jakel168's game development

2012 - Chapter 1

2012-01-16T03:45:00.000-08:00

Well, I did said that I'm gonna write one post per week, so here's one for the first official entry of 2012 (the resolution piece doesn't count).

I've been hard at work recently, adding features for my thesis game project - SecondVisions. Before the project even starts, I have high hopes for it. But two semesters later I realized things does not turns out to be as good as I hope for. The game... well, was a bit of a failure, as the game's design got kinda mess up around October to November last year.

But I'm not giving up on it just yet, because if I do, I'll fail the course~XD So, right now I'm basically just adding more features into it, finishing the part which I originally promised (my lecturers) to work on, and just continue designing the game along the way.

Moreover, I've learned a lot of stuff between last year and this year when working on game-related projects, so I've got a lots of scripting tips and stuff to blog about next time when I'm done with SecondVision. It'll probably be around February or so. Stay tuned~:D

My 2012 Resolutions

2012-01-05T16:53:00.000-08:00

A list of stuff I wish to accomplish this year, and some of them may be derived from the 2011 resolution.

Top 5:

1. Publish 2 iOS good game on the appstore that will do well

By this I mean completing two iOS games with my own team of developers and publish them under my own Apple account. Working for someone else, company or client-side project does not count for this resolution. I've just recently purchased an iOS developer account, cuz apparently using your friend's account can be quite troublesome, especially during urgent game-porting/testing times.

Now that I've got my own account, it would be a waste to not publish anything on it. Currently I'm still waiting for reply from MSC regarding my game development funding. And once that thing is settled, I can finally get myself the sweet Unity Pro and iOS Pro licenses, and start making sellable products. Also, I've recently picked up GameSalad, probably gonna use it for a casual game project, when I don't wanna do so much programming.

EDIT: After looking at DarkAcreJack's great advice on game publishing resolution, I realize he was right, I need to make good games that will do well~ XD

2. Continue mastering the languages

Derived from the 2011 resolutions, the current main languages (programming and non-programming) I wish to fully master this year would be Csharp and Japanese. Csharp is the language I often use during game development. Though I don't consider myself a very good game programmer, I could create whatever game mechanics I want to, with some experiment and research.

As for Japanese language, I used to be really obsessed with it... probably because it's always a dream of mine to venture into the Japan's game/animation industry, and also all the anime and Japanese drama I love watching, the manga I love reading. But since the start of 2011, the thing I'm most obsessed with is game development. I spent most of my time on it, joining game jams, working on games for my assignments... completely left out the learning Japanese language part.

Not to say I completely left it out in 2011, I do played quite a number of non-localized Japanese games in my DS and PSP, such as: Persona 3 Portable, Devil Survivor, Monster Hunter Portable 3rd, Tomodachi Collection, etc. Most of those games which provides hours of gameplays and have tons of dialogues to read on. It helps me tackle some reading problem, and learn more new words too.

This year, I'm gonna continue learning it more seriously, read all the lessons books, and start practicing on the speaking part.

3. Earn 100,000 USD

Derived from the 2011 resolutions, I wanna earn 100,000... USD. Although I'm not really short on money or anything, I just wanna take it as a challenge for myself since I'm gonna be graduating soon and going to work in the industry.

Funding does not count for this resolution, I want the 100,000USD to be purely profits from my hard works, such as salary and game sales revenues (minus out the funding). Although I'm not very confident about the game sales revenue part, as I'm still a new player in the industry, fresh out of the oven... I'm gonna try my best!

4. Go to Japan
I'm crazy about this country for years, and was kinda worried that I'll never get to visit it when the tsunami happen. I really hope that I could go there at least once this year. I've already talked to some of my friends who are also into the idea... and now we just wait...

5. Learn to drive well
It's been 4 years since I've got my driving license, and the number of times I've drove within this 4 years had not even reach more than 20 times. I had a slight trauma around 2-3 months after I got my driving license and had been neglecting from driving ever since.

I hope this year I can overcome that trauma and drive normally. It's so important it had to be in the top 5, consider that I'm graduating soon and have to drive to work, can't always rely on trains. Or maybe I should get a bicycle?

Bottom:

6. Take a vacation or two

Similar to the 4th one... It's been 4 years I've studied in MMU, and we don't have much of holiday here. Even if there is, it's only gonna be for a week or two between semesters, which is definitely not enough.

I used to go on vacation every year before I enter university. But those times weren't as stressful as when I'm still studying. Nowadays, as I'm nearly finishing my studies, I grew more and more stressful everyday. Not just me, but also my classmates and friends who are also graduating soon. I can't think straight, started to forget certain things, dreaming about codes and bugs at night (which can quite a nightmare), more white hairs dominating my head (I'm only 21, dammit!)... etc.

I need a vacation when all these is over! I really do, we all do! Maybe do some backpacking, or just travel to Japan, Korea... somewhere beautiful; visit some of the wonders of the world... and maybe King Kong~ XD

7. Make a short film
It's in one of my old 2008 resolution, but never got to do it till now for I'm lack of a video cam. I should've bought a Nikon D90 instead of a D60 last time... as I'm not much of a photographer.

Though I did get to do a public awareness video 3 years ago, where I was in charged of writing the script (which was really bad).

8. Write a blog post a week

I've gotta say, blogging has always been a stress-relieving activity for me, but I don't do it very often. One reason could be that I don't want this to be like one of those simple social life blog about me... I want this to be about the "game development" part of my life. And there's too much to talk about, but too little time to write them all down.

So this year, I'll try, no matter what, to write at least 52 blog posts (equivalent to 1 post per week for a year). Speaking of which, I just counted, and I've got 45 blogs from 2011, which was not bad! But I'll try to do a little more this year~ :D

9. Start a comic series
I used to be a pretty good comic strip artist back in high school, and that was one of the main reasons I went for an art degree. I haven't drawn anything since then, always wanna start a series but I never really got to do it.

10. Make the Pokemon (fan-) game I always wanted to make
I have an idea that I really wanted to do. It's not really a big or genius idea, but it's something that's in my mind for months since last year. It's kinda of a new approach to the original Pokemon games, I've dreamt about all the gameplay and stuff, and I really wanna see if this approach works.

It's kinda like the indie motto: "make something you would like to play", and I really hope that I could make and play this game this year.

11. Make a gross-able game
I don't mean making a "gross" or disgusting game, but more like a game which is released as a freemium, and earning money through selling in-app item. It can be consider as part of the 1st resolution, but this may come as a web game too.

12. Lose weight (10Kg) and get a life
Well, it's pretty much self-explanatory.

13. Survive the apocalypse, and be a hero
Wildest dream... XD

A look back at my 2011 resolutions...

2012-01-03T00:18:00.000-08:00

Before I get started on my new resolution this year, I'm taking a look back at the resolution I made for 2011, see what I've accomplished:

2011 Resolutions:

1. Master all languages I know

I mentioned that I'm gonna try my best to master all the languages I know: JavaScript (not Java, :P), C#, AS3, and Japanese. For one, I've been doing most of my game programming in Unity3D using C#, and worked on a couple of titles (one released, a few simple prototype-jam games, one prototype which is now pending for funding, and one for my university's assignment: SecondVisions). I consider myself an intermediate-level C# game programmer now. Of course, there's still a lot of stuff I don't know, probably because I haven't find the need to use them yet, but I will, soon.

For JavaScript (not Java), it's basically just the same as C#, they just have some difference in syntax, and how they handle enumerations... etc. I started out with JavaScript when I first started with Unity3D, and then switching to C# a year ago because of various reasons, so I do know how both side of the game works.

For AS3, I've completely given up on it, I've neither write any AS3 codes nor open a new Flash game project, in a while now. It was the first languages I learned when I first started doing game programming, before I met Unity3D. I'll always remember those great (unfinished) game development times I had with it 2 years ago.

For Japanese, I've been trying my best to find time studying it... I just can't, but I'm not giving up on it yet. The main reason I can't do it is mostly because of poor time management and no motivation. Well, it's not like I have better time management skill now, but I will try my best again this year. I've changed some language of the software I use to Japanese, and even played mostly Japanese games on my NDS and PSP. As for motivations, I've recently talked to the representatives of DeNA during the previous Malaysia's IGDA, about my wish to venture into the Japan game industry. They told me some stuff about how I could possibly get in, and offer some help and guidance for me too. So that's a start too~ ^w^

2. Finish projects and submit them

Like I mentioned above, I'm involved in one released game. It's called OctoExplorer and it was from when I'm still doing my internship at TeratoTech. I worked on most of the game mechanics side of the project (not the graphic, sound, nor the Facebook and Twitter integration)... but I consider that "released game", a finished and submitted project... though I do not own it.

Moreover, I've joined a few jams around the first half of 2011, and released a 3 prototype games. And 3 months ago, I joined a pitch-a-game-for-funding event called ICON2 (and ICONdap), where I'll have to develop a game prototype within a month and pitch it up to the judges for funding to further develop the game into a sellable product. It was a really fun experience, and I've developed a playable prototype called "Little Green Hood". The judges seems to like it (and is now pending their approval for the funding), and I've also got somebody from a venture capital contacting me about future business venture-related stuff.

Last but not least, SecondVisions, a game I proposed for my final year project, and have written a few development posts about it... is not completed yet. I'm kinda like having an on and off development with it, because the design of the game got kinda messed up around October, I'm kinda lost in the "direction" of the game, losing interest and motivation to finish it, and I was trying to focus a whole month and a half into the ICON2 thing. But I'm currently close to graduating, and is trying me best to finish the game by February. I can't afford to fail this class~ >.<

3. Learn Android/iOS apps development

I tried to get a few books, started learning how to code Xcode or Cocos2D. After reading a bunch of articles by some experienced developers, and talking to some of them from my country... while learning and getting an extra skill is good, sometimes it's also better to just master the skill that you have right now, while it still have its market value. It's more of the "Jack of all trades" thing: you learn a whole bunch of stuff and in the end not really good at any of them.

So, I'm just gonna continue sticking to Unity3D and C#, mastering it, develop some games, publish them... until its lifespan is over~ :D

4. Lose 10Kg

I failed at this one too... I've only lost 2kg at most, but gained it back during a series of continuous wedding ceremony held by my relatives.

I tried joining Fitocracy, but then quit because I was really busy with my works and stuff... It's really hard to lose weight~ =_=

5. Earn 100,000

Well, I quit doing freelance a few weeks before I started my internship because of all the stress it provided me, and haven't been doing any freelance stuff since then. The amount of allowance I got from my internship does not even reach the 5k mark. And I totally forgotten about this resolutions list by the time my internship started... can't really blame me~ =3=

6. Get a life

I started joining events in and outside campus, met a lot of game developers during IGDA and ICON2 events, get a lot of friends... at least I'm socializing with people outside my campus. And there's not much female in IGDA events though, probably they aren't really into game development, but I do hope there'll be more this year~ :D

Conclusion:

I've accomplished half of what I promised myself to do in 2011, and it's not bad for someone like me. "50% of something is better than 100% of nothing", rite?

2011 has been a great year for me, I met a lot of great people, got a lot of new friends, learn a greats deal of knowledge from them... it's a year where I truly began my journey as a game developer, and there's I know there's more stuff waiting for me to accomplished in the future.

So, now that 2012 is already here, I'm gonna start making a new resolutions list too. This time, I'm gonna try a little bit harder, instead of accomplishing 50% of what I promised, I'm gonna try 80% (or more).

My next post will be my 2012 resolution list~ ^w^

Blender Notes #1

2011-11-22T06:31:00.001-08:00

Just to note on some stuff I always forgot when using Blender...

1. Making Camera tracks an object

Adjusting the camera (both translation and rotation) can be a pain if doing it manually. In one of the Blender tutorial I followed, they showed me a way to make camera tracking on object easier.

First, add an "empty object" in scene by pressing Shift + A to bring up the "Add" menu and select "Empty".

Then, press S and enlarge the empty object so that it's easier to identify in scene.

Next, make sure that there's a camera in the scene (else just press Shift + A again to add one from the "Add" menu). Right click and select the camera first, follow by the "empty object"... it has to be in this sequence, so that we can to tell Blender that we want the camera to "follow" or "track" the "empty object".

When both are selected, press Control + T to bring up the "Make Track" menu, and select "Track To Constraint".

Now move the "empty object" around, and you should be having the camera following/tracking it. Press 0 to see the effect. And since the "empty object" is empty, it won't get rendered in scene...

2. Showing texture in scene
Well, a lot of times when you think you have added a material and a texture on your object, but the mesh in scene didn't seems to have any texture on it, and is still white in color.

The trick to getting this done is simple, all you have to do is to press N to bring up the right side panel, and look for the "Display" tab. Look for "Textured Solid" and check the box, and your texture will be up on the mesh in no time...

Chapter 100

2011-10-27T17:12:00.000-07:00

I haven't been posting stuff for quite a while, and I can see from the blogger stats that the number of viewers are slowly declining. Not that I care about that but it's good to know that someone is reading my blog :D So, what I've been up to recently?

SecondVisions

Well, I'm currently still working on SecondVisions, and the reason I still haven't release any updates for it for such a long time was because right about 2 months ago, I felt that this game wasn't really going towards to direction I'm hoping for, and the level design looks kinda mess up in overall, some of the (cool) features were added just because it was cool but doesn't really have any use, puzzle design for this game has been forever hard, etc. As soon as I finishes my previous semester, I spent the rest of my holiday brainstorming and redesigning the game, came out with a story, an ending, a simple puzzle for the mechanics, remove some of the useless features, done some sample level designing... and it's going pretty well so far.

I'm redoing some of the in-game assets, making them arrangeable within all levels, and not like some assets are only suitable for certain levels and stuff. Hope that these new directions could help me finish building my levels faster, and release some new updates for you those who are following the development soon.

Second Person Shooter Zato

Did I mentioned before that SecondVisions was actually a game inspired from the famous, titular second person shooter game by Himogames? Well, first of all, my character is blind (same as SPSZ), and have to rely on living things around him to view around.

I talked to the original creator of the game, Himoji-san, about his awesome game, and this current game which I'm developing. And he seems pretty cool about it and would be interested to know more about my project.

ICON2

For most of you who didn't know what ICON2 is, it's a project pitching event held in Malaysia (annually I supposed), where you pitch your ideas, and then if they like it, you'll get funding to develop a mobile game within a months.

I just got back yesterday from the event, proposing a Zelda-like game to them, and I got in. Which means starting from next week, I'll be attending a one week intensive Unity training, and then to develop the game after the training week.

The training coach was an industry experts, Bret Bibby, founders of GameBrains.com, whom people from the IGDA described him to be the kind of person who "use Unity and doesn't use the Unity Editor". I was like... how it that possible? What's the point of using Unity3D then? But from what I heard, he sounded awesome, and I'm very looking forward to meet him soon, learn from him, make an amazing game, and win the prize!

Carl Callewaert - Unity Evangelist

On the same day of the ICON2 events, I was attending a Unity seminar held at Hotel Novotel, Kuala Lumpur. The speaker of the Unity session was Carl Callewaert, an Unity Evangelist. He gave a talk on some of the new Unity features in the latest version... and the upcoming features for 3.5, gave a talk on how to conduct the light mapping, occlusion culling, and some other advanced topics... which I kinda missed because I have to go for the ICON2 event for my pitching session. But I do learned a lot from him, and hope we could have more people from Unity to come down here to Malaysia and gives us talks on... well you know... Unity3D!

Exploring AR using Unity3D and Qualcomm AR SDK

2011-09-30T10:41:00.000-07:00

This week, I spent a large amount of time wondering what I should do to spend my first week of holiday before throwing myself into the sea of assignments, which I will do on the 2nd and 3rd week of holiday later on. I decided to explore AR.

I've done AR before, using Flash and AS3:

Now I'm doing it again after 2 years, only this time I'm using the softwares which I'm most familiar with, Unity3D. As for the AR SDK, a lot of experts would suggest String (cuz it's more powerful, faster and stuff). But I'm more of a hobbyist developer and don't really plan on spending much money on developing commercial AR app/game just yet. Then I found Qualcomm, which is a royalty-free AR SDK for Android and iOS development.

The Qualcomm AR SDK download and getting started site gave an very good tutorial on how you could make your first AR app using Xcode or Unity. Soon after following the tutorial, I started building more stuff into the Unity scene and writing codes to test out the capabilities of the SDK. At the same time, I'm also thinking about the kind of app or game I wanna build using it, which makes me wanna know more and more about the SDK.

Here's some notes from those experiments I did in Unity (might be useful for certain beginners):

- when building a scene, it needs to have at least an ARCamera and an ImageTarget prefab.
- anything which is a child of the ImageTarget, will only show up/appear if the ImageTarget is tracked. Including those children which are moving around, as long as they are part of ImageTarget, they'll dis-/appear together with the ImageTarget.
- anything which is not a child of the ImageTarget, will appear static in front of the ARCamera in an AR scene. That said, anything that's outside of ImageTarget will always appear in the scene, and moving along with the camera as if the camera was its parent.
- For instance, if you're spawning some monsters into your AR scene, you're gonna want to make them a child of the ImageTarget; else if you just spawn them in the scene, they'll move as the camera move.
- you can call OnTrackableStateChanged (also listed in their getting started site) if you wanna detect whether or not the ImageTarget is tracked (appear in the scene when camera is facing the marker)
- if I'm not mistaken, you can only call OnTrackableStateChanged in an ImageTarget script (any script you dragged into ImageTarget)

I think that's about all the notes I have for now, if I have more I'll add them in here.

Anyway, I made an AR game using Unity3D and Qualcomm AR SDK, called YokaiShooter, where enemies called "Yokai" are gonna get spawn randomly into the scene and you're gonna have to shoot them down to prevent them from reaching the city.

Gameplay video:

Screenshots:

Not coming to an AppStore near you :D

Second Visions - Basic Control Preview (Playable)

2011-09-20T10:50:00.000-07:00

Unity3D: Web Player Blogger Gadget

2011-09-19T11:57:00.000-07:00

Been meaning to try this for a really long time (found the link almost a year ago in unity forum): http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/45697-Unity-Blogger-Gadget-and-Unity-iFrame-Gadget

Second Visions - Dev Blog 4

2011-09-19T05:11:00.000-07:00

First of all, an announcement! I've just found out that there's already a game out there in the market which is also called "Second Sight", for the PS2 console. To avoid confusion between that product and mine, I'm gonna have to change the name from "Second Sights" to "Second Visions", without changing the meaning of the name. Apparently I didn't do enough research for this game of mine, what a bummer!

So the name has changed, now let's move on to the new updates! I've already started working on the coding part, and the basic control of the game has been done, and here's a video for it:

In there, is a preview build of Second Visions, to let the players understand a thing or two about the controls of the game (and probably the difference between this and PS2's "Second Sights").

That's all for today's post, thanks for reading!

Second Visions - Dev Blog 3

2011-09-13T17:42:00.000-07:00

Just finished up some animations for the main character of Second Visions. In the new FBX, it now has these animations:
- idle
- walk
- interact

- interact collect
- interact receive
- idle hold
- walk hold
- recline
- recline down

and here's a video of it:

Will start working on the scripting part after I get some sleeps... :D

An Obvious Failure

2011-09-08T03:31:00.000-07:00

Last month, I sent an entry for a local game making competition called the IPCC (Intellectual Property Creator Challenge) which was held every year for Malaysians to create creative projects, then submit it for pitching it up to get a 50 grands (RM) funding to produce a commercial ready game later on. And everyone was given 3 months (since the announcement) to develop their projects.

Well, I had always dream of getting into one of this competition, get the funding and start making games for a living, and maybe drop out of college to found my company too. Back in 2010, they also had a similar competition, but at that time, I'm still not much of a good game developer just yet. I don't mean I am that "good" now, I just don't have the skill to create a finish game. The engine which I was using that time was Flash Professional CS4, and I'm still unaware of the existence of great Flash game library/engine such as FlashPunk or FlashDevelop, which could literally lower the amount of my scripting time.

I had all these great ideas about the game I'm gonna make for the 2010 version of IPCC, written a full GDD for it, and even go as far as recruiting someone to join my team. And as always, I failed to make anything for it. Mostly because I don't have the will to do it; I have a tons of assignments back then to block me from opening Flash up; my majoring department had just started introducing us to Unity (right around when Unity became free) and I'll have to start learning to use it for my project.

But now things have change. I've became a better and faster coder and developer. Right around when IPCC 2011 was announced, I was still at the last month of my internship programme, so I have like 2 months to develop a game for it. Never mind the design stage of my FYP (final year project), which started as soon as I finished my internship programme, my FYP schedule was like super loose, and I should have plenty of time to develop something.

I only started developing something around 3 to 4 days before the deadline of IPCC 2011, and manage to finish up the basic game mechanics. Even though there weren't much graphics in it, I submitted it anyway. Not to mentioned the projects proposal in which the participants needed to submit along with the entry, which I finish within 2 hours because I thought the deadline was gonna come in 3 more hours, but turns out they've got the time wrong.

The moment I'm submitting it, I knew I'm never gonna get anything due to 3 reasons:

1. the prototype entry was developed within 3 days

2. the projects proposal was written within 2 hours, without giving much thoughts into it, and I missed out quite a few vital elements, such as the: production timeline (which I have no idea on where to start), budget (my first thought of it was zero, and finally realized I was supposed to divide the given 50 grands productively), team implementation (my team only consist of me, and a few others who weren't directly involved in the projects; I only use their name so that my team have enough people)

3. I didn't follow the guideline given... it says to design/develop a casual game, but I suggest something bigger~

Thus, this post was to remind the future Jake again that he should never ever again:

1. develop a game in less than a month

2. write a project proposal first before building the game

3. if the guideline says develop a "casual game", then god-dammit develop a CASUAL GAME!!!

That is all, thanks for reading~

Regards

Past Jakehttp://www.mscmalaysia.my/topic/IPCC+2011

Second Visions - Dev Blog 2

2011-09-05T07:15:00.000-07:00

A lot have changed since the last post of the "Second Visions" column. For one, in order to make the process easier, I've started learning Blender 3D and using it to develop the 3D assets of 2nd Visions, due to the reason that one, I wanted to use my MBP for the entire development of the game; and two, Blender offers a much more easier environment for 3D assets building.

Thus for the past few days during the holiday, I've been learning to adapt to the Blender's interface, learn all of its shortcuts and stuff, while following this book: Character Development in Blender 2.5. And I quite like it though, especially its UV map unwrapping part, which I can very easily unwrap an entire human model to a beautiful UV map in 15 minutes; while in 3ds Max, it'll took me about 3 to 7 days to unwrap and stitch up the UVs to an okay-looking UV map.

I've only been using Blender for about 7 to 8 days now (not to forget I also have one or two tricks from when I was using 3ds Max), and here's a 3D character model which I made in Blender for Second Visions:

The main character was supposed to be a fugitive-like character who was captured to be a lab rat for an illegal chemical experiment. So I think I've achieve my goal here...

And here's the UV map which I boastfully brag that I finished in 15 minutes XD...

That's all I have for now, and next, I'm gonna rig and animate it... so stay tuned~

One September Post

2011-09-01T07:54:00.000-07:00

Finally got some time to write something here. I haven't been developing games lately, and by developing, I mean doing the coding part... as I'm now working on the 3d modelling and animation for one of my next game: Second Sights... in Blender3D. So no real gamedev post for a while this time around... will probably start next week or so, so stay tuned! :D

By the way, I just turned 21 two weeks ago, I'm now finally a man (lol). During my cake candle-blowing session, I wished for an unusual wish -- to retire before I'm 25. Which means, I still have 4 years to go then... and seriously, I still haven't created a sellable game yet, or try testing out the Apple's app-developer thing I signed up a while back. Also, it means I've got a lot to do from now on then~ I've list down a list of things I wanna to do before I'm 22, and started conducting some of them (including signing up for a piano lesson)... so that's a start for me.

Second Visions - Dev Blog 1

2011-08-23T03:39:00.000-07:00

Looks like the development blog for Second Visions isn't going to be a daily thing, but more like weekly. I just started working on it Sunday night, and now I've kinda completed the game's level 1 environment models.

I have until this Thursday to finish texturing them, so I'll have to work harder.

And according to this gantt chart, I have about 5 weeks to complete the prototype...

So... good luck to me~

Second Sights - Announcement

2011-08-18T19:24:00.000-07:00

The design stage for "Second Sights" just ended yesterday, and according to my schedule I have about 5 weeks to develop a prototype. Actually I don't really need to be in such a rush, I have about 20 weeks (5 months) to develop the Beta, but I wanted to push myself more this time.

So "Second Sights" is a game about a blind guy who has the ability to "borrow/steal" the biological perception of living things around him. And it's gonna be a second person shooter, stealth-action game, and a little bit of simulation involve. If it's possible, I'll try to do a daily post on my progress, might skip a few days though.

UnityExperiment 101: Turn-Based RPG Battle System

2011-08-10T08:57:00.000-07:00

JRPG or turn-based RPG was my favorite game genre, particularly for games like the Persona, Final Fantasy, and the Tales-of series. I hope that one day I'll be able to make a turn-based RPG games as awesome as those (maybe not as good as their graphics :D).

I made a turn-based RPG game about two years ago, when I first started using Unity. It's called EcoTat: The Bengal Tigress, you can find it in my games archive. The battle system was less logic based and more animation based, as I have less time to develop it while learning how to use its scripting system.

This time around, I take a little time, and invest in building a new turn-based RPG system. Actually it was for a competition which ended yesterday, thus this battle system will looks like a rushed project.

You can download and play them here:

PC Vers: https://rapidshare.com/files/2648847294/WarriorRPG_PC.zip

MAC Vers: https://rapidshare.com/files/1050614101/WarriorRPG_MAC.zip

Tell me what you think~

[UPDATE]
I see that this post had been getting some attention, so I thought I should share the source code for the game above here (click to download):

Turn-Based RPG System Source

Have fun~!

newDomainName == awesome;

2011-08-07T08:41:00.000-07:00

It took exactly 72 hours (3 days) for my new domain name: jakel168.com to work. I felt both piss off (at Google, for taking so long) and exciting at the same time. However... it was worth the wait, my blog has got its own domain now, and don't I seriously know what else should I do right now... Should I open up a champagne and celebrate it, or continue my game development life as always. Well... I choose the latter.

I haven't been making any games recently, as much as designing them. Currently designing a game called Second Sights for my degree's final year project, and also another secret one for a competition which name I shall not disclosed till I submitted it... and hopefully won it, or got into a finalist or something.

I had been playing quite a lot of indie games, mostly the Humble Bundle 2 and 3, and Anomaly: Warzone Earth from Steam... which was an exceptional backward-tower-defense game.

It has got a 67% discount rite now (about USD3.33 after the cut), I suggest you go get it before the discount ends.

Actually I shouldn't even be talking rite now, I should be continue working on the secret project, as the submission was tomorrow, before midnight. So, see ya...

Story writing tips for games

2011-08-04T11:54:00.000-07:00

Story telling is very important in games. A lot of award winning games these days, such as the Mass Effect, Bioshock and Fallout franchises, Heavy Rain, Alan Wake tells great stories. And of course, to tell a great story, one must also design a great story for it too.
You can’t just depends entirely on the “awesome gameplay idea” you thought you had for your game and ditch out the story elements. Which was a huge mistake that I just realized a while ago while designing Second Sights.

One big problem with the current design of Second Sights is that, it has no story. The only part which I’ll ever consider to be a story is the prologue cutscene, which kinda design to tell the story of the origins of the main character through a series of comic panels and BGM. As soon as the prologue cutscene finished being play, the game will start and the main character’s sole mission is to escape the facility where he’s being held at… and that’s all.

I’ve done some research on the topic of writing a (good enough) story for your, and here’s an article by John Sutherland, entitled: “What Every Game Developer Needs to Know about Story”. Link from Gamasutra: http://bit.ly/tZK2a

And here’s a little tip on a the basic structure of a game story that the author thinks everyone should keep an eye on:

First, there’s a protagonist, a hero.
His or her world is thrown out of order by an inciting incident.
A gap opens up between the hero and an orderly life.
The hero tries the normal, conservative action to overcome the gap. It fails. The world pushes back too hard.
The hero then has to take a risk to overcome the obstacles that are pushing back.
Then there is a reversal. Something new happens, or the hero learns something she didn’t know before, and the world is out of whack again. A second gap has opened up.
The hero has to take a greater risk to overcome the second gap.
After overcoming the second gap, there is another reversal, opening a third gap.
The hero has to take the greatest risk of all to overcome this gap and get to that object of desire, which is usually an orderly life.

So the new story of Second Sights will be redesigned based upon this… which I thought was actually quite good, because that’s exactly how most game stories are like.

Game design, game design, game design...

2011-07-13T19:12:00.000-07:00

Haven't update this blog for like ages (around 1 month I guess). Well, I've been working on a new game for my final year project, and it's gonna called "Second Sights" (it's lame, will change to a new one later on). It's currently at the design and research stage, been for about 1 month and a half now, and should be going into development in about 2 weeks.

One of the reason it took such a long time to design was because for our final year project (FYP), we have research on something, anything from an environmental issue, to how different species mate with each other... and then apply our research into our game design. I should've expected that since I'm in a course called "Virtual Reality"!!! There's bound to be some research involve in the VR field. What frustates me the most is that, if this is a VR subject, why isn't there an elective subject for our course which teaches about design research, VR research... but instead, you gave us some corporate identity crap (it's actually a subject for the Advertising course), which have no relation at all with our field. Although corporate identity is kinda important too... I mean, we could very well design some good, standard GUI for our projects, but suck it, I didn't learn anything from it anyway, the lecturer kinda suck, I wanna learn some VR stuff!

So, I updated my blog, mission accomplished! I should post some new images of what I've been working on in my next post... else I'll lose the point of starting this blog... And I missed the whole "Achievement Log" again... for like a few months~ XD

“escape from Ghost House No.7”, a GPCv6 game

2011-06-20T21:19:00.000-07:00

The GPCv6 event started last Monday, and anyone chooses to participate has to make a game within 7 days based on the theme: Electricity and Closure.

This time, I’m planning to make a “notgame”, and on a topic more about conservation and preservation of energy-electricity-related stuff (due to the influence from my majoring’s final year project).

So this game is about you, went for a visit to Ghost House No.7, and stuck somewhere inside the building. Your torch is dying and you need to recharge the battery… And your main goal is to escape the building…

The level design was pretty straight forward, as I’m sorta running out of time here.

Click the image below to play the (not)game :)

Unity3d + C# + iOS/Android: In-game cheating system

2011-06-11T12:10:00.000-07:00

Abstract (if you wanna skip this part, head below for "Description")

Debugging and testing your game in the iOS can be kinda annoyingly hard sometimes when you wanna:

1. change some attributes of your player in the scene, make sure the controls flow well - using cheat codes to change some values or booleans, just like changing it in the inspector when you were working on it in the Unity editor

2. see if you can pass through the levels without crashing - I faced this problem lots of time, mostly because of graphical memory issues on the iPad or lower generations iPhone and iPod Touch

3. change some settings in your scene - spawn lesser enemies (to see if the game won't lags that much with lesser enemies, or how much it can spawn before it gets lag), reducing time.scale (to check collider errors on your player's and enemy's gameObject), etc… a lot of stuff you can do, I'm just stating some of my usage of it.

4. switch to a backup scene - for backing up, in case some unknown bugs screw up your original scene and you wanna to switch it to an extra "hidden" backup scene… Good for when developing a client's game.

5. show off to your friends about your super high (cheated) highscores - originally when I first introduced the system, I try on getting the highest scores (with cheats) and show it off to the rest of the team... it was really fun XD

I know there's something called the UnityRemote 3 where you can play the game remotely using your iOS devices while syncing with your Mac. But for some reason, mine gets pretty laggy, and the graphic will also get (extremely) pixelated-like, very blurry when building 2d games. I'm not sure about the rest of you, but for mine, it happens a lot.

So I got an idea of creating a "cheating system", where I could do some testing stuff while having the game running on my iOS device, with or without syncing it to the Mac.

Description

The so-called "cheating system" is actually a pretty easy thing to build. The idea is to create a bunch of invisible buttons (with number values in them) in the game scene, press those buttons (key in the codes) and it'll activate the cheats and carry out a function that does what you want.

six buttons positioned on the screen in a number pad-like form

I've set up an example scene for testing out the in-game cheating system, or I as I called it the "CheatsManager" in the example file, you can download it here:
CheatsManager.unitypackage

1. After you downloaded the package, open up a new unity project or use an existing one. Double click on the downloaded package and you should be able to see a list of stuff that are about to be imported:

cube1 (material), cube2 (material), CheatsManager.cs (script),

TestScript.cs (script), TestScene (unity scene file)

2. Select import and open up the TestScene. You should be able to spot two cubes lying in the middle of the screen, one red and one blue.

3. Each of those cubes are attached with a self-illumin material and a TestScript.cs script, while the MainCamera is attached with a CheatsManager script. I'll go into what each of them does a little bit later.

4. Before you click Play, check the Build Setting and make sure that your target platform is for iOS devices, and click "Switch Platform" located beside the "Player Settings" (in case you haven't), to switch the platform to iOS. Same thing, if you're building for Android on a PC. Alternatively, you can simply change the resolution of the PC and Mac build to width: 320, height: 480, but I find switching to smartphone devices way easier as you can switch between portrait and landscape later on.

5. Once all of the above are done, go to the Game view and change the aspect to "iPhone Tall (320 x 480)", and then click Play!

6. Once in the Play mode, six GUI.Buttons will be spawn on the screen.

7. For this test scene, I've already set up some cheat codes, use your mouse and click on the numbers for either of this two cheat codes: "123450" or "012012"... one at a time.

8. If you succeeded in clicking "123450", the red cube above will enlarge, click the same codes again and it'll shrink back to its original size; while if you clicked on "012012", the blue cube below will Color.Lerp to another color, click the same codes again will change it back to its original color.

9. Now let me explain the "magic" behind this. Click on the Main Camera, and you should be able to find a CheatsManager script attached to it, in the inspector.

Here are a number of variables the script contains and what they does:

- Cheat Codes Array (CheatCode class array)

contains four variables within it:

= Names, the name of the cheat code (optional)

= Codes, the cheat codes

= Target GO, the target's attributes which you wanna change. Not setting anything here will make it call the function from the gameObject it's attached to (Main Camera), assuming the gameObject also has a method of the same name

= Function Name, the name of the function that the targetGO contains in its script.

- Limit Cheat Codes Length (bool)

checking this to true, will limits the length of cheat codes to the amount of cheatCodesLength variable (below).

- Cheat Codes Length (int)

the maximum length of cheat codes (the subsequent cheat codes you had in the Cheat Codes Array's Codes variable must also be at the size of this variable).

- Start Cheat No (int)

the starting cheat button number, default at 0. Decides what number will the cheat buttons start with. If leaves it at default, the button sequence will be "012345" (depends on the number of buttons); setting it to "1" will change the sequence to "123456".

- Cheat Button Column (int)

the number of columns cheat buttons have.

- Cheat Button Row (int)

the number of rows cheat buttons have.

By multiplying the amount of column and row, you'll get the number of buttons which will be spawn in the scene when game starts.

- Show Button (bool)

checking this to true, will shows the GUI.Buttons on the screen in Play mode; while at false, it won't, but still press-able. It's only replaced with a blank GUIStyle that makes the buttons invisible.

- Type Cheats Time (float)

how long you can type the cheat codes before it resets, defaulted at 2, means when you stop typing the codes, it'll take 2 seconds to reset everything so that you can type again.

Sample Exercise

Assuming you wanna to change the size of the blue cube, and blue cube has a script inside it which contains a function called "ChangeSomething" which does all that.

i. All you have to do is to click on the blue cube, look for a variable in its TestScript.cs called the "changeType", change the value from "color" to "size".

ii. Then click on the Main Camera again, and change the size of the CheatCodesArray to 3. Name it to "Change Cube2's Size" (optional), then randomly write a cheat codes at the length of 6 (I'm using "123123").

iii. Drag the blue cube gameObject from the Hierarchy to the Target GO variable, then change the function name to the name of the function you want to call, which in this case, is "ChangeSomething"... insert that in.

iv. When the game is in Play mode, and the desired cheat codes is pressed in, it'll call the function that change the size of the blue cube from within the CheatsManager script, using SendMessage(). And then the blue cube will start changing size.

If it works, then congrats, you've just made a successful cheats! But if it doesn't, please go through the sample exercise again.

Feel free to test around with the variables value in the inspector if you like, but don't mess around with the CheatsManager scripts unless if you know what you're doing.

Again, if you wanna to create an entirely new gameObject with an entirely new script, you just have to create a new space in the CheatCodesArray, set new cheat codes, drag in the gameObject to Target GO and then set the function name.

Also, it'll work just the same after you built it into an iOS device, but remember to check off the Show Button variable in the Main Camera's CheatsManager script if you don't want those GUI.Buttons to appear and hide your game or darken it a little... And it'll also change button size and positions once you change the device orientation from portrait to landscape. I haven't really check out this part yet (got some problem with my iPod at the moment), but if you have problem with inputing cheat codes in landscape orientation, send me a report/message at leezhifei168@rocketmail.com :D

An internship and an experience plus

2011-06-07T11:11:00.000-07:00

For the past few months (since around the end of February), I've been working in and experiencing the game industry, in Terato Tech. Throughout the span of 14 weeks of my internship programme, I've learned a lot from the people there.

And here's a list of things I picked up and learned from there (in point forms, I hate writing essays):

1. Experiencing the real world - the "real world" is
a term where undergrads like us refer to as "the actual game industry". I'm from an art degree, and originally wasn't really suppose to be involved in "the game industry" but rather "the art industry", even though my degree did do stuff about game development for my entire second year there, I did it anyway, because it's what I wanna do in the future. And the "real world" is... a really hard place to work at, unless if you love coding and developing games all day like me.

Well, I've grown to hate it a little bit... the coding part, because everyday was a programming and bug-fixing hell. I get headache from time to time, but we do get to rest every once in a while. I even fell asleep in the office, then lied to my boss that I'm sick or having a stomach-ache... but the whole headache part was definitely true.

Now I've been cooling myself off with a no-coding phase for the past few days after my internship because of the trauma I faced from the real world... And I still can't believe when my supervisor told me that he loves to work under stress... and he continues coding after he got back home until midnight.

It's experience I guess.

2. Working with the clients - one of the most pain in the ass thing I experienced from the real world. I'm not sure whether working with the clients who knows a lot about game would be easier, but the one we had was a bunch of (really) casual game players who... play games, and that's all. Probably didn't play too much games, but enough to differentiate between a game and an apps (I guess).

Around the third weeks of the program (somewhere around that... I don't keep track), we were assigned to a new project... with a client, a big one. But due to some P&C regulations, I can't reveal them here, just that they are very big, and not a game development or publishing firm.

Anyway, here's how every day in a week of my internship life goes after week 5 - 6 (after we have built an alpha version of the game and was presenting it to the clients for user testing):

Monday - the supervisors take the latest version of the game (of all builds: iPhone, iPad, Android) and show it off to the clients. We have some time to rest here, it's either I watch a bunch of YouTube clips, or fix previous bugs and add in new features that the clients want.

Tuesday - Receive logs/bug reports from the client. <-- This was the part I hated the most (so did my other team members/colleagues), because we sometimes get really outrageous request from them... adding features that makes us doubt whether they've play games before.

Wednesday to Friday - bug fixing, and latest version to be finish by Friday, else we'll have to do it during the weekends for Monday's presentation.

It was around the second last month of the programme that I finally, decided to give in, let them do what they want while I was just following the clients orders. Because that's what working with a client is all about, they are the game designers, the one who wanted to make the game in the first place. But not to say we on the employee side don't have to do a thing, we do give some suggestion of our own while at the same time doing the (crappy) stuff they want. Also have to thanks my supervisor for his advices on these working-with-clients issues that I had.

3. 2D Game development on mobile devices (iOS + Android) - before these, we have never work on any games for the mobile devices, but for PC games, we do a lot. And most of the time, we don't really care about optimizing the games that we made, because the PC we used for our presentations were strong enough to handle it. Which is why this experience was very crucial to us. Because the mobile game industry is going to be the future of casual gaming, and the stuff we made... inside Unity (the main engine we used), should be optimized as much in order for it to run smoothly in these mobile devices.

At the same time, we (the interns) also never have any experience in 2d game development. So for the first four weeks of our project, after we managed to build an Alpha vers., the game took like 20+ seconds to run... it was a failure. After a few weeks of experimentation with the SpriteManager, we managed to lower it down to 8 seconds at maximum. It was fun process, I wrote a lot of frameworks to further optimizing the rest of the games, making it smoother... which leads me to the next point:

4. The experience of being the lead game programmer - I suppose almost everyone who started developing games in college or high school would want to become the lead game programmer on a project team one day. It was also one of my wildest dream, as soon as I started developing games and get a little bit good at it, I've been dreaming about being the lead game programmer of a game project. Though I wasn't getting the title in the company, I think I was getting close to being the role. There were three of us working on the game mechanics, and I was in charge of making sure my partners are doing his/her works right, using the framework and tweaking the game correctly, etc.

5. Working in a team - one of the skill I lack of the most... is to work within a team, as I've always been developing games solo. I do have an experience once in my campus, where I have to collaborate with a classmate of mine on a networking game. However I do not know how to utilise the skill she had... nor do I find any.

Throughout these 14 weeks, I have a chance to work in a real team, where it's full of pros from different fields. We have an art director, a game designer (the supervisors, besides the clients), a brilliant iOS developer (from Japan), sprite artists who's as good as those you saw on deviantArt (the good ones), sound designers (also the supervisor with one of the interns), and game programmers (me and another intern), on the team, which was like... a dream come true for me, and working in a game development team is an awesome experience!

6. The game development process - Lastly, one of the precious stuff I've learned from my internship programme was the game development process. Back before the internship program starts, I never properly follow the game development process when doing my game-related assignments. Mostly it's just: game concept, then art, then straight away Beta production. No prototyping, game testing, researching, proper game designing (we just design it along the way)...

During this internship programme, I get to experience all that: building the prototype, designing the game, then release an Alpha version, get user acceptance testing, receive log/bugs reports from clients, build new versions every week while slowly adding in new features... I'm really gonna miss all these. In fact, I'm gonna use what I've experienced from this for my final year project (FYP) in my third and the last year of my degree. I think I can make a better game this time, as long as I don't forget what I've learned... XD

In the end, despite all the game development-hardships I faced over there, I was kinda reluctant to leave so soon. Felt like I should've stay longer, work on a different project, get tougher... in terms of stress-handling. But I still have my chance in the future, as long as the world doesn't end so soon. And thanks a lot to my colleagues for their advices, helps and teachings, I really appreciates all that. In return, I'll try my best to make a kick-ass game for my FYP :D

Unity3d + C#: 2D game background scrolling and percentage sign...

2011-05-21T07:28:00.000-07:00

In 2d game development, they are lot of times where you would want the background texture (tile-able) of your game to scroll while your character is "running" (where in fact he wasn't), to make it looks like he's really running across the scene.

(screenshot from Canabalt)

Well, Unity provided some basic tips on making the textures on a plane to scroll in accordance to time. Here are the two main methods they used:

1. Material.mainTextureOffset -

public float scrollSpeed = 0.5F;

void Update() {

float offset = Time.time * scrollSpeed;

renderer.material.mainTextureOffset = new Vector2(offset, 0);

}

2. Material.SetTextureOffset -

public float scrollSpeed = 0.5F;

void Update() {

float offset = Time.time * scrollSpeed;

renderer.material.SetTextureOffset("_MainTex", new Vector2(offset, 0));

}

What they are doing here is that, they take the offset value (Vector2) of the texture in the material of your background (usually a plane in the scene), and then set or add values in one of its axis (which is the above case, it's the X-axis), and the texture will scroll as if it were moving...

It's a good method for not only moving the background of your 2d game, but also commonly used for making a force field effect (like in Unity's own 3rd person controller tutorial), special magic-attack effect (like those in MMO), etc... a lot can be done with this two texture-scrolling method.

However, if you're making a game where the background of your game will continuously scroll for as long as your character run (let's say that particular level is about 5 minutes long), you might wanna do some adjustment with the script.

Here's what happen, in the game which I'm currently developing, I too have a character flying up in the scene, and the background is continuously scrolling down (to make it looks like it was flying up)... and will only stop until the level is complete. But as time goes by (about 10 minutes or more of continuous gameplay), the background texture of my game become more and more pixelated... or blocky...

Looking back at the script (above) which Unity provide:

float offset = Time.time * scrollSpeed;

renderer.material.SetTextureOffset("_MainTex", new Vector2(offset, 0));

If you try printing the 'offset' variable (using print() or Debug.Log()), you'll notice that once the game starts, the offset will continuously increase, and get above the value of 1... which is why the blurry/pixelated problem occurs here. The UV value of the offset should always stay as close as one. If anything more, the texture will 'hypothetically' multiplying, stretching or whatever you call it... making it more and more pixelated.

The way to solve this is to always set the value of 'offset' to a range between 0 to 1. To do this, all you have to do is to divide the value of 'offset' by the percentage sign:

float offset = Time.time * scrollSpeed;

offset = offset % 1; // divide using the percentage sign...

renderer.material.SetTextureOffset("_MainTex", new Vector2(offset, 0));

Not sure if I'm explaining this correctly, but the sign was kinda like keeping your value at a percentage of the max value of your choice, which in this case is 1.

The percentage sign was also commonly used at formatting the time (minutes, seconds, etc):

public int format = 60;

private float timer = 0.0f;

private int sec;

private int min;

void Update()

{

timer += Time.deltaTime;

sec = (int)(timer % format);

min = (int)(timer / format);

print(min + ": " + sec); // this is a sample time formatting script...

}

Unity3d + C#: Using List and ArrayList array

2011-05-15T11:05:00.000-07:00

Usually when creating an inventory, you would need to first create an array variable to store the content of the inventory. Using UnityScript (or JavaScript) you can do that by declaring an Array variable directly:

var inventoryArray : Array = new Array();

However to do the same thing in C#:

public Array inventoryArray = new Array();

That wouldn't work, instead it return you with an error saying:

error CS0246: The type or namespace name `Array' could not be found. Are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?

And the error was pretty much self explanatory, that the "Array" doesn't exist in C#, instead it has ArrayList and List. But for the rest of the example, I'm gonna be using List (though it works the same as ArrayList), because I was having a hard time memorizing what type of information am I storing inside an ArrayList when I'm declaring a large number of them (3 to 5 can be messy enough for me) in a script; on the other hand, I felt more secure with List as I can check back on what type of List I'm using and what info I should and shouldn't add into it... more on that later...

To use the List array, you have to first use the namespace System.Collection.Generic, by adding it up above the script:

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic; // <-- add this line

Then declare a variable for it (public List variableName):

public List<int> inventory;

To actually start using it, as always you have to first declare the size or capacity of the array, because if you don't, Unity will either hang or crash after you click "Play", for some unknown freaking reason...

In the Start function:

inventory.Capacity = 9; // let's make it able to store 9 object inside...

To add something content into it:

inventory.Add(2); // since this is a "int" array, you can only store another integer into it... anything else would return an error...

inventory.Add("this works!"); // for if your List array is a "string" array...

And then to clear up everything, I mean, delete all infos, turn the array size back to zero:

inventory.Clear();

That was the part of the List method I love the most, because usually when I was using a normal array (int[], for int array; string[], for string array; bool[] for boolean array), there's such function as Clearing up and Adding stuff into the array... But I could be wrong, because I haven't use most of its features yet... which I'll, in the future.

More on what it could do: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/6sh2ey19.aspx

Achievement Log 03-05-2011

2011-05-03T10:26:00.000-07:00

1. Decided on developing a game and finishing it in a month's time - One of the hardest decision I've made, was to make a game within a month... or simply: make a complete game. Well, anyway I joined the 1 Month Game initiative, created a post for my upcoming game which I called "SuperRed", a stealth,
adventure game similar to Hitman and MGS, just not as violent as theirs. It'll be designed and developed by me using Unity3D, with tracks compose by, if possible my old composer for my previous mini-games. Well, good luck to me then~

2. Failing on my Facebook integration in Unity Android attempt - I never had any experience with Android development (except a printing "Hello World" project I did a while back), don't even have to mention Facebook integration, so I plan to use the WWW and WWWForm thingy (as described in my previous log) to do it. After about 4 days of working on it, without using the AndroidUI or AndroidJNI or Java, I failed to do it. But failure is not always bad, like Thomas Edison once said: "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work", I found a wrong way to work on this integration attempt.

And here's what I did that failed (I'm not gonna go into detail about the codes and stuff, just a summary of what I did):

1. I first started by sending an authentication message with infos about the Facebook apps address and its apps ID using the WWWForm, then load the result using WWW.

e.g.: https://www.facebook.com/dialog/oauth?client_id=YOUR_APP_ID&redirect_uri=YOUR_CANVAS_PAGE

2. As soon as the WWW was loaded, it returns me a bunch of HTML stuff in its WWW.text.

3. What I did next was to extract the website's address which was stored inside the HTML source, and then load it up again to get Facebook login page's HTML source.

4. Then use the Facebook login pages's HTML source and extract its address again while adding some extra component, like placing in the email address and password inside the required field and then login into the Facebook, and thus being able to access the apps.

5. Which was where everything went wrong, I could pass the email address into the Facebook login page's "email" field (by adding: &email=my_mail@gmail.com), but I couldn't pass in the one for "password" (by adding: &pass=my_password),... and I just stop from there, not knowing what I should do next...

But seriously if you think about it, the failed method which I was using was kinda wrong in every way. It was the only solution I could come out with at that time, due to the fact that I'm not an Android developer or a Java (not JavaScript!) programmer...

Anyway if you are having a hard time understanding what I meant, try to imagine that you're trying get someone on the Facebook to access your apps, but they need to allow the apps to have access into your profile and posts on your news feed (that you've beat someone's highscore, earned a new item, harvested a special plant etc), that's when the Facebook authentication came in.

However since we're doing it on Android (using Unity), it's very obvious that your friend has not login into Facebook yet, and you're trying to pass in his email and password (typed on a GUI.textfield) as soon as he hits a submit button (which you generated using OnGUI and GUI.Button)... Well, passing in the password part was the part that I fail at... not sure why...

Maybe I should just go and learn Java and Android development after all...

Achievement Log 28-04-2011

2011-04-28T04:51:00.000-07:00

Don't really do an achievement log everyday like I expect, but I'll try doing it frequently.

1. Set up a GitHub - Setting up a GitHub has always been a hardest thing for me to accomplish when I'm using my old Window laptop (maybe I'm just suck). Now that I started using Mac, it only took less than 20 minutes for me to learn and set up the whole thing.

They've got all the procedure set up fine, I just have to follow their steps, and... I created and updated my first repository: AddMaths! Will make another repository particularly for this blog when I've got the time, for uploading the scripts (tutorials) that I've written here.

2. Attempted on integrating Facebook in Android builds - The thing I spent the most time on this few weeks, was to integrate (or implement, or whatever they call it) Facebook into Android using Unity. Our team has tried our best looking for tips on it but they kept leading us to the WWW and WWWForm thingy.

Non of us are experienced with Android other than knowing how to build it in Unity, but the client wants it... what to do...

Anyway, I didn't succeed on integrating it today, but I learned a way that I shouldn't do. Will trying other methods in the future.

Achievement Log 22-4-2011

2011-04-24T02:29:00.000-07:00

Seems like ever since I started working, I don't really have time to write more focus topic on every post so I'm gonna make it fast by writing them in this log-post... will elaborate them more later on when I have the time...

1. Implement WWW and WWWForm on Android app builds - when building an Android application
for a client, our team was required to make the Android application to be able to: post scores to Facebook, Twitter, and submit scores to the server. The Facebook and Twitter was the hardest as non of us have any experience with Android development before, so we decided to go with the submit-scores-to-server thing because according to the community, they were all done using WWW. With the help of our teammate, Keen, and the Unity community, we were able to implement it successfully and send the info we need to the company's server.

Here's a few links that was useful in making it possible:
http://www.unifycommunity.com/wiki/index.php?title=Server_Side_Highscores
http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/3560
http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/37950/postscore-server-side-highscores-tutorial

2. Read a book on game design - Something I never got to do these days was to read a book on game design. It was kinda hard for me to do it these days now that I started working (since 2 months ago, for an internship program), everyday has been a living hell for me. Then after internship, I'm going for FYP (Final Year Project) in my campus, so I will have to design a game before that time comes. Not to say I don't have any game design skill, but after making a few sucky games for one year and a half, I think I did learn one or two things about game design from them.

The book I'm currently reading is "Creating Games: Mechanics, Content, And Technology" by Morgan McGuire and Odest Chadwicke Jenkins... it sounds like a hard book to read cuz it's a book for game developers from all sorts of fields: design, program, direct, sound, etc, and not just solely for game designer. If it's just for game designer, then "The Art of Game Design" Jesse Schell would be perfect, but too bad I only have the PDF version and no iPad to read it... and reading it on hand (actual book of in iPad) is a way better feel than reading it off a PC screen...

Achievement Log 20-04-2011

2011-04-20T15:47:00.000-07:00

First post for a new category of my Achievement Log. What it does is to record down all the stuff I've accomplished in that particular day (or week) in this game development hell... XD

1. (Slightly) Found a solution for the iPhone-Trampoline problem for iOS game dev - This happens
sometimes when I wasn't noticing: whenever I wanna create a new version of the game project I'm working on, I just quit Unity, copy and paste the latest game version folder and rename it to a new version then open it again when I started Unity. And right when I was gonna build it, the problem occur, and I'll get a failed build in a folder store in my project, named "Temp", and giving me an error about "unable to find a file called iPhone-Trampoline/some-name-over-here inside the 'Temp' folder"... and the same problem occurs over and over again when I attempts to build it...

Well, I tends to "solve" the problem by quitting Unity, Delete the "Temp" folder, and open Unity again, and the problem's solved! Kinda weird, but I solved it anyway...

2. (Slightly) Found a solution for the Data Formatter problem for iOS game dev - The known "Data Formatter" problem usually occurs when I'm building the game, testing and debugging it in Xcode. Later found out that the problem occurs due to some memory issue with the iOS device. So apparently I have some really large sized textures and audio in my Unity scene, and also some useless ones...

Solved it by reducing their file size to 1024 (that's the lowest I can get, anything lower than that is gonna get really blurry), compressed all the audio files (by changing its Audio Format from "Native (WAV)" to "Compressed" while adjusting a proper compression (KBPS) for it in the audio setting), delete some unwanted scenes, making the library size way smaller that before... and it runs very on the iPhone now, no crashing when loading new scenes.

That's about all that I have for this post, can't think of more (though there's a lot more... like 100+ of them), been having some pretty bad headaches for two days straight now... The game industry is hard~!

Unity3D: 2D game development...

2011-04-05T06:44:00.000-07:00

2D game development
2D games has always been my weakest point in game development, I remember in 2009 when I first started using AS3, I was a total mess, I write codes that could make people laugh to death (yeah, it's that serious!). Have you ever seen a function within a function (2 dimensional function)? Something like this:

function ShootBullet()
{
  function CollideEnemy()
  {
    function Explode()
    {
    }
  }
}

It was a really embarrassing stuff to reveal to people that I once had a moment like that, especially when during that time I was a very over-proud-of-myself and told people about how good I am in scripting AS3, and when they ask me to show my codes, I was like... connection problem, I forgot about it, and make them forget it slowly. Asides from bad scripting, I can hardly code a workable game, except for some clicking and touching game that earn you points, like those lame old "tap, tap" iPhone game... Those method they use are a bit too hard for a design student like me to understand, and I slowly developed a phobia against 2D game development...

Anyway, I've been doing 3D game development for almost a year now, in Unity3D, which was a great piece of game making machine. I've also tried XNA, UDK, but non of them grab my heart long enough like Unity3D did. Now, for my internship program, I was tasked to developed a 2D game for the iPhone, iPad, and Android phone, with mechanics a bit similar to Doodle Jump without the jumping part. So, for the past few weeks I've been busy working on the game, in an area (or dimension) which I'm still kinda "fresh" at.

Animating 2D Sprites

I've never touched sprites all my life, not even in AS3... I mean... not like... a whole bunch of sprites in a piece of sprite sheets and then assign them one by one in correspond to a certain time, to make looks like it was animating. As far as I know, animating 2D sprites was a lot easier with SpriteManger, but that wasn't my primary choice for the project. I chose to load up a couple of 2D individual sprites and then animates them using a timer function, which, compare to SpriteManager, was a lot easier. But the downside with this method is that, it takes a LOOONG time to load up all of the textures. Imagine if I export it to iPhone, it would be a disaster length of time to load up those 400+ 2D individual sprites the artist prepared.

Now what I meant by "2D individual sprite" (it's not a correct term, I just invented it) is this:

I have about 8 of this crabby image (which animates when you play them in Flash), instead of a piece of sprite sheet with 8 of them inside.

From what I hear earlier, creating a Texture[] container and then drag and drop these textures into the container will results in increasing the loading time of the game.

So what I did next to solve the long-loading problem was to load the images right after the game finish loaded and started, using Resources.Load():

public Texture[] crabby; //the Texture array for storing the loaded textures
public int texNo = 8; //number of textures to be loaded

void Start() {
  crabby = new Texture[texNo]; 
  
  for (int i = 0; i<texNo; i++)
  {
    //in order for the textures to load successfully, 
    //all the textures must be placed in a folder named "Resources"...
    crabby[i] = (Texture)Resources.Load("crabby_" + i, typeof(Texture));
  }
}

And that was before I realize that I could flip the texture of an image using Material.SetTextureScale(), I flipped all of the textures manually using Photoshop, and then load all of them using the method I use above and store them in two 3 dimensional arrays (the 3 dimension: level, enemy type, and textures).

Just when I thought I finally found a solution to my long-loading problem, I realize that it was a waste of effort, because the game was only a bit less laggy than before by a bit. The problem occurs when I had to load the textures of 19 different enemy's 8 individual sprites, which has both left and right space, and adds up to a total of: 19 x 8 x 2 = 304 textures.

It was a stupid move, I know, but during that time, the project was about close to deadline, and there's no time for me to go and learn something new, asides from trying other solution I could think of (other than SpriteManager, which was thought to be extremely hard to learn at that time).

So the huge laggy issue finally appear and I finally took a step into the world of SpriteManager. And to be honest, it wasn't really that hard to learn at all. The original developer even have a newer version of it called SpriteManager2, which was said to be way more better and easy to use than the original one. Too bad I can't afford it at the moment, so I'm just gonna stick to the first. And if I have the time, I might even post one or two tutorials about it... and today is only the second day I'm trying out the SpriteManager though... :D

Postmortem - "a sunshine ray of hope"

2011-03-23T06:04:00.000-07:00

This is a postmortem for the game I developed for the 4th GamePrototypeChallenge (#GPCv4), entitled "a sunshine ray of hope" (click the title to play the game).

The themes for the challenge was "burden" and "sunshine". And for the next two days after the announcement date, I've been brainstorming on the ideas for the game which I would make based on those two themes given, and I finally came up with one.

Story

The story for the game is a bit rough, but it sounded something like this: "One day the sun is dead. And for a pretty long time, people had been living in the darkness, with no hope... and dream. Then we have a hero here, who got hold of a something... a (sun) stone, which he believe could help 'save' the sun. In the meantime, there's also a myth that the power of the sun stone needs to be harvested by 'the harvester', a device which, if harvested a sun stone, can send the power to the sun... regain its power, making it functional once more. 'The Harvester' was believes to be hidden in the dark forest. And so our hero take on a journey to look for 'the Harvester' within the dangerous dark forest...".

Genre and Target Audience

The game is a puzzle-platformer, and targeted to the audience at 12 years old and above (12+), and puzzle-platformer lovers.

Game Mechanics and Features

The idea is to have a character, who has in his possession, a sun stone, which could cast a ray and move specific objects or "blocks" in game. There're be two kinds of "blocks" in the game, in which one is covered with dead plants, and another one which isn't. When the ray is casted to the dead plants block, the dead plant turns green, as if the sun ray from the stone has given it the power (sunlight) it needed to survive. And as the player moves his aim (and the direction of the ray moves too), the plants will follow the light, and thus moving the block it's covering; while for the block which is not covered with anything, it'll just stay stationery in its original position, until something (blocks with plants) come knocks it down. I did a blog post about the game mechanic here.

Besides that, there'll also be other element planned for the game which helps makes it a more interesting puzzle-platformer, such as the giant ball (common in most puzzle-platformer), large block-pendulum, trap, boulder, door (which need to be unlocked by solving puzzles), etc.

And lastly, "the Harvester" will be placed at the last level, where by the player will need to cast sun rays at it for it to "harvest", before sending it for the sun, and thus ending the game.

Development Team

The team, SuperOrganic168, currently consists of me (Lee Zhi Fei, the game designer, programmer, artist) and composer Richard Daskas. There's only three games developed under the studio name thus far, and another 3 game I developed on my own 2010 will also be added, making it 6 games in total. I'm currently still a full time student on his internship program (at this time of writing), and a part time indie game developer; while Richard is a masters composition student at Penn State.

Development Tools

The softwares I'm using for this project are:

- Unity3d, the game engine

- 3ds Max, the 3d modelling tool

- Photoshop, for texture making and UV map editing

What went right

1. Finished game mechanic - The game mechanic was originally thought to be impossible to complete within such a short time, I had about 6 hours per day to think and work on how I could do it, and probably another 1 to 2 hours at works. The basic mechanics (casting ray and move blocks) was completed within 9 hours, and another 4 hours on tweaking it to fit the direction I want. It's still a little buggy at the time of the submission, but the game is playable, and the bugs is not so noticeable. And the Unity's MouseOrbit script really helps a lot for these types prototyping situation.

2. Good tracks for the game - As soon as the game mechanic was finished, the first thing I did was contacting my composer, Richard for some music tracks for the game. Told him about story, and how the environment is gonna be like, and a few days later, he came out with two tracks, and we just discuss about how we could improve it to suit the game through e-mails. The point is that, thinking about the music first was for me, a great step for a game development project. You've got to think about the environment and the feeling you want to give to your player first before you start building the environment. I remember previously, in my second year at MMU, when I was working on a project, the music part usually comes last, and it's a pain in the ass to decide later on what kind of music suits the environment.

3. Successfully learn and use line renderer - I've never use the line renderer thing in Unity3d, only sometimes heard about it on other developers' blog. A few days before the challenge started, a classmate of mine mentioned about line renderer, and it got my think about how they did the Tron back-line thing that kill its player if crossed in Unity3d (they made a Tron game in Unity3d too!). So the information was sorta came at the right time I needed it. Because originally, I intended to use particle system to create the sun ray, but I have no idea how to limit the particle so that it'll only shoot particles until the hit.point, and to think about a formula to do that effect would take quite some time for me. Luckily, line renderer wasn't that hard to learn and use. I manage to come up with a solution to shoot the sun ray as a line renderer game object, and make it stop increasing in length as soon as it hit something. It was worth taking the risk of trying something I've never did before.

4. Successfully learn and use 3DText - Another thing that I haven't really tried on. In one of my previous project, I did some test with it, but failed with unsatisfying results, mostly because of the font issues. For some reason, the 3DText in Unity3d goes all distorted when I'm trying to use imported font, instead of the original default Arial. Thanks to the fact that a lot of people are also facing the same issue and UnityAnswer was there to provide the solutions, I was able to find a solution (using new materials, and change shaders, etc), and got the 3DText look exactly like how I wanted it to be in the game.

What went wrong

1. Bad character control - In order to make more time for me to work on the puzzle and level design of the game, I re-use back some of the old character movement script I wrote some time ago, and it turn out to be a disaster. Not that the script aren't working, but it's just wasn't fits for the game's nature... or any other puzzle-platformer game. It was originally wrote for a RPG game I made previously. The suitable one should be one that moves according to the corresponding camera angle.

2. No restart level - The problem is extremely easy to solve, but due to time constraint, the idea to restart a level wasn't in the plan, or I didn't even think that it was needed when I was building the levels. Anyway, as soon as the game was completed, I found out that some of the levels at the higher level was kinda hard, and the player can only respawn if they fall off cliff, but the non-movable-block won't respawn if they fall off cliff and thus the player can't complete the game and will have to start all over from the tutorial scene and proceed all the way to the level they lost at. A very troublesome problem, especially when some of these hard levels takes a long time to complete, and stops the player from reaching the last level (the 6th level), where the harvester is at. A restart level solution is currently in the work.

3. Not so narrative - Also a feature for the game, was to make it a little bit narrative, like telling a story the player about what's going on in there, and what happened as he proceeded through the levels. The only "narrative" part of the game I think would be the tutorial scene, where we have a couple of floating text which tells the player what to do. The only part that I failed to finish was to place the story into the game.

4. Game assets not complete - There's actually quite a lot of stuff (3d models) I intended to put in there for the game, but I never got to finish them on time. One of which was quite important, the main character, was also intended to be an actual "character" (with animations and stuff)... instead of the current white box guy. Besides that, I also planned to make the game a little more dark-forest-like, by adding some trees and use terrain in there, but never got to do it because it's decreasing the performance and increasing draw calls.

5. Not all levels done - I had quite a few levels designed to be in the game, but ended up not doing any of them. Some of the levels in there are combinations of the levels I intend to put in. A few levels I designed even have new elements for the game, but I only manages to do two, and placed them at the second last level, which, if you managed to get past the first 4 levels, you'll get to see it.

GPCv4 Day 1 & 2 - Game Mechanics + Studio Logo/Splash Screen...

2011-03-17T08:02:00.000-07:00

GPCv4

Was having dinner while writing this post... So, right now I'm working on a game for the latest GamePrototypeChallenge.com challenge, and the theme of the month is "Burden" and "Sunshine".

I don't really have any idea for the first 2 days, other than I wanted to make another puzzle game... This time, I'm planning to make a REAL puzzle game, unlike my previous entry which was originally meant to be a platformer, but ended up being an optical-illusion-puzzle-platformer genre instead.

I did a lot of brain storming, came up with quite a few ideas, and then ended up with the current one which I find would be easier for me to work on in this 7 days of game development. The story is like this:

"One day the sun suddenly stop working, and the whole world went dark... for a pretty long time. And then decades later, our hero appears, with a stone which he thinks can help save the sun... and he must go to the center of the dark forest through a series of challenges with the help of the stone... in order to reach a machine over there which can harvest the power of the stone and save the sun...". And the stone in this context is something like Sun stone... except that it's not for evolving a Pokemon. The player can use the stone to create a ray of (sun) light and move objects with it, and solve puzzles (if there's really any puzzles at the end)... XD

Anyway, I spent the next 12 to 15 hours coding the game mechanics in Unity3d, and here's what I came up with:

Music by George&Jonathan...

The video shows some of the stuff the player (you) are capable of in the game. When you aim and shoot, a ray will be casted by the Sun stone you're holding, and you'll be able to mystically move the blocks. The scripts is still a little buggy, though no errors, but it's considered complete for now. I'll be working on the level design next...

SuperOrganic168

A while ago, I kinda gave my own room-studio a name, and it's called "SuperOrganic168", don't ask me how I got the name (it's a pretty long story), and "deepth" was the first game I released under the studio name.

I spent some dinner time today doing a logo-splash screen thing (without the logo yet, still working on it)... Here are the without-logo version (will upload with-logo vers. if I manage to finish the logo by the time the challenge is over, or I'll just put it in game):

The one with the word "meat" was actually for adding some sense of humour into it (and it sounds the same as the Katakana too), and I kinda thinks that the splash screen looks good already without a proper logo... haha As for the orange theme, orange is my favorite colour...:D

Unity3d + C#: Reducing draw calls and gaining some performances with CombineChildren.cs and Texture2D.PackTexture

2011-03-07T00:00:00.001-08:00

I realize a lot of Unity tutorial out there focus more on the gameplay issue and less in the graphical issue, probably due to the fact that they want to guide/teach you into creating a better game with more kickass functions... Well, in this post, I'm doing a note on ways to reduce draw calls in order for better performance in lower-end PCs.

Usually a game with high draw calls means it has a ton of meshes in its scene with different textures, materials and shaders, and the PC will have to loads them up and render one after another causing it to gets laggy, unless you have a high-end PC like mine... You can read a more detail explanation in this article at Unity Answers by RobotDuck.

So, a way to reduce this is, as the article explained, by creating a large texture atlas, which is made up of all the textures of the meshes in your scene, and then assign the texture atlas back to the meshes, and then position them to their corresponding textures on the atlas according to their designated UV coordinates. I'm kinda bad at explaining stuff... so I'll just show you this:

This is an example of a texture atlas (taken from the link above), where by you have all the textures of the 3d objects in your scene and then assign the texture to them according to their corresponding UV coordinates...

So let's say you had already created all the textures for your game project and was too lazy to create the texture atlas for time's sake, cuz it can get pretty messy assuming you have like 100 different textures and you would like to have say... 6 different shaders for all of them. Instead of opening up your Photoshop to make those 6 texture atlases (for different shaders), you can pack those textures up into atlas straight way using scripts...

I found one well-written script, written by "phantom" from the Unity forum which uses the Unity built in functions called Texture2D.PackTexture() to create a texture atlas. I've sorta tested it out, tweaked it a little, and exported it as a unity package... you can download it from here (for Unity vers. 3.x): TexturePacker.unitypackage

And now let me guide you through on how you can use the script...

Import all the assets into your project folder. Some of the script inside the package, especially CombineChildren and MeshCombineUtility originated from Unity's own Standard Assets.

Go to the Assets/Scenes folder and open up the "TexAtlasTest" scene, and you'll see 4 cubes inside the scene. Don't touch anything yet, but go to the Game window, and select stats...

The stats window should show a Draw Calls of 4, which make sense, consider we have 4 cubes in the scene with different textures and materials, but uses the same shaders, thus there's a chance here we could combine their textures together and use the same material and texture atlas for all the meshes in the scene.

Next, in the Hierarchy, you should see a gameObject named "Objs" which contains all the blocks in the scene. When you select it, there should be two scripts attached to it: CombineChildren.cs and TexturePacker.cs

What this CombineChildren.cs script does is, it combine all the meshes of the children of the gameObject (which was using the script) into one big mesh. And then TexturePacker.cs will combine all the textures of the children to create one huge texture atlas, which would then be auto-UV to all the meshes inside the scene.

There's two parameters over at the inspector which you could toy around with:

"Shader Type": the name (in string) of the shader you want to use, and

"Texture Size": the size of the texture atlas you want to create... it's 1024 x 1024 by default...

As for the "Packed Texture" variable, just leave it alone... It's actually for storing the texture atlas created when you click "play"... so it'll remain empty for now, and then a new texture will appear during play mode...

Those were the two important scripts to make the draw calls reduction possible... Now if you could just click "Play", and look at stats again:

Now we have for the scene, ONE draw calls. (Yeah! :D)

More explanation about the script used is inside the TexturePacker.cs script itself (those comments in green-colored font)...

NOTE:

* Important thing to be noted about the scripts when using them is that... these scripts will only turn their children into one huge meshes and one huge texture atlas... Thus, always make sure that you have an empty game object that stores all the meshes which uses the same shaders that you wanna combine into, before using them.

* In the process of packing texture using PackTextures() functions, you may face a problem of getting an error like: "Texture atlas needs textures to have Readable flag set." Don't worry, it's not a bug or anything, you can solve it by going to your texture's folder, click on the textures you're doing the packing on, and in the inspector, look for "texture type" and select "Advanced". Doing so will bring out a number of new parameters. Look for the one called "Read/Write Enabled", check it (for all textures used), and the problem's solved.

What's happening here is that if the "Read/Write Enabled" is not enabled, the texture is never stored in ram, but only vram, as such you cannot use it for packing as the cpu can't access it.

Reference (some cool articles you could also check out):

http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/2117/what-is-a-reasonable-number-of-draw-calls-relative-to-one-hardware-configuration

http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/7247/whats-the-best-way-to-reduce-draw-calls

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/6699-Texture2D.PackTextures

http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/ScriptReference/Texture2D.PackTextures.html

http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/Manual/iphone-DrawCall-Batching.html

Download any Unity3d version...

2011-03-06T11:05:00.000-08:00

I'm trying to clean up some bookmarks of mine on Chrome, so I thought I post something up on those things which I bookmarked on (one by one) which might be important for me in the future... :D

Well, anyway, for this post, it's about how to download any Unity3d version from the main site, the link is as follow: http://download.unity3d.com/download_unity/UnitySetup-N.N.N.exe, where by "N.N.N" is equal to the version of Unity3d which you wanted to download... such as "3.1.0", "3.0.0", "2.6.1", etc.

Useful for when you want to open up your old Unity projects but you don't want to ruin/destroy it by upgrading it to the latest version, cuz mine tends to do like that. Like my previous Alice in Wonderland parody game, it's not functioning properly (character move slower, some scripts not working, laggy issue, lighting problem, etc) after I upgraded it to version 3.0... but good thing I saved a copy of it...

Thanks whoever it is that inform me about the address... forgot who he is, some random Unity3d developer on Twitter...

Started to feel like my blog post was a bit dull... I'll add more images in my future post... regardless of how unrelated it is to the context...

A Mark Zuckerberg method?

2011-03-05T11:50:00.000-08:00

So I'm currently working freelance for a third party game development company (who wants to be first party) on an MMO game prototype... which was also a more local version of a ripoff of the Japanese game AiSpace. And I started having ideas to create an MMO of my own, somehow a little similar to what my client wants me to do, but better, and with more unique contents...

It wasn't until a few days ago when I saw a news somewhere about the Winklevoss twins wanting to get in another lawsuit-battle with Mark ("Zuckerberg" was too hard to type, I'll just go with "Mark") of Facebook (which I'm not gonna go into the details) and the news reminded me of the Facebook story in The Social Network... where Mark sorta "steal" the Winklevoss twins' "idea".

And it gets me wondering, would I be a thief (or a more appropriate title such as: "idea stealing scumbag") for doing the same thing like what Mark did. I'm not saying that the fault's on Mark, I mean he does work very hard on Facebook, and seriously the Winklevoss twins has no right to just come in and claim money on something they did not contribute in, what a bunch of ass... Anyway, my situation now is kinda like what's inside The Social Network: there's these guys (3rd party dev, no idea on how to code), who wants me to help them write an MMO game, and I kinda plan to slip out and develop another MMO of my own, get successful (just exaggerating XD), and then get sued for a "multi-million dollar idea". <-- (I laughed so hard at the last line)

Well, I'm probably just thinking too much. I'll continue working on their MMO, finish it, and start working on one of my own... And I might not even get to as great as Mark though... I mean, c'mon, there's like a million online games out there (some are great), and how could a beginner like me compete with them... lol... I guess we'll find out... probably next year~ :D

Work, work, work, and 5 games in total...

2011-03-03T08:32:00.000-08:00

As of February 21st 2011, I started working at TeratoTech as an intern for a game programmer position for 3 months; and FYP (Final Year Project) right after that. So currently I've been not-so-formally "assigned" to an Unity3d development section of the company, well apparently there's only like 5 Unity3d developers over here, in which 3 of them includes me and my two other pals who also came here to intern; and two projects for us to handle, in which I'm again, not-so-formally "assigned" to as the lead programmer of those projects... XD

Then, to make my life more exciting, I'm planning two join two more challenges this month (March): EGP and GPC. Not sure if I'm gonna join all of them, but I'm definitely joining one of them, and if both had the same theme at the same time, then I guess I could submit it for both the challenge. haha

Lastly, for the fifth game which I'll be working on (as described above, I'm ady having about 3-4 game projects running in March), will be an online MMO prototype. Not the World of Warcraft type (that's crazy!), but more like Second Life, without the world creation part. It's actually a ripoff of a Japan online game called AiSpace (according to my client). I'm only gonna be working on the scripting part, while the rest (graphics and audio) will be handle by the client's company. Btw, I'm given 6 months to develop this MMO's prototype, not a month, so I still have some time left for other projects too... :)

Well, in conclusion, though most the games I mentioned that I'd made above will probably take up my entire March period, I still have plans to make my first "big thing" as an indie game developer. I already have the basic concept and some minor advance concept for the "big thing", and I'll develop it as soon as I'm free from all these. And I kinda promise my client that I'd work with them on another two iPad games after the MMO thing, but they're gonna have to get another guy, cuz this guy (me) has a dream (game) he wanna to achieve (make)~

New game, new challenge...

2011-02-21T04:05:00.000-08:00

These few days were fun, first I've finished my final exam (while fearing that I fail some of them), then my internship started. It was kinda fun working. The environment gave me a feeling to work, and thus I had enough time to finish my latest game: "deepth", play it here: deepth.

It was a game prototype challenge held by GamePrototypeChallenge.com, to create a game based on two of these themes: "loneliness" and "dimensions"... Sounds pretty hard for me cuz I've never join/enter a challenge before, I thought, this might as well be my first, since I sorta blew up my previous promise; to join the experimental gameplay project 's February challenge... Well, anyway, I got to finally finished it today, which was a good thing, cuz I've a pile of works to do later on.

At Terato Tech, me and my team members were asked to develop a tower defense game for the iOS, and maybe, if possible, PC... We had a great time discussing about it at the office, sounds to us like it's gonna be a great game... XD

Meanwhile, at Hana Creative, I was asked to develop an online game prototype, which I plan to start tomorrow, cuz now I'm pretty exhausted, and lost... not sure how I should start... zzz

Well, anyway, if anyone's reading this, enjoy my new game, and I'm off... nightie~

Unity3d + C#: My early inventory concepts... Part 1

2011-02-13T13:22:00.000-08:00

A few month ago I gave myself a little challenge to develop an inventory script right after I finished up with my project at that time... Took me three days to finish, and haven't have the time to comment on it yet. And for some reason, I'm really bad at commenting script, and I'm bad at memorizing stuff too, always forget about how I wrote and structuring my script in the first place... haha

Now I'm taking some time off to document/comment on the early inventory concept that I've scripted. Before going into the script, let's visualize what I'm about to do. So right now, I need to create an array of empty spaces at a specific size of... say 4 by 4, for storing items... like how a normal inventory is like.

For this, I'll need two arrays, one is for storing the items, and the other one is for storing the positions (Rect) of the cubes for when I show them on screen using GUI.Box, which is sorta optional, but I wanna make things simpler by finishing all the calculation stuff before using them...

When I first started thinking about the structure of the script, I've been wanted to make it customizable, in terms of the size of the inventory.... So I first started by creating the four main variables:

private Rect[,] inventCont;
private int[,] inventCont;
public int arrayCapacityColumn = 4;
public int arrayCapacityRow = 4;

The first one is a Rect variable (used to store GUI positioning and size information), 2 dimensional; while the second one is an integer variable, also 2 dimensional. And as you can see I used the [,] for each of the variables created, as a call for creating a multidimensional array. To know more about multidimensional arrays and the array class, you can visit here: http://bit.ly/gKk4vS.

For the third and forth variables, as the name suggested, is the variables for declaring the size of the array. When put it together in the Start() function:

void Start() {
  inventCont = new Rect[arrayCapacityColumn, arrayCapacityRow];
  inventItems = new int[arrayCapacityColumn, arrayCapacityRow];
}

Next, I'm going to place something inside the arrays I just created. Before I continue, I'm going to declare 3 more variables for the size and space of the item slots in the inventory:

public float slotWidth = 75;
public float slotHeight = 75;
public float slotSpaces = 20;

Then back to the Start function, I write these:

for (int c = 0; c < arrayCapacityColumn; c++) {
  for (int r = 0; r < arrayCapacityRow; r++) {
      inventCont[c,r] = new Rect(slotSpaces + ((slotWidth + slotSpaces) * c), slotSpaces + ((slotHeight + slotSpaces) * r), slotWidth, slotHeight);
      inventItems[c,r] = 0;
  }
}

For the inventCont, which was a Rect array, I'm inserted a number of 16 (4 x 4) Rect variables with information about the placements and positions of the boxes in there.

And another 16 of integer number "0" in the inventItems array. The number "0" in this context means empty, making it an empty item slot. I can change the value to other numbers while keeping track of what each number is about.

After that, in the OnGUI() function, I'll create buttons to represent the empty button slots while adding GUI boxes with some specialize icon to represent those items inside the inventory. To do that, I'll need a new GUIStyle variable, a GUIStyle array.

Back to the top, I insert the following line:

public GUIStyle[] inventItemIcons;

What I basically want to do with this is to place in a few PNG or PSD files of my item's icon and then use them when referencing what I had in my inventory...

Back to the OnGUI function:

void OnGUI {
  for (int c = 0; c < arrayCapacityColumn; c++) {
    for (int r = 0; r < arrayCapacityRow; r++) {
       if (GUI.Button(inventCont[c,r], "")) {
       }
    }
  }

  for (int c = 0; c < arrayCapacityColumn; c++) {
    for (int r = 0; r < arrayCapacityRow; r++) {
      if (inventItems[c,r] > 0) {
        GUI.Box(inventCont[c,r], "", inventItemIcons[inventItems[c,r]]);
      }
    }
  }
}

Before testing out the script, I'm gonna place some items randomly in the array. To do that, I go to the Start function and insert these lines inside:

inventItems[2,1] = 1;
inventItems[1,0] = 2;
inventItems[3, 2] = 2;
inventItems[3, 0] = 1;
inventItems[0, 3] = 2;

Part 1's final result (after inserting the item icons into the GUIStyle array):

to be continued...

AddMaths time!

2011-02-13T10:16:00.000-08:00

I'm starting a little side scripting project here which I called "project AddMaths". It's not a game, but a bunch of scripting experiments which I did during my free time. And I added what I've learned (if it's helpful with my future projects) into a new extension file which I named as "AddMaths.cs". By doing this, I could use and reuse these "experimental" functions in my projects, without having to rewrite them all over again in a new project... which was kinda tedious and troublesome. Most of these aren't even that awesome yet, and Unity probably have some even better functions than mine, that I have yet to figure out... XD...

To check it out, go to the toolbar above and click "AddMaths", or go here.

Use it at your own risk... I mean, it's not gonna harm you or anything, but if you don't like it, just delete it and we're cool... right?

VRD3P3 - Intro Scene

2011-01-26T14:23:00.000-08:00

With the help of the kickass iTween, I created this intro scene for my game...

The quality was good before I uploaded it... don't know why it become like this... even the lighting looks sort of mess up. Anyway, enjoy!

VRD3P3 - Environment Final

2011-01-20T02:22:00.000-08:00

I think this should be enough, considering that I've spent 2 weeks working on the game's environment, tweaking and adjusting the lighting and stuff...

I've built a demo version on the game which contains only the environment, cuz I haven't start working on the gameplay yet. You can download it here...

I was planning to upload it to some unity game hosting site like GameJolt or IndiePub, but the game is just too freaking big in size, about 70mb... takes too long to load.

Anyway, here're the in-game screenshots:

VRD3P3 - Scene 1, texturized

2011-01-11T21:19:00.000-08:00

Here're are some pics of the first scene of my game which I'd just finished texturing... My skill in Photoshop is not that good, so texturing this scene took about 5-6 hours, and I'm damn exhausted now~>^<~

Here they are, print screen from inside Unity:

Graved in space...

2011-01-07T15:59:00.000-08:00

This was a tiring week, as I was working on the 3d models for my new networking game's environment. Thought I post something up before I go for a nap, here's a little sneak peek at what I'm up to:

These are the interior of my game's environment. It's half finished with around 8000-9000 polys, and I really hope to be able to get it done by tonight, then texturing by Sunday, and start the scripting/programming part next Monday...

As for the networking part, I'm going to use Badumna Trial, which only has a capacity of 60 minutes of gameplay. But I'm sure that's enough anyway, since those networking games (especially indies) don't usually last that long.

I was suppose to try and tweak with it a few days ago, but I saw a video on YouTube about a way to build an awesome monster trap in Minecraft, and my two days of time were just, "poof", gone into Minecraft... But thanks to an fatal error during the gameplay, I'm back to my feet again and seriously spending more time in this game project.

The submission date was around the 24th of January, and after that I'm gonna be joining another game dev challenge held by Experimental Gameplay Project:

And the same project will also be submitted for the Kongregate's Unity game dev contest and Indie Pub's Independent Propeller Awards.... another exciting month to live for!!!

My New Year's Resolution... Part 1?

2011-01-01T09:45:00.000-08:00

Stuff I really want to achieve this year, so terribly~!!!

1. Master all the languages I know -

I know Java, C#, AS3, and Japanese... but due to time constraints and my eagerness to learn more programming language, I deserted Japanese... for about 3 months now. I really regretted it and want to go back and re-learn everything from the start, with every free time I have. Besides that, I also wanna master those programming language I know, though not entirely mastering it, but to be able to code better than 2010... and to be able to speak Japanese more fluently and write more posts entirely in Japanese (so far, I'd only written one... hehe)...

2. Finish projects and submit them -

Up until now, other than EcoTat, I seriously have not finish a single project, and always looking for excuses to go pass it. But not this year anymore, I really need to finish my latest work, a networking game, in those 3 weeks time I have left before submission. By submitting it, I don't mean submitting it to the lecturer or what so ever, but I mean submitting it for some competitions, indie sites, or any GDC events. It's time for me to "step out" into the world now, now that I've been developing games for almost a year...

3. Learn Android/iPhone apps development -

A while ago, my uncle from OnSemi sent me an e-mail about a course regarding Android which cost about rm3800?! That's quite a fortune, but I've also checked the list, and you could really learn a lot from the 5 days course. Anyway, I plan not to register for it anyway, particularly because the fees was too damn high! And I just thought I could learn it myself with some guides online, same way on how I learn to code in C#. I think of it as a new little challenge for myself in this 2011 new year, though I actually plan to get an Apple PC instead and learn XCode for iOS, since the place where I'm going for intern was a small holy community of XCoders, I might learn a thing or two from them. Due to the fact that I can't afford an Apple PC now, I'll have to give up my little dream, and pursue the cheaper way instead -- Android, while thinking that I might, probably learn a slight bit of XCode and use their Apple PC while I was there though... sigh...

4. Lose 10kg -

So current weight was at an average of 75kg, and I've been telling one that I'm gonna lose weight, I'm gonna do one of those cardiovascular activity to burn my fats and everything, but I ended up not doing them anyway. I'm not wishing to own a muscular body or so, but instead a not-that-fat body without the big tummy. FYI, I'm a game programmer, and that means I stayed at home most of the time (though I like shopping for clothes, with some friends)... Now how am I suppose to reach this goal while retaining my current lifestyle and habits... hard!

5. Earn 100,000 -
Previously, after hearing my lecturer's success story on how he earn 50,000 (or more) in just a few months' time, I was really thrilled and started a plan to do the same thing, earning 50,000 before the end of 2010. Well, I failed... Earning money is hard, especially by that much amount. You really need a lot of focus on a project and finishing it with heart, before you could finally earn something off it, at least that's what I believe in... I just checked my account over at GameJolt, and I've earned only about $0.02 off my games (most probably from EcoTat I think...). Anyway, I'm having the same plan this year but with a different amount in mind: 100,000! Be it in USD or RM, as long as it's 100,000 (or more), then I'll not have anymore regrets this year anymore when 2012 comes... I'll probably join a lot of competitions, make some apps and sell them (though I'm still at the stage of learning how to develop an app).

6. Get a life -
As much as I don't wanna to admit, but I'm becoming more and more like what they call an "otaku". You know, those guys/girls who are obsessed about something that they collect everything about it, or those who stay at home more than they stay outside, or those who stay at home so long that they are basically a hikikimori already... Anyway, I'm one of those who stay at home more than I stay outside my apartment. The thing is, every since I enter my second year, things started to get tougher, and the amounts of assignments are getting higher, my friends whom are all in the same degree as I am were staying at home more than usual human being, even the girls! I must admit, I'm more fond of programming and game development than staying outside, but still, I can't let myself stay this way. I need to get... a life! Probably hanging out with a new girl instead of my other girl-friends is probably a good start, I might even end up being in a relationship with her, like that guy from Densha Otoko... LOL...

So, that sorta concludes the first part of my new year's resolution, there's still more, but it's about time for me to sleep and I wanna publish this first part sooner...

And lastly, a new year's smile from me...

with my signature smile... :P

Confused?

2010-12-23T21:52:00.000-08:00

I'm currently in the final semester of my 3rd year of studies in University now, and just one more year, two more projects, and I'll be off saying bye bye to my Uni and work in some (probably) good company later on.

It sounds like a great ending, but the more I think about it, the more I felt useless, as I can only wish for those "successful" things to happen in the future after I graduated, instead of being "successful" while I'm still in Uni... It's like I'm gonna regret about my Uni life when I started working, just like how I regretted not doing anything really meaningful in high school.

Not that I don't have anything to be proud of now, I do have one currently, it's my first Unity game, EcoTat... It was my first and somehow complete game I designed and developed entirely. It's also something I created when I've pushed myself up to my limit, during the time when I first started using Unity and scripting in Java; building a turn-based fighting system...

Anyway, my progress had gone worst than before in the following semesters: I developed a vehicle-adventure game, and a 3rd person shooter adventure game based on 'the boring Tim Burton's movie, Alice in Wonderland', which were not entirely complete. Particularly the Alice game, where I completely stop its development after the presentation is over, though the game wasn't even half complete during the presentation day, as the scope I set was a bit higher than the others.

And my latest work, a job-searching application did not meet up to my majoring coordinator's expectation. To be quite frank, I've been really lazy lately, and developed the application within a week's time (again?). Furthermore, I've had zero interest on the project, as my primary interest is on game development. The output and reception were worst than I expected...

But from these past experiences, I've really learned a few things, something values which I, and probably the rest of the young developer/beginners may need in the future:

1. Never look down on projects -

As boring and uninteresting a project may seems, you should always give in your best, because whether of not it's in the real world or in your University life, you always have to develop stuff that satisfy your client, which in a student's case, the lecturer is the client.

2. Create stuff that isn't possible in real life -

My latest project revolves not only the interactions but also the architecture and design of my virtual environment. One of the review by my lecturer is that, the building and environment I made for my application was too common in the real world. I'm building a virtual world here, and it's a place/world where impossible ideas from the real world can be fulfill even with just a slight creativity.

3. Your lecturer sucks doesn't mean you are too -

To be quite frank, my current majoring lecturer was the worst I had throughout my studies in this University. He's not like rude or not being friendly or anything, he's just not up to par. And during the semester when my progress had gone from good to bad, he was my lecturer of the semester. Anyway, I realize later on that I blame the others too much, and never think about what my major problem is here: I'm too lazy (probably from )

4. Do what you are suppose to do, stuff within your range -

After facing so many failures in these development stuff, particularly it's because that my application wasn't well-received by everyone, I realize something... I'm not just a game programmer... I'm a freaking game designer. And I'm like nothing if compared to those real Computer Science and IT people... I've been focusing so much on programming that I rather give up on my designing time just to make better technologies for my applications/games. This is a wrong step, and I understand it now...

5. Project finished within a short time is not always good -

While some developers may have been talented for developing games within a short time during Ludum Dare. But you can never do the same when working on a school's project or for a client (lecturers). Doing a project within a short time means, less game design, less interaction ideas and thought-out, less focus on the game project, and less chance of it getting tested by anyone other than yourself, etc... Means you will have no idea on whether the project is gonna be good or not if you are not able to develop a prototype first for user testing... blah, blah, blah, and get pawned by critics later on...

...

I do remember there's still some more... but that's all for now, I'll update more when I think of them...

Unity3d + C#: Rect.Contains(Correct mouse postion)...

2010-12-23T10:29:00.000-08:00

When using the Contains function:

void Update() {
    buttonRect = new Rect(20,20,50,50);
 
    if (buttonRect.Contains(Input.mousePosition))
    {
        print("haha");
    }

void OnGUI() {
    GUI.Button(buttonRect, "");
}

I realize that the phrase "haha" will be printed in the compiler only when the mouse position is at Rect(20, Screen.height - 20, 50, 50), instead of Rect (20, 20, 50, 50). So what happen is that the origin (0, 0) of the mouse's position starts at the bottom left of the screen... instead of the top left.

To solve the problem here, I created a function that return a value from reverting the mouse's Y position...

Vector2 RevertMousePosValue(Vector2 mousePos) {
    Vector2 newMousePos;    newMousePos.x = mousePos.x;
    newMousePos.y = -mousePos.y + Screen.height;
    return newMousePos;
}

How the function and formula works:

And then applying it in the Update() function:

void Update() {
    Vector2 mousePos = RevertMousePosValue(Input.mousePosition);
}

So, what I do next is to compile all scripts together while switching the "Input.mousePosition" with "mousePos":

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;

public class TestingScript : MonoBehaviour {
    private Vector2 mousePos;
    
    void Update() {

        mousePos = RevertMousePosValue(Input.mousePosition);
    }

    void OnGUI() {

        Rect buttonRect = new Rect(20,20,50,50);
        GUI.Button(buttonRect, "");
        if (buttonRect.Contains(mousePos))
        {
            print("haha");
        }
    }
    Vector2 RevertMousePosValue(Vector2 mousePos) {
        Vector2 newMousePos;

        newMousePos.x = mousePos.x;

        newMousePos.y = -mousePos + Screen.height;

        return newMousePos;
    }
}

and... that should do it. Check out my mini coding project which uses similar method.

Unity3d + C#: Return-able functions in C#

2010-12-18T15:26:00.000-08:00

I'm still new to the C# environment, and is working on my first application coded entirely using C#...

So when I was using Java, functions can always be return by simply writing the "return" phrase, followed by the value you want to return:
function ReturnAValue(a,b,c) {
return a+b+c;
}

But after coding for a while in C#, I realize that I just can't simply put the "return" phrase in a void function (in C# they use "void", instead of "function", really confusing for beginners)... So anyway, I figure out a way to deal with it at the moment. Say you want to return a "float" value in a new function, here's what you do: instead of writing "void", you write "float" follow by the name of the function:
float ReturnFloatValue(float a, float b, float c) {
return a+b+c;
}

Haven't try other variable types yet, but I guess it's pretty much the same... Will practice more on XNA as soon as I'm done with my current project~

Unity3d + C#: Referencing object's script variables...

2010-12-18T15:14:00.000-08:00

Just something I kept forgetting when scripting with C#...

If a variable is not "public static", then it cannot be reference from other script such as this:
//If we are taking a bool variable called "canAccess" from another script called "Player.cs"...
Player.canAccess = true;

Thus, in order to reference a variable from a script which is not "public static", first, you need to state the script name as the class of the variable, follow by the name of the variable:
Player playerScript =

Then, after the equal sign, "cast the variable", before stating the "GetComponent" function:
//"obj" is the game object which you want to access to...
Player playerScript = (Player)obj.gameObject.GetComponent("Player");
//Now you can reference the variable...
playerScript.canAccess = true;

It's kinda long, and I always forgot about the "casting" part...

some deep, deep, scary dungeon

2010-11-17T17:22:00.000-08:00

Been extremely busy in the past few weeks, doing University's assignment and stuff. But now I've got a week's break, I can do whatever I want, which was what really frightening me the most, because it's one of these times where I won't have the will to do anything.

I'm not planning to make any game for now, as I mentioned it one of my previous post, I'm planning to explore the possibility of Unity and enhance my skill before going on making another game in Unity. But that doesn't mean I won't make any game on other platform. I have some puzzle game ideas which I would like to work on Flash... which means I'm gonna have to re-touch the AS3 I left long-long time ago...

Moreover, I continue with my current Unity project - making a dungeon generator (I have been working on it, then deserting it over and over again for the past few weeks). Started around one month ago when I suddenly plan to make a JRPG game. Here's the current progress:

Above shows 4 variety of a 3 corners dungeon. The dungeon will automatically be created (instantiated) when the Play button is click. So currently I'm the stage where it could somehow calculate where it should go/corner itself. At the same time I'm also dealing with tons of scripting problem here, particularly on the rotation part and issues with Quaternion... Despite all the troubles, I felt like wanting to know more - how they programmed the Quaternion function, the formulas etc... I actually found a book entitled Visualizing Quaternion which I plan to read during the mid-break. So for now, I'll just focus on getting the dungeon stuff done.

What else... Oh yeah, I found a pretty good site to learn XNA, called 3D Buzz... Not sure if it's good yet, but the stereotype here is that: if it's made by the west-pros, it has gotta be good. And I've also been working on some game design document (GDD), I really wanna join the game development industry, thus such skill is vry much needed.

Java stuff: Declaring space in Array

2010-11-09T23:11:00.000-08:00

One thing I notice about the Array in Java is that, you have to declare whether the Array have space or not, before you can finally Push() values in.

While I was writing my current project's script, I did something like this:

private var arr : Array;

function Start () {

arr.Push("2");

}

When I click Play, the compiler give me this error:

NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object

I realized I had faced the same problem before and my solution previously was to declare a "space" for the array by adding "[]" after declaring the array...

private var arr : Array = [];

function Start () {

arr.Push("2");

}

I posted this because I never had the same problem in Flash AS3 before... I'm still consider new in Java since I first started using Unity this March, but they are basically the same, just that AS3 is more to object oriented stuff...

repair and get done with'em

2010-11-06T05:07:00.001-07:00

A lot of stuff to do all over the months... First I have one presentation on Tuesday and a case study to be submitted on Wednesday, then an exam on Saturday. At the same time, I'll have to finish building my portfolio site before sending it to my future (possibly) internship boss, for evaluation...

So there's a total of 4 Unity games which I had developed thus far, and I've finished building and fixing one of them, which was the latest piece that me and my team created for a competition held by our University. You can play it here.

And here's the main title of the game:

I still have 3 more games to be fixed, it's gonna be another busy week(s) for me...

Besides all these, I was also involved with another project by a few French guys as one of their minor AI programmers (really really minor)... And I've also asked Efraim of the TornadoTwin brothers on whether I could sell any Unity prefab I made at their store, and their reply was 'very possible'.

Thus, for my next free time, instead of developing games, I'm gonna develop a few prefabs prior to what I mentioned in my previous post - as a preparation before getting into the actual game development... and sell some of them (if they are good enough)...

preparation and exercise

2010-10-27T18:47:00.000-07:00

A months ago, I gave myself a little challenge making a puzzle game in Unity. I don't know exactly how I'm gonna start, thus I took a Flash sliding puzzle game tutorial I had from a while back and port the scripts from AS3 to Java, with the aid of its tutorial video of course. After a few weeks of trial and errors, and some major problem with Array and While loop, I finally arrive at the last stage of the puzzle mechanic's development, where I couldn't find a solution to some script-porting problem related to some confusing object positioning stuff... That's when I've decided to quit working on it as I'm at the limit of my scripting knowledge...

Anyway, what I've learned from all these is that never ever build the assets of the game first before you are assure of the technology of the game you're making... And yeah, I built everything for the game before I work on the game's mechanic, the environment, the object in space, the characters and their animations, I even UV and textured everything well before I even started the project. It was a false move, I agree. I had my game design did pretty well, prepared everything, every data about the style, the game play, the game mechanics of the game I'm about to make... It was a waste now that I think about it.

Thus, before moving on to a new project which I also had planned for a long time now... I'm gonna start with its mechanics first. So my next project is gonna be a JRPG-style game, with (listing them down):

- dungeons

- turn-based battle

- AIs

- inventory

- talking/chatting system

- good-looking characters (involved better sketching designs of the characters, I mean, c'mon I'm from an art degree, I should be able to pull this off)

- animated GUIs (not sure if iTween got this for free... if not, I'm gonna have to make my own, poor me...)

- etc... (still got something I might miss out, update later)

For a start, I'm going to make my own dungeon generator. I now have two ideas of making it, one, using the traditional binary system (0,1,0... thingy) like the one here.

Or,

Using tons of for loop and IF statement to generate the generator randomly like how one usually program an AI's thoughts...

I'm gonna give the second one a try first, so good luck to me...

Unity.IndexOf(indexOf);... Looking for "indexOf" within Unity's array of functions...

2010-10-17T03:00:00.000-07:00

I was currently building a game in Unity, sort of a puzzle-adventure game, which means there will be a lot of array related stuff all through the scripting. It was a huge headache for just making the puzzle itself, and I was following a puzzle making tutorial at the same time, which was in Flash's AS3. So I stumble across this useful but impossible to found on Unity script reference, function called "indexOf", which sole purpose was to search for a number or string variable within an array. The way of using it in Flash was:

var arr : Array = [1,2,3];

arr.indexOf(1);

Clueless, depress, and desperate (for finishing the game prototype, as I promise my composer I would show him that in 2 weeks time... now's already entering the third) I look for my own solution by using tons of FOR statement to re-create the IndexOf function. Not exactly tons of them, but just two lines:

function IndexOf(arr, posX, posZ) {

for (var i : int = 0; i

for (var j : int = 0; j

if (arr[i][j] == allTiles[posX][posZ]) {

return 0;

}

else {

return -1;

}

Two lines of FOR statement was used because my array here is a 2 dimensional array (array within an array, which explains arr[i][j]). In some way, the function above still have a lot of mistakes and incomplete, not enough to satisfy me. I was like, this was as far as I (my programming skill) could go...

I was planning to look for a better solution on the Unity forum but my idiotic internet service provider has left me internet-less for about 5 months now.

Thanks to fact that most programmers spend most of their time in front of the PC, as soon as I got my chance to get online and seek for help on the Unity forum, I got my reply from them and found this:

System.Array.IndexOf(Array, Integer/String);

This goes without saying that... I really should start learning C++~~~

Note on using root, rigging and exporting character to Unity...

2010-10-13T23:01:00.000-07:00

Been having some troubles with Unity 3 for the past few days, primarily on the animation part. For some reason, every single animation which I exported into Unity 3 or 2.6, it kept pushing my character to Vector3.zero and stay stationary all the time in Play mode. Ultimately I figured out where the problems are, it's the ROOT's fault...

Well, for every character which I animated, I place a Point (in 3ds Max, which I named as "ROOT") at the origin while attaching the main bone to the Point, so that I can move the entire sets of bones without selecting all of them, actually it can also be done without using Point at all, it's just a habit of mine. So, my character consist of a gear-shaped mesh and a sphere ball, which doesn't exactly need any skinning or enveloping other than just attaching it to the bone I wanted it to move with...

Soon after animating it, I exported it directly into Unity and the problems I mentioned above starts occurring...

It turns out that it couldn't detect the Point (ROOT) and I'll have to apply a Skin modifier to the gear-shaped mesh and add the corresponding bone into it. I exported the new version into Unity and the problem is solved... what a mess!

How to make a mini map for your scene in Unity3d

2010-09-27T23:29:00.000-07:00

This is my first tutorial on Unity, kinda nervous writing it... Anyway have you guys ever play Hitman, Dynasty Warrior, Starcraft or any RTS games? Usually at the bottom left of those games, there's a 2d map showing where the players are and where you're suppose to go etc.

Well, that's what I'm trying to write about today, how to make a simple mini map similar to that, instead of using the top down camera method. This comes in handy when you're trying to create a mini map to locate the player and the enemies (AIs) current position... Like Hitman, where you can see where everyone's heading from within a map.

I've already set up the scene for an easy start, download it here:

Starting project
Final project
And... let's get started!

First, import the "startPackage" into Unity, then expand the "My Scenes" folder in the Project view and open up the "tut" scene. There should be a "well" textured terrain with mountains, a prefab called "Enemy" in the form of a cube, a first person controller, and a game object called "Waypoints" which contains a bunch of other game objects with "w" follow by a number on their name inside. Click "Play" to play the scene, and you should see the cube starting to move by itself across all the waypoints in the scene.

Next, create a new Javascript file, name it "MiniMapScript" (or whatever that suits you). Double click on it in the project view to edit it. Now we are gonna create a few variables for the script (comments are added for explanation):

//For placing the image of the mini map.
var miniMap : GUIStyle;
//Two transform variables, one for the player's and the enemy's,
var player : Transform;
var enemy : Transform;
//Icon images for the player and enemy(s) on the map.
var playerIcon : GUIStyle;
var enemyIcon : GUIStyle;
//Offset variables (X and Y) - where you want to place your map on screen.
var mapOffSetX = 762;
var mapOffSetY = 510;
//The width and height of your map as it'll appear on screen,
var mapWidth = 200;
var mapHeight = 200;
//Width and Height of your scene, or the resolution of your terrain.
var sceneWidth = 500;
var sceneHeight = 500;
//The size of your player's and enemy's icon on the map.
var iconSize = 10;
private var iconHalfSize;

function Update () { //So that the pivot point of the icon is at the middle of the image.

//You'll know what it means later...

iconHalfSize = iconSize/2;
}

Those were the basic variables required to make the map works. You can try dragging the script to the FPS (First Person Controller) and then customize the GUIStyle variables with the textures I provided in the folder named "My Textures"; drag the Enemy from the Hierarchy view to the "enemy" transform variable in the FPS's mini map script, and the same thing for the FPS, into the "player" transform variable.

Now there's a few thing you need to understand before we proceed...
So what we are trying to do here is to take the X and Z (not Y) position of both the player and enemy, and convert them into the X and Y (again, not Z) axis of the screen (for the map).

When you look at the image above. it's like you're gonna flip the whole things up (Z and X to Y and X). I'm not sure if Unity has a function for what I just mentioned above, I know there's something called GUI.matrix4x4, but at the moment I was to lazy to find out, and I used the directly proportional method, to "convert them".

Under the Update function, add this line:

function GetMapPos(pos : float, mapSize, sceneSize) {

return pos * mapSize/sceneSize;

}

Basically what this line of function does is to take the position (pos) of the player, multiply by the height or width of the map, and then divide by the resolution (height or width) of the terrain, and it'll return back a value which we could use later to locate the player's position as it is on the map.

After that, create a new OnGUI function below the GetMapPos function, write these in:

function OnGUI() {

GUI.BeginGroup(Rect(mapOffSetX,mapOffSetY,mapWidth,mapHeight), miniMap);

var pX = GetMapPos(transform.position.x, mapWidth, sceneWidth);

var pZ = GetMapPos(transform.position.z, mapHeight, sceneHeight);

var playerMapX = pX - iconHalfSize;

var playerMapZ = ((pZ * -1) - iconHalfSize) + mapHeight;

GUI.Box(Rect(playerMapX, playerMapZ, iconSize, iconSize), "", playerIcon);

GUI.EndGroup();

}

The first line (GUI.BeginGroup) and the last (GUI.EndGroup) is to create a GUI group and placed it at the bottom right of the screen using the mapOffSetX and mapOffSetY variables in Rect(), and the GUI texture for it would be the miniMap GUIStyle which we just set-up earlier.

The second and third line (pX and pZ) is two new variables which has the returned value of the GetMapPos function...

The forth line (playerMapX) contains the information of the player's X-axis position on the map. It is minus by iconHalfSize so that we can have the pivot point of the player's icon which would appear on the map to be in the middle (looks more appropriate that way).

The fifth line (playerMapZ), like playerMapX, contains the information of the player's Y position on the map (it's written as playerMapZ to let you know that we are taking the player's Z-axis position in the scene, you can name it to anything you want actually).

Like what I've mentioned in the sketch I posted above (the one with the Z & X axis, and Y & X axis), when you are creating the map, you have to flip the Z-axis in scene vertically to make it the Y-axis in map. To do that, we multiply "pZ" with negative one (which would flip it), and then plus the mapHeight to get the value of the Y-axis in map.

The sixth line is to create a GUI.Box which would represent the player on the map, together with the playerIcon GUIStyle as the texture...

Those stuff should be enough by now. Click "Play" and you should be able to see a map on the screen, and a small, yellow, diamond-shaped icon on the map (the player).

Try to move around, and you should see the yellow icon move along too. If it didn't, check your line again, see if you didn't confuse the Z axis with the Y axis (unless if you choose to write it accordingly, instead of copy and paste).

If you understand what I've wrote thus far, you should be able to code the enemy part yourself. But if you can't, below is the full codes, copy and paste them to your script:

//For placing the image of the mini map.

var miniMap : GUIStyle;

//Two transform variables, one for the player's and the enemy,

var player : Transform;

var enemy : Transform;

//Icon images for the player and enemy(s) on the map.

var playerIcon : GUIStyle;

var enemyIcon : GUIStyle;

//Offset variables (X and Y) - where you want to place your map on screen.

var mapOffSetX = 762;

var mapOffSetY = 510;

//The width and height of your map as it'll appear on screen,

var mapWidth = 200;

var mapHeight = 200;

//Resolution (both width and height) of your terrain.

var sceneWidth = 500;

var sceneHeight = 500;

//The size of your player and enemy's icon as it would appear on the map.

var iconSize = 10;

var iconHalfSize;

function Update () {

iconHalfSize = iconSize/2;

}

function GetMapPos(pos : float, mapSize, sceneSize) {

return pos * mapSize/sceneSize;

}

function OnGUI() {

//Everything about the map.

GUI.BeginGroup(Rect(mapOffSetX,mapOffSetY,mapWidth,mapHeight), miniMap);

var pX = GetMapPos(transform.position.x, mapWidth, sceneWidth);

var pZ = GetMapPos(transform.position.z, mapHeight, sceneHeight);

var playerMapX = pX - iconHalfSize;

var playerMapZ = ((pZ * -1) - iconHalfSize) + mapHeight;

GUI.Box(Rect(playerMapX, playerMapZ, iconSize, iconSize), "", playerIcon);

var sX = GetMapPos(enemy.transform.position.x, mapWidth, sceneWidth);

var sZ = GetMapPos(enemy.transform.position.z, mapHeight, sceneHeight);

var enemyMapX = sX - iconHalfSize;

var enemyMapZ = ((sZ * -1) - iconHalfSize) + mapHeight;

GUI.Box(Rect(enemyMapX, enemyMapZ, iconSize, iconSize), "", enemyIcon);

GUI.EndGroup();

}

And that's basically all... If you have any question (like an error or bug), drop me a message at leezhifei168@rocketmail.com, I'll try to answer to your problem as soon as I can.

Please be noted the final product will not look like one of in GTAs, but those in RTS games, where you have an entire big area in a small map. To do the effect like in GTA, you have to use a top down camera and some shaders, I'll try to post a tutorial about it later when I'm free.

End of a Chaos, Start of a new... Chaos

2010-09-26T03:39:00.002-07:00

Again, a lot have been going on this week, first of all, my AIW's presentation was a big let down. I learned my lessons now, that people never appreciate the technology (inner) side of a game but more on the way it feels (outer). Both the tech and interface played important roles in a game, as the interfaces runs on the tech, and if the tech wasn't good, the interface wouldn't be good either...

Either way, game development, virtual reality, and some other stuff related to interactions are complicated and takes time to understand. In which I took my first step, by reading The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell. I couldn't find the book anywhere in the stores so I downloaded a copy of it from somewhere on the internet, but as a book lover and collector, I'll definitely buy one in the future, cuz I still prefer holding the book than reading it off the PC screen...

Anyway, it was a good read. I get a lot of tips from it even after only reading the first half of the first chapter. One thing I like the most was what he mentioned it the book that a game or an application is about giving people experiences, and it reminded me of the Dejobaan games called "AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!!: A Reckless Disregard for Gravity"...

One of the reason I think it was a huge success is because it gave me an experience of jumping off a building and... well... it was a really awesome game, but definitely not for people who are afraid of height though (yeah, it was 'that' scary).

I heard those "giving people experiences" stuff all the time in the Dean's Experiential Studies class, the Interaction Studies class... almost once or twice every week. But I guess it was tons of failures (I failed lots of time in my journey of making a good games) that leads me to finally listen to what they say. For instance, just now I was doing some game designs for my new game which I was planning to submit for the 9th Casual Gameplay Design Competition held on JayisGames. And this time it wasn't just plainly "sketch a few stuff" and "I've got everything in my head" stuff, but actually writing it down and plan to finish building everything before I make it (mostly because I was gonna make a puzzle platformer game, that's why).

Unlike before, this time I'm really gonna join the competition. Before this, I used to say that I will join but then ended up not joining in the end. Well, that time I was too over confident of myself... This time I'm seriously planning to venture into the indie game biz. Oh yeah, I even found myself a freelance music composer, and of course I have to give him a share whenever I won a competition or something.

Whether I'm going to win or not is still a big question, just depends on whether I can design a better game from now on (against millions of other indie game developers). Let's just see how it goes then!

AIW's new progress

2010-09-18T20:18:00.001-07:00

A video of my current progress in A.I.W.'s development:

Instead of using a top-down camera, I use GUI and a little bit of math to calculate and convert the player's position as it'll be in the map. The math part is simple, it's just the idea of how to make it took me a while to figure it out.

Anyway, it'd been fun developing the map, I'll continue to finish the game ASAP, before the final submission date arrived.

September No. 1

2010-09-16T22:19:00.000-07:00

Just realized that I haven't blog for some time now. A lot have happen from the previous post till this. I'm currently developing a game for my course assignment entitled : "AIW". It's not a "good" game yet, but another experimental game for me to test out my skills.

This is the kind of game which was made just to pass up for my assignment. The final submission is next Thursday, around the afternoon time, so I've been rushing the assignment and hoped to finish it ASAP so that I can have time to study for my final exam which is also happening next week (sigh...).

Below is some snapshots of my progress of AIW, it's a small adventure game based on Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland (thus, "AIW"):

Been working on it for two months now (from game design, concept sketches, character design, modelling, texturing, environment design and programming, all in Unity3d).

And... yeah, that's all I have to say now, cuz my mind is all about AIW...

Head Texturing in 3ds Max

2010-08-21T03:15:00.001-07:00

I've just stumble across an easy way to texture a 3d head model. So all these times I've been: adding Unwrap UV modifier, flatten mapping, and take a long time trying to arrange the pieces of flattened maps into a face map, which was a really tedious and boring job...

So I was following this character modelling tutorial called Joan of Arc, and it taught me some great technique on modelling and texturing a character that I thought I'd take a note here.

Easy face texturing

1. Click on the face and apply a "UVW Map" modifier, then choose Cylindrical Mapping.

2. Click the "+" sign beside the modifier and select "Gizmo".

3. Use the move, rotate and scale tool to position, turn and resize the gizmo so that it covers the entire head model in a tidy manner.

4. Next, right click on the UVW Map modifier and select "Collapse All", and the modifier will be collapsed into the model, leaving only the Editable Poly/Mesh modifier on the stack.

5. Then, add a "Unwrap UVW" Modifier, and click on the "edit" button, there'll be a nice looking UVW map waiting to be modify on the screen.

6. Though it looks pretty good already, it's still not very satisfying here. I'll make some modification here. Select everything an rotate them so that the face is in an upright position.

7. Look up and closer and there'll be some thin-looking map over there. Those are the unsatisfying stuff I'm talking about.

8. Select them all at once, and flatten mapping it.

9. I'll leave them for a while now, will get back to them later, so just place them at the top for a while. So now, the face look a bit to the left, and I wanna arrange it so that it'll be in the middle. I first select the other half on the right, detach it (right click > Detach Edge Verts) and place it to the left, and weld all the vertex there (right click > Weld Selected).

10. And the face looks much more settled now.

11. Took some more time to further modify it and I got this.

12. What about the unsatisfying map from earlier? Here they are, arranged together with the face without crossing over each other. It wouldn't take too long to make this part... for those who aren't still beginner.

13. So I've got my face mapping done and it's about time to texture it in Photoshop.

Click on Tools > Render UVW Template... When the box appear, choose the size (mine favorite: 1024x1024) and click the Render UVW Template button. A rendered UVW template will shows up. Click save to save it...

Done!

Binary 1

2010-08-06T19:08:00.001-07:00

Was developing my new game, and here's the first binaries for the first scenes' map:

01111111111111111111111111011010111110101011111111110111011101101101111

110111101100011110111011000011111111101111100111011110111111111001101

11010011110110111101111101011110101010001111011010000101001111111111

1111111111110111111111111111111

Designed using the Online Maze Designer. Though I'm not really designing a maze, the method which they propose were also good for map design.

Breaking the process

2010-08-05T09:15:00.000-07:00

So I've got a few... as a matter of fact a lot of game ideas in mind, mostly JRPG style (my favorite game genre). But judging from my current skill, it's actually quite impossible for me to finish any one of them. There's still a few possibilities which I wanted to explore in Unity, thus I'm gonna break the process down to pieces and do experiment on each of them while at the same time making a game based on what I've learned, just like what Sophie Houlden did... Her idea was sorta good btw, really need to thank the Game Developer Mags for showing me her existence.

So, here are a bunch of stuff (elements) that would make up the game I wanna make in the future:

1. 3rd person shooter (gonna work on a game project for campus soon, and it's gonna be using the 3rd person shooter camera)

2. Cut scenes (camera movements)

3. Enemy AI (I'll start with walking... then further. Currently reading AI for Games by Morgan Kaufmann)

4. Turn based battle system (ady have the basic concept and structure of the program)

5. Characters conversation (not sure about the name, but this one's like how you talk to another character inside a Japanese game, the chatting stuff with the floating picture if the character)

6. Gizmo (I want the GUIs to appear above or around the character)

7. Interactive GUI and interfaces (other than just GUI, I wanna try Movie texture on the game interface to make it looks more lively)

8. Loading screen (the loading screen just like the one in the game consoles' games)

9. More animations!!! (on 3ds max, and probably... if I'm free... Maya!)

10. Foreign languages (always wanted to make a foreign language film, and Jap is definitely the main choice here)

11. Character modelling (I suck at this, still improving... since I can only depends on myself to make things workout the way I wanted)

12. Character design (hand drawn stuff, especially mecha!!! I can draw but suck at mecha-lish drawing)

That's about what I could think of thus far... I know there's more, but I just can't recall back what I had in mind previously at the moment. I might make 5 more games for those things I've mentioned up there, you know, to strengthen my skills...

RedChariot+Survivor

2010-07-27T05:03:00.000-07:00

Finally finish making my second Unity game: Red Chariot Survivor... It's a driving game, where player trying to outta the dark mansion while at the same time, staying alive.

I was originally planning to write a few development post about it... But due to insufficient amount of time for me to complete this project (I was given 6 days by my lecturer), and with my router broken (thus, no internet!!!) I hardly can.

I'm now attempting to upload the current version to dimeRocker, while working on a newer version for the DigiCon6 submission... If I won in any category, I can (stand a chance to) go to Japan!

RedChariot...

2010-07-16T06:33:00.000-07:00

Been working on my game level's design for the entire day. Apparently, it's harder than I thought, I mean, it's not that hard if someone else were to do it, but for me it's hard, as I didn't really have a solid plan about the level's design. I had already done the top view sketch, but my mind kinda want something different when I was actually building it...

from this...

to this.

Basically, the level is complete, just need some programming stuff to make it better.

Oh yeah, the game is called RedChariot by the way, it was originally called "Anciently Survivor", but I felt the name was kinda lame, and my racing car was a red chariot, so... that's why.

Some screenshots of the RedChariot vehicle.

I thought blogging would make me lose off some stress, but it doesn't... Anyway, it's fun to blog again (after deserted it for a while), and I really hope that I can blog a full Japanese post later in the future. Okay now back to work~ got 2 days left till final submission of this project... I'm a busy man~(T3T)~

Game Developer Mags

2010-07-01T07:34:00.000-07:00

Just found out that one of my favorite mags in high school, Game Developer Mags is still publishing now:

Still got my old March 2006 issue lying on my desk.

Wonder if they're still selling it in M'sia, probably only Kinokuniya have this kinda great magazine these days. Anyway, great to know that they haven't gone, and I've been downloading its latest issue in PDF off the internet. But I prefer to read it (and any other books) on hand, rather than on the PC screen... I really should get an iPad.

ナンバー４１

2010-06-26T11:09:00.000-07:00

Finally, I'm on the 41st posts here. It's been long, for almost half a year since I started this blog. I have had numerous version of the "JakeL168" blog over the years, but this is by far the one I had for the longest period of time.

It's a good thing that Blogger finally added the "Design" setting, cuz I've been struggling with my blog's design for a long time, looking for the right layout for my blog. I'm just too interface-sensitive. Even the current layout only satisfied me by 50%. As far as I know, all of the previous one didn't even get pass 30%.

Anyway, the only project which I started and can be considered "done" so far was EcoTat. made using Unity3D. I have no intention of ever improving it anymore since it was just a prototype, unless if I start over with a new design and scripting.

I've had all these crazy ideas in my head which I wanna start working on. For now I wanna create a turn-based RPG game about school-life and children's folklore, but I still don't know where to start from. Btw, the course which I'm taking now has taken a serious step, more towards the preparation of game design now. I'm hoping that after all these, I can finally be able to conduct my own preparation of game design, and start making game!!!

Lastly, I've finalized the name of my project, it's gonna be called "AfterSchool", instead of "Scare me, not!". I've design some basic logo for the game's ScreenSelector (for later Unity's use):

Title + A little Japanese words in there (both Katakana and Kanji) to make it looks cooler... I prefer the Katakana vers.

"Importing" .upk to UDK

2010-06-26T10:55:00.000-07:00

Well according to some experts out there, it's impossible to actually import a .upk to an Unreal Development Kit (UDK), but it can be open it. What it meant was that (took me a long while to understand it), once the file is copied into where the UDK is installed (usually it's in the C drive, outside the Program Files, I copied mine in the folder: C:\UDK\UDK-2010-02\Engine\Content), start-up UDK and it'll in the Content Browser.

However, though it's in the content browser, it won't show a thing when clicked on, not sure why. It can be fixed by right-clicking the package and select "Fully Load". After a short while, the textures and stuff will appear in the browser...

3ds Max 2011, you've changed... I hardly know you anymore...

2010-06-24T07:35:00.000-07:00

Finally got my copy of 3ds Max 2011 yesterday. My friends has been telling me how amazing it looks (though he never really used one before), now I'm finally get to see it myself.

The main interface was pretty much than the previous 2010 version, nothing much changed here.

The toolbar interface has become something a little similar to Microsoft's Word toolbar.

What I did next was loading up a file of mine from the 2009 version, I planned to continue modelling my stuff in the 2011 version to slowly adapt to the new environment. To my further surprise, the material editor has become something far more superior than I expected. It's like the software has its own window and you can open softwares (materials) inside. Something which I would call a "brilliant" interface (and yeah, I'm that optimistic and simple).

So it got me thinking: if the material editor has already become something like this, what's gonna happen to my favorite Render To Texture?! And...

nothing happen... thank goodness... Thus, I'm gonna start working on my project with the new kid here. Bye bye 2009...

Scare Me, Not!

2010-06-12T06:22:00.000-07:00

After a few days and hours of self-mind struggling, I've finally decided to start another game project. Not sure how many times have I said the word "this time, is for real!", and then subsequently halt a number of game projects, but I'm still gonna say this again: this time, is for real!!!

Below is my current project's detail:

Project name: Scare me, NOT!!! (tentative title)

Genre: Adventure, JRPG

No of Bosses: 6

Synopsis: The children of Fairmere Ville has been disappearing one by one every since the arrival of the new village chief (Rowan). Rumor has it that he lure the kids into the forest, and then eat them alive. A gang of 3 kids from the village notice that one of their friend from their gang has gone missing for a couple of days. They were convinced that rumor to be true as they last seen their friend getting scolded by the village chief for accidentally stepping on his plantation, he was then taken into the chief's house and has never been seen since then. The 3 kids plan to find their friend and solve the mystery of the missing kids by attempting to ruin the chief's plantation on purpose -- to get into his "trouble", and mystery turns out to be more complicated than they thought...

Now I know the synopsis may already make the game sounds hard to make, but I'm not in a rush, and will take my time to make it.

That's all for this post, I'll try to update more if I've got time...

Normal Mapping, CHECK!

2010-05-16T07:30:00.000-07:00

Promised myself that I'd work on baking normal mapping in 3ds max, which I just did, and succeeded today.

Here are a few screenshot of my successful normal mapping works:

I'll probably write a tutorial for my own sake, because I made this out of 3 different tutorials, and a little bit of self-discovery too. But first, I'll have play around with it a little bit more...

List of things I plan to accomplish during holidays:

2010-05-13T21:48:00.000-07:00

1. 3ds max: light mapping, normal mapping, low poly count

2. Unity: Enemy AI, Character customization, so basically any tutorial available on Unity, and they have quite a great list of tutorials by the way...

Unity Project 2... 終わりました。

2010-05-04T22:37:00.000-07:00

Just passed up my 2nd year first semester's Virtual Reality (VR) project. Entitled "Ecotat: the Bengal Tigress", this is an application about learning the ecology, behaviour and habitat of a tiger.

This was the third time that I actually finish a game project, kinda proud of myself. I'll be making a video... kinda like a trailer for it later.

凄いな　アイパドとアイフォンのゲジェト

2010-04-30T12:39:00.000-07:00

WIRED.comで動画を見ました。

エパルのパソコンを買いたいです。アイフォンのゲームも作りたいです！

来月はエパルのパソコンを買わなければなりません！！！

今仕事は頑張ってね～～～お金、お、お金～～～

Cubase 5: Exporting your audio

2010-04-30T11:41:00.001-07:00

I had this audio exporting problem when I was trying to export the fake radio show assignment I was working.

Turns out if you just simply click on export, in Cubase 5, you get none of the stuff you want, but a bunch of piano tunes.

Here's a more appropriate way to export audio on Cubase 5:

1. Select all the tracks on the screen, drag and select all of them using your mouse.

drag and cover the entire (or just a part of the audio) which you would like to export

be noted that Cubase 5 will only export the audio you chose here. if there's any part of the audio which you don't want to be a part of the exported file but you wish not to delete the track which contains it, you just have to de-select it (shift+click)

2. Next, go to the toolbar and look for Transport>Locators (F) to Selection, and this function will make the 2 selectors above the tracks to be placed in the range of your audio.

Transport>Locators to Selection, or F

notice that the locators up there is covering up all of your selections, in light blue

3. After that, go to File>Export>Audio Mixdown, a box will appear for you to customize the name of your audio, where you wanna export it to, and the file format you prefer.

Customize!

name, name!

file location

file type (I would usually choose WAVE of AIFF for the best quality)

4. Click export after you're done with everything. A loading bar will shows up, wait for a while (depends on your audio length), and Voila! You've got your audio exported...

Cubase 5: Turning inactive to active

2010-03-28T09:01:00.000-07:00

If you accidentally disconnected an audio device in the C5's Device Setup>VST Audio System>ASIO, hit F4, or go to Device>VST Connection, to open the VST Connection panel, change the both Stereo's left and right bus to the name of the disconnected device. The disconnected audio will then be connected again.

Array.shuffle()

2010-03-26T07:38:00.001-07:00

Just read an interesting article about array shuffling from DaveOnCode.

Array.shuffle(), in reality doesn't exist in Flash's AS3, thus it's a pain in the ass for us, fellow moderate-level AS3 programmer.

His script here,

var arr2:Array = [];

while (arr.length > 0) {
    arr2.push(arr.splice(Math.round(Math.random() * (arr.length - 1)), 1)[0]);
}

"Tells" the AS3 to execute a function which shuffle an Array of stuff into another new Array.

Read more about his explanation of this function here: Array.shuffle().

Revisiting Arithmetic progression

2010-03-24T08:00:00.000-07:00

I was making a typing game for my class's assignment using Unity3D and Java, and I'm trying to create a level script for my game. There's a few ways I could do it if I look for it on the internet on in the Unity forum, but for this time, I wanna try scripting it myself.

I try on a few ways I could think of (like using the "if, else" statement, and create a really long script about when the level should change when the scores hits a certain point -- which is really a time and space wasting effort), before I realized about Arithmetic progression, an additional-math formula I learnt in high school.

I first list down a few levels, and the scores required to reach them. for instance:

0 scores-level 1 (I wanted the player to start at level 1, with 0 scores),

10000 scores - level 2,

20000 scores - level 3,

30000 scores - level 4, etc...

The difference between 2 of those levels is 10000 scores. Using these infos, I started working it in the Arithmetic progression formula:

(from Wikipedia, I've totally forgotten about the formula after quitting math since 2 years ago)

a (with a small n) = is the player scores here...

a (with a small 1) = is the starting scores, which is 0 (refer above)...

n (inside the bracket) = refer to the player's level...

d = the difference between 2 of those levels, which is 10000 (refer above)...

The structure of the formula in script would look like this:

var scores:int = 0;
var level:int = 0;
var diff:int = 10000;
var aOne:int = 0; //these are required variables set

//the formula
scores = 0 + (level - 1) * diff;

Since I'm gonna change the value of level here instead of the scores, I need to change the formula a bit to:

level = (scores - aOne) / diff + 1;

Then, applying it to the main script:

var scores:int = 0;
var level:int = 0;
var diff:int = 10000;
var aOne:int = 0;

function Update () {
if ((scores - aOne) / diff + 1 > level) {
level ++;
}

What the script is saying here is that, if the result of the calculation is more than player's level, the level will increase itself by the value of one.

Say... I've managed to score around 11300 points while I'm in level 1. Using the formula:

(11300 - 0) / 10000 + 1, the result would be 1.13, which is more than 1 (the current level)... Thus, the level will increase itself by 1, and become level 2...

If I were to create some sorts of a RPG/first-person-shooter game, a Geometric progression would be the better choice in writing the level script.

event.target

2010-02-21T08:07:00.000-08:00

I always sees the term "event.target" being used in tons of codes all over the internet, but I never really understand what it is, and what it could actually do, don't even wanna find out.

Until a while ago, when I plan to put the same function for different buttons of the same eventListeners, I realized how convenient it can be.

I have all the buttons inside the same DisplayObject called "mainMap". Then I assigned functions for all of them through: event.target.townI (.desertI, .grassHillI, .volcanoI, etc...), where by "townI" is one of the button in "mainMap".

bad habits

2010-02-20T08:34:00.000-08:00

It's 2010, a new year, and I've accomplished nothing through the years in 2009. I was having this sort of bad habits which I think almost everyone also has, I was too ambitious.

Every time I started working on a game, I started small, and no brainstorming or a simple pen-down notes for the game which I'm about to make. And that project ended up being scrapped, left in a folder on my hard drive, waiting to rot...

I planned to join competitions, but I ended up not joining any of them because I kept stressing out myself with the theme or requirement of the competition, when I could have just submit anything.

I wanna be a game designer but I have not much of a determination to start with. Told myself I would make 100 games before I graduate, but I only made 2 low-class games so far.

This year, I wanna try something different, I wanna try not being too ambitious, and start making good, standard small games... May the god of games help us all!

talk myself out of you... all!: main character's interactions

2010-01-26T15:51:00.001-08:00

I've been having a lot of troubles giving name to my game, a good name... Therefore the name which I'm currently assigning to the game I'm currently working on will be: "Talk myself out of you... all!".

Below is the current progress of the game:

Instruction:

1. There are 3 different buttons which you could click on, in which each of them carry out different functions: attack, magic, and heal.

2. You can use any attack you want, but the magic attack (last button) won't work unless you have a certain level of confidence.

3. You need to keep on attacking until your confidence bar (the tube on the left side) is filling up itself. And when you get to a certain level, you can start using the magic attack.

Now, it's only been 2 days since I started working on this project, I've managed to finish coding the main interaction of the character, but haven't started on the enemy's AI, which to me is kinda complex, and needed 2 to 3 days to further working on it...

I'm also struggling with the perfection of the graphic, for instance: making sure the X and Y axis is in the range of rounded up numbers, and no decimal points, else I'll get all fed up about it.

tough decision

2010-01-23T12:28:00.000-08:00

I've finally decided, I'm gonna make a game for the LG competition I mentioned earlier; no matter what game it's going to be, I'm just gonna make one; whether or not I'm following the theme given or not, I'm just gonna make a game for it. It's 4:38am... nite...

jakel168's game development

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凄いな アイパドとアイフォンのゲジェト

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Revisiting Arithmetic progression

event.target

bad habits

talk myself out of you... all!: main character's interactions

tough decision

凄いな　アイパドとアイフォンのゲジェト