Author: digm520admin

August 19, 2019

Unity Pokemon Tutorial

Encounter List Creation

Youtube – Lets Make… Pokemon in Unity! – Episode 6 More Pokemon!

By: BrainStorm Games

This tutorial is about actually creating BasePokemon GameObjects and using them as a prefabs. The general prefab structure is pretty simple. The object is a SpriteRenderer (with the pokemon’s sprite) and has a BasePokemon script attached that just has all the base stats filled in in the editor, along with typing in the name and also hading a sprite reference here.

We created 5 different types of this prefab for different pokemon objects and used those to populate the GameManager BasePokemon list. It turns out this list won’t be holding every pokemon that exists in the game, this will just the list of possible encounters in the current area.

The method for encountering pokemon included creating an EmptyPoke prefab as well, which acts as a placeholder that becomes one of the referenced Pokemon objects from the current GameManager list. The battle instantiates this EmptyPoke object, and then uses the reference from the randomly selected Pokemon object from the list to basically add a BasePokemon component to this EmptyPoke object and copy all the relevant data over to it.

Finally, they added some transform objects to locate your pokemon and the opposing battle pokemon in the battle scene. These objects are just referenced as where to instantiate Pokemon objects (and as a result, their sprites).

Testing and Debugging

Problem 1: Generating Empty Lists that Were Being Accessed

I was getting an error that GetRandomPokemonFromList from attempting to access an array element out of the bounds of the current list being given to it. It turns out this is because I only put VeryCommon and Common rarity pokemon as options to be found, so when any other rarity (Rare, Semirare, VeryRare) were being rolled for the encounter, it was defaulting to trying to access the first element of an empty list.

Solution

I was able to solve this by adding a check for an empty list and having the method return null in that case, then the rest of the methods using this data would check if it was null first before performing their actions, so they would only proceed if they had an object to work with first.

Problem 2: Missing Encounters

I added my own EndBattle method to the GameManager script just to make testing multiple encounters easier and found an issue where it did not seem like every pokemon in the list was coming up as an encounter. I know RNGs can be a bit repetitive, so I tested for a while but it was clearly missing some encounters.

Solution

It turns out the Random.Range int they were using with bounds of 0 and list.count – 1 did not need the (- 1) since the high bound is an exclusive bound. With the (- 1), one pokemon from each rarity tier was being left out as an option. Removing the (- 1) fixed my issue, and all pokemon were appearing (eventually).

August 19, 2019

Unity Pokemon Tutorial

Class Data Management

Youtube – Lets Make… Pokemon in Unity! – Episode 5 – More Pokemon Integration

By: BrainStorm Games

This tutorial focused on creating the Player class and increasing the functionality of the BasePokemon class.

The Player class contained a list of OwnedPokemon, which was a newly created class within the Player script.

The BasePokemon class added some new features to work with evolution. The PokemonEvolution class was created, which held a BasePokemon that is the next evolution and an int for the level at which the evolution should occur. A PokemonEvolution variable was created within the BasePokemon class which would hold a reference to what pokemon a single one could evolve into.

There was also a lot done with the GameManager script. A PokemonMoves class was created that would provide the foundation for all the different types of attacks in the game, as well as a new MoveType enum, which categorized the moves (as physical, special, or status). There was also a Stat class that was created that just held a float for a minimum value and a float for the maximum value. The GameManager class itself also got a list of BasePokemon called allPokemon, and a list of PokemonMoves called allMoves. I am assuming these will just be used to hold some style of reference to every unique type of pokemon and move in the game.

The GameManager class also contained the methods for determining which Pokemon is randomly encountered in battles. A List method, GetPokemonByRarity, was created which basically takes an input of a Rarity enum and then looks through the current list of allPokemon and creates a new list with only those that have the same rarity value as designated by the input Rarity. Then another method, a BasePokemon method called GetRandomPokemonFromList, simply takes a BasePokemon list input (the list created by GetPokemonByRarity) and then randomly chooses one of the BasePokemon from that list and returns it. This combinations works to determine the specific pokemon encountered when calling a random encounter.

Again, things seem to be run a bit inefficiently (for example, populating this rarity list every time a battle is encountered) but I’ll be interested to see where it leads. This tutorial was a lot of setup that will make more sense once the system gets put in motion.

August 13, 2019

Unity Pokemon Tutorial

UI and Pokemon Class

Youtube – Lets Make… Pokemon in Unity! – Episode 3 Basic Pokemon and UI

By: BrainStorm Games

This tutorial covered the very basics of starting to get the UI setup in the game, as well as starting the overall base Pokemon class. The UI portion was just grabbing an image and setting it as the image for a Unity UI Panel. To help present the image in a certain way, they did go into the sprite editor to apply an all around 4 pixel border to the image.

The base Pokemon class started with two enums, this time for rarity and type. This class, BasePokemon, also references an outside enum that was created called BiomeList, which will set out the different types of environments a Pokemon can be found in. Other than these enums, the rest was just preparing the class by setting up a lot of the variables, like the Name, image, and all the stats (like hit points, attack, and defense).

August 13, 2019

Unity Pokemon Tutorial

Player Movement

Youtube – Lets Make… Pokemon in Unity! – Episode 2 Basic Player Movement

By: BrainStorm Games

Player movement in the overworld of Pokemon games is tile based. To emulate this, the tutorial uses a Coroutine which can move the player a full tile at a time while locking the player out from further inputs until the player character has completed its full tile of motion. It also uses a simple setup where it reads the player’s horizontal and vertical input, but checks which is greater and reduces the other to zero to ensure the player is moving only on the two intended directions.

Since the player is a 2D sprite, they used an Enum setup to tie certain sprites to certain movement directions. This way it would look like the character is facing the direction they are moving. This setup had the 4 directions (North, South, East, West) for the Enum Direction. The player’s input would set the Direction variable, currentDir, to a corresponding direction. This would then be referenced in a switch case to determine which sprite to display for the character’s SpriteRenderer at the time.