SorceryGames Dev

Bad Guy has a Flag with an emblem #gamedev

2017-03-23T23:57:00.000-07:00

I have been busy getting the Main Story quest line implemented in the
game. I have to say it is very exciting as now I am getting down to the
last few of the quests for this. I am being delayed a little bit as I
implement the actual happenings when you get so far through the quest,
such as areas opening up and special animations required etc.

I have also been busy as has Leilani getting some more graphics in the
game, such as NPC portraits and such. They look real nice in my opinion.
Still more to go in, such as the arcade cabinets, which I chopped up
already and have 2 in the game.. that leaves only 7 more to make haha!

I am now close to creating the final scene of the game... the one where
the bad guy resides. Here is his banner that Leilani designed for him.

---

Along with all this are the many bug fixes along the way, and a few
minor redesigns of various bits that make the game look better and play
better. While doing all this my kitchen is coming along well in the
house, though slowly as always haha.

Laters
Da Voodoochief

Main Story Line is Written #gamedev

2017-03-02T11:20:00.000-08:00

Yes it is true, we finally have our Main Story line written. We have had it laid out/designed for a while, and lots of work has been done around this main story line. But we never quite had it done, and it is rather important!

Now tis story Arc is finished with and we are just tidying up some of the language we can get that flow into the game. There are a number of events in the game that rely on you the player being at certain points along the main story arc. Now I can hook them all up.

One of the funniest items that relies on this story arc is the TOWERR, which is a lovely tower that appears at some point along the story. Though it appears with NO door. How odd.. and later the door should appear. However I have not created the door yet for this tower. Do when I was doing some testing I couldn't figure out how to get into the tower scene I had created several weeks before (when creating scenes I simply use a cheat shortcut). It took Leilani explaining to me why I could not get into the tower! I will be glad to hook that up.

With this development it will mean that we can finally head to the end of Phase 2 of the game into Phase 3... which is the final phase of this game. It is like the end is near... or at least approaching.

Have a good one,
Da Voodoochief

p.s. Not posted lately as I was having technical issues with my account. All sorted now I reckon.

Got the Font

2017-01-26T00:04:00.004-08:00

It has been a busy week once more, adding more quests into the game, fixing bugs and generally tidying up all sorts of things. along with that Leilani provided some more graphics so I managed to get those in as well. Game looks all the better for them.

So back to the Font. Well one of the first fonts we looked at a couple of weeks ago was called Minya. Both me and Leilani loved the way it looked and felt it suited the game 100%. So then I read the license file that came with it and see I cannot use the font embedded in my App/Game. Dang, well all I need surely is to buy the Font. Well then I looked all over and selected a few font buying sites and got confused about which license I needed and got frustrated.

As it wasn't a totally free font, we thought at this point to simply find another font that would work for us instead. I have to say here that I must have searched through 400 fonts. I downloaded about 30 and put most of them into the game for a test. In fact below is the Minya Font.

Next up was a Font I really liked called Gabriella, but it wasn't right for the main bodies of text.

Then Admina, this one was simply too busy for the game, it is supposed to be a relaxed experience.

Smythe looked great when I downloaded it, but once in the game I hated the way it looked, and yes, perhaps I could have made it larger, but I do not think that would have helped to be honest.

So after all that I decided to do what it said on the Minya page of 1001font.com, that was to contact the creator if I had any questions. Yes, I did! Well wouldn't you know it.. on his contact page he had some questions answered and he answered one about App embedding licenses and gave several links to purchase this license. So I chose the first one (Fontspring.com) and on that page I could buy the App license for 12 dollars and the Web embedding license for only 3 dollars as it was on offer.

So for 15 dollars I got the exact font I wanted, our favorite font. All that running around , hours on top of hours trying various fonts and in the end I went with just about the first one I saw... Life can be funny like that I guess.

G'night
Da Voodoochief

Fonts Required

2017-01-17T00:22:00.001-08:00

I didn't manage to get anything done on the game this weekend, though my Friday meeting with Leilani was as good and productive as always.

Still this weekend was full of Football (American) and Supercross and lots of Tennis, mostly by my wife, but also by me. Then there was a nice 50th celebration with my friend Chris. Great weekend, it went in a flash haha!

So, to the title. Fonts... One of the items on our list and has been an item for a long time is the fact we need to obtain final fonts for the game. We decided we only need two fonts, a Title/Header font and also a main body text font. Different requirements, but at least we only need two and not three. Now in the past I have been criticized that I had too many fonts on a screen (it was 3), and also that the fonts did not compliment each other. So this time we are both going to have to agree with the choices, and also we need to make them both compliment the actual game and therefore each other.

The thing about Fonts I do not like is the licensing for them, it can get me quite confused. As that is a factor I will probably only go with completely free font licenses, even if I favor another font. Having said that I have a font I like for the Body text and it has a license that is restricted for App embedding. As I cannot understand the restrictions or where/how to buy it for my needs I will likely email the creator and see what the deal is. Some of these fonts get really expensive for Apps, even if they are a 10th of the cost for Web pages and more.

This is the week we will decide on them, one way or another. So in a future post I should be able to post some samples or comparisons of ones we looked at and why we made decisions we did.

On a last note for tonight I will mention that the other day I realized that my Blog posts are no longer going to my Facebook page or my Twitter account which means I have very few views each week. It was quite confusing for a while there till I realized. So I will have to fix that soon.. yet another job.

G'night
Rob

Inventory design and a Cave painting

2017-01-09T19:59:00.000-08:00

In the image above you can see a section of the Cave. On the left side is the Ore that you come here, primarily to mine. I have about finished the whole Cave1 system now and am working on refining the environment and adding cool touches where I see them needed. I think it is quite atmospheric, though I have still to find the right music for this scene.

When playing the game itself lately I have become a little displeased with the Inventory system that you use. It isn't really bad, but it has a few shortcomings and so in a recent design discussion with Leilani we came up with several touches that should improve it's usability. For example... where the cursor is when you bring up the inventory, is exactly where you left it, no more resetting to the top corner. Also the cursor now wraps on the horizontal, meaning you can get to the furthest item real fast! Along with this was the fact we have added in sooooo many more items for you to carry than the original design called for, so we wanted to address that too.

We decided we needed to show more inventory items at a time.....

We were only displaying 5 items on the horizontal lines, and so adding more items should be easy right? In the above image you can see that I went all out and made it 9 in the line. However we really felt this was a bit crowded. I also wonder how people might fair on the touch screen tablets. So 9 was too many... ok then....

So then we tried 8, which was still too crowded. finally I ended up on 7 and felt OK about it. Leilani confirmed and so I made it so in the code. Now I feel that using the inventory is not bad, not bad at all. Still the best feature was adding in the fact that the cursor did not reset when the inventory was displayed.

The reason the cursor was reset is due to the fact that the Traders also used your inventory display and code. Well as it happens I do not think this inventory display really suits the Traders. So after a brief discussion and design session we came up with a totally new layout for Traders to display their wares. I have just started on it and will report on that in a future post :)

Lastly I want to mention that Unity really lets me down badly when using large Enums in the Editor. they display in a linear fashion and it is very cumbersome. So a few days ago I spent 5 bucks on an editor asset that fixes this issue by adding a search box and a vertical scroll bar. I think this is going to be 5 bucks well spent. Otter Menus.

Laters
Da Voodoochief

New Rock Smashin Gif

2017-01-06T23:21:00.000-08:00

That is my newest Gif. I am so pleased with myself for remembering to create one to show ya what I have been very recently working on.

This animation shows me smashing a rock to get some stone pieces which I need for some quests. I had to fix a few bugs I had with this as I wrote it quite a while ago in code. Now it is fully tidied up and also has Jack swinging his trusty Sledgehammer as a bonus.

So next up was to make it so Jack could use all his tools, or show he is using them when you chop wood, or pick plants etc. I have gotten the Axe put in as well, and will soon do the other tools, but I now have the method down and the way to animate Jack correctly. Pretty sweet I think.

Laters
Da Voodoochief

New Flowers Created

2016-12-24T09:22:00.001-08:00

That gif above is only my second Gif. Which is a little annoying to me as I promised myself I would create a number of them to show off parts of the game. I am happy however with the way this one turned out. This is one of the new flowers I just put into the game and it is a bluebell. This flower grows like this over several hours, not like it is above.

I also put in the Hibiscus flower and that looks o. Bit disappointed so no doubt I will be revisiting that at some point soon.

I have also been very busy working on the cave... that thing is a monster and taking up so much time. Still I also got a couple of the Lantern quests done for it. The other Major thing I have been working on and have at about 90% is Quinns Tower. The inside this time, which is a new scene. Bringing my total up to 36 scenes for this game! Wowza, I never ever thought it would be half this big. Well actually that's a bit of a lie as I did expect it to be about 18 scenes in size.

I am stoked with Quinns tower, and it only has a few extra things to do to complete it and that makes me feel good. One more scene done means one less to go.

I am going to go back to working on quests while I also try and get the Cave finished. Wish me luck.

Merry Christmas,

Da Voodoochief

VBHh Cave Progresses

2016-12-19T20:52:00.000-08:00

The cave is taking a considerable amount of time to get done. I say done and what I mean is to progress. It is hard to get it just looking right enough to be publishable. So I spend a lot of time trying to get various bits right. Now I also realize that as I complete sections of the cave they can be reused or reworked fairly easily in other sections of the cave scene.

I also have to admit that there are a lot of pieces to the caverns within the whole cave scene. So many GameObjects. They take time to place and colorize correctly and so most of my last week was spent working on this. I must admit to quite liking what I have completed so far though. Even if I am only about 25% through it, gah! hahaha!

Leilani has been very busy working on the main story arc and it is now about fully spec'd out and she is nearly ready to write it all out. I am very excited to have that done. It is late in the game development to really be getting it in, but we did not want to rush it... so instead we worked on all the other stuff to surround it. I believe the result will show we made a good choice.

I have fixed up the Watergun mini-game and it now looks exactly like I wanted it to, phew. Done!

Rockfall has also has some tune ups by adding some animations it needed. Along with several bug fixes to mini-games now. It feels pretty amazing to say I now have 10 finished mini-games, the right number for this title.

So onwards as we add in more graphics and complete more sections of the game.

Laters
Da Voodoochief

New Minigame - Rockfall

2016-12-12T23:23:00.000-08:00

I am a bit late for writing this weeks wrap up, up. That is because I have been suffering a Migraine this weekend and it really knocks me about a lot. I hope to be fully functional by tomorrow. However me and Leilani did already have a fully productive week before the weekend migraine arrived.

This last week we got through a number of things. As I am not working on a quest chain at the moment I got to work on something else and that is my Final minigame. OK, I say final as it is my 10th minigame. Though technically I call this one an Arcade Task, as it allows the player to fulfill an in game quest by completing the arcade minigame.

This image above is the title page for the minigame. Not the most interesting ting I agree.

The game is a simple timing game where you tap the screen at just the right time. Depending on how well you time your strike you will generate more power and smash the rocks faster. Faster of course equals more points! This is a unique style of game for VBHh and so fits in rather well. Now I have to hook it up to the Quest system and finish it off with a new animation of Jack swinging his Sledgehammer.

I also really finished off that Bermuda Love Triangle quest line and so much more.

Well on with the next week, where I shall be working on many a varied task.

Laters
Da Voodoochief

Cave Mon

2016-12-04T22:15:00.000-08:00

We have been working hard on several aspects of the game this last week.

The image above is my first layout pass for the Cave system that I mentioned in my previous blog post. As you can see I have some detail already on the far left as that is the entrance. The rest is a major work in progress. Just sorting out the collision areas is taking me some focus and time. Still it will be awesome when done. This is one of my side jobs as I move the rest of the game forwards.

Another aspect of the game is the placement of the Quests.. or perhaps now I should call them narratives?

While I have been inputting some of the quests I have run into several things that were needed to support them, such as more Items in the game, and even the Baker Trader needed to have her inventory refresh set up correctly. This was an interesting piece of code to write.

We also in Fridays meeting got to discuss the Arcade Minigame Task we sort of had designed. It was not quite right. So Bam in only about 5 minutes we had all the extra bits sorted out and the design is done. Now the creation of that game is waiting on my todo list.

Laters
Da Voodoochief

Fridays Meeting

2016-11-26T14:45:00.000-08:00

Each Friday lunch time me and Leilani meet up for lunch and discuss our current task list, we also get to discuss important things that have turned up in the week since the last Friday meeting. Important things can include reworking ideas for things not quite working out well this week when I am trying to implement them. This is also the time when we discuss any big ideas that have come to us during the week.

Friday (yesterday) we had one of these meeting and I had several items on my agenda... yeah, I always like an agenda when doing meetings, for my day job as well as this kind of development.

The image above is the major notes page we created. Notice at the top (ok, as I ran out of space on the page I ended up using a few extra lines at the very top).. I digress..... So near the top is the major meeting agenda, and it has three items. We pounded through these items pretty well making notes for what we decided on along the way. So we now know how the Trader inventories are going to be restocked... now I need to write that code.. haha

We also got down a new minigame task, which I felt like we needed to round out this area of the game. Well this new Arcade Task will go along with something else we came up with.. more on that later. The last major thing we discussed is the Trader UI.. as I have been feeling frustrated with part of it just not matching other parts. So after a good discussion we analyzed which bits I dislike and then re-designed them to match the parts I did like. Just gotta code it now of course. Leilani also came up with another modification to the Trader UI, so that was good.

Lastly we touched on the aspect of tools and needing more in the game, along with the fact we have a Gem trader who has no gems AND we need a bit more in game area to explore and hide stuff in. We ended up with this answer...

You can perhaps see that this is a new scene, or set of scenes to be more exact. These scenes are all 2D and are a cave system with various levels. This also opens up two new tools, a Lantern and also a Pick. The Lantern to light your way in the caves and the Pick to collect precious rocks with for the Gem collector. This area is now also designed to be opened up later in the game after you have gotten the Sledgehammer, and yeah, the new Task is related to the opening of the cave system.

It all came together and it is interesting that we discussed a Cave and Pick 18 months ago at the start of this game design. Everything has come full for this I reckon.

Laters

Da Voodoochief

p.s. I will try and update the blog at some point with why I have not blogged in quite a while, just a lot of frustration with some aspects of games from the past. At some point Ill be ready to write about it.

Screenshots improve your game #gamedev

2016-07-27T23:52:00.000-07:00

Something I don't think I have discussed before is the way in which Screenshots can help with getting the art for a game completed, or moving along a much more complete path.

There are a couple of elements to this.
1. You want your screenshots for your game to be as good as you can make them. Most people only see a few screenshots before making a decision on buying the game, be them on the back of a box on a web page in a review. So you really want them to be as good as you can make them.... (they will Never be perfect!).
2. Screenshots highlight a section of your game, or level or scene or whatever it is. This highlight does not always show context. It is unlikely to show as well as if the level is scrolling, moving etc. This highlighting can be a bit of a shock to view. It will tend to be plain. And we don't want plain in our pictures. #1 has already stated how important they can be.

OK, so you can alleviate some of the screenshot stress by only putting the ones you like into your press pack etc. Simple...

BUT
There is another great use of screenshots that most people do not bother with, or have the time to use them for. I am talking about Sprucing up the area of the screenshot. Giving the area a nice working over to improve the look, and even perhaps make an average screenshot look good enough for the press kit.

I have just done this to a very limited extent to show Leilani how this works and how beneficial it can be. So I took several screenshots, then one lunch time we sat down and discussed what we liked and didn't like about them. Good fun and the food was great too! (Thanks Brick Oven).

The image above is the original we discussed. Our negative points we came up with were:-

The Sky is missing something, it is too bland.
The trees look all the same color wise.
The front log is a bit over bright.
The shadows under the trees is a bit small, and is over the roots.
The area does not look dark enough for a forest.

In the image above we addressed the previous issues by:-

I placed some clouds in the sky, it was easy to pull them from another scene and place them.
I used to have a routine that gave the trees a variety of color. This was broken by me in the prefab. I actually moved the re-colorizing code to another class. So that was an easy fix.
Easy to darken the front log of course.
I spent most of my time working on the shadows for the trees. I had to get a good angle and also a good size for the trees. Now I think it worked out great, only I do believe I will darken under the trees a bit more, but the lengthy shadow is good.
With the extending the shadows for the trees it addressed the darkness of the forested area quite well.

I hope you like the example above. I now believe that this screenshot is much better than the first and also good enough for the press pack!

Good luck fixing up your game :)

DaVoodoochief

Alpha Demo is Ready - #gamedev

2016-07-21T08:15:00.001-07:00

It is Amazing, but finally I feel the Alpha Demo is ready for people to view. Only...

Yes that's right. It means I now need to do a lot more work to support the Show and Tell I am planning for this Demo.

Let me explain a bit.

This Demo is going to be mostly for showing off the game to potential voice actors. I want them to see what the game entails and make sure there is some enthusiasm for their parts. It will also be a great way for me to get practiced at presenting the game and seeing what works and what does not. This will be a big event for me and Leilani, oh and the game of course. Also we have discussed having some associates here who have a large social following, as it would be silly to miss out on any promotional opportunities while doing something this big for the game.

I am currently working on a list of people I want here for the presentation. It will include Actors, friends who I hope to convince to help me test or finish some content in the game (create new quests etc). People to help promote the event (social media associates).

What's Needed?

So now I realize that if I am going to get the word out that the game exists, then I need a proper landing page and information on it. That must include at least a press Kit, and a way to have people sign up for an email list for more information. I will then be able to use that list to find Beta testers and get people to buy the game when it comes out. I am not sure what else, but I suspect a lot more!

Time to work
Laters
Da Voodoochief

Eye Catching Marketing - The Gif

2016-07-10T08:51:00.001-07:00

However you pronounce it, the Gif is an eye catching element to any web page.

It can bring any Web page to life instantly. Generally they are very focused visuals which should make them even more inviting, noticeable and engaging.

This image above is my first Gif. Yes really! After more than 30 years in the industry this is the first Gif I have actually created myself. This one above is a test... can I do it, does this kind of thing work... or will it? Ok, so I cannot answer all those questions obviously at this time.

Why?
I am an avid reader of Gamasutra and all the blog posts especially that appear there. A few days ago I came across one that was new to me, original and informative. It is titled Marketing in Motion: A Year of Making Gifs and it an excellent read. This got me thinking that I could spice up my static web pages with some exciting animations. Hopefully bring some of the initial connectivity to my casual visitors to the web page.

What?
The image above works ok, and for a first try I am quite happy with it. I used a tool called GifCam. This made it pretty easy to create and the tool seems pretty good. Once I have gotten to play with it a bit more I will have to donate for sure.
My only real issue with the Gif is the fact that this one is 354kb. Which is quite large for a small image and is due to the fact that the whole image is updating/moving. I will try to make more that are a little more static so they do not overload the web observers bandwidth.

Whats the point?
I am always looking for things that could help me promote the game. I do not however at this major development time want to spend hours on social media each day. That time will come and is not now. So poking things into the social media awareness is what I really need. Then I will have links and thoughts all across the internet for me to pull on later (I hope).

So something else I have never done though I have been aware of it in some way is a place called imgur. This place is awesome I have to say. I could easily spend a long time looking at stuff on this site. Anyway the point is that I could post my images to this excellent discovery web site and hopefully one of them could possible go viral, which means on this site that it could get half a million views.. yeah! Imagine my game getting half a million eyeballs on it.. Woah!!!!

Now imgur is an interesting place and I believe it will take practice to get the title of the image correct as well as the image itself. It looks to me like an art form I have never previously seen. I hope I can pick up some of the skills quickly.

Conclusion.
Marketing needs to be done, using Gifs on a site like imgur could be a good addition to a campaign.

Laters
Da Voodoochief

Adult Female in the industry

2016-06-27T23:53:00.000-07:00

I know that title is a bit strange. Let me explain...

Today my Daughter turned 18. A huge deal where I come from in the UK. Over here in SoCal USA it is not such a big deal. In fact I had such a hard time finding a card with 18 on it, that I never actually did.

Now being 18 means she is now officially an adult. Yes, an adult. She has already started her college career at a local community college this summer, meanwhile she is also of course working with her Dad (me) on our first game development together.

Leilani has been working on Very Bunny Haha now for over a year and are still going strong. We really have been connecting well on the game and as the game has developed we have added, changed and improved so much along the way. In fact in the last year the game has developed from our first ideas to the way it is going now. It has added many, many months to the development cycle, but we are really enjoying the ride. In fact adding in Leilani's graphics are a real pleasure, along with working with her on scripts and other aspects of design.

Leilani is a wonderful daughter that has her own ideas, and works really well with me. Something we will always have, and hopefully when it is completed many other people will also get to enjoy our game.

Leilani has now been in the Industry making this game for over a year. Do you think she will get an E3 badge next year? I don't know, but I will certainly try hard to make it happen. She works every day on this game... she deserves it.

Congrats my sweet Leilani. Follow those dreams and work hard like you always do. I believe in you.

Dad,
DaVoodoochief

VBHh ongoing Development

2016-06-21T00:25:00.001-07:00

Been a while since I last wrote up a Blog post. We HAVE been busy however.

First off I want to mention something I only got set up a couple of days ago, but I am really chuffed about it to say the least. That is MantisBT.

MantisBT is Mantis Bug Tracker software. This will allow us to track not only bugs, but also features we are working on or desire in the future. We can Rate, Group, Sort and Assign these bugs between me and Leilani. Later when we get real testers on the game we will be able to give them accounts as well. Brilliant and awesome for the future of the game. I will mention my mate Colby who helped me set it all up in no time at all. COOL!

We have also been busy developing the game..

We have been creating characters, characters that feel more real. Easier to connect with, along with story arcs for a number of them. Motivations, desires and goals. This all came about several weeks ago when I read this AWESOME article on Gamasutra.
Lively Game Characters
This was such a good read for both me and Leilani, we decided to give it a test run over lunch. We picked fairly randomly 3 of the NPCs we have in the game and followed the main bullet points. What we did was create something we didn't have, something more than wonderful. Real feeling, rounded characters, but along with that we got a hefty bonus. More story for these NPCs meant we also had more areas to create quests for the game. FANTASTIC!

There has also been some new graphics created, though not yet in the game. Along with some programming to fix bugs and add more features.

Finally one of the big things we have done is to do a 10 minute walk through. Ok, so we did not make ten minutes before I called it as we had three pages of notes half way through. Now I am very busy trying hard to get all those notes done and soon I expect we will do another game play through and try hard to make it to the 10 minute mark.

So the game is coming along. Never as fast as we want it to, but we want quality more than we need it finished. Along with that Leilani has college to deal with and me the usual day time job.

There will be more coming and I intend to start work on the Press Pack once more as now I have gotten over the fact that screen shots will not be final. Heck, who cares at this point... the game still looks original and AMAZING!

g'night
DaVoodoochief

The Goodies - featureset #gamedev

2016-05-13T21:47:00.000-07:00

I love calling them the Goodies. After a very British comedy program from the 70s that I watched incessantly back then.

Today though these Goodies refer not to a comedy trio, but to a Trio of features added into the game. Interestingly or coincidentally it has taken me 3 weeks to implement.

The Trio are:

Companions. Little friends to keep you company on your adventures.
Wearables. Items you can wear, such as a new Fluffy tail, or a Halo because you are so good.
Effects. There are a selection of different effects and effect attach points on your player Rabbit. So you can customize which Effect goes where. Fun little items.

The Goodies are selected through the in game menu. Selecting them brings up the sub Menu for you to choose what kind of Goodie you want to work with.

As you can see, this is the Wearables sub menu. Here you can select which items you would like to wear and in which slot on your player Rabbit.

Finally we have the player Rabbit. Your character ALL decked out in every slot, and being accompanied by your own Worker Bee companion.

We are very hopeful that players will appreciate the large amount of work put into this area of the game. It is not an essential part of playing the game, but customizing your character is always a fun thing to do. This will also double as rewards if and when we go and KickStart this game. I also think this simply adds value to Very Bunny Haha

Have a good night,

Da Voodoochief

Steam Greenlight and Failure

2016-05-11T00:22:00.001-07:00

This is a fantastic read in my humble opinion. Although I think he I a bit down on his own project I feel this is the way a normal Indie dev goes about their business.

How I failed at Steam by James Buckle
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JamesBuckle/20160509/272192/How_I_failed_at_greenlight.php

Some people I know and have known are insanely positive about their products, and what amazes me is that a LOT of those products are trash. Poorly designed, poorly implemented and these people are just so happy to be publishing a game. I am not one of those hyper positive people with my game. Instead I feel like I have a critical and sometimes even impartial eye towards what I can do, what the game can do and time... always time....

So reading James article was really cool as I could see myself writing it a while back. Ok, perhaps 20 years ago (I have been making games a looong time!). Here I am at 50 and yet I started making games at 15.. wow how the time has flown.

Oh right back to the main point here. I need to work on marketing my game, my blog my whatever now. Or that is what people keep suggesting. However I need to get it done. How can I do both?

I am thinking about blogging more about features added into the game, though that kind of thing will be slow.

For instance I have spent the last 2 weeks working on the menu's and structure to allow us to have Goodies, which include clothes and effects and companions attached to the main player Rabbit. so IF I blog about features added I would still have to wait a few days as I am not quite done debugging this area yet.

What to do about getting a following... Still working on it, any ideas would be welcome, and yes, I read stuff on this area most days of the week, but nothing concrete it feels like that I can run with.

G'night
Da Voodoochief

Adding a Companion is so easy! #gamedev

2016-04-27T23:47:00.001-07:00

Yeah, adding one is so easy. In fact I would say it would take me about 20 minutes and that includes creating a flying animation for it as well.

The thing is that although making the companion and attaching it to the player Rabbit is easy. Designing and creating the UI to control which companions are attached to your Rabbit is a LOT more time consuming.

The latter is what I have been working on for several days now, and will continue to work on tis feature set until it is done. It feels like a major blocker to the games development, however it really is a side thing compared to the game, ya know, such as creating more quests or adding more objects to interact with. The thing is though that this feature set is going to be needed for in game rewards... Like if you get Exalted reputation with the Queen bee, then perhaps you earn a Bee Companion :)

These companions are also central to one of the ways for this game to be monetized. Selling companions I hope will provide some financial reward to help pay for the game. Especially if it helps pay for me to work more on the game.

So here I am working for many days on something that from the outside looks like it should be done in half an hour.

G'night
Da Voodoochief

Random Disablilities

2016-04-22T12:47:00.001-07:00

Just when you think that the game is coming along nicely, and your day job is going well, busy busy busy. Lots to do and doing it all.

and...

WHAM!

I have hurt my right elbow, and I am a righty. This is a major disability for my Tennis obviously, but it is also really bad for my day job and my own development.

The elbow is currently so bad that I have to have it suspended and at a certain angle just to not be in pain. Heck even writing emails is painful.

So if ya have something to do, keep on doing it cos ya don't know when random events will stop ya.

Enjoy
Da Voodoochief

2nd Thoughts on the Blog #gamedev #blogs

2016-04-18T00:03:00.000-07:00

Q: What am I doing here with writing this blog?
A: Trying to give an honest and open account of the thoughts and work it takes to create games.

Q: Why?
A: I love what I do creating games. I put a lot of work into it and wanted to share this large amount of love, care and work I put into my games creation.

Q: Any other reasons?
A: Yes. I read about the need for social networking of an Indie game to help make it successful. It all makes sense so I wanted THIS blog and its connection through Twitter and my Facebook page to help me find a following. After all, it is nice to be popular is it not?

Q: Why am I writing this Blog post in this Question - Answer way ?
A: I am having second thoughts, ok, well more like 20th thoughts. I have been writing this blog now for years, and it isn't working. By writing this post in this fashion I hope to clarify where my current thoughts are at.

Q: What is not working?
A: I have tried promoting this blog in a variety of ways, and yet... The views are not going up. I had hoped for a steady improvement over the months. However it is not working and my viewership is still very low, showing no major improvement in the whole year since I restarted Blogging.

Q: So what's next?
A: I am still working on what is wrong with my Blog, the reasons why I think that it is not connecting with a wider audience. I am also looking into what I need to do to grow an audience for Very Bunny Haha, as that is the current focus of my development.

Q: Conclusions?
A: I believe in the social networking aspect of appealing to a whole group of people. I believe that VBHh being inspired by Harvest Moon is going to be a game that people will love. However if they do not hear about it, I will have failed. So I want and NEED to improve what I am doing. Also, it is great to read how well some people did with their social networking, but I am sure that for everyone that writes an article saying how you need it and how successful they were, there are people like me, trying very hard and simply failing.

G'night
Da Voodoochief

Redo of the Doors #gamedev

2016-04-13T23:34:00.000-07:00

Experience has taught me that everything can be improved. This absolutely includes my code.

The doors I wrote many moons ago have worked very well these last 11 months or so. However I have learnt so much more about using Unity, as well as improving my own C# coding skills along the way. Now the Door control code has also got out of hand as I now have like 40 doors in the game, and not the several I had written the routines to control.

In short.. the door code is being inefficient and cumbersome, it was also not very Editor friendly. In fact the name of the Object was being string compared for me to know which door ID to use. Ouch!

Today was a time to refactor this code. Initially I was going to make each door a World Object, and then they would all go into my World Array. This has a number of benefits, but I realized before this update that this would add 40 Items to the World Array. An array that is cumbersome within Unity as choosing one of these Enums takes me time to scroll through the 110 plus that is already in there. I do think that Unity could do a better job allowing me to select an Element within this fairly Large array.

So instead of this answer I simply made a new script that only contains a Public variable of the Enum type that controls my Doors. This means that I can select which door this object is, and not have to rely on typing the name correctly, or comparing to some string I type within the game code. A Huge improvement, and I will only end up with more doors, so this is a good change for the future as well. Making my life easier and therefore saving more time in the future. Not bad for 20 minutes work (I had to go through every scene and fix up the Doors).

G'night
Da Voodoochief

Fountain 3D Spatial Blend Unity3d #gamedev

2016-04-09T23:24:00.000-07:00

Well I got to spend some time on the audio today. Enough time to watch some tutorial videos from Unity (even if a few are out of date). I also read the docs on Master Audio.

However Master audio was not my focus today. Getting the Fountain working properly was my aim... and I SUCCEEDED!

I have placed an informative video onto youtube for anyone else interested in using the Unity Editor for auditioning your Spatial Blended sound Effect. It is Awesome!

In the Video above I show you a few things that took me a bit of time and research to find. I am hoping by showing them off in this video I can save others the time it took me.

Notes on the Video:
1. Top left there is a Speaker Icon that will allow you to audition your sounds while in the Editor and not having to Run the game.
2. Selecting an Audio Source in the Hierarchy will show you a graph which shows you relative distance of the listener as well as Spatial Blend and other control parameter curves.
3. Once you have set the Audition audio button, you can scroll the window around to hear how the audio sounds all over you scene.

Results:
My Fountain test audio works. It ALSO pans from the left and right speakers properly, which is really Awesome.

I am very nearly all the way through this audio set up, and I believe I also know enough about Master Audio to convert this work over to using it. That is for another day however.

G'night
Da Voodoochief

Game Audio Frustration pt #3 #gamedev

2016-04-07T23:58:00.000-07:00

You know... I bought the Master Audio AAA asset for Unity so I could plough through and throw my SFX and Music into the game.

This is NOT the case.

Now I know that Master Audio is doing a good job at what it does. Heck, I just joined the forums to ask dumb questions today and there really is not much activity in there for saying many many people have downloaded this asset and are presumably using it.

The issue is me.. and my knowledge of the existing system within Unity. But if I have to learn all that anyway, why did I buy this asset?

I am stuck on two things:

1. I want to play a sound in a scene that the master audio prefab was not created in. I get some error I have not yet had time to work through. Something like 'MasterAudio could not find sound: SceneBus. If your Scene just changed, this could happen when an OnDisable or OnInvisible event sound happened to a per-scene sound, which is expected. Triggered by prefab: Fountain'. - I have No idea how to fix #1...

2. I want this fountain sound to have it's volume based on distance the camera is from the source object of the sound. Only I don't understand how to do this. I did post this question in the forums, but I do not understand the answer yet. The Mixer was mentioned along with this being basic Unity audio functionality. So tomorrow I will read again the docs on the mixer, and hopefully resolve this issue.

So this is where I am. I have been very busy with real work and so have not yet spent enough time on this, but I have read through the docs a few times... now if only some of it would stay in my head...

Must be getting old haha!

When I resolve these issues I will blog about them, so everyone will know the answers.

G'night
Da Voodoochief

Music in my Game part 2 #gamedev

2016-04-05T00:51:00.000-07:00

Back again!

This time I have spent way too much time trying to decide on whether or not I should or even need to buy an Audio manager for Unity.

Other game development teams MUST have faced this problem. The Unity audio mixer seems pretty darned useful to me, and I am not sure of it's shortcomings. In fact I cannot seem to find a review about it, or even any real commentary of it's abilities. Yet reading the Unity docs on it, it sounds great (no pun intended).

So here I am wondering just what to do? Do I spend money and buy an audio manager from the asset store? Or is the built in audio control in Unity enough for me.

My opinion on this is that the built in one is most likely absolutely ok for my game. However... If I buy an audio manager, will it save me time, or perhaps make it easier for my Daughter to manipulate the sounds in the game? If either one of these is true, then I should buy one right?

I did find this one Blog review:-

http://blogs.unity3d.com/2014/11/27/the-sound-engineer-and-the-asset-store/

I like what this guy wrote, an opinion or two. I know this was a while ago and he was looking forward to the release of Unity 5.0 to get the new sound controls. We are of course there now, and I wonder what he thinks now?

He does mention several audio assets in the store, and I have been pondering a couple of them already. Watching their promotional youtube videos etc. I have also read a bunch of their comments.

Conclusion:
After watching the instructional/promotional videos for several of the audio assets. I believe that the Master Audio AA Sound is the one I am going to choose, as it looks like it will fulfill both the speed of use criteria AND the ability to allow my daughter to work in this area of the game.

Here is a link to this particular asset, currently at 45 dollars.
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/5607?utm_source=unity3d&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=ASContent_audio

I also looked at the now FREE audio manager called SoundManager Pro 3. But have not chosen this, because I believe the event system in Master Audio is going to be better for me personally.
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/9209?utm_source=unity3d&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=ASContent_audio

I hope to update at some point when I have had time to buy, import and use the Audio manager.

G'night
Da Voodoochief