Road to Sheep Island
Building on my procedurally-generated island mesh, the next step was to see about bringing some life to the land.
I had a vision of an interlocking techno-organic ecosystem, with a bunch of different animal and plant types, but my inspiration dried up after implementing sheep flocks.
"I wonder how hard it is going to be to add a navigation mesh to a procedurally-generated island"
— Jez 🌻 (@NinjaJez) April 22, 2018
Answer: not very! Awesome tooling, @unity3d! #unity3d #gamedev pic.twitter.com/mvRls4au8Y
I continue to be impressed by how #unity3d makes life easy. In a few scattered hours today I've added a nav mesh and collision to my procedurally generated island and borrowed a pannable, zoomable camera from a community post.
— Jez 🌻 (@NinjaJez) April 22, 2018
Next up: navigating agents, I guess? #gameDev pic.twitter.com/yTIrZf61cg
Spent the evening experimenting with #unity3d's runtime nav mesh generation feature. Worked out how to generate nav meshes for different agent types; here there are two overlain where one agent can't go up as steep slopes as the other! #gamedev pic.twitter.com/sy2lGV7eNR
— Jez 🌻 (@NinjaJez) April 23, 2018
The next step! First a visualisation of the nodes that reference the underlying voronoi centers structure, and then my first autonomous agents, currently tethered to said nodes (green line) and wandering to random locations nearby (red line) #unity3d #navMesh pic.twitter.com/2c5vdBJKiu
— Jez 🌻 (@NinjaJez) May 2, 2018
Sat in the park making little cubes pretend to be vaguely sheep-like :D#unity3d pic.twitter.com/PscwkKAOQs
— Jez 🌻 (@NinjaJez) May 5, 2018
Amusingly, I've already found a black sheep - for whatever reason, this lil guy wants to hang out in the sky. Just... floating there. On its own. Not sure if I should be all "poor lil guy" or "it's ok dude, just chill"#unity3d pic.twitter.com/IdVRQeP6Mk
— Jez 🌻 (@NinjaJez) May 5, 2018
— Jez 🌻 (@NinjaJez) May 6, 2018
Implemented a new flock behaviour: transitioning between unthreatened and defensive :D Note how they get a speed and acceleration boost when threatened ^_^#unity3d #gameDev #circleTheWagons pic.twitter.com/V8KV9F1eVg
— Jez 🌻 (@NinjaJez) May 6, 2018
Suspicious sheep stare down the suspicious, threatening cube :D#gamedev #unity3d pic.twitter.com/hKsE6c9Hvl
— Jez 🌻 (@NinjaJez) May 11, 2018
It took a couple of hours, but I worked out how to get my flocks to scatter when threatened too much! Not bad for being tired and having a cold! :D#unity3d #gameDev #sheepHerding pic.twitter.com/Fi5cnExIdl
— Jez 🌻 (@NinjaJez) May 12, 2018
Spent the day fooling around refactoring the world generator to use a builder-style pattern, to make it easier to change the parameters. I can now add features to apply trivially! See some examples from my current simple function chain below.#unity3d #gameDev pic.twitter.com/0Y7awRh7Wm
— Jez 🌻 (@NinjaJez) May 12, 2018
Fooling around with additional terrain deformation ideas. How about craters? Big ones, small ones, some the size of your head! Mash 'em together, erode them down a little bit...#unity3D #gameDev pic.twitter.com/NGACiMaVws
— Jez 🌻 (@NinjaJez) May 13, 2018
My first attempt to stick feet on my sheep using the power of #code didn't go quite to plan...#Unity3d #gameDev #thatWasntSupposedToHappen#sideprojectMonday pic.twitter.com/H4o5jIzmcr
— Jez 🌻 (@NinjaJez) May 14, 2018
There we go! The noble sheep stares out across the desolate mountainscape, proudly perched on planar paws.#Unity3d #gameDev #sideprojectMonday pic.twitter.com/4dQsicvtwS
— Jez 🌻 (@NinjaJez) May 14, 2018
Ok, so maybe the offset is in the wrong coordinate reference frame, but this little skating guy has style B)#Unity3d #gameDev #sideprojectMonday pic.twitter.com/CVZ3SQUmIq
— Jez 🌻 (@NinjaJez) May 14, 2018
Phew, it scales! there's 200 lil skating sheep on this island, doing their little scoots with their feet finding the terrain :)
— Jez 🌻 (@NinjaJez) May 14, 2018
Calling it an evening there; my next challenge is gonna be making them take steps!#Unity3d #gameDev #sideprojectMonday pic.twitter.com/hSyPXWQEdC
Turns out when the sheep get et, their feet remain.
— Jez 🌻 (@NinjaJez) May 15, 2018
Forever.
Reminding you of what you did.
...
brb, patching my guilt out.#unity3d #gameDev #TheIslandRemembers pic.twitter.com/pYqEO6Tv4W
Feet 2.0
— Jez 🌻 (@NinjaJez) May 19, 2018
D'aww, lookit them go!#unity3d #gameDev pic.twitter.com/r0NX0ShkcS
Once upon a time someone told me that programming was all about numbers. So I figured I should add some to my island.
— Jez 🌻 (@NinjaJez) May 21, 2018
Then I got a bit carried away.
I'm telling myself it's all for a good cause, or something.#sideprojectMonday #unity3d #gameDev pic.twitter.com/qe4It0VHab