Category: Indie Game Dev

New Game Started!

SO I have started a new game project using Unity and Javascript, I am calling it Path, a part of the word emPATHy  and it is about a girl who can mimic the abilities of any living thing for the purpose of getting though the puzzle-platformer world she apparently exists in.

I started work on the project November 22nd 2013, and  would say I have invested around 30-40 hours into it so far.

Here are some screenshots:

When you hit the A button next to a living thing, you can get an ability from it, like the frog that lets you jump higher/farther.Path-ss4For early obstacles  it will be obvious what creatures to Path, but later the harder puzzles will have to switching and trying things to see what works, and you can only use one ability at a time. Path-ss3 I have been experimenting with AI, raycasting, pathfinding, and procedural/randomization stuff during this project as well, and while none of that is working just yet for me, I am excited to keep trying and improve my game programming skills.Path-ss2 

Balloon Chase Vehicle – Dev Log Week 4

7:30pm – 1:00am | +5.5 Hours Dev Time | 28.75 Hours Total Dev Time

Highlights:

Today was a good day, we got a lot done that we can be proud of. Being new to Unity, it took a while for some things to ‘click,’ and this night a lot of things did.
Starting with a working mock-up I (Alex) created, Anthony was able to jump off from that point and get the engine going. It did take some re-writing, and a lot of adjustments in Unity to get the ‘2.5d that looks like 2d’ working right.

Balloon Chase Vehicle – Dev Log Week 5

7:30pm – 2:30am | +7 Hours Dev Time | 35.75 Hours Total Dev Time

Collisions!

The main focus of this night was getting collisions and jumping working, and we got somewhere. I would by no means call it perfect, but we have a goo starting point for collisions and jumping. and also some weird errors..

Overall a good night and I can see the momentum building now, so we can get going on level design once the engine is basically figured out.

Balloon Chase Vehicle – Dev Log Week 2

3:30pm – 2:45am | +11.25 Hours Dev Time | 19.25 Hours Total Dev Time

9:56 PM – 2:45 AM


  • 2:45 am Calling it a night, will come back to the movement code with fresh eyes another time!
  • around 1 am, we are getting burnt out, not much is working with the movement code.
  • Posted screenshot of the title screen artwork on twitter
  • More working on getting to know Unity
  • Amazing Idea for a level: Moon Level!
  • Worked more on artwork, working on a promo/possibly title screen

7:26 PM – 9:56 PM


  • Dinner was awesome, who said Louisville doesn’t have any authentic Mexican Food?
  • Played some Super Mario World for physics research, (photo) trying to nail down some smooth acceleration and momentum carrying into jumps
  • Worked on some art elements for the first level, trees, mailboxes, fire hydrants, clouds…

6:58 PM – 7:26 PM

  • Made some adjustments to Mono, like dark color scheme: Check that out here
  • Creating a simple movement script in C# for player movement, based on our two-button scheme, go and jump

6:10 PM – 6:58 PM

  • Talked over control scheme for keyboard/controller/touch scenarios
  • Talked about dinner -Mexican!
  • Looking at some tutorial videos, thanks Youtube!

3:30 PM – 6:10 PM

  • We have decided to use Unity for the Balloon Chase Vehicle.
  • Learning about Vectors and UnitVectors from Anthony
  • Thinking about stuff

Balloon Chase Vehicle – Dev Log Week 1

5:00pm – 3:00am | +8 Hours Dev Time | 8 Hours Total Dev Time

So you may or may not have seen on the rbmlb twitter that rbmlb is now 2 people!  Anthony @datGamerDood has joined forces  and we plan to release our first game by the year 20XX!

Last-night was our first game jam night, and it lasted about  8 hours, during that time whiteboards were doodled upon, graphics were drawn, and I believe even  several(approx.) lines of code were written!

We are excited to start our first game which will be titled “Balloon Chase Vehicle” which as of now will run on Win/Mac.
Here are some relevant photos:



‘Hiatus’

I took a break from the squid game, for a couple of reasons, including having the flu pretty bad, but I will be starting up the dev log again soon.

I also found this device called the SD2SNES, and I am blown away. It’s a a board that can be used like a SNES/ SFC cart that allows you to store roms/saves/home-brew etc on an SD card and run them directly on native SNES or SFC hardware. The price is quite high, $195 for the board alone (you would need to salvage an old cart to give it some ‘clothes’ or $260 for the deluxe with custom painted cart/case/ SD card/stickers etc.

The work that went into getting the multiple add-on chips many games had inside them alone is incredible, and I totally understand the cost, but I probably can’t afford one just yet. This makes me dream of creating my own games to run on a real SNES… wow I have no idea where to even begin on that one! If anyone if working an a home-brew SNES /SFC project and needs someone to work on art, contact me for sure! I will be very interested.

Mentioned Links:
Stone Age Gamers – home of the SD2SNES

Until next time,
-Alex

Squid Game Dev Log/ Learning Unity3D Day 11

Day 11 – 12-10-12
So-far so Good, I have now figured out how to have the player ‘eat’ the caffeine pills and boost the awake meter by 25pts and have the pill object disappear
– Fun stuff, most of the game mechanics are done, as this is a simple game.

  • Movement – Done
  • Collection of items  and positive effects – Done
  • Rock rolling ability – Somewhat Done
  • Enemies and negative effects – Not Started
  • Endpoints, and level switching – Not Started
  • Saving and continuing from where you left off – Not Started
  • Menus – Still needs to be done
  • fix rock dynamics – Needs to be done

I Shot a quick video of a somewhat unrefined version of the first level:

After I recorded the video, I spent some time fixing bugs with the terrain, and sealing off some of the weird visual gaps on the outside borders.
Here are some screenshots from before I went to bed:

Squid Game Dev Log – Pill Sprites and Video

Awesome things:

Using Orthello to achieve 2d sprite animation in Unity3D I found a cool setting called “Start on random frame” on the Animating Sprite which allows me to have my pill spites rotate independently – which adds a cool little visual.

Also I am learning how Hinge Joints work for attacking my seaweed sprites to the floor and allowing the player to collide with them and cause them to jostle a bit. I set the z axis (depth) to different amounts for each seaweed, and some are jostles more or not at all depending on the depth relative to the player.

I am obsessing over tiny details, but really fun!
Unity3d is crazy on options.