Character Concepts + Second Prototype - Devlog #2

REACH FOR THE STARS

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For prototype #2, I intend to create a scene where you are catching up to a friend who is already watching a star shower and is urging you to hurry up. The challenge for this scene was to create specific events without relying on coroutines or OnTrigger/OnCollision events.  Within the scene I practiced the following methods: 

• Scrappy VFX- Yes I know Unity has a vfx component that makes this a lot easier but I wanted to try my hand at creating shooting stars on my own through code. 
• Vector3.Distance - Continue practicing modifying the rotation and direction of an object through code. Additionally creating 'events' based on how close you are the from the NPC. 
• Dialogue System- I continued practicing making a very simply dialogue system. Using string lists to contain lines of text and having them read out each time the player clicks the mouse button. 
• Typewriter Effect- It's a crime that Unity doesn't have a built-in typewriter effect component, but I followed this tutorial from Code Monkey in order to create one I can use throughout all my prototypes! I won't pretend I understood everything that happened but now that I'm exposed to the process I can better practice it on my own. 
• mathF.Clamp- Yeah so being able to hard restrict the rotation/movement of objects is very cool. I will absolutely be abusing this method from now on. 
• Gradually Fading Screen To White- You would think that this would be straightforward but it's moderately convoluted. But now I know how to reference the Color component of a specific sprite image. 

That's about all the core concepts I can think of that's covered in this prototype. The game has not been updated to access this second prototype. I will update this devlog once that has changed.  Updated the build! You can now play the second prototype. I created a little start menu for you to choose either the first or second one. 

If you're a long time follower of this itch.io, you'll notice that you can no longer access my Twitter account. I have it locked for privacy reasons, but you can follow me on Bluesky to keep up to date with what I'm working on generally. You can also follow my dev thread on this game that contains more small updates and .gifs where you can see everything in action! 

CONCEPT ART!

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To treat myself for finishing the first prototype, I spent some time drawing out what Doogies and their friends would look like! Once I'm finished programming all the core systems in my planned prototypes I plan on going back and giving them a visual facelift to tie it all together. It's nice getting to draw again and wow I improved a lot on my lineart after doing it a lot for another personal project I haven't really posted publicly about yet.  

I haven't settled on names for half of them but the blue dragon/dog on the top-left is the namesake Doogies, red imp below it is named 'Prince Orbital' and the green alien slime dog is Doogie's pet named Slugoo. I'm sure I'll come up with names for the others...or not. It's not like it's really important for this game specifically. If you have any suggestions, let me know in the comments!