game engines and develop some 3D gaming. After all, most of the gaming and animation industries have been transferred to 3D making already, including the traditional 2D companies like Nintendo. For the engine, I chose Unity over Unreal for now just because I also want to get into know more about C#, and I picked a top-rated course developed by the team of GameDev.tv for self-learning.
Update (May 13th): Unreal Engine just released their demo of their new Nanite system, and I am totally bought and have decided to try it out after wrapping up the existing projects on Unity. The demo is called “Lumen in the land of Nanite”, and I have attached the hyperlink for anyone interested.
Space Leap: collision, motion control, particle effect, level design
Galaxy Defender: timeline and waypoints, beam ray, terrain and texture
Terminal Hacker: C#, asset importation
Galaxy Defender Walk-through
Galaxy Defender is the most mature 3D game I developed, in which player would be controlling a spacecraft called the Ray to explore an colonized alien planet and defeat various of enemy swarm. The project spans over about 2 weeks with three design phases.
The first phase is prefabs making/gathering, including the Skybox, terrain and its textures such as snows, alien lava and the blueish minerals, as well as the enemy ships from Spacesparrow. The second phase is to set up the rail track of the player’s ship and its camera, first using the Unity Waypoints scripts, then Timeline for smoother control. Since it is a rail shooting game, it is very important to design the track with some rhyme and breath-holding moments, such as crossing a narrow mineral bridge, or a great dive into the mining valley in order to dodge from the enemy attack.
Enemy Encounter
Right after passing through a narrow bridge, the player would encounter large swarm of mineral carriers - one of the most surprising moment of game
The Great Dive
The rail is set to make a great dive into one of the valley to give the player a sense of visual urgency
In the last phase, precise control were added to the player’s ship such as the pitch and row, as well as beam coming out of the aircraft and trigger mechanism for scoring points. A 2D UI was added to display the score to the player.
The released version of the Galaxy Defender has most of the bone functionalities, and yet several of the following aspects would be added in a later version:
A begin and ending scene. Right now the whole game is just looping itself, and it would be great to have a clear start where the player ship takes off from a place and land at another place.
Timeline for the animation of each enemy swarm, as well as some voice/script guidance for the player.
A begin/finish UI screen.