Soap Creative: TankBlasters, Unity3D work in progress experiment

renderhjs

This is actually my very first personal Unity scene and project, but because I am just learning Unity3D I created a scenario and experiment rather than a real or complete game.
My basic ideas were to do something in unity that I know how to do in flash and just to play with a theme that I like (grid based board alike game with tanks). I did something like that before in Flash, so pathfinding, 2d arrays and alike should be piece of cake for me, except that I need to translate it to a new language: C#

Online Demo
http://renderhjs.net/_tmp/soap/TankBlaster/
(requires the Unity plugin)

The idea is at some point that you can move around a tank and destroy the Soap logo (company that I work as a Gamedev for) in a retro feel. Some screens of the current yet early build:


I'll be finishing this experiment sometime soon and it will be part of the Soap's showcase. I hate unity as a editor in many ways which is good because it pushes me more to a edge of writing edtor tools and scripts to fix whats broken or not available in Unity.

Once those scripts are in a stable version I will release them just like I did with TexTools. Most of these scripts in Unity are about selecting multiple objects quicker, snap prefabs, snap rotate them, random offset rotate/ move, shuffle object positions,...

I was pushed into using Tiled (a open source 2d tile editor) for which I wrote some tools to convert the saved XML data to use-able and simplified c# arrays. Though in the end I think using Unity3D itself ONLY with extra scripts might be the better soloution in the end. Unity is pretty much broken as editor itself (bounding box selection, transform multiple elements, object layer management,...) but maybe with version 3.0/3.5 or 4.0 things will be more at the level of Max, Maya and alike.

On the 3dsMax side I also wrote some Tools and Scripts to wrap Prefabs into single FBX files with {0,0,0} based object placements within the file (so having pivots makes actually sense). Some snapping scripts to align verts to global units, so that I can create snappy prefabs that are easy and fun to create a level with. I might release some of that as well for those that are interested in it.

Soap, my company already ordered Unity3 pro for iPad, iPhone and Android and so eventually I will be working a bit more with Unity3d later this year. Exploring the limits on a mobile device such as the iPhone or popular Android phones with tool / pipeline scripting tricks will be fun.

JasonLavoie

I just want to say renderhjs that you never fail to amaze me buddy, truly one of the current greats in the industry I think I hope the experiment goes well man.

Muzzoid

Looks really cool.

It's really interesting hearing your thoughts on unity like that, considering ive only every heard good things coming from it but having never used it myself.

Gallows

Really sick stuff man. Getting excited at all for the Unity update? Hopefully they fix a lot of the apparent tool problems.

renderhjs

Muzz wrote: »

It's really interesting hearing your thoughts on unity like that, considering ive only every heard good things coming from it but having never used it myself.

Don't believe all those positive reviews there is quite a lot things still very wrong with Unity3D. Sure they will upgrade and fix the flaws and gabs but it is NO WAY close to what they claim in their ads and website (just like adobe, autodesk,microsoft,... software)..

Here is a list of things that I really hate so far, my rant list:

• Hidden, not obvious or well documented fixed folders (editor, gizmo,resources,..). You can't move or rename those how you want, neither are they highlighted in a special way, nor do they exist at first.
• No bounding box selection method, no fucking way to select multiple objects with a drag and drop marking. I need to write some scripts to find a way around this, I already have some scripts that select similar objects or near connected objects but something as basic as this missing is just unbelievable.
• Super annoying additive selection with ctrl + click which often requires another click because of focus issues in unity, and this is the only way to select multiple objects in the viewpport - even that is broken.
• No object layer management (I will write a script for this most likely). And if you create empty nodes and put others into it that node usually expands every now and then in the list view which makes it extremely annoying to scroll - I so hate that behavior. Its just a mess in Unity working with lots of prefabs which makes using he editor as a editor almost impossible.
• Hardcoded settings for certain settings such as FBX base scale of 0.1 instead of 1.0 - always forcing you to change it and say yes to that nagging popup box,...
• Unable to sect and move with one click and drag and more importantly no way to restrict movement to a 2d axis (instead of just x,z,y) like in 3dsmax. Some extended pivot control would be nice. Overall very cumbersome to move and transform objects in unity, to many clicks required no drag and slide gestures incorporated.

On a personal preference I just can't stand the reversal of Y and Z axis compared to all other 3d apps I know. It's not just swapped but inversed on one axis as well- which requires rethinking when writing some scripts and code.

Like I said before whenever I say I hate something it means that I am to that extend unhappy with it that I am already about to think about alternatives or possible workarounds (scripts, hacks, macros, plugins,...).
The only thing that I can praise about Unity's efforts is their community system all with the bug reporting, unityAnswers, their forum and so on. It all was very smartly and well planned ahead and just works beautiful, people are really helping you on those sites with quality and speedy answers. Companies such as autodesk or adobe could learn a lot about that, less company in control more crowd in control, its amazing what a well organized crowd can archive.

renderhjs

I worked today on a skid mark code that creates a mesh dynamically with fixed UV mapping so that it looks as if it was actually casted by the tank while moving.
The yellow rectangles define the skid sources to draw from. The scripts places a new element to the mesh every certain reached distance.

Worked on some intro screen stuff and a few other things. Will update the online demo sometime soon.

edit: updated the online demo:
http://renderhjs.net/_tmp/soap/TankBlaster/

rumblesushi

I have to admit that the lack of bounding box selection is absolutely astounding, how on earth can they not even have that? That's essential in any software working with mutiple objects on the stage. Flash 1 probably has that

Also, what do you mean by one of the axis is reversed? Do you mean the Y axis like in Flash? Where up is negative? I hate that too.

Also, why can you not just do everything in Max and load it in like you could in any other engine?

r_fletch_r

i think marquee selection is a new feature in 3

haiddasalami

You probably know this but sometimes the tank just flips out probably something to do with the collision box. Great stuff as always Render. Are the scripts for unity just written in C++?