For some reason, this week was largely dedicated to Rokkit assets. Sure, they could be used elsewhere, but the last three this week were all made specifically with the rokkit game in mind.
8 February: Dynamite, LOD A
A stick of dynamite. It’s black because I don’t have a good paper material handy and I didn’t feel like spending hours screwing around making one. So my options were the shiny, glossy red car paint material I used on the 60mm RPG’s nose or the black composite rubber I used. If dynamite ends up being a major item in a project, I’ll change it.
9 February: Placeholder Shack, LOD A
Just a basic little shack to stick into a test level to give the player and Ais something to operate around. Unlike some of my other models, this one won’t be so much upgraded as completely replaced down the road. It’s too small to explore, and I haven’t bothered cutting a hole for the door.
10 February: 100mm General-Purpose Missile, LOD A
This missile is a general purpose unit suitable for vehicle launch or as a heavier shoulder-fired round; it’s three feet long and would weigh 12 pounds plus launcher. While that’s only about half the size of a Dragon ATGM, it’s twice the size of an RPG-7 round. I see these being used largely in pods or autoloading tubes. The relatively small size makes them easily field-serviceable; if a unit carrying these needs to rearm, the crew can hand-load them from a stockpile without needing a hoist.
As a shoulder-fired weapon system, it would probably fill the role of most video game rocket or missile launchers – not something to be fired a single time before returning to base for rearming, but a heavy enough weapon that they aren’t going to be using it in place of a rifle. If the character was going tank hunting, they might carry a half dozen rounds and the launcher. Or it would serve as the primary weapon of a heavy weapons team with a gunner carrying the launcher and a loader carrying several reloads.
As compared to the 60mm RPG I made last week (to the right in the second picture), this one features a much heavier warhead and better engine and seeker head. It’s bigger, faster, stronger. I do indeed have the technology.
I already have some basic guided missile code. It needs a few tweaks to make it launch more smoothly, but that’s no big deal.
11 February: Lamppost, LOD A
A basic beacon lamp on a post. It’s there mainly to make the launch pad visible to the player, but I’m sure I’ll be able to find plenty of other uses for it elsewhere. Once I convert it to a proper GameObject, it’ll have a light that can do various things like blink, pulse, rotate, or change color. The color change is a big one, since I intend to have at least one level where the player has to land at several pads for whatever reason, and when they do I can make the lights change color as a visual cue. Or if it’s used as a strategic point marker in a capture the flag type game, it could switch colors to represent which team currently controls it.
12 February: Launch Pad, LOD A
This is an upgraded version of the launch pad I made a few years ago for my Rokkit game. Since I’ve decided to do some more work on it, I thought I’d upgrade the existing assets like the rokkit and launch pad. This version of the launch pad can support a craft up to 4 meters in diameter if the pilot is careful. Since the rokkits I’m planning are all between two and three meters in diameter (a Mercury capsule is 1.9m and a Gemini is 3m) this gives some room to spare.
13 February: Radar Dish, LOD A
If it was manned, this would be on a control tower like at an airport. Instead, this is a little automated weather and air-traffic radar station a nearby aircraft or spacecraft can tie into. When I convert it to a full GameObject, the sensor dish will spin.
14 February: Rokkit Launch Pad Terrain Piece, LOD A
I combined the last three assets into a few alternate configurations for various launch pad sites. That was a big part of making the parts separately – by doing so I can put the sensors on a nearby hill or play around with the lamp post placement. I can also make variants of all of them so they can be different depending on the specific launch site.
Depending on where I go with the rokkit game, I could add more to the launch pads. Maybe I’ll incorporate a mechanic where the pilot gets out of the rokkit to explore on foot and some of the landing pads will have buildings nearby that have to be entered by the pilot in his spacesuit. Next week I’ll put together a stairhead model for this or similar scenarios.
If you’ve seen my Totally Not Zelda FPS test, you’ll recognize the bunker the radar dish is sitting on from that. It’s based on a basic beacon I build in Minecraft so I can have artificial landmarks as I wander around.
And I have no idea just what in tarnation is going on with that weird lighting effect in the third picture there. It’s something to do with where the radar bunker is placed, but since this is just a basic demo I’m not going to agonize over it too much.