IndieGogo

Hi again!

And there it is, PocketCrusades is on IndieGogo now!

http://igg.me/at/pocketcrusades

Please fund and share!

A trailer for PocketCrusades & IndieGogo

Hey guys!

First of all, here's a little trailer I made the last days:

Secondly, and more importantly, today, in 3 hours, PocketCrusades will be on IndieGogo. So if you like the project, please help it get funded. It would mean the world to me, and it assures that this will become a high quality game!

I'll post the link to the project the moment it get's online!

So, till later ;)

The Stinker

Hello and good evening everyone, It's way after midnight here, so I'll keep it short. I finished the second Orc hero, the "Stinker":

"I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different."
(Kurt Vonnegut)

And here is his first spell:

Upon impact the Stinker destroys itself, but leaves the enemies stunned and deeply hurt.

Ok, that's it, I need some sleep.

Thanks for reading, good night.

Help me a bit

Hey everyone!

I'd be very thankful if you could help me boost my ranking on indiedb by clickin on this little button: Thank you, have a good one ;)

Status report - 24.07.14

Good evening ladies and gentlemen,

I've decided that from now on, I'll try to give a little status report everyday, containing what I did today, if I finished any milestones etc.

So for today:

1.) Increased performance

The morning was spent looking for potential places to save some drawcalls and/or memory. I was able to eliminate 4 drawcalls for a typical scene without any difference to the looks of the game. That does not look like much, but it produced roughly a 5% increase in frames per second, not bad, eh?

2.) Went through some music from Incompetech, found a few songs that could fit the game, but I haven't decided anything yet.

3.) Made a ToDo-List which can be found here. Some things are still missing, like audio, but other than that it has pretty much everything in it that needs to be done to finish the game.

Ok, that's it, thanks for reading,

have a good one.

Monetization - What I've got planned

Hey everyone,

Ok, after a refreshing 7 hour dose of sleep I'm back with another topic: Monetization!

Basicly, there are a few ways to monetize your game:

1.) Through Ads

Generally, ads are annoying, and nobody likes them. If they are annoying enough, most people will quit, and the rest will spends hard money to buy a premium version, or add free version of your game. A good example for this is the early "Angry Birds", before they came up with all the different IAP (see 2.)

2.) Through in app products that you CAN buy

Again, Angry Birds (at the current state) is a good example for this. Every level can be done without having to purchase anything, but in some cases, you just want to go the easy way, so you'll pay for some extra abilities to continue the game.

3.) Through in app products that you must buy aka "Pay to win"

Ah, the horror. I despise every developer that does this. Quite frankly, I'm pretty certain games like these aren't created by actual game developers but rather by accountants in disguise. One good example for this is the current "Family Guy" "game". Sorry, but if you have to pay not to wait for !24! hours after playing for about 3 minutes, something is wrong. That's not a game at all. That's like the uber-fast delivery service from amazon. What the fuck? Am I supposed to enjoy this? There are some cases where I think "Pay to win" could work, but not this way.

Ok, now here's what I want to do:

Every race has one starting hero, that can be played without paying anything. Also, they have one spell each that is included for free. However, to give you a wider variety of tactics, you can buy other heros. These won't be stronger than the first one per se, but they will give you the ability to change your tactics. The same goes for the spells. This way you'll be able to beat others without paying, but it also gives you the chance to change and adapt your style of play to beat players that you wouldn't have beaten before.

Also, since running server's is expensive, each online game will cost 1 diamond. If you win you can earn up to 3 diamonds back, depending on how devastating your victory was.

There'll be also some products that you don't really need, but you might like, like other skin sets for the gui.

You will be able to earn a decent amount of diamonds by playing the campaign, so there'll be no need to buy diamonds if you are good enough, or play long enough.

Does that sound fair? Give me your thoughts in the comment box or on twitter (@sensegames), I'm happy for every input!

Thanks for reading, have a good one1

Finally, a video ;)

Hello there =)

So, I won't count how often I promised a video, but I'm sure it was over a dozen times. Well, here you go:

Better late than never ;)

IndieDB

Hey there,

Just want to mention really quick that PocketCrusades is now on IndieDB!
Here you go: indiedb.com/games/pocketcrusades
Check it out =D


Thanks for stopping by!

Ambient Occlusion

Hi everyone again,

This is already my second post today, and it's close to midnight here, so I'll keep it short.
Paul Usul Fluegel who's creating DwarvenKingdoms gave me a hint on how to make the trees in PocketCrusades a bit more beautiful, and he was totally right, have a look:

Before - Without AO on the trees

After - With AO on the trees

I had Ambient Occlusion turned on in my light mapping at all times, however, I did not notice that the Unity Importer had "Generate Lightmap UV's" turned off for the tree models.

Well, now it's done, so thanks Paul.


Good night everyone!

Big news everyone

Hi everyone,

The last two weeks I've been on vacation in Croatia, and it was wonderful!
But still, I managed to work a bit every day on this project, and made huge
progress! Here's a list of what I've done:

• I finished the campaign menu, that's the final version now
• I made a tutorial - the first two levels of the campaign will teach you the basics of the game
• Parts of the shop system
• The first "real" level of the campaign
• The game over check of the game
• Refined the animations of the game
• Optimized huge parts of the game
• Tested it on several devices:
• Device                         FPS on High quality          FPS on Low quality
• Samsung Galaxy S4                    ~45                                    ~60
• Samsung Galaxy S2                    ~30                                    ~40
• Samsung Galaxy S                      ~25                                    ~35
• Refined the fighting of units
• Set the values (Gold, Food, etc. - These might still change a bit after alpha testing)
• Refined the hero
• A settings menu (sound, quality, etc)

Basicly, the game is playable, however, there are still a lot of things todo:

• Online PvP
• The rest of the shop system
• Music and SFX
• Optimize even more (I guess I can make it at least 30% faster)
• The human hero
• The fog of war is a bit buggy
• Same goes for the mini map

Since I do not have to study for the next 3 months, I'm pretty sure I can find the time to make a little video on all these changes. 

So, till then, have a nice summer day, and thanks for reading!                                          

The Orc Hero

Hey again!

Just wanted to tell you that there has been an update to the orc hero. If you look back at this post some time ago, you'll see what model I initially wanted to use for the (first) Orc Hero. After looking at it several times, I just wasn't satisfied.... So, here's the new one:

THE *TANK*

Not bad, or what do you think? I think he fit's perfectly into the style of this game.

Thanks for checking by, now have a nice day!

Particle effects

Hey!

So I just came along this post by Danny Groleau, and want to mention that not only is he completely right, but also want to add that you can use ParticleEffects for much more than that. I primarily use them as static effects for different atmospheres, as they are cheap solutions for:

Sun-Rays

The sun rays on the right spot, little particles around the area,  all solved with
cheap particle effects.

Water (-falls, -splashes)

What a great atmosphere. The combination of the waterfall, the splashes and the light rays
makes a wonderful picture.

Decent Fog and Dust

Look at the fog and the small particles surrounding the building.

They can make the difference between a good looking game, and an awesome looking game. If you are using Unity, like I do, here's a little trick to make them look even better. For all particle effects (fog, fire, light-rays), add a small point light in exactly the color of the effect. It will appear as if the light is send out by the particles (just look at the sunrays). For water effects use some cyan. This of course can have quite an impact on the performance of your game, but since I use them as static effects, these lights are included in my lightmapping.

Thanks for reading!

Some screenshots

Hey everyone,

As promised in my last post, here are the new screenshots. I hope you like them, tell me what you think ;)

Thanks for checking by!

Just some quick infos...

Hello everyone,

Just wanted to show that I'm not dead yet, and neither is this project. I've just been really busy the last few weeks and haven't found the time to post anything. Nevertheless, I was able to finish some big points of my todo list. I'll make a longer post, maybe even with a video, but certainly with screenshots tomorrow, where I'll talk about all the recent changes and developments.

That's it already, thanks for checking by!

I'm way too tired!

Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen!

First off all I want to apologize for the long pause in my posts, it's not that I haven't been working on this project, I just do not find the time to make an extensive post about everything that has happened since the last time. So here's a quick summary, maybe I'll find the time to go into more detail the next few days:

• Orc Hero
• Orc Tower
• Hero Spell
• Mana/Rage System for the Orc
• Particle-Sound-System - I'll definitly make a post + tutorial on that one, could be interesting for anyone using Unity. It's very easy: Let all the ParticleSystem have the possibility to add a sound that get's played alongside the System. Also show/play it in the editor to make it easy finding the right one.
• Human Start Building
• Human Hut
• Human Barracks
• Human Tower
• Human Worker
• Human Archer
• Human Warrior
• Human Oracle
• Basicly the complete Local-Game System
• ParticleEffects for Arrows (Archer & Tower)

In addition to that I have now pretty much everything planned on paper and in writing, and will soon create a little Guide or Manual for the Game.

But I still have a lot of work to do, here's my list for this week:

• food has to be reduced when dead!
• (Maybe) Highlight the selected unit some other way?! (Halo?)
• Only ONE! Hero (of one kind) alive at a time
• When hero did perform special attack, set ANGER/Mana to zero
• Terrain performance sucks, try making it a mesh (T4M?)
• Multi selector doesnt work now that race is implemented
• Hero hit needs sound
• Turn off NavMeshAgent when close to mine (Turn on after)
• Remove as much transparency as possible
•  Selected  Ring
•  Effects?
• StartUp? (Building etc)
• Add voices... Eg:
• On attack: "Get him", "Kill him"
• On hit: "Arrgh", "Uh"
• On kill: "Yeah"
• On Select: "What?", "Yes?", "Why are you bothering me?"
• On Build/mine: "Sure" (Annoyed), "Okay", "Hmpf", "Do this, do that...", "Gimme a break"
• On finish build:"And now?", "My work is done!"
• Add sounds... Eg:
• During build: Saw and Hammer

And that was just a summary. But, the game is making good progress, even though it costs me (way) too much sleep. Well, enough for today.

Thanks for reading, good night!

On the topic of AI

Hi everybody!

The last few days have been very stressful, as I have to study quite a lot at the moment. Since I don't find the time to (really) work at the Project currently, I try to at least plan as much as I can and figure out how to solve some issues.

One of them being the AI of the Units. Some of the questions I came up with:

• Should the player have a possibility to set what the unit(s) should do? ie.:
• Patrol - Attack bypassing units
• Defend - Attack if you get attacked
• Run - Run away if attacked
• Hide - Run away if enemy comes close

• If not, should the Unit have a way to decide? ie.
• Attack bypassing units if you are stronger
• Defend, but don't attack if you are a bit weaker
• Run if you are attacked and the enemy is way stronger

• Or should they all just react the same way everytime? ie.
• Just freaking attack enemies if you see them!

• Furthermore: What if I'm currently going somewhere? ie.
• Player sends Unit to some point. On the way there it encounters enemies. What now?
• March on
• Attack them immediatly
• Attack them if they attack me

• What if you have friendly units nearby? Should they help you attack?

And these are not even all the things that come to my mind. Do you have any suggestions?

My idea would be something like this:

• If you are send somewhere, don't attack units you encounter on your way. Just keep going, even if they attack you.
• If you are in idle-mode, do not attack enemy units unless they attack you, or they attack friendly units or buildings nearby.
• If you are attacked:
• Enemy is weaker: Attack
• Enemy is the same: Attack
• Enemy is a bit stronger: Attack
• Enemy is way stronger AND you are alone: Run
• Enemy is way stronger AND there are friendly units in idle-mode nearby: Attack
• If nearby friendly units are attacked:
• Attack!

I'm not quite sure yet if this will be the way it turns out, but we will see about that. Currently, all units that are able to fight (Warrior, Archer, Hero) behave like this:

• Idle: Attack enemy on sight
• Going somewhere: Go there first, if you switch to idle, well, the above.

Which is a bit too less in my eyes.

Please, if you have any ideas, leave them in the comments below, I'd highly appreciate them!

This is fucking hilarious =D

For once, nothing new about the game. Just thought I'd share a video by FaptainObvious, which not only gave me a good laugh, but also features a great indie game with beautifull graphics and some awesome gameplay.











That's already it, thanks for reading.

The campaign menu

Good evening!

As I'm writing this lines it's after midnight here in Austria, and it could be that I already had a few beers, so if you find any spelling mistakes, you can keep them.

Now, what I'm really here for: As I stated in my plan earlier this week, today (or yesterday, by a few minutes) should be the day where I finish the campaign menu. And.... I did. In fact, I completely redesigned the whole menu, since I thought it's a bit overloaded for a game mainly designed for mobile devices.

I will show you all it's beauty in the next video, which will come either this weekend or some time during the next week. But for now, enjoy some screenshots:

The main menu - It features an orc which just runs around.

The Race selection. As said earlier, you can play the campaign from either side.

The map selection! I think this one really looks nice. As you can see, only
the first map is enabled at the moment, as you have
to finish this before moving to the next one.

Now, I will head for the bed, as tomorrow will be a very busy day, where (hopefully) I will find the time to finish the hero.

Thanks for reading, Good night!

Predictions - I'm not good at them

Hi everyone!

On the 25th of January I showed you my plan, which was, with hindsight, as wrong as it could be. It looked like this:

27.01. InGame-Setup (Starting the level/map - setting of players, buildings, mines, etc.)

29.01. BASIC Interaction (sending them around) with RTSUnits (Workers, Warriors etc.) 

19.02. Complex interaction with Workers - Building things

22.02. Running Inventory-System

26.02. Menu

14.03. Complex interaction with Warriors - Attacking
20.03. Complex interaction with Heros - Casting spells
23.03. GameOver/Won - conditions

28.03. Multiplayer Setup


Well, I sticked to the plan for the first 5 points or so, then, I slowly noticed there is now way to keep up with it. The reason is simple. A day only has 24 hours - screw you earth, rotate slower - and I would need some more. A typical day for me looks, on average, like this:

6 h of sleep
1 h to get the day started (coffee, shower, newspaper, walking the dog etc.)
5 h of work for my company
3 h of studying at the university
1 h of studying at home (ie. preparing for tests)
3 h of working for this game
1 h of working for different projects
4 h with my girlfriend                                                                                        
24 h

As you can see, I'm on a pretty tight schedule, I barely find the time to do something other than work, and it's pretty exhausting. And still, I'm only a month behind my plan. (Compare that to the 19 centuries that Jesus is behind his plan ^^ ) Now, even though my plans are bad, I somehow need them, so that I don't fall in a hole of procrastination.

So, I propose a new timeline to finish this project, this time a more realistic one:

• The Hero System
• Walking                          ✓
• Attacking                        ✓
• Special attack                 31.04.2014
• The Fighting System
• Position Players               ✓            
• Differentiate them            ✓
• Fight between them         ✓
• Winning conditions          03.05.2014
• Campaign
• The forest                        ✓
• The Ridge                       18.05.2014
• The Burning Mountain     ✓
• The Glacier                     12.05.2014

• Copy the above two to the        10.05.2014
  Human side

• Update main menu
• Campaign menu               29.04.2014
• Multiplayer menu             16.05.2014
• Config menu                    02.05.2014
• Shop menu                      20.05.2014
• Award menu                   25.05.2014  
• Multiplayer
• Serverside                       15.05.2014
• Clientside                        16.05.2014
• Ingame                            20.05.2014
• Finish the game
• Sounds                           10.06.2014
• Effects                            14.06.2014
• Testing                            07.07.2014

Alright, that sounds like a plan, hopefully I can stick to it this time.

What are your thoughts on timelines. Do you just work on what comes to your mind, or do you have a full plan of everything you're gonna do before you actually do anything?

Thanks for reading!

• Write a post in bed      ✓

Just some screenshots for the Campaign, and some updates!

Hi everyone!

Easter is over, so it's time for some quick updates!

1.) The hero! He walks, he crushes bones, and he destroys everything that comes in his path. So what's left? The special ability! I hope I'll finish this tomorrow, let's see.

2.) The Multi-Selector! I don't know if I have ever written about this or not, nevermind. One big challenge when creating a RTS for mobile (and therefore touchscreen) devices, is the simple task: Select several units. How are you gonna do that? Well, I for one, tried to solve it with a little button that you can move over all units you want to select. And it WORKS! I'll show you how and why in the next video (hopefully also featuring the hero)

3.) The campaign! As you have seen in my previous posts, 2 maps are already (or nearly) finished. The game will have a single player campaign that stretches over 4 maps, and can be played with both sides. So, the last 2 days were spent making a campaign overview map, which will guide you through your process and provide some background story. Here some screenshots:

The burning mountain - As seen in my previous posts

Some snowy ice map

The forest map - As seen in previous posts

Just some details

The human capitol

The Ridge - Haven't even begun working on this, but that map is gonna be awesome!

The whole map!

So, that's it for today. Questions, comments, suggestions? Leave them below!

As always, thanks for reading!

A new map, a hero, Screenshots...

Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen!

I'm currently working on the first orc Hero as well as on a second map, "The Burning Mountain".

I think this is gonna be a productive week, as I do not have to attend university for the next three weeks. (I have to work though). If everything works out as I hope, you'll get severall updates this week.

Back to the game! Slowly, but notably, this project is getting closer to being finished. But, it still misses something important.... the story!
Since a game completely without story won't work, I'm trying to make something up, but I guess that is not something I'm particularly good at, so if someone has an idea, PLEASE contact me!


Now, to the screenshots!

I like the combination of orcs and lava, what do you think?

As you can see the main theme is Lava. Although the design isn't completely finished, I think it's ok for now.

Another view, from a different angle.

And for the last screenshot, the first hero! If you look closely you will find that it is just a modification of the warrior model, but it works quite well this way. All heros will have some special ability, this one will get some sort of "earthquake" attack. So that if he hits the ground with his axe, it ripples and breaks hurting all around him.

Thats it for today, hope you have a nice and productive week.

Thanks for reading!

Better late than never! Warriors and Archers - The movie ;)

Just kidding, there's no movie! But at least a two minute demo of them. Tell me what you think, comment and request changes in the comments please!

I'm currently working on the first hero for the orcs, which will be some kind of freaking huge warrior. The second one is gonna be some kind of Shaman. More information about that this weekend.

As always, thanks for reading/watching.

Warriors, Archers and a Logo!

Well, there are times where being a student, working for a company, and working on private projects can be a little too much. The past two weeks were exactly that. Since I can't clone myself (yet), I had to leave my projects aside and focus on the others.

But, I didn't leave them completely, I just haven't found the time to post anything about them. So, what happened since last time?

1. Warriors! And Archers! At first I wanted to finish the warriors indepently, but I figured it would be best to generelise the code for them to the most part. This way I can develop new "fighting" units much faster. Both of them are nearly finished, only the "shoot arrows" part on the archer side is missing.
2. The Logo! As I said (several times) before, I'm a programmer, not a designer. Nevertheless I think I did a pretty decent Job! 

What do you think?

So, what to expect for the next days? Well, I hope that I finally find the time to make a video about the warrior (and Archer now). 

Thanks for reading!

PlayMaker on SALE!

Just a quick info, PlayMaker for Unity is on Sale in the AssetStore, only 31.59$ instead of 90.25$!
So, I recommend you get it now, you won't regret it! I need this tool almost every day, and some of my upcoming tutorials will also feature it!

Get it here: AssetStore

Tonight I'll upload the video with the warrior-update.

Till then, thanks for reading!

The warrior is here!

Another step towards finishing this game has been done!
Today, after hours of struggling with the GUI, which was appearing wrong, and I have to admit I still don't have any idea why, I finally finished the warrior. There won't be a video till tomorrow, because I will head to bed now, but as a little sneak peek, here's a picture:

The concept for him is pretty similiar to the worker, I didn't even had to change the major parts of the scripts. Some time during the next week I'll add a video (tutorial) explaining how the Units in this game do what they do, how the most parts of the code is reusable and so on. Maybe, and thats a big MAYBE, I'll even publish parts of the code-framework of the game, so that everyone could make something similiar.

We'll see. 

Good night everyone, thanks for reading.

Use the KGFMapSystem for Fog of War

As promised yesterday, here a little explanation of how to use the Fog of War from the KGFMapSystem (which is on sale currently) that is only displayed on the MiniMap, in your game.
This is extremly usefull for TopDown-View games, like PocketCrusades.

The first thing you need to do is set up the KGFMapSystem. If you do not know how to do so, take a look here: KGF-Support.

Now, when you have everything set up, be sure to check the Fog Of War option in the settings.
Thats how it looks for me:

You can change the resolution depending on the size of your world.

Now, create a new Script called FowCreator.cs! Thats where we will instantiate layers that are visible for the "Game"- Camera. These will get the same texture assigned as the FogOfWar plane for the minimap.

Here's the script:

Thanks to Brainswitch Machina and Alexandre Ouellet for pointing out some improvements!

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;

public class FowCreator : MonoBehaviour {
 
 private GameObject[] layers;
 public float[] heights;
 private bool isCreated = false;
 // Use this for initialization
 void DoCreate () {
  isCreated = true;
  int layers_to_use = heights.Length;
  layers = new GameObject[layers_to_use];
  GameObject pre = GameObject.Find("fog_of_war");
  Vector3 apos = pre.transform.position;
  //apos.y = heights[0];
  //pre.transform.position = apos;
  //pre.layer = 0;
  for(int i = 0; i < layers_to_use; i++)
  {
   layers[i] = (GameObject)GameObject.Instantiate(pre);
   apos = layers[i].transform.position;
   apos.y = heights[i];
   layers[i].transform.position = apos;
   layers[i].layer = 11;
  }
 }
 void Awake() {
  StartCoroutine(findLayer());
 }
 IEnumerator findLayer()
 {
  GameObject ag = GameObject.Find("fog_of_war");
  while(ag == null)
  {
   //Dont call find with string too often, this will slow the rest down
   yield return new WaitForSeconds(0.1f);
   ag = GameObject.Find("fog_of_war");
  }
  DoCreate();
 }
}
  

Now, in the editor assign some testing values. Depending on your "world" you'll need different ones.

Choose how many layers you want. The higher, the better it looks, however, at great computing costs. Since I develop for mobile devices, I just use one. The element values themselves are the height of the layers. The highest should be higher than anything visible for the camera.

That's it. Tomorrow I'll make a brief demo on the Warriors, be sure to check it out.

Thanks for reading.

My top 5 Assets from the AssetStore!

If I had to name one reason why I love Unity, the first thing that'd come to my mind is the AssetStore.

Let's be honest with ourselves, none of us is perfect in everything. I mean, I'm a programmer, and a, well let's say not the worst, 2D-Designer. However there simply are things I'm not good enough to create myself. So, in order to still create good looking games, you need someone who can do this for you, and thanks to the AssetStore, that's pretty cheap nowadays. Also there are enough situations where you just go: I could work 50 hours creating this, or I'll just spend 20$ for pretty much exactly what I want. Well, what you gonna do?

Over the last Year I bought quite a number of Assets there, so here's my top 5! I'll focus on "programming" stuff, because these are things you need in most projects. I bought a lot of models too, but these where pretty "project specific".

#5: Pool, Target, Constrain Bundle

The targeter in this package works fast and efficient, I could not have done it better myself. And the pooling is great, no more lagging when instantiating objects!

#4 Mesh Baker 2

I used this extensively for Empires-Rising, and without it, the game wouldn't even run on high-end Desktop machines! Merging together different Meshes with different textures into one saves you alot of draw-calls, and this thing makes it so easy!

#3  KGFMapSystem (minimap)

The best minimap system I have found so far. Tons of settings, different designs, you name it! It also includes fog of war, but only for the map itself. However, with a little tweaking I made a quite decent World-Fow out of it. I'll post how you can do that yourself this weekend.

#2 NGUI: Next-Gen UI

Did I mention that I love Unity? Well I do! BUT, the integrated GUI System sucks! Tons of drawcalls, it's slow, no editor, so you have to code everything "blind". It's just sad, Unity deserves better. And thats what NGUI is for! WYSIWYG design in the editor, TONS of settings, fast and efficient, and dozens of precreated tweens. It's all there! The price is a bit high, but I got it when it was a 24 hour-sale for 40 bucks, and I'm sure it will be there soon again.

#1 Playmaker

If you know this thing, and haven't bought it, you are an idiot. Ok, that sounds a bit harsh, but it's the truth! It reduces the time I'm working on small things like "selectors" (i.e. selecting a unit or building), raycasts for different things and so on by HOURS! Also, you can combine it with NGUI, which makes these both tools even better.

Thats it! Thanks for reading!

Here we go! Demo-Video!

Here it is, a little preview of the game!

It's not even close to finished, but I think you can see in which direction this is going. 

I have to apologize for the bad audio quality, the microphone I used was, well, shitty.

I'll arrange a better one for the next video, which will be uploaded in the next few days,

showing the barracks and the first warriors.

Thanks for watching!

Menu, Units, Some Buildings - DEMO VIDEO TODAY!

It has been some time since my last post, so today I'll upload a video showing the current state of the project.


 What has happened:

1) Menu
I finished the menu, where you choose if you want to play locally, online, buy stuff, or change the settings.

2) Units
The workers are FINISHED. You can send them around, let them build and repair buildings, or let them mine for gold. They even push each other around while doing so. I have to say, I'm very pleased with how they turned out. And, on the basis of their scripts I will create the other units (warriors and heros), so they won't be too much work.

3) Buildings
The state of the buildings is as follows:

1. Townhall: Finished
2. Farm: Finished
3. Barracks: 50%
4. Tower: 10%
5. Altar: 10%

So, this evening I'll present the first InGame demo.

See you in a few hours,

Thanks for reading.

NGUI HUD without Extension

NGUI is a great tool for Unity, no doubt about it. But, it's a shame that they want 20$ for the HUD extension. Save your money, here's an easier way to get HUD Text without having to buy the extension.

First off, If you do not already have NGUI up and running, create a simple 2D UI, as we will copy some of the existing components.

Here's what you do:

• Under UIRoot, copy the camera, and place it under your main camera (as a child)
• Set it's position and rotation to 0-0-0 (So that it has the same as your main_camera)
• Maybe rename it to something like HUD_Camera
• Create a new Layer - Let's call it "HUD" (or whatever you like)
• Set the Culling mask of the HUD_Camera to HUD (and HUD ONLY!)
• Copy the UI_Root and put it under the object you want to have HUD text above (as a child)
• Set it's Layer to "HUD"
• Position it so that it hovers above the GameObject
• Now, create your HUD-UI (Labels, Sprites, whatever you want)

That's basically it. It's now a 3D HUD. Which means if you are behind it, it's backwards, if you are above it, it's invisible. To change this, apply this Script to your UIRoot:

1:  using UnityEngine;  
2:  using System.Collections;  
3:    
4:  public class HUDFaceCamera : MonoBehaviour  
5:  {  
6:    void Update ()  
7:    {  
8:      transform.LookAt(Camera.main);  
9:      //Attention: This only works if your  
10:      //HUD_Camera is in the same position  
11:      //as your main_camera  
12:    }  
13:  }  

Or just use the LookAtTarget (or whatever it's name was) script that comes with Unity and set the target to your HUD_Camera. That's it, have fun! As I said, 20 Bucks is a bit much, since this can be done this way (which goes probably even faster than downloading, installing and setting up the extension) As always, thanks for reading!

Delay - Off to croatia!

Hi!

I'm heading to croatia in a few minutes, so the next post will be in 5 days.
I hope I'll find the time down there to work a bit, but I'm not sure if I will.

Thanks for reading, Bok!

Map-Setup

Yay! Milestone number 1: The map design and Setup is finished!
What happens is basically this:

Player enters level, the StartScript chooses a position for him, creates a startbuilding (the townhall) there, the townhall then produces a worker, and leaves the rest to the player. This is basically where the game takes off. The whole thing looks like this:

Or like this:

depending wether you play Orc or Human. Not bad eh? The menu you see down there is from the townhall, which is selected in the images.

So, to summarize what I did today:

• Set the player/camera to one of 4 positions at gamestart
• Automaticly build the start-building/townhall there.
• Set the inventory to start values
• Give that building a menu to build something (in that case a worker)
• Give that building some variables, like "health", even though that term is probably wrong in that case

Well, thats  it already for today! Tomorrow I'll probably try to let the workers be "movable", meaning that the player can send them around (Which means they have to me selectable/multiselectable first). And, if I find the time they should start mining, even though I think thats some work for wednesday.

Thanks for reading, arrivederci!

The map

Hi there!

I spent most of the day working on the (first) map for the game. I had several ideas like snowy cliffs, a volcanic area, something steampunky, but in the end decided that the first map, should  be a basic forest area.

Since I already made a (rudimentary) version of this map before, which got lost due to the corrupted project, I was faster than I expected.

Since my models are all "hand-painted", I went for the same style with the map - everything else would look weird, at best!

Here some screenshots:

Todo-List till tomorrow:

• Map design 
• Minimap
• Fog Of War
• Navigation Layer
• StartScripts (Inventory, Start-Buildings)

These scripts should only take an hour or so, so tomorrow will be a relaxing day!

As always, Thanks for reading!

Phase 1 - The idea

Hi again!

Sorry for the delay, but I got injured playing Volleyball, and after being at the hospital, I had to organize a few things, which kept me busy from writing here. That was the first downer of the week, the second one was, at least for me, even worse. While I was working on this project my working environment crashed and left me with a corrupted project, which ment I had to start all over. Well, bad for me, good for you, as I'm able to show you now everything from scratch. So let's start, shall we?

Basics

I will use Unity3D as my game engine. Even though not exactly cheap, it's perfect if you want to publish for different environments, in my case: Android and IOS. Another thing that I absolutly love about Unity is its AssetStore. Let me be clear, I'm a programmer! I know how to use Photoshop, but I'm not creative enough to make my own textures, GUI and so on. I know Maya a bit, but I'm not even close to making professional Models. That is why a lot of things I'm using in my games are bought, at a reasonable price. Even if you are a "Programmer-Designer-Modeler", doing everything alone would take forever, and I want to finish this game in my lifetime. 

The Idea

As you might imagine, every project starts with an idea. Coming up with an idea is easy, but finding out if it's possible to make it, if it's a good idea that people will like, and, and that is the most important thing, if you like it yourself enough that you will actually finish it.

Since my last project was a strategy game, I figured, I should do something in this direction again, since I already have most of the Know-How to create such a game. This time I want to make something like WarCraft. It won't be a clone, but it will have certain aspects of the game. Since I want to build the game for mobile devices, it has to be short, by which I mean one game shouldn't take longer than maybe 10 to 20 minutes. In addition, this game will be a lot less complex than WarCraft, making it easier to develop, but also easier to understand, which is critical for mobile games. It should have a both singleplayer and multiplayer to keep the game interesting, so that people will buy some InApp products.

Look and Feel

Well, long story short, here's a screenshot of my GUI so far:

Top right: The inventory - there will be onlygold and food to keep things simple.

Bottom left: The map

Top middle: This will be a dragable component to multi-select, send and cast spells. (More on this coming soon)

Bottom middle: This will be components that show up when something is selected to let you build or attack things. Example: You selected a worker, now these show the different kind of buildings you can build. Drag them onto the world to build them.

Bottom right: Here you will have the informations about the thing you currently selected, in this case a townhall.

The Plan

I want to have a running prototype (Menu,one map, single player and multiplayer) before march, so I'll try to stick to this:

27.01. InGame-Setup (Starting the level/map - setting of players, buildings, mines, etc.)

29.01. BASIC Interaction (sending them around) with RTSUnits (Workers, Warriors etc.) 

19.02. Complex interaction with Workers - Building things

22.02. Running Inventory-System

26.02. Menu

14.03. Complex interaction with Warriors - Attacking
20.03. Complex interaction with Heros - Casting spells
23.03. GameOver/Won - conditions

28.03. Multiplayer Setup

Thats it for today!

Thanks for reading!

PS: Almost forgot: Here's some artwork so that you can imagine what this game is going to be/feel/look like.

Let's get this started

First off, a few things about me:

I'm Alexander, 23, from Graz - Austria. I'm currently working as a Programmer for a local company, besides being a student, and did start my own company back in November last year. But, let me start a bit earlier!

When I was about 9 or 10 years old, I first got interested in creating my own games. Back then I made my first steps like everyone else, with the the RPGMaker2k. This tool was great for learning, but soon enough I wanted more, at least one more dimension. So I (or lets say my mother) bought an edition of the GameStudio3D. In hindsight this was probably one of the most important things in my life, since it made me learn programming, which I do for a living today. From age 15 on, I stopped trying to create games, I had other things - like everyone this age - in mind. This was the case till about 16 months ago, where I had an idea, and said to myself "Fuck it, let's do this". It took me till December of the last year - about 2500 hours o f work, and way to much money for licenses, the server, etc... - to finish it. But I did, even though I have to admit it's a bit buggy - I'm still trying to improve it. Here's the trailer:

As you see, I decided to develop for mobile platforms. Why? Because- with a lot of work - you can compete with big companies in terms of graphics, which is not unimportant. At least that was my reason.

Now, after a month of relaxing, I'm starting something new, a fast strategy game with the name "Pocket Crusades".And this is going to be the development blog for this.

Tomorrow I will tell you what it will be about, show you parts of my development plan, and give you some insights into how to make a decent looking game - alone!

Thanks for reading!