Burrow Games

I’ve turned back on myself and I’m working on Meteor Arena yet again!  I realized that my programming skills weren’t up to par and were holding me back the hard way so I spent the past month learning C# and practicing.

The past week I’ve been implementing the AI Steering Behavoirs and a StateMachine in C# from the book Programming Game AI by Example, it’s been a lot of fun, I think I’ll make a few blog posts detailing the Unity implementation of the State Machine and AI if people are interested.

Anyways as the title says, Pew Pew!  I spent a bit of time today implementing a laser beam system.  It’s a fairly simple script and uses the LineRenderer component of Unity.  The noise function can be used to create random noise in the beam.  You should attach a particle system to the beam script as well if you want it to do shot some sparks when it hits something.

I’ve uploaded the script here and you can see how it looks:

This didn’t work out, it’s much harder than I expected to make a full blown game in 48 hours!  I had an idea but it didn’t turn out to be fun while playing so I got off on a tangent.  Next Ludum Dare I will be more prepared, just you wait!

I’ve been working a lot on Codename: Max for the five weeks. It’s coming along quite well and I’ve been learning a lot in the process!

I’ve decided to take a 2 day break though to compete in the most recent Ludum Dare http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/

The theme is Alone, the game will actually be kinda similar to Codename: Max, which should help me make it quicker  It will be about an Alien stuck alone on a planet trying to make his way back home.

He’s gonna fly his rocket ship up and try to collect parts on the way.  Everytime failing until he gathers enough parts to make it home!  For mobiles it will be tilt based, on PC it will use the mouse/keyboard.

I’ve been hard at work lately!

I’ve put Meteor Arena on a holding pattern for now. Atari actually released a new version of Asteroids called Asteroids: Gunner. They’ve implemented a lot of ideas I had for Meteor Arena in their game, although the Style is quite different. Also they seem to have focused themselves on solely Asteroids, which to be honest gets quite boring after a while. The Asteroids simply don’t provide enough of a challenge for a player and their patterns are easily mastered. Its the main reason I’ve been working on enemy AI for my game, to provide a challenge and excitment. Multiplayer will definitely make Meteor Arena an awesome game to play. I’m a huge fan of Quake style deathmatch games. I also really like DOTA, I may just combine the two

So why was Meteor Arena put on hold? I had a great idea for a touch game last week, that’s why! The new game, which shall have a code name of max, is a casual touch based game for mobile devices. Max is my younger brother who I’m naming the game after. The idea floated into my head while driving home from work and I took a break from Meteor Arena to create a prototype before heading out on Friday Night. The mechanics for the game are very unique, from my research I haven’t seen any iOS games that use a similar mechanic, although I’m sure there are at least a few. The theme of the game with these mechanics however is completely unique and I know has the potential to be a solid entertaining game. It will be a casual touch based games. I’m also doing all the artwork myself which is turning out to be fun. I don’t want to reveal too much just yet, but I will when the game is more polished.

This is max so far as I’ve been drawing him in Inkscape. I’m still learning how to draw, but he’s turning out quite well

I’ve uploaded a new verson of Meteor Arena(Working Title), a few of the changes:

• Increased game area with scrolling camera
• Enemy Melee ships that will pursue your character
• Infinite asteroid spawning with increasing difficulty
• Tweaked mechanics
• A planet in the background!

I’ve got so many new ideas of what I want to add into the game, the AI code I’ve been writing has been coming out really well.  I’m getting a lot of my ideas from the book Programming Game AI by Example which is an excellent resource.  I really like it so far, I still need to implement flocking behavoir however, which should put a really interesting spin on what I have planned.  The algorithms the book uses are solid, however they’re all done in C++ so some tricks and comprises are required to work them into UnityScript.  I plan on moving to C# as soon as I finish this game since it is a much more robust language.

The melee character’s behavior is currently a work in progress, I plan on having him charge against your ship once he gets within a certain range so the trick will be to constantly stay in motion to avoid them.  I’ll be adding in close range enemies and long range enemies as well, along with a cruiser sized ship that the player will have to deal with eventually.

Also I will be trying out some new control schemes including a standard twin stick style control scheme soon.  After I finish the single player component and release it to iOS/Android I want to work on implementing mutliplayer Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch.

Here are some screenshots and as usual you can play the WIP at here.

I’ve been working on the game demo lately and improving it incrementally.  

So far I’ve added:

• The ability for your ship to die after hitting asteroids 3 times
• Asteroids blow up into smaller chunks when they explode
• Bullets!
• Explosions with sounds!
• Different colored starfield background

 I’ve got a lot more things to add into the game.

• Level state manager to manage asteroids and increase difficulty
• More sound effects
• Fine tune mechanics
• More particle effects when asteroids break into chunks
• Sound control button to quickly mute
• Title Screen
• Options Screen
• Points scoring system

I may or may not add new weapons and possibly Enemy ships to increase the difficulty.  Undecided as of yet.  I’m also not 100% sure about the spotlight approach to viewing asteroids, it makes it more difficult but it can seem a little gimmicky.  I want the game to get REALLY hard as it goes on, making it difficult to get a high score, but I need to figure out a mechanic to add into the game to provide it with some depth for skillful players.

You can play the current Work In Progress here.

This weekend I was with my friend and we decided to try our hands at making an Asteroids clone.  This is the work in progress so far!  I was mainly concerned with the code to handle the control scheme and basic collision detection.  I’ll be adding weaponry effects and randomized asteroids, along with asteroid destruction and explosions as I work on it this week.

One idea that I was using to differentiate it from Asteroids was to put a spot light on the players ship, so the player could only directly see what’s being illuminated in a limited field of view.  I tested it out, and it actually feels scary not knowing wether an asteroid is near you or not, forcing you to constantly manuever your ship to illuminate the immediate area.  I’m still playing around with this idea, I’m debating on adding flares into the game for your ship to temporarily illuminate a small area.  

Unity is so powerful for rapidly testing new ideas.  What’s been done so far was whipped up in about 5 hours of toying with Unity.  I think this shows how powerful Unity is even though I still consider myself a beginner!

The controls are wsad or the arrow keys, ctrl or mouse1 to fire, and r to restart.

« created with Unity »

I finished Unity 3.x Game Development by Example Beginner’s Guide today.  It was a good read, the Author is very clear in his writing style and is humorous.  The example projects are rather lackluster though, and he does attempt to hold your hand through the entire development process.  This wasn’t unexpected considering the book is targeted towards Beginner’s.  I went through the book mainly to get a rough handle on Unity’s syntax and structure which I feel I’ve accomplished.  Since it only took me about a week to go through, I consider the time well spent, especially since this hasn’t been my only learning resource during that time period.

There is still so much to learn though, it feels quite intimidating!  This is why it’s important to stay motivated and excited about future projects, it’s easy to drown and burn out if you’re not motivated.  I’m reading all of my technical materials from Safari Books Online, an incredibly valuable service.  Unfortunately the basic subscription is limited to 10 books at a time per month which feels quite limited when starting out on a new platform.  I still like it a lot though, it’s nice to be able to pick and choose books as I need since I tend to read a lot when learning a new SDK or API.

More updates to come soon!  I should be able to get a prototype up and running of my first game Centauri Run within the next 2 weeks, with life pending negotations.

I’m currently in the process of learning Unity.  One of the books I’m speed reading through is Unity Game Development 3.x By Example, and one of the example projects is to make a flip card matching game.  So far I really like Unity.  The WSYIWG editor is very simple to use for someone like me who is trained in 3D CAD software.  Scripting interactions with Javascript is also very easy and the design patterns used in Unity are intuitive.

I’m hoping that by the weekend I’ll be working on my current game proposal.  The game is going to be a manuevering game that takes place in outer space.  It’s going to incorporate various elements of shoot em ups and anti-gravity racers.  I’m not revealing too much just yet because the game design is still very plastic and is subject to change.  However, this upcoming weekend should be very productive.

So without further ado, here is robot repair!  I’ll be updating the project this week and refining it slightly, just to add a little polish to it.  This project was mostly uploaded to test how my current webhost handles Unity web applications.  It will be taken down eventually.

Edit: Removed it, will be uploading a better game soon ^__^

Hey folks!

This will be the first post in a long running blog series by me.

I’m a 24 year old Mechanical Engineer from New York City who has a passion for video games, software development, futurism, and robotics.  I’m currently working on a game in Unity 3D to be released via the web and iOS/Android.  Right now I’m working solo on my game development, so the final products you see will be the result of a lot of hard work.  I have a lot of game ideas running through my head, It’s going to be exciting to see these ideas flesh out into working games.  The main goal of this studio will be to release quality entertaining games, feedback is always appreciated.  I’ll also be using my games as a vessel to explore the concepts of futurism and what lies ahead for us!  I’ll be releasing more details as my games mature and approach release, stay tuned!