Becoming Indie Game Developer

A little bit about Mustache Games

2011-12-01T14:14:00.001+04:00

Hey there! Long time no see! You probably thought I gave up on the idea and that's why didn't write anything here... Well no! Quite opposite, actually!

Somewhere in July, I realised that it will be hard for me to achieve the aim alone. So I grabbed a few friends and we started working on a game togethere. We call ourselves MustacheGames, we work on the game called OfficeReveng and we're awesome! Well not so much... Everything is far not as perfect as it could be and it's natural when you take people who have no experience doing what they have to be doing and make them work and hope for the best.

Honestly the biggest problem now is me. I'm having some problems concentrating on the project. It's 2 months into production already and about 2 more ahead... and honestly I got a bit tired. I know the feeling won't last long, but... anyway)

So I just needed to post about it right before I get back to working. Posting always used to help me concentrate so yeah...

Also when we're done with the game, I plan to continue with the blog. I'll have a lot of expereince to share by then! I already have enough, but I do not have time to do quality posts, so far :(

Best wishes,
Alfred

UDK or Unity 3D?! Comparing Game Engines

2011-05-09T02:20:00.004+04:00

One of the blogs I'm subscribed to is by Johan Sanneblad who is like a Pro at game development. You can read some more information about him here.

So he lately had this seminar where he talked about actual large scale game production for mobile platforms, namely iPhone and Android. There is a lot of interesting things said there, but among all I enjoyed the process of him comparing Unity3D and UDK. UDK came out as a winner here for me, even though Johan's team choose Unity (they had their reasons... watch the video). I was really glad to see that, simply because I was still not sure if I did the right choice when choose UDK as the platform to study and develop on. I'd like to put here his list of Unreal vs Unity comparison and discuss it a little.

Target devices
UDK: Windows, iOS and consoles.
Unity: Mac, Windows, Android, iOS, Web, consoles.
Yeap! If you work with UDK you by default can develop only for Windows, iOS, Xbox and PlayStation. Which for sure is not a small market, but the lack of Android support is for sure a minus. BUT! You can't expect this to last long. Android is pretty popular platform and Epic (the creator of UDK) is a pretty serious company. There is no way they don't meet. And the words of Epic's vice president Mark Rein prove that.

Host environment
UDK: Windows only
Unity: Mac/Windows (Mac for iOS render & remote)
Well, THAT is not good! It's not like it's a problem for me, or like I can imagine someone choosing Unity over UDK just because of that. But the fact might affect one's workflow not in the best way. It's just uncomfortable. I guess if I were a Mac user, I would choose Unity despite all other UDK pluses.
On the other hand UDK gives you a unique possibility to upload your game right to your iDevice from a PC for testing!
So UDK might be a headache for people who have pro-mac pipeline, but a blessing for a pc-team.

Development language
UDK: UnrealScript ("the look and feel of C/C++/Java code")
Unity: Boo, C# or Javascript
I don't know about Boo, but I know C# is as popular language as C++ is. So I don't think this makes any big difference here.
For sure any coder will need some time to get to learn the specifics of UnrealScript, but once he does it worth it. UnrealScript is the specifically designed to work with 3D games. It surely saves more time then a multi-purpose programming language.

Custom splash screen
UDK:No
Unity: Yes (in a Pro version)
True true... If your game is made with UDK, you will necessarily have the "Powered with Unreal Engine"-kind of a splash-screen, when the game is launched. For a big scale product it might be an issue, I understand. But for the rest, mortal developers, I believe having a logo, of the company that sold Infinity Blade hundreds of thousands times and shocked us with EpicCitadel, is an advantage.

Other tools
UDK: UnrealKismet, MaterialEditor, Scaleform GFx
Unity: plugins, plugins, plugins
With UDK (which is free) you get all the advanced tools, that will speed up your work and increase quality of a final product. With Unity you'll have to buy the third-party plugins which are in beta stage yet. You know what beta means, don't u?)) lags and crashes!

Pricing
UDK: 99$ license. Free<$50,000 income. 25% of income>$50,000
Unity: iOS 400$ + Android 400$ + Pro 1500$= 2300
Well, her it's all up to you! Do you want to make 50 000$ and spend only 99$ (+99$ of Apple Developer's License) or maybe you have extra 2300$? Choice is yours...

One more word
I always used to say, that it doesn't matter what software or platform you use... The only thing that matters is what can you do with it. If you have a clear vision of a game, you will manage to do it with any engine.

I guess, that's it for today! Don't forget to have fun while making a game! ;)
Cheers!

P.S. I actually wanted to post the video only. But the video embedding process turned into a quick post :)

Creating User Interface in Unreal Development Kit (almost no scripting)

2011-05-06T01:40:00.001+04:00

UPDATE: What I didn't know at the moment of writing this post is that, even though the technology is supported by UDK Mobile, it won't work on iOS.

Hey there! UI (user interface) is very important in every piece of software and you can be sure that a game is almost impossible without a UI. Creating a good one isn't easy and takes a lot of knowledge and talent in my opinion. There is this great book about it, if u're interested, it's called Game Development Essentials: Game Interface Design. I couldn't make myself read it all, just because I have to limit how much information I consume... I might go crazy because of an overload of information soon ;)) I hope I'll finish the book some day. But I can say it's worth reading if you're serious about Game Development.

In my process of developing/studying I've reached the stage where I need to create a UI and a HUD. (heads up display - the thing that displays all the needed information during a game) I was trying to not jump into it as long as I could. Because programming a UI is fun and a bit familiar thing for me. I was sure there will be no difficulty in studying it.

I heard about the fact that Adobe Flash technology can be used for creating UI in UDK and today I watched a tutorial explaining how to do that. It's called Scaleform and it's super simple if you know Flash and just simple if you don't.

I'm really happy about the fact, because (long time ago) Macromedia Flash was the first animation software I studied, being a 8 grader. I have this weird warm feelings about the soft :) It's simple and elegant in many ways.

You can find the tutorial I mentioned on VoxHouseStudio's YouTube channel. It explains creation of a simple menu scene with usage of really basic Kismet functions (GFxUI). Even though the tutorial gives you really essential knowledge of the so called Scaleform technology, it's absolutely enough to understand the workflow, if you ask me.

Mougli on his blog shows us how to do the GUI and HUD using UnrealScript. You might want to check out these too.

Weekly Report #3: Weapons, INI Files and Still No Tutorials.

2011-05-01T14:08:00.000+04:00

I'm starting to hate myself because of not finding enough time to share things with you guys. But you have to understand that all of what I do won't matter unless I show some achievements. Which means I need to post a game to App Store and start getting at least some income! I don't think I'll manage to share any useful information about how I do that yet. It's just that informative posts take a lot of time and energy, while reporting posts are like a simple chat with a friend. I hope you understand me. I will still try to share some information, but not as much as I would like to.

Now let me tell you a few words about how the study and game-dev process is going.
This week I had an accident with my project. I was adding an input zone through an .ini file and suddenly all of the configuration file got reset to the default settings somehow! I have no idea why that happened, but fortunately I had a backup of the project on my desktop PC so I copied the configuration files from there. Now I'm back in shape.

I know it doesn't look so pretty. It's just a placeholder graphics.

I finally managed to add a weapon to the pawn! :)) Although the weapon still needs some refining I'm still happy with the result. It might sound simple to a person who already knows how to add a weapon to a pawn, but for me it was like walking in a dark and trying to find a way out.

I also starting to work on the designs already! I was a bit afraid of this stage, because design is the thing that makes me nervous most of the time.

On this week's to-do list is finishing the weapon class and studying basic usage of AI classes. Also I need to get done with end game events, HUD, menus and transition levels. I don't think I manage to cover all of that this week, but what cheers me up is that as soon as I'm done with these I can start actual production of the game!

Things go really well! I actually can't believe I'm still doing it))

Cheers!

Weely Report #2

2011-04-25T01:38:00.002+04:00

Hey there! Yeah yeah yeah the weekly reports are supposed to keep me organized and make me do what I say I plan to do, but… you know me! I didn't do totally do what I was planning to do this week although I have some breakthroughs! So let's get started with that!

This week I managed to solve the picking up problem, but I did it a bit other way then I planned. I didn't use UDK's pickup factories. I created a peaceable subclass of Actor that just has a touch action to inform the Pawn and after that destroy the actor. The best decisions are always the simplest ones, you know! I have to thank Mougli for what he wrote at his blog! It really helped me with that! His blog is kinda the same one as mine is, but he writes only about UnrealScript and writes about that in a really good manner! He apparently has much better coding skills and took the learning thing much more serious. I believe he read the whole documentation of UnrealScript. I should've done it long time ago, but I thought it's too much of boring reading for me. But here I am now reading both his blog and the whole documentation and it really made me evolve much faster.

About the game design of our first game! Thanks to my girlfriend I came up with the better idea of the game! Now we have the character! And it's going to be a crazy grandma under RedBull overdose that hurries to come back home from a mall to feed her baby grandchild! She tries to get there as fast as possible, but the whole world is against her! At first it's just traffic and some seldom people, but then things go wild! Zombies, beasts and stuff like that stand in her way! But she just can't stop! Her child is starving and because of her overdose she has to keep drinking RedBulls, otherwise she dies from a heart attack! She has the ability to hit anything with her bag while she's on the go! But that's not it! She gets some crazy superpowers from time to time, like Crazy Moma Megaspeed or things like that! I didn't think through all the details yet! But what I like is that it still seams like not so hard to accomplish! I believe I'll get a draft of the whole gameplay in two weeks, now when I have the knowledge!

I see it all as a bunch of actors with touch actions and all we'll need to change after the change is a meaning of a variable that will represent the level of RedBull in blood, which in fact is health for the character! What also has to be changed after that is a touch actions, when the Pawn has the superpower! Seems pretty simple to me!

As to the video tutorial I've mentioned before! I just looked through it and it was all like "em", "aaahm.." and so on, so I decided not to post it so far the way it is. I need better preparation to do it, because it was all me figuring out what to do instead of explaining the whole process. I just don't want you guys to fall asleep while watching it! I swear I'll post it during the next few days!

As to the plans for the week! Well, if I manage to keep up the speed of developing and studying that I currently have I'll set up the obstacles scripts, superpowers and RedBull stuff too! I should already start thinking about the design, so far I just have the placeholder graphics for the things to bee seen and animated! You'll see the placeholders in the video tutorial, I really love em! The character's name is Walter! :P

So I guess that's it for this productive, but not much to talk about week!
Cheers and have a good time!

Game Design: Runner

2011-04-25T01:30:00.000+04:00

Ok, here is the deal! We want to make a game, right? But there is a big possibility that this wish will vanish before we manage to do something! So what do we do to prevent that? We feed ourselves with something that motivates us! We read books, watch other people's success, imagine the bright future and simply try to stay on a good mood!

But I tell you, there is no better motivation then having your own finished product! I was lucky to play big part in some pretty serious (on my country's scale) projects that got finished. One of them was the first feature 3D animated movie in my country.

It's been 6 moths already since I decided to mess with games for iPhone, but so far I got stuck in the study routine. Study is good but, knowing myself, I can say this won't last long if I don't get some results. Financial results are desirable :)

So let's start talking about our first game! (for the second time) Let it's code name be simply TheFirst!

It's crystal clear that the first game should be fairly simple so we don't really get stuck! But it also has to be fun to work at and should have a chance to succeed! Why fight if you don't plan to win?

Few ideas about the Game Design of TheFirst!

I see TheFirst as a running game! Like the one where you have to get as far as possible. There are lots of games like that on AppStore!

It's not that hard to implement! It's simply movement and touch triggers! It's even possible to do it with Kismet only! But I'll use UnrealScript for the most part anyway.
Enemy AI doesn't have to be complex at all.
The fact that there are many games of the kind is not bad at all!

People know how to play a game of the genre.
There is already some number of fans of the genre who will be happy to see yet another running game in our implementation.

The game should be all about the character's charisma! He should be well motivated to run wherever he is running!

Game happens inside your mind and not in a CPU or on Display. If you're told that a red dot is Mars, you won't think of it as a collection of pixels of #FF0000... You will think of it as of a whole planet, maybe populated by aliens! Like in "I must run", a game with a fairly simple gameplay, I enjoyed the non stop running process, because I knew I need to come to the place in time, otherwise they'll kill my wife! I wouldn't spend a single minute playing the game if there was no story. By the way, last time I checked the game was free. Get it and see what I mean.
Just pay attention to it. Most of the popular apps have a face on an icon. The more popular the character gets the more popular will be the app.

I definitely want to implement the experience points, power ups and special powers into the game. Like super powers, because I'm a geek and I need epicness to enjoy a game/movie/book! What's the sense of enemies if you can't every once in a while kill a thousand of them with one press of a button?

GameCenter implementation will be just awesome here!
It also gives a big potential for future updates! New powers, new enemies, new maps.
Some kick ass powers will be good for PR. You show 2-3 of your best ones in the trailer, mention that you have like 25 of them there and everyone thinks that all of the 25 powers are just as awesome.

The game should be side-scroll runner, so it should have 2D logic. But it will have 3D graphics, that will give it a very beautiful look.

3D get's better when you know beforehand from which angle will a viewer see it. Now when the character and background will be locked in 2D logic, but will have the freedom of 3D, the visual part should be very joyful.
Neither FPS, nor third person camera games don't work so well on a touch device, IMO. I mean ofcourse there are developers who manage to bring the comfortable FPS experience to touch, but... First - I'm not that good yet. Second - in my opinion non FPS games will still be more popular among different classes of users. It's just nicer.

The controls and interface should be very simplistic! iPhone's design proved it's better like that :P

I imagine 4 buttons, each in a corner of the screen looking like they are little holes in the game's image.

Question #1: Who is the main character?

Is he a stereotype of a fighter or of a victim?
What exactly made him run?
Should the main character run from something or should it better run to something?!

FROM: In that case we can explain the "don't slow down" factor! That can also give the game endless number of tours!
TO: There is an end to the game. There is a destination point that can make the game more serious. When we think of running to something I imagine Nemo's father looking for him (from "Finding Nemo"), Neo flying to catch Trinity and so on. I just see more drama here.

Indie Direction Weekly Report #1: UnrealScript, Video Tutorials and a Book

2011-04-18T02:10:00.001+04:00

Hey there! I apparently have some big issues with staying organised. This is obvious if you have a look at the way I post on the blog. It's been 5 month already, since I've registered the blog and we have only 6 posts here.
But I'm really taking the idea of the blog seriously, so that's why I decided to bring some system to it! We'll have weekly reports! Every Sunday evening (according to my time - GMT+4) I you'll find here a post about:

What I've been doing about the project this week
What I'm planning to share with you
What I'm planning to do next week about the project

I think it will be both informative for you and motivating for me! I mean like, a word is a word! (Although we already had a case of me not keeping my word. I apologize for that.) One of the main reasons why I haven't been posting so much, is that because of my big pause in writing, we've got a lot of catching up to do. And I couldn't find a way to do that until now.I think it will be fun!

So let's get started! I've got some exciting things to tell you about!

This week I've been messing with UnrealScript. It has actually been already more then a month that I'm trying to master it and I have to say it's not easy.

The main problem with UnrealScript is that most of the tutorials and information on the web about it (which is not a lot) is not for the mobile version of UDK. And you might think that there is no big difference, but actually difference is huge! UDK Mobile Editor and the classes that it uses have much less preset functions/prewritten scripts then normal UDK Editor has. That was actually a big disappointment for me to learn about. The excitement I had vanished at first... Things appeared to be harder.

So the situation with finding information about UnrealScripts classes mostly looks like this:

You search for something you don't know how to do. (say create a weapon)
You find an article with the similar headline.
You read the article and it's pretty short. You feel relieved "It's not so hard!"
Then you find out that the person who wrote it, is using UDK's prewritten UT classes, that have everything what you need already, but are not supported by UDK Mobile in the first place.

But nevertheless I'm not giving up! I've already learned a lot, but I still can't claim that I clearly understand the way UnrealScript works and all of it's paradigms.

So this week I've been struggling with a Pawn's (character's) Inventory, PickupFactory and Weapon classes... I had some steps forward, but they were achieved by hours of struggling.

I have and idea of how I can speed up my UnrealScript study. I'll write about it in the ending part of the post.

What I'm planning to share with you should be really useful! At least I hope so! I'm preparing what I've always wanted to do...

It's a video tutorial! I myself learned a lot of things from video tutorials, so I thought why not!

Well... it appeared to be pretty hard! Actually much harder then I thought! English is not my native language as u might have noticed, so I have to really work hard when making a tutorial. I have to think of what I'm doing, I have to think of how to say it and I have to listen to myself carefully, so I notice mistakes. I never did that before and after the first 2 hours I felt like I was incredibly tired! I actually don't remember when I got so tired last.

Also I'm not sure if I'm allowed to call it a tutorial, because, as you know, I'm still studying the subject. So let's say it's a student to student help ;)

I've got 3 topic on my mind at the moment:

"Side Scroller Game using Unreal Kismet" More then a half of it is already done and you can expect it to be released in a few days.)
"UDK Mobile Editor" I didn't plan to do anything about it, but when I was doing the Kismet tutorial, I understood you might need at least a brief explanation of how I imported and placed character, how I used volumes and stuff like that. BUT I will make the video only if I don't find a good one, that already exists and is free.
"Side Scroller Game using UnrealScript" That's the video I'm really looking forward to! It will show the difference between Kismet-only and UnrealScript approaches in it, continueing the topic of Kismet vs UnrealScript but also providing more detailed information!

Also a topic to talk about is Game Design! Technical part is for sure important, but as far as we're in the situation of playing one man band's role, we also have to think of even more significant questions. There is no need in a technical knowhow if there is no idea and balanced design behind it!

I'm currently reading Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design and I have to say it's awesome! This book is changing the way I think about designing a game. It's filled up with tons of examples from real life! This is not only really informative and useful, it's also motivating. With every new page I read, I feel like I'm getting closer and closer to the community of game developers. I believe it's a must have for everyone following the same dream that I do. I'm really thankful to Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams for writing this book!
When I'm done with the book I will for sure write a few posts with resumes of the major topics I found important.

The following week I'm planning to spend maximum time working on understanding UnrealScript! I need to finish the PickupFactory and Inventory things as fast as possible, because I've spent too much time on it already!
A few days ago I came up with the idea of how I can speed up my studying process and also give you guys more information, that I personally couldn't find anywhere on the Internet. I'm planning to get it from pro and half-pro UDK coders!
The idea is I'll trade my work for their knowledge! I'm not sure if you're familiar with IndieDB, but what you need to know is that it's a community of independent game developers. And in the same way as I don't have a coder in my indie team, there might be a good UnrealScript coder who doesn't have a 3d animator/modeler/rigger on his team! It's also pretty common that they one can't afford to have a person like that on the team. (Like in my case) And as you people might have heard, I'm pretty good in animation, modeling and rigging.
So in a few days I'm planning to post a preposition of doing say 1-2 hours of work in return for 30 minutes of consulting from an experienced person. I can do even more work for the person, all I need is the answers!)) A small talk and few examples must be enough for me.

It's already not Sunday evening as I'm finishing to write this post... It's Monday in my city and the new week already started.
I just had this funny filling... I can swear I felt the smell of sea breath, saw bright sunlight and felt free! It's a silly thing, but with this project I imagine myself trying to break out from a prison by digging with a spoon :)
Cheers!

Not just a business and a form of art.... A Lifestyle!

2011-04-04T02:56:00.000+04:00

On January 18th I mentioned that I got an aim set... I thought I'm going to manage to make my first simple game in a month... Today is 3rd of April and I'm pretty far from that. Maybe it's all not that simple as it seemed to be.

Not only I didn't post anything in the blog, which was supposed to keep me motivated, I wasn't also paying enough attention to the project. I can tell you a lot about how much tired I get after my full-time job, about the feeling of need to rest at least a little spend time with your girlfriend and friends, but... What I'm starting to understand is: My quest is not only about learning software and game design. It's also about changing my lifestyle,the way I am and the main part - staying motivated most of the time. Few of the thought I had after all this time.

Hit the break to see what I think we can do about that!

People

People around you affect you badly. If you're surrounded by people who stopped evolving, you can be sure you will also stop if you already didn't. Well it's kind of a true, actually. Although you might think you're doing much more then your friends/workmates/neighbours/relatives it still doesn't mean that you do enough. The problem is exactly that one thinks that better then someone is good. Good is far better and more then others.

But don't look at it as if it's a bad thing! If people who don't try to succeed make you do nothing, then there is a big chance that successful people will affect you in the opposite way! If you have a millionaire in your contact list, go ahead call him! Otherwise there are plenty of ways to meet people these days. It's not necessary to drink coffee with the person (although it's definitely good) a light e-mail conversation will also have an effect.

One of other ways is just watching and listening to successful people online. For example, Pat Flynn from smartpassiveincome.com made me start thinking a lot. He also made me act. I can only imagine what would happen to me if he was a pal of mine so I could have a cup of coffee with him once in a while. I guess I would've already had a good passive income system set up.

Body

"What does body have to do with that!?" - you might ask! May be you're the smartest person ever, perfect coder, gifted artist and have the greatest self motivating skill, but your body shape and health might not let you use your whole potential.

I'm actually not the person who can tell you about that. I don't sleep enough, my nutrition consists of junk food, I'm mostly in a sitting position and got some unhealthy habits. Actually the facts made me understand how strongly it affects the way I'm able to work. I get tired fast, I often lose my nerve and can't concentrate from time to time. Although after I get a good sleep, take a walk and/or eat well, I feel dramatic improvement in my performance.

With the great help of Timothy Feriss' The 4-Hour Body I'm slowly getting rid of all of the factors that interfere with my current main aim. It's not like I'm crazy about being healthy, I'm crazy about starting the indie game development studio, so it's my duty to keep my mind clear and my body clean.

Time

“A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.”

CharlesDarwin

The "time" thing is not just about time. It's about getting things done. For example 48 hour rule claims that if you didn't do anything about the idea you came up with, in 48 hours since you decided it has to be done, you will most probably not do it at all. (bunch of "do"s, huh?)

Staying organised and trying not to waste your time is very important in the situation I'm in. . One hour of gaming, 22 minutes of a sitcom and 30 minutes of senseless browsing might not seem like a big waste of time. But as you know I have a day job which I just can't leave yet. So I need to try and manage to fit the game development tasks in the 8 hours a day that are left from sleep+work. Every hour counts. The same good old Timothy Feriss' other book called The 4-Hour Workweek says a lot of important things about time management. It actually changed my whole vision of how things work in this world and work time. The book is actually also one more factor that made me start the quest.

It might seem like I'm trying to get rid of all the fun in this world, but... For me personally seeing that I'm moving forward with the game development is much great pleasure then hearing Barney's joke, capturing the flag and learning the latest macrumors ;) The problem is - sometimes I forget about that.

Organizing

When you don't have the ability to work on a project all the time, your brain still keeps thinking about the unsolved tasks and comes up with new ideas. Also when you're a one man band you have too much things to do and remember.

Instantly writing down and keeping track of done and to-do things is critical in that situation. It might be just a notebook and a calendar on your wall. Some people say it's even better to use these instead of apps. There is some psychological trick behind that, but I still prefer digital way of doing that. I also always use apps that sync with the cloud. There is nothing worse then not being able to get to your info just because you're not on your machine/handset.

I currently use

Google Calendar - for planning things out for the whole project. It has really comfortable interface and almost everything similar can sync with it.

Wunderlist - for to-do lists. I was using Remember The Milk, but Wunderlist's aesthetic look and nice lists system made me to do the switch.

Evernote - for quickly writing down ideas and notes. I really love the option of making voice notes. Sometimes when I manage to solve some problem during the development I feel like I need to write down, how I did it because it's most likely that in time I will forget some details. Typing down the whole process into my iPod would take 5-10 minutes... Saying is much faster and easier.

Summing Up

What I want to do and what I believe you want to do, if you're reading this, is to set up the most fun business ever that will also bring us money. Let's not let anything stand in our way. Even the little things we talked about today might have a dramatic effect on the speed of our journey :)

Cheers.

Kismet vs UnrealScript

2011-01-22T03:07:00.004+04:00

As I've mentioned in one of the previous posts Unreal Engine has this visual scripting language called Kismet. It's pretty powerful and simple at the same time. I really loved using it while making tests of our upcoming game. So far I surprisingly mostly had difficulties with the Content Browser and the Level Editor itself, but never with Kismet... Working with is a real fun!

But one question always bothered me... Will I have to code? Where is the limit of Kismet's power? When will I have to give up visual scripting to actual coding?

I actually can't really bring an example of a situation where one would use Unreal Script, just because I'm still not that good at UDK. (I'm good at studying software on my own, but not THAT good) BUT! I did a little research and have a few answers, but before that let me tell u a few words about the Unreal Script itself.

Unreal Script is a powerful programming language dedicated especially for the game engine and working with 3D graphics interactivity. It was on purpose designed with the same syntax as C++. And it's good, just because C++ is the most popular programming language in the world and practically anyone who at least was having fun coding late nights, knows how it works. Unreal Script has special functions for all the things u might need while programming a game interaction. Basically that's the point of an engine, duh.

But at the same time u can do most of programming an interaction with player with Kismet, so why code? Well of course there are people who will feel more comfortable with a code editor, then with moving nodes and connecting with some arrows. But it's just that UDK is dedicated to make FPS games. Of course you can easily create games of other genre using it and still not writing a line of code! For example on UDK's official web-site you'll find free video tutorials of creating a top-down game using only Kismet Editor. And it works fine!

The thing is that changing game-play is mostly a hack. For example creating a character for 3rd person shooter game is actually creating a controllable enemy character with a camera linked to him. While the method works fine for games of small scale, it might be more reasonable to make the changes on a deeper level if u make something big.

Using both of the tools is the perfect combination. Kismet saves a lot of time, Unreal Script gives you customization freedom and better control. (if you know what you're doing) Using this workflow =, a programmer can independently add some improvements with UnrealScript to Kismet for the very project a studio works on. Meanwhile a level designer will use the custom add-ons to do his job. Everybody's happy, everything works perfect!

But for now I guess we'll go with the Kismet hacks to create our first game. iOS games mostly aren't huge, so I suppose we'll manage to get away with the great, but limited, power of Kismet.

Best wishes,
Alfred

News Update after the holidays...

2011-01-19T00:10:00.000+04:00

Hey there! First of all, Happy New Year! I'm not really a big fan of holidays, but who cares what I think. They still do happen every year and people keep on complaining that I forget to with them something.
I did't post here for long time. It's been hard days for me and our whole team at the studio where I currently work. We've finished the first feature animated movie in our country and the last days before the deadline were living hell. I've posted a few thoughts about that on my other blog.
As to our topic, I do have some news too, although as u might expect I didn't have enough time for it either. But the news are mostly good and pretty inspiring for me.
First of all the greatest event is that Epic has finally released the update of UDK that completely supports iOS. I'll post about all the great things they've added to the package in the December's release later. But what I’d like to mention right now is that, because of what I’ve learnt after a more in-deep study of the engine and analyzing our financial situation I’ve decided to choose UDK as the engine to develop on. And I’ve already mentioned that it doesn’t ask for good coding skills (in most of situations) and it takes only 99$ to start up.
Me and my friend, who’s also taking part in this quest of ours, came up with few ideas of games that we assume would work. I’m not telling you any details about the games so far, just because they’re too basic so far and need more work. But what matters is that we decided to try and have a ready game in one month since today. The game will be pretty simple and I don’t expect any big success of it. It’s just that I want to go through the whole process in order to improve my vision of this industry and market.
I also won’t spend too much time thinking of how can we make the first game better. I assume it’s smarter to “just do” it instead of spending weeks in brainstorming, redoing gameplay, visuals and animations. As they say “good is better then perfect” and I couldn't agree more. Of course someday I will (everyone will!) create the best game ever, but by now... Let’s just create a game...)
The day will come, when we’ll be independent... And it’s not so far from here...
Alfred

We'll have to invest a little...

2010-11-27T10:32:00.000+04:00

Hello, there!

So in this last post I've listed tools I think of choosing as my primaries. But the thing is, we are all limited to how much money we've got! And when u decide to change your full time job or as in the case to start your own business, then you're probably a bit limited within your budget. So in my case I'm super limited... I live in Georgia and currently make 500$ a month. It's pretty enough to live here, but not a lot as u might expect. So I need to find a way to do what we've planed without big expenses.

Take into consideration that the purchases will have to take place only after you’ve developed a draft of a game on your PC. Of course you can buy all these things beforehand, but you don’t have to! You use your good old computer, with all this software you didn’t pay a penny for until you understand that what you’ve developed can bring you money…

Let’s find out what we need!

First we need a Mac anyway. Even though all of the tools I've mentioned can run on a Windows PC , we'll still need something that runs OS X Snow Leopard to publish an app on the AppStore. You'll have to use iPhone SDK and it runs on the OS only. So a Mac. The cheapest choice is a used Mac Mini... But it's not the one I prefer for the moment. The difference in price between the latest new one and the latest but used is not so significant. It will cost 612$ (well at the moment of writing it costs so much) to purchase Mac Mini on Amazon.com, but you can for sure find one in a local store. I already have a display and other accessories and hope that so do u. If not, of course u need them too.

What we need next is a license of the software we use.

· In case of Airplay SDK it won't cost us a penny so far, just because we didn't make any money yet.

· If we decide to use UDK we need 99$ for the start.

· If our choice is Unity we'll have to find 1900$ somewhere.

Of course Airplay is the cheapest, but it's not a game engine. UDK is good and doesn't cost u a lot until u make some money, but I'm a bit afraid of it just because it's pretty new to iOS. Unity is expensive for me at the stage. You just don't invest so much money in what you actually have no idea about, do u? But on the other side I really like it! So here is what I think. Create the first game with either Airplay or UDK and then purchase UnityPro iOS's license if we get enough profit. I guess it will most probably be UDK, but give me some time to have a closer look at Airplay. I didn't give it as much of attention as to the other's, to be honest.

So we've spent 100$ more for licensing the software. And we also have the game ready! What next?

We need one more license.... Apple Software Developer's License so we could test the game on our device when we have the final binary version of it. It costs 99$ annually.

And here comes one more thing which will take some cash from us. It's apparently an iOS device. iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. Now of course u can buy any of these but let me just show some of the differences.

· iPhone/iPod touch apps are different from iPad's. iPhone apps can run on an iPad but not on contrary.

· First generation iPhone can't run iOS 4, nor can the first iPod touch. The version of the OS includes features that are almost a must to any new app on AppStore today. (multitasking and Game Center).

· And of course the difference in hardware! 4th generation of iPod touches and of course the iPhone itself have ultra high resolution (retina) displays, 1Ghz processor and better motion sensors.

I believe u'll need a few of the devices of different generation for good testing, but u will necessarily need at least one for a start. Which one is up to you! If u're in a very tight budget as I am, I advice u to by an iPod touch. It has all that an iPhone has, except the phone function, which we're not so much of interested in now. Which generation? Well, I believe it will be better to test your game on a bit older device like iPod touch 3rd generation. It's just that what will work perfectly on your super latest model of might be a laggy mess on an older thing. So take it into consideration. Although to be honest I didn't. I couldn't help myself and just purchased iPod touch 4 from Amazon.com with this few clicks, so in my case it’s 199$. Actually I'm lovin' it! To be honest I write the posts using it! Although I do edit them on my PC.

So this is it! 612$+99$+99$+199$=1009$

I believe it’s not a lot.

Now, as I said. You’ll need to spend the money only when you already have the game almost ready and running on your PC.

Then the rest is up to how strong is your belief in yourself.

One of three ways...

2010-11-23T00:57:00.000+04:00

Hey there! So I'm on the stage of studying thing and planning where to go next...
Here are some news:

At firs I thought that I need to concentrate on learning iOS SDK perfectly, but pretty soon, after having some studies I understood it's much better to learn a cross-platform tool of creating a mobile game. AppStore is good and I love it, but making what u've created cross-platform means greater number of consumers and as a result more profit. Taking into consideration that number of Android devices is growing and even Woz thinks that it will be the main stream platform in the world it would be stupid to invest in iOS only. Although I just have this feeling that it limits your possibilities, when you create something that works on multiple platforms, I have to admit that it didn't stop any software developer so far.

So here is what I found cross-platform.

AirplaySDK
homepage

Currently it supports almost any portable platform: iOS, Android, Symbian, Windows Mobile and others. And u can create not only games using it, but almost any kind of an app. It has everything you might ever need to develop an app for a portable device. And the most exciting part is that you can sign your apps even if you use it on a Windows PC!!!
AirplaySDK is free if your anual turnover is less then 100K$! And even after that it stays pretty cheap.

UDK (Unreal Development Kit)
homepage

If u've been checking iOS news lately and/or watch every Apple keynote as I do, u might know that UDK added iOS support a few months ago... It's a great event! UDK brought an unseen graphics to iOS devices! I actually couldn't imagine that something of this level was possible on today's portable devices (although PSP's is impressive too). As u might know UDK came from Unreal Engine 3 which is as well as I know one of the most advanced game engines nowadays. And it's not only about what impressive lightning and shading u can achieve with it, using tools that are very familiar to any CG artist! It's even about programming the game. What I've learned about it is that you use node based system to program the interactivity! It's also very familiar to us, guys working in CG! In 3Ds MAX (and I believe in other software of this kind) particle system control works in the same way. It's very comfortable and visual! And it doesn't need coding skills. I'm not sure if this way of programing limits your possibilities, but I believe there must be an old school way of doing it in there if so.
As to the pricing... Well, you have to pay 100$ for, what they call, Royalty Bearing License. Then after you make the first 5000$ from the product you've developed using UDK, you're gonna have to pay them... wait for it.... 25% of all the subsequent revenues!!!!!!! With all due respect, this is a robbery... And just have a look at this!!! "UDK related revenue includes, but is not limited to, monies earned from: sales, services, training, advertisements, sponsorships, endorsements, memberships, subscription fees, rentals and pay-to-play."
It's the first time I see that kind of software license and it shocks me!

Unity 3D
homepage

This one is my choice and choice of lots of 3D game developers for iOS nowadays. It has all the needed features to create a game of any level of difficulty. U can use different languages for coding, like C#, Python, Java and even XML. The system is pretty similar to the one seen in ActionScript 2.0 (I don't know if there is a special name for it) which is assigning a script to an object. I'm not sure if it's good or if it's bad way of organizing your code, but that's how it is Unity.
And it also has a free version which even though is limited, still is pretty powerful and good enough for a start. But if you plan to publish your game on AppStore then you need UnityPro and Unity iOS at least, which will cost you 1499$+399$.

So here they are! Three of the bests! Which one to chose is up to you!

Escaping the reality...

2010-11-14T13:31:00.000+04:00

Hey there! My name is Alfred and just a few weeks ago I understood that things aren't goin right in my life... Don't get me wrong I have a pretty good job which I like a lot. I have good friends and a passionate girlfriend. But... it's all not the way I used to dream it to be when I was just a few years younger.

A few words about my background. I'm a college drop-out... I wanted to be a programmer, but then came this passion for CG and 3D animation and I thought I don't need the uni any more... I'm not sure so far if it was a good decision or if it was bad one. Anyway, mostly I don't regret it.

So back to the "few weeks ago" thing... I keep reading these lifestyle blogs (my favourite and actually the first blog of the kind that I subscribed to is Oscar's http://freestylemind.com/) and these guys showed me that there is another life! That u don't actually have to spend your whole day at the studio working as hard as u can EVEN if u're too young for a calm life. That there is much more about this world then work. They really inspired me!

In addition I never enjoyed having a boss (although I believe to be a really good employee). So I came up with this thought and vision of living a life where you do what you want whenever you want, make enough money for it and don't have this feeling of all the fun in the world simply passing by.

"Great!" one would say! It's a dream come true! But... how?! Good question. I actually realised that subconsciously I've been asking myself this question for the last 21 years... (which is my age BTW)
And here was the simple answer... I love doing animation and working with 3D graphics... I worship Apple!
I'm a geek! I'm good at self educating, self motivating and working without a team... I have programmer's background and although I'm not VERY experienced at it, I love this feeling of working with the code! So if you sum it all up (in my naive vision of the world) u get a perfect indie game developer of iOS, oh don't ya?!)) At least that's what i believe in and that's all that matters so far.

So I just understood that I need a blog just to report my progress. I believe it will make me stay more concentrated.
At this stage I'm collecting information and trying to develop a good action plan. It appeared to be harder then I thought, because there are lots of different ways you can make an iOS game...
In a few days I'll update you with the news about what I've found out.