The obsession continues. I didn't like how the animation looked for TANK, so I redid the graphics. This made the edges less jagged. I don't want a few stray pixels to blemish the overall work. TANK is the main character, so he has to look professional. I think this will help the game to scale. That way if the graphics are reduced (old iPod/iPhone) or expanded (iPad / Mac OS X) it should still look nice.
I'm not having fun with the latest part of the project. Setting up the shops is so tedious... especially with auto-rotation... but I'm almost done. With only the addition of a "gold" system, I'll have my first totally completed scene.
I think that's how you can start to notice when the game is nearing completion. Instead of counting the number of completed actors, I'm starting to count in scenes...
• Weapon Shop - Almost Done • Repair Shop - Next project 60% • Equipment Menu - Almost Done • Main Base - 75% • Sector 2,4 - 75%
So, I think I can start planning a schedule.
For tomorrow, I'm planning to start work on the gold system. Continuing with the minimalist theme, the gold display bar will expand and contract based on the number of digits. If TANK has 10 gold, that's two spaces. If TANK has 10000 gold, that's five spaces. If I get fancy, I might even add commas.
Also for tomorrow, I should finish up the Repair Shop. That's where the character saving will occur. If you don't make it back to the base, and you die, the progress since the last save is lost. There's no running to your corpse or other such MMORPG nonsense here. If you die, you die! So, don't die! I'm not watering down the game's difficulty. The player should feel a sense of dread when wandering too far from the main base.
Here's the schedule...
• Gold system... 1 day • Title Screen... 1-2 days • Gun bonus logic, Weapon #4, Item #1 & #2, bonus item #1 & #2... 2 days • Option Screen and finalize shops... 1 day • About 7 more enemies... 7 days (one week - one enemy per day) • 34 explorable areas... 10-17 days (2-3 areas per day) • Quests and quest characters... 3 days • Comic story (maybe)... 2 days • Game Center? ... 1 day
So, it's looking like a late April / early May launch.
Photics said: March 21, 2011 - Progress Report (Supplemental)
Now that avatars are working again, I uploaded the BOT icon image as my profile image.
Out of all the future games (and posts) on GS, BOT is the one i'm most looking forward to. :-)
However....I'm going to be honest. BOT currently looks too evil in my opinion. Maybe thats how you intend him to be? But after reading your entire game log (And website) I imagined BOT to be more friendly/hero. More like Walle. Perhaps thats just me. I noticed that in your new profile PIC you added Hair, which I like. The quality and detail of your profile is brilliant too, I just think his eyes are too "bad guy" with the mask et all. However, maybe after everything BOT has been through thats why he looks the way he does?
This is your game, not mine. Hell at the minute I wouldn't even know how to make a game like this so my hat goes off to you!! ...anyhow you can guarantee a full purchase from me (no promo code) at whatever price you will charge. Keep us updated, looking forward to your next Log post :-)
I'll assume changes to the character will be limited to the Daz3D object used. I guess the eyes could be changed depending on your skills in adapting the actual model.
AddictiveGames said: Out of all the future games (and posts) on GS, BOT is the one i'm most looking forward to. :-)
Thanks!
AddictiveGames said: However....I'm going to be honest. BOT currently looks too evil in my opinion. Maybe thats how you intend him to be? But after reading your entire game log (And website) I imagined BOT to be more friendly/hero. More like Walle. Perhaps thats just me.
I have more friendly bots in there. When you see the things TANK fights, I don't think he should be too friendly. The game is a little bit dark. It's somewhere between The Legend of Zelda and Aliens. Heh... probably closer to Zelda.
Also, I think it fits with the story. The other self-aware machines out there hunt the humans. Will TANK ultimately betray humanity?
Here's a less threatening version... the original D-Bot...
...but again, that really doesn't match the game's theme.
I noticed that in your new profile PIC you added Hair, which I like. The quality and detail of your profile is brilliant too, I just think his eyes are too "bad guy" with the mask et all.
I like the look. He's like half Optimus Prime, half Ninja Turtle.
However, maybe after everything BOT has been through thats why he looks the way he does?
That's right... he's supposed to look like he's a fighter and he's seen battle. He's a tough guy. The main thing is that he looks like a knight walking around. It's originally based on an RPG idea, so I like how he moves around.
StusApps said: I'll assume changes to the character will be limited to the Daz3D object used. I guess the eyes could be changed depending on your skills in adapting the actual model.
Why would I want to change him? He looks great. The only thing I changed is the width of the hair. It was too big. I'm surprised that he's not a popular model. I looked at robots by popularity. Super D-Bot is not that high.
That's another main point of this project... to reenforce what I wrote in The Unofficial GameSalad Textbook. GameSalad handles the programming and there are plenty of places to get game content. What's left?
The only thing left is the hard work in putting together a solid game. That's what I'm doing. I'm like a cook, finding the best ingredients. It's also about a good story and a good idea. I like how the game is coming together.
mynameisace said: Did you not design BOT characters then?
Nope, I bought a license to use them. If I designed them, the game would take much longer to create. It certainly wouldn't be done by April/May... unless it's like April/May 2012.
Today I set up the shop and equipment buttons for Weapon #4, Item #1 and Item #2. It's incredibly tedious and time consuming. Why is a button so difficult? I wasn't sure myself, so I counted behaviors. I have over 30 behaviors for a single shop button. That button is then related to another two actors, with additional behaviors. Each purchasable weapon/item has four levels, so it's a bit crazy. It would be easier to use big images for each level, but that wouldn't be optimized.
I fixed lots of bugs too.
• The "pause" button can't be triggered multiple times • Better management of music transitions, to-and-from shops and the equipment menu. • Button lag, the stars/purchase price weren't hiding and showing properly.
Things I learned...
• I'm starting to hate Interpolate. When timing matters, it doesn't always work correctly. • It's tricky restarting music from a paused screen, especially when managing multiple tracks. I've been stopping the music before I load the pause scene. Then, from the pause scene, I change a game attribute to trigger the music restart.
BOT is a little complicated with music. As an example, the main base actually has three versions of the same loop. To keep the music from getting stale, I randomize it. I think it's a nice touch.
Question - What's the difference between the game.Screen.Device Orientation and game.Screen.Interface Orientation attributes?
Answer - About 100 Rule changes. HA!
Today I discovered that if I hold my iPhone 4 face-down, change the orientation, and then bring it back up again, my interface would get screwed up. That's because I was detecting changes that don't need to be checked.
With Device Orientation, there's Portrait, Landscape and face up/down. With Interface Orientation, there's just portrait and landscape.
Heh, I have to go back and fix that.
I'm pretty serious about testing today. I decided that the faster loading of pause wasn't worth the inconsistency when unfreezing the scene. Sometimes the music wouldn't play right or TANK wouldn't leave the portal correctly. So, I dropped two out of three situations were pause was used.
Realizing that it could be another month of 10-12 hour work days, I started feeling discouraged. But when I see the game in action, I find the motivation to keep going.
Hey Photics, are you planning on shading/material changes and re render that character or is this the finalized artwork you are showing us?
Also, I am amazed that you went the "license" way because if the game is successful, copy cats would have access to the character ...
Would you mind sharing how much DAZ charges for a license? The reason I'm asking is because I made a robot model a few years back that was animation ready and it would be helpful to know the $$$$ difference
xyloFUN said: Also, I am amazed that you went the "license" way because if the game is successful, copy cats would have access to the character ...
A copy of Super D-Bot can be yours for $9.95.
It's an interesting point. Yeah, someone could get a license to Super D-BOT too. But, so what? People could look at it and think of my game. "Hey, that's the icon Photics is using." ...or... "Hey, that's BOT!"
Fruit Ninja is an excellent example. The main artwork is fruit. Lots of games have fruit in them.
I look at Super D-Bot as an actor, and he's starring in my movie. Just because Adrien Brody was in the Pianist, doesn't mean he can't be in Predators.
I think the best parts of this game are the controls and how well it's built. That's one of the reasons why I'm not showing any videos. HA HA
If it becomes an issue... or if the game makes lots of money... I can hire an artist to create original artwork.
I have a pretty good head start. If someone inside this community decides to rip off my idea, they'll look bad trying to promote it. If someone outside this community decides to rip off my idea, they won't have the speed of GameSalad.
I did not know that you can buy a model from DAZ and use it unrestricted in a product ... but, it's now the "image of a character" and no longer the model that is resold. So it makes sense ...
Thanks and good luck with BOT, the #1 game which has the potential put GS on the map
I'm not trying to be better than other developers here though. I'm just trying to build BOT as best as I can. I really like this community, so I don't want people to think that I'm an elitist or overly competitive. I'm just really passionate about this.
One thing I like about making stuff for the mobile market is that the medium is new. Imagine in 10 or 20 years from now ... we all will have a good laugh about what we did back then (which, for the time being, is now).
@rob2: yes, if you want to use DAZ models in games, you will either need to purchase the single use dev license for one game - or a multiple use license if you want to use the model in multiple games.
As mentioned in the "Graphics" chapter of The Unofficial GameSalad Textbook, the Daz model isn't embedded into the app, so the regular license is fine here.
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Wow, today I'm on schedule. I finished the scoring system. The minimalistic design expands and contracts with the digits, almost exactly to the design requirements. The only think not included — commas. I'm not sure if constraints are such a power-hog anymore, but I didn't like the idea of using seven of them. So, I decided to streamline things a bit... commas are gone. They looked out-of-place anyway. Also, I'm planning to balance the game so that the majority of players will have less than 10,000 gold.
I did some calculations... if a player got 1 gold every 10 seconds, it would take them almost half-a-year of non-stop play to reach 1,000,000 gold. So, I think six digits are enough. The reason why this is important — I'm planning to use Gold for Game Center ranking. I decided to drop experience points. Leveling isn't necessary.
The four-way auto-rotation is spectacular. I fixed the glitch. I tested things out by rolling around like a ninja. No matter which way I turned the screen, the actors lined up correctly. Auto-rotation works great with the gold display. I started designing this game as landscape, but I like how portrait mode looks too. This is good. It means I'm hitting my targets.
Pause is really starting to annoy me. The game is running at 55-60 FPS — except on the Equipment menu — where it dips into the 30's and 40's. Since it is an equipment menu, this doesn't hurt the game. Most people might not even notice. I didn't notice the problem, not until I did some testing.
I think it's important to test your game as you create it. That way you can see when problems arise — and eliminate them quickly.
Overall, I'm feeling pretty good about this project. That's a big difference from this morning and last night, when I was feeling quite discouraged. There's still a lot of work to do, but I'm still moving forward in getting it done.
DreamLab said: so when are we going to see some gameplay?
It's looking like late April or early May. When the game is sent to Apple, I can work on a promotional video.
Comments
"Tightening up the graphics"
The obsession continues. I didn't like how the animation looked for TANK, so I redid the graphics. This made the edges less jagged. I don't want a few stray pixels to blemish the overall work. TANK is the main character, so he has to look professional. I think this will help the game to scale. That way if the graphics are reduced (old iPod/iPhone) or expanded (iPad / Mac OS X) it should still look nice.
I'm not having fun with the latest part of the project. Setting up the shops is so tedious... especially with auto-rotation... but I'm almost done. With only the addition of a "gold" system, I'll have my first totally completed scene.
I think that's how you can start to notice when the game is nearing completion. Instead of counting the number of completed actors, I'm starting to count in scenes...
• Weapon Shop - Almost Done
• Repair Shop - Next project 60%
• Equipment Menu - Almost Done
• Main Base - 75%
• Sector 2,4 - 75%
So, I think I can start planning a schedule.
For tomorrow, I'm planning to start work on the gold system. Continuing with the minimalist theme, the gold display bar will expand and contract based on the number of digits. If TANK has 10 gold, that's two spaces. If TANK has 10000 gold, that's five spaces. If I get fancy, I might even add commas.
Also for tomorrow, I should finish up the Repair Shop. That's where the character saving will occur. If you don't make it back to the base, and you die, the progress since the last save is lost. There's no running to your corpse or other such MMORPG nonsense here. If you die, you die! So, don't die! I'm not watering down the game's difficulty. The player should feel a sense of dread when wandering too far from the main base.
Here's the schedule...
• Gold system... 1 day
• Title Screen... 1-2 days
• Gun bonus logic, Weapon #4, Item #1 & #2, bonus item #1 & #2... 2 days
• Option Screen and finalize shops... 1 day
• About 7 more enemies... 7 days (one week - one enemy per day)
• 34 explorable areas... 10-17 days (2-3 areas per day)
• Quests and quest characters... 3 days
• Comic story (maybe)... 2 days
• Game Center? ... 1 day
So, it's looking like a late April / early May launch.
-Josh
Now that avatars are working again, I uploaded the BOT icon image as my profile image.
However....I'm going to be honest. BOT currently looks too evil in my opinion. Maybe thats how you intend him to be? But after reading your entire game log (And website) I imagined BOT to be more friendly/hero. More like Walle. Perhaps thats just me. I noticed that in your new profile PIC you added Hair, which I like. The quality and detail of your profile is brilliant too, I just think his eyes are too "bad guy" with the mask et all. However, maybe after everything BOT has been through thats why he looks the way he does?
This is your game, not mine. Hell at the minute I wouldn't even know how to make a game like this so my hat goes off to you!! ...anyhow you can guarantee a full purchase from me (no promo code) at whatever price you will charge. Keep us updated, looking forward to your next Log post :-)
http://www.daz3d.com/i/3d-models/-/super-d-bot?item=3640&_m=d
Also, I think it fits with the story. The other self-aware machines out there hunt the humans. Will TANK ultimately betray humanity?
Here's a less threatening version... the original D-Bot...
http://www.daz3d.com/i/shop/itemdetails/?item=1082
I didn't think that look fit with the game. Heh, maybe as a kid brother for TANK.
Heh... he's got a dog too...
http://www.daz3d.com/i/3d-models/-/d-spot?item=1288&spmeta=ab&_m=d
...but again, that really doesn't match the game's theme. I like the look. He's like half Optimus Prime, half Ninja Turtle. That's right... he's supposed to look like he's a fighter and he's seen battle. He's a tough guy. The main thing is that he looks like a knight walking around. It's originally based on an RPG idea, so I like how he moves around. Why would I want to change him? He looks great. The only thing I changed is the width of the hair. It was too big. I'm surprised that he's not a popular model. I looked at robots by popularity. Super D-Bot is not that high.
That's another main point of this project... to reenforce what I wrote in The Unofficial GameSalad Textbook. GameSalad handles the programming and there are plenty of places to get game content. What's left?
The only thing left is the hard work in putting together a solid game. That's what I'm doing. I'm like a cook, finding the best ingredients. It's also about a good story and a good idea. I like how the game is coming together.
I'm so excited about releasing it!
There's so much work left to do though. HA HA!
Ace
I'm really tired, so this will be a short update.
Today I set up the shop and equipment buttons for Weapon #4, Item #1 and Item #2. It's incredibly tedious and time consuming. Why is a button so difficult? I wasn't sure myself, so I counted behaviors. I have over 30 behaviors for a single shop button. That button is then related to another two actors, with additional behaviors. Each purchasable weapon/item has four levels, so it's a bit crazy. It would be easier to use big images for each level, but that wouldn't be optimized.
I fixed lots of bugs too.
• The "pause" button can't be triggered multiple times
• Better management of music transitions, to-and-from shops and the equipment menu.
• Button lag, the stars/purchase price weren't hiding and showing properly.
Things I learned...
• I'm starting to hate Interpolate. When timing matters, it doesn't always work correctly.
• It's tricky restarting music from a paused screen, especially when managing multiple tracks. I've been stopping the music before I load the pause scene. Then, from the pause scene, I change a game attribute to trigger the music restart.
BOT is a little complicated with music. As an example, the main base actually has three versions of the same loop. To keep the music from getting stale, I randomize it. I think it's a nice touch.
"Doh!"
Question - What's the difference between the game.Screen.Device Orientation and game.Screen.Interface Orientation attributes?
Answer - About 100 Rule changes. HA!
Today I discovered that if I hold my iPhone 4 face-down, change the orientation, and then bring it back up again, my interface would get screwed up. That's because I was detecting changes that don't need to be checked.
With Device Orientation, there's Portrait, Landscape and face up/down.
With Interface Orientation, there's just portrait and landscape.
Heh, I have to go back and fix that.
I'm pretty serious about testing today. I decided that the faster loading of pause wasn't worth the inconsistency when unfreezing the scene. Sometimes the music wouldn't play right or TANK wouldn't leave the portal correctly. So, I dropped two out of three situations were pause was used.
Realizing that it could be another month of 10-12 hour work days, I started feeling discouraged. But when I see the game in action, I find the motivation to keep going.
are you planning on shading/material changes and re render that character or is this the finalized artwork you are showing us?
Also, I am amazed that you went the "license" way because if the game is successful, copy cats would have access to the character ...
Would you mind sharing how much DAZ charges for a license? The reason I'm asking is because I made a robot model a few years back that was animation ready and it would be helpful to know the $$$$ difference
It's an interesting point. Yeah, someone could get a license to Super D-BOT too. But, so what? People could look at it and think of my game. "Hey, that's the icon Photics is using." ...or... "Hey, that's BOT!"
Fruit Ninja is an excellent example. The main artwork is fruit. Lots of games have fruit in them.
I look at Super D-Bot as an actor, and he's starring in my movie. Just because Adrien Brody was in the Pianist, doesn't mean he can't be in Predators.
I think the best parts of this game are the controls and how well it's built. That's one of the reasons why I'm not showing any videos. HA HA
If it becomes an issue... or if the game makes lots of money... I can hire an artist to create original artwork.
I have a pretty good head start. If someone inside this community decides to rip off my idea, they'll look bad trying to promote it. If someone outside this community decides to rip off my idea, they won't have the speed of GameSalad.
Thanks and good luck with BOT, the #1 game which has the potential put GS on the map
I'm not trying to be better than other developers here though. I'm just trying to build BOT as best as I can. I really like this community, so I don't want people to think that I'm an elitist or overly competitive. I'm just really passionate about this.
One thing I like about making stuff for the mobile market is that the medium is new. Imagine in 10 or 20 years from now ... we all will have a good laugh about what we did back then (which, for the time being, is now).
Here is the link to the Super D-Bot Developer License page:
http://developer.daz3d.com/i/shop/itemdetails/?item=3640
EDIT: nevermind, if you are just rendering out 2D sprites to use in your game, the Standard License applies.
Wish I was as good as you.
.
.
.
-----------------------------------------------------
Join the GameSalad Community and have your game noticed for free.
http://www.facebook.com/ListYourTopiPhoneGame
List your Top iPhone Game on FaceBook!
Wow, today I'm on schedule. I finished the scoring system. The minimalistic design expands and contracts with the digits, almost exactly to the design requirements. The only think not included — commas. I'm not sure if constraints are such a power-hog anymore, but I didn't like the idea of using seven of them. So, I decided to streamline things a bit... commas are gone. They looked out-of-place anyway. Also, I'm planning to balance the game so that the majority of players will have less than 10,000 gold.
I did some calculations... if a player got 1 gold every 10 seconds, it would take them almost half-a-year of non-stop play to reach 1,000,000 gold. So, I think six digits are enough. The reason why this is important — I'm planning to use Gold for Game Center ranking. I decided to drop experience points. Leveling isn't necessary.
The four-way auto-rotation is spectacular. I fixed the glitch. I tested things out by rolling around like a ninja. No matter which way I turned the screen, the actors lined up correctly. Auto-rotation works great with the gold display. I started designing this game as landscape, but I like how portrait mode looks too. This is good. It means I'm hitting my targets.
Pause is really starting to annoy me. The game is running at 55-60 FPS — except on the Equipment menu — where it dips into the 30's and 40's. Since it is an equipment menu, this doesn't hurt the game. Most people might not even notice. I didn't notice the problem, not until I did some testing.
I think it's important to test your game as you create it. That way you can see when problems arise — and eliminate them quickly.
Overall, I'm feeling pretty good about this project. That's a big difference from this morning and last night, when I was feeling quite discouraged. There's still a lot of work to do, but I'm still moving forward in getting it done. It's looking like late April or early May. When the game is sent to Apple, I can work on a promotional video.
Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Quantum_Sheep
Web: https://quantumsheep.itch.io