Anomalous Underdog

OpenInFileBrowser Code

2013-05-19T21:45:00.001+08:00

I realized there's a debacle right now in the Unity Wiki Website over its content being under the Creative Commons License.

So to make sure there's no legal problems with using this code, here's a re-upload of my OpenFileInBrowser code for Unity here in my blog.

As always, I put this code in Public Domain as it's quite simple but good enough to be shared.

public static class OpenInFileBrowser
{
   public static bool IsInMacOS
   {
      get
      {
         return SystemInfo.operatingSystem.IndexOf("Mac OS") != -1;
      }
   }
 
   public static bool IsInWinOS
   {
      get
      {
         return SystemInfo.operatingSystem.IndexOf("Windows") != -1;
      }
   }
 
   [MenuItem("Window/Test OpenInFileBrowser")]
   public static void Test()
   {
      //string path = "/Users/Ferds/Unity Projects/BuildReportTool/BuildReportUnityProject/Assets/BuildReportDebug";
      //string path = "/Users/Ferds/Unity Projects/BuildReportTool/BuildReportUnityProject/Assets/BuildReportDebug/EditorMorel.log.txt";
      //string path = "/Users/Ferds/UnityBuildReports/";
      string path = "/Users/Ferds/UnityBuildReports/test4.xml";
 
      Open(path);
   }
 
 
   public static void OpenInMac(string path)
   {
      bool openInsidesOfFolder = false;
 
      // try mac
      string macPath = path.Replace("\\", "/"); // mac finder doesn't like backward slashes
 
      if (Directory.Exists(macPath)) // if path requested is a folder, automatically open insides of that folder
      {
         openInsidesOfFolder = true;
      }
 
      //Debug.Log("macPath: " + macPath);
      //Debug.Log("openInsidesOfFolder: " + openInsidesOfFolder);
 
      if (!macPath.StartsWith("\""))
      {
         macPath = "\"" + macPath;
      }
      if (!macPath.EndsWith("\""))
      {
         macPath = macPath + "\"";
      }
      string arguments = (openInsidesOfFolder ? "" : "-R ") + macPath;
      //Debug.Log("arguments: " + arguments);
      try
      {
         System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("open", arguments);
      }
      catch(System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception e)
      {
         // tried to open mac finder in windows
         // just silently skip error
         // we currently have no platform define for the current OS we are in, so we resort to this
         e.HelpLink = ""; // do anything with this variable to silence warning about not using it
      }
   }
 
   public static void OpenInWin(string path)
   {
      bool openInsidesOfFolder = false;
 
      // try windows
      string winPath = path.Replace("/", "\\"); // windows explorer doesn't like forward slashes
 
      if (Directory.Exists(winPath)) // if path requested is a folder, automatically open insides of that folder
      {
         openInsidesOfFolder = true;
      }
      try
      {
         System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("explorer.exe", (openInsidesOfFolder ? "/root," : "/select,") + winPath);
      }
      catch(System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception e)
      {
         // tried to open win explorer in mac
         // just silently skip error
         // we currently have no platform define for the current OS we are in, so we resort to this
         e.HelpLink = ""; // do anything with this variable to silence warning about not using it
      }
   }
 
   public static void Open(string path)
   {
      if (IsInWinOS)
      {
         OpenInWinFileBrowser(path);
      }
      else if (IsInMacOS)
      {
         OpenInMacFileBrowser(path);
      }
      else // couldn't determine OS
      {
         OpenInWinFileBrowser(path);
         OpenInMacFileBrowser(path);
      }
   }
}

My first time selling on the Unity Asset Store

2013-05-08T07:23:00.001+08:00

It started with this. Someone was having trouble with his build size so I explained that thing about the Editor.log, in that it actually had info on the breakdown of your build's file size!

So I went and whipped up a simple front-end for the log's build info over a weekend.

Then I asked the forums if they'd be interested in having it on the Asset Store. A handful of people agreed. Then I thought, why don't I try selling it, maybe for just a few bucks to see what's the experience of selling on the Asset Store? We need the money anyway.

There was a discussion in a LinkedIn Unity group where someone was adamant that I should give it for free and that I'd only get a few bucks out of it. It was quite a bummer. It was a bit depressing actually.

So I set it to $2 as an introductory price and waited how it would turn out. The plan went that I'd keep it as $2 for one week then set it to the standard price.

David Helgason even retweeted my tweet about it. I guess it was like... I don't know. Stevie Wonder humming a tune you just made up? It was unexpectedly cool.

David's a pretty awesome guy.

I placed a public poll on my forum thread asking "How much would you be willing to pay for this plugin?" The choices I put where $2, $5, and $10. Majority answered $5. I guess they're not that cheap that they'd settle for the lowest price. Seems like $10 is too much too. So we figured $5 was the sweet spot.

By the end of the week I then set it to $5, only to realize that price changes do, in fact, still have to go through review by the Asset Store team. Then David again helped me out. It's quite awesome that a big company like Unity still has the time to help out the little guys using their products.

So the $2 sale went for approximately 9 days. A total of 117 people bought it during that period.

I'd shudder to think that $163 is only a few bucks. Must be there's a really high standard of living where that guy is.

Now that the selling price is $5, the amount of people who purchased is about 1/3rds lesser. I still got higher sales overall though.

It's selling quite well, for something I just whipped up over the weekend (though I do improve it every now and then). It's managed to get consistent five stars from reviews. It even got to the Asset Store front page one time.

Here's the link to the Asset Store page: http://u3d.as/4u2

Here are some things I'd like to share for my experience:

If a customer previously purchased directly from you (not from Asset Store), it cannot be unlocked for them in the Asset Store for free. They have to buy it again in the Asset Store.
Your publisher page is quite bare-bones. There's no sales graph or overall total sales. There's only the sales per month, and you can only view one month at a time. Switching from one month to the next is quite slow (for my Internet connection).
Related to that, when a customer posts a user review, you get no email notification about it, or any notification whatsoever. You have to visit your asset store product's page every now and then to see if someone has a complaint in their review, or some misunderstanding you'd like to clear up. UT's take on this is that it's your job to facilitate communication with your customers, but something like an option for email notification in this case would be nice, no?
The ways you could offer support is usually via Twitter, email, tell them that they can PM you in the Unity forums, or if you have a forum thread about your product, give them a link. You'd usually put such links in your Asset Store product page's description.
I'd like to reiterate the standard warning: If enough customers complain that they are not getting adequate support from you, UT has the right to take down your product.
If your product is something visual, then potential customers will like to see video demos, or web interactive demos to see an example of how your product is useful. Their mindset is: "So what's this Asset Store package? Will it be useful in the project I'm working on?" That second question is what you need to address. And you do it by showing potential scenarios of how it's used, i.e. demos.
If your product is purely code instead, perhaps a video tutorial how to use it can also work. At the very least, post some screenshots. Surely there's something visually presentable that you can show?
If your asset store package has code, customers will appreciate it if you separate your code into your own namespace as much as possible to avoid name conflicts.
Use the lowest possible version of Unity when releasing your asset package. Since they are distributed as .unitypackage files, the version of Unity used to create the .unitypackage is also the lowest version allowed to import that file. Frankly, I think this is just a conspiracy to force you to upgrade your licenses. I keep an installation of Unity 3.5.3 in this case.
Selling on the Unity Asset Store is a non-exclusive deal. I.e. you are free to sell your product via other stores (ex. gameprefabs.com)
You can't verify if a person who emailed you really purchased your product just using your publisher dashboard alone. You can, however, email the Asset Store Team to verify for you if someone indeed purchased it. Dantus in the Unity forums points out email isn't necessary. All you need to do to verify if someone purchased your asset is to ask them for their Invoice Number. Then in your publisher dashboard, there's a tab called "Verify Invoice". You can type the Invoice Number there to verify someone's purchase. (For example, say, someone reported a bug. So you fix it and would like to send it to the bug reporter to test the fix on his machine. What if he didn't really purchase your product? You better verify to be safe.)
Possible places you can use to advertise your asset package:

Main Unity Forums
Google+ Unity Community
LinkedIn Unity Group
Unity South East Asian Mailing List (only if you're based in South East Asia!)
Unity3d Subreddit

Global Game Jam 2013

2013-01-28T14:57:00.000+08:00

January 25, 2013. Start of Global Game Jam 2013.

I woke up at 6 PM in our home-office, still a little bit groggy. I think my fever was gone.

Global Game Jam 2013 had already started and I was two cities away from the nearest jam site. What the hell do I do?

The me back in that January 25th would never have thought that I'd bag a Best Art of Manila Game Jam 2013.

Let me backtrack for a moment.

I heard of the Global Game Jams before. I thought it was crazy to try to come up with a game in just two days' worth of time.

But last year I was invited to be a mentor in the Unity Game Jam Manila and I realized, hey, this is pretty fun. I should have participated instead.

So I determined that come 2013, I'll start joining the Global Game Jam.

Boys will be boys

It was the night before the Game Jam. We were bunking in our little home-office as usual.

For some goddamn reason, the whole apartment room started smelling like semen. Seriously man, putang ina, amoy tamod. What the flying fuck??? Is someone jacking off? We're all guys here, but there's this little thing called respect...

But it turned out it was coming from outside the window.

My friends said it was Zonrox. Here in the Philippines we have a bleach brand called Zonrox. And it suspiciously smells like goddamn semen.

Ladies and gentlemen, Exhibit A.

My other theory was that some bored neighbor was masturbating from his window. He probably kept bottles of it, judging from the strength of the smell.

I can't remember if I had my headache before or after that. Anyway I was starting to feel nauseous so I slept early.

The next morning, straight to the toilet I vomited. According to online pregnancy forums, clear and bitter vomit is just normal stomach bile.

I still had a headache so I slept the whole day.

So when I woke up, it was 6 PM, and the Global Game Jam already started.

I was still concerned for my health, so a 48 hour contest sounded risky.

I thought, no way, I want this. Leeroy Jenkins all the way!

You know I heard some people use autosuggestion to actually improve their health, like a placebo but without going through the fake meds.

I like to think Gurren Lagann was a factual story.

Anyway, I packed my stuff and through the graces of public transportation, I was able to hail a cab only after 30 minutes of waiting and overtaking my opponents for the nearest vacant taxi.

Day 1

I arrived about 8 PM I think. The people were just about to the last few pitches. I walked in, bags in tow, looking for the nearest acquaintance.

"Excuse me-- Oh yeah I just got here-- Hey, what's the theme?"

So it was a heartbeat sound.

I looked for the nearest empty table and started setting up.

The first idea I had was a character whose heartbeats physically affect the world around him.

Then I had a visual recollection of this game called Journey, which from a video, I recalled, shows that the way to communicate to your stranger friend was by pulses.

So from there I started my concept on the character.

You can easily see the influence from Journey here.

I like to start with the art even though I already had a rough idea of what gameplay I want.

Usually people would go for using capsules as placeholders for character graphics and refine their mechanics until it's good, then swap in the real graphics.

And that's really how you should do it, because you need to concentrate on refining the gameplay first.

But my brain just doesn't want to work that way, at least, at that moment.

I really need to see the guy in there. He doesn't have to be normal-mapped and everything, but just see his shape, see him walking, really makes me feel focused.

Note: Actually I did not have the time to animate him walking.

I also recalled my past idea of sound locks.

Sound locks are locks that have no tangible keyhole. Instead the lock is adorned with a figurehead of an animal.

You have to play a sound of the other animal it fears so the lock will open.

So a lock of a cat would open upon playing the sound of a dog bark. Subsequently, it would lock upon hearing the sound of a mouse squeak.

The table behind me was of a group of students. This jam site was sponsored by iACADEMY, a local college (actually the college I went to and subsequently dropped out from).

The students were kinda obnoxious. But it was likely a wrong first impression on my part.

In retrospect, I should have introduced myself. But I was not in networking-for-business mode, I was in I-need-to-finish-this-game-in-48-hours mode.

They were also understandably amateurish (well, they were still students). I could overhear them having problems over the simplest things in the Unity game engine. I did my best to stop sighing out loud. I kind-of wanted to help them, but I also needed to concentrate on my game.

I didn't want to come off sounding like a showoff also, considering I'm a one-man team competing in an otherwise roomful of teams who are mostly looking healthy in the members quantity section.

Marnielle Estrada was the only other one-man team in the jam afaik. Hats off to Marnielle for an awesome game! Check it out: Traversal.

Just being there working alone, I felt I was being obnoxious.

It made me feel like kind-of insecure, and it probably did affect my productivity in some way.

To their credit, that team behind me received the "Best Technology" award. This is their game: http://globalgamejam.org/2013/pound-pound-i-dont-want-diet

My ego is saying "Ha! One time I finished a multiplayer mecha game in under 10 hours". But well, now that, is being obnoxious.

Back on the game.

For some reason, I recalled this Unity game called Silence in the Mist. A really, really beautiful looking game with minimalistic graphics.

Screenshots from Silence in the Mist

I thought I'd follow in its footsteps and make the world of the game similar to that.

For some arbitrary reason, I thought of making the trees pulsate with life every time you emit a heartbeat near one. I just thought it made sense.

So over time, I thought of the idea that your character went into this gray, lifeless world, and use his ability of emitting heartbeats to bring back life and color.

I only realized now, the trees look like cherry blossoms and the scenery reminds me of old Japanese films. The character is even wearing a straw hat, which I really put there on a whim, and didn't really have any significance.

I, using the expression loosely, called it a day at 5 AM. I got my character walking, a camera system in place, and the pulsing heartbeat visuals.

But what exactly do you do with the heartbeat ability you have?

I was wrestling with the sound lock idea. How do you play sounds other than a heartbeat? I thought that your character would absorb other animals' sounds.

Your character's color would change to reflect it. Absorbing a meow sound from a blue cat would turn your character blue, absorbing a bark sound from a red dog would turn you red.

How do you absorb and how do you release? It felt like it's veering away from the heartbeat theme.

My internal brainstorming was going nowhere. So I slept.

I, being the free spirit I am who does not plan ahead, did not bring any means to sleep comfortably.

Get the spare t-shirts, bundle them up like a pillow on the floor, BAM. There's your bed. End of problem.

Even while trying to sleep I can hear people judging my choice of bedding.

Day 2

By Saturday afternoon, I did the Barber's Knock puzzle, which took the whole day.

It's that distinctive "tap-ta-ta-tap-tap tap tap" melody of knocking you probably already know.

The reason why it's "Barber's Knock" is because I read in a novel that it was called that way. I didn't know it had a name.

Apparently, a lot of people too. I tried Googling for more info and the best I saw was only one forum post that was asking about it. Apparently it came from the phrase "shave and a haircut, two bits!"

No one got the reference though. I guess that makes the game hipster.

In code, I used the Listener/Observer design pattern, to let objects know of incoming heartbeats the player made. The objects are quite literally, listeners.

By night I started on the sound locks, or rather, a sound gate. I just went with the standard idea I had, a cat blocking your path, wherein you need to play its opposing sound for it to stand aside.

I couldn't think of a really nice looking dog (his bark would be the "key") but I did see a really cute drawing of a small cat, so on a whim, I made a small cat whose meow opens the gate.

I probably should have used a dog instead. A dog would have been easily associated with a cat, rather than a cat with another cat.

My idea then, was that pulsing a heartbeat on an animal will bring it to life, which will then follow you around.

After that, whenever you pulse heartbeats, your animal friend will meow or bark to the tune of the beat you did.

I had the sound gate working by 4 AM I think.

I then turned my attention on the really glaring problem of what the whole place will be and how you will achieve your goal.

So the goal was to bring the world back to life. My simple idea was to have a tower at the end of the level where you do something and a shining, blinding light you activate will finally brings things to life.

Something like that. Journey had a mountain you went to, so I thought mine would be a tower.

My idea then was the player needs to search the place for three animals and bring them to the tower. With all of them there, the tower rumbles with some mechanism and activates a pillar of light of some sort, and the game ends.

The three animals would be the cat, a wolf, and an owl.

Getting to the wolf would be puzzles based on driving away sheep with the use of the wolf's howl.

I thought of the standard see-saw puzzle where you need to put things at one end to tip the platform to where you want it, but it was kinda weird to explain it in story. Why would there be sheep in a see-saw platform anyway.

I also thought of raised platforms that act as levers. This is pretty standard puzzle fare on many 3d games.

I then thought of a Sokoban style puzzle where you push flocks of sheep so you can find a way to the exit. I spent too much time on that when in the end I decided the see-saw platform was more intuitive.

All of the ideas were pretty generic puzzles that don't really take a lot of advantage of the sound mechanic, it was basically conforming the sound idea to already existing game ideas (i.e. the see-saw physics puzzle, switch-platforms, or the Sokoban puzzle).

Then the owl was mainly on the idea of illuminating the darkness. It was a pretty standard puzzle: you walk on a platform of square tiles. There is usually only one path of tiles that are walkable but since it is pitch black, you can't tell which tile is a hole and which isn't.

The idea then was to manipulate light so you can see the path, usually for a limited time, which then you had to commit to memory as you walk through the path in pitch black again.

So I thought the owl, while having a hoot, will also illuminate the path with its eyes like a pair of spotlights.

It was again, a pretty generic puzzle but I had little time left so I had to settle with that.

It was already Sunday of something like 5 or 6 AM, and I had only settled on the concept of it.

Things didn't look very good. I called it a day.

Day 3

When I woke up at 10 AM or something, I thought, why don't I just sleep through the rest of it? I felt defeated.

Inside my head I can already hear the critics and the I-told-you-so's. I can already imagine my friends berating me.

Somehow I felt that I had to prove to myself that I was better than that. There are people whose greatest critics are their own selves.

I knew I had to drop ~~some~~ a lot of features. That much was clear. (That's also how it goes in work when the reality of deadlines loom on your face.)

So in the end, I just made the tower and basically when you went inside it, the game ends.

But I couldn't resist adding another puzzle so I put in a big fire bowl inside that you had to activate by sending continual heartbeats. Doing it enough would cause the whole tower to gain color and, at its peak, some flash of light would activate whatever power was sleeping in that tower.

Results

Play tests proved that the game sorely needs a tutorial level. I purposefully decided against a help/instructions screen explaining the finer details because I want the game to naturally teach you as you play.

It seems to me people don't want to bother reading walls of text instructions anyway.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to deliver that "natural teaching" part. In this regard, I consider my game in its current state then to be a definite failure.

Maybe I should have made a tutorial level instead of the ending?

Yes, this was my genius plan to compensate for the lack of content. I got quite a few laughs from the audience at this, so it was probably worth it.

I also realized not everyone is keen on the rhythm puzzles (i.e. the speed of the heartbeat, the Barber's knock puzzle), so it was something I wanted to revise.

I probably could have seen it coming if I had people play-testing the game early and often. I had totally disregarded the "inspect and adapt" mantra of Scrum.

Someone actually had mistaken me for a student. Haha, seriously? How old do you think I am from this image?

Unexpectedly, I was awarded "Best Art" for the game.

I guess they liked the cats.

So that was my first Global Game Jam experience. Expect me in all future Global Game Jams as well! I'll make sure to take more photos next time.

Check out my game in the Global Gam Jam website: http://globalgamejam.org/2013/project-amrak

Battle Maiden Part 2

2012-11-29T09:18:00.001+08:00

Day 2: Saturday

Fixed shoulder joint twisting.

Had to leave early because like mentioned, it suddenly turned out to be cleaning day.

It turns out Saturday was also when the meetup for the Game On! Philippines 2012, a game development competition for students. Me being one of the mentors for the participants, and that day was when the participants would meet with the organizers to show progress on their game, I attended the meeting to talk with the participants.

I'll talk about that some other time, but long story short, I wasn't able to do much progress on day 2.

Day 3: Sunday

Got things set up back at home. It's kinda hard to get back to the rhythm since the 48 hour hackathon didn't push through.

Suddenly I'm having crash problems with my Unity.

Every time I click "Apply" on changed prefab settings, there seems to be a 2 out of 3 chance that Unity will crash.

I guess it's because I'm using an old version, 3.5.5f2. So I tried finding 3.5.6, the latest one in the 3.x versions.

The official Unity site, for some reason, doesn't show the links to older versions of Unity. Since Unity 4 is out, this means there's no links to any 3.x versions.

I had to find it from the forums, and even the site had problems.

Dark forces are at play here.

When I finally got to it, the download is slow, as expected. Oh Asian Internet, you so crazy.

It would have been nice to just press Ctrl+S in the Unity editor and be assured that everything was saved in case a crash happens again.

Unfortunately, this isn't the case. When you change settings in prefabs, or GUI skins, or ScriptableObject files for example, Unity holds off saving the changes to the disk until you quit Unity. So I find myself closing and opening Unity after every significant change I make.

Meanwhile, I got the Locomotion system working a little more smoother and I got to test the player model in the game.

Times like these I wish we had motion capture studios. I heard you can use a Kinect as a low-cost makeshift motion capture device.

Day 4: Monday

Have I mentioned that I go to the office only when I feel like it? Yeah, so Monday will be devoted to finishing this, because I say so.

Day 5: Tuesday

Have I mentioned I rarely ever get any work done while at home? Yeah, so I slept all day long yesterday. But I was able to test attack animations today.

Also, seems like the version update for Unity got rid of the crashes.

Day 6: Wednesday

I did a few thumbnail sketches so I wouldn't forget what animations I wanted to do. I should've done this earlier.

Right now the game is sort of on-hold as Wednesday is usually the time I go to the office.

Battle Maiden Part 1

2012-11-28T17:33:00.000+08:00

In the small game development studio I work in, I wanted to have what we ended up calling "Free Fridays": Every first Friday of the month, everyone stops doing work for clients and make personal projects. At the end of the day, you show your work to everyone.

This was an excuse to find the time to do crazy ideas that we get every now and then.

One such idea came to me when I was about to sleep, I just thought all of a sudden "Damn it, I want to play Assassin's Creed style combat right now on my Android tablet."

I thought, yeah that could work. I actually like the easier, free flow approach in Batman: Arkham Asylum. Batman can dart from one end of the arena to the next so easily, hitting opponents here and there.

H-Here We Go

So when our Operations Director mentioned we forgot to do Free Fridays again for this month, I thought I'd do that idea.

I also requested that Free Friday be lengthened to 48 hours (up to Saturday), since the idea I had was a lot of work. Game jams are mostly 48 hours anyway.

Even with the extended duration, I knew I had to cheat a little. I'm only one guy doing both code and art so 48 hours was probably still not enough.

Day 0: Wednesday-Thursday

I stole some time from work to prepare the 3d models I'd use. For the enemy I used the soldier model I already made from before.

For the player, I used MakeHuman to create a base mesh, then added hair and clothes in Blender.

I did this with the understanding that I'm making a throwaway model just so I can finish this as soon as possible. While her face shouldn't be anime like my old sketches, it shouldn't be the one that MakeHuman comes with either.

I downloaded a bunch of Assassin's Creed 2 and Batman Arkham Asylum YouTube videos for reference.

The idea was that we'd start at 00:00 of Friday and end at 23:59 of Saturday, to really squeeze the 48 hours. It wouldn't be wise to extend to Sunday, and the higher-ups didn't want us to start earlier than Friday.

So by about 1 AM of Friday, I was still preparing the player 3d model. I had a headache and felt like vomiting (as always when I stay too long in the office), so I had to sleep it out.

Day 1: Friday

By morning I was ready to tackle it on.

This was my first draft for the ideas.

I thought I'd try Unity 4 with all its fancy new animation systems with the blend tree. Hopefully that would make my work easier.

As I tried getting myself accustomed to the GUI changes in Unity 4, this happens.

I can't rely on a tool that crashes, given that I have a tight deadline for this, so off I went back to Unity 3.

These were my first few tests:

I wanted a way for the enemies to figure out the path to get to the player's backside. I also wanted them to move in an encircling fashion. So I made a simple waypoint system to track the player's front, back, left, and right sides.

Next I had the enemies actually follow that path.

By afternoon, I swapped in the enemy 3d model. I used Rune Johansen's Locomotion System to make the walk animations look better. Props to Rune!

Unfortunately we were suddenly told that Saturday can't be used anymore because the office will be cleaned. I guess I just have to take my work home or something.

To tell the truth though, not a lot of people in the office was taking Free Friday very seriously. Some understandably still had deadlines to meet and some were just playing videogames.

I actually still needed to fix the player 3d model. It wasn't even rigged/skinned yet, so I ended up taking too much time there.

I wanted a lot of fancy physics effects on the player. The skirt and ponytail should sway, and her boobs should *ahem* move naturally.

For cloth swaying, Unity has the built-in Skinned Cloth component for that and it works as expected. The interface to configure it isn't exactly great, but it works as advertised.

Doing the same thing for the ponytail would be overkill, and besides, it should move more like linked pieces of elongated chains than like a strip of cloth anyway.

I found a link in reddit that explains a simple trick, just use rigidbodies with joints on them and add some swaying motion: http://www.farfarer.com/blog/2011/07/07/unity-skeletal-ragdoll-jiggle-bones-tutorial/

The only problem was that the tutorial needed me to configure my 3d modeling software to specifically disable keyframe animation on the bones that need to jiggle. Unfortunately, no such option exists in Blender, so I just did something quick to fix it.

I made a script in Unity that detaches the ponytail's bone from the skeleton then reattach it again quickly. This would cause it to stop being moved by the skeleton's animations, while still being connected to it.

For the boobs, the wiki site has something just for that: http://www.unifycommunity.com/wiki/index.php?title=JiggleBone

The code for that needed some cleaning up and it didn't seem to work reliably at all for a 3d model created in Blender, so I took some time to fix it.

The day ended with me staring at bouncing boobs.

While I feel a little stupid for doing this, I made pretty sure the physics don't go so far as this:

Damn, I haven't even added combat yet.

Combat-esque conversations?!?

2012-10-27T00:36:00.000+08:00

So, to open my argument, here it is:

What if you could take the idea of a combat system, and use it for your NPC conversation system?

We all know dialogue trees are a drab workaround to letting a game's main character partake in conversations with the game's make-believe world.

Aren't you sick of that? Can we try to find a way around that somehow? Isn't it worthwhile at least to experiment, see if there is indeed some better way?

Craig Stern has this to say about dialogue trees in his article:

...This emergent quality makes combat a tempting choice to form the backbone of a cRPG, since it offers a much higher ratio of entertaining possibilities relative to development time spent than a more static system (such as, say, dialogue trees) would.

That was actually what led me to think about this whole idea in the first place.

If combat systems were designed to be so emergent (you can explore so many decisions and tactics) while only an economic amount of programming is required, why can't we try the same idea for conversations?

So how is it going to be? For starters, we can take this:

and turn it into this:

Its a very superficial take, but you get the idea, don't you?

When you choose "Attack", you see your character swing his sword and the enemy takes a hit. Then the enemy takes his/her turn.

When you choose "Insult", you perhaps would hear your character say a pre-recorded line of (insulting) dialogue, chosen partly in context and partly in random. And you'd see the expression on the other person's face, and see/hear his/her reaction.

I'm not proposing some sort of procedurally generated lines of dialogue. I certainly don't think our best technology so far can do it reliably.

What I'm thinking is scripts will still be made, its just that instead of choosing exact lines to say, the player "macromanages" the conversation.

Looking at that, its not such a radical idea, really. Many games experimented with this style before.

In Indigo Prophecy, instead of choosing specific lines of dialogue to say, you choose some topic, and your character automatically shifts the conversation to go there.

Same goes for Mass Effect to an extent.

Update: A whole list of other games with similar ideas by reddit include: Monkey Island's Insult Sword Fighting, Leisure Suit Larry, Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

But instead of choosing contextual topics at hand, what I want to see is a fleshed out system with rules akin to combat and everything that supports it: the importance of movement, targeting, stats, skills, perks and whatnot-- but for dialogue.

Skills and perks... all of that sounds overkill for a conversation system. But its worthwhile to study if some things can be translated here.

Interrogations in L.A. Noire comes very close to what I'm getting to.

Here was another impetus for me to jump-start the idea. Tonio Barmadosa has this to say about behavioral game design in this article:

Very interesting indeed. I can't help but draw an analogy with a totally different field, called Pickup Artistry. Pickup artists pick up hot babes in night clubs using methods from Behavioral Psychology. They push a girl's psychological buttons in order to create attraction, qualification, comfort and eventually seduction.

They use the exact same techniques, for example, being unpredictable and pushing and pulling all the time, which is equivalent to variable ratio reward / punishment.

We're getting somewhere here aren't we? "Picking up" can be thought of as a game. But one thing to note here is that you are not the player anymore, at least not purely. You also partake the role of umpire. You hand out the rewards to the player (i.e. the hot babe/guy) when you deem so. You make the player feel like s/he worked hard for something.

This is, of course, for seduction, but I think we can work out how it plays for other goals.

Goals for why we "talk" to NPCs may include:

To get useful information¹
To get useful feedback (as in suggestions, criticisms)
To progress in the story, main storyline or otherwise
For romance, as noted earlier
To coerce, persuade, or fool them for your advantage (bribes, taunts)
etc.

[1]: And this can even be while in a hostile environment. Black Widow's first scene in the recent Avengers movie, is where she fakes naïveté while actually collecting information from the enemy.

Let's see all of our tools at hand in a combat system.

In a combat system, the very first thing you want is a way to assess the enemy and the surroundings.

Practically, this means a health bar, maybe a grid to see how far they are, fog-of-war, etc.

In a conversation, maybe you can have a hostility/friendliness meter on your NPCs. Maybe even an irritability meter, or a boredom meter akin to The Sims.

Your high-level options then fall somewhere along these lines:

Inspection: assess the enemy
Aggression: extinguish the enemy (attack)
Conservation: survive/outlive the enemy (heal/defend)
Subversion: weaken the enemy from within (poison, slow, etc.)
Augmentation: strengthen yourselves (buffs)
Concession: surrender, truce, agreement, etc. (forfeit, load game, etc.)

This is all well and good, but how does "extinguish the enemy" translate to "find out why he's hiding from the bandits" for example?

Let's say that's our "victory condition".

For a goal of "find out why he's hiding", the enemy is not "he", it's his reluctance to say his reason for hiding.

These could be some examples of how it would pan out:

Inspection: asking questions
Aggression: pressuring, convincing the person
Conservation: defending your argument
Subversion: intimidating, lying
Augmentation: make yourself sound credible
Concession: bribery, bargaining with the person

Again, these are high-level examples. In the same way that saying "attack" in combat can be done in a multitude of ways, the act of convincing or intimidating would also be achievable in several ways.

I'm particularly interested in how spatial movement of combat can be translated to a conversation system. Perhaps that can represent the topic of conversation?

The same way attacking the rear of an enemy can deal critical damage, perhaps pushing the topic of conversation to something the person is uneasy with will make your persuasions "deal critical damage".

Even with having these commands and "movement" options, I think the end result of the player inputting such commands should still show two guys talking, complete with dialogue text, and prerecorded lines of dialogue if need be.

In this manner you could say in the end this is actually more complex than a simple dialogue tree system. It is, but imagine how this could change your game (I'm actually content with just text dialogue, but having audio dialogue will definitely make it harder).

If the player is losing, he'd usually just load a saved game, but what if he can bargain with his enemy?

What if the player can talk to a merchant to drop his guard or distract him?

It can open up more emergent possibilities.

Unity Game Jam Manila 2012 Part 3

2012-10-15T09:32:00.000+08:00

On the final day, things started to get hectic. As the staff needed to go to the associated event to give a talk about game development, Charles and I found ourselves having to man the game jam (I couldn't find the marshals for a time, they probably needed to be elsewhere too!).

We needed to facilitate getting the participant's builds into the officially designated machine to be used to demonstrate the game during judging. We needed them to submit their builds, let them test it on the machine, and make sure they don't do something horrible like delete the other teams' folders.

Then Charles said he needed to assist some guests from the industry looking at the game jam, and I was left to man the machine (see what I did there?).

Occasionally manhandling the mic to nag them about the deadline, I was checking off which teams have submitted at least one build.

Some cut it close to just 10-20 minutes before the 5pm deadline (I'm not actually sure if it was an exact 48-hour jam).

And there was even one who, get this: she only attended the first day, then left for home, did the jam by herself in her house, then came up like 20 minutes from the deadline asking to get submitted.

As facilitator, Brett was a nice guy and let her submit for presentation, but it was up to the judges if she was eligible for the prizes.

Paul Gadi of IGDA Manila came by the jam venue and went just as fast. Apparently he was on short notice.

Then a guy gave me a scoring sheet and said, "You're going to be a judge. Paul Gadi couldn't make it to the judging so you'll stand in as the IGDA representative."

Haha. Oh wow.

Thankfully, all teams were able to submit before the deadline.

I would have loved to post screenshots of each game made but I don't have them.

And so after presenting the games, and us two mentors presenting our games too, I had to go and judge.

There were immediately three games that stood out to me:

Prologue: Primitive Life

Pretty unusual game. You see a planet in XCOM geoscape style, and your goal is to fling asteroids at the right position and moment to start the seeds of primordial life.

Crystal Boom

A shooter reminiscent of Clean Asia (the Attractor ship) and Gradle Unison, you dash to attack instead of shooting bullets. I'm a big fan of these games. As a cool bonus, your super attack is you can set arbitrary way-points and your ship will dash to all of them instantaneously.

Silhouettes

These guys went for a safe bet and made a side-scroller of the popular running-man subgenre (i.e. Canabalt clone) but it was an interesting take in that you need a light source to see where you're going. You need to collect glowing spheres to charge up your light, so in addition to avoiding obstacles, catching lights is very important.

Playable Web Build: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/80881529/Silhouettes.htm

I am going to share my personal opinions here:

Prologue: Primitive Life

Pros:

Has a good amount of challenge, testing your aim and ability to time your shots.
Impressive graphics for something done in 2 days.
A very unique game, I don't know of any game similar to this.

Cons:

Not enough variation. Once you master the skill needed, the fun wears off. My suggestion is to add more types of asteroids in addition to the life asteroid and death asteroid. Perhaps an asteroid that makes depressions on the planet, or ones that build mountains. Perhaps ice asteroids that make oceans, fire asteroids that make volcanoes, etc.
The presenters themselves noted there were some bugs.
The presenters did a poor job of explaining the game to the judges. Brett had to re-explain how the game works to the other judges so they could understand it. Remember, some of the judges know very little about video games beyond what they have in their smartphones, so that needs to be taken into account.

Crystal Boom

Pros:

Again, a challenging game. Like I said, I'm a big fan of shooters like these.

Cons:

I find little relevance to the theme of "Primitive Life". Even the title, Crystal Boom doesn't have anything to do with the theme. I think the enemies were supposed to look like biological viruses, so there's that. Thing is, they cajoled an existing game genre into the theme, not the other way around. In the end though, I don't care as a gamer, cause I like to play these kinds of games.
Graphics weren't so good. Check Clean Asia and Gradle Unison for ideas.
Same problem with Prologue, the judges couldn't understand how the game works even with the presentation that was made. I had to go and explain them.

Silhouettes

Pros:

Challenging game. Running-man games are inherently challenging.
Easy to understand how to play. Only one judge didn't get it, and still, after a little explaining, he immediately got it. That's a given though, since running-man games always have simple controls.
Very very good amount of polish to the game, they can take the game as-is, and release it on the appstore. And they should.

Cons:

Not that it matters to me, but I also find little relevance to the theme here, if at all. They explained it was "primitive" in the sense that you're running in fear of the dark, like primitive instincts kicking in. But the truth is, again, they cajoled an existing game genre (Canabalt clones) into the theme. It feels like cheating to me on that bit, resting on some sure-win mechanics that other people came up with. But again, its ok. The thing is, they added their own little twist to the running man genre so it wouldn't be generic.

If it were up to me, all these three would win, but all of us judges had varying opinions. The only thing we could universally agree on was that Silhouettes was very nice overall, so it was no question that that was first place.

What hampered the other two games was that the judges didn't get how those games were played, and presentation was part of the judging categories. In contrast, Silhouettes was easily understandable.

For future games, my tip is to add in-game tutorials, perhaps in the same way Silhouettes does. Also I did that in my game, TopSide.

To the game jammers, here's a tip: NO ONE WILL WANT TO BOTHER READING THE HELP/CONTROLS SCREEN. You can't expect people to be patient when all they want is to see how the game plays.

If you find people getting stuck and you have to explain verbally how the game plays, you're doing it wrong.

The game should naturally teach the player how to play, as part of the playing experience.

It could be in-game tutorial text like in Silhouettes or TopSide, it could be some character in-game talking to you how the game plays, it could be tutorial levels, like in Valve's Portal.

Play again the videogames that you play on your PC's and consoles. You'll see these things. And they're very important. The player won't get to experience the fun part of your game if they can't understand the controls in the first place.

Here's part 1 and part 2 of this 3 part post.

Unity Game Jam Manila 2012 Part 2

2012-10-14T13:30:00.004+08:00

So with that previous part about the new keyword, I spent time fixing my code for Tactics Ensemble.

By 7pm of Oct 11, Thu, the participants entered. More than 30 people came in (16 teams were ultimately formed).

After the introductions and FYI's with the student's curfews and everything, Brett announced the theme:

"Primitive Life"

Huh.

To help, Brett showed some examples, "Ok, what do you mean by primitive?" It could be, primitive geometry, primitive behaviour, and some other examples I forgot. It was "primitive geometry" that stuck in my head.

Brett told us mentors, "You know, this first half of the jam, you don't need to worry about anything, cause they're still mostly in the planning phase. You might as well get some rest. It could actually get pretty boring so you may even want to actually do the game jam too, you know, while waiting for people to ask for your help, you could do it as well, cause you're gonna get bored."

I actually had a headache that night (was not able to sleep the night prior to that because friends were playing multiplayer Borderlands 2 nearby, shouting all night) so after commiting my changes to Project Tactics Ensemble, I called it a night, & went back home to sleep.

On the way home though, I thought if I was participating too, then I mulled on the theme.

Primitive Life.

Hmm.

The usual thing to go for here is some sort of caveman game. But that's too bland.

What about a game where you beat up programmers who have such a primitive way of thinking in making their code? Yeah that'd be fun, I'd play that. A lot.

All I could remember from Brett's examples was primitive geometry.

So between last night and the following morning, my train of thought led me to this old 1884 novel called Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. I actually found out about that a long time ago in college, thanks to Project Gutenberg.

I never really got around to reading the novel but, long story short, its about a fictional world where 2d shapes were living, breathing characters.

One of them, a hexagon, thought, "What if there's a 3d?". And such ideas were pretty much taboo in 2d land. So she ended up in a journey going to 3d and even 1d. (As a nice bonus, there's actually an animated film adaptation of the novel released back in 2007.)

That was where I got the idea. Some game where you transition between 2d and 3d. And I thought, practically that would most likely be transitioning between side-scroller and 3d isometric.. or should it be between side-scrolling and 3rd person view?

And I thought the idea is good but I'm going the wrong direction here. There's not much sense in doing those.

So I thought, what about a game where you transition between side view and top view? That's probably more useful. There are things you can only do in side view, and things you can only do in top view.

Then I thought, ok, I'll make it that you can only jump in side view, and that you can't in top view, because it's hard to notice such a thing in top view anyway.

Side view is how you normally move left to right, but top view is useful if you want to "change lanes", so to speak, get behind or in front of things.

So the moment I got back to College of St. Benilde, I was surprised to see my other mentor partner (Charles Cue) was already working on his game jam game too!

Ok, a little competition now, is it?

I started working on my idea as soon as I could. I checked around and it seems like the participants have yet to run into problems.

This obstacle was the very first thing I set up to do.

I might as well link the actual game I ended up with here. Make sure to click in the game so it can get keyboard input:

There are only 3 levels so far; the 3rd level simply loops back on itself when you finish it.

I tried making myself useful for the participants but I got the feeling I was being brushed off. All the other mentors there were faculty staff of the school. I was the only outsider. Some of them probably didn't even know I was a mentor! Brett had a better rapport with the students cause, well, he was visibly the guy from Unity Technologies.

I felt I looked rather stupid roaming around and getting strange looks from the students.

Nevertheless there was at least one participant who was friendly with me. Admirably, she was the only one who went solo while the others were all in teams.

Ok, I'll stop here. In part 3 I'll explain how the jam ended.

Here's some photos I took (since no one was asking for my help!):

Having neglected to bring a sleeping bag, this was
where I slept. I used some t-shirts as a makeshift pillow.

Toilet paper? Check. Food? Check. Laptop? Check. All set!

Billy here used to be an intern in our company, now he's
landed a job! Not in our company, but I'm still happy for him.

Unity Game Jam Manila 2012 Part 1

2012-10-14T09:42:00.000+08:00

I got a rather surprising email last Oct. 2. A notification for a Unity Game Jam here in Manila, Philippines. Amid the looming deadlines I have for both work and personal projects, I thought that more stuff to do was the last thing I wanted to see.

Then I thought, what if the prize is a Unity Pro license?

I read the email more and what I got from it was this was meant more to be for learning Unity, other than it being a game jam (i.e. the whole "learn how to make a game in 48 hours!"). Also it turns out, De La Salle-College of St. Benilde is one of the sponsors of the event, so I take it students will be joining.

So, for the most part, I just ignored it.

The week that game jam is gonna take place, I see the usual announcements on our little IGDA Manila Facebook group, and silly me, I neglected to announce it on our Unity Philippines Users Group too. Though pretty much the people in Unity PUG are in IGDA Manila too. Nevertheless, I probably should have made some announcement too. I was hoping Mars Balisacan would do it; I'm only the guy who answers newbie programming questions in the group!

Then I got a private message, "Hey Ferdi, would it be ok if you come in the game jam as one of the mentors to the participants?" And having gotten that message while I was in the office in the middle of work, it was like a nice little distraction to go on some event for a while.

I also convinced myself that it would look good for the company if we participated in official Unity events. So I decided I would go.

So come the starting day of the event, straight from Quezon City (where our office was) I took the railway transit back to Manila.

When I got to the event's location (i.e. College of St. Benilde) I got stopped by some pretty strict security and it turns out the guards didn't even know the game jam is about to take place in their school.

Fortunately things cleared out amidst many phone calls and forms to sign.

Brett Bibby of Unity Technologies was coming in as the facilitator and the first thing to do was a briefing of us mentors. Apparently his flight got delayed so I was able to take some time to rest and chat with the people there.

When Brett arrived, we set up our things in the game jam's venue, the school's "Alienware Lab". Pretty much a big open space with a bunch of Alienware PC's. Unfortunately those things weren't set up yet so I couldn't get to try them.

So the briefing? It was this: Brett wanted to see how good we are with Unity so he asked us to come up with a game from scratch in 1 hour. Understandably it only needed to use cubes, and spheres, and whatnot.

My throat dried and my heart pounded fast. Being something of a perfectionist, I didn't want to settle for making a game that can't be completed in one hour. You could say I'm a completionist.

Ah, I know which game to make.

The simplest thing I could do: a side-scrolling shooter.

I did one before when Mars and I conducted the seminar about making a game using Unity. But I can easily recreate it from memory, more or less.

The challenge was doing so in under one hour.

So off I went.

I kept on checking for the time, glancing back at Brett. He was eventually getting into small talk with the other facilitators of the event; the faculty staff from College of St. Benilde (CSB).

Oh, good, good, looks like Brett is getting distracted from checking the time. More time for me!

Brett Bibby (left), and Patrick Williamson (right) of Unity Technologies

So I had my player ship moving and shooting, some enemies continually spawning, some particle effects, and I was about to finish some simple powerup feature when Brett called time.

Mine got looked at first, and pretty much the mistakes I did were:

If you are continually moving something (via code) that has a collider, you always, always will want to put a kinematic rigidbody on it. Failing to do so will cause Unity to be forced to recompute the whole world's static collision data.
Do not instantiate while in the middle of the game. Allocate everything you'll ever need at the loading screen or startup only. i.e. use a resource pool. Regardless if this is a mobile or desktop game you will want a resource pool. The enemy here is Mono's garbage collector. Unity is still in the process of updating the version of Mono that they use. In the meantime we're stuck with the old version (Mono 2.6) which reportedly has a slow garbage collector. [1] [2] [3]

The red line shows how bad Mono 2.6's garbage collector is.
The blue line shows the new garbage collector since Mono 2.8.

Point number 2 was understandable because I can't divide my attention at making a resource pool and the game's code and still complete in one hour.

And so point number 1 was really my mistake there. And Brett said, "Don't worry, even I forget sometimes." The problem also was that you'd only notice this if you have the Profiler, which only comes in Pro.

The effect then, is that people using the free version don't know why their framerate gets so low at times, and in effect they may get the wrong impression that Unity is slow.

Brett was actually wanting that some form of warning be made when the user makes this mistake (a message in the console, some explanation on the user manual perhaps, etc.). They're still arguing about how to go about it, it seems.

NCarter in the Unity IRC chat recommends people read up on the Nvidia PhysX User Manual. Since PhysX is what Unity uses, it will clear up a lot of mysteries for the common user if they read how PhysX works.

The only other mentor who I was with, Charles Cue, did a cool job too. It was about feeding food to a dragon, all in cubes and spheres, yes, but that was the idea. It reminds me of Papo & Yo.

Charles Cue, one of the faculty staff and mentors of the game jam.

The marshalls did an ok job too with the one hour hackaton, some were understandably struggling but they all got somewhere at the very least.

Brett gave some final tips for us:

These students who are entering the game jam? They will almost always want to use physics. The problem is that they will likely misuse it and you will end up with something that you might as well throw away. You need to explain the gotchas of combining physics with user-input and animation.
Sometimes they will ask how to do some particular thing which sounds rather strange. The proper thing to do is to ask "Wait, what are you trying to achieve in the first place with doing this?". And they go something like "Oh it's because I want to build a bridge that breaks." And then you realize "Ok, what you were asking for? That is totally not what you need to do to make a breakable bridge. You can forget about that. You need to do this instead..." and they realize they were needlessly doing things the hard way.

He then explained some intricacies with the Unity engine.

When Unity gets memory to use, even when garbage collected in Mono, Unity NEVER releases that memory back to the OS. Naturally when the Unity game closes, only then will it get released.

Apparently, this is actually a feature of any professional game engine: you will always want to allocate everything you'll ever need in a loading screen first, and never do any memory allocation while in the middle of the game proper. This is to ensure a reliable framerate for the game.

Second, things you know about .NET do not necessarily apply with Unity. For the simple fact that Unity uses Mono, and not .NET. Structs always get allocated in the stack? Not in Mono (ergo, not in Unity).

Thing is, in Mono, whenever you use the new keyword, that will always make use of the heap (memory allocation). If you're in Update(), you will not want to initialize a Vector3 with new Vector3(0,0,0) because that will make use of the heap.

Instead, use the handy Vector3.zero, or, if you need to give some specific values, do this for example:

Vector3 myPos;
myPos.x = 345;
myPos.y = 0;
myPos.z = 23;

Don't worry, a struct (like Vector3) can never be null, so this is fine. While it is admittedly a little more wordy (what used to be one line is now four lines of code), it will actually be faster this way. The point is, just don't bother with using new if you're in a tight loop (i.e. Update).

I'd like to clarify that this issue with new is because of the way Mono works, not necessarily something Unity Technologies directly chose to do.

They argue about this in length in this Unity forum thread, and here's some tips on the user manual.

That's it for now, I think this blog post is long enough as it is. In part 2 of this post I'll explain what happened in the game jam itself and share some more photos I took. Part 3 explains how the jam ended.

Why Level Up In Multi-player Is Bad-Wrong, Says Me

2012-05-31T00:17:00.000+08:00

The fundamental problem of leveling up, is that you have to level up.

I quote this from the article 'Unlocks' and the Gamification of Gaming:

"EA had designed a game with a serious problem: new users, already at a disadvantage against their more experienced peers, had the deck further stacked against them through the use of unlocks. EA’s marketing for the Ultimate Unlock Pack explicitly acknowledge the problem they had created..."

The problem is new-coming players have to level-up to have a chance against long-time combatants in a multi-player setting. Did we ever stop to think if "level-up", which is perfectly appropriate in a single-player setting, makes sense in multi-player?

It's no surprise to me I found in Guild Wars 2, that a quick PVP match has everyone temporarily pumped to level 80 (for the duration of the PVP), to have it an equal playing field.

Why do we have Level-Up again?

And don't tell me it's because that's always how it's been.

There are several reasons, but for pragmatic reasons, level-up is there so you are not bombarded with so many attack options at the start that you don't know how to use them all.

Level-up is so you can work your way into learning new powers bit by bit since in a level-up system, you unlock powers a few at a time as you level-up. It forces you to concentrate on some new ability at the moment, sort of like a flavor-of-the-month power.

So that contradicts a bit with having everyone suddenly pumped to full power when in PVP. Imagine you are a level 1 player, enter PVP and so you're now level 80. You now have access to all these attacks, which do you choose? How are you supposed to know which to choose?

Three things come to mind:

Force it: Learn by trial-and-error
Get help: Have a friend teach you, or read up crash-course tutorials
Learn it the way the game meant you to: Stop the PVP, and go through the single-player aspect and level-up to 80

I think having these workarounds is far better than having an unfair playing field, especially if we talk about tournaments.

In contrast, other highly competitive games always have everyone in an equal playing field.

Street Fighter characters all have access to all their attacks at the start, in multi-player Starcraft, everyone starts out not having anything researched, and you all start with an equal number of units.

It's no coincidence these two games have a highly engaged competitive community. It's also no coincidence the three things I mentioned above also work to some extent for Starcraft and Street Fighter.

Videogame Development Bookmark Map

2012-05-30T17:56:00.001+08:00

Hi, I'd just like to share my small activity here: I'm transitioning my bookmarks from a list into a visual map, and I like the results so far.

I want to share the bookmark links to everyone interested in videogame development, so here it is: ~~http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25260770/Bookmarks/VideogameDevelopment.xmind~~

UPDATE: The xmind file is now in version control! Git repository here: https://bitbucket.org/AnomalousUnderdog/videogamedevbookmarkmap

(Non-technical people can find there a link that says "Get Source" in an archive format of your choice. Just use that to download the latest version of the bookmark map.)

This is far from complete as I have a lot of bookmarks amassed over the years, so just check that link every now and then for updates.

You'll need the program called Xmind (http://www.xmind.net/). On that note, I'm wondering if there's a better mind-mapping program that outputs in text format so this can be put on a version control system properly. It would be nice to collaborate on gathering links.

Open Image Annotation Initiative

2012-05-03T07:57:00.000+08:00

Long story short: A tool to let you annotate any image and embed the drawings you made to that picture, while having the original file stay intact.

To senior artists, imagine you want to give critic or feedback to another artist's work. Perhaps the anatomy of his drawing is wrong. Perhaps you'd want to draw in red lines how things should be.

Normally you would open Photoshop for this, but what if you can sketch your notes for any image while in the browser, with pen tablet support?

To artists, imagine you are keeping a collection of files for visual reference, or visual peg, as they say, and you want to use your Wacom pen to sketch notes on your reference images, while keeping the sketch and the image separate from each other?

You could save it as a Photoshop .PSD file (because you need layers), but what if you want to annotate an animated .GIF file?

You could save the annotation sketches as a separate file, perhaps a transparent .PNG if you're clever. But that's messy.

What if you don't want extra files to manage? What if you could add "layers" to any image file type? "Layers" on a .JPG, "layers" on a .GIF, "layers" on a .PNG?

(I say layers in quotation marks because this proposed tool does not really add layers in a technical sense.)

The idea is to embed an archive to an image, with the archive containing your "layers" as separate, transparent images.

This hidden archive trick is not meant to be secretive; the file will be renamed to the extension of picture.zip.jpg, for example, if the filename is picture.jpg.

To programmers, you can perhaps see that is not as efficient as true layers as in Photoshop .PSD files. Perhaps, who knows. (Note: the open-source equivalent of .PSD files, .ORA files, are actually just archives. Unfortunately, .ORA is still in a messy state right now to be usable.)

But this tool is not meant for heavy image editing like Photoshop, it is a tool for adding quick notes and annotations to any image.

If you are still not convinced, the annotations can be saved as vector graphics data, ensuring a very small bloat on the original file. Perhaps as 8-bit .PNG files, if need be.

Specifications

There are two variations on how the tool can add sketches on top of the image.

The sketches are saved as either .SVG or .PNG and stored in a zip file, embedded into the original image.
Same as in no. 1, but the original file is included in the zip to be embedded. And instead, a new image, a mixdown of both the original image and the sketches will be the "front-facing" file.

Using the mixdown will add more file size, but ensure that the annotations can be seen in any web browser, in any image browser, without any special program, and yet the original file can still be extracted with any standard archive manager.

If file size is not an issue, the mixdown approach is more useful. To compensate, the mixdown image can be saved in a small file-size, low-quality .JPG if the user prefers.

Transparent Images

If the original image has transparency, the user can choose to use a background color to replace the transparent parts (for example, to add a white background on a black drawing to ensure it can be seen, even if it was posted to a forum that had a black background). A checkered square pattern will also be possible.

Pen Tablet Support

As noted, the tool promises pen tablet support, such as in Wacom pens. Pressure sensitivity is important, and attaining an, at least rudimentary, recreation of pen or pencil-esque quality is important for the tool to be artist-friendly.

Vector Graphics

Typed notes will also be possible, as well as simple shapes like a circle, perhaps an arrow, etc. The tool will allow you to edit the vector graphics (which means the SVG data needs to be embedded, so it can be recreated when editing annotations).

Target Platform

As for what the tool will be made in, I'm currently thinking between Python (as a standalone program), or Flex or HTML5 (as a web browser plugin). Perhaps create both standalone and browser versions.

Out of all of them, I am most familiar with Python, so for now, it will be a standalone program, made in Python, using numerous libraries such as wxPython, cgkit, PythonMagick, etc. Here are the plans for that.

Viewer Program

In the plans is also a lightweight tool to view these kinds of images, and allow toggling display of the annotation sketches. Preferably it would be a plugin to your favorite image browser and web browser. Among the two, a web browser plugin is the simplest path. So that will be given priority. As a start, a Firefox add-on for this is planned.

Open Source

I heavily prefer that this be released in an open-source license, but I am unsure which license to use. GPL is seen as restrictive for other people, and yet all my favorite digital content creation tools use GPL (Blender, GIMP, Inkscape, MyPaint, etc.).

I would not want there to be closed-source derivatives/modifications to the Open Image Annotation Initiative, because a tenet here is it should still be usable without any special or proprietary plugins (the original file can still be extracted using any standard archive manager).

The tool will use widespread and readily available data formats: Zip, PNG, SVG, and perhaps JSON or YAML for miscellaneous information.

For interested programmers:

Git repository of work-in-progress here: https://bitbucket.org/AnomalousUnderdog/openimageannotationinitiative

Attributes

2012-02-10T17:13:00.001+08:00

Here is what I have been thinking about this whole time:

Arm Strength: Powerful arm movements. Affects melee damage, and climbing
Arm Dexterity: Quick, flexible arm movements. Like in martial arts. Contributes to actions like parry, flurry strikes, and acrobatic movements.
Arm Endurance: Maximum stamina for melee attacks.
Leg Strength: Powerful leg movements. Affects melee damage for kicks, faster travel time (i.e. speed)
Leg Dexterity: Quick, flexible leg movements. Contributes to actions like evading, dashing, tumbling, acrobatic melee, and proper footing in melee attacks
Leg Endurance: Maximum stamina for movement.
Hand Dexterity: Fine motor skills. Contributes to actions like skullduggery, playing of musical instruments, or using firearms.

A high leg strength but low leg endurance means the person can do a short burst of fast sprinting, but he will tire away quickly.

A runner with leg endurance means he may not move fast, but in the last 200 meters of a marathon, he's still going at the same pace, while the others are too exhausted. Essentially he's a distance runner.

Separating arm strength and leg strength was because I figured there are brute-like enemies who have overbuilt upper body muscles, but slender legs. Top-heavy, as they say.

Separating arm dexterity and leg dexterity is maybe too much though. Though I understand there could be martial art styles that concentrate on kicks only. I think I won't go that far though, so I'll combine them.

Arm Strength
Arm Endurance
Leg Strength
Leg Endurance
Dexterity: Quick, flexible movements of limbs. Like in martial arts. Contributes to actions like parry, flurry strikes, acrobatic movements, dashing, evading, and proper footing.
Hand Dexterity

Having separate endurances for arms and legs meant that I'd separate stamina for arms and legs. Meaning the legs can get tired but the arms don't yet.

I figured they could be combined as well, as when someone is exhausted, he wouldn't be able to use both arms and legs anyway, so it doesn't make sense to have separate stamina for arms and legs.

The stamina they use are shared, in a way, though consumption wouldn't have been proportional for both depending on the action done (movement would consume more leg stamina and only little arm stamina, attacks consume arm stamina and a fair amount of leg stamina, because proper footing when attacking can also be tiring).

It then made little sense to separate endurances for arms and legs. So combining them:

Arm Strength: Melee damage for punches and swings.
Leg Strength: Speed. Melee damage for kicks.
Endurance: Maximum stamina to expend when doing actions, like moving, attacking, etc.
Dexterity: Quick, flexible movements. Like in martial arts. Contributes to actions like parry, flurry strikes, acrobatic movements, dashing, evading, and proper footing.
Hand Dexterity: Fine motor skills.

I'd then rename Dexterity to Agility, then Hand Dexterity to simply Dexterity:

Arm Strength: Ability to exert powerful force using the arms. Melee damage for punches and swings.
Leg Strength: Ability to exert powerful force using the legs. Speed. Melee damage for kicks.
Endurance: Ability to sustain force for an extended period of time. Maximum stamina to expend when doing actions, like moving, attacking, etc.
Agility: Quick, flexible movements of limbs. Contributes to actions like parry, flurry strikes, rolling, tumbling, evading, and proper footing. Also contributes to melee damage. Reduces charge-up time for melee attacks.
Dexterity: Fine motor skills. Nimbleness of fingers.

I could change Arm Strength to simply Strength and Leg Strength to Speed, but I have characters that are slim, lithe, but have high kick damage, essentially high Leg Strength. It would not make sense that their attributes reflect a high strength score when they are slim and lithe.

Garwolf Gives Up

2012-02-09T06:41:00.000+08:00

I was mulling about how Garwolf gets his forceful closure with Serin and this is the scenario that always plays in my mind. It is unusual that this pessimist bypasses the first four stages in the Kübler-Ross five stages of grief.

Garwolf trudges on, disregarding his grevious wounds. "I need to save her", he says.

Mayev can only watch in despair. Is this what love really entails?

Arriving at the scene, he staggers and stops, lets out a soundless gasp. Once he remembers himself he darts for a place to hide. At this point it all feels rather foolish. What a stupid notion!

He stays quiet and lets them pass in peace. A sigh escapes his breath as their last footstep echoes away. His vision lingers as his thoughts wander, "I wonder what do heroes do, when the world doesn't need their brand of saving."

Eventually Mayev finds him passed out. Dead birds dot the path.

Garwolf finds himself in a lady's room, his wounds dressed.

"Do not banter. They still bleed." Mayev inspects his face, her concern more than physical needs.

His face limps like a lifeless manikin, drawn in a perpetual stare, without joy, without hate.

"Sometimes," he speaks tentatively, "Sometimes I wonder. What it feels like to give up and surrender." He direct his gaze at her. "It would be so much easier.", he whispers.

While she could not escape the flattery, she shakes her head, "You need to rest."
As she closes the door, she could not help smiling.

Mayev kisses him, but something wasn't right. It was like kissing an unresponsive doll.

"No, no, no, no!" "What are you doing? Fight back! Fight back! You always fight back!"

To be continued... Garwolf will find himself fighting one last time before hope is fully stolen.

Bosses That Roam The Level

2012-02-06T07:20:00.000+08:00

This is a good idea. The podcast mentions this great hate for the classic boss level wherein the boss is waiting at the end of the level within a closed-space arena. While I really have no intense hate for it, I also like his suggestion: bosses that roam the level.

A lot of games already do this:

God of War: where sometimes the boss is the level
Enslaved: where this mechanical gigantic dog chases you, though the events are largely scripted: defeating the boss is done in multiple parts, normal gameplay is interspersed with encounters of the boss, where it finishes with either you or the boss retreating, until you encounter it again, and in the final part the boss is meant to die
Dead Space and Resident Evil: where an invincible boss chases you around the level and the only way to kill it is to lure and trap it in a special way
Clock Tower: where a serial killer hides in various places in the mansion. unfortunately, the game has you ~~needing to~~ investigating those various places as part of the game

Its true that sometimes the arena-type boss level gets shoehorned forcefully into the narrative (why is the boss patiently waiting for you at the end of the level?). And sometimes when you see those health stations just before a big door, its a relief for the player, but it doesn't make sense in the narrative.

Do you guys know of any other games that do this?

Tactics Ensemble: Movement

2012-02-03T12:28:00.002+08:00

This is an experiment on the movement mechanic of the combat for Victis.

The violet area is the limits of where the tiny white guy in the middle can move to.

While the game is turn-based, the map does not make use of grids. Basically I just used my idea from Death Zone Zero, which in turn, got its idea from RTS games in general. If you've played tabletop wargames, things work that way.

Movement is calculated as a stamina cost per meter, not a predefined value. He has, in this example, 100 stamina points, and movement is 2 stamina points per meter.

Other actions like attacking also consumes stamina, so the player has to be mindful of deciding when to conserve stamina for movement or actions. Basically the same with Action Points of XCOM games.

Furthermore, climbing upwards has a higher stamina cost of 10 stamina points per meter, which accounts for the irregular shape of the movement range.

The currently selected destination is shown with the X-mark on the ground there, with the distance to that shown at the top left, together with the total stamina cost to move there. You can see the stamina cost is roughly twice the distance. This is correct since again, I've set it to be 2 stamina points per meter. The disparity is from the fact that the terrain is bumpy, and since climbing upwards is more costly, the destination's stamina cost reflects this.

Input Recorder For Unity

2012-01-31T14:24:00.000+08:00

Being able to record player input is invaluable for bug reports so players can submit their recorded play session and you can easily watch how the bug manifests.

After development, its also useful for the end-user to share his play experience to other people, or to allow other people to study other player's tactics.

So I saw this:

And saw how simple the input display was. So I went to try the same thing in Unity:

This only records input so far. Feeding those recorded input back to the game is another matter. Its also not possible to feed those data back into Unity's input system as far as I know. So I can't make Input.GetAxis() return the recorded input data.

Instead I would have to make my own system, like, say, RecordedInput.GetAxis(), RecordedInput.GetButton(), and so on. Feeding that data to the GUI system is also another matter.

Do We Need Annoying Small Enemies?

2012-01-31T01:19:00.000+08:00

Continuing on that podcast, they mention this:

"Games should never include small scuttling enemies that walk across the floor or hover above your head and are really hard to hit and are annoying."

First, I have no problem with small enemies. Enemy variation is good, but I believe there is a wrong way to design small enemies. The podcast notes an enemy in Singularity with an enemy that can kill you with one hit. I"m afraid I haven't played that game.

But I do believe enemy attacks should always have a tell-tale sign. The more grievous the attack, the more evident the hint should be. This is regardless with the size issue, because enemy size is not the issue here.

About attacks that kill you in one hit, as long as the player can anticipate it and have a chance to prevent it, then I think its fine. Dark Souls have some characters that can kill you in one hit, but such attacks are slow in charging up.

In contrast, one mission in Valkyria Chronicles end up with a regular enemy anti-tank unit killing my full-health tank hero unit in one hit. No matter how I looked at it, I think that was really pointless.

So I believe there is a right way, and there is a wrong way of doing one-hit kills.

Each enemy has its own "gimmick", a behavior that circumvents the player's usual method of attack, forcing him to rethink his strategies. They really would have an easy but unusual way to kill them, and the failure is the game not hinting or encouraging the player how to find that out.

So I do hope Singularity's small enemy was designed that it has a weakness.

Hints should be implicit and part of the story. For example, the minotaur boss in God of War starts with a short cutscene of soldiers trying to fight the minotaur and failing horribly. That is enough hint for the player to get that this guy is not to be messed around with.

The podcast mentions the small parasitic enemies in Dead Space. I really had no problem with those enemies because I discovered early on that the assault rifle is an effective weapon to dispatch them. The assault rifle shoots low damaging bullets, but the magazine size is high. One shot is enough to kill one parasite (or more if they are clumped together).

So the game becomes a matter of having "the right tool for the right job". It was odd though, that his experience with this enemy was vastly different from mine. Perhaps he never bothered using the assault rifle.

The podcast then mentions about the big fat necromorph that spawns the little enemies, in that it was unfair, doesn't add any value to the game, and that there was no tactic to fighting them.

I would say instead the surprise there is it punishes greedy players who keep on getting loot. And really, once you've found out about the nasty trick, you would obviously make it a point to avoid falling for it again. You need to make sure to shoot its stocky limbs and not its belly. And do not stomp on its corpse.

Again, this is the idea of each enemy having its own variation.

Did they perhaps feel cheated that they found a type of enemy that they couldn't get loot from?

RPG Elements On Non-RPG Games

2012-01-27T09:02:00.008+08:00

I recently got a smartphone so I can listen to podcasts on the go. One of the podcasts I listened to mentioned this:

"Developers shouldn't shoehorn RPG elements into games that don't need them."

I think this is terribly narrow-minded. But let's hear more of his argument:

"Enslaved has a level-up system to allow your character to improve, but I believe the player has the risk to forget this as he has to remember to go to a level-up menu that's not focused on during a normal play session."

"All of Monkey's upgrades complement each other. There's very little reason not to want them all, so why should the player have to choose those upgrades themselves? Why not have them given automatically at a set point, or have his skills improve the more they are used?"

"In contrast, Zelda, has you exploring and one of the items you will eventually find is parts for a big heart upgrade. Once you collect enough, your max health improves. In this way, 'leveling up' is more convenient as you will inevitably find big heart containers in the course of the game."

(To be fair, Enslaved actually gives a message notification when the player has enough red orbs to be able to purchase an upgrade.)

Ok, saying "RPG elements" is pretty broad, but now we're getting somewhere. I think his main gripe is games that added leveling-up as a cheap way to add depth.

Leveling-up is having your character improve over time. Having him start out weak and through the course of the game, give him gradual improvements to allow him to face the proportionately increasing difficulty and complexity of the game.

Now, at its basic description that I've mentioned, that makes sense. You wouldn't want the player character to start out with high-level abilities, or rather, too many abilities, from the get-go, that would have overwhelmed the player with too many things he need to get hang of immediately (i.e. Bayonetta).

In traditional RPG games, those level-up improvements are largely formulaic. Allocating more points in strength simply adjusts the result of the formula for damage.

Now this becomes a question of "Why should developers be adding formulaic RPG elements to twitch games?".

More after the jump.

Why indeed? Remember Hellgate London? A part-rpg part-shooter where the deciding factor whether your gun hit an enemy is by your character's stats and dice rolls, even though you've clearly aimed your crosshair cleanly at the enemy? And oh gee, I wonder how Hellgate London was received by gamers?

Shooters are established as games of reflexes and hand-eye coordination. Should we challenge that notion? What would be the point of creating a first-person shooter that doesn't rely on the player's reflexes?

But enough of that. Surely we can adapt the concept of leveling-up to games that don't require dice rolls.

Character Improvement

Let's take leveling-up again at its basic concept: character improvement.

Mario improves over time. As he gains the Tanuki suit or the cape, he gets new abilities. Link gets the boomerang, the bombs, and they change how Link can dispatch enemies. Soma Cruz gets new powers by absorbing the souls of his enemies. Racing games allow you to buy better cars or better car parts. First-person shooters let you obtain more powerful weapons over time.

These new improvements drastically change the flow of the game (at least, a good game should).

The difference with these against leveling-up is that experimenting with these improvements I mentioned is so easy. You get Mario's Tanuki suit or Link's boomerang as obtained items, with no cost (except for the hardships entailed), ready to be tested, as opposed to getting them by having to spend hard-earned skill points to purchase skills from a dull list, where new players will find it hard to visualize the worth of each skill. Which skill should he purchase? You really can't expect a newcomer to be able to choose confidently.

Fluff-filled descriptions for each skill doesn't help in making an informed decision. It would take a wiki where each player contributes their insight into the skills' appropriate use to help a player choose ("Skill X is really nice, but oh, its really only useful when you fight enemy A, otherwise forget about it. And when you fight an enemy using skill X, you can counter it using skill Y or skill Z depending on your class..."). And that will be a lot of reading. For a new player who just wants to play the damn game, that can be exasperating.

And if you needed to purchase improvements in non-RPGs, as with the racing game example, the racing game has leeway for mistakes: you can sell off car parts the moment you don't need them anymore, but skills you've purchased for your RPG character stay there indefinitely and if it turns out you didn't want that, then too bad. You'd have to reload.

This is why respec is such a heated debate in gamer communities. And I'm sure developers are pondering hard on the subject as well.

So then it becomes natural for RPG gamers to go through trial-and-error experiments called min-maxing. RPG games accommodate for players who have the mindset of "Oh I'll grind for hours and max out the strength and see how effective my character becomes, if it sucks then I'll just discard this character/load my game". This won't necessarily work for non-RPGs.

So the problem is that the RPG's level-up way of giving character improvement is normally a permanently life-changing process for the character, and as such, it should be decided on only after lengthy deliberation, and only after having gained a good grasp on the game's system. And that, may or may not be appropriate for a non-RPG game, where that kind of player mindset is not prevalent.

Accommodating Play Styles

Leveling-up also consists of letting the player choose how he wants the character to improve. He may opt for stealth skills, attack skills, et al. Basically, allowing the player to play using different play styles. This is at the heart of Western RPGs where the game should allow you to roleplay however you want.

I believe the characteristic of accommodating different play styles is already adapted in non-RPG games long before the "let's put RPG elements everywhere" idea came in. Even though the multiple play styles in non-RPGs is not quite as varied.

In Gradius, you can choose to be faster, have missiles, have a little guy who shoots with you, or have a shield, etc. You can customize cars in some racing games. Real-time strategy games have you purchasing various upgrades and can be played with different strategies in mind.

The golden grail here is to be able to establish emergent behaviour while using only the least amount of desired building blocks.

Compulsory Variation

Take note that accommodating play styles is different from having a game that variates its requirements for winning. Each boss battle in Zelda games require your use of a new weapon's unique ability. It makes for good variation, but it doesn't necessarily accommodate different play styles ("I want to be stealthy but this game isn't letting me!").

That isn't to say its mutually exclusive. You could surely accommodate to different play styles and still have variating requirements for winning.

Conclusion

So I believe allowing the player to unlock and experiment with better versions of the things he can do, and optionally allowing him different ways to achieve his goals is as good as having put RPG elements in your game, without needing to shove a stat system to it.

Remember: new players aren't as well-informed as to know which skills he should be purchasing, or which stats he should devote to, so helping the player get rid of his lack of knowledge is the goal.

So how about these as few suggestions to get your brainstorms started:

Tutor: A game where the player is gently introduced to the usefulness of each skill he gets, by "tutorial missions" in the vein of Starcraft 1. Each mission requires his use of that skill to succeed.

Afterwards, the next non-tutorial missions given can be finished using any of the skills he previously used. He'll have more confidence in choosing which skill to level-up now, since he has past experience with using them.

You could make this more complex by showing him only the missions that he seems to gravitate to (he likes stealth? give him more stealth-skill tutorial missions!).

Refund: An option to re-lock an unlocked upgrade, where you get back perhaps half of the points spent on that upgrade. Optionally, the option to refund is only allowed for a limited time after purchasing it.

Try-before-you-buy: Allow the player to try out a skill/weapon first in mock combat before he finally commits to purchasing it. Champions Online and Bayonetta does this.

Unlock full version: Upon purchasing a skill, you can sell it back for the full price, but it currently works in a limited manner of some sort (only at half efficiency, or can only use it a limited number of times, etc.).

An option that is labeled as "commit to this skill" gives you the skill with no limitations, but you can't sell it anymore.

Podcasts

2012-01-23T19:14:00.002+08:00

So when I realized hauling around 1.32 kilograms of an Android tablet with keyboard is cumbersome when you want to listen to podcasts on the go, I bought a smartphone.

I looked for a phone that works with CyanogenMod. The first one, I accidentally bricked when preparing it for CyanogenMod.

The next one, I made sure it works easily with CyanogenMod. I decided with an HTC Wildfire.

And it did work. So the next thing I did was to get a good podcast downloader.

I use ACast in my Asus Transformer, and I wasn't really that happy with it, so I looked for others. All of them (free ones) turned out to be inadequate. In the end, I still settled for ACast. Looking back, ACast isn't so bad.

So next was to get really good podcasts for game development. Here's a list of the ones I found:

~~I will, if time permits, update this article to give my feedback on every podcast listed there.~~ The list is updated with my opinions on each podcast.

Game Development Podcasts

Irrational Podcasts
Ken Levine's personal podcast as he talks about videogame development along with anyone he decides to interview. Updates are not frequent but very well made, and offers valuable insight into AAA game development.

http://irrationalgames.com/tag/irrational-podcasts/feed/

The Bethesda Podcast
Podcast of the makers of Elder Scrolls, and the id guys (Doom, Quake, RAGE). Some of the interviews sound more like advertisements to make you buy their game, but other episodes are good.

http://bethblog.com/bethesdapodcast.xml

GAMBIT: Looking Glass Studios Podcast
A 10-part series of interviews of the past employees of the now defunct Looking Glass Studios (1990-2000). Very nice podcast explaining some things about how Thief and System Shock were made. You'll realize how even AAA companies (back then) have brash and spontaneous workflows like the rest of us.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/LGSpodcast

Flammable Penguins
Personal podcast of Claire Blackshaw, programmer/designer at Climax where she interviews other game developers. Not updated since 2010. Nevertheless there are some good discussions here.

http://www.flammablepenguins.com/FPPod.xml

Infinite Ammo
Podcast that focuses on interviews of indie developers. Updates are infrequent; I almost thought the podcast was dead.

http://infiniteammo.ca/blog/tag/podcast/feed/

Another Castle
Freelance game designer Charles J. Pratt interviews other game developers in the New York game development scene. Sadly, not updated since 2012. Who knows, maybe we'll get a season three?

http://www.another-castle.org/?feed=rss2

The DigiPen PodClass
Podcast about game development from people in DigiPen. Not that good of a podcast IMO. Also not updated since 2010.

https://www.digipen.edu/index.php?id=2505&type=100

Experimental Game Dev Podcast Show
Interview podcast that's more on indie devs, specifically mobile games. I don't really get much out of this podcast but maybe you'll have better luck.

http://www.indiegamepod.com/?feed=rss2

Game Developer's Radio
A podcast more on design ideas/mechanics of games. This goes more on theoretical/internalizing discussions chiefly about anecdotal experiences of the podcast's hosts. You'll probably find yourself alternating between agreeing and disagreeing with the things they say. On hiatus as of November of 2012.

http://www.gamedevradio.net/?feed=podcast

Gaming By Design
Similar to Game Developer's Radio, this podcast is more on anecdotal experiences of the hosts, discussing their opinions about various game design topics. Only went for one season by 2011, and has no updates since.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/GamingByDesign

The one thing I hate is when the podcast goes "I think players tend to like X instead of Y. Like me for example, I like X a lot. So developers should do X more." This is a narrow-minded, circle-jerk discussion that gets nowhere.

Gaming Podcasts
Gaming, not game *development* podcasts

Orange Lounge Radio
Where a straight guy, a gay guy, and a woman talk about games. Imagine Sheldon talking about videogames for about 30 minutes.

http://www.orangeloungeradio.com/index.php?option=com_podcast&view=feed&format=raw

Electric Sista Hood
Two African American gamer girls/girl gamers squee like fangirls and talk about anime and videogames. Spoiler: They don't exactly look hot. Don't Google what they look like. Instead, imagine the Jolie twins when listening to the podcast.

http://www.electricsistahood.com/category/podcast/feed/

Video Game Outsiders
Let John's devil may care attitude and Michelle's reproachful demeanor take you to places far and beyond, as long as its loosely related to videogames. Oh and Matt is now a co-host.

http://www.videogameoutsiders.com/podcast_xml.php

Mega64
Oh yes. Listen to the makers of the numerous prank videos based on videogames talk about stuff.

http://mega64.com/category/podcast/feed/

Podtoid: Destructoid's Video Game Podcast
The almighty Podtoid podcast. Hear Jim Sterling as he longs for Jonathan Holmes' cock. 'Sup Holmes!

http://podcasts.destructoid.com/rss

Other podcasts I found that I have a hunch might be useful to me as a game developer.

History Podcasts
Podcasts like these mainly give me story ideas.

Stuff You Missed In History Class
Deblina and Sarah recount various stories from history. Each episode centers on the life of a famous person, like Cynthia Ann (the American girl abducted by Indians and raised as their own), Gertrude Bell (Lawrence of Arabia's mentor), and so on.

http://www.howstuffworks.com/podcasts/stuff-you-missed-in-history-class.rss

History Extra Podcast
BBC History Magazine's editor Rob Attar doing interviews on various historians with their area of expertise. Mostly on European history. Things like the cadaver trade, evolution of maps over time, the jujitsu suffragettes, et al.

http://www.historyextra.com/podcast/historypodcast.xml

Dan Carlin's Hardcore History
Dan's powerful emotive voice narrates pieces of history in certain point of views that you wouldn't have thought of.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/dancarlin/history?format=xml

Binge Thinking History Podcast: http://bingethinkinghistory.libsyn.com/rss

Military History Podcast: http://geo47.libsyn.com/rss

All Things Medieval: http://allthingsmedievalpodcast.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

Medieval Podcast: http://feeds.feedburner.com/MedievalPodcast

A Short History of Japan: http://frug.podbean.com/feed

Celtic Myth Podshow: http://feeds.feedburner.com/CelticMythPodshow

RTÉ - Conspiracy Podcast: http://www.rte.ie/radio1/podcast/podcast_conspiracy.xml

Others

The Moth Podcast
Powerful, moving stories from ordinary people set upon unordinary circumstances. This podcast always brightens my day.

http://feeds.themoth.org/themothpodcast

Stuff Mom Never Told You
A female perspective on issues like gender and health. You girls will love this.

http://www.howstuffworks.com/podcasts/stuff-mom-never-told-you.rss

Stuff To Blow Your Mind: http://www.howstuffworks.com/podcasts/stuff-to-blow-your-mind.rss
TechStuff: http://www.howstuffworks.com/podcasts/techstuff.rss
The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe: http://www.theskepticsguide.org/feed/rss.aspx?feed=5x5
Night's Knights: A novel about vampires. http://www.podiobooks.com/title/nights-knights/feed/
Knights of the Night Actual Play Podcast: A tabletop RPG play session turned into a podcast. http://kotnwod.libsyn.com/rss

In addition, here are video podcasts that I subscribe to on my Android tablet:

Gaming Video Podcasts

Good Game: Hex and Bajo gives you game reviews and interviews, with Goose occasionally giving you a bonus game review or perhaps an enlightening presentation of some sort. Each episode is about 30 minutes long. http://abc.net.au/tv/goodgame/video/vodcast/goodgame_mp4.xml

X-Play's Video Podcast: Various small parts of the T.V. show X-Play, spliced and served here for your podcasting pleasure. http://www.g4tv.com/xplay/podcasts/6/XPlay_Daily_Video_Podcast.xml

G4TV.com Web Shows: Same thing but on various shows like Attack of the Show, The MMO Report, etc. http://www.g4tv.com/10play/podcasts/56/G4TVdotcomWebShows.xml

The DTOID Show: Quick five minute news on the games industry. http://revision3.com/destructoid/feed/MP4-Large

Backup Tool for Unity non-Pro, Areca Backup For Mac

2011-12-20T23:02:00.002+08:00

I found this nifty tool called Areca Backup that does differential/incremental backups. I haven't used it extensively yet, but I'm hoping it plays nicer with Unity non-Pro than SVN does. It doesn't keep metadata on each folder like SVN, so it won't mess up if Unity messes with the file organization.

But because of that, it can't track changes between file moves. It can't even track changes anymore if you rename the file. But the old unrenamed file is still there in the old backup entries, so if you need to get back to it you can do so.

This is slightly better than the manual method of zipping up your project everytime you want a new backup. A version control system is the most ideal but we all know its not possible with Untiy non-Pro.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/areca/

I did some few fixes to have it running on Macs: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25260770/Areca/Areca-7.2.3.dmg

Its not perfect, it may hang when you try to exit it. But I've tested it and backing up does work properly.

At first, the backing up didn't work. It turns out the exceptions stem from the fact that Mac and Linux have different ways of showing the output of ls.

In DefaultMetaDataAccessor.java, ls -ald1 seems to print the file without any info (filenames only). I had to change it to ls -ald. Furthermore, Mac's ls prints out a file size total as its first output, so I needed to skip that if found.

There are further problems with the way the output of ls is handled. Mac's ls puts an @ sign when the file has extended attributes (ACL, etc.) and that needed to be taken into account.

Currently the program may hang when you unselect an entry at the leftmost list.

I get this:

java.lang.NullPointerException
 at com.application.areca.launcher.gui.composites.TargetTreeComposite.handleEvent(Unknown Source)
 at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.EventTable.sendEvent(Unknown Source)
 at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.sendEvent(Unknown Source)
 at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Widget.sendEvent(Unknown Source)
 at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Widget.sendEvent(Unknown Source)
 at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Widget.sendEvent(Unknown Source)
 at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Widget.notifyListeners(Unknown Source)
 at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.runDeferredEvents(Unknown Source)
 at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.readAndDispatch(Unknown Source)
 at org.eclipse.jface.window.Window.runEventLoop(Window.java:820)
 at org.eclipse.jface.window.Window.open(Window.java:796)
 at com.application.areca.launcher.gui.MainWindow.show(Unknown Source)
 at com.application.areca.launcher.gui.Application.show(Unknown Source)
 at com.application.areca.launcher.gui.Launcher.launchImpl(Unknown Source)
 at com.myJava.system.AbstractLauncher.launch(Unknown Source)
 at com.application.areca.launcher.gui.Launcher.main(Unknown Source)
11-12-20 22:09 - ERROR
java.lang.NullPointerException
 at com.application.areca.launcher.gui.composites.TargetTreeComposite.handleEvent(Unknown Source)
 at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.EventTable.sendEvent(Unknown Source)
 at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.sendEvent(Unknown Source)
 at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Widget.sendEvent(Unknown Source)
 at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Widget.sendEvent(Unknown Source)
 at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Widget.sendEvent(Unknown Source)
 at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Widget.notifyListeners(Unknown Source)
 at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.runDeferredEvents(Unknown Source)
 at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.readAndDispatch(Unknown Source)
 at org.eclipse.jface.window.Window.runEventLoop(Window.java:820)
 at org.eclipse.jface.window.Window.open(Window.java:796)
 at com.application.areca.launcher.gui.MainWindow.show(Unknown Source)
 at com.application.areca.launcher.gui.Application.show(Unknown Source)
 at com.application.areca.launcher.gui.Launcher.launchImpl(Unknown Source)
 at com.myJava.system.AbstractLauncher.launch(Unknown Source)
 at com.application.areca.launcher.gui.Launcher.main(Unknown Source)

Source code: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25260770/Areca/areca-7.2.3-mac-src.zip

Collaborative Diffusion/Influence Maps For Obstacle Avoidance

2011-12-19T04:28:00.002+08:00

There was in the Unity forums, a post asking about how to implement ~~flanking behaviour~~ obstacle avoidance. I took interest because I've been wondering how to do that also.

Another user posted a link to a page explaining Collaborative Diffusion. From what I understand, its like influence maps, but once an agent passes through a node, that node's influence becomes zero, signifying its impassable now that he's there.

So I tried implementing it in Unity here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25260770/PathfindingTest/WebPlayer.html (you'll need to install the Unity plugin for your browser).

Left click to set the new attraction point or whatever its supposed to be called.

I'm pretty sure some of my code is a bit naive. Its only in certain situations do the agents will exhibit flanking behaviour. Some agents end up stuck, and I don't like the bee-like zig-zag movement they make.

Also I think it would be better to couple this with typical A*, such that, the path created by the A*, the area of the influence map that that path takes up, will be set to zero influence. Its as if the agent will be saying "to my allies, this is the path I'll take, don't cross it, its mine only. find your own path".

Angry Birds

2011-12-19T01:33:00.000+08:00

I overheard my father talking about how he's appreciating playing a game. I'm surprised my father is starting to understand the depth of fun and strategy to be had in playing a video game. I'm more surprised that the game he mentioned was Angry Birds.

I never payed much attention to Angry Birds because I find the basic premise of the game mechanics boring. But after overhearing my father I figured there is much thought and depth that the developers added to the game. More than what I would have considered at first draft of a design document.

It turns out each bird has special abilities. There's one that can dive, one that drops eggs as bombs, one that speeds up, and probably a bunch of other stuff that I don't know. Each bird's ability is useful in a certain situation. The blue one is suited to breaking ice as I heard. Its not simply "this bird does 25% more damage on ice objects". Its with the fact that it breaks up into three smaller birds (not sure why) and you'd have an easier time shattering through multiple layers of ice that way.

Contrast that with the last game I've released, Zombie Fields, and Angry Birds is looking like its got more strategical depth in it, disguised in a veneer of the visuals of a kid's story book.

About Me

2011-09-06T01:32:00.002+08:00

I made a forum post in Unity 3d which had me going on how I started in the game industry. Here it is:

______________________________________________

Where are you coming from?

I've always wanted to make videogames ever since I was a kid seeing one for the first time when my brother showed me. Ever since, I've studied what it took to make a game so I got into programming and 3d art.

As a child, I've shown a natural inclination in art, but I also persevered with programming, and I'd say it paid off.

I would usually learn a programming language earlier than my peers in school, only to find out that what I studied was too advanced for my expected level. I remember being a freshman in highschool when two seniors were at awe when I started writing private variables and public functions in C++.

My very first game was a turn-based RPG combat in QBASIC, which I threw away because I thought it sucked. I regret doing that.

I've dabbled in other stuff over the years: sketching, 3d art, graphic design, Flash and web programming.

Game development is a very risky proposition here in my country as its not as established as other fields like advertising or information technology. Nevertheless, I always jump on the chance to go into game development because its what I love to do, stable jobs be damned.

My very first major project was an online game with Torque, and it was quite stressful being the only programmer in the team. I worked there for two years and eventually left from burnout. There was a point when I questioned myself and didn't want to do programming anymore (I thought about being a novelist), but that's all water under the bridge now. As a compromise, I'm making a videogame where I'm also writing the story.

Now I work in a start-up company making videogames hoping to establish ourselves in the local industry.

I'm also active in the Unity developer community sharing code in the wiki and forums. You can find me hanging out in the Unity IRC chat channel occasionally as AnomalusUndrdog.

Which languages are you working with in Unity?

I come from C++, so C# was a no-brainer to me, after finding out the equivalents to the STL data structures and whatnot.

What do you enjoy about using these languages in Unity?

Its what I'm used to, and no more need for pointers.

What do you find annoying?

Mostly not the language but the IDE, MonoDevelop is a weird one, double-clicking on an error doesn't focus the MonoDevelop window, its slow, and crashes sometimes. So I use Notepad++ when on a Windows machine and Unitron on Mac.

I'm mostly vexed with the fact that I can't afford Unity Pro for the foreseeable future. This has me tempted to try out UDK.

Blending Problems

2011-08-15T19:41:00.000+08:00

So I got these indicators to know when a unit is selected or where he's going to move:

Its a projector, its not the fastest, but it looks good. Its blend equation is set right now to multiply. That's fine but:

Multiply darkens the blend, making it hard to see in dark places. So, I try an additive blend:

So that looks better. Only it does the opposite: in bright areas, its hard to see:

More so in very bright areas:

So in the end, I am forced to use a normal alpha-blend equation. It looks plain, but is sure to be visible in both bright and dark areas:

Unfortunately, you can't emulate the blend types in Photoshop like Overlay, because blending equations in videocards are fixed-function.

Here's the Unity shaderlab code for alpha-blended projectors:

Shader "Projector/Diffuse" {
	Properties {
		_Color ("Main Color", Color) = (1,1,1,1)
		_ShadowTex ("Cookie", 2D) = "" { TexGen ObjectLinear }
	}
	Subshader {
		Tags { "RenderType"="Transparent"  "Queue"="Transparent"}
		Pass {

			ZWrite off
			Fog { Color (0, 0, 0) }
			Color [_Color]
			ColorMask RGB
			Offset -1, -1

			Blend SrcAlpha OneMinusSrcAlpha

CGPROGRAM
#pragma vertex vert
#pragma fragment frag
#pragma fragmentoption ARB_fog_exp2
#pragma fragmentoption ARB_precision_hint_fastest

#include "UnityCG.cginc"

sampler2D _ShadowTex;
float4x4 _Projector;
fixed4 _Color;

struct v2f {
	float4 vertex : SV_POSITION;
	float4 texcoord : TEXCOORD0;
};

v2f vert (appdata_tan v)
{
	v2f o;
	o.vertex = mul(UNITY_MATRIX_MVP, v.vertex);
	o.texcoord = mul(_Projector, v.vertex);
	return o;
}

half4 frag (v2f i) : COLOR
{
	return tex2Dproj(_ShadowTex, UNITY_PROJ_COORD(i.texcoord)) * _Color;
}
ENDCG
		}
	}
}