Whats the news on the next Almond-Hill? Daily-Updates

Hello everyone.

As you know, I have announced my next game project, "Almond-Hill : Silent Meow". That was about two weeks ago though and some might of noticed there hasn't been any updates since that time.

Well actually, that's not right. I have been posting updates very frequently about the game project. I just haven't been posting them here on the blog. I only post updates on the blog when they are big updates, or a trailer, release date info, etc. Just major updates. Also, I have been updating some sections in the blog such as the 3d art work section where you will find a couple new characters that will appear in game, and I put up an early prototype for controls in the prototype section a while back.

Anyway, I have been posting daily/frequent updates about the game right here on the unity forums in my WIP thread Unity Forums WIP Thread

So to stay up to date, check out my WIP thread at the unity forums. Of course also check out the blog but remember, I will only post major updates about the project here on my blog.

The project is coming along smoothly and I plan on having a short trailer sometime in the future when more progress is done.

Stay tuna! (ha, tuna)

Stay tuned for more info and updates and thanks for reading.

Missing Cat? A New Almond Hill Game!

Hi everyone.

It is finally time to show you what I have been working on. In my last blog post I mentioned I was working on my next game project. I also mentioned that it would be a horror game. Other than that I did not say much.

Today I am very excited to share a lot of info on my next game project. Since it is E3 week, I guess right now is the best time to finally let this info out. It might be the time for all the big companies to show off their newest games but who says the indies can't also show their new games?

Anyway, getting to the main point.

Everyone, get ready for: "Almond-Hill : Silent Meow"

First of all, yes that is the title of my new horror game and you will understand why later on. Secondly, yes. It is also a new Almond-Hill game. My short "Silent Hill : Shattered Memories" inspired horror game that I originally released back in October for Halloween is back!

Now, for those of you who have heard about or played my original "Almond-Hill" game might be asking "Why are you making another Almond-Hill game?"

There is a lot of reasons why actually. First of all, out of all the other game projects I created, I had the most fun creating "Almond-Hill". I loved experimenting around and putting a horror game together. Also, I might of been goofing off back then, but I really like the simple plot I came up with for the horror title and I want to carry that plot on again in a much more polished game. And last, its because of you (the people who played the first Almond-Hill game). It might not have a huge fan base, but it turns out that the original Almond-Hill game is the most popular game I have released yet. I have noticed that a few people have made youtube videos playing through my game, and I can see the stats here on blogger and most of the blog hits I get is because people come for Almond-Hill or search it. Everyday in my stats the most viewed thing is my Almond-Hill game. Some people liked the game, some people thought it was the worse thing they ever played (can't really blame them since I rushed the project for a Halloween release). Despite that, I believe that this game does have a fan base out there and that is what truly inspired me to create another one.

Anyway, now getting to the good stuff!

I have been using Unity for 2 years now and have a lot of experience with the engine. I released many titles up until now but none of them have been quality, polished or serious attempts at creating a great game. All of that ends. Starting with this new project "Almond-Hill : Silent Meow" and all my future projects I will be working hard and taking serious attempts to create great quality and polished games.

So about the new Almond-Hill?

This new Almond-Hill game is a complete reboot to my original game. Its not an Almond-Hill 2. The new Almond-Hill game will have a completely new town to explore, four new unique original characters, a slightly different story line (which I will get to), much more polished controls and graphics and animations. Everything about the new Almond-Hill game will be fresh and a hundred times better than the original. Also, (sorry to take a shot at Slenderman but) this is not a crappy slenderman game. I want to bring Slenderman up because whenever I see indie developers working on a new horror game, they always only want to make a Slenderman game. It has been done so many times, its just not original or fun. I am working on this project to also encourage developers to try and come up with something original and not Slenderman. If you are an indie developer and want to make horror games be as creative as you want and try something new. Don't get me wrong, if you want to make a Slenderman game that is perfectly fine, esp if its just an experimental project but I believe the indie scene is tired of Slenderman and wants to see something new.

Ok sorry for getting a bit off topic but I feel I had to bring that out for those of you reading.

"Almond-Hill : Silent Meow" Plot and Characters:

You play as Leon Coffeebean (character shown below)

Leon one day gets a phone call from his grandmother Grams Coffeebean (Character shown below)

Grams Coffeebean lives in a small town called "Almond-Hill". She calls her grandson Leon to come over to Almond-Hill so he can help her with a "special search". When Leon arrives at Almond-Hill, he learns that Grams's cat has gone missing. Grams then has Leon explore the town of Almond-Hill in search of her lost cat. Leon eventually finds out that the town of Almond-Hill is haunted and there is someone or something living in the Almond-Hills forest. Because Grams is an old woman, she never leaves her house and that is why she is unaware of the happenings of the town she is living in.

The name of Grams cat is Almond (character shown below)

Almond is the cat you are looking for. This cat is a very special cat as it can walk on two legs and is a loyal feline companion. It is unknown how, when or why Almond has gone missing.


Vehicles in Almond Hill Silent Meow:
The last thing I want to talk about in this project for today is vehicles. Almond-Hill is not going to be GTA or Red Dead Redemption huge obviously as I am a one man team and would never consider taking on a massive project like that, but it will be big enough to drive cars. So yeah you will be able to drive this time around.

For example, you will be able to drive at the very beginning of the game as Leon needs to travel to the town of Almond-Hill.

The first vehicle you will see in game is this "Snowconesolid Transport" Taxi.

And later on in the game you will be able to own your own car. Here is another one of the car models you can get in this new Almond hill game.

Although there wont be many, I am planning on having other vehicles in game as well as a car dealership where you can purchase different cars.

Driving will be a very important aspect of this new Almond-Hill game and I think it will be a really cool feature to make the game a much more unique experience.

Final thoughts: 
My goal for this project is to make a very unique horror game. Something that is different than your average horror game. I plan on creating a stylized horror game with a dark atmosphere and some comedy as well as a unique storyline.

That is all I have for now. I am excited about this project and cant wait to show more progress. Stay tuned to the blog as I post updates on how things are going. I will have more info soon!

Update: 6/12/ 2013
 I forgot to mention one very important thing. The platform this game will be on. I plan on releasing this for PC and Mac. After those releases I might consider going back and porting over to Android  for a mobile version. But for now the game will be for PC and Mac.

My next game project and the expanded and improved blog

Hello everyone!

Finally I am back. (I never left) but I mean I am back to developing my games. After releasing my first Android game "Revolver Finger" back in February I took a while off from developing anymore games to spend more time improving my skills and learning so I can produce much better quality games. Its been almost three months and I have greatly improved in many areas (mainly my 3d art skills but a lot of other areas as well such as game design). I have learned a whole lot during the time I was gone improving my skills such as new techniques, the proper ways to do certain things, etc. While I am still no professional, I learned how to do things in a professional way. So from now on I have set standards for myself and I promise to release the best quality games that I can. I guarantee that all my next game releases will be a hundred times better than any of my previous game releases from now on. I have matured a lot as a developer since I first started two years ago and will take all my next game projects much more seriously because I want to have great releases.

So I am now ready to make more games once again. Since we are still on the topic of developing games, I want to announce my next game project today. My next game project will be a horror game. This is something I have been planning for a while and now I am finally working on it. I have really high expectations and goals for this new horror game of mine and believe it will be my best release yet. There is really not much to say or show about it at this moment because it is still early. Once I get a good amount of work done on this project I will start to reveal it in future blog post so stay tuned.

By the way, have you noticed anything different with my blog? I recently had my blog set to private for the past two days while I worked on renovating/expanding it. Its more organized now and I added in a lot of new sections such as a section for my 3d art work, game trailers, etc. Just look for your self above in the tabs.

One of the coolest new things I recently added to my blog is the new "Welcome" page. This is a welcome page like no other. I actually created a very small platforming game for this page just for my blog. You can play this game directly in the blog to, so no need to go to a different website or download anything. It is a very simple platforming game that is only about 2 - 5 minuets long and it welcomes visitors and introduces me, the developer to them and it gives visitors a better idea of what this blog is all about. If you want to check it out just click on the new "Welcome!" tab above.

That is all I have to say for now. It feels good to be back working a new game and I hope to share more updates on it soon.

Expanding the blog, small welcome game and Unity Playmaker

Hello everyone.

Once again sorry for the lack of blog posts but I have some good news and hopefully starting soon I will  be more active here on the blog once again.

As many of you already know by now, the reason I have been barley posting on the blog is because ever since I released "Revolver Finger" for android I took a huge break from working on anymore of my game projects and started to focus on improving my skills. Mostly my 3d art skills because I want to deliver much better quality games from now on. I believe I have greatly improved in many areas since my last game release and think its almost time to get back to work. I have been planning on starting my next game project soon. I don't know when yet, but plan on getting back to developing games sometime in May. Anyway, wont say anything about my next game right now, that's kind of for a different post.

First, before I get back into developing more games, I think this blog needs a little change. So I have been planning on redesigning it a little bit and expanding it. I will be adding some new sections to it soon.One of the new sections that I am going to be adding to this blog is an all new "Welcome" page. This brings me to the next thing I was going to say.

I am going to create a welcome page in a very different way than most welcome pages. I am putting together a very small game project that will be on this welcome page. This will not be a game that is meant to be played for the purposes of playing a game or a game with replay-ability, it is going to be an extremely small game (a single short level, maybe about 1 - 2 mins long) that welcomes users to my blog and introduces me the developer. So its more of a game for promoting my blog. It is an interactive way for welcoming site visitors. So this small game will be on the welcome page and once the user reaches the end of that very short level it will open up my actual blog. Off course users will have the option to skip the whole welcome thing entirely and just go straight to my blog. I understand it would be annoying to have to play that welcome game over each time. But yeah, you may have seen similar ideas like this on sites where they have maybe a short video play or some interactive thing before it takes you to their website.

It will be just a very small, basic super mario inspired platform level. But don't expect too much from it because once again, this is not really a game project, it is just a short single level game for introducing the blog on the welcome page. Its just a small little feature I am adding that is part of the blogs "expansion". So at the moment that is what I am working on. It does not really count as a game project but more of a nice small practice project and also promotional project. Thats how I see it.

Here is some WIP screen shots: This is just a quick prototype version I put together, I created some real simple assets that are very super mario 3d land inspired as you can tell. :)
But yeah, these are not screens from the final build.

Also, here is my most recent original character I created. This will be the character you play as in the very small welcome project.

So what about actually making the next true "Samer Khatib" aka Snowconesolid game?
Ok, so after I change up the blog a bit, redesign/ tweek it a little to look better and create that welcome project I will probably then be ready to once again start working on my next true big game project. So as I said a little earlier, I plan on going back to developing games sometime in May, most likely near the end or half way through May. Well see. Maybe I might start earlier. Depends on how things go for me.

One final piece of news I want to put out there is from now on for all my future game projects I will most likely be using the popular Unity add-on/tool "PlayMaker" for developing all of my games. I just recently bought it from Unity's asset store and think its great. I am still new to it and learning how to use it but have already played around with it and so far I am impressed. For those of you who use unity you may have heard of or also use playmaker for your development. It is actually one of the most popular add-ons for unity and a lot of unity developers use it. For those of you who have never heard of it let me tell you about it. Pretty much it is a visual scripting tool. It allows you to build a game using these nodes. So pretty much you don't need you write a single line of code. I think this is a very good alternative way for developing games. If you have ever used blender's game engine, it is similar to playmaker. Blender's game engine uses logic blocks.

So why use playmaker for development?
There is a whole bunch of advantages of developing a game with playmaker instead of coding up the entire project.

First of all you save a lot more time on developing the actual game. I like coding and all but at times it is extremely time consuming and can be tedious to type lines and lines of code. I know first hand because I have three years of programming experience and coded all of my previous projects.  Playmaker allows you to rapidly develop your games saving a lot more time. This is actually the most important benefit of using playmaker over coding and is a major reasons as to why I decided to make it part of my workflow for developing games. Now, I can spend all that extra time focusing more on the art side of the game.
As a solo indie game developer, time is the most important thing because you do not have a team. You don't have some one to work on the art or the animations, the programming, etc. You need to create everything yourself and that takes up an extremely great amount of time. With Playmaker however, you can now save a ton of time you would of spent on typing lines of code and use it for something else.

Don't get the wrong idea now, I am making it sound like playmaker just magically makes the game for you. Its still programming in some way, but just visual node based programming. But yes, it does make things a lot easier and quicker.

You would think that people who buy playmaker are people who do not know how to code at all. This is not true. Actually a lot of programmers like using playmaker. If you have playmaker and know how to actually code than playmaker is a hundred times more of a powerful tool because you can code in your own custom actions for use with playmaker. I definitely plan on coding in my own custom playmaker actions for my future projects. So say for example I needed to create some kind of vehicle movement for a simulator of some sorts but playmaker's library does not have such an action. Since I know how to code, I can just write my own custom action and then add it to playmakers library so I can use it as a node whenever I want. I believe that visual programming is the future of coding. Have to keep up with the times. Although I know a lot of programmers will disagree with me.

If you are a solo dev or with a team and use unity I highly recommend using playmaker for your development. Whether you don't know how to code or are an programming pro, playmaker is an excellent tool for any skill level and is extremely effective for rapid development.

Anyway, thats all I have for now. Sorry for the huge blog post but I had a lot of things to share this time since I am not posting here as often. I look forward to getting back to developing games again real soon and hope to have some great releases this year.