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 ;)

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!