Hey there folks.
I will probably be using itch.io’s new dev log page for my game to distribute news updates on it. You can view it here. Note that the page is using a secret URL because it isn’t public yet. I’ll probably make it public once I have some useable art assets. You can now view the page publically, but it’ll be generally unlisted if you search for it on the site.
As for the first dev log post, you can view that here freely.
As I decided to write this, the date changed from the 23rd to the 24th. I am currently starting to write this just past midnight, whether or not I finish writing this tonight is yet to be seen (Somewhat likely, I don’t write much for these).
I can’t remember if I mentioned in my last post that I started a new project. If I did, then my apologies; if not, well guess what? I started a new project.
It’s a game, this time a 3D one that focuses more on traditional control methods (PC/Console friendly), and as such has opened the door to a slew of bullshit wondrous new avenues in Unity’s development tools. Well, sort of. The difference between the 2D and 3D tools from a programming perspective is negligible at best. But, I do feel the development toolset lends itself better to this perspective.
So what is the game? I can’t talk too specifically yet, but it’s a bullet-hell game. Which considering it’s a genre I am terrible at, is pretty surprising that I’m actually doing somewhat well in constructing it.
Now, I’m not quite ready to show any gameplay yet, but I assure you it’s coming along well now. I’m gonna talk about how the progress has been so far, and I am deeply sorry that I cannot go into specific detail about certain scene, scripts, or game objects. It’ll make more sense once I start showing the game I assure you.
When I first started it, I ended up over-thinking a lot of the base principals that would construct the game. Everything was very singular and separated, but still required to communicate with each other. This way of development continued for several weeks, and became harder and harder to work with, and made progress incredibly slow. I didn’t get player movement working on that system until maybe late February or early March.
Sometime after doing the player movement stuff, I got sick and had to take a couple weeks off (I may or may not have also been playing the crap out of Nier Automata by this point, but lets ignore that detail). And after I came back to work on the game, I realised something; Everything I was doing was very convoluted and difficult to manage, especially considering how Unity manages hierarchy of objects in the game scene.
Once I realised this, I broke down all of my previous code and bundled up a lot of the objects that I was generating separately into two slightly different objects (And then made another two based on those), and then generated the game scene based on those. This amendment caused a significant increase in my efficiency and made the other tasks for myself considerably easier.
For example, the player movement code that had taken me several days to make and work properly, now worked within a matter of hours and was much easier to obtain the components I needed from certain game objects.
One of the other issues I had was a little more specific to Unity. I found a need to destroy game objects in a scene, but said objects were being collected in a list. However, Unity’s GameObject.Destroy() function only operates at the end of the frame and not immediately. Which meant that the list I was storing these objects in said there were more of them than there were, which actually broke the player movement system.
Unfortunately, the WaitForEndOfFrame() function didn’t work as I had intended, so I had to resort to rebuilding said lists in the Update() method which is expensive. It’s kind of been nagging me, so I’ll likely end up fixing it at some point in the future. Additionally, the bug can still occur if the player is positioned in a specific way, but that’s also something I’ll fix.
That’s about as specific as I can currently get. Hopefully by the time I write my next blog post I’ll have some images and video to post. Although my next post will likely be a Den post.
That’s kinda all for now.
-Adam
P.S. Persona 5 is hella rad.
P.P.S. Nier Automata is also hella rad.
First off, it’s no longer 2016. Secondly, as always, my apologies for not posting more regularly.
My project, the one I’ve been working on since 2015, is cancelled. You can view what is was here. So, let me discuss exactly what happened with it.
Around July of 2015; I have the idea to make a game, and I figured a platformer would be easy enough. I still had some left over code from Global Game Jam of that year and figured it wouldn’t be too difficult to make something playable relatively quickly. In all fairness, that part went fine. I made something playable in about a day or two. The point after that is where the problems begin.
I figured I wanted to make something with an under-lying story. Told through thing you would find in the environment. Then I thought, maybe put important things like codes and stuff into those pieces of story documents. And then I thought, what if playing the game poorly means you can’t access the real ending of the game.
OK, getting a bit complicated, but I still built the foundations for these systems with relative ease, and they actually worked quite well at tracking how the player was doing in the game. For the record, I got up to 500 deaths while debugging.
But then I decided, I should put enemies in the game.
And make it a stealth game.
And add even more types of enemies.
And then have all the enemies swarm you if you alert one of them.
And so on.
Over about 5 months, working almost everyday, I managed to get one enemy type to actually get in and out of alert states and follow the player. Along with a bunch of other tweaks.
Around January, I decided to work on a side project, and that took about 4 months away from this project.
Once I got back to it, I felt somewhat unmotivated to continue, even though I had learnt some new techniques from that side project that I should of ideally implemented into my main project. I carried on regardless, and implemented a new, stationary enemy type. While doing so, I realised the why I was handling AI was wrong, and that I really should be doing some inheritance-based structure for my code to make things a bit easier. Which never got past the early implementation stage.
Then I just played video games because I was lacking the motivation to work on it entirely, and because I wasn’t enjoying what I was doing. The sheer amount of work I had made for myself become far too daunting.
At some point in December, I decided to say “Screw it”, and play video games until the new year. Once the new year came, I looked at what was done, what needed to be done, and what the game was supposed to be; and considered it to no longer be viable to complete within the time frame I had set myself.
And so, here we are.
Overall, nothing significant was made. Frankly when you look it, it doesn’t seem like much. It was my first real Unity project though. But yeah, it looks like something other people would probably make in a couple weeks. As a learning experience, both from learning Unity and in general, I gained a lot of knowledge that will be invaluable for future projects.
Speaking of which; I have started a new project. This time, I decided to actually design what it is supposed to be from a gameplay standpoint, and will not add to it until the base design is implemented and it is absolutely necessary to expand upon it.
I don’t know how long it’s going to take, but I learnt something. Designing the game is something you should do before you start building. Doing things as you go will probably lead to feature creep, and then it’ll just become a nightmare to work on as you add more and more on. Going forward, I’m going to try and avoid that.
The rant on the Xbox One can wait a little longer.
And because everyone loves top-10 lists, here are my top-10 video games of 2016…
10. Senran Kagura Estival Versus
9. Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End
8. Zero Escape III: Zero Time Dilemma
7. Digimon Cyber Sleuth
6. Odin Sphere Leifthrasir
5. Steins;Gate Zero
4. DOOM
3. Titanfall 2
2. The Last Guardian
1. Final Fantasy XV
Honourable Mentions: Hitman (2016), Trackmania Turbo, Amplitude
Released Games I Wanted To Play or Play More Of: Quadrilateral Cowboy, Redout, Dishonored 2, I Am Setsuna, Dark Souls III, Furi, House Of The Dying Sun
And my top-10 anime of 2016:
10. Lupin III Part IV
9. Keijo
8. Shokugeki No Souma S2
7. Fune wo Amu
6. Bungou Stray Dogs
5. Koyomimonogatari
4. Yuri On Ice
3. Uchuu Patrol Luluco
2. New Game!
1. Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu
Special Mentions: Kimi no Na Wa, Sansha Sanyou, Sakamoto desu ga?
Pretty good year for both those things. Now to get back to work.
-Adam
That’s a good five months between posts? My bad.
First things first, I released that shitty pong clone I was working on, it took me 3 months longer to make than I thought, and 2 months longer to mention the fact I released it. Either way, you can go play it now. I’ll be making a page on this site for it at some point. Here is the site page for the game.
Additionally, I still intend on updating the site with all the stuff I did at Uni at some point.
Now on to what I’ve actually been doing.
I’ve been working on my game, or at least half-working on it. And when I wasn’t working on it, I was going to the Enterprise Centre to sort out my business plan; which is now more or less sorted, I just need to fix it up a bit more. Unfortunately, my game isn’t ready to show yet, probably won’t be until sometime next year once I get the art ready and have something to play. I intend on releasing a demo on itch.io when it’s ready, so people will be able to give me feedback on it.
As for video games, I’ve been playing the new Destiny expansion, Forza Horizon 3, Dark Souls III, and the Japanese version of Persona 5. I’ll probably give my impressions of them when I can be bothered to do so. Although do expect a post where I rant about the Xbox One in the somewhat near future.
But yeah, that’s what I’ve been doing. See you whenever.
-Adam
Hello again.
So that previous mobile VR headset, well turns out that the lenses were fucked. On the inside of it, the plastic was corrugated, so everything I looked at was blurry as shit no matter what I did. So I ended up replacing the thing entirely. Now I have the VIGICA RIEM 2.
This headset actually has a magnet switch (Albeit on the wrong side, so I had to switch it), lense adjusters, suction cup grip for the phone, and generally fits better. But most importantly, the lenses are smooth plastic.
It certainly an improvement over the previous piece of crap I had. Actually it’s so good, since I start using it, my previous complaints about getting motion sick have been minimal at best. So I imagine the clearer picture helps a lot with that. Additionally, it’s Google Cardboard compatible out of the box, although the model I have didn’t have the QR code, but luckily someone had generated one.
That being said, I still can’t see the point of it outside of being a head-mounted display. A decent one at that, but only that.
Now. Uncharted 4.
After the disappointment that was Uncharted 3, I didn’t have that high of expectations going into 4. And after playing a good chunk of The Last Of Us and despising it for it’s animation systems and combat, I really thought it was going to have the same issues.
Thankfully, Naughty Dog have learnt and improved.
Pretty game is pretty.
The gameplay systems have been improved where combat is concerned. Gunplay is relatively tight (Although they decided to reinvent the wheel and change how aiming and recoil is handled AGAIN) and enemies a little less bullet spongy. Additionally, other than maybe 3 areas of the game, you can use stealth to get through all your encounters. You could do this in Uncharted 2 as well, but the systems have been significantly improved here with indicators showing when an enemy sees you and so on. And should you want it, you can turn these features off.
The dialogue is good, general quips are still pretty interesting and the interactions between characters works in a believable way. The main two villains aren’t great. The main guy is kind of an arsehole in a “I’m a rich guy who wants to become famous, despite already having fame and fortune from my parents” way, which OK, it works but come on. The other is a woman who just seems over-powered for SOME REASON, but ultimately does the “You guys are crazy I’m out” thing right at end of the game. And frankly that just makes her existence seem pointless.
My biggest problem with the game is that it’s not very memorable. No particular events stand out in my mind like Nazi stuff in Uncharted 1, or the train level in 2, or the desert scene in 3. This might change as time goes on and I think about the game again, but who knows.
The in-game graphics filters are great.
Well, that’s my two cents on that.
The other game I started working on is near completion now. Just needs some adjustments and extras and it’ll be ready for release on Android.
It should of been finished weeks ago, but unfortunately I’ve been having a problem with keeping myself motivated. I’ve barely been doing anything. I just sit in my chair and browse the Internet all day sometimes and listen to the same songs I’ve heard before and then complain about how bored I am. I can’t even be arsed to go through my staggering backlog of games. So if there’s something I can give Uncharted 4 credit for, it’s making me motivated to do SOMETHING other than slowly dying in front of two LCD monitors.
Now that I’ve gotten past the mental block, maybe I’ll actually be productive again.
And I’ll call the Enterprise Centre soon. I sent them an e-mail a few days ago but never got a reply.
-Adam
P.S.
I’ll be updating this site with stuff I’ve done from Uni soonish. I need to clean up this damn room first.
It was that time of year again.
Our words: Ninja, Platform, Bandit.
Being the only 5-man team at the event, we decided to move out of the main lab an into the .NET lab, away from everyone else.
![DSC_0004[1]](https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/DSC_00041.jpg)
This is where we were set up. Pictured: Mike and Ed.
The player was a ninja that ran across a never ending train fighting a horde of bandits.
![DSC_0003[1]](https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/DSC_00031.jpg)
My set up. Just a laptop this time.
FOOD.
MORE FOOD.
That’s all the photos I took, unfortunately. Lukas and Rob ended up taking a bunch.
Anyway, we all ended up bailing around 7am. The game remained unfinished.
It was a ton of fun though, and I did a shit load of half-decent art.
COME ON AND SLAM, AND WELCOME TO GLOBAL GAME JAM!
So I travelled to Grimsby with Ed Brown for the 2015 Global Game Jam. This was the first time the event had been held there, and incidentally mine and Ed’s first time going there. It was held that the Grimsby Institute, which was actually quite a nice venue. It reminded me of “The Tech” in Omagh. Anyway, the theme this year was “What Do We Do Now?“.
Presentation before we began. Showing the theme.
After getting with a group of first years from the institute, we went about designing some ideas for what we wanted.
The whiteboard we stuck all our ideas to.
The “Yes” pile of ideas.
Originally, we sort of planned for a “What-if” scenario where the Y2K bug became real, and most computing equipment went completely haywire. The player played as an IT technician during the point when all the computing equipment was going nuts, and you had to navigate the environment. Later on, stealth mechanics, items, NPCs, and other environmental hazards would pop-up.
Writing some ideas.
The first level would have taken place in an office, and demonstrated some of the navigational mechanics the player has, as well as partly setting up the game world. The second level would act more as a set piece, showing the world around being thrown into a state of havoc. The third level that was planned was a underground level, showing more of the use of items and environment navigation.
First level design.
It was a very ambitious design, heavily relying on art. Thankfully we had 3 artists. The being said, the morning after, we abandoned the design in favour of something else.
The room we were stuck in for 48 hours.
Ed being Ed.
The new game was a more simplistic platformer that heavily relied on it’s art to standout. The reasoning for this decision was because we had 3 good artist, 1 sound guy, 1 good programmer (Ed), 2 not so good programmers (Including me), and 1 other person. The idea we originally came up with was quite taxing from both an art and programming standpoint, so changing it to something less crazy was probably for the best.
Anyway, GitHub is not as great as people say it is. With Unity anyway.
Myself and Ed hadn’t really used it much, so we had no idea what to expect. But basically it broke down to this; Ed would do a thing, someone else would do something as well, Ed would commit it, other guy would get a fuckload of conflicts and try to merge, other guy loses hours of work.
Because of that, programming turned into a “one PC at a time” kind of deal. So Ed was really the only person working on it from a programming perspective. Actually, his laptop’s Internet would crap itself, so it he eventually started using other people’s PCs. In case you were wondering what I ended up working on, I programmed the Checkpoints within the level (Which I then rewrote with Ed sitting next to me), made the particle effects for the butterfly, and rigged the level.
Oh yeah, I guess I haven’t explained fully what the game is. The game was a platformer where the character would try to chase a butterfly through a continuous level, filled with enemies and devious platforming. The butterfly was meant to represent the characters dreams. I won’t spoil what happens, you can play it for yourself later.
Anyway, in the downtime; I re-familiarized myself with Unity by watching tutorials. Especially the new ones that covered 2D games. After a while, I became more confident in my ability to work and started to help out a bit, suggesting solutions to problems and such.
The people we were working with were alright. Other than the occasional loud noises and Nerf gun fights, things were mostly pleasant. People coming into the room and distracting us was a problem during the second night though.
Our team. Ed and myself on the far right.
Somehow I managed to get some sleep, although it was the most uncomfortable thing in the world having to sleep on the floor underneath a desk. Not to mention the sporadic heating problems, whether it was either too hot or too cold.
Anyway, back to the game.
The art was great, my checkpoints mostly worked, and it played fine.
There were a handful of issues, like most games made in 48 hours.
All things considered though, I’m relatively happy with what we made, and I had fun at the event. Eating food, bantering, designing things. Was fun.
And guess what, we won a thing:
Woo! We won a thing!
And then Ed (After being awake for about 30 something hours) drove me home. Which was fun because we were both tired and the GPS would occasionally point us in the wrong direction.
This is the second time I have stayed for the entirety of a jam, and the first time I stayed for the whole of a GGJ.
Our team’s page can be found here: http://globalgamejam.org/2015/games/painted-wings
Additionally, here’s Ed’s Blog and here’s an article about the jam.
For those wondering whether you should go to one of these things, I’d recommend it. But I’d also recommend bringing a sleeping bag.
-Adam
I’m not really going to talk about the event, it happened nearly a month ago, but I’m posting what I took now. Sorry about being late.
I’m going to admit that I was very productive this week, partly due to watching a fair amount of Mad Men the past couple of days. However, I still managed to at least get started on a GameMaker project, and I’ve began designing some level and mechanic concepts to help me build the thing. Here’s what I have so far:
From here, I’m just planning to make these levels as a sort of basis for what I can do, then go from there to create far more complex environments. Still not entirely sure what this game is going to be about, I have some ideas, but nothing concrete.
As for other stuff I did, well I made new background for the site, I think it looks significantly better than before. And I also cleaned up my work environment (As in my room), now I can use my other desk for actual art projects again.
In terms of games, not much. Still playing Persona 3 Portable and Persona 2. MK9 for the PC came out and it seems decent. It feels kinda clunky seeing as I’ve been playing Persona 4 Arena a fair amount. And I went back to the ICO and Shadow Of The Colossus Collection, to which I realised it has Remote Play support, which is awesome. ICO holds up better than I thought it would, although modern game design hasn’t done any favours to my puzzle-solving ability. They’re not too bad, but I certainly had to refer to a walkthrough to point myself in the right direction a couple of times. Right now I’m at the East Gate Bench.
Speaking of ICO, I’ve started to think about gender roles in games again, and my personal opinion on it is very different to how everybody else thinks it should be done. I’m gonna do a tad more research before I write anything.
And I also played Battlefield 3 seeing as it was on PS+ this month. And you know what? It is awful on consoles. Damn near unplayable.
Plans For Next Week:
That’s it for now, see you next week!
-Adam
So the first week of Summer projects has proven to be an interesting one. I spent most of my time doing the improved graphics of the MGC forum and altering all the layout stuff for it.
It’s not the prettiest thing in the world, but for a first coat of new paint it certainly does the job and there’s still plenty of improvements to work on. Next on the list of features in a homepage and the actual editing of the CSS that gives the forum that look (I’m currently using Forumotion’s back-end for most of this stuff).
In terms of other stuff I’ve been doing, I went back to a previous GameMaker project to see if I could correct and revive it. I made a couple of levels to see how it played and it worked fine. The idea in question is a platformer with personal commentary overlapping it to give some idea into the mind of the creator of the world… Or I could just use it as an outlet for my thoughts, which would make this blog rather redundant. Either way, I did more work in two hours than an ex-colleague of mine did in three months. And by that I mean I did work while he sat an played Guild Wars 2 and complained at me for his laziness.
Anyway, I have noticed that I’m not super-productive like I used to be. I still played quite a few games between tasks and often got sidetracked by videos and things on the internet. Well, at least I know what to cut down on during next week. And for reference, no, I don’t work on weekends unless I really have to.
Next Weeks Plans Are:
-Adam