Unicorn Training Bosses: Pyre, Splash, Surge, Decoy, & Hex

     I finished up the last few bosses yesterday and now everything in my game has a functioning brain! This is really exciting since it means the game's release date is in sight! I can't wait to get to beta and just playtest this thing. this is the longest I've ever spent on a single project and I want to see it become something. The boss fights are the most interesting battles in the whole game so I'm glad to finally get those playable. Get some descriptions below!

Unicorn Training Bosses: Cut & Frost

     I got a bunch of boss development time yesterday and went to town! I finished 2 more bosses and have the rest setup so I can easily finish them before the weekend even starts! That's the current plan at least. We'll see if school has something else in mind. Check out the boss descriptions below!

Unicorn Training Bosses: Shield & Bounce

     A metric butt-ton of things got in the way of me making progress with Unicorn Training. Exams are relentless and comic-con weekend ensures low-productivity. Tonight is different because I had a full hour to myself and I spent it finishing up the first bosses for the game!

Unicorn Training Enemies: Cruncher & Cyclops

     This time I'm finishing up the last of Unicorn Training's enemies. I made the last two recently but didn't post about them yet! Cyclops and Cruncher are the final two enemies to script and  both were easier than I anticipated. All the enemies became simpler once I got rid of the roaming script and stuck with horizontal / vertical switch movement.

     Cyclops walk around with their bad attitudes shooting out laser balls every 3 seconds. They always switch from horizontal to vertical (or reverse) after firing. Each time they fire they aim at clover based on their horizontal status and choose to shoot left/right or up/down. Cruncher is the last enemy I did and it behaves much like the Cyclops but spits splashes of water instead of firing lasers.

     It's nice to have this part of the game out of the way. Just 9 bosses to go and I start the sprint toward the finish! If this is the hardest stuff I have to code I'll be done in no time.

Unicorn Training Enemies: Sentry, SurgeOrb, Troll, Ogre

     Sentry is the common dungeon dweller. It's the only enemy that appears when you step on a booby trap and serves as the default bad guy in Swirllock's obstacle courses. It has two orbiting diamonds that take turns shooting at you and will also fire if you manage to hit it in the face. The easy part is, they don't have the ability to move, so they can be dodged easily.

     SurgeOrb is basically an aggressive Blockwork. When its electric shield goes down it shoots out wattballs like crazy before going back into hiding. You're going to need some healing cupcakes to deal with these guys. At least they don't move. They don't attack while guarding either, so that's your chance to set up a turret in their faces.

     Trolls and Ogres are cool because they just walk around boasting their testosterone levels. They're based off of a gag character from My Little Pony and just walk back n' forth shouting every few steps. Ogres are green, smelly, and slightly slower than trolls. They shoot fast fireballs that put Burstie's to shame. Trolls are the easy little brother with no bonuses aside from a tiny bit of speed. Both are tanks with twice the health of normal enemies, but are total pushovers once you level up your strongest moves.

Unicorn Training Enemies: Flapwick & Psybat

     Flapwicks are big ol' Zubat looking monsters that fly around and pause to screech every couple seconds. Every third screech has a slightly bigger hitbox than normal but all screeches do the same damage. Hitting a Flapwick makes it alternate between moving horizontally or vertically. Like spinners, these were meant to wander freely but I'm having trouble with the code for that but this Drillor style wall bumping works perfectly.

     As for the Psybats, they took most of the code from Goorbs and basically flap in place until you hit them. When hit, they throw one of their four levitating rocks at you which do more damage than Goorb balls but don't bounce everywhere. Once all the rocks are gone, the bat resorts to feeble screeching like it's Flapwick cousin until you can take it out. The rocks will block everything but the Cut and Surge spells so you'll have to time your shots or switch over to a spell that can kill them.

Unicorn Training Enemies: Burstie, Spinner, & Blockwork

     After a couple days of miserable sickness I'm back at it! I got a handful of enemies done and I'll be describing the latest 3 today. Bursties are the brown dudes spiting fireballs. They rotate clockwise on the spot and shoot each time they turn. They do this no matter where Clover is so they can make the entire map dangerous. They pop after just one hit, but on death they will explode and cause damage if Clover is near them. To make up the challenge they are guaranteed heart droppers like Jelwads. Taking these guys out first is a very wise decision.

      Spinners are the ruby eyed orbs floating above little tornadoes. They simply roam within a small space around their spawn position. Every few seconds they'll shoot at Clover if she's nearby. The trickiest thing about them is hitting the small fast-moving collision box around the head orb. Landing a hit while dodging the rapid fire energy balls can be pretty tough in the heat of things.

     Blockwork is the name given to the ruby orb with a surrounding diamond. It can only be harmed when its diamond shield turns off. All the while it fires energy balls every couple seconds if you're within range. An interesting thing I noticed with this enemy is how it can always be harmed by the piercing Cut spell. If you don't want to wait for the shield to go down, switch to Cut and slash away. It gives players a reason to use that spell rather than sticking to a single favorite. I'll keep that idea in mind for future baddies.

Unicorn Training Item Shops

     Both the item shops are open for business! They work like a charm, allowing you to buy helpful things in exchange for gems. It's as simple as walking in from of what you want and pressing the action button. The price of your selected item hovers over the shop keep's head. I'm currently debating on whether to have item descriptions somewhere or let that be a surprise. At this point I realize items are not a necessity but are more like a bonus to make things easier. Especially the potions. Items and currency kind of just exist for the sake of existing. I'll definitely overhaul it all when making Unicorn Quest.

Doing Unicorn Map Before Scripting Enemies

     I'd get a much nicer morale boost if I do this one little thing before scripting enemies. My map page in the pause menu has been blank for too long. I want to put in the map sprites I made yesterday and the whole thing can be done in one night. I want Clover's flashing face sprite to be over the square region she currently resides in. It will give players a general feel for where they are and show where certain gems are in the overworld.

     In dungeons it will show how close you are to the boss room. I don't want players to feel completely lost and I also don't want them to feel like dungeons are deeper or shorter than they actually are. 9 dungeon rooms each and 16 overworld rooms. This map shows where you are in those.

Finished Remaining Enemy Prefabs For Unicorn Training

All the baddies exist! Too bad they can't move yet.

     I finished up the last of the enemy and boss prefabs a couple days back and now I'm working on each one's script so I can tell everyone how the finalized versions will work. I have basic ideas written down in the design document but I've noticed my enemy designs changing to fit constraints on the fly so nothing is certain until it's set in code. Hopefully I'll have a basic enemy or two up soon so I can talk about them.

Unicorn Training: Things Left to Do

     I'm expecting this to be Unicorn Training's last couple months of development. If everything goes well and I don't get handed much homework I'll be able to reach final playtesting by late October! I thought it would be interesting to see my development task list the way I glance at it daily. I copy/pasted my checklist from my iPod notes below the break.

Unicorn Training: Making Enemy Prefabs (Copy/Paste Monster Objects)

     I finished up the animations and crafted game objects out of some enemy sprites. This allows me to drag & drop them into any levels I want them to appear in. I can also summon them at will in battle this way. I'll be doing this for the rest of them today. Next I have to code each one's unique behavior to have them all complete. Right now they all have empty scripts so they just stand in place when spawned.

Unicorn Training: Sprites Imported, Animations Ready!

     It's finally done! All the enemies and bosses have fully animated in-game forms! I just have to code them one-by-one and my game will be in near-beta completeness. Once I've finished the enemies I'll just need a few menu interface sprites before being left to balance and polish up the game. Getting these enemy sprites done once and for all is a huge relief because it took so much longer than I was expecting. Still, the game is roughly on schedule and should be in final playtesting by late September for an early October release.

The organization is pretty messy. I'll sort this stuff better next game.
Folders are your friends.

Finished White Outlines (NEVER DOING THIS AGAIN!!)

     The time consuming process of outlining each up-scaled sprite is finally over. I am ready to cut out each sprite box and drag them all into Unity. It's a big relief to be done drawing everything and soon I'll be making code that turns these pixel monsters into living creatures. Like I've mentioned before, I don't plan on ever ding this stuff again. I'll keep my sprites small, manageable, and outline-free. I can focus more on color contrasting and non-black borders to make things stick out.

Finishing Up Enemy Sprites For Unicorn Training

     I finally got all the composition work done so I can start doing the white outlines next. I really don't like the effect anymore but I'm in too deep and have to stick through it for just this game. I gotta say all the new poses and animations took longer than I'd liked, especially the ones with walk cycles. The Troll, Ogre, and Cyclops for instance. Although the Cyclops was simpler because I could take an NPC body and make it a bit fatter and move the eye over.

     Some of these enemies require some Gimp trickery and object placement in Unity to look right but these are all the base pieces I needed to draw. Once they're brought to life in-game I can rest easy knowing release day is about a month away.

Enemy Progress For Unicorn Training

     So far so good with turning my monsters into pixels. I really am getting better at turning doodles into pixel art. It also helps to edit over my existing sprite library to create new things. Each thing I draw gives me a new piece to play with. I'll explain how each new enemy works when they're all done and functioning in Unity.

     I want to spread out posts explaining them to make up for the downtime I plan to have the first week of school. I can't just get there and go straight into crunch mode, I need a breath of fresh air and time with old friends. It's weeks like this that make me want to start doing bi-weekly posts instead of daily ones. There are just some days where nothing gets done.

   I promised daily Unicorn Training updates so that's what I'm going to do. I want them all to stand as something to look back on years from now so I can remember what it was like making my first RPG. Hopefully some reading all these can learn from my mistakes or be inspired to pursue a dream game of their own.

Making The Remaining Unicorn Training Enemies

     The game's development is coming to a close now and the first day of school is approaching so it's time to get the last really big task complete. Finishing the rest of the game's enemies and bosses. Spriting and coding them all may take over a week, but when that's done the game is basically in complete alpha shifting toward beta as I add in finishing touches and balance stuff.

    I plan on saving the more exotic and tricky designs  from the original document for the next game. I feel like I can make better use of them in a grid-based realtime combat system. These simple guys I sketched will get the job done and flesh out the game enough to entertain for a couple hours. They behave differently and will keep battles from feeling like a shooting gallery.

More Sound Effects in Unicorn Training

     I've added more audio to the game in order to make up for all the silence going on. I wrote down every little thing in the game that would need to be heard and wrote what it should sound like. Now it's a matter of spending hours in Bfxr and Freesound to mix the right sounds together and toss them into the Unity script I have setup for them.

    It's kind of silly how disorganized it all is now that I've down-scaled and won't be using any of those reserved variables I made to prepare for a much larger world. I'll just keep churning these out for the next couple days and have every sound I could possibly need ready to go.

I also got all the NPCs working yesterday!

Working Obstacles in Unicorn Training

     I got the basic travel stuff down finally. Dungeons are navigable and feel great! Just throw in some enemies, treasures, and a boss then they'll be complete. I made things like pits you can only cross by teleporting, electrical gates that turn on/off in alternating patterns, switches that open gates, and booby traps that spawn baddies when you touch them. Next on the agenda is testing every door to make sure they lead to where they're supposed to. It'll also give me a chance to experience the world from a player perspective instead of a zoomed out tile map view.

Unicorn Training Overworld Collision Complete!

     The overworld maps are done (except for enemy placement) and look fantastic! It feels fantastic too now that all the doors are working. The longest stretch is completely behind me now and I just have to worry about making the remaining enemies before it's a smooth jog to the finish.

    The game feels more real than ever now that I can go scene to scene and the world layout makes sense. I feel like I'm 3 weeks away from finishing development. I might even be done within the first week of school with only playtesting and review requests to worry about.