Delayed devlog additions

5th Dec: Followed a Code Monkey tutorial on the new Input Systems in Unity. Scripted basic movement stuff.

6th Dec: I attached the camera and movement script to the player. 

The past two weeks then, I was unmotivated to work on the project because I just couldn't figure out the compiler errors... I get home and push my project, through GitHub, to my home computer and manage to fix these errors which allow me to get back to working on the project properly.

The compiler errors were mostly a fault of case sensitivity and naming consistency (This made them pretty hard to spot).

12th Dec: Created a rough build of the game. It has nothing much at all to it. A capsule player on a blank plane. I have my camera at a fixed angle looking at the player from behind - an over the shoulder third person style angle. I received feedback on this work that's encouraged me to properly work. My idea isn't ambitious or complex so this should be doable in the time given and I should be able to catch up. Some concerns considering the state of my other project that I need to work on, but I'll do my best.

13th Dec:  Overhauled a lot of things. I started constructing a scene that fits the game a lot more. 

Initially the player character was a capsule.

After playing around in the game a bit, I decided to change this. I changed the player into a ball that will roll around the scene.

Before this, we were on a blank plane with no objects. Before today, I'd set the camera at a fixed angle looking down at the playable area.

I added frogs and trees from the Unity assets store to the environment. I created my own prefabs of the frogs - one is Safe and one is Dangerous. I'll be generating these two kinds.

I implemented the script to randomly generate a batch of Safe Frogs. I was hoping to do both safe and dangerous frogs within one function but could not figure it out.

I'll be scripting the dangerous frogs another time. For now there's two different spawn location batches, designated for the two types of frogs. If I can figure it out, I will make it so they are varied within those locations.

I also created a script to make it so that the dangerous frogs will target the safe ones but I haven't done much with it, yet.

I moved the camera so that it is now directly behind the player and attached to the game object. This didn't work out exactly as I want though...

Since the player is now a sphere, the camera rotates with the player which is quite dizzying so I will fix this. I want it to follow the player but not the player's rotation.

I asked Toby for some help with this who managed to ask Matthew, my classmate, to come help. He taught me about a camera plugin called Cinemachine in Unity that I installed that had the perfect fix for me. We set the new camera to Look At and Follow the player with the Binding Mode on the Body at "Simple Follow With World", meaning that the camera body stays upright while following the object. It also perfectly centres the player in its view at all times.

I found this day to be wholly productive - I fixed my game to fit much closer to what I'd envisioned, and I especially regained my interest in the idea as a whole. I can finally imagine it being completed.

15th Dec: I added a NavMesh plane to the whole game area in preparation for the AI I'll be adding specifically to the dangerous frogs.

28th Dec: Implemented the dangerous frog spawning mechanics to my frog spawning script. When I'd initially run into problems in this aspect, I thought I might have to create a separate script for the two kinds of frogs. This is not the case and I've just created another two functions as counterparts to the safe frogs' relevant functions. Bad frogs spawn in their area, and good frogs in their own area.

I need to consider what will distinguish the two, because I didn't use different frogs for the two.