Well, I’ve played around with Unity for about a month now, so I figured it’s time to create my first simple little game. I’m calling it “Butterfly Fury”. This is just a learning experience, so it’s probably not going to be anything too exciting. Just your basic “blowing stuff up” type of game.
It’s mostly placeholder content right now while I mess around. The sky and explosions were snagged from a couple of the tutorial projects. I’ll be replacing those with original content eventually.
I’m kicking around the player controls a bit right now. I added some bank to the camera when rotating, but I’m not sure if I like it. Since the enemies will be on the ground, I think it might play better without the bank.
Right now there are just some boxes to shoot at. I will be adding enemies that fall from the sky, then shoot at you from the ground.
It’s very early yet, I have a LOT to do. I am really enjoying using Unity though. What a fantastic program! I just can’t get over how straight forward and easy it is to use, yet it still has so much power. I love it!
I’d suggest some camera banking, but really tone it down so it just adds to the feel of the motion. It was a little extreme as it was, but then the camera felt a bit dead without it.
Thanks Sabatier. I am planning on adding a forward burst (probably with a particle effect trailing off the back of the butterfly). There will be collectibles that allow the player to power up to use the forward burst. That way the player will have to use it sparingly while attacking or escaping enemies. I don’t think I’ll add a way to slow down or stop though as I will want the player to have to keep moving.
I did start playing with the terrain a bit, just adding some hills and such. I also created a new cube map. Not sure if I’m liking that though. Still needs work I think.
Btw, the butterfly is completely procedurally animated. It flaps it’s wings according to the speed it rises. When it falls, it slowly rotates the wings to a neutral position. Then there is some random bobbing and wobbling applied to the butterfly as a whole. It’s nothing terribly complicated, but I’m kind of happy with the way that turned out.
Added a speed burst with a trailing particle effect (spacebar). Still could use a whooshing sound when activated I think. Right now you can use it as much as you want, but it will be limited use in the game.
I started playing around with the gameplay a bit. It’s still VERY rudimentary, but it is playable. I still have a lot to do yet, but I’m having fun and learning quite a bit. Which of course is the point.
I am curious about the FPS though. When I play it in Unity, the statistics window shows that I’m getting like 1200 fps. When I added the code from the scripting manual to display the fps, it hung around 64 fps. Then when I embedded it into the webpage, I now get around 32 fps. Does that sound right? Is that accurate?
The story is that digger droids are falling from the sky, sent from another planet to mine minerals. As the first butterfly to emerge from your cocoon early, it is up to you to fend the droids off for as long as possible to give your butterfly brethren the best chance for survival and save your planet.
I got around to modeling the digger droid. Nothing too impressive, but it should look decent I think.
I plan on reworking the gameplay. I’m going to try having the droids fall in waves instead, see how that works. I think that will be more fun as it should feel more progressive.
Droid model added (also changed to red so it’s more visible)
Added temp sound for droid guns (will change to laser sound)
Reworked the gameplay
I think the reworked gameplay is much better. It’s starting to feel a little more like a game now. Before I had it set up so two new droids would fall after each kill. That wasn’t very fun as it didn’t feel like you were progressing. So now the droids fall in waves. With each new wave there are more of them, and they are stronger.
Next up is to add some power-ups to the game. That should help relieve the constant mouse clicking a bit. I’ll add stuff like larger explosions, rapid fire, and some special weapons.
I need to have the droids explode yet too. That should add a little more gratification.
Thanks Brad. You must have read my mind. I am planning on creating a special weapon that is similar to a daisy cutter. The special weapons will draw on the player’s energy level a bit, so the player will have to balance using special weapons and using the speed burst.
I’ve been playing around with power-ups. I’m thinking that there will be four that the player can collect. They will be able to cycle through them so they can choose which one they wish to use at any given time. I’m still fine tuning them, so they aren’t in this build.
Here’s what I did add:
more sounds
flashing red screen when the player gets hit
GUI
fixed a bug in the droid drops (they should not fall too close anymore)
The four slots at the top of the screen will display the power-ups as the player collects them. Right now they just remain blank though.
This is great! i would just suggest that you change the butterfly’s bullets to actual objects that move really fast. Right now, it kind of just feels like you’re clicking the towers to death. You could spawn a bullet in front of the butterfly and set that bullet’s speed and direction towards the point that you’re using now to spawn the explosion particle. hope that makes sense :), good job.
Thanks eteeski, I appreciate the feedback. I was thinking of adding a laser that shoots from the butterfly, but then thought that might look funny. I may have to give your idea a try and see how that looks.
I have another update here. I’ve implemented health, energy, and special weapon collectibles. The special weapons all work, but still could use a little polish yet. I also added a menu page. I posted this beta build on Wooglie in the “in development” area.
New Special Weapons: Scatter: Creates randomly scattered explosions Jumper: Creates multiple explosions that jump from droid to droid Drill: Creates multiple explosions that drill the same area Magnetic Pulse: Completely drains the shields of any droids within the pulse area
There are also multipliers for the special weapons. The more you collect, the more it will multiply (up to 3x).
It’s procedurally animated. Mostly just compounded sine waves to make him bob around. The wings are driven by the Y translation, so when he moves up he flaps his wings, and when he moves down they rotate to neutral position.
Took me a while to get back up and running again here. I had a virus and my computer kept freezing up and crashing, so I ended up reformatting my HD. Luckily I had everything backed up good this time, so it actually wasn’t too painful. Wasted a good week tinkering and reformatting though. Ah well, running nice and smooth again now.
Ok, so I finally got the droids exploding. That does add a bit of gratification I think. I also added some sound effects and tweaked the gameplay a bit based on some feedback I got.
I think I’m getting close to calling this one done. I just want to add some background music yet, a leader board, and tidy some things up.
Has a lot of potential
I cut the bank angle by half, and I think I’m warming up to it.
