Islands in the sky

After some talks with Kylie, I offered to give a little more design direction to Islands. It seems to me that the concept has stagnated a little as the project evolved. A few things I discussed with Henrik and Kylie will be forwarded to the Islands crew to see what they think. I like to think the project can be really successful and make some nice waves, it just needs someone to grab it by the horns and push it in a definite direction.With that in mind, I created a few concepts for the islands they want in the game. Kai did some great concepts a few weeks back, and I looked at them for inspiration. What I have come up with fits in nicely with what I think the game needs. Since this is a flying game, and you can soar upwards as much as you like - why limit the worlds vertically? The tower and snow islands are close to finished, and I have yet to start the others. Basically, the character is tiny compared to the islands, giving you more room to exlore.

Have some image -

One thing I would love to see is a more stylised approach to the models and textures. Influence from WoW is obvious, and not a bad thing at all.

Thanks for viewing,
Zac

Play islands NAOW!!

Try this maybe? GO HERE to play it, if you have a gamepad plugged in.


http://glightdev.com/Unity/islands_test1.html


Have fun?

Controls are -

Left Stick - Yaw
Right Stick - Pitch and Roll

Left Trigger - Slow down
Right Trigger - accelerate

Right Bumper - Afterburner
Left Bumper - Airbrake

YAYPLAY!

Islands Prototype - More things from the air.

I came into uni early today (around 6am) to get some more work done on the islands prototype.

The flight controls I snaffled from the forums worked wondrously, and I have had a lot of fun flying around. Up until now, I have been using the terrain that came with the script, but today I decided to change that, and *very* quickly modelled and textured up a floating island. I will be putting a second one in presently, so you can fly between islands.

Also, I have made a cloud layer that sits below the islands and scrolls around, attempting to look all cool and stuff.

Stay tuned for more updates, and meanwhile, have at you some images from the current build!






Zac

Islands. Yeah. Islands.

SO, I found a sweet script that some guy made on the Unity forums. I actually contacted the dude and asked him for it specifically, and he pointed me to the right place. I'm glad he did, because it's freaking awesome. I had a few problems at first, as the package didn't contain a few things, and the controls were set to joysticks only. A few changes later and I had it working. NEXT, I changed the terrain up, because I wanted the character to be able to land. Bitches be cool - it stuffed up. When you collided with anything, it would add insane torque to the rigidbody and make it spin out of control. To counter that, I changed the angular drag from .05 to 10 and it works a treat now. Landing on dear sweet virtual mother earth works...except stopping doesn't really yet. SOON MY UNDERLINGS, SOON!
So there is an update. I could put images up, but images are for the imagination impaired.

Just kidding. Here is an actual image of what I am doing at the moment.


So I lied, that's not my image. Or did I/is it?

I'm tired.

Zac

Technorati Tags: islands

Clouds. They are cool.

BUT! They are hard to get working in the context we want them. I have been beavering away for the islands game, researching some of the tech we will need behind the game. Stay tuned for some updates, as I have a few good leads/ideas.

UPDATE - Found a few interesting threads/websites.
Interesting video on some cloud technology using particles -
http://www.ofb.net/~eggplant/clouds/CloudsInGames_NinianeWang.mpg

A unity thread on clouds -
http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=8881&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=60

Aaaand a pretty picture of what it should look like...


I would like to implement something similar for Islands.

Zac

Plane Control

I looked into control methods for flight. I had the camera just scooting around using the mouse and arrow-keys. This wasn't good, as the movement doesn;t have a sense of flight, and that is really integral to the game concept. I then looked into a lot of code for flight models using physics. It seems far to complicated for the prototype, so I will be making a video of the flight, trying to get the right feeling.

So yes, stay tuned. Kylie and Cameron will be putting some art/ideas up too.

Zac

Islands Prototype

Cameron, Kylie, and I are doing the prototype for Cameron's Islands of Relaxation. Not to be confused with JAMES Cameron's Islands of Blue People.

A few things we decided were - The flight control and feel is very important. It needs to keep the player enthused.

In terms of controls, I am thinking the left and right arrowkeys will control the roll of the player, and the up and down keys to control pitch. I prefer roll rather than turn. It simulates control better. Maybe a little bit of turning in there too? This will be pursued a little more in the tweaking phase.

Zac