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Hello all,

Recently I’ve been having a bit of a dilemma… You see, creating games requires alot of different talents, ranging from Sound Design and Visual Arts… to Programming… and just plain old fashioned creativity…
So with all these options or paths in game design, I’ve had a bit of a hard time focusing on 1 thing… Do I practice drawing every day to get better ? Or should I focus 100% on programming… and what about music ? and 3d modelling!
Decisions Decisions… Makes me wish the day had more hours… preferably 50+ hours pr day, that would be ideal for me 😉

So for the past few days I have focused on the programming, and tried to get at least 1½-2 hours worth of drawing in as well. I reinstalled my tablet on my new pc, and started looking for all the digital brushes that I had gathered in the past for my old pc.

And by the end of the night, I had managed to paint a concept art (its not really that useful, since I dont see it being used in a game or anything… but it was still a satisfying experience to finish a piece… even if it is relatively basic painting of a mountain scene… with a bunch of magic thrown in for effect 😉 )

Mount-Raven-concept-01

I also did alot of work in Unity. I’ve now read and understood up until the 6th chapter in the Will Goldstone book called: Unity Game Development Essentials. 🙂 I highly recommend this book for anyone new to Unity.

Chapter 1 to 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

I am off work for a week now, and I will be focusing strongly on drawing practice as well learning more programming in the next 7 days, so stay tuned for updates 🙂

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Hello all…

Slackiest weekend ever… But at least its over and a more productive week can begin 🙂 (Who would have thought I would ever complain that I didnt work enough during the weekend ? 😛 )

In this latest update I have added a work in progress 4th level (who am i kidding… all the levels are work in progress… the whole GAME is work in progress ;D )

I’ve remodelled the Yellow Gemstone in Blender, making it a more coin-ish appearance… And while I was in blender, I decided to have some fun with a Cube and the Extrusion Tool combined with a bit of scaling and rotating (yes, I am a total newbie at 3d modelling… So if you’re an expert and reading this… and suffering from an abundance of generosity, then dont hesitate to throw your leet skillz in my general direction 😀 ) I havent added an actual Texturemap to the Firetrap model, as I have still yet to learn how to apply those kinds of things and I couldnt be arsed to learn it since I figured the actual coding at present time was more important 😛

Most of the levels also recieved tweaks here and there… I played through the maps alot, and also looked over the shoulders of various playtesters to try and figure out exactly where the maps are not making sense, and where you end up not knowing where to go.

I’ve also played around with the PlayerPrefs system in Unity3d, which is basically a way of storing information on the user’s computer. Thereby allowing the game to remember specific things. In this case, the Highscore (Its not an Internet Highscore, it is simply YOUR personal highscore on YOUR computer… )

Its not perfect, but its a start. 🙂 You’ll find the highscore meter at the start menu in the game, its not finished or polished, but it remembers the best score you did on that computer 🙂

Oh, and finally, before I wrap up this blogpost, as you can probably see, I’ve also played around a little bit with the text formatting on the blogpost, let me know what you think… be it good, bad or in between. Any feedback is appreciated 🙂

Thanks,

Eli (TastyGraph)

 

ps. I am aware of the horrible english in the subject of my blogpost… it seemed like a funny idea at the time 😛

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Yep, today is the 24th of November… so just 1 month left until Christmas… But I say lets celebrate Christmas in November!!! So in the spirit of christmas, the firetraps will now reward you with small and big gems, depending on which sort of Crate you toss at them 😉

No… not really 😛

Actually, it wasnt really in the spirit of christmas, but hey ho 😛 It was my plan all along that the crates would eventually give rewards of some sort 🙂 And today seemed a good day to finally figure out how to do it, and add it in the game 🙂

But you guys had no way of knowing what was coming in the future, or what was being developed.

So to remedy that, as well as to motivate myself. I have now added a Suggestions/To-Do page. You can find the page at the top of the blog, or in the right side of the blog at the Pages section.

 

Dont hesitate to let me know what you think. (And yes, I am aware that the rotation on the gems are a bit … woogy 😛 I am working on that)

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Another day with a decent amount of tweaks and updates..

Extra Lives now display a little text when you pick them up, making it immediately known to you that you picked up an extra life.

Timer mode now resets to 300 seconds everytime you switch a level or you die (effectively giving you 300 seconds for every attempt you do at completing a level…)

Ended up spending most of the morning trying to figure out why the bloody Timer mode refused to reset on level 3 but worked fine on lvl 1 and 2… made absolutely no sense… and ultimately I didnt find out why.. But I did get it fixed… go figure 😉

Here is a video for the lazy folks 🙂

And once again, please dont hesitate to post a comment or let me know what you think of the game or the latest updates… It is really the only way for me to figure out whats good and whats not so good 🙂

Or what you would like to see changed or added to the game 🙂

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I’ve recently come in contact with a 3d modeller who is willing to help out with some basic models for the game, thereby allowing me to focus more on the actual coding and designing 🙂

I’ll post a link for his portfolio/showcase later once I get it 😉

His first addition to the project is a little prism-like gem that will replace the yellow gem/coin thingy that we have in the game for bonus/pickups 🙂

I’ve added it to the game and tried out a Diamond-effect on it… didnt quite work as I had intended, but rest assured, it will be sorted once we figure out how to make a purdier looking one 🙂

Anyways, here’s a bit of camera-scanned concept art from TastyGraph’s sketchbook and flickr page 😉

Gemstone and 1up heart concepts
18-11-2009

End of Level Portal, locked and unlocked 🙂
18-11-2009

18-11-2009

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Hi all…

 

From figuring out how to do the extra life thingy, I managed to get my head around how to work with a score for the player, and gaining points from picking up the gems/coins… I also did a bit of an overhaul on the 3 levels, adding more fire thingies and more gems and tried to make the lifts a bit more interesting to use, by adding in the gems in rows while you’re travelling… giving you a POP POP PPPPPPOP!!! feel as you use the lifts… at least the first time 😉

 

Now I just need to figure out how to make it so that the scores and lives do not reset everytime a new level loads… by the end of tomorrow, I should have that nut cracked! ;D

 

Ooh, and before I forget… I changed it from being a streamed game (it would load as soon as the first map was finished, but sometimes this resulted in some problems for slow downloaders since some items would be missing from the next map… I’ll get it sorted, but for now I have changed it to a non-streaming format, so it will download all of the game before actually starting to play.)

On a more positive note though… Platform Textures are back! Yay! ;D The game looks semi-reasonable, once again 🙂 … but just semi 😉

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A bit of a large update was made today… I learned alot of new ways of working with the Unity3d engine, and as a result I have now figured out how to make the BonusGems play a sound even after I have destroyed them. So no more laggy feeling of running through Coins/Gems and hearing the pop instantly but watching the gem disappear after half a second, or the sound getting interrupted because the gem disappeared.

I’ve also added a little Lives Counter at the bottom left of the screen, please let me know if its working on your end, as I had ALOT of difficulties figuring out how to place the text and having it scale depending on the user’s screen-resolution.  Since there is now a visible cue telling you how many lives you have left, I decided to also add in a new Bonus item, the Extra Life! It looks like the Gem/Coin thing, except its green 😉 (at least for now! :p )

I am aware that the lives reset to 3 everytime you switch map, this will of course get fixed once i fully understand how to keep specific objects alive or prevent them from resetting between map-loads 🙂

Then you will most likely also notice that there has been made some changes to the text… and thats because I have figured out how to work with fonts and create custom GUI (Graphical User Interface… the stuff you click on and look at :p the menu thingy)

Oh, and I also managed to do a little concept drawing of what I am aiming to make my Main-Character in this little game, for when I figure out how to do 3d models AND animate the darn thing 🙂 Baby steps… baby steps 😉 I’ll get there eventually, but for now my priority is on the game design, rather than the graphics… 🙂

I had fun drawing this. I was inspired by Mario and most of the short/stubby characters with big heads and a cute appearance.. Havent thought of a name yet, so feel free to let me hear your suggestions 🙂

13112009720.jpg

So all in all, a nice productive day 🙂