Fat Rodzianko

This fat Rodzianko has written me lots of nonsense again. I deign to even reply

GameDev Blog: Goblin Rules Football #2

Posted on Author jmurphy5277Posted in Game Development, Goblin Rules Football, Unity

I’ve realized that I created a “Goblin Rules Football” blog #1 but never really followed up on it. So, I’m going to try and keep one up going forward. I hope to make some small blog posts every time I add a new feature or make some other change to the game. This won’t be detailed tutorial style writeups like I did for Card Conquest. They should instead be much shorter, “what’s new” type posts.

A quick rundown of what I currently have in the Goblin Rules Football game:

  • Player controls
    • Movement
    • Combat/punching
    • slide tackles
    • diving/rolling
    • passing
    • kicking the ball downfield
  • Controller support!
  • Animations for everything. I’m very bad/slow at that…
  • In game UI. Was a lot harder to render correctly than I thought it would be…
  • 1v1 and 3v3 multiplayer
  • Core gameplay phases
    • Coin toss
    • kick off
    • Regular game time and Xtra Time
    • kick after attempts
    • End of half/game
  • PowerUps
    • Spawn powerups
    • pick them up
    • have “blue shell” / powerful powerups spawn when one team is down
    • Use powerups
      • particle effect to signal buffing powerups like increase speed
      • Throw or drop objects for powerups like bananas and bottles
      • Allow for some powerups to have multiple uses, such as having 3 bananas to toss behind you
  • “Random Events”
    • randomly during the game an “event” will occur that players have to respond to
      • Only 1 so far: Bottles are thrown from the stands and create shattered glass on the ground. If a player steps on the glass, they trip
  • Obstacles
    • In keeping with how some of the old arcade-y sports games I’m basing this on worked, random stuff is spawned on the field that players have to dodge
    • Trip obstacles: Rocks, logs
    • Slow down obstacles: water/mud puddles, bushes and overgrown weeds
  • Some (very basic) NPC AI
    • For 1v1 games, I needed the other two goblins on each team to “do” something
    • Very simple “State machine” to determine what goblins should do
      • Get open for pass
      • move toward the football if its on the ground
      • Chase the ball carrier
      • Attack nearby goblin
    • Gave some basic “path finding” for the NPCs.
      • Originally tried to use A* but that wasn’t working quite the way I wanted to
      • Instead used pieces of “boids flocking” to have the NPCs detect when objects they should avoid (trip objects, goal posts, other goblins, etc. )are in front of them
        • https://chrishammond.ca/2017/10/10/boids-2d-unity-approach/
    • This still needs a LOT of work. Especially if I want to have a single player mode where you play against the AI
  • Possession Bonuses
    • Keep track of what team has the ball and give them “possession bonuses”
      • move faster, heal faster, lose stamina slower, take less damage, etc.
  • Updated and remade a lot of the UI for a new reference resolution
    • from 512×288 to 768×432

Without going into too much detail, I think that’s about everything? The version on itch.io does use Steamworks for multiplayer, so I did have to implement that as well. Right now it uses my appid for Stalks Stalks Stalks. Still unsure if that is violating some sort of Steamworks ToS or not. Oh well…

What’s New Today?

So, now, new things! Or at least, some new things I added since I uploaded to itch.io.

New PowerUps

I added a few new PowerUps. Here they are:

Invincibility Star (blue shell)

  • Heals all goblins on your team
  • makes your selected goblin “invincible” for 5 seconds. Can’t be tripped or knocked out
  • No ball carrier slow down debuff
  • stamina doesn’t drain when you sprint

Glue

  • Little blobs of glue you can drop behind you
  • 3 blobs to drop
  • slows down goblins you run over the blobs

Bomb

  • Drop bomb behind you. Only one
  • 3 second timer starts when it lands on the ground. Bomb flashes yellow during countdown
  • Explosion animation!
  • Any goblin within 3 “units” (3 yards on the field) is knocked out

That’s… basically it. Here’s a gif of a bomb going off and a Goblin being protected by the invincibility star!

And if you want a higher quality video of this gif, here you go!

What’s Next?

I don’t know really. Some more content? I have ideas for more random events to add. Otherwise, lots of polishing that needs to be done

Oh, and also, I still have no sound in the game. Need to work on that…

Small ya later nerds!