This week we rode this train straight into the ground. Then salvaged some of it and kept chugging along.
What got done:
- Tooltips! (~3 hours)
- mapped to dpad, holding a direction brings up the tip for the corresponding face button
- Optimization
- Unit AI (3 hours) – almost completely redid unit target acquisition. It is now done through an array like towers, which allowed me to get rid of OnTriggerStay checks. It also limits the number of getComponent calls significantly
- Towers (2 hours) – outright removed OnTriggerStay. It was a clumsy way to handle what can be done with an OverlapSphere on tower spawn. That still needs to be implemented though. Also switched to pooling projectiles to avoid the slowdown instantiating and destroying can cause.
- Sobek particle effect implementation (1 hour)
- Active blessing targeter effect implementation (1 hour)
- This will be fleshed out better with different targeters for each blessing, as well as targeters of the appropriate size
- Miscellaneous fixes and patches (1 hour)
- There were issues with the loadout menu after some changes were made. I made it look correct again, but the whole thing will need to be fixed so it scales properly with resolution changes
- Total – ~11 hours
What went well:
- The game is much more optimized now I feel. There are still some instances of hitching that will need to be looked into, namely the first time certain effects spawn, but slowdown caused by large numbers of towers and units is much reduced.
- I redid the tooltip framework in a much more elegant way than it was originally. Aside from changing the mapping to the DPad, I have also limited the number of objects to be worried about by attaching text elements to each gameobject that will have a tooltip so that the text can be pulled straight from there and put into the UI, then removed when the button is released. This way there are not an obnoxious number of objects floating around the scene.
What didn’t:
- Another reeeeally late build night. We need to stop backloading our work.
- Part of the reason I redid my work for the tooltips is that my previous framework got wiped in a merge. I don’t know why but it was unfortunate.
- Having some serious menu problems and issues just cropping up. Testing needs to be improved.
- It’s a small frustration, but the project structure is getting messy. I want to get back to organization.
What’s upcoming:
- Fully connecting all the different elements – the second map, the tutorial, etc.
- Continued optimization and polish
Pharaoh Hound Games 