Introduction:
My name is Brock, but I usually go by Badger. I’m a recent college graduate with a degree in physics. This means I’m unemployed. So, I’m making a video game in Unity. Here’s the video demonstrating basic movement in Dig, Robot, Dig!
The inspiration is obvious, but unlike Minecraft I wanted a more interesting spherical world, and more physics. The player is an actual physical object, and most of the interesting game mechanics that work so far are byproducts. The vaulting over edges, climbing, and falling over just happened.
Mechanics:
Along with the physics, the game will feature digging, building, and a crafting system for development of tools and items. The list of items is currently short and undeveloped, but the primary items will be ranged weapons and digging equipment. Think pew pew lasers and sonic screwdriver type tech.
The crafting system will be based mostly on pretty glowing radioactive substances that must be mined and processed for use as a power source. The element here that I’m most excited about is the range of colors and the potential for customization and sub-types for items. Think of topaz adding lightning damage in Diablo II because it was yellow.
These ideas are a byproduct of lighting. The variety in color will translate into item variety. It’s all static, but moving point lights might play a part. I’m working on other mechanics as they come up.
Current work:
The next big update is a chunk and save system to allow scaling up the world. Right now its about as big as it can go before introducing lag and hitting hard limits on colliders/rigidbodies. So far, the game can recognize player transitions from arbitrarily sized areas in the spherical coordinate system.
The only thing left is to rearrange the existing block generation code and store data in XML.
Smaller goals include finished lighting, and temperature based destruction of blocks. The game used to feature this system, but it needs reworking.
Beyond that? Items, inventory, and crafting. That sort of thing has its roots in very different areas from the current concerns, so it’s on the back burner at the moment. Oh yes, sound. I’ve been doing research into chiptune type stuff, but nothing solid yet. Something retro is a good bet.
A bit of art:
I should mention that I am the only one working on this, so I get to do the art as well. Creative control ftw. Most of it is pixel art, but not all of it.
The hero, and a villain, are still in the concept stage.
Anyway…:
My primary blog is hashtagphysics.tumblr.com, and I put a bit on twitter as well under the same name. I plan to update every couple of days. This is proving to be a long term thing.
To those who are interested, let me know if I’ve left out something you want to know more about. Thanks for reading.
