full disclosure: I’ve never blogged before.
yet, as I begin this adventure into developing my first game I thought a history I could look back on would be a good thing.
Who or what is Percy Parcel?
Percy Parcel is an arcade parcel delivery game, based around a wobbly red truck in a low poly city (placeholder name: Shipment City).
As for if Percy Parcel is a human driver, or a self-aware recklessly driving 6 wheeler, you decide.
I thought since I’ve already done a week’s work on Percy Parcel, I would use the first blog post to bring people up to speed on where it is.
Third Party Assets (so far)
SimplePoly City – VenCreations (FREE)
for the roads, buildings and other models. I’ve done very basic 3D modeling in the past, but as a one man band I’d never make progress without these models.
Feel – MoreMountains (PAID)
really powerful package that I’ve barely scraped the surface on. Currently just used for a few animations and sounds, but I will be using their scene loading, loading bars, and other features going forward.
What do we have so far?
Truck Physics
The truck’s physics is based upon Unity’s wheel collider tutorial. I would highly recommend it as a place to start with a vehicle game, as it handles torque, braking, steering, and the pièce de résistance; suspension.
The suspension is what really makes the truck come alive in my opinion, as the wheels bounce up and down over the various curbs and drops of Shipment City (name pending).
Parcel Physics
Really happy about how this is going so far.
There are still some issues; namely if you’re accelerating the parcels will get stuck to the rear wall of the truck, and won’t slide down. This might make sense if we were accelerating at some ludicrous speed, but our dusty old truck won’t be competing in any drag races any time soon.
I think I’ll be replacing the box render with a mesh render that’s still cube-ish, but a little more rounded on the corners for a nicer look.
Parcel Spawning
Currently we’re spawning parcels in the center of the truck, with a scale based on random variables assigned when the mission is created. I want to change this to a “stacking” system, wherein when loading the truck you can place the parcels in however you would like (like keeping them as flat and low as possible).
I’d also like to introduce various parcel types, such as “FRAGILE” and “KEEP UPRIGHT” to bring some difficulty to the game.
I did add some fun animations, sound effects and haptics when parcels are spawned/destroyed though. I’m using FEEL by MoreMountains to add the pop in and out and play the sounds, I highly recommend it as a worthy purchase.
Missions
Missions came quite late in the week so need a ton of polish. They also are just given by a button on the UI at the moment, but I’ll have a “distrubution centre” that the player will need to return to for collecting new jobs/parcels before heading out to deliver.
Once you’ve got a mission, the parcels pop into the truck. Drive to the orange circle near the destination, and you complete the quest and the parcels will pop out again.
Going forward
There are many things I would like to implement, maybe I get around to it, maybe it stays here forever, never to be more than words on a page and an idea in my head.
- Player Hub / Parcel Center
- PvP (local multiplayer, who can raise the most money in 5 minutes?)
- Fragile / Keep Upright parcels
- A crazy arrow to next mission destination
- A UI that isn’t shit
Thanks for reading!
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