Reindeer Games DevBlog

 Today, I drew the sprites for the second enemy type in Gilded Towers: Smol Goblo, or Smolbo. A little guy with a huge, explosive attitude!!! Hence the grenade motif. We'll be using simple code-based, transformative animations in our game, so not many frames are required this time around. The first is the default state, where the Smol Goblo contemplates its next action. Second is the attacking phase, complete with a large ball of fire. Last but not least, the death sprite. The Smol Goblo flips onto its back and promptly explodes. Battle... he is thinking Attacking Dead :( I don't know what else to write so uh.... until Nao-xt time!!

 It works!!! Finally!!!!!! I had to change "col" to "other.gameObject" so that the empty would actually check what it's touching and not itself, but my ground check system is now working as intended! You can no longer skip the entire level by jumping up the invisible borders, and Fflur no longer breaks her legs after sliding down a wall. Video proof: With that major bug out of the way, I now feel comfortable moving on to adding in the rest of the animations and figuring out how to get the ones I've already implemented to loop seamlessly. Supposedly, I just need to edit the animation curves, but none show up in the curve view? My confusion is immeasurable and my day is.... pretty alright, actually. If I have to redo the keyframes, I will do that. Pivoting over to my work with Gilded Towers, I've finished the sprites for the basic Goblo (Idle, Attack, and Death). I have ideas for variants, but not much to show for concept art. Yet. Behold! (These were th...

Another day, another attempt at making this ground detection system behave. Instead of fiddling around with the same chunks of code over and over again for the nth day in a row and begging the powers-that-be that it will somehow work this time, I've decided to burn it all down and start from scratch. This time, I've added an empty object to my player character's feet, as seen below, set it as a trigger and attached a new script called "GroundDetection" to it: It is a work in progress (I still have to add references), but basically it should check if the collider of the object it is colliding with is tagged as "Ground", if it is, great! isGrounded = true. If not, isGrounded = false. Simple and easy. My fingers remain crossed. Hopefully, this will solve the issue of the player being able to jump up the invisible level borders and anything else not tagged as "Ladder", while also not leaving the player perpetually airborne after hitting a wall and ...

 Today we had a few groups in to playtest Gilded Tower. I think it went great! Our playtesters were able to quickly grasp the concept and gameplay and generally had a positive experience, and are excited to see the finished game. One big thing we were able to take away from player feedback was that the game being 100% RNG feels unfair and we should add some ways for the player to take direct control of their "luck". As is, it feels more like watching a game than playing it. More cards and enemies are also in the works! That's all for this week. Until next time!

 Today in class, I attempted to fix an issue I've been having with the level borders in Tiger Express, where the player is able to jump up them. Because the code is seeing them as being tagged as "Ground" even though they're tagged as "Border'. Except, through testing, I've found that the code actually sees everything  (besides ladders which are a trigger) as a ground collider. Looked through several Unity discussions and Stack Overflow threads, and haven't found the solution yet. Better luck next time, I suppose. (Using Unity 2022.3.34f1) Speaking of luck, it's time to draw goblos for Gilded Towers!

Warm Welcomes to My Game Development Blog! I'm Nao, a 25 year old indie game developer just starting on my journey with the help of Code in the Schools. I'm still deciding on a studio name, but we'll be going with "Reindeer Games" for now! Reindeers are awesome, and I'm a sucker for wordplay. In this blog, I'll be recording my progress developing Tiger Express, a personal project of mine, and Gilded Tower, our game for CITS Prodigy Spring 2025 where I am working in collaboration with CoinHardware @  https://gildedtowerdev.blogspot.com/ , with more games hopefully to come in the future! Expect new posts and media twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays detailing our game's development! About the Games Tiger Express - A 2D platformer beat-'em-up reminiscent of games like Celeste and Scott Pilgrim VS the World and a loving fangame tribute to Project Moon, whose world this game shares. Avoid heavy traffic by navigating the complex Cityscape in the form...