GearBlocks News

As I mentioned in the previous post, I'd started to mock up some ideas for the player character's tool model. To keep things simple I decided to just have a single "universal" tool, and over the past couple of weeks I've been developing this idea further.

[h3]The model[/h3]

I wanted something relatively compact that wouldn't get in the way, but still could provide useful feedback to the player. I settled on an appearance that references VR controllers and the like, and also takes inspiration from some great ideas from the GearBlocks community!

First step was to model it in Blender. My modelling skills are rudimentary at best, so I like to keep things pretty simple, but I think it turned out OK.





By the way, the handle has the same radius as an axle in the game, and is designed to fit into the player character's hand!

[h3]Status display[/h3]

Then after dropping the model into the game, I got to work implementing a status display for it. This uses the Unity UI system with a world space canvas positioned just behind the tool's transparent screen. I customised the UI shader slightly so that the UI elements are emissive with an HDR colour, making the display glow brighter than its surroundings (looks pretty cool at night!)

Builder tool display, mostly empty right now, but in the future will show the status of some options that I'm planning on adding:



Material tool display, shows the currently selected material:



Linker tool display, shows which link types are currently selected to be edited:



Painter tool display, shows the currently selected paint colour:



[h3]Particle effects[/h3]

Lastly, I worked on improving the builder tool "energy beam" effect a bit, and added another effect (a glowy sparks thing) to represent the source of the beam.



I also trigger the glowy sparks effect when the material or painter tool are changing things (I've removed the old paint spray effect). I'll probably have to revisit these effects (improve their appearance, maybe add sounds etc.) but for now they're a decent step in the right direction.

This video shows everything in action:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdq8Cz3F4Y8
OK, that's it for this update. Thanks for following along this year, for your invaluable feedback, and as always, thanks for your patience with my slow pace of development! :)

Happy holidays to you and all the best for the new year (here's hoping it will be an improvement on 2020!)

Hey everyone, time for a quick update on what I've been working on over the past month or so.

[h3]Scenario mode[/h3]

If you've been following the development of GearBlocks for a while, you'll know that my plan for a long time has been to build something on top of the current open ended "creative mode" game-play. This is something I've been wanting to work on for ages, and now I've finally made a start on it! I'm calling it the "scenario mode", but you could equally refer to it as "campaign mode", "challenge mode", or "tutorial mode". The idea being that it'll be flexible enough to cater to all of these use cases and more.

My plan is to create a series of scenarios of increasing complexity to gradually introduce new players to the concepts in the game and act as a tutorial mode. Beyond that I'd like to include an additional series of scenarios for experienced builders to challenge them further, but that will come later.

Each scenario may have a limited selection of tools and / or parts to build with, and certain objectives to achieve. Once the objectives are achieved, the scenario is complete, and it may then unlock more scenarios.

The process for creating a scenario is pretty simple. You set it up in creative mode, save the game tagged as scenario, and then it'll be available to launch as a new game in scenario mode. This way players can create their own scenarios and upload them to the workshop!

So far I have done the following:-

• Changed the UI and code to now refer to a saved "game" as a saved "world", I felt this made more sense because a saved "game" from creative mode can now serve as a template for a new game in scenario mode.
  
• Modified the UI and code so that a new scenario mode game can be launched from any saved world that's tagged with scenario (this includes built-in, locally saved, and workshop downloads).
  
• Implemented code support for parameters to specify which game features are allowed when a scenario is active (such as which tools are available, whether new constructions or parts can be spawned, etc.)
  
• Added a scenario editor panel in the world tool UI for editing these parameters while in creative mode.
  

Here's what the scenario editor UI looks like right now.



There's still plenty more to do, for example:-

• Add the ability to test a scenario from within creative mode without having to exit first and start a new game in scenario mode.
  
• Implement an option to reset / restart a scenario while playing it.
  
• Add support to save / load in-progress scenarios (not sure if this will be strictly necessary, but could be good for scenarios that take a long time to play through).
  

Beyond that I need to build out some features to facilitate creating objectives (e.g. special parts for start / end trigger zones, gates, etc.) but this is something I'll discuss in more detail in a future update.

[h3]Player tool model[/h3]

I've also been mocking up some ideas for the player character's tool model, I'm sick of the crappy "box on a stick" placeholder that's in the game currently!

Originally I was thinking of having a separate model for each tool (builder, linker, painter, etc.), but to reduce scope and simplify things I've now decided to have a single universal tool model. However, when the player switches between tools, I still want it to visually represent this somehow, e.g. with a display, visual effects and so on.

I think I know the direction to go in now, and soon I'll be firing up Blender and getting to work on it.

Hey all, another demo update is just out, with UI and part behaviour improvements, plus a few bug fixes.

Release notes:-

• Improved and added in-game UI overlays to show what actions are available to the player, and the keys bound to them.
  
• Various other tweaks and improvements to UI textures and elements.
  
• Implemented a gear engagement indicator.
  
• Part behaviour actions now have primary and secondary key binding slots (and can use modifier keys).
  
• Added configurable part behaviour settings for input smoothing and motor direction.
  
• Controllable part behaviours can now be configured so that their bound keys either toggle activation on and off, or have to be held down to keep activated.
  
• Enabled linear bearing attachments on gears.
  
• Double clicking on a construction in the world tool UI will now select it.
  
• Bug fixes.
  
• Upgraded to Unity 2019.4.13.
  

Hey all, here's an update on what I've been up to over the past several weeks. I've mostly been focused on providing more UI feedback for players in game, and improving part behaviour control.

[h3]UI overlays[/h3]

I've overhauled the in-game UI overlays to show the player what actions are available to them depending on the current context. These overlays show which keys are bound to these actions, so that they can always see what can be done at any given moment. I'm thinking this will replace the current text based hints, as it pretty much renders those redundant.

Below you can see the player overlay on the bottom left, the toolbar overlay in the middle, and the part overlay on the right. Each of these overlays have been modified to show various available actions and their key bindings.



The player overlay now shows the current camera mode and whether free flight is enabled. The toolbar overlay shows which keys to press for the tool and construction menus, and the part overlay now shows whether the part behaviour is active and which key to press for the part behaviour UI.

I've also added new overlays in the top left corner to show the available actions depending on which tool is active:-

Selection overlay (for select, delete, attach, detach, etc.) and transform overlay (for translate, rotate, resize, etc.):



Material overlay (apply and pick):



Link overlay (add / remove, and delete all):



Paint overlay (apply, remove and pick):



My plan is that eventually the tool models themselves will also show additional status information, for example the painter tool will show the currently selected paint colour.

[h3]Gear engagement indicator[/h3]

While attaching gears and trying to align them so that they're engaged, it's not always totally clear whether the game thinks they're actually engaged or not, at least until the construction is unfrozen and the player finds that things aren't working the way they expected.

So I've implemented a gear engagement indicator - when a gear is highlighted, arrows point to the other gear(s) it's currently engaged with. Here’s an example where the idler bevel gear in a differential is highlighted, showing the other two bevel gears it’s engaged with:



It also works while aligning a gear during construction, so that the player knows what to expect once they attach it:



[h3]Part behaviour improvements[/h3]

I've unified the way key bindings work between the actions you can configure in the controls options screen and those in the part behaviour UI. This allows part behaviours to now use modifier keys, and to have a secondary key binding.

Controllable part behaviours can now be configured so that their bound keys either toggle activation on and off, or have to be held down to keep the behaviour activated.

I added a parameter to controllable part behaviours to configure input smoothing. When smoothing is set to a higher value, input is less responsive but it's easier to hold it at a roughly constant value by tapping the key. Conversely, when smoothing is set to a lower value, control is more immediate and responsive.

This can be really useful when using servos for vehicle steering for example. Increasing the servo's maximum RPM while also increasing input smoothing provides responsive but still nicely controllable steering:



Finally, I also added a parameter to the electric motor part behaviour to invert the motor's direction. This works regardless of whether keys are bound to control the motor or not, but obviously is particularly useful when they're not.

I'm planning on releasing a demo update with these changes soon, so keep an eye out for that!

Hey everyone, I’ve just released a minor update to the demo. Here are the release notes:-

• Saved game / construction format changed to support part attachment improvements, old saves are converted when loaded.
  
• Parts can now slide along multiple slider rails that are placed end-to-end.
  
• Constructions are now spawned frozen and positioned in front of the player, rather than being immediately selected.
  
• Player free flight movement now has a different acceleration and a higher top speed when holding shift.
  
• Bug fixes.
  
• Upgraded to Unity 2019.4.10.