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

Escape Ocean Zero Development

    

      Hey everyone. I apologize for the delay in updates. My intention was to post a new update sooner than this but then I got busy with other things. However, I am picking things up again and I have been working on my next game project, which I call "Escape Ocean Zero". I announced Escape Ocean Zero earlier this month (May 12th to be exact) but really have not given much info about it. So today I want to talk a little bit about it and where its going with its development.

First, I just want to say that I have actually been making really good progress on my new game. I already have created a whole bunch of different 3d game assets/props, I have already finished some playable levels, controls are working, ammo system is in, main character is ready, gameplay mechanics working, implemented sound effects, etc. So I have built up major parts of the game already in a pretty decent amount of time I would say.

One of my biggest goals with this specific project is to create a fun playable complete game in very little time. My initial intention was to have the entire game finished by the end of this month but then I got distracted by other non -game dev things and now I am a little behind. However, now I am back and am rapidly developing this game. My new goal is to have this game complete by the end of June or earlier. I strongly believe that I will have the project complete by the deadline I have set for myself.

In a future post I plan to get into more about the actual game, what its about, maybe have a playable demo, etc. For now though, I can't really explain it because just like all my game projects, I change a lot of things throughout the development cycle. I try an idea I originally thought of and then later when I actually put it in the game I decided that maybe I don't want to do this and so I end up making changes and so on. Its a common process to go through in game dev. So for now I am still kind of forming the game until I get it in the shape that I am satisfied with. For now I am just going show you a bunch of screenshots from the games development I took while creating it. If you follow me on twitter or seen me on the unity forums you might have already seen these screenshots but for those of you who haven't here you go!

Just keep in mind that these are not screenshots from the final game, they are only development screenshots. Anyway, that's all for now. I will go into further detail about the game later on in upcoming posts. Expect updates here on the blog soon because once again I am rapidly developing this one. I have a really good feeling about this project and am really enjoying creating it.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned. More is on the way.

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.

What I have been working on (Announcing my next game project!)

   

 Sorry for the lack of updates. I know it has been a couple weeks since my last post. Of course while I was away from the blog I have been working on something new. My next game project actually. If you follow my twitter you may have seen me post various screenshot over the past couple days.

I'm just going to get into it right away. I would like to announce "Escape Ocean Zero" 

Or at least that is what I call my new game project. Who knows I might change the name later down the road. Anyway the title is not important right now.

It is still very early in development so I won't get into too much details about the project right now (I don't have very much to show anyway) so I will save that for a later post.

I did however already create and animate the main character and even built a small simple prototype that you could play right now in your web browser (Its nothing fancy though.)

Play it here (Link)

So, in this game you run around and shoot stuff with your beach ball cannon. (A gun that shoots out beach balls) Off topic: I do believe that my game will be the first game ever to feature such a type of weapon.

The Beach Ball Cannon: A toy looking gun that fires beach balls...

You play as "Beach ball shooter", the main character of my next game. I actually created this guy a little over a week ago.

Anyway, going to leave off with this and keep the post short. I will have a lot more updates and info on my next project down the road. I am looking forward to showing off some of the actual levels and other characters, etc later on so stay tuned!

I do plan on rapidly developing this game and finishing it fast (maybe like a one month time frame or so). Of course I am also going to really polish it up as well. I already think this might be my best looking game so far (graphically)

Summer is coming up and I think my new project is perfect for it.