After working with game studio Forgotten Empires from 2014-2016 I decided to create my own game from scratch. I had two months spare and I chose to spend them creating a game using nothing but the Unity Engine. The game style I picked was 3D Tower Defence as they are often quite complex.
Development was initially slow but once the smaller components were done the game started to come together quickly. The user camera controls and cursors were the first to come along, then the fog of war was created along with some of the main buildings and units (pictured above).
The next thing implemented was the nature elements. Trees and rocks were added and properly displayed (or hidden) in the fog of war.
Eventually the more complex features were completed. The AI and object pathfinding was written next. Building on the existing unity NavMesh pathfinding I coded many changes to make the pathfinding work the way the game needed. One of the changes I made was creating locations around the base of buildings so that objects would not get caught on each other as easily (pictured as green boxes). The AI I programmed needed to work well so to ensure correct decision making I built the AI using Subsumption architecture. Nature objects such as trees and rocks were added in to embellish the map after the AI was created.
The combat was next to be created and collisions added in soon after. These were then linked in with what was already created and shown to the user visually through the User Interface. The last thing to be added was the lighting, which took a lot longer than anticipated. The day-night cycle did eventually get completed and is utilized by some of the towers.
Creating a game using no existing assets was lot of fun and great deal of work. The end game is something that I am quite proud of considering the complexity of the game developed. I play the game every now and again and enjoy it every time.