Game Feel, Full Game Loop & Disasters
Week two is where it starts to feel like a game. Last week was mostly planning — Amanda and I figuring out what we were building — plus a rough dice roller. This week (Thursday and Friday) I focused on game feel and getting the whole core loop working end to end.
Where we left off
At the end of week one you could roll the two dice, wait for them to settle, and read the result off the top faces — the d8 for which disaster, and the d100 for the percentage. Functional, but not exactly thrilling.
Adding game feel
The big change this week was making the roll feel good. Hitting the dice now kicks off a bit of screen shake and a couple of particle systems as they tumble, then a UI panel pops up showing the disaster you rolled and its percentage. I also dropped in some sounds. Small stuff on its own, but together it's the difference between a spreadsheet and a game.
A bigger board
I grew the board, and the plan is for it to keep growing each run — eventually you'll be able to scroll around it. For now there are some temporary graphics sitting on it as placeholders. Those are going to get smashed by the dice for a bit of comedy and then pop back up; down the line the board will fill with people, relics, temples and other things to manage (and destroy).
The full game loop works
The big milestone: the core loop now runs end to end. Roll the dice → screen shake, particles and UI feedback → hit continue → place the disaster on the board → the disaster fires → you get your results. The continue button and placement graphics are still temporary placeholders, but the whole sequence plays start to finish.
Next up
New devlogs every Friday. The full episode is above, and the complete transcript is below.
Full transcript
So welcome to Dev Vlog number two. Yeah. Before I really start, I want to show you where we left off last week. Again, we only had one day last week where we were working on the game, and that was a lot of, Amanda and I trying to figure out exactly what we're going to do and accomplish and how we're going to go about it and all of that. But, I'll just show you where we left off. So I'm just hit play real quick and I can hit the dice and both of those dice are generated.
And then, of course, once they settle, I'm trying to figure out which face is up, and then, I'd score the percentage from the d100 as well as what the disaster is that's facing up. Okay. Terribly, terribly exciting. But let's fast forward to week two, which was both Thursday and Friday. Yesterday and the day before. So here we are, in the updated version.
And we now have, a few little graphics, some UI, that's in there as well as we've added some sounds and, more stuff is happening with the board. I increase the size of the board and I'm going to, eventually make that bigger each run. It'll it'll get bigger as you go. And you'll be able to scroll the, the board and stuff. That's to come. But I just threw some, temporary graphics up on the board, and these will actually be smashed by the dice.
Just add a little comical aspect to it, and then, of course, they'll pop back up, and then they'll be people on here and relics and temples and all kinds of cool things that we're going to have in the game. But let's go ahead and just see this in action. So I'll hit the the dice now, have a little game feel doing a little bit of a screen shake. There's some particle systems, happening as the dice are rolling. And now we have some UI that's popping up to show you which disaster you have rolled, as well as, the percentage and this continue button is just a temporary placeholder, but we can go ahead and continue. And then now we can actually place the, the disaster again, some temporary graphics here.
And then once you place it, the disaster will happen. I was able to see the disaster just yet because we have gone that far. But at least you can see what's happening with the screen and you get some feedback for, what's happening with the disaster. And we actually have the full game loop completed. So, you'll be able to get your results for what? You know, what the disaster accomplished, and you'll be able to hit continue.
And then we're going to have a period here real quick where, the population will kind of continue to grow and things are happening on the board. And then, but then you can go right back into rolling your dice again and we'll see if we get a different disaster. There we go. And we now have an earthquake. So I'm going to hit continue. And now we've got an earthquake that we can place.
And then we'll be able to place it. And then we'll also be able to rotate, where that, what that's going to be and where it's going to go within the, the environment. So several of these, you'll be able to, rotate and send them off in a certain direction, like the storm. But you can see that we get we have that functionality in there. And then once you click, then it's going to actually do the disaster. And so getting that game fill in there was, really fun for me to accomplish.
And I did that with the fuel asset from the Unity Asset Store. It took me a little bit to get that figured out, with what I wanted to accomplish. But, we now have a complete game loop in there for the initial gameplay. So that is what we were able to accomplish this week. And I think, the game is actually coming fairly far. We've got particle systems for, you know, releasing the disasters and stuff, but I just don't have those in there yet.
To show. But this is where we left off for dev log number two. Oh, let me do a little self promo here real quick. Two. If you look at my hierarchy you can see that, hey, this looks a little bit different than a normal hierarchy. And that's because I have a new unity asset coming out called Hierarchy Pro.
And this is a rule based hierarchy system that allows you to customize your hierarchy based off of rules. So, just to show it real quick, I have hierarchy Pro as a tool. You can create rules. If you don't have any rules, set up initially, you can add starter rules and it'll automatically add some rules that you can use, but you can go ahead and create your own rules. So I've got my, feel, game objects. I've made those to be, background of of orange.
I can set the specific icon that goes along with those. Anytime I have something that's a folder I'll use dash, dash, dash, space and whatever the name of that folder is, so I can set up a rule for that. I have, sub game objects that are my game manager objects, and I might, set the background of those to be blue. What the color is of the text, what the icon is. You can do all kinds of, actions with this. Now, this is a, game complete asset.
So you set up a config file, or when you're making these rules, it sets up a config file. And then any, any scene, you open up it, it will automatically, load the rules and it will change your hierarchy based off of that. And the cool thing is if you're, doing a GitHub project, like Amanda, I am, this shows up for her to. So any, any teammate, will be able to see the exact same thing. They can set up rules as well so that your whole team can have access to this. this is Hierarchy Pro.
It's going to be coming out soon on the asset store. It's in the the review queue as we speak. So anyway this is Dev log two. And stay tuned till next week.