GameDev 2019 Week 34: Patch Notes

More Models, Polishing

22.09.2019 - 17:52
I did a lot of smaller tasks this week, so I am going to try and make this blogpost more like patch notes with additional descriptions. It may be a superior format anyway, because it's clearer and easier to read.

Thursday 12.09

• added the animated orc model to the game

I had to add the code infrastructure so the game can use the new animated model system. The old models are also still in the game, so it supports the old and the new animation system.

Friday 13.09

• added a new system for enemy blueprints and models
• added model height, so the hp bar can be placed at a custom height above the model for tall models like the orc
• added custom animation speed for every model, so the animation speed can be different for different models
• finished the animation for a spider model I started weeks ago
• added a function to the new animated model viewer that can replace colors

There is no way I can create enough completely unique animated models, so changing to color of existing models to create elemental variants of them is an easier alternative


• created 8 elemental variants of the spider model
• added all the spiders to the game
• fixed a bug where the in-game console caused a game crash

Saturday 14.09

• fixed an old bug where the default look of menu elements was overwritten when a single attribute of the default look was changed
• fixed a bug where the font was not correctly applied to listboxes
• fixed a bug where the font was not correctly applied to drop down lists
• fixed a bug where hover texts didn't change their background size
• fixed a bug where a hover text would flicker to the top left if it was changed while being visible

Sunday 15.09

• started a naga model, most of the mesh

Monday 16.09

• finished the naga model, more mesh details, weight painting and animation

I really like how the naga model turned out, the animation looks good and feels natural. I modeled the orc in a T-pose, which made the arms look a little bit weird once I rotated them down. I realized that I don't need to model human like models in a T-pose, because (at least for this game) their arms are only swinging while walking (slithering for the naga). Therefore I modeled the arms of the naga hanging down which made the shoulders look a lot better, especially when animated.


• added more options to the color replacement of the editor for easier use
• created 8 elemental variants of the naga model

Tuesday 17.09

• added all new naga variants to the game
• added a small speed variation to the enemies to make them look and feel more individual

Not every human/animal/fantastic being is identical, therefore it makes sense for them to have slightly different speeds. I added a gamerule for it, so it can be turned off easily when desired. (And while writing this I realized I should also add a small scale variation so the enemies are not all the same size)


• changed the time between mob spawns to be per player and not global, so every player can have a different spawn rate
• added the spawn rate to the run generation and it will create different spawn rates from very fast (0.2s) to very slow (1.4s)
• added a function to the console to set a custom font
• added the information about the spawn rate of a wave to the wave selection ui and the wave details window
• when there is a reward option that unlocks a building, it is now possible to hover over the icon and see what stats and effects the building has

Extremely important, so far the player had to look at the name of the tower and blindly hope that it is any good.


• changed the orc model in Blender to false colors (false colors == pink/cyan/bright green/etc, colors that normal models wouldn't use, so they are easy to replace in my editor)
• made 8 elemental versions of the orc and added them to the game
• boss mobs will now appear bigger

Wednesday 18.09

• added a hover element when hovering over the next wave options to give the player more information about the next wave options when selection a wave

Thursday 19.09

• made a snake model in Blender

Snakes are easy to model and weight paint, and the animation turned out decently as well, my favorite thing is the snake tongue I added that is also animated and comes out every few seconds


• made 8 snake variants and added them into the game
• the building hover will now adjust its width if an effect description is longer than its default width
• the upgrade buttons now also use the normal building hover, they were still using the old one
• now that everything uses the new building hover, the old one has been removed

Friday 20.09

• added immunities to generated runs

There is a certain chance that a mob has an elemental type specific immunity, like water mobs may be immune to burning, and a smaller chance for a random immunity. I'm not sure about the exact numbers though.


• added the immunites to the wave details window
• added a hover effect for immunities

Saturday 21.09

• added lists to the blog

This was more complicated than I thought, because when writing a list I usually put one list point per line, but when formatting the nl2br function replaced these line breaks to html breaks and there was an additional empty line between every list point. I experimented with splitting the string and only applying the nl2br function in the non list parts, but that also removed wanted line breaks. In the end I added a function that replaces every \r\n with just , so it is as if everything was written in one line and when unformatting I add the line breaks back in, so it looks good in the text area.


• fixed a bug that the "C++" tag didn't work in tagsearches
• moved the read more button to the images in the home latest blog posts overview because the button was clipped when the blogpost had a long title and a long description

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