[WK 11] Adding visuals
As stated in my proposal I wanted to add some visuals to help the systems stand out and make the traits more visibly communicate their purpose.
For this I downloaded a pack off the asset store of low poly dog models that contained animations. I also created VFX's for all the traits and created new symbols to represent each trait.
The major challenge I had to overcome was the fact that the logic for attacking was only triggered after the attack (or "bark" animation in this instance) had finished. I was really confused because looking at the champion controller script I couldn't work out how the animation was communicating to the logic.
I discovered that on the attack animation in the champion animator there was a state machine behaviour component attached to the animation itself. I didn't have any prior knowledge that this was possible in the engine so this was really useful to learn about.
Quite simply to fix the issue all I had to add was add the component to the bark animation to the dog animator.
Adding in dog models / animations
Adding in the animations was actually more challenging than I thought It'd be.
I had to convert the dog's animator [seen on the left] to the champion animator [seen below].
After reading through all the parameters and looking in script at how each animation state is triggered I managed to setup the animator correctly.
Configuring Animations
Next I configured the animations to adjust them to an appropriate speed.
I also later adjusted the attack range of the dogs so they weren't so close to each other.
Creating the VFX
Creating VFX that mimic the style / fantasy of the traits is important because it reinforces the fantasy of the trait.
Player fantasies for each trait:
Working: Should feel big, heavy and impactful since these dogs were used for guarding and manual labour.
Pastoral: I knew I wanted some sort of ability that would affect the positioning of the opposing team since pastoral breeds include herding breeds like border collies. A taunt effect which shows an enemy unit getting "enraged" causing them to break formation would be effective for this. I also wanted a shielding effect since pastoral's would often guard livestock on a farm.
Toy: I used the pre-existing heal effect that was in the game already. I did consider changing the sprite from the health icon to the heart icon however I thought users would better understand what the effect did if they saw the health icon.
Terrier: For Terrier I used the heal effect again whenever the unit gained health from the damage.
Gun: For this trait I took the pre-existing healing effect. Duplicated it changed the heal icon for a bleed icon and made the overall colour red. I also chnged the direction of the effect so the icons spawned and fell downwards instead of rising to oppose the heal effect.
Hound: Hound took a little bit of work to get it working how I wanted. I wanted to have this smokey trail that went from the hound unit to the target unit like the dogs were smelling out the weakest unit.