ChaoticBoredom

(This article has been cross-posted from www.lifegoesongame.com)

Over the course of any dev cycle, you will encounter bugs. Unless it's 'Hello World', there will be bugs (and even sometimes in 'Hello World' programs, typos happen!) The difference between game development and other code projects, the bugs are sometimes unintentionally hilarious. Sometimes it's because you've slept less than 8 hours in the last four days, and sometimes it's because an unrelated bug has been bugging you for the past two days. Sometimes it's both. Regardless, let's look at some of the more interesting bugs that have been encountered in the development of Life Goes On.

Knight in a Can
First up, is Knight in a Can. Knight in a Can amuses me greatly. The blame for KiaC can be attributed in part to how the project got started, and in part to our lack of familiarity with Unity. In the first 48 hours, the knight model was rougher than the current incarnation, and when he was imported, he was also much smaller. Most of the traps twoered over him. With the deadline looming, we went for a quick fix and scaled him up by three. (Fun fact! With Unity's units being roughly one unit = one metre, our knight is a towering three metres tall!) This worked fine for a while, until there was a new knight model. When we went to replace him, we no longer needed to scale him up. Unfortunately, the knight's animations were still tiny. So we had a nice large knight model, trying to act on a animation rig that was three sizes too small. End result? Knight in a Can!

Flea Knight
Our next knight comes from our attempts to rebuild our player physics. We started off using the Character Controller provided by Unity, but decided that we needed something that interacted with physics. So began our adventure to create a physics based controller. It ended up pretty well, but the first few attempts were a little too physically enabled. Our dear knight would begin to accelerate, and would never stop. He could run like the wind! He could outrun our camera! And could he jump! One little jump would launch Flea Knight into the stratosphere. The camera had trouble keeping up until he started falling. Which could take a while when a 3 metre tall knight jumps many many times his own height. Still, our physics controller was delayed for some time while I played with Flea Knight.

Mage Knight
Next in the tour comes Mage Knight. After a while it was decided knights should be able to grab onto ledges and bodies. After this was implemented, it was decided to add a nice particle effect. Something to subtly accentuate that the knight was grabbing onto the object. Despite the fact that afterwards he'd normally be hanging off of said object, with a dopey grin on his face. (At least in my mind he's got a dopey grin) This worked fine. Until there was a body on the ground. The knight would happily grab and release as long as he was standing on the ground next to the body. Over, and over, and over again. The subtle particle effect quickly built up into a super charged magical attack! Or Kamehameha! Or Hadoken! Or choose your favorite ball of energy attack! Mage Knight was one of the easiest bugs to replicate, and left to his own devices, he'd happily keep charging his attack indefinitely, never firing it off. Poor little Mage Knight. He must have been so frustrated.

Thriller Knight
Finally (for this blog post at least) we come to Thriller Knight. Thriller Knight. Oh Thriller Knight, how I loathe thee. Thriller Knight, while highly amusing, was one bug that refused to be squashed. Time and time again, I'd swear I'd resolved the issues, only for him to reappear, dancing, taunting me. No matter what I did, he'd be back again. There seemed to be a thousand different causes of Thriller Knight. I'd track down two or three, only for a dozen more to pop up. The root cause was the hang/grab animation would carry on despite the knight standing on the ground. Variables were being set, but the animation state failed to be reset. Maybe a new animation system from Unity, maybe that'd fix it, but nope. Thriller Knight. You just kept coming back. Like a zombie. Now you'll have to be satisfied with haunting this blog post instead of me.