I haven’t made a post in a while, but I’m back, and with a new demo for Sand Surfer. There’s been a few changes to it, mostly focusing on the player character and smoothing out all of the movement and playability of it.

The bow now has proper animations, and a better aiming system. The movement feels a lot better. Jumping has been fixed. The player can now slide by crouching while running, and so on.

Considering that I don’t get anywhere near enough time I would like to actually work on this thing, I’d say the progress is somewhat decent. But now it’s going back on the back burner so I can work on “CyberSurfer”, a derivative of SICKHACKS.root, my game from Global Game Jam earlier this year.

CyberSurfer will be my next main game project, and I’m gonna try and really get this one out into the mainstream more. Not sure how, but I’ll probably have to start shilling much harder.

In other news, my shotgun asset pack was rejected from the Unity asset store and I’ve yet to receive any reply to my request for more information. However, I have decided to sell it anyway on other storefronts.

It’s on Itch.io (Link above) as well as my Ko-Fi Store. I will try to expand on the Unity asset when I can and re-submit it when I’ve done that, but there’s only so much I can do.

But while I’m here, I’ll explain why it was rejected; it was “Too Simple”. No elaboration on that point whatsoever. Didn’t tell me what I needed to add or what was unsatisfactory. Companies do this shit a lot these days and it’s been driving me mad. Vagueness. Deliberately refusing to provide detail or specifics and then using that as justification to reject, ban, or otherwise punish customers and developers.

I don’t like it, and you’re seeing it a lot. Throw in power-tripping jackasses without even a modicum of personal responsibility to not abuse it or use rational thought to understand what people are actually saying, and the whole thing gets worse. Ever had to deal with shitty forum moderators? While they got a significant promotion and are now ruining the Internet at large.

Anyway, my ranting aside, you can now use those shotguns in your game if you want to.

Next up, I put out a new Blender/Unity tutorial.

I’m cooking up another one on Skyboxes and after that, I’ll be making a tutorial on materials from Blender into Unity in both URP and HDRP.

Outside of game dev and other projects, I went to Belfast for the first time in 3 years. It’s changed a bit, a lot of the shops are different. I had Yakitori for the first time, there was Japanese fast food place that did it, although I’d struggle to call it fast food as it took quite a while to come out, I almost finished my meal by the time my friend got his. But if I went back, I’d probably get some of the larger items like the Katsu curry bowl.

While I was in Belfast, I had a list of things I wanted to get. The first item was a new backpack, my old one has had a hole in it for some time (Which I did patch up pretty well) but I decided that I should replace it. Got a nice one from a surplus store. Next on my list was a Swiss Army Knife. I was intending to get one when I turned 18, but I never got around to it, but I have one now. It’s quite stiff getting some of the tools out. The knife is sharp, very sharp, as the cuts on my hands currently might suggest.

The last thing on my list was straight razor, which I forgot about. So instead I went to CeX and got some more Xbox games for my collection. Dead Or Alive 3 and Call Of Duty: Finest Hour are the two big ones, plus the game for the 4th Harry Potter book. I’m trying to get a full collection of those games, but it’s gonna take a while, and likely get expensive. I also bought some anime, Haibane Renmei and 5cm Per Second.

And for the actual reason I went to Belfast: I saw the Mario film. It’s OK. It’s a kids movie and it’s fairly inoffensive. My only issue with it is Peach being overly “Kick-ass”, to the point where I wonder what her character arc is even supposed to be. Bowser’s maddening love of her gets a bit weird too, but that might just be Jack Black’s portrayal. Not that I have anything against the man.

That’s it for now. Reminder that I stream on Twitch most days of the week during daytime hours, so check that out. Till next time.

-Adam