Unity 3D is, as always, awesome.

http://blogs.unity3d.com/2013/05/21/putting-the-power-of-unity-in-the-hands-of-every-mobile-developer/

.... ;)

May 2013 - changes

Although changes have been slow due to the large amount of work required by school (especially during exam season) I have managed to spend several hours making some small changes to the game here and there (nothing groundbreaking - mostly adding stuff) but below is a full changelog of what has been changed since the last version went up - the link can be found at the bottom of the blog post (:

• Created the general look of the village - it's a gathering of 7 houses, a town hall, a stable, a lumbermill and a guild house. The village has 3 golden statues in the center to add glamour to it.
• Added the first few models with placeholder animations (2 animals at the player's starting position, and several trolls in one of the buildings)
• The first house has been decorated and outfitted with furniture, which I've made a video of:

• I tried writing several of my own scripts, one of them is the ladder climbing script, which isn't perfect and needs to be improved but its a start... 

(Written in C#)

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;

public class ladderclimbing : MonoBehaviour {

public GameObject player;
public GameObject destination;
public Collider collider;

// Use this for initialization
void Start () {

}

// Update is called once per frame
void Update () {
if(Input.GetKeyDown("e")) {
RaycastHit hit;
Ray ray = Camera.main.ScreenPointToRay(Input.mousePosition);
if(Physics.Raycast(ray, out hit))
if(collider.Raycast(ray, out hit, 100)) {

player.transform.position = destination.transform.position;
}
}
}
}

There is still plenty to be done, and this is barely an alpha.. but the newest version can be found here:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/56829355/web.html

Any kind of feedback is very welcome, I should have a blog post or video explaining the story and overall message of the game sometime soon (:

What makes you you? What factors combine to make you the person you are everyday?
Who are you everyday? Is it the people that you interact with? Is it the things you do alone? Is it the thoughts you have or is the actions you take?
Is your past a bigger part of you than the present?
Can you change who you are on a fundamental level, or will you always be the same?

If you are evil, what defines evil? Shouldn't evil be in the eye of the beholder? All the different views, facts, beliefs that coexist to create our moral system and our judgement, don't they differ from one person to the next? How would you describe evil? Are there evils you can't make up for?

How certain can you be you know someone? Think of a friend, do you know "him"? How do you know him? Through his actions? His thoughts? His views? What if that person had a twisted, dark past that you don't know about? If you found out about it, would you still feel safe around them?

~A Journey Into Memories Past

Video showing today's changes

And as I promised, here is the video showcasing the changes I described in the previous post ^^

It's finally time for updates! :D

This is way way way way later than I would have liked it to be, trust me. But with the amount of school/home/house work going on (and okay free time too, I admit) there really hasn't been much time to work on this project. The fact that I'm still fairly new to scripting/coding is also slowing me down, although today I managed to write my first own script! :D Very simple but...

Anyway,
I was able to spend a few hours working on the project today and I have added/modified a lot of stuff. Since the last version there is now a number of new buildings that make a village outside the "starting area" people who have played WoW will recognise those with no problem!
The buildings so far are just randomly placed so they could be textured, etc but my next step is to make it look all pretty like a village, so ill be focusing on that later today!

The next thing I've done is fix the retarded mouse cursor. In the currently uploaded version, the mouse cursor is moving all over the screen and just being a pain. Now, it is stuck in the center of the screen to be more akin to FPS games, great! :D

Since mouse sensitivity is a big problem for a lot of people, you can change the sensitivity in game by pressing the [ and ] keys (this was the first script I ever wrote 100% on my own! ...Told you it was simple! :))

The character can now walk up stairs more naturally than he/she used to. However, I found that just changing the step offset isn't enough, so I'll have to add invisible planes to stairs for the character to walk on which is my next step.

When you pick up objects now, they don't rotate like retarded animals. They stick in one place all nice and neatly. This does however cause them to simply move through stuff, which feels awkward.. I'll have to see what I can do about that.

The last thing I managed to do today is kind of cool (if you ask me) I added full xbox360 gamepad support to the game, so if you have a wired xbox gamepad lying around somewhere and would prefer to play it with one, you can do! It would actually be awfully nice if someone could do that, because I think I have a bit of a faulty controller, which caused my camera to constantly spin around in-game. If someone could check whether they have the same problem later on when I upload the newest build to my dropbox, I promise to bake some brownies in your honour.


The list of things to be done, not necessarily in order:
The village
Fixing all the stairs
Adding sound effects for walking (having the type of floor affect the sound, could take a while (maybe))
Adding at least one NPC - Ill try to have him/her randomly walk around, if thats "too advanced" for me at the moment, he/she will be static - like sat inside a house or something

I would want to add animated characters from WoW, but currently my 3DS Max doesnt work properly, and everytime I try to import an .fbx file it crashes (might have to do with WoW Model Viewer too, who knows...)

What I would also like to add at some point depending on how much time I have/how the development goes:

Splitscreen coop/multiplayer (I know how to do it, it will just take a lot of time)
Day/Night cycle (need to learn it first, but it would be really cool! :D)
Possibly mounts? (I know that this is a very very advanced feature, but challenges are fun!)

If I do manage to get animated WoW models to work, the game might change from a first person game into a third person game. This would allow me for character customization and other cool features... We'll have to see!
Thats all I have for you so far, writing this from my laptop so I can't upload any screenshots or anything, but a video is currently being uploaded to youtube which ill post here later.
Also I'll try to upload the newest build of the game as soon as possible, might be today, might be tomorrow... Definitely before sunday though!

Work has been kind of slow...

As title says, the last two weeks were spent being in bed sick with the flu. Fun stuff. Especially when you have a load of material to catch up with from school... So progress on AJiMP (thats actually a pretty neat abbreviation, hmm) has been kind of slow.
I did however start working on the first village outside of the main starting area. There are currently 3 buildings, those that played WoW will recognise them as the small simple house, a "guild house" (version 1) and a "guild house" (version 2) currently two of them are finished, with the last one causing some trouble due to the fact that it contains a basement. (The room is stuck below the terrain) should be a really easy fix though, just didn't have time today!

I also know HOW to get animations to work, except that I can't at the moment because all 3DS Max does at the moment is crash whenever I try to import a model. I guess this means I have to reinstall it, which kind of sucks because I remember that installing the program was a pain.. >_>
But as soon as I do get it working, I will also finally be able to make that YouTube tutorial people have been asking about, which is how to import an animated character from WoW Model Viewer (which also stopped working for me, joy) into Unity. So as soon as those 2 programs work again, that's a thing that will be happening..

Aside from that I'm keeping a list of things that need to be changed, mainly controls, although everything about the controls at the moment is simply a placeholder. So everything will be different. (sensitivity, movement, mouse control, walking up stairs, etc, etc) IF I get animations to work properly the game will probably be played in the third person perspective.. maybe.
The build to which the link is below is still quite old, it was the first "working" build, and I hope to have a new, improved one out fairly soon!

The story is also coming along quite nicely ;)
That's pretty much all there is to say at the moment... See you guys around!

A link to my tumblr... if that's your thing?

If tumblring is your thing, I got you covered!

http://journeyintomemories.tumblr.com

Follow for updates and what not..

Try the game for yourself!

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/56829355/web.html

The link will take you to a playable demo of the latest version!
(make sure you DO NOT PRESS "C" it's a crouch function in progress, and needs to be fixed. Do not press it)

Controls:

WASD - movement
Left shift - run
Mouse - look around (need to fix sensitivity... will probably have the cursor fixed in the middle of the screen, will see)
Left mouse button (hold) to pick up and move blue objects (also needs to be fixed)
E - when close and looking at a book press once to read, again to close (books are outlined in red)

There is a long list of bugs which I have in my head, but if you find any please let me know!
Also there isn't much to do at the moment... hence the demo ;)

But have fun and leave comments! :D

Hello everyone!

Where should I start off.. Probably from the start;
Right then, hi guys (and girls) this blog is to follow the development of a game I'm working on titled "A Journey Into Memories Past".
I have worked on smaller game projects before, but I'm aiming for this to be my first "release".
What is there to say about the game?

First of all how it's made and stuff like that..
Since I don't have a lot of time  barely have time ever, I can't afford to make my own models and animations. The game will feature models, animations, sounds and other things from World of Warcraft. Before I get myself in any legal trouble, the models animations and sounds belong to Blizzard Entertainment and I'm not using them to make a profit (the game will be 100% free for all 3 main operating systems; windows, mac and linux). Next, the game will feature a cel-shaded graphics style (or as I like to call it, the Borderlands style) this means all objects are very bright and colorful, and have black outlines around them making them look cartoony, which honestly looks great with WoW models in my opinion, but judge for yourself from the screenshots.

Thirdly the game will feature a physics system similar to Penumbra. You will be able to pick up and throw around certain objects, read "books" and notes, and use items to solve puzzles. This needs a lot of work, but there is a prototype that works so far.

Now what about actual game mechanics?

They are very closely tied together to the game's story, which I really don't want to spoil too much. In my opinion story is the most important aspect of the game. I think this obsession arose from all the Warcraft lore and then later the Mass Effect games. (just to name a few).
But, game mechanics. Aside from the already mentioned Penumbra like physics puzzles, the game will feature a time mechanic. Before you all sigh and groan and point at Braid saying that’s been done or whatever, the time mechanic in here is different, more of a subliminal time mechanic.. So you'll be able to swap between two alternatives, the present and the past (thus the title, duh) to discover... stuff (hard to avoid spoilers man..) 

As previously stated, I really don't have much time to work on this game, I'll mostly only be able to get stuff done on the weekends, so updates and progress won't be accelerating at a very fast level I'm afraid (also being a bit of a beginner slows things down as well... just a bit, but you know) 

The engine I'm using is Unity 4. It's incredibly powerful, very easy to learn and so amazingly convenient that it's a pleasure just adding and placing things.

But I've blabbered on enough, check out some screenshots taken from a 12-hour-into-development build running on my macbook.

A lake to show the reflection of the water and the fishing hut. (The textures for the terrain will be redone)

Hello and welcome to picking up crates. The book the right can be read (text is placeholder)

A view from the second floor of the player's house. (I will try to add cel-shading to the leaves as well.. maybe)

The second floor from an earlier build (looks different now)

The entrance to the house (uncomplete, furniture missing, etc)

So there are some screenshots from the earliest build of the game (around 12 hours into work, lots of things need to be changed, fixed, added and tweaked) 

Tell me what you think so far and I hope to have a lot more to show after this weekend!