Lets finish designing a Unity3D game.

[jAQUAN]

So I've had some free time the last couple of weeks thanks to a summer break and merciful geometry class. Instead of using the time to beat another game I decided to make one. I've been wanting to tear into Unity for a long time now but finally took the plunge. I must say, I feel a career shift coming on.

Anyway, I spec'd out some very basic gameplay for the purpose of teaching myself the ropes. It's basically a first person angry birds with a puzzle element instead of physics. I'm kind of at a flat spot as far as ideas go so I thought I'd open it up to you guys.

Here's what I have so far. It's all primitive shapes since I'm just focused on code atm so pay no attention to the graphics.
click to start, move your mouse, try to hit the back wall. Repeat.
http://joelstransky.com/lab/RocketWall/RocketWall.html

So where should I take it from here? What's required to clear the stage? Tear it up.

[jAQUAN]

Idea's I'm playing with:
1) The wall will consist of default gray and a few primary colored cubes/bricks.
2) Similar colored gates would exist along the way which would augment the rocket somehow.
3) The current augment would affect what type of brick removal occurred.

But I'm really open to anything. Just looking for excused to get good at Unity.

[mr_malee]

it needs a cannon ball and a flaming ring, or perhaps, 10 flaming rings.

Different colors could give you different points / powerups. Why not use the level to ricochet the player? say you have some colors on the bottom of a block, the only way to hit those colors is to ricochet off the floor.

[jAQUAN]

Interesting "break-out" concept malee. I'll have to consider that. A key to gameplay so far is that it's a controlled flight and a cannon ball has sort of an initial velocity and trajectory. Not sure it would make sense to the player if they could steer a cannon ball. Food for thought though.

[mr_malee]

I think it could still work with your controls. Make sure the player can't turn on a dime so that walls can be used to switch your heading dramatically. This could be the first 3d breakout thingy... kinda... maybe.

I was thinking along the lines of an evil knievel character with a jetpack on getting shot out of a cannon.

[jAQUAN]

Right on, I think that might work. So what's required to complete the stage? I'm thinking you have a limited number of shots and have to achieve something within those shots. Taking down the whole wall seems kinda obvious and would take a lot of shots with only kinetic demolition. Perhaps if the projectile hits the same color brick as it is augmented to then it takes out a larger area or all adjacent bricks of the same color.

[mr_malee]

yeah, use the colors, if you hit your same color; or some kind of target color then something big happens. The big color wall doesn't always need to be at the end too with the ricochet mechanic. It could be around a corner, or on a roof. You could show the top down level (kinda like a minigolf course layout) then zoom into the player start and let them go. Some colors could act as propulsion, like an explosive, giving the player more momentum to reach the goal.

[jAQUAN]

Yep! I'm liking it.

[jAQUAN]

Still working out some core logic. Had to take a step back and re-examine code/class organization. It appears very flash-like on the surface but you soon learn its much better, and much different.

[mr_malee]

where's the application entry point in unity? how do you do UI? switch levels? in game UI?

From what I can tell you place 3d planes in the world and display a camera at the correct position to make these planes appear as 2d. I hope that's not correct.

[jAQUAN]

No there's a GUI layer which relegates GUIText and GUITextures to two dimensions in global space.

Levels, Menus, Cutscenes etc. are saved as Scenes and loaded with LoadLevel

Unity is a component based architecture where every active script has the option to supply handler functions. So far it seems the popular method is to attach start up scripts to an empty GameObject which is Unity's version of a Sprite.