Finally played around with Unity 5!

   

     

    As everyone probably knows already, Unity 5 came out at the beginning of March (March 3) and it was a really exciting day for game developers, the people behind the unity engine and unity fanboys and girls all over the world. I remember being very excited about Unity 5 as soon as I heard it came out that week and I just wanted to download it right away and start making awesome games with it. 

Unfortunately, I had to hold that excitement back for a bit. When Unity 5 came out I was still developing my recent released game "Don't Explode". Of course I could of just move that project from Unity 4 into Unity 5 and finished it there but I didn't want to do that because it was pretty much almost finished, I had all the features built in and it just needed some polish work. I wasn't sure if anything would break if I upgraded to Unity 5. Long story short, I decided to hold off on using Unity 5 until I finished and released my latest Android game. But now, that is out of the way. My game is complete and you can download "Don't Explode" today for free off the Google PlayStore 

With that out of the way, I finally downloaded Unity 5, opened it up played around with it and even created a quick simple demo scene to test out a bunch of cool new features the updated engine comes with. Mainly played around with rendering settings, new shaders and so on to create a beautiful looking 3d scene using only 3d primitive gameobjects Unity comes with. (Such as cubes, capsules, planes,etc)

Screen shot of my results:

See it in action running live in your browser with the Webplayer I built!

Webplayer Demo: Unity 5 WebDemo Test

Bottom Line:

Is that after playing around with Unity 5 for a couple hours I am in love with it! The Unity team continues to upgrade their engine to be the best and pack each release with awesome new features. I'm still exploring Unity 5 for myself and playing around with and testing all of these great new built in features. I personally am really excited to start creating all my upcoming games and projects with the new Unity 5 engine and I am really looking forward to sharing my creations with everyone else. Also, I am really looking forward to seeing what other developers will create with Unity 5 and what the Unity team has for us next.

Hello! I'm back.

Hey everyone!

Sorry for the lack of updates. Last time I posted was after submitting my entry for the LD30 competition. Its been over a whole month since my last post! Anyway, that is going to change because I am back once again and have a lot of projects planned for the future. Mainly mobile game projects, but this is talk for a different blog post. For now, I just want to say hello to everyone and let you all know that I am still here and still creating games and 3d stuff and all that other good stuff! (I mean, if there is anyone out there who reads my blog and is interested in what I do of course).

Although I did not post in over a month, I did create something not too long ago actually. I didn't want to get rusty with my game dev skills. Around the beginning of September, I created  a really small project I call "Hello". This is not really much of a game. It was more of just a small weekend project I did for fun. It is a game I use to kind of show of my game dev skills and introduce my self as a developer. If you remember a long time ago I created a small "Welcome to the Blog" project that welcomes people to my blog. This "Hello" project is similar to that.

Anyway, In this extremely short game, you explore a small city with trees and chirping birds and must collect the letters to spell out the word "Hello". After that the game ends.  It is "Hello", nothing more and nothing less.

PLAY IT HERE (Webplayer)

You can also download an android version of the game here: Hello - Android

Controls: Click the screen to move the character around. (Same for touch screen controls)


ScreenShots:

That's all for now. Once again, it's not really much of a game or big project but it is evidence that I am still here :)

So Hello everyone again! I am glad to be back. Stay tuned for my upcoming blog post. As I mentioned earlier, I have a lot of projects planned that I want to get working on.

Thanks for reading. More soon.

Release: Beach Ball Shooter Version 1.0

Play it in your web browser here:
Beach Ball Shooter V1.0 

What is this game?
"Beach Ball Shooter" is a really short and simple game about shooting beach balls and collecting rubber ducks!

Current Version: 1.0
 -features 13 short mini levels!

Free!
Just like all my other games this one is also 100% free to play of course! 

Game Screenshots:

Developer Note:
      After over a month of not being active on my blog I am back and with a new game release. Releasing this game is kind of a surprise to myself personally as I had other plans for it. This game might look a bit familiar to some of you who have been reading my blog.

Back in May I announced a new game project I was working on. Originally it was called "Escape Ocean Zero". I was constantly posting screenshots on my twitter and talking about it. I originally had different plans for the game and wanted it to be more of a mystery/adventure type game. As time went on I had become busy with other things and eventually ceased developing the game. I had left my blog without any updates for over a month and even left the game development scene for a while.

After a good break from developing games I am ready to once again jump back in and start creating my new ideas. I want to start focusing on my new ideas now but at the same time I didn't want all the work I put into "Escape Ocean Zero" to go to waste. So I decided to take a different direction with the project and soon it became this game, the one you see right now, "Beach Ball Shooter". Instead of creating this big game with a complex story I wanted to keep it short, simple, avoid creating a storyline and keep the gameplay constant throughout.

So for "Beach Ball Shooter", I created a number of really small and somewhat easy levels all that focus on the same simple goal, collect the rubber duck to complete the level. That's it. That is the whole game. As simple as this game is, I actually really enjoyed creating it. Creating such a simple game felt right. It has even changed me a little bit as a game developer and made me realize that games don't always need to be this crazy complex creation with big levels and storylines and cutscenes. They can be fun in their simplest form. I am starting to understand that less really can be more in some cases. So who knows, I might just take a similar approach with my future game projects from now on as well.

About Version 1.0:
     Beach Ball Shooter Version 1.0 features 13 easy mini levels. I am releasing this as version 1.0 because I might just release updated versions of the game later on in the future with more levels. I created a ton of game props and assets for this project that I can easily reuse and I can easily create a lot more simple levels out of all the props/game assets I have already set up in the unity engine.



UPDATE: 8/20/2014

Beach Ball Shooter is now available on the Google Play Store for Android devices!

Get it here: Google Play - Beach Ball Shooter

Check out the full news article here:
Beach Ball Shooter On Android

In love with Unity's built in AI !!!

    Recently I started playing around with Unity's built in Navigation/ NavMesh tools so that I could learn a little bit more about AI behaviors such as pathfinding and so on. I must say, I am in love with the built in navigation the game engine provides. Its very smart, easy to use and opens up a ton of different possibilities for what the game engine could be used for.

For those of you who don't know what I am talking about check out the Unity website over here. Pretty much you can bring your characters, enemies, whatever you want in the game to life using Unity's AI.

In very little time I built my own playable prototype using the navigation tools to create an enemy gameobject that follows the player around while at the same time avoiding obstacles such as walls. Its a very simple basic AI behavior but its very effective and of course much more advanced AI behaviors could be created.

Check it out over here

So I am in love with this feature that the game engine provides. This is a very important feature for me and my games and probably most game developers out there. Creating good quality AI behaviors for my games characters and enemies has always been a bit of a challenge for me. AI in general is a subject of its own and could be very time consuming work. In my past games such as "Revolver Finger", "Forest Soup",  "Hide-n-Seek Winter" and other game projects I could never quite create good quality AI behaviors. I managed to create my own AI behaviors for enemies and such in the past but they were never really good AI behaviors. For example, the enemies in my forest soup game and revolver finger game would follow you around but also they wouldn't avoid obstacles, they would go through walls, they would not follow the player around accurately and sometimes even float above the ground when they aren't suppose to. The AI would even break sometimes and behave weird. Getting to the point, the AI behaviors I created for my past games were very poor quality and not professional.

However, now that I have the power of Unity's built-in navigation tools I can create much more believable AI behaviors, much more smarter AI behaviors and much much better and more professional quality AI behaviors. I am sure this will have a really positive impact on my future game projects. So I just really want to thank the devs behind the Unity game engine for making this feature available to everyone.

The AI/navigation tools use to only be a feature available to pro licensed users. However, a few recent builds of unity 4.xx ago this feature became available to users using the free version of unity and that is just awesome. Those of you who have been using unity might of already known about this feature for a while now and I did to, but I just recently started using it and am really impressed by what it could do.

Anyway that's about it. Once again a big thanks to the people behind the Unity game engine for giving users another pro feature for free. If you haven't played around with the Navigation tools yet I highly encourage you to it is a lot of fun.

I know this post isn't really about my next game project but I will have news on that down the road so stay tuned. Thanks for reading.

The Flower boy character

     After releasing my recent toon game "Hide-n-Seek Winter" I began planning out some stuff for my next game project. Today I would like to show you the newest character I have been working on. The main character for my next game project is "The Flower Boy".

The Flower Boy is my latest original character. He is part human and part flower... (I guess you already figured that out though)

Flower Boy background: The Flower Boy was once a seed who was planted in some soft soil during an apocalyptic time. After 16 years in the soil, the flower boy has finally grown out of the ground and is seeing the world for the first time. However, he came into a post apocalyptic world. Everything is destroyed and there isn't a single sign of life around.

 This little background will play into the character and games storyline. That is for another time though when I have a lot more to show for my next game project featuring my flower boy character in the future.

Making Of...

Also I have created a new section on the blog called "Making Of...". It is located at the top between the "3D Artwork" tab and the "Webplayers" tab. In this new section of the blog I will post "making of" articles about how I created my characters, artwork, games, etc from start to finish. I have already posted my first "Making of " recently of this Flower Boy character that you see here in the above image. To check it out go to the "making of" section of the blog or check it out over here:

Making Of the Flower Boy (Link)

In this "making of" I show how I created the Flower Boy character. I will try to keep the "Making of" section updated as often as I can and post more making of stuff down the road.

WebPlayer Demo:

Looking at pictures of the finished model is nice but its even cooler to see the model in 3d actually in the unity game engine. I have created a web player demo that you can try out directly in your web browser to check out my new Flower Boy character and see what he will look like in the game engine.

You can try it out over here:

Flower Boy Unity WebPlayer Demo (Link)

Press the space key to change the characters pose.

You can also find this webplayer along with other webplayers I made over time in the "Webplayers" section above.

More soon!

"Hide-n-Seek Winter" now available on Webplayer!

     Hey everybody. Four days ago (March 6th) I released my latest game "Hide-n-Seek Winter". A unique toon adventure game I created about a boy who ventures off to the world of infinite snow in search of his little sister who has been kidnapped by a demon known as "The King of Hide and Seek".

I released the game for Windows, Mac and Linux platforms. Today, "Hide-n-Seek Winter" is available for a fourth platform. I just released a webplayer version of the game. Now you can play "Hide-n-Seek Winter" directly in your web browser, no download required at all. This version of the game is the best because it plays in the same resolution for everyone which fixes a GUI problem that was in the standalone versions of the game.

Just like the Windows, Mac and Linux versions, this version is also 100% free to play, no ads or in game purchases or anything like that.

You can play it here at the link below: 

Hide-n-Seek Winter (Web Version)


Anyway, I hope you check out my new game and give it a try. I would love to hear feedback on what you thought of it!

If you are looking for a downloadable version of the game for Windows, Mac or Linux platforms you can grab it here from the "Hide-n-Seek Winter" release page: Release Page

The release page has also been updated with this webplayer version of the game as well for future reference.

Thats all for now. Enjoy!

Forest Soup now available on Kongregate

     Hello again everyone!
As you know I released my game "Forest Soup" a couple days ago on Halloween for Windows, Mac and Linux. Since the Unity game engine is so good at deploying games across multiple platforms, I decided to also release a webplayer version of "Forest Soup". I have put the game up on Kongregate and now "Forest Soup" can be played directly in your web browser. No download required. This is good for anyone who has been wanting to play the game but for some reason could not download it.

You can play Forest Soup on kongregate HERE

There is a few things I want to say though. I still recommend downloading the game for your target platform (Windows, Mac, Linux) instead of playing the kongregate version. I say this because those versions have slightly better quality and a few other differences like the main menu and other small things. I had to make changes to the webplayer version because kongregate only allows 20mb max file size for game uploads and Forest Soup was around 30mb. So I had to reduce the graphics a bit and make a couple of changes in order to reduce the size of the game down to 19.9mb. It is still the same game as the downloadable versions and nothing major or important was changed or taken out but you will notice a few small differences in the webplayer version I have on kongregate such as graphics and menus, etc. Things I already mentioned.

So there you go. "Forest Soup" really is available for everyone now. Its now on Windows, Mac, Linux and webplayer. I guess I can say this is my first real multiplatform game. :)

Whats next?
Now I am truly done with Forest Soup. What I mean by that is, this is my final post/update about this game. Forest Soup has been my project for the past month. I finished it. I released it. I went back and released an updated version and now I am releasing it on webplayer. It has been really fun and I think my best game project yet. So now I guess its time to just let this game exists online on its own and time for me to move onto my next game ideas and projects. I thank you all for checking out "Forest Soup" and stay tuned for my future games.

see you later. :)

First improvment/ demonstration project is up

Hey everyone.

As I said a while ago, ever since I released "Revolver Finger" for android, I have been spending all my time practice/training and learning more to better improve my game development and 3d art skills. I have been making a lot of great progress and definitely have improved in many areas. I have mainly been focusing on improving my 3d art skills. Those of you who have seen my deviant art or some of my recent posts may have seen some of the models I created for practice.

Anyway, in a post I made not to long ago I said that I would put up a small demonstration/prototype project that shows my recent work so people can see how much I have improved. I also mentioned I would be putting these small projects up when I first said that I would be taking  a break from development and focusing on improving.

So here is my very first "Improvement project" (thats what I like to call them). Its nothing special, just something real basic. You can walk around it and just look at some of my recent work. Its kind of like a small virtual museum. In this you will be able to move around in a small town type level I created and get a closer look at my more recent models such as my zelda character remakes.

You can check it out in your web browser from here: Improvement Demo

I will be adding these into the "Prototype/ Demonstrations projects" section of the blog.

I have definitely learned a lot more and greatly improved but I am still not satisfied with my current skill level. So I am going to continue training and improving further for the time. I will probably have more "Improvment project" demonstrations up as I go.

I mentioned this before, I have plans and already know what my next game project will be and I am really excited about it but I will not start working on it until I greatly improve. And I want my next game release to be my best one.

So thats all for now.