Fucking hardware

Ps3 broke, I was so far in DS2. Now there's another thing I need to buy, where the hell am I suppose to get the money? Oh well. Fuck it.

(Completely unrelated)

What I realized just then, about ten minutes ago, is that we're just choosing the way we're going to die.  Instead of choosing a gun or a knife. We choose to study, get a job, build a carrier, have a family, see the world or even change the world either way it's just your prolonged choice of suicide.

They say suicide is causing your own death intentionally. We all know we're going to die at some point, so we intentionally fill our lives up with wonderful experiences, but eventually too much life will kill you. So in choosing to live, and understanding we'll die because of it. Aren't we intentionally choosing a slower death, hence suicide.

So we're just choosing to run the blade fast or slowly I guess.

Gosh that's a weird thought.

(Completely unrelated)

Stupid ass ps3 being busted.

(Completely unrelated)

I've been looking at reference images and planning designs for the main character for this project. I need to stop thinking about everything that's involved and just take it one step at a time, because the development process is daunting.

Dark Souls II

Hmm... Lets call it research? Yes, research.

It has been a very long time.

I guess it's to get out of this coma, what a grueling year. Overlooked marketing with Tywin, lessons learned. All I wanted to do was get that game out and I did, but at what cost really.

I'd finish work at 6am then catch a bus for 20 minutes, wait for 3-4 hours for my classes to begin and finish the day at 9pm. It was awful, heartbreaking and painful. I had dropped down to 42kg's but my weight didn't faze me in the slightest.  I liked the stress because I knew I was going somewhere,  in comparison to some of the other students I definitely stood out. Though I wish I could have studied full-time without the hassle of work and all the other bullshit that relationships require.

On the day Tywin launched my doubts in my relationship had come to a head and on the 31-3-13 I called it quits and asked her to leave. I usually give my goals 110%, that way if I fail, I know I tried my best and I know she had tried too for a very long time but some problems cannot be fixed, so I made a hard decision, the right decision and ended it there.

This compounded personal and professional stresses but I still managed to graduate with high marks and was offered the advance diploma, which I turned down. I needed a break and the teachers at SIT didn't really care, only a few did but the majority were so dead, their resentment for their jobs and personal insecurities were thrown up onto students for absolutely no reason and was usually reflected in their work ethic, I swear most of the bad students were reflections of their own shitty methods. Beyond a few good classes and a few great teachers the diploma just taught me how to teach myself, going to class just separated me from the distractions in my life and allowed me to focus, but I did most of my work in my own time.

My motto was:
I can sleep when I'm dead

And I didn't really sleep at all.

During my time away, I've gained weight, got a six pack , learnt how to play the piano, have written a lot of my own music, performed my music on stage, learnt how to rock climb, got a new partner, healed social circles and more.  

https://soundcloud.com/photoacoustic

And now I'm here again. I hope I never make the same mistakes I made during Tywin's development, I hope I'm ready to begin this new project.

I'm scared because I lost so much last time... And I really can't go through that again.

Recorded Audio

Recorded some of the characters voices with Matt Cassar.

Changed again

Originally there were two different maps of Australia, One for the minimap and one for the Region. Changed it so there is only one now. The regions have been placed on another layer and the minimap culls them so they're no longer rendered. This allows the abilities that the player can use to control the varroa mite to be seen on the mini map as well.

It looks awesome =]

New boundary

Added a mathf.clamp to the region cameras anchor object and deleted the bounding boxes. The regions are no longer stacked, we encountered a problem with ray-casting through them.

Yeah it's not actually laid out like that had to change it for the picture.

Region movement, Back button

The camera movement in the region view is based off of an invisible moving object that the camera is anchored to. When they click the mouse and move the anchor moves and the camera lerps to the anchors position in world space.

The lerping function in unity interpolates between two different numbers over a period of time and can be used to handle many different variables.  I use it a lot to smooth out movement, previously the camera movement was slightly jerky but now is as smooth as ice =]

Also added a back button to the mini map that allows you to go into the scenario view instead of selecting it from the minimap again.

Region Bounds OLD

Boundary box for camera

Region nav.

Mini map re-sizes to bottom left hand corner of the screen when region map is selected. 

Mini Map View

Region view

Stacked Regions

When the player selects a region it becomes active and is rendered and the others are not. 

I had all the regions stacked atop each other because I wanted to be lazy with the borders and use a bounding boxes to prevent the player from scrolling off of the side of the screen.

The movement system was cursor based. When the player would mouse over to the side of the screens the camera would pan in that direction.

The stacked regions created a problem later on and the layout changed. 

MiniMap Mocks

Started off with a plane and threw a map texture on it. 

When you select a state the regions rise and can be selected.

This was achieved by ray-casting from the camera at the mouses position then reading the selected states ID and lerping the camera to another position in world space.

 

Varroa Mite - CSIRO project.

At the start of this project I was very keen to begin but got side tracked with Tywin, a personal project that has now been completed. 
Now this project has my full attention.

During the early stages of development many different designs for the game had been thrown around both by the Client and our team. After three weeks and many meetings we were able to come up with a vision that pleased the clients expectations and was achievable in the time allocated to us by Southbank institute of Tech.

The game's vision was originally meant to play like "Plauge Inc."  but from the perspective of the Varroa mite (which is what the client wanted). It seem's like an easy enough premise to work with and build upon but our teacher didn't like it so the concept so it changed. 

The following is my personal opinion.  At the moment the game concept is pretty bad, it doesn't seem fun at all. The concept is like a multiple choice excel spreadsheet with animations over gameplay. Needless to say I'm not a designer on the project I'm one of the programmers. I just wasn't expecting to work on a game that was so not fun. Moving on though...

Back on the scene.

 It's been pretty hectic with development. I've been working on two different titles now. Tywin and another game for the CSIRO. I'm about to finish my diploma as well.

Blogging kind of fell by the way side but I have been busy. I stopped working on the coding and worked on the graphics in Tywin. The game looks awesome now.

The planet textures fade from:

 Instead of:

Though I want there to be more healthy planet textures so that's my goal for tonight. There's also new levels and new mechanics. 

Uhhhggggg

  So tried >___<"

So hard but so worth it.

I created a new 3d model for the planets. They were originally 3d spheres, but after looking at the draw count and how many tri's and verts it was up dating I replaced it with a model that looks like a cookie.
Super tedious replacing all of my prefabs and updating the levels but but the games performance has improved a lot.

I also went back through my scripts and refined them and got the save game working.

There are new purple planets that exert a certain amount of acceleration onto the player altering their trajectory and new yellow rectangles that give the player a speed boost to +10.

All I need to add now is the upgrades screen, numbers on the level selection screen and make some mind-fuckery levels.  I'm thinking of hiding dark planets in some of the levels as well, if the player finds them they'll unlock new ship models (only the coolest models will be on the dark planets, thinking of a cat or something =] ) its been so hard getting this next video out because I've been so busy working on the game but you'll be pleasantly surprised when I'm finished with it. I checked out my last video I uploaded and so much has changed since then!

Super Productive!

Progress:

• GUI
• New layout.
• Added player speed.
• Added HighScore.
• Buttons have Audio.

• On Pause
• Player can edit speed while on a planet.
• Restart button becomes main menu button.
• Main menu button scales and grows to fit font.
• Added Increase and Decrease buttons to GUI.

• Levels
• Several new levels have been added.
• Levels now fade to black between loads.
• Audio added to planets.
• Planets now fade from red to blue.

• Title Screen
• Added new buttons
• Start
• Level Select
• Options <may change to Upgrades>
• Exit
• Added BGM.

A new video will be out soon.

Heads up display

Tywins Hud - still need to add some stuff.

It's weird to think it's only been 8 days since I posted my video talking about Tywins concept. I've managed to achieve so much since then. It really feels like this last week has been a year. I've been waking up, sitting on the computer, working on Tywin and then heading off to my real job for another 8 hours. If it wasn't for my girlfriend giving me coffee and  supplying me with nutrients I'd probably be dead. 

Developing has been going steady, just worried about the save game function. The player will need to store their highscores/level progress/Unlocked awards etc. I know I can do it, just thinking about it makes me not want to do it =P.

I also need to work on the Restart and Pause button images. 

HowmuchfukinlongerwillIneedtofukaroundwith
thesegoddampauseandrestartbuttonsImeanJesuschrist
reallynowIneedtomakethemlookprettyandshitfuuuuuusomuch
timegoesintothistediouscrapcantwaittofocusonleveldesignandgetbacktothefunstuff
alsoifyoutookthetimetoreadthisthankyouverymuchyouwonderfulperson.

Tldr: The tedium of the Pause and restart buttons wears heavy on my soul.  

Tywin's Development thus far =]

Tywin - Development Progress: 1/25/13 from Mr.Cow on Vimeo.

Endurance check

Developing is getting harder but it was to be expected, the further I go into the process the bigger the problems are to solve. Exciting stuff because I love a good challenge but development is hard and I cant see it getting easier anytime soon. 

The dev. station

It's raining outside at the moment (thank god) my room gets so hot.The GUI gave me a bit of a head ache, getting the GUI to scale properly was a hurdle. I'm not going to say its done because every time I say that I find a problem and I need to work on it until the wee hours of the morning. I'm lucky because I have a three different android platforms to build and test my game on so I'm finding errors and fixing them for you lovely people.

So my company is up and running and its just me... I wont lie, it fucking sucks. Its a horrible feeling, because I want Tywin to be an awesome game of high quality but the journey to get it there is hard because I'm alone.

It's weird I know, I've never really spoken about my feelings on this blog but hey :P it was going to be a blog about my indie development process and the stress is just one aspect among many.

It's hard to get people to care and it's hard to get people interested and the hardest part is not knowing if you're moving in the right or wrong direction. 

As always thanks for stopping by and on a good note,  planet rotation is smoother, created stage boundaries and GUI buttons scale correctly across different platforms.

Good with the bad

Good news on the company front, by business is registered. Hourglass Entertainment is now open for business.

Bad news, unity build seems to have shat itself, going to have to re-install it. Thank god for version control.

Pause, Resume, Restart, Refined =]

The player no longer jumps off of the planet when you press the pause and restart buttons on the GUI.

I got around the problem by adding a condition that ignores the launch function if the button is pressed and after everything is restarted/resumed it enables the launch function and you're ready to fly again.

Tomorrows Goals: 

• Points

Zzzz another late night. Take it easy guys and thanks for stopping by.