[GAME] My Glitch Garden

Unity Courses Talk
,
#1

My Glitch Garden game.
It’s essentially the same game as the lecture, except for a few minor tweaks.

Link: http://www.sharemygame.com/share/349f74a2-3256-4f25-97c3-544debc48ca9

Features:

  • “Rules” Section that (poorly) explains why you’re there and what you need to do, as well as a brief (and poor) explanation of the defenders and attackers.

  • Options section where you can set your volume and difficulty.

    • Difficulty: Changes Attacker / Defender Health, total level time and starting stars.

    • Easy is insultingly easy, Normal is easy, and Hard is a little challenging.

  • In Game, defenders you can’t afford are coloured red on their buttons when selected / hovered, and their text is Yellow for affordable and white for not.

  • Pause button, for all your Pausing-related needs!

  • Exit button, for all your Exiting-related needs (Now with “Art Thou Serious” Modal dialog box, in case you fat-fingered the wrong button)!

    • Both the pause button and the exit modal dialog box pause the game.

    • With the exit modal dialog box, click the Red “Yes, Exit” button to crash back to the main menu, or ANYWHERE ELSE to close the dialog box and continue the level.

  • If those marauding varmints manage to destroy everything you know and love, you can restart the current level by clicking the “TRY AGAIN!” button on the FAIL screen.

  • Gnomes: Just a heads up, Gnomes cost 10 * [Number of Gnomes] stars. They’re the glass cannons of the defenders (i.e. High damage output, low-ish health).

  • Lizards: They have a nice death animation that everyone’s probably already used - projectiles even pass through them while they die.

2 Likes
#2

All the levels automatically win

#3

I had the same experience.

#4

Hey @Dean_Newberry,

I really like you take on this game, you have added some additional functionality to the course version and tried a few new things…

Items I liked;

  • Volume controls, that work
  • Rules, good idea
  • Unaffordable defenders change colour to red, good affordance
  • The lizard getting knocked backward and into the pond when killed was a nice touch
  • The ability to pause the game

Some items I spotted;

  • As per the other feedback, each completed level says “you win” which indicates the end of the game, perhaps “level complete” would work better
  • The gnomes axes have a different layer order, they fly behind the stones instead of over the top for example
  • Game balance - I played on “normal” and the game seemed quite fast, the first and second waves were fairly good, but after that the game became too easy, I had quite a lot of defenders firing numerous projectiles which meant attackers were unable to move more than about 2 squares before being killed. Some additional play teseting and tweaking of the projectile firing rates, damage done, attackers/defenders strengths should help iron this out a little
  • The font used for the “Rules” seems a little large and didn’t seem to quite fit with the fonts used for the rest of the game text

All in all I would say this is a really nice take on the course game with some great additions - well done :slight_smile:

#5

Thanks for the feedback everyone!

I’ve made some adjustments to the game
(Atrociously Execrable Garbage: http://www.sharemygame.com/share/3892e905-fb31-4cd8-8923-b6cd5f81d14e):
(Slightly Less Atrociously Execrable Garbage: http://www.sharemygame.com/share/4378f4e9-a457-43e4-ba2f-0e3ce0accfe5):

  • When surviving a level, you get “LEVEL COMPLETE!”, instead of “YOU WIN!”.
  • The Gnomes’ axes fly in front of gravestones now.
  • The enemies can now take more abuse. You can still easily roll them if you can get enough defenders down, but getting to that stage is more difficult (especially on hard - it almost turns into “Glitch Souls”).
  • Rules font changed from Arial to Kidergarten (the font used throughout the game).
    • I had a feeling the Arial would look weird and out of place, but I thought Kidergarten would be too hard to read.
      But it’s not really that bad.
  • There are now healthbars on all defenders/attackers

And Finally, I updated to Unity 2017.1.0p4, because there was a potential security risk or something:

This led to an annoying bug: turns out in 2017.1.0p4, if you have UI elements (including Canvas) with Scale Z = 0 on a world space canvas, they won’t work (or, that was my problem at least :expressionless:) - so I had to go through the pause/exit buttons on my level canvas and fix it…

Hope you enjoy this version of the game better than the last! :grinning:

Updated Thu Nov 09 2017 03:11:

Hey you! Don’t go to the above, Atrociously Execrable Garbage! :face_with_raised_eyebrow:
Go to this slightly less Atrociously Execrable Garbage (http://www.sharemygame.com/share/4378f4e9-a457-43e4-ba2f-0e3ce0accfe5)! :crazy_face:

Includes the hotly anticipated feature of ACTUALLY WORKING LIKE A GAME! :open_mouth:
No more shall you hear the trombone of disappointment as the game PLAYS ITSELF INTO SUBMISSION! :dizzy_face:
…
Oh, and the other things you may not have been able to see. :scream:

Have fun! :sunglasses:

1 Like
#6

Hey Dean,

Great that you’ve taken on board feedback from the community and released another update.

I just tried it but it is automatically winning every level until it gets to the end and then says I won! :smiley:

A little bug for you to have a look at me thinks :wink:

Updated Wed Nov 08 2017 13:25

I changed the difficulty to normal from easy and the game plays as expected, hope this helps track down the bug :slight_smile:

#7

:upside_down_face:
…
ARRRRRRRRGH! :face_with_symbols_over_mouth:

** Venting Completed **

Story Time:
I saw your post before updating. I checked it out, and I FINALLY saw what everyone was saying when they said “the level automagically wins.”

To get the time you need to survive, I multiply the difficulty by 0.5f.
This bug is caused because there are no difficulty settings, so the difficulty defaults to 0.
0 * 0.5f = 0f = CONGRATULATIONS! YOU WIN!

… Essentially a “super easy mode” - this will get changed quickly. :persevere:

1 Like
#8

Hehe…

I think you may also have another instance of something similar when you set the costs for the gnome, the first price is zero, so could be a similar issue. :slight_smile:

#9

Believe it or not, that’s intentional - The cost of each gnome is literally “Number of Gnomes * 10”
:slight_smile:
…

Good or Bad?

#10

Aha, ok.

Ref good or bad, that’s fair broad, all I can say is that I saw that it was 0 and for a moment was confused, e.g. can I buy it or not as the mechanic was different than for the star generators and cactii.

If it were me I would probably give all of the items a starting cost, and I may dabble with the multiplier, for example, should it be per defender it increases or per wave with then a multiplier for the number of starting stars given? Not necessarily a right or wrong but finding balance is important. Its quite hard to complete the third wave because of the game speed.

:slight_smile:

#11

Fair enough.
The Gnomes are physically more fragile than cacti, but their axes are stronger than cucumbers.
I intended them to be more of an “emergency unit” than a power unit.

As you point out, they start at 0 cost and are, therefore, free. Putting down a column of the first 5 Gnomes (one for each row) costs the same as a column of cacti, and are great for getting attackers off your back.
At the very least, they’re decent impromptu meat-shields while you wait for a gravestone.

My tactic is to start with a column of gnomes about 4-ish spaces ahead - that way, I can put down generators while the gnomes attack.

… This tactic breaks down a bit in hard mode though. :slight_smile:

ALSO:
My game is updated and (appears to be) working - it’s tacked onto the bottom of my second comment.

Good night / very early morning :sleepy:

1 Like
#12

That’s some good thinking and information, thanks.

I will be on the road for a few hours now but will endeavor to have another go soon :slight_smile:

Again, well done :slight_smile:

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