dock

Check it out! 48 hours of games development squeezed into 150 seconds! XD

I have put together a timelapse video of my screens during Ludumdare last weekend. It was taking one screen every minute, You can get an idea for how I spent my weekend, and also get experience how ridiculously large my home monitor size is (2500 x 1200 in total over two monitors...) It's my first time doing anything like this, but I might record another timelapse if I do Ludumdare again.

Oh yeah, and there is some footage of the actual game at the end too, if you haven't seen it yet.

I won "Best Gameplay" award in the Unity Awards 2008. See the competition results here.

"Best Gameplay:
Tumble Drop – Dock

Special Recognition in following categories:
Puzzle, 2D, Physics."

Yaaay!! I didn't win 'forum favourite' (but I appreciated every who voted for me!), and I didn't win 'best overall game', but to win anything at all is fantastic news. I'm delighted with this result.

I win €200, and I get a 20% discount on a license which is worth almost the same again. I'm going to take those €200 and put that straight towards a 'pro' Unity license.

Yesterday evening I spent a couple of hours with Unity, trying to remember how to code. It has been a couple of weeks since I did anything with Tumbledrop, and it was slightly unnerving to see how clumsy I was with using Unity at first compared to how I was towards the end of Tumbledrop. Of course, having a structure of a game in place helps a lot, whereas last night I was starting from scratch with an empty project.

So, I played around with simple 2D platform game stuff. I managed to get my character moving left and right, jumping (with lower jumps with shorted button taps), and only jumping when touching a surface... but none of it works well right now. I'm interested in making a very simple scrolling platform game, but I'm not in a hurry so I'll chip away at this until I'm happy with basic things like running and jumping.

Speaking of Tumbledrop, I intend to pick that up again quite soon. I get the feeling I should probably tackle some of the bugs first (and generally tidying up the code), but also work towards getting some new features in place so that I don't get bored or too frustrated.

Kinda wish I could develop Unity on my laptop, but keeping it all on one machine is probably nicer, not to mention that I don't own a macbook. I really want one, but I'm not due to upgrade my laptop for another year or more.

Today Tumbledrop was featured on the front page of Tigsource, which is quite an honour for me! I have been reading tigsource for a while, and it's very encouraging to have my first game show up on there as a featured item. Somehow I thought it might be a bit lightweight for them, as they generally tend to focus on platform games or more hardcore indie titles, but I'm delighted that it has been well received. It's even more pressure for me to to fix it up!

Yesterday I fired up Unity (and 3DSMAX) again briefly and decided to fix a very minor bug... the only bug that no-one has noticed or mentioned, but one that annoys me every time I play. Which bug? This one:



That's right, there were some parts of the shape outlines that were lighter than others when the shape disappears after clicking on it. This has been driving me crazy for ages, haha! Now it looks like this:



Graphical glitches like that drive me wild.. I'm quite finicky when it comes to visuals, I have to admit. I'm leaving the more obvious bugs until the big update in a few weeks time, such the fact that level 6 and 17 are the same level... (wtf, didn't realise that until today). I hope to get a few life-things out of the way so that I can knuckle down with development again.

The tumbledrop 'launch' was a success! ^_^ The game has been received well, and was even posted up by a few gaming blog sites. I managed to get a lot of feedback about it, and I just need to compile a list of bugs to fix. I've decided that I'm going to aim to release a 'final' version of this game in about three weeks time, before London Expo. It's long enough to take off the pressure, but soon enough so that I don't get distracted and don't want to go back to it. So, some time around 23rd October expect a shiny new version.

So, now that Tumbledrop is done, I figured I should take some time out on this blog to consider how the development went. Today I'll focus on 'concept art', and take a look at what I produced.


"game - shape stacking.psd" (11-Aug-2008)
At the time was just a doodle of a potential game to make, one of many that exist. I wanted to do something very simple with the physics engine in unity, and figured that a 2D game with shape stacking would be good. I had played and enjoyed some 'physics tower' games before, but didn't like the square shapes much. The folder is called "Topple Tower" at this point, and this became the unity project filename too.


"game - shape pieces.psd" (12-Aug-2008)
I had settled on which of the pieces I liked, and I started to mock up a bunch of different shapes. I was aiming for some geometrically robust shapes, but also ones that would roll and tumble in an interesting manner. I was also trying to settle on some sort of look for the faces at this stage. I had also changed the stage to an island at this point.


"game - shape mock 2.psd" (13-Aug-2008)
So, this was the mock-up that I posted when I started this blog, and this pretty much became my aim in terms of what to achieve. It was called "TumbleTower" here, as I was still trying to settle on a name. I think I managed to get most of the visuals here in place, such as splashing, stars upon impact, and scared faces when the shapes are falling. The clouds in the sky I threw out because they conflicted with the GUI, and hot-air balloon in the background is still penciled in. The number on the island at this point was going to be the moves guage, but I didn't like it there.


Page from my sketchbook, around the same time...
Not all the concept art for this was done on computer! As well as many post-it notes that I have since discarded, I was drawing up ideas for shapes and visual designs in my sketchbook as well. This was when I came up with the 'triple', the three pronged shape you see here, which is probably my favourite of the tumbledrop shapes.

Of course, I didn't commit myself to development at this stage, and I only announced my intention of developing it some 10 days later. This was more like 'maaaaybe I'll make this'. I then went on to do some small tests in Unity and MAX to see if I could make the shapes and have the physics work, which pretty much took us to the 22nd August when I decided to enter the Unity contest.

Next time I'll post about how using Unity worked out for me. :)

I can't believe it! I managed to get Tumbledrop done on time!! I've submitted Tumbledrop to the Unity Awards 2008... and the game is also playable on its own website! :D Please give it a try! For Mac and Windows, needs a browser plugin.

www.tumbledrop.com

There are still some small bugs in the game that I intend to iron out of the coming weeks, and I have a 'medal' system planned for high scores (and medium scores) on each of the levels. I might implement level unlocking, or at least acknowledging that you have completed each stage. Any feedback you have would definitely be appreciated.

I'm actually stunned that this game came together as well as it has done. Yesterday the game was a mess, and I wasn't confident at all that I would pull this off. Today was very productive however, and things came together at the last mnute. Literally, in some cases... the 'level complete' sound effect was added at 11:35pm, and submission was only 10 minutes after that.

Phew, now I can exhale!

Tumbledrop is looking in pretty bad shape right now. I only have a couple of days left before the competition submission, and there are some horrendous bugs that I'm struggling to overcome. The problem with bugs is that they tend to get worse rather than better if you're in a hurry... or at least this is the case when you're inexperienced with coding. I'm going to get stuck in and focus on a couple of key parts of the game today, which could make all the difference.

It's worth pointing out that lots of progress has happened as well. Most of the user interface was designed and put in place, which makes a big difference to the overall look and feel of the game. Right now, however, the game is broken so I need to work hard!

Of course, after wednesday I can update my game to my heart's content, but I just need to get it to a state fit for entering into the contest before then! o_o

I'm surrounded by bugs! Nooooo!!

Progress has been really slow over the last few days on Tumbledrop, starting off on Sunday with a very simple bug that literally took about 24 hours to fix. -_- It's very frustrating getting 'stuck' with coding when you're inexperienced, because you often don't know where to start. Is your use of syntax wrong, or are you simply trying the wrong approach? Unity's scripting language is case sensitive as well, so it will sometimes give completely nonsensical bug reports and suggestions when in fact I should have just been using 'yield' instead of 'Yield'. o_O

Nevertheless, things are slowly coming together. Today I'm determined to put some GUI in place, with level select and level progression, to get a better feel of it being a completed game. If nothing else though, my game has a good sense of polish. Transitions and responses are good, and the sound effects are still pleasant to listen to after hearing them a billion times.

Plans for an updated demo have been thrown out of the window for the time being, but maybe I'll sneak something out at the weekend to get a few days playtesting before the competition deadline. I'm certainly aiming to have all the pieces in place by then.

I've been working on Tumbledrop all day long, getting up early and making sure that I really poured the hours into the project. I managed to scour several important items off my list of things to get done, and I'm going to bed now with a view to having an equally productive day tomorrow.

As you can see from the screenshot, Tumbledrop now has water splashing. I'm working on some other visuals effects too, but implementing them is proving a little tricky. I also need to track down some more boring bugs with regards to the 'recharge timer', as well as consider the visualisation of this. Lots of work to do! :)

I'm still aiming to get a new demo out on Monday, so I had better hit the sack and see how much I can get done tomorrow.

I've had a fantastic evening of games development, perhaps too long an evening considering it is 2am now! Whoops! I had a rollercoaster evening of things not working, then theorising a solution, and fumbling through all the code until that solution worked perfectly. I now have complete control over the expressions on my shapes, and it works smoothly and precisely how I want it to. On this particular screenshot you'll notice the two chaps on the left hand side expressing their discomfort at the collision from the shapes above.

I'm proud to say I have 'FaceYay();' as a line of code in my game! ^o^

The rainbow you see was something I did at lunch-time. This is the 'win' rainbow, which forms after you succeed at the level, along with some other exciting on screen decorations. It is inverted and quite wrong!

Finally, I found out a way to further smoothen my export-pipeline. I'm now saving files directly into the project folder over the network from max into Unity, and Unity is neatly re-importing these objects and silently integrating the changes into all instances of that object. I'm flabberghasted at how robust Unity is with this sort of thing, especially considering I've done a lot of custom work to each of the objects after importing.

I'm really starting to feel comfortable when working with Unity, and the prospect of doing projects after this one is actually quite exciting.

It's been a few days since I posted up my beta-demo of Tumbledrop, and the reception has been much more positive than I had ever anticipated. I'm very appreciative of all the feedback that I've received as well, and I've definitely been taking everything into consideration (I know I need a better system for showing the countdown timer between clicks, for example!). It's all very encouraging, and it has really fueled my enthusiasm for getting this game done.

Here's a video that someone made demonstrating the two-click solution! Spoilers!! XD The two-click thing has motivated me to make sure the game logs your lowest number of moves.

I've been working on the additional shapes for a while now, and they've been taking much longer than expected. There are 17 shapes in total, and each of them has a range of facial expressions. I also ran into a bunch of problems in 3D Studio Max, where animations and exports were being screwed up be Xform problems (that old chestnut!). It's already obvious how the gameplay changes quite a lot with the new shapes, with interesting leverage type behaviour occurring. My aim is to get the shapes fully implemented as proper 'prefab' objects by Friday night at the latest, to give me the whole weekend for programming the main game interface and working on levels.

I think I'm going to try to release another 'demo' next Monday, as an incentive to make sure everything works and to get some further feedback on the interface. Watch this space!

I've released a very rough gameplay demo, in accordance with the rules of the Unity Awards. You can play it HERE (and you'll need the Unity plugin). It is browser based, and works on Windows and Mac. It's very very rough, is only one level, but it works.

To be honest... it might not be a bad idea to wait sixteen days until the finished game is ready though, and play that instead. This isn't really the demo I had hoped to have ready - maybe I'll have that ready for next week instead. With that in mind, I'm off to focus on getting the objects fixed up.

edit: some guy on the Unity forum managed to beat the level in two moves! o_o Not sure how! Might be a trick to do with timing...

I spent all of yesterday working on the graphics for Tumbledrop, working on the 3D models needed for the shapes. It may not be obvious, but Tumbledrop is actually a 3D game, and relies on 3D models for all of the graphics. The visuals are strictly 2D, but behind the surface are a lot of complex 3D models. A big part of the way it works is that it needs 3D objects for all the physics calculations, and those have to be constructed from multiple convex objects. There are around 18 different objects in the game, and each of them requires careful modeling to make sure they measure the correct size, or else they won't pile up in a way that makes them suitable for puzzles.

I'm still working on these shapes now, and they're taking much longer than I had anticipated. At this rate I'm not sure what state my game will be when I have to show it off tomorrow, as I'm not sure I have time to implement what I'm working on today. My 'beta' might just be a very barebones proof of concept, just to 'qualify' me for the contest.

Nevertheless, it's 10:05 on Sunday, I've had some coffee, and I'm ready to give it my all. ^_^


Quick edit: I'm using the laptop to export shapes from 3DSMAX, it just occured to me that my desk looks absurd. It's like my desk is from the future, year 2008! Living in the future is awesome.

Would you install a new browser plugin just to play a game?

The game I'm working on right now is browser based, using the Unity Web Player browser plugin. The plugin works on both Mac and PC, and is about 3MB in size. There's currently no way of playing the game without the plugin.

There are a lot of people who are adverse towards installing plugins in order to play a web game. There are plenty of good reasons for this, as people want to ensure their browsers work as fast as possible and the threat of a poorly maintained plugin bogging things down is quite looming on modern tech-savvy internet people. There's a certain amount of commitment involved in installing a plugin, and you generally want to be able to trust the company that makes the plugin. Games such as Runescape require people to install a plugin, but for something as big as an MMORPG it seems justifiable. Would people be willing to go through this step for something as simple as a puzzle game?

Of course, some people have no option of installing the plugin at all! You often can't install it on your computer at work if there are administration limitations, especially as the 'auto install plugin' procedure often seems to fail in firefox. So those people wouldn't be able to play until they get to a PC they have control of.

The obvious response is "just install the damn plugin!", but to take that approach isn't much different from people who defend horrible DRM. I'm not one to say that "it's no different from installing flash", because flash has a ten-year legacy and is considered a staple, even moreso than Java. Also, Flash has more uses than just one game, whereas I wouldn't expect my users to necessarily run into other Unity webplayer games.

I have some plans of how to deal with this. I'll be creating youtube videos of my game so people can 'preview' it before installing the plugin, so they have some idea of what to expect. However, I fully expect that on day one there will people who will refuse to install the plugin. It's a shame, but I'm prepared. ^^

Spent some time today implementing some clouds and other graphics. I also managed to code in some very basic gameplay, so that you can click on shapes to delete them and let the objects tumble down. I also messed with the physics a little bit in order to be more forgiving. I need to focus on the gameplay right now, and get it working properly as well as having a level-section screen. I need to submit a working 'beta' of the game within the next few weeks, so gameplay is the most important thing until then.

Most importantly, however, is that I 'tidy up' the data files at this point. I think I need to create a fresh new project file in Unity and rebuild what I have so far so that it's fully documented with good import methods and naming conventions.

So, I've decided to make a game and enter the Unity Awards 2008.

As far as contests go, it's a bit of a long shot. There are people who have been working on their game for 12+ months, and some teams of people entering too, but that's okay. Hopefully it will be enough to push me to complete a project. I've decided to keep a development diary over the next six weeks to help keep me going, whether or not I succeed in completing the game.

This contest isn't really about winning. For me I will 'win' if I'm able to complete my game and enter the contest. That's my goal.


Here's my game design idea. This is my 'mock-up' of how I want the final game to look. The game is called 'Tumble Drop', and it basically works by having a pre-built tower of shapes, and you have to remove a specified number of shapes without the tower falling into the sea. Some of the shapes won't be removable. I have a long way to go before it'll look like this, and more importantly there's a lot of gameplay to code. I'm very new to Unity, and pretty rubbish with coding, so it'll be an uphill struggle.


...and this is how the game looks right now. It's completely non-interactive, you can't click on anything. You can just watch the physics drop the shapes into position. The part that does work, however, is that I've figured out how to get the shapes to change their facial expressions. Right now all the stars 'blink' a n_n face in unison, which is all animated in 3DSMAX. I also put some work in to make sure that convex physics objects work correctly, which caused some troubles at first. Finally, the visual appearance with the outer white stroke was something I was keen to get working, and it looks exactly as I planned it.

I've just sent off my 'entry form'. Sink or swim, time to give this a shot.