Toy Update, Part 3

For Friday Funday I talk about the latest updates to my space game, which are mostly a shader and a gradient with a dash of transparency!

Videos I reference:

[Smeighl]

The more I learn about game making, the more intimidated I feel about making art. This vid made me a little less intimidated by shaders. Really enjoy following your toy updates while I work on my toy!

[bartham]

i love friday funday! i love toy updates!!!

edit: something you might think about is the audio. it's a little loud and static-ey. not exactly important to gameplay, just my 2 cents.

[pfm]

Awesome that you actually changed the targeting cursor transparency thing. It made my day =) It's so much better!

[jasondunken]

I'm really enjoying these updates Tim. Not just because of the project its self but because of the clear joy and excitement you're expressing in them. I would have loved to work with you. Thanks for sharing!

[nikitakolesnichenko]

Yeah! Love how your toys evolve with each Friday) And I love how it feels when your voice is heard and counted.
Thank you Tim for all you did, for your games, most of which inspired me to become a game developer myself, and for this channel in particular, so I can keep learning something extra from you directly and to say thank you to you almost directly.

[FlymanMS]

Every time I watch one of Tim’s videos, I make sure that he says “It’s me, Tim”, this way I know I can trust what is said next.

[shawnwolf]

One thing I might recommend. When the shields are down and there's one shot left, why not just remove the shield entirely? SO red would mean there is 1 hit left on the *shield* and then when the shield drops, the ship is vulnerable to damage because they are actually destroyed?

Just a thought I had watching!

[mightyn]

This looks great - I can see how even just a few changes can make a game (or a toy) look and feel much better. Definitely super inspiring, love to see these toy updates!

[DylonDylonDylon]

1. Might be cool to add a texture in the shield to add additional feed back to the player the shield is being broken, like cracks using a noise texture.
2. This would increase the difficulty, but the shield should probably contour around the ship's shape a bit. You could have a variable for the contour level based on the ship type and the difficulty level you want since the shield is a collision actor.

Enjoying the series!

[Odisseia-hhtd]

7:23 looks great, but I would make it so that the shield never becomes fully opaque. At the end, the nearly fully opaque shield reminds me of a solid pool ball.

[YellowKing]

You know what would be nice? The shield should be only brightly colored immediately after a succesful hit, then ease out back to the original color in less than a second. Also the shield could be a capsule, or simplified shape of inflated craft itself, so you can better read the heading of the enemy ship.

[Jaqinta]

Hi Tim and also everyone else in here also .

I hope this Toy Updates videos keeps coming, i love it.

I have some thoughts, would like to share it ;

1) I think it's on SetShieldColor -> in hitPercent variable, when it reaches final color red the enemy ship can't be seen but can see red sphere only maybe making the ship visible a little bit more so player can hit center of the sphere and can see the enemyship and decides where to hit exactly.

2) For making static colors appear on screen, could it be possible to add task that runs asynchronously so instead of for example orange color appears with in some predifined time period it will Show orange color again but in time it's color change into dark orange to light orange color, like player can see color transition in time. (Or might be have some simple approach to make it happen)

3) For attacking enemies well it's a maybe later stages thing probably but either it depends on when player got hit from enemyship or some sort of other feature maybe like for each enemy ship destroying some kind of power shot gauge fills up and when it fills it will do some significant damage to the enemy ship so like with power shot to the untouched enemyship rather than starts with White it skips White color and starts with blue color ..

[DylonDylonDylon]

Cool video! I like how your working with your viewers to create an example of how to make a game, awesome Stuff!

[dennislarsen]

It is really cool to follow the way you tinker with a single mechanic!
On the color gradient, as a science nerd, i would have the colors change from low frequency light to high frequency light, reflecting the energy density of the light, e.g. from red to violet.
But i'm damaged by old hard sci fi, and love noticing little sciency details, the "red is the color of damage and danger" argument is valid to... "Sigh"

[KryyssTV]

In regards to the HUD its often better to move as much of it as possible onto the reticle as long as it doesn't get cluttered. The reason for this is that the players attention is on that reticle and with space combat games being so fast paced a momentary glance at the HUD on the edges of the screen can be fatal.

Typically the hull integrity is represented as a half circle on one side of the reticle while shields are a half circle on the other. The curerntly selected torpedoes and their quantty also appears above or below the reticle so you can easily see what is selected and can cycle through your launch bays while chasing down a starfighter or lining up a strafing run on a capital ship.

[wesss]

Setting: Outer Space, maybe a Space Dock

Story: ???

And you are working on the system mechanics.

Excellent to see the progression.

[theamazingbatboy]

The cursor transparency was the first thing I thought of when watching this—so glad you implemented it, looks terrific. One thing which might be nice for polish is boosting the alpha separately on the crosshair itself, as the least intrusive cursor element, while still benefiting from the more transparent outline. I wouldn't render the hud transparent, the skeuomorphic aspect of a spaceship/cockpit hud is an important immersive element which transparency breaks imo.

[OpenGLever]

9:14 I would recommend adding the ability to strafing left, strafing right, strafing up, and strafing down. Currently, you are flying straight towards the enemy to be able to hit them, but without having the ability to dodge their fire with skill.

[sethwilliams]

Dang Mr. Cain. You’ve been ramping up this toy talk, we’re all better for it.

[paultweb]

Love seeing your progress on this—hope you keep these videos coming!