March General Progress Update

March 25, 2023March 25, 2023 by Jonathanin Game Development, UpdateLeave a Comment

March General Progress Update

So its been about a month since my last update. So its about time I updated y’all on where things are at.

Save Manager

The main progress has been on the save manager, with the code base now being pretty close to being production ready. I’m currently working out some bugs on builds which are been a bit annoying. The editor side of the asset is ready though, with just a few stress tests to do to make sure it works.

I have a few feature changes to the asset, mostly due the amount of work for the amount of use it will get. So the create tab has been removed as the creation of save data is a more modular in this version and should be easy enough to follow without a tool. I may add it again in a future update if its requested or really needed, but for the initial release making data manually will be fine with documentation and videos to aid with that.

Speaking of documentation, I’ve been looking into solutions for that. Annoying there isn’t really any solution I’m 100% happy with, most either are paid which I can’t afford given everything I release is free or doesn’t quite do everything I need it to. I’ve ended up trialling an idea using a website builder & either GitHub pages or similar to host the site on. An example below that I trailed using the Multi Scene docs

I’ve also changed up the path remapping in the asset to be different dependant on the target platform. You can define the path still but using some pre-defined strings rather than selecting the path yourself. There are some caveats such as having the update the path for each platform if you want it to be different etc. But it should work out fine for the first version. You can also press a button to open the directory where the save will be if targeting a standalone platform (PC/Mac/Linux).

I think I’m still good for the April release, but things may crop up that interfere with that, well see.

Audio Manager

The advantage of not doing the Audio Manager before the Save Manager is that I can use what I learn from it in the new version. I’ve recently been testing the early versions for bugs (which there are many) and researching some ideas. This week I was able to make a method chain solution that will change up most of the API I’ve written so far. Currently the setup is similar to 2.x with loads of methods for each use case which gets very hard to maintain. If I went about the chaining solution which I’m planning to now it works, I’d be able to reduce that and make the asset much easier to manage from my end without compromising on features. If you’ve used Linq, String methods or some tween libraries then you’ll know the syntax. An example below of what I’m thinking of doing and what it’ll do:

// Example
AudioManager.Play(Clip.Click01).SetVolume(.5f).SetDelay(.1f);

// What it does:
// Your normal play this clip, clip being the struct system I already have in place.
AudioManager.Play(Clip.Click01) 

// Sets the volume of the clip to play at .5f volume (range 0-1)
.SetVolume(.5f)

// Sets the clip to play with a delay of .1f
.SetDelay(.1f);

Now this is still quite a while off as I’ve only just got my head around how to make this work. I also won’t be working on the Audio Manger 3.x until I’ve finished & published Save Manager 2.x. But this will certainly give me a lot to work on. I do still plan to keep a modular method for the more traditional calls should people wish to use that syntax over this setup.

Personal Project

While I’m working on Carter Games stuff, I’m also taking on a personal project at the same time to give me some variety. Mostly to avoid burnout on one project which I’ve had in the past. In this case I’m making a passion/portfolio project where I attempt to replicate the Person 5 Royal (P5R) combat system & to an extent the look as well. I played the game over the Christmas break and really enjoyed it. So decided to make a project out of it.

The end goal is to at-least have a small custom boss battle which a full party of 4 vs something. With the user being able to use a mini velvet room system to make a persona with the skills available to then use in the fight. I don’t plan on replicating the AI or anything for the players party so it will be direct commands for all party members. The party members will also be custom and not related to the actual P5R ones. At the end of the day I’d like to make a mini-experience out of it, but it will always just be for portfolio, I obviously cannot release it commercially due to copyright etc.

Below is a little video below of how that’s going so far on the UI side, but its still very early days:

If you want to see more on the project then you can see the full project page on my portfolio here:

Persona 5 Royal Combat Project Page

Its a long project so I’m posting update posts which you can view on that page. The up side of doing a project like this is that I learn even more doing it. I’ve now got a custom UI shape system as well as a basic Google sheets downloader working as well will come in handy in future projects.

That’s about it for this update, I’ll see you in the next one.

Whats coming in Save Manager 2.x?

February 25, 2023February 25, 2023 by Jonathanin Asset Store, Game Development, UpdateLeave a Comment

Whats coming in Save Manager 2.x?

Currently the save manager is the asset with the longest time since its last update & with the most progress on its update. As this is the case I felt like updating you all with what has changed between the old and new versions and how it’s progressing so far.

The bad with the old setup

1.x while stable it has a lot of flaws both in workflow and how adaptable it is to different projects. The setup only allowed for 1 save data class which could easily get bloated and was often a slightly inconvient setup for non serializable types such as vectors. The setup also had no way of editing the save in the editor which is inconvient when debugging issues with projects.

What is the new version offering?

The new version offers a much more modular setup which addresses all of the above and more. This currently includes:

Save Objects & Values

Save objects holding a collection of values that can be defined as needed.
Can save Vectors & Colors as their normal values. No need for SaveVector2 etc anymore.
Can store as many objects as needed.
Tool like in 1.x to help make save objects.
Easily make variants of data in the save with different save keys.

Save Editor

Ability to edit all save data in a window.
Changes in values apply to game save when changed.
View/hide each save object & save value.
Easy reset for objects & values.

Save Profiles

Ability to save a copy of the current save data setup in the editor and load back to it when needed.
Profiles can also be edited in the normal Unity editor if needed.
Changing data structure will reset values in profiles, not ideal but the feature is intended for debugging mostly and struture changes can be worked around.

Saving Icon

The ability to show an icon on a canvas when the game is saving for a defined amoount of time. Handy if you want to let the user know the game is saving and that they should not close the game while it is active. Currently is still a work in progress but the first version is working as of writing.

Faster saving and loading

Data stored in dictionaries for better performance.
Saving and loading process has additional catches to avoid issues.

What is still to-do?

As of writing there is still a fair amount of work to do on the asset before it reaches a testable version. This includes a load of bug fixes to the current setup & a few features I’ve yet to implement which include:

Save Encryption
- A way to let the user encrypt the save data should they wish to for extra security.
Path Remapping
- Support for the user to remap the save path for the save data outside of the project as well as any editor paths for generates files from the asset such as settings assets & save profiles.
Additional Collection Types
- Support for the normal Lists/Arrays as well as other variants and dictionaries.
WebGL Support?
- A planned feature that 1.x didn’t support. My hope is to find a solution to let this new setup work on Web builds. But I do need to do some more research on this to be sure that it’ll work.
Documentation & Tutorial Media
- The big bad of any asset, the docs. Always a slow process. For 2.x I plan to work find a good solution for the docs to be hosted on that I like, It’ll follow a similar structure to the Multi Scene docs I wrote last year though. With some video tutorials going over the basics of how to use the asset to hopefully help new users with commonly asked questions.

ETA?

I don’t have a firm date for release yet as I need to finish the code first, but I imagine that it’ll be ready by around April at the latest. I’ll post a more exact date when I have one but for now that is the best I can give you.

C.W.I.S Devlog #7 | State of the game

November 27, 2022November 27, 2022 by Jonathanin Devlogs, Game DevelopmentLeave a Comment

So it’s been a little while since my last post and I’ve been meaning to make an update post for a few weeks now, so here it is. In my last post I went over some of the menu work and missile launcher improvements, since then I’ve been working out what is left to-do and trying to work out what I’d need to change in order to get build out, a thing that has been a goal for quite a few month’s at this point. Sadly, life has meant I’ve been rather busy in the evenings and weekends so I’ve struggled to get the time to work on the project, at least as much as I would’ve liked. Due to how near we are to 2023 and the fact that I have lost the motivation for this project that I once had, I’ll be moving on next year to new things once the first public build is done. I am committing to atleast release the arcade game mode that I planned to and to fixing any bugs that get reported for this project, but I don’t plan to continue it onwards unless it suddenly kicks off.

Some of the last three months I have been working on some of the assets, updating audio manager to 2.6.0 and releasing a much needed update to multi scene in the 0.2.1/2 updates. This took up a fair chunk of the time I would’ve had for C.W.I.S. But I have got some significant stuff done since the last update so here are the main changes:

Game settings system

One of the systems I wanted to get right from the grt go was the settings, as I wanted to be able to use it inother projects inthe future with, little to no changes needed. Atleast that was the plan, it took a bit longer than I planned as all things seem to with setting the resolution & full screen state. I did manage to figure out the resolution problem eventually but the full screen mode still proves to be an issue as of writing, I have left this bug for now to focus on the more pressing gameplay bits that I need to get working soon.

A view of the game settings screen for the video settings in the game so far.

Game save system

The old system I was using was the same slightly modified setup I used in Project Tilly. This in turn being a modified version of the public save manager asset. While this will work just fine it is really hard to debug issues with it. The new setup takes a totally new and modular approach, giving me an inspector view of the save state when needed as well as the option to add or remove values without having to reset the entire save. It works by saving the data in objects instead of the actual type & loading & saving the state from scriptable objects instead of data in code. This will likely become the framework for the next version of the save manager next year once I work out the kinks a little more, but for C.W.I.S it’ll work just fine.

The game settings in the new save setup.

Upgrades layout

The upgrades layout has changed a lot over the lifetime of the project. The new view aims to minimise the on screen space it takes up and make the systema little easier to follow. The new setup has a panel like layout with some of the upgrade types mixed together to lock some upgrades behind others of a different type. All the upgrades do now have icons that somewhat match their purpose as well. This ui is final at this point minus the weird bug when purchasing upgrades that causes the system to reset the display of purchased upgrades to appear not purchased and some of the upgrade implementations not quite working as intended. All of which will be addressed in the coming weeks.

New mechanic (system damage)

A recent development has been the turret damage mechanic. The idea being that turrets that are in sections that get hit by a missile have a change of damaging a nearby system, temporarily knocking it out of action. Damaged turret will not function fully or at all in some cases but will self repair if not hit again. If hit while damaged there is a chance the system is totally destroyed. In the event that a system is destroyed the user can still select it but none of the options will function for the rest of the game. The outline of the system will change colour and there is a UI indicator to signal the change of state to the user.

The UI showing the radar being damaged & repaired.

Radar knockout and lookouts

A new system that works into this setup is the radar lookouts. As having the radar system go down completely would be a little unfair on the user, I’ve added a close range warning system that acts like lookouts on the ship. When a missile is close by there is now some additional UI that appears to give the user some warning when a missile is close to impact. This system will work when the radar is working or not to help with aiming the C.W.I.S when at close range.

Minor bits

Some other minor bits include:

Some backend changes to remove the multilayer code I had as it was adding complexity I didn’t need.
Some clean up of some of the code to make it easier to manage and work with.
Added an upgrade button to the comms array to allow the user to reduce the cooldown for supply drops.

Release date

As I’ve hinted to in this develog I am aiming to release the build before the end of the year. But understand that this may overrun in the Jan 2023. If I don’t manage to get something out by the end of Jan 2023 then I will be leaving it there as I have other projects that do need my attention that are live products. So that is the plan, but I will be pushing for the release as I would like to get a new build out if possible xD

C.W.I.S Devlog #6 | WATER!

September 26, 2022September 26, 2022 by Jonathanin Devlogs, Game DevelopmentLeave a Comment

Welcome to C.W.I.S, a tactical shooter where you controls the weapons systems of a destroyer that was constantly under missile attack. Previously the devlog for this game have been in a video format on my personal YouTube channel. If you want to see these early devlogs they can be viewed below:

I have since made a blog post for each with a little text and the video that came out with that devlog. I also transferred the Project Tilly devlogs from IndieDB to here as well so there is just a lot more content on the blog to give it some footprint on the site, so feel free to check those out as I do play to go back to that project in the future.

What’s new!

Water shader

By far one of the worst bits of the last few months has been choosing a good water shader. Now I’m no artist so I couldn’t make my own & I have 0 budget so I couldn’t just buy one. So I had to go off the free options on the asset store & GitHub to find something to use for this project. While a lot of the shaders would be great of other games where the player is at the level or more or less the level of the water. However in a top-down view there is the common problem with the tiling texture or effects with the shaders that the user can easily notice.

After trying upwards of 50 shaders and/or effects I finally decided to stick with one of the more customisable, that being the stylized water for URP:

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/vfx/shaders/stylized-water-for-urp-162025

https://carter.games/storage/2022/09/image-6.png

A screenshot of the arcade scene in C.W.I.S with the new water shader

The shader still isn’t perfect and I would certainly prefer a more random tiling one, but it is better than the old shader I used in the jam version of the game which was much worse than this option in my opinion.

Missile Launchers

I’ve spent a fair bit of time on these launchers and still have more time to spend on them before they are completely working as intended. I did however spend a fair bit of time getting them up to scratch with fixed to the actual prefabs so they can be correctly reset when reaching their target.

Previously the missiles would throw an error on their reset due to a coroutine still running on them when the object is disabled. The routine was the one that managed the missiles pathing lifetime and would not quite reach the end due to the physics collision detecting the hit between both the player missile & the incoming missile.

On top of this I’ve added the actual launch sequence of the missile so when you fire a missile it takes a little longer to get into the air. This is done by having the hatch of the missile tube actually open before the missile fires. Once it has opened an event fires that tells the missile to spawn as it did beforehand so the rest is just as it was before. Though I did fix an issue where only 3-4 tubes were been used to launch missiles due to a little mistake on my part with a boolean value not updating correctly.

Below is a little video of the new launcher in action:

No more five-inch gun?

For the purposes of the arcade build I’ve decided to turn off the five-inch gun as its usage is not needed in the basic missile defence scenario. All the code is still there and all, its just had its script disabled in the scene so the player can’t select it when playing. Instead the player start on the forward C.I.W.S instead which is more practical. Down the line the five inch or the main gun would be used to target surface target at a defined range which will have more use in the campaign, missions or PVP/PVE combat.

Supply Drops

In the arcade build supply drops where just crates that came by every now and then, when they hit the mid point of the ship you would get some ammo and a chance to get some health back. I do plan to add a ship health regen setup to the game, but it won’t be through supply crates. Its more likely the ship will heal over time if its not been hit for x amount of seconds with some UI to help indicate the change of state. The new setup has you calling in a supply drop via the communications array which starts a timer in the top left. When that timer completes a supply drop drops down onto the heli-pad section of the ship and when it reaches the ship the user gets ammo for their weapons systems at random amounts.

The visuals for this still needs a little work as they are currently just primitives and it shows. So more on that soon. I’m also considering possibly adding a few upgrades to the communications array to speed up the time it takes for a drop to arrive & the quantity of the ammo provided. But these are yet to be implemented.

Controls Menu

Another minor change since the last update is a new panel & button in the game menu showing the controls for the game. There is controller support planned as its super easy to add that in the future, but that’ll be after the arcade build. These controls are also shown on the pause menu of the game for convivence.

Closing notes

That wraps up this devlog/update, these written logs will be the main form of updates from here on out instead of videos. Its a lot quicker for me to type stuff out as the videos took almost a day and a half to make so its a much better use of my time. The next written log will be around a month from now or sooner if there is a lot to show off. Feel free to comment below this post if you have an questions or feedback to give and I’ll speak to y’all again soon!

Another Website Update & Future Roadmap

September 21, 2022September 26, 2022 by Jonathanin News, UpdateLeave a Comment

I have yet again updated the website look & feel. It has been a while since I last use the website posts section to make announcements etc. but this will become the norm soon as I want to revive the website as a hub of knowledge for everything going on with Carter Games.

What’s changed?

So, you’re probably wonder what has changed. The main change with this website update is the structure of it all. Before there was a massive header menu with a load of items and it was all a little too cluttered. Now there are just three sections, “Home“, “Posts” & “Contact” to keep it super simple and easy to follow for any visitors.

The home page has been updated to have more content on it. Previously it was very bland and simple as the footer was an actual part of the page. Now the homepage contains a summary of every major active or release project to date as well as separate pages for users to read more about a particular project and a main link to the relevant store for the project if it is released. I’ve also added an about section at the top of the page and plan to add a slideshow in the future showing off some of the better-quality projects when I have some to show.

The news section has been setup for future content, including guides & development logs. Currently there are obvious gaps which I hope to start filling up in the coming months so keep your eyes peeling for more here soon.

Other updates

Outside of the website update I spent the time to revamp the brand graphics. If you follow me on the socials you will have already seen this, but I thought I’d mention it here to in case you missed it. Below is a before and after for the logo & banner graphics.

A before and after of the Carter Games logo & banner graphics

Roadmap

Going forward for the next 6 months or so I have been planning out what I want to release and when. These are obviously not set in stone, but it’s a rough plan going forward with a more certain one coming around the new year.

Autumn 2022

Audio Manager 2.6.x

I spent the last long weekend 50/50 working on C.W.I.S & this. The idea is to clean up the asset a little and provide some minor improves to the inspectors as an end-of-life update. That is end of life for the 2.x.x version line, not the asset. The asset has a new 3.x.x line in the works which I have made decent progress on and teased on socials a while back. The new 3.x.x version is still quite a way from being production ready. So, this update acts as a mediator between the two versions, introducing the project settings window for the asset settings as well as some of the new standards all the assets will follow in updates when they are next released. Below are some screenshots of the new inspector looks:

The Audio Manager script 2.6.x inspector look

The Music Player script 2.6.x inspector look

The Audio Player script 2.6.x inspector look

The Audio manager 2.6.x settings provider window look

C.W.I.S Arcade Build

I’ve been spending a lot of time on this game project since I started a remake and progress is good. I’ve spent the last few weeks trying to get a good enough looking water shader working from a top-down perspective which is harder than it sounds. I have since settled on a look and continued to work on fixing the existing mechanics to work as intended.

A screenshot of the arcade scene in C.W.I.S

I’ve also spent the time to improve the realism of the missile launchers. Previously they would just spawn missiles from the centre regardless of the number of missiles shot. Now they have the tubes that open before the missile in the tube launches. It’s a subtle difference but a feature I really wanted to add. At the same time, I was able to fix up the missile objects, so the trail particle now correctly reset instead of using up all the particle returning to the launcher when a missile is called to fire again. I also fixed another issue where only 3-6 launchers were being used due to the same reset logic.

A screenshot of the Unity editor showing a open missile tube on the ship in C.W.I.S

Multi Scene 0.2.x

Some of you may be wondering what on earth is Multi-Scene. Yea I’ve kept this somewhat quite apart from a few teasers on socials. Multi scene is a experimental asset to help with making games that use Unity’s multi scene setup, this is where you load scenes additively instead of one at a time allowing for elements of your game projects to be split up into manageable chunks. If you’ve had a gander at the Carter Games GitHub, you’ll have seen this as a repository for quite a while.

Dark Mode

MultiScene (this link opens in a new window) by CarterGames (this link opens in a new window)

A multi-scene workflow/tool for using multiple scenes in one go in Unity.

Link: https://github.com/CarterGames/MultiScene

The last major release was back in February of this year with update 0.1.3 where I added a ordering feature to the interface referencing setup. This 0.2.x update adds a load of new workflow improvements to make using the asset a lot easier. These include scene selection for the scene groups instead of a string field, a lot more control over how scenes load & how often the listeners run when a group is loaded + an editor window to load scene groups at the press of a button in the editor. On top of all that the asset manager is now static instead of instanced based for ease of use. There will be lots more on this when this update is released to go over how to use the asset and were using a multi scene setup can be handy.

A promotional image for the Multi Scene asset.

Winter 2022

Compared to autumn, winter will be quieter with some room to allow one of the above projects to fall behind if it happens.

Leaderboard Manager 2.1.x

The leaderboard manager had an update somewhat recently to fix one or two issues. Since using it in a personal project I noted a few features that could use improving along with a few suggestions or comments from users that could be handy for usability. These include:

Option to show equal scores as =3rd instead of 2nd & 3rd for example.
Option to change the save location of the leaderboard data
Option to not use the display pooling setup, instead having the leaderboard be pre-defined in the scene with the rows in the parent object.
Option to view and edit all leaderboards and entries in a editor window of some kind.
+ All the new improvements I’ve made to my other assets in recent times.

Detective Notes 2.x.x

A bit of a supprise one, but for a while I’ve wanted to make an update to the detective notes app with some clearer art, animations & performance improvements.

Early 2023

The new year is a bit of a blank space for the time being, but I do have a few ideas of things to be doing that year which I’ll list below:

Audio Manager 3.x.x
Some other minor asset updates (possibly a new Save Manager if I get the time)
Anything that has overrun from the previous year.
Some new game project planning.

So that’s all for this update, keep your eyes peeled for more updates coming soon!

Developer & Founder

Jonathan

Hi, I’m Jonathan, a Junior Programmer, currently working as in the games industry. I run Carter Games as my indie brand to release under in my spare time. I am currently the only person working on the projects at Carter Games, but the plan is to one day add some people to the team and get a fully indie studio started.