Project Muniris

Another quick update, I made another build of the game that is includes compatibility with Windows, where the player starts off with a couple of items and a bit farther ahead in the game. I thought that the browser version would work for non-Mac users but I realize now that the servers really can’t run Muniris very well. Thanks for your patience everyone!

Hi guys, one last quick log. I’ve been working to ship Munirism over the last couple of days and ran into a bunch of computer issues due to itch.io not being able to take files more than 1 gb in size (and my computer kept crashing every time I tried to build the game). Thankfully, I got a working link to play on a browser and a link to the Mac download of the project for people who would like better frame rate optimizations. Since I can’t submit 2 test links, I’ll give the Mac download here: https://gamejolt.com/games/muniris/1100442. Thanks everyone!

Good evening fellow coders, this is my final devlog for Project Muniris! I added in all of the mechanics that I wanted to into this final portion of the game and it is finally ready to be shipped. To summarize what I did, I made a bite-size castle area where there is a HUGE enemy gauntlet, which contains a final climb to the top of the hourglass that has been tantalizing the player ever since they entered the game. Since the castle is so high up that you can see past the boundary walls, I added a dense fog at the bottom of the castle that respawns you if you fall just in case the player fails any of the challenges. I created one final enemy type, that being an RPG turret, which essentially can shoot tons of missiles that seek out the players. Additionally, the last gun, the sniper rifle, was a fun time to speed develop since I realized that the mouse sensitivity was WAY too high for the player to reliably shoot when the rifle was zoomed in all the way. Due to this observation, I tweaked the mouse sensitivity via scripting so that when the camera is not zoomed in, it has a greater mouse sensitivity than when it is. Furthermore, I finally added a bunch of musical/sound assets into the game! All of the bullets from enemy and player fire have sound effects added to them. Each area also has a unique track to it, making them stand out from one another. While each track may not be musical, I made sure to find a bunch of immersive sound effects to increase the player’s auditory connection with the game. All in all, it feels very bittersweet writing this devlog, as it is the capstone to one of my longest and most passionate projects ever. I’m really thankful to the Stardance team for creating this program, as the community it developed really helped motivate me along the way. Most of all, thank you to you guys as well! Reading your comments and seeing what other people are doing has been really fun the past couple of months. Best of luck everyone!

Hey everyone, this is probably going to be one of my last devlogs for this project, as it is nearing completion. For starters, I finished the tundra area today, which combined my original idea of 2 separate mountain and “heavy weather” areas. It is a much more open area that the player is free to explore, but requires the double jump and dash to get into. At this point in time, all I really have left to do is create a quick ending area in the form of a castle, where the player will infiltrate the area and get to a giant hourglass at the end marking the finale of the game. I still have to create a new gun for the ending, and I’m leaning towards a sniper rifle. Since the player will have had tons of experience with the right-hand guns for a while, I’m thinking of making the sniper a bit harder to aim but having lots of damage as a tradeoff. Additionally, I added a bunch of snow particles falling from the sky to simulate a snowstorm, and it actually turned out pretty well! Due to occlusion culling, the framerate can actually survive all the snow being generated, and allowed me to create a lot it. Lastly, I added a tiny script that changed the skybox when you enter the area so that it seems cloudy instead of sunny, just so that the snow doesn’t seem like it’s appearing out of nowhere. As a personal anecdote, this project has been really fun to create the past couple of months, and has seriously boosted my design/programming skills (and time management). There will probably be one more devlog before I ship Project Muniris, but in any case I just wanted to share my thoughts on my journey through Stardance here.

Hi again fellow devs, over the course of the week I have been working on a bunch of stuff that I am excited to share. First off, I finished up the mine mini dungeon, where the player has to hit switches in order to unlock gates and progress throughout the area. It isn’t the most complex of puzzles but it gets the job done in a 3d platformer/shooter. Secondly, I added in 2 new abilities: the double jump and the dash. Essentially, via giving each player an extra jump whenever they’re in the air, I can enable them to double jump, and when they dash I simply set the non-vertical movement speed very high for a quick moment. I initially had some problems with the dash where it could send you flying upward if you collided with terrain/obstacles, but I mitigated how far up it can send you when you collide with other objects. Past these abilities, I am currently in the middle of a snowfield area, where the players will have to use both of their new movement abilities to traverse the area and make it to their final destination, the castle. I’ve decided to make it so that any currency you collected along the way in the game will be displayed at the end, and you will be able to see both your completion percentage and your total run time. I don’t think the game should take too long to beat, so I’m trying to make it have some replay value along the way. One last thing I forgot to mention was that I spent a bunch of time fixing the jump, since the coyote time would make your jump seem to blast off in the air super high. I know I said I fixed this problem in my past devlogs, but it seemed to keep coming back for whatever reason. Now though, I am happy to say that I fixed the error via taking a deeper look at when the coyote time should reset back to 0.2 seconds (any time above 0 means you can still jump after you fall off a ledge). In total, this game is almost finished, I just have to add 1 more area and give it a thorough run-through!

Hi developers, I just finished the base layout for the mine system that I am developing as one of the final areas of the game. At this point in time, I am trying to finish the mine area, create a quick mountain area, and make a short castle segment that acts as the final challenge of the game. Since the game is open world, little hints and clues as to where items might be located are scattered around the world now. Additionally, I worked on some post-processing effects for the mine area, which is why it is so dark on the right side of the screen compared to the left side; I will eventually add post-processing for all areas once I finish all the other parts of the game. In terms of item adjustments, I made it so that the chakram has a point light attached to it that can act as a miniature burst of light in dark areas. My last thing for now is a little issue that I ran into while adjusting the lighting for the game. Essentially, I switched from baking lighting back to generating realtime lighting because I realized that my computer can’t really handle baking lighting for so many objects in the scene, so I wanted to just generate it all in realtime to make things easier. After I tweaked these settings and generated the new lighting, I pressed play and the game totally nuked itself. Every game object had broken out of its hierarchy and 75% of them were straight up missing/deleted (all they left behind were empty transforms). I tried for a while to recover the scene but nothing was working, and eventually I had to force quit Unity due to it having stopped responding to my inputs. After I reopened Unity, the scene was back to normal! All in all, lesson learned to not panic when all seems lost and to not upset grumpy old Unity about lighting anymore.

Hello everyone, today I worked on fixing the player UI and coded the chakram left-hand item I’ve been working on. After seeing that at different screen sizes/resolutions the UI would change shape and position, I adjusted the anchors of each UI element and made sure that they looked nice together no matter the screen size. The chakram ability turned out very nice, as with the additional fire/spark fx it feels pretty cool to throw around. I made it so that the chakram will interact with any physics object, meaning that it can bounce around a bunch before returning to the player. Looking ahead to the next area, I am thinking of a maze-like mine segment where the player will get either a new gun or the dash ability. See you all next time!

Hello fellow devs, writing this now I realize that this game has gotten to a pretty large scale and I might not have time to finish everything I wanted to do with this game before I ship it. HOWEVER, I will be working my hardest to make sure that this game still contains the core aspects of what I wanted it to be. Speaking of, I made a whole new “forest hideout” area where there are a lot of enemies and slight platforming challenges. I coded in moving platforms that essentially just move around using an animation, and when the player jumps on one their parent transform is linked to the platform so that the camera doesn’t fall off. Furthermore, I finally added locked doors to the game, so the player has to first find some keys before they can open certain doors in this area. At the end of the hideout, I am working on a chakram left-hand ability that will be able to return to the player after being thrown, acting sort of like a boomerang. During the middle of the development of this area, the framerate dropped like CRAZY and I had to take a whole bunch of time to fix the parameters of the game so that it could run better. To sum up all the changes I made, I added occlusion culling, baked lighting for static objects, and tweaked the rendering distance for terrain like trees and grass. Lastly, I tuned up the player’s jump because it was getting really random jump heights and I wanted to make it more consistent. All in all, this project is going great and I can’t wait to ship it to all of you!

Hey guys, I just finished up the left-hand healing item that I’ve been hinting at in my recent devlogs. It is a magic bottle that will heal you up at the cost of magic. I used a special visual fx in order to make the heal seem more “magical.” I also heavily tweaked the enemy vision system so that the enemies can see the secondary player and choose to aim at them instead of just the primary player. Currently I am trying to fix a problem where the UI will go crazy if you resize the screen, so I will be working on that from now on. Other than that, I also fixed an error where only the secondary player’s health ui would update, leading to both the primary player’s health and game over screen being stuck on the wrong camera. Best of luck everyone!

Hey everyone, long time since I posted here. Last week I realized that inside of my areas, there are not a lot of rewards given to the player in terms of their stats. So, instead of developing that new left-hand item I talked about in my last devlog, I decided to make an upgrade system where the player can receive health, magic, or stamina upgrades scattered around chests throughout the world. I also added a little series of clues to get the key and the eventual healing item hidden in the lake of this region through visual cues (ex. a heart-shaped rock formation) and text written on the walls of certain shelters. See you guys next time!

Hi guys! Today I finished up the code and tuning for both the rpg and mech enemy that I have been designing the past couple of days. I added a cool explosion to the gun whenever the bullet collides with an object, which creates some really cool visual effects. However, the bullet will still explode underwater; since I’m thinking of having a feature of being underwater that your guns misfire anyways, I’ll just keep this effect for now. With the new gun item and enemies all finished up, I am excited to say that I am almost done with this lake area. I am proud to say that it is of a much better quality than the tutorial area and is heavily focused on platforming, which will hopefully generate some fun chaos with 2 people playing at the same time. The last thing I have to do with this area is give it a proper “final upgrade.” I’m thinking of it being a healing item you can use with your left hand that takes a lot of magic but slowly heals you up. See you all later!

Hey guys, quick update here. Lately I’ve been working on a heat-seeking missile, and although I encountered a lot of different bugs today I finished the weapon up (kind of). I’m using a software called Linq to filter out enemies and get the closest one to the missile, but a problem I encountered is that the algorithm doesn’t account for colliders between the missile and the enemy. I’ve tried a bunch of stuff such as raycasting and Physics.linecast, but nothing seems to be working. I’m gonna take a break for today and come back tomorrow with a fresh mindset. Other than that, I also am finishing up a “mech” enemy that has different pieces of it you have to destroy in order to kill it. I’ll give a bigger explanation of this enemy when I finish it. Thanks for reading!

Greetings fellow developers, as of right now I have been furthering development on the lake area of the game right outside the tutorial. Development is progressing well, and I am just about finished with the overall design of the area. On the programming side, I have been working on “heat-seeking” missiles that will be the reward for the player in the form of a new right-handed weapon at the end of the area. I’m thinking of having a key to a chest being hidden at the top of the area and the player has to dive down to the deepest part of the lake to open the chest in order to make the area loop in on itself. If anybody has any ideas for left-handed items let me know!

What’s up everyone, over the last couple of days I’ve been working towards finishing up the lake area. This area is mainly focusing on platforming and refining the platforming that is seen inside of the tutorial area, as I feel as if that area has some janky features. I will eventually add enemies and some mini-bosses to fight while you are jumping from rock to rock, but as said before this is mainly for the spectacle and the platforming. I am thinking about adding some sort of a movement ability at the end of this area to reward the player, but I do not want to overpower the player too much at the beginning of the game. If you have any ideas please comment them down below, they would be well appreciated!

Hey everyone, quick update here. I’m currently in the process of making a beach area to highlight the water effect that I developed over the past couple of days. I added a bunch of different terrain textures and tree assets, so the area itself should look a little different than the typical forest/grassy area of the tutorial. I hope to add some post-processing for outside of the water eventually as well.

Today I finished up a new ladder system and the water post-processing effects, alongside a much-needed tuning of base speeds, maximum velocities, and the different forces added to the player (for example the jumping force). I noticed that in the vertical platforming sections I did not add shortcuts to get back up in case the player fell all the way back down, so I decided to add a ladder system that will extend down when the player reaches a certain spot. Furthermore, with the water system being finished up, I can now focus on making more unique areas of the map and creating engaging gameplay instead of just tutorial and test areas. See you guys soon!

Hey everyone, it’s been a while. Currently I am trying to implement a water mechanic inside of the game where players can enter the water and swim freely without the effects of gravity. Mechanics are working well to my surprise, and the only thing left to really work on is the post-processing for when you dive in. Unfortunately, I realized that the jump mechanic has to be kind of reworked due to the fact that the player does not have control over their momentum after they jump, making platforming way harder. All in all, development is trucking along.

At this point in time, I finished fixing up the UI system so that the 2 different players are both able to control their separate canvases, while there remains a large canvas that encompasses the entirety of the screen. This can be utilized through the time slower item, for example, as the entire screen is scene through a blue lens when the item is used. Furthermore, I added a house next to a dry lake (at the moment), and will figure out how to add a water mechanic to the game that will require certain items for the players to swim across. Lastly, in order to enter the first eventual “dungeon” of the game, players will need to get the attention of the big dragon in the sky that was added recently. It currently just roams around from point to point but when the players get to a specific point they will need to utilize its positioning.

Currently I am working on making a UI system that can fit both players. I have 3 separate canvases all controlled by a main UI Manager script. Basically, there is 1 canvas for each player and then there is 1 canvas that covers both players’ screens.

I just finished integrating the second player’s movement and UI into the game. I made it so that the 2 players share a common magic meter, which is a circular ring in the center of the screen. I try to make the gameplay require cooperation as much as possible via having both players share certain game mechanics such as their magic. With that, I have also finished the enemy tutorial area!

I am currently working on the 2-player functionality of the code for this game. Since some of Unity’s canvas assets are not built for 2-player unless you update them in a certain way, I have to manually go in and update my scripts to make the world objects function as expected. All in all, development is rocky but progressing.

I just finished the chest system as well as the coin system. Taps are the standard currency and joules are a rare currency that can net you cool items that wouldn’t be available normally.

Just finished the enemy code to track down the player and try to shoot the player, it has been a little rough with the balancing but development is going well on the programming side.