Interactive tabletop playing surface (Space Hulk Hobby Challenge)

Seriously, it’s been a while since I did anything more than just a simple UI/interface in Unity and a very long time since actually writing anything that resembled a game (probably last time I actually finished writing a game was back in the days of the GameBoy Advance when some wag found a way of pirating games, and the homebrew coding community used it to put their own games and apps onto the device).

I’ve had all kinds of problems trying to understand lighting in Unity, all to no avail.

So I’ve just deleted all the light probes, set all material shaders to Standard (diffuse) and set the light intensities from 5-6 down to 2-3. I also removed all baked lighting information and just ran the game from there.

It doesn’t look terrible.

But it does look a bit like a game from 1989 on the Sega Megadrive, filled with garish colours, just to demonstrate a full 256-colour palette. It’s not quite the look I was aiming for!

It doesn’t look anywhere as cool as it could do, if only I properly understood this crazy new real-time system; like everything in the coding world, it feels like everything used to be so much easier than it is today!

Dammit. Doors are a real pain.

Because not only do they block your line of sight, like a wall, but they can be opened (and removed from the tabletop) – very much NOT like a wall. Which means, mid-move, it’s possible that you reveal enemy characters.

And some enemy characters might have “interrupt-your-opponent” type actions, such as overwatch fire.

With about 48 hours ’til deadline day, it’s really not the best time to admit “I forgot about doors” and I’m dreading the moment when I finally realise just how complicated having removeable doors is. It’s partly why a lot of games don’t bother with desctructive scenery – because it makes things really complicated!

Any way, here’s a quick test of how opening doors alters the line of sight for our characters, and how the game/app interrupts your turn, so that you place enemy pieces on the board as soon as they are revealed.

It’s also worth nothing that the addition of audio makes a massive difference! The whole point of the game is to keep the player focussed, not on the screen, but on the tabletop. So we’re going to need plenty of audio cues in here.

But that’s for again – this afternoon’s issue is to make the doors work properly!

Of course there are a hundred and one things I’d still like to do – and maybe, before the end of the year, I might just.

The audio leaves a lot to be desired (though it was only added as a last-minute thing because “hey, wouldn’t it be cool to add some atmosphere with some CB radio chatter?”). There are not victory conditions – the game just plays until the alien player decides to stop spawning Genestealers (and when the Marines are wiped out, there’s not much they can do except end each turn!).

But functionally?

Well, it’s a working game. It puts your tabletop miniatures onto a tablet. And it lets you play against opponents over the internet!

So while not every target was smashed in time for the end-of-competition deadline, I reckon there’s enough to say “I’m done”….. for now 😉

Utterly inspired by taking part in this challenge – thanks to all the Beasties who got involved – I’ve spent the last few days adding to and improving my game.

It’s been such fun (and, let’s be honest, a lot of hard work) that it’d be a shame to stop here. So I will continue the development on a separate project page, possibly even under a different title, as more features, characters, maps and weapons are added to the game….