Monday, February 29, 2016

SDC.Game: March 2016

Tuesday, March 8th, at the Warrenville Public Library.  



There will be a few larger things to discuss this time.  
  • I'll be proposing a new time/day of the month for the Meetup.  
    • I'm planning on it being roughly in between the SDC Meetups so perhaps 3rd Tuesday, instead of the first of the the month.  (SDC is technology in general, SDC.Game focuses on gaming tech.
  • Running a Game Jam
    • I'd like to start a Game Jam for the group. 
    • Debating on a 4 hour live, or 1 week online.  
    • General Discussion on what they are.
  • Format Change:
    • Currently, the meetups are more ad-hoc discussion.  
    • I'd like to start each meetup with a presentation on something game related.  
      • 15-45 minutes long, relating to game programming, engines, art, music, marketing, design, ai, etc...
      • I'd like to get different people to present.  
        • Do you commonly generate textured models in Blender?  Show us how.
        • Have you developed game samples with RpgMaker?  Show us how.
        • I can do some presentations to begin with, but I'd like to get more people in on it.
      • After the presentation, 
        • it will be open to Q&A, 
        • then open for announcements, sharing project updates, etc
        • and finally stay in open for discussion.  
Join us on Tuesday, March 8th from 6 to 8:45.

Review: The Game Jam Survival Guide: Part 1

I'm still in the middle of reading The Game Jam Survival Guide, but I felt like posting an update on it.  How I feel inspired, and stopped working on games (for a moment).  :)


First, if you have any interest in game development, I recommend getting this book.  (so far. :) )

I've found it very inspiring.  While I've been part of very few game jams, I find my interests in attending in a game jam peeking again.  At first, I started working on another game concept, the 2D truck physics game, but after getting into hours 13-24, on a part for "Motivation techniques" (page 51) it brought up to share the work in progress and some reasons why.

Sharing the progress reminded me of what Codivore.com has been becoming in my head.  While I want Codivore to be an open community of training, where the community helps shape and define the training, the first feature I'm aiming for, is a quick way to post an article with a functioning Unity 3D WebGL game attached.  Its proven a pain within blogger.

I feel like getting Codivore to take over for the blogs before I jump into a 48 hour game jam.  I hope you enjoy it.  The book is inspiring my to finish more than just a game.

Saturday, February 27, 2016

Truck Ride - PoC Update 2

I've decided to give the project a code name, "Truck Ride" which is intended to be changed prior to release, as a title might emerge from the product.



Updates:

  • Custom Art.  Terrible Custom Art, but its my temporary place holder that I built in gimp after a few minutes.
  • Camera Script for following the truck  It has an offset that I'm not using, 
    • Later is intended to alter the view range based on the speed.
  • Shrunk the terrain prefab.
  • Terrain Script that recycles the terrain, and adjusts the height.
    • Will need to improve this drastically, to include angling the terrain, and potentially curving it along a changing spline/bezier curve.  
  • There are still *no* scripts controlling the vehicle.  I have the default wheel scripts set to 1000 RPMs.

Friday, February 26, 2016

Codivore.com Update 2:

Codivore.com is a site I've been working towards for a while.  A video training site, since there clearly aren't enough.  (snark)  I'm hoping for it to stand out in a particular way.  Like Stack Over Flow, multiple people can cover the same topic, and different answers get up voted.  Community members can add training they created.  If we don't have it covered already, then you'll show up.  If we do cover it already, it will be available as an alternative, and enough people review both and like the new one, yours will swap out as the primary.  Kind of a videopedia.

Its not ready, but it has been improving in the capabilities and will go live, hopefully soon, and replace this blog.  I.e. I'm bringing out its blog focused features now, and plan to make it easy to add Unity demos in articles.  A feature which is not convenient here.

I'm trying to do everything as cleanly is possible.  MVC5, C# 6, Ninject (& Ninject.MVC), AngularJS, Web API's, etc.

I hope to have it up for blogging at least very soon.

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

POC: 2D Car Physics

I'm considering creating a 2D Car game, similar to Hill Climber.  This is a proof of concept, just testing the features.  The art is only a place holder, as I borrowed it from RC-Niews.nl for this test.  The point is to make sure I can control general physics and vehicle creation.  Additionally will come custom graphics, upgrades, terrains, power-ups, high scores, and hopefully a fun & engaging system of play.


Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Unity Review: Sweater Stitch Shader (5 Stars)

Sweater Stitch Shader works incredibly well and was a breeze to add.  Installation is 1) import, 2) add stitch script to the camera, and 3) set background color alpha to 255.  That's it.  You can activate it and deactivate it in game.  (click the image to see a higher res copy)

I took an RTS I'm working on for Lynda.com and dragged it in as a test and this is the effect.  Below is an image where I increased the stitch size.

I give this a 5/5 for what it advertises.  However, there are 2 upgrades I would like to see.
1) have the script's start up edit the background color's alpha channel.  Additionally just add a bool called "SetAlphaOnStart" so the designer can turn that off if they wish.  And 2) I wish the gauge would take into account screen size.  I.e. keep the size the same no matter what screen size it is on.  This would help so that the tablet and the phone apps could appear the same.

Of course we can write our own scripts or mod the existing ones, so its really quite a minor concern.

Update -- Below is a recording of the system in real time, adjusting stitch sizes and turning it off, without affecting the game, and still seeing animations live.