Death Star Tiles Update

It's sometimes funny when the right moment happens where you find an excuse to dig up a project exactly 9 years old and give it a few days of work just for the fun of it.

While drawing 2D pixel art of Death Star surface tiles dates back even further, I started doing 3D renders of it back in 2013.

April 11, 2013 - Original six tiles derived from my old Kilk @ Play pixel art

April 21, 2015 - Textured except for one

Actually the very first post of this blog described the early Unity + Blender work I did on Project Starfighter. The original tile set was textured so I could use them in a procedurally generated Death Star surface. Ironically given my work at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory, the only tile I never finished modeling is the one on display at the lab..... until now:

April 12, 2022 - Starting detail work, one quad at a time

April 13, 2022 - Quad Two

April 14, 2022 - Quad Three

April 14, 2022 - Completed Tile

Of course now this tile is vastly more detailed than the other ones. Maybe too detailed for my needs, but it was a fun modeling exercise for a few days. Plus more 'greebles' to add to my digital library. Always fun to look into the craftsmanship that went into these old physical models - all the kitbashing and random parts clearly from model tanks, planes, etc. 

Spring Break 2022 Mini-Project

 

For spring break 2022, just to shift gears a bit from my thesis work, I decided to implement another mini-project in what I like to call "Video Game Fundamentals" where I've made a small project focusing on a particular game mechanic. In the past I've done an X-Wing style flight simulator and first person shooters.

For this project, I focused on a turn-based RPG combat system based on Star Wars Galaxies. For the back-end combat logic, it used many of the documented combat equations found:

• Damage Formula
• Armor Rating
• Weapon Accuracy
• Weapon Speed
  

The character models and animations I got from Adobe Mixamo. Which made a good exercise in importing existing models with character animations, Unity's animation system, and Unity's NavMesh Agent system to handle the AI movements and "aggression" when a player gets close (though the latter is not in the above video. May document that feature as this prototype progresses.

The above video highlights, a default primary attack, cooldown timer, a special attack, and accuracy values. Each of those also are connected to a particular animation: Idle, Punch, Uppercut (Special), Hit, and Death.