Warbreaking Point Weekly Round-up - April 18-25th

After a deserved Easter break together with my family, I'm now back on track with new mental energy for the Big Game Project. First of all, I have decided on a proper title for my game, which is "Warbreaking Point". This was just something that I came up in my head while I was getting back from the Easter holiday.

Then, I'll talk about what has also happened since the last post. Since that time, I've been looking into the Unity Asset Store for assets and useful technology for my game. So far I've found 2 technologies and 1 asset  pack that I will use for this project:

• Tile Based Map and Nav is a scripting tool that allows the creation of tiled grids (both square- and hexagon-based tiles), and some useful functionality that comes along with it; like simple path-finding for moving from one square to another. After looking into the source code and a couple of examples that was included with the purchase, I think this is going to work out great for my game. I will need to make some adaptations to the code that was included with this pack, but I don't think that it is going to be too big of an issue, as it already has a good foundation of what I need going forward with my project.

• GoogleFu is an Unity editor extension that allows you to export data from Google Spreadsheets into Unity and access the data from there, with no need for internet connection once the spreadsheet is exported. This was the daily deal and the Unity Asset Store a few days back and I bought it because it could come in handy when I (hopefully) develop this game with a full team next year; as Google Spreadsheets are a good way of collaborating when several people are working on something together.

• Even when working alone, GoogleFu is also useful because it allows you to extract game variables (like a unit's health, speed, attack damage and so forth) into an external file rather than hard-coding it into the game. As a general rule, you should never hard-code numbers into a game's code, as you might want to use that number in several places in the code and if you had hard-coded it into the game, you'd had to change it in several places if you every decide to change it and you might very well miss one variables because of this. This also allows people to understand your code better, as the number 100 does not really tell what it is used for; while a variable named Unit_Infantry_Health is very informative, even for those how are not directly involved with your project.

• 300+ 2D Projectiles, Icons, and Items is a collection of various icons for usage in games. I bought this because it's made by an Indie Developer whom I am personally a big fan of, and it had some useful stuff that I could use for the GUI in my game.

Overall, it feels really good that I've now started looking into how to make my game. I feel that I can accomplish a vertical slice to show at Gotland Game Conference. It may not be a full game, but my teachers want to see what I can do of the concept

In the relatively near future, I'm planning on making my concept/design document publicly available for everyone to watch and submit feedback on. 

Project Clint Weekly Roundup - April 12-17

This weeks round-up post comes a bit early because it's Easter and all what that means.

Sitting with Unity
While not complementing previous courses, I've sat more and trying to learn myself the Unity game engine. I'm starting to get a hang of how the engine and the  scripting system and such is working, although this will probably be a constant process as the development goes along. I feel ready to start working for real next week.

Talking to teachers
I've been talking to my teacher about this project as well, and I've made some small changes to my plan based on what happened during those talks. No change were major though.

Next week - Grid and movement system
Next week I finally start working on this game for real, and then my main task will be to get the grid/movement system working, and the subsystems that are required for that to work properly (like A* for the movement system and the unit's path-finding). This task is being done first partly because of that this is a part of the core mechanic of my game, partly because of that the other tasks related to this one should be easier to implement once this system is on place

Big Game Project Weekly Roundup: April 7-11

My first, real week of the Big Game Project is now finished. From now on, I  will blog at least once a week, and do some weekly roundup on what happened during the week.

April 7-9: Talking to my teachers about what to do
I spent the first three days of this week talking to my teachers about what I should do during the course since I was the last man standing while every other Big Game Group was filled. In the end, we decided to let me work alone on a vertical slice of the game I pitched to them earlier in the course, and hopefully make the game in  full next year.

The reason why I didn't pitch this concept for the rest of the class was not because of the fact that it was a bad idea. In fact, my teachers really liked my idea and they really wanted me to keep working on it. The thing was that since this is a strategy game, you'll need lots of  Rock-Paper-Scissors triangles of units and such to keep it interesting (Håkan thought that 12 different units was the bare minimum required for the game to be interesting). It would simply be to much work for the Big Game Project, even if we were to work in a big group. That's why I'm only making a vertical slice now

April 10-11: Learning the basics of Unity
The past few days, I've been sitting and trying to learn myself the Unity game engine; which I only have limited experience since earlier on. I've been mostly sitting with a stealth game tutorial from Unity's official site. So far I have a hang of how things work with the engine and such

Next week: Keep learning Unity
As planned together with my teachers, I will keep sitting and learning myself Unity the next week. I will look into more tutorials, as well as reading a book on Unity that I got to borrow from my teacher that it very up-to-date.

Looking ahead: Assets
Since I'm not an artist, I'll most likely download/buy assets from the Unity asset store and work with them. My teacher also told me that there might be a person who can help me with the GUI of the game, but that comes later.

Announcing "Project Clint"

Since I was the last man among my class that was without a group after all groups were filled, I talked to my teachers about what to do. After listening to a few suggestions and having discussions about it, we arrived at the conclusion that I would work on a vertical slice/prototype about a certain part of the idea that I pitched to my teachers last week, and then make the full game once the third year starts.

So that's why I'm announcing my project, which until I've decided on a better title will have the working title "Project Clint" (After Clint Barton, aka Hawkeye from Marvel comics, whom I'm a big fan of). You can have a look at my first, rough concept document here. Because it is the first rough version of the concept document, things will most likely change as time goes on. I will talk more with my teachers later today (April 9th) about the project and help on deciding a project plan.

Preparing for year 3 already now.

Right now, the Big Game project course has started. Some groups are already well underway with their projects, others who lacks groups will pitch their game ideas tomorrow (Friday 4th April) and try and find the members they need.

I talked to two teachers at Campus Gotland, Håkan Mattsson and Adam Mayes, about the idea I had for big game project. And they really liked my idea. But the scope was to big for the time that is left on the Big Game course, in combination with some personal reasons affecting my life (It's nothing serious though,  you do not need to worry). But they encourage me to keep the idea alive and try to make during year three. Which I will do.

As much as my summer schedule will work, I will keep polishing the ideas that I had and try to code simple prototypes of the game. And we'll see what'll become of it.