New Minigame for Very Bunny Haha called Plong

This is what I was working on late last night and till about 1:30am this morning. Hey when development flows ya gotta stay the course and create, right!

Ok, so the name might likely change. Though I need something with an Arkanoid, Pong or Breaout kinda feel. For now this name is fine I reckon.

The inspiration for writing this minigame came from playing a lot of Ping Pong with my family this last week. We are looking after a table and it is parked in the garage.... well after cleaning and tidying up a bunch there was enough room to open up the table and we have been playing every day ever since. A lot of fun for sure and it also got me wanting to finish up a minigame design I had for a Pong themed game.

Here it is finished, balanced and done. Today I put in the SFX and also the pink effect you see in the middle of the screen (Ball spawning effect).

Next up is the Use button in the Inventory to move along the development of the game for Tablets. Meanwhile I am working hard on the design for the 'Reputation', which tonight my daughter gave me several good opinions on. I might be ready to move that forwards as well soon.

Good Night, and Happy New Year everyone.

Da Voodoochief

Tablet version of VBHH coming along.. and then

The tablet version (touch control) version of Very Bunny Haha has been coming along very nicely of late. I have fixed several bugs and made it so some things are much easier now, such as the last fix to make it so the 'USE' functionality is easier.

So I download to my Kindle last night and start playing the game properly, working my way through the introduction and then getting to the part where I pick up my first quest from the Mayor. This is all going swimmingly. So I head out of his Mansion and into the village so I can introduce myself to a few of the important denizens. this is all part of the introductory Quest line. I make sure the quest is in my Log and also that I have the Quest item, which is a Note for Aaron.

I head off to Aaron and open up my inventory to use his Note on him when I realize...

DOH! I have not written any code to allow me to select the Note in the inventory and Use it with a touch interface. Hahaha, it works with a keyboard or joystick, but not touch (well not yet).

Above you can see the image of the inventory screen:
(A) - This is an Axe, but more importantly you can see that it is the highlighted item. The horizontal highlight along with the individual highlight makes it shine. When an Item is selected this screen also shows other relevant info, such as it's name.
(b) - These arrows on both the left and right sides of the Item lines light up if there are more items to scroll to. Again, this is not currently touch sensitive.
(c) - These are the instructions I display, and as you can tell they are for keyboard only. I am not sure quite what to do here... a small re-design might be in this sections future...

What I need is to be able to highlight Items using touch, and then also allow a touch to Use them.

Looks like I have some more work to do, but then I should be able to play the actual game a lot more.

Laters
Da Voodoochief

Fixed stuff, broke stuff

BAH!

Been one of those days. I have managed to fix a few bugs, add a few smaller features etc

I crushed a bug that has been haunting me for a little while. A bug that mostly showed up on the tablets. This of course made it harder to find and fix. I ended up getting this same bug (using the scene to scene door would get stuck half way through transit) in my PC game. Once I got it to happen I tried it several more times till I could dupe it every time. This allowed me to find a fix. Which was pretty easy to be honest.

The issue I now have is that my double tap that I recently added to the game to make it so I can use stuff, doorways, quest giver etc on the Tablets. Well Double Tap works great if the screen is not scrolling all over the place. Now I have the continuous touch move in both the 2D game and the 3D game (recent awesome addition), the screen keeps moving every time you tap the screen. This means I now have a real hard time achieving a double tap. GAH!

So I am going to try and fix this is a very small dead zone for touch to move (click to move is the same thing) around the players Rabbit. I cannot make this dead zone too big though otherwise I will lose some minor movement control.

Well better get it solved while I watch the Vikings and Giants battle it out.

G'night
Da Voodoochief

Fixing bugs and Stuff

I am not creating much at the moment for Very Bunny Haha. Like adding content etc.

What I am achieving though is a to stabilize the game in various ways. Solving bugs and finding even more to solve. Pretty cool even if the game is not growing at the moment.

I have added a bit more data saving as well which is always handy, cos ya never quite sure that you have ALL the data saved.

Fixed the player going awol through collision, and stopped the player vibrating against collision edges.

Fixed the player continuously walking off through collision and off scene when a menu such as the Inventory was pulled up.

Fixed some bugs with touch input not quite functioning properly on all buttons. It was a simple improper linking to the wrong functions.

Fixed some detection bugs that were easy to fix in the editor.

Now got to set up more in the South Village to make it more complete. Also going to do some more Quest additions etc. Time to get more stuff into the game after all. Though if I find more bugs, I reckon I shall crush them first.

G'night
Da Voodoochief

Vibrating Collision, and falling through collision in Unity

Big title huh! And nope, I have no pictures this time...

Let me describe my problem, or two problems that are very much related. Then I'll tell ya how I solved them.

Player Collision:
In the 3D scenes I move the Rabbit (player) around by altering the Transforms position in the X and Y. I place Physics 2D edge colliders all over the scene to stop the player going through houses and off the edges of the scenes playable area. The way the collisions work is that the edges push back the box that the Rabbit has at the bottom of it's image. Thus preventing the Rabbit from crossing these edges.

1. When moving the player against one of these solid areas you can witness a vibrating of the Rabbit. This is due to you pushing (moving) into the collision wall and the wall pushing back.

2. When pushing along one of these collision edges you can some times fall through them. Occasionally there is a frame rate hiccup and you end up in the middle of the Fountain or House etc... pretty bad as ya canna get out.

My Solution:
I referred to this page in the Unity Docs
http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/ExecutionOrder.html

That shows not just the execution order in Unity, but also all of the different stages you can plug into. This is important as I have done all my movement code inside the Update() function. I move the Rabbit multiplied by the Tine.deltaTime() and this means that depending on how much time has passed to how much the actual Rabbit moves this frame. This has the effect that you move into the collision by semi-random amounts. If the deltatime is a bit much then you can jump into the edge collision and possibly go far enough in that you get forced to the other side.

Unity has some extra Physics functionality, namely the FixedUpdate() function. So I placed my actual movement code into this function and because of the nature of how it works, I now get pushed back in a more controlled way. This removes the bouncing effect and also with the smaller movement increments it means you cannot jump past the collision. I do the actual button pressed test in the usual Update function, and then I only move in the FixedUpdate function, and all I did was to remove the multiply by delatTime.

Hope this you some ideas on solving this issue if you have it.

Laters
Da Voodoochief

Jumping in 2D with Touch Control

Now I have the game working on the Kindle in a much more controllable fashion for the 3D scenes. I started to play the game a bit more to see what's next on the 'need to fix' list.

First up was the fact that the quest buttons were not only too small, but also the click action was not actually set up (it used to be before I moved the GameObject buttons). This was easy enough as I re-hooked them up in a few minutes. Only when testing it I realized just how hard the buttons were to touch on my Kindle. So I enlarged the buttons by doubling the vertical size and now they are much more touchable. YAY!

Second was the more interesting job in several ways. I discovered when trying to play the 2D screens that the control from the 3D scenes just wasn't really very useful. I am using a Click 2 Move in the 3D scenes, so wherever you clicked the game remembers that and moves your Rabbit to that location.
 To fix this I simply made it a live touching control. So it only moves the Rabbit when the screen is being touched. This was a great move and allowed me to play the Gem Cave game scene with some good control.

Next up was the fact that my 2D scenes need you to be able to jump, and jump with some control.

At first I considered doing a double click to make a jump. Only this wasn't working very well and so I went with my second idea. This is denoted in the picture above. I made it so a relative position will control if the player jumps or not. In this case I have drawn arrows to show what happens in the quadrants that the mouse can be in. So once the vertical distance is above the horizontal distance, then you jump, but also only if you are far enough away from the Rabbit to make it work. It was important to have this dead zone for the jumping, as it was a massive jump fest when trying to control the player.

Now onto the next problem, whatever that is :)

G'night
Da Voodoochief

Touchcount on Unity

I am confused. This seems to be a feature, yet I do not see any caveats listed as to what it does and doesn't do. For example what does it not work on, what are its known bugs etc.

I mentioned in previous posts that I got the game to run on my Kindle Fire. Well I think that the best way to present the game to people would be on a nice tablet. I am even looking around to a good deal on a 10 inch and larger Android tablet, so far I am still looking. This means that I have some immediate work to do... like getting the interface fully functional on the tablets.

As I have already done version 2 of the click to move control, I figured it was time to get the 'USE' functionality working. Using stuff in the game is the second most important function after movement and allows you to interact with Doors and also NPCs (to obtain quests etc). So I want to use a Double Tap method. Sounded easy and I was going to write my own when I realized that literally thousands of games must use this, so the functionality should be standard in Unity 3d.

Well they do have 'Input.touchCount', which doesn't appear to work for me on the PC using the mouse. Why a Mouse click would be different to a touch has me a bit baffled. However I implemented the touchCount code, even though I found many questions about this feature NOT working on Android. Then when I ran the game it simply worked.

if (Input.touchCount == 2) {
  HandleUseTouchingItem();
}

It worked!. Why is there all this info on the Web about this feature not working I wonder?

If you need this functionality I would recommend you try this as it is fast and easy to try before you worry about rolling your own.

Happy Holidays,
Da Voodoochief

Lazy Ranch Hand Character

In this image above you can see one of the newest Characters to join us in Very Bunny Haha land.
He is a Ranch Hand and he has an Ecky Thump hat. An old joke that comes from my youth when I used to watch a comedy program called 'The Goodies'. They did a few skits where they wore these ridiculously over sized flat caps and ran around with large Black puddings to smack people with. Perhaps this whole bit is a bit English hehe!

Back to the image above.... He is wearing a colored hat that is actually Grey, and this allows me to recolor the hat for different Ranch Hands. The last thing about him above is that he is in his basic position. This means the positions we stitch the Rabbits into before animating them. This also tends to be my actual idle for them as well.

As it happens this particular Ranch Hand is being a bit lazy. There is a quest for you to go and find him, and when you do you can see he is taking a quick nap. Hard work Ranching is ya know. So I animated him to make it look like he is snoring. So far this has been my favorite animation.

We are thinking of adding some eye animation (which will make him look more like he is asleep). Then I am thinking of adding a nice 'zzzz z Z Z ZZ' effect floating up from him. I think this dude is an excellent character and When you meet his friends who discuss the silliest stuff, I think you will enjoy them as well.

G'night,
Da Voodoochief

Credits Menu now in

I am sure this seems ridiculously early in the development of a game to put in the credits screen. However I have a few reasons to do this:-

1. Everyone that works on a game should get credit, and it is too easy to forget someone when ya finally get around to doing credits at the end of the games dev cycle. This way I add them as people work on the game.
2. The menu needed doing as it moves other options around on the Main Menu.
3. I am brain dead... work has dissolved my brain this last week and so I do not have any great technical power left, so working on something obvious and small is good as I am still making progress with the game. Moving it nearer to a complete product.

As you can see there are only currently two main creators attached to this product, yet a week or two ago I put in some minigame music from Kevin Macleod. So BAM! I get to add an extra credit.

Ok, tired again now, going to bed.

G'night
Da Voodoochief

Windows Phone Pub Center

I have recently been getting emails from Microsoft telling me that Pub Center is going away and I should link it to my Dev Center account. Heck I didn't know I had a Dev Center account?!!

Anyway it appears that Microsoft already knew my connections and linked them for me anyway, which was really nice. Well I have not visited the Pub Center site in probably 18 months or more as I am not receiving any money from Ads any more. Well not quite true, I have made 7 cents this year to date.... yeah, you read that right.

The other things that this tells me is with a nice Graph of my downloads for the last 12 months, and I thought I would share this with you all.

As you can see these games, which I published a number of years ago have managed a poultry couple of hundred downloads in the last year. Now these games are all free to download... so it isn't like I have made any money.. Sad really.

Now back to my regular day job (making successful games), and also Very Bunny Haha, which will change these freelance fortunes.

G'night
Da Voodoochief

Minigame Base class

I have already written two minigames for Very Bunny Haha as I have documented in previous Blog posts. Well I knew when writing the first one I would be writing Many many  more. This meant I approached the coding task in a very certain way, always being mindful of where I placed particular parts of the actual minigame code and variables, and trying to keep them separated from what I would call common code.

Common code:
This is code that controls the stuff that all the minigames have in common (duh!). Such as the countdown timer, the Game Over control, the timer and of course the Instructions overlay.

So when I wrote the second Minigame I took the first ones code and changed the actual games code, but leaving he common code the same. Well actually there were a few modifications I had to make but that was expected. Once I had two minigames working I knew the common code was ready to be separated from the games code.

It took me a surprisingly small amount of time to separate the base class from the minigames code. In fact about 40 minutes saw me first do the 'WaterBall Minigame', and about 5 minutes for 'Zoomy the Porcupine' game.

Now writing the next Minigame will go faster smoother and I can easily add more common code and functionality to the system.

I highly recommend this approach,

G'night
Da Voodoochief

To many in Unity Tags List

This Image shows one of my new scenes, Field Farm, with the new baby cow etc. This is the view form the Scene in the Editor, so the objects in the scene are not currently scaled for the pseudo 3D look. That is all done at runtime in some code.

What this picture also shows on the right is the Unity Tags list. This can be very useful for naming objects and allowing you to test that name in the game for various effects. Now of course they won't be fast as it will be string comparisons.... but I digress.

Since I started using Unity I have tended to use the Tags for all sorts of naming tasks. One of those tasks was to name my 'Doorways' from one Scene to another. Names such as 'Door2NexusFrom Village' is one example. But as the game has gotten bigger and bigger and I have added more and more scenes (currently at 21), I have found that I have created approximately 40 Tags. I will be honest and say that this was bad. In fact I do not recommend this course at all. Experience now tells me that Tags should be used for multiple Objects that could be named differently, but use similar properties or some such.

Having 40 tags showed up a weakness in the Editor as well. Once you go over a certain number of them you have to scroll (clicking a small downward arrow) to get to the next one and so on. There is no hold and see them flash by, nope, you have to click al the way to the one you want. I have now removed the Doorway names from the Tags as the Image above shows. Instead I have simply named my Doors with the old tagged name. This works great and actually removed a step for me to get the doors to work in the game.

So when using tags, be aware what you want them for because if you end up with a large number of them, it is Very likely there is a simpler more easily handled way to do it.

G'night
Da Voodoochief

Skyline, or not?

Here is an image of the Skyline I have been working on. A few days ago when discussing the game with Leilani and figuring out what we need to complete the Chapter #1 section., we came up with several new areas we needed to be able to place characters into.

One of those areas was the extension to our village. the main village we have is full, full of buildings and also full of characters already. However we need a few more Village type professions, such as a Baker. As we cannot fit them into the existing Village area, we decided to come up with another area of the Village for you to explore. We also decided that this extra area should be above or below our existing Village. So now we have the VillageSouth scene. It is of course a work in progress at this point.

Another idea that was discussed for this area was to have a Skyline or Silhouette of the North village area showing up in our VillageSouth. This image above is where we are at currently with it. Personally I do not think it is working... perhaps I need more art expertise. Of course I will do some research this weekend. I think looking at photo's of this same thing should help me make something better than what I have at the moment.

Ok, time for bed... been a tough afternoon after having a filling and my face staying numb for 5 plus hours.

g'night
Da Voodoochief

New Options Menu

I am still busy working through various aspects of the saving of the game. While I am doing that I am also adding SFX and music into the minigames. This activity brought up the fact I did not have an Options menu and I need one, at least to control the Music and SFX volumes. For me you see I like quiet music for the most part and louder SFX.. I know some prefer it elsewise.

So I knocked out a quick overlay Options Menu. It amazes me how fast I can make this thing in Unity3D now, compared with 6 months ago. Heck, 6 months ago I was trying to convert Aceball from the Xbox360 Indiegames to Unity and Failed at the main menu. Well fail is a strong word, but it took me hours to get that menu created, and I found it so discouraging that I gave up on that conversion as I realized I did not know enough about working within Unity.

Nowadays I can create and lay out this thing so fast. Then I can hook that into code in a matters of minutes as well. Interestingly this is the first time I have used the Toggle and Slider UI elements. This makes me feel confident and I am so pleased I can save such a large amount of time to do other things in the game.

Tonight I got to have a good meeting at Panera with my daughter to discuss the game and what we need for a release. We have the first part called Chapter #1 (as opposed to Episode #1). We even know when the Chapter will complete.. but I won't reveal that at this time... more to come eh.. spoilers!

Now I have the game saving recording the plants growing it makes my saves a lot more valuable. Now I can actually grow stuff in the game. YAY!

G'night
Da Voodoochief

New Fencing for the Farm

This is an Image of me first starting to convert the Farm from a Hedgerow style to the New and Impressively tidy Fenced in Farmyard.

 

This is the finished product after all the Hedges have been replaced by the wooden Fencing. I hope you will agree that this is not only tidier, but also a lot more interesting.

You see I put the hedges in the Farm scene to form a boundary around the area that you call the Level 1 farm. It was not a perfect solution to the problem, but I had no other graphics on hand to perform this task. Then today Leilani drew a fence for something (I am not sure what), and we both realized how good this would look for the farm, and also the new Field of Horses scene.

I am very pleased the how the whole thing has turned out. What do you think, Improvement or what?

G'night
Da Voodoochief

Field of Horses

I have been working on creating some new areas in the game. This will have a double (at least) benefit as I can make a nice Scene, and also place a special Character or two which will allow me to place more Quests. This will allow me to spread more quests around and make players explore and move more.

This is the start of my new Scene. It is obvious why I called it what I have. I have placed a number of Horses, but I will place quite a lot more, and then I will have a special script to allow me to turn off or flip Horses to face left or right. I might seed this with the Time of day so the Horses move in a sort of predictable way.... Though I am uncertain how this will really look, it could be too haphazard to actually use this method.

I also have to get some more backgrounds or something animating in this scene, but a lot of that will be taken care of once I get the Horses actually animating... oh yeah, they are all static at the moment.

I still need to place the Special Characters and to choose which ones of the numerous ones that Leilani has drawn will go here. In fact it will be a discussion between me and Leilani.

G'night
Da Voodoochief

Real Time Deltas

I am not certain what the best description is with what I want, but I quite liked this title.

Meaning:
Use a Time based on real time (can be UTC or Local). Not based on time since the game started.

Why:
Well I need to have my plants grow over hours, or possibly days. I also need quests to respawn daily, weekly, or perhaps even monthly.

Functionality:
What happens is that when you have completed the Daily quest for the first time. I record the time and Date this was completed on. Then I can test this in the NPC's update function against the Real Time NOW. If the right number of hours has passed, then I can once again respawn the Quest on this NPC. The same goes for objects collected in the game respawning.

I had no real idea quite how to do this at first, but research was easy to come by, even if my search terms were not great... apparently.

The Answer:
DateTime dt = new DateTime(2015, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, DateTimeKind.Local);
DateTime dtNow = DateTime.Now;
TimeSpan result = dtNow.Subtract(dt);
int seconds = Convert.ToInt32(result.TotalSeconds);

As you can see from the answer, it is Actual C# code that I used in Unity within my Very Bunny Haha game. I am very pleased to announce that this code is working fine. I made it into a function and I record the seconds in my Arrays for respawning stuff.

It is very easy to test the Current number of seconds (time now) against the completed and recorded seconds + how many seconds the respawn is supposed to take. Wham, it works

I hope you also get to write something like this in your game.
g'night
Da Voodoochief

Bought Music, got SFX and more

I bought the Incompetech music a few days ago. For a remarkable 48 dollars I could get everything on the site. Which is ace, even if I only need a few of the pieces of music at this time. I did not get one of the newest pieces that I desire, but I shall go buy that one individually soon.

Now I have the tough job of trawling through something like 1136 pieces of music and flares etc. Yikes! I estimate that would be more than a week of full time listening. Luckily most do not really apply to this sweet and charming bunny game, however ya have to keep ya ears open and your mind as well. At time pieces of music will suddenly jump out at you and tell ya where they should be played.

I also grabbed (not from Incompetech) a few SFX tonight for the 'Zoomy the Porcupine'' minigame. I grabbed the rings sounds from Sonic the Hedgehog, the one where he picks up a ring along with the one where he loses them all. The other SFX I grabbed was of Mario jumping from Mario Bros III. I have used them together in the minigame and now I wonder.... Have I crossed the streams?

Personally I think they sound great together, and if I had a bit more time tonight I would some music to the game.. but that will have to wait. It has been a very long and hard working day for me, merging code and then debugging it.

Ok, done, expect a new video of the Zoomy the Porcupine minigame soon. cos of course the little legs o the porcupines now animate (hard to see though).

g'night
Da Voodoochief

VBHH - Click 2 Move (Tablet ready)

The above Video I created tonight shows off the Click 2 Move left mouse button control I have just added to the game. It doubles as movement control for Tablets as well, and that is the reason I even wrote it.

I know I should code something else, but seeing the game on a tablet is simply so exciting to me. The first iteration of the Click 2 Move was a bit raw. It would move 100% of speed in the X or Y depending on where Jack was headed. So he tended to move diagonally and then in a cardinal direction to get to his destination. Only this did not feel good and Jack keep getting stuck all over the place. So changing this to variable X and Y speeds solved the issue and now Jack heads straight for the place you want him to go. So much smoother and more natural. I find I don't tend to click places he cannot reach like this too often.

Well, as for the video. I tried hard to add titles and transitions and audio, but alas Pinnacle the editing software just kept breaking. So I got frustrated and just uploaded the raw footage. GRRRRrrr!

G'night
Da Voodoochief

Point and Click Move

So when I put the game onto my Kindle I found it as usual quite liberating and so incredibly exciting.

Now I was not able to play the game like that, as I did not have touch screen kind of input for the game. Well although I have been busy doing several other things in the game, I couldn't help but knock out a simple mouse click move (took me about 8 lines of extra code). This took me about 20 minutes to get working, and tonight I followed it up with about 15 minutes more to do a modification to allow the point click move to go in a straight line to the destination, as the first implementation moved the joystick as far as the game was concerned.

This new implementation is nice and caused me to once again put the game onto my kindle. The game is so cool on there, all vibrant and filling my mind with possibilities. Still I also realized when looking at it with my daughter that I do not have a 'Use' method... and in the 2D scenes I need a jump, I wonder what I shall do. With a two button mouse it is easy enough, but for the tablet I will have to come up with something. I may have to look at some other games, not that I know of anything exactly like this... hmmm. Any suggestions hehe?

Well no picture in this post as it wouldn't show the click input I am talking about. Perhaps video later this week :)

G'night
Da Voodoochief

Zoomy gets a Porcupine

I thought I would start writing Blog posts with a picture at the start instead of writing some stuff and then inserting a picture or two. Of course if I have more than 1 picture to post I will still start with a picture and then work my way down. I think will improve the Blog posts a bit. I am sure readers have noticed how I tend to post more pictures now to go with each post as well as I think pictures can say so much.

In the above image you can see that Leilani drew a Porcupine for the minigame, though I am still in need of swapping the Tomato out with something more reasonable. We did discuss what and Leilani wants to go with an egg. As this game has a cross connection to Sonic and Egg could be the best way to go.... Though I am still not sure, perhaps a ring would be better ?

Along with this I bought a Save and Load asset from the Unity store (more on that when I get to work with it soon).

I also tidied up several issues within the game, like the end of Zoomy the Porcupine, which ended as soon as you were hit, no final particle effect etc, but now it ends much more nicely.

It has been a busy weekend off camping with the Boy Scouts, and so it is time for bed.

G'night,
Da Voodoochief

SpriteRenderer on UI

I titled this blog post because it is one of the things that has been wrong and bugging me for several weeks now, probably more like 2 months.

I had a nice GUI being drawn from within the Canvas in Unity and one day I decided to add the Joystick functionality to the game. Seems good for a PC game eh. Well this went smoothly until I added all the appropriate A, B X and Y buttons graphics to the actual button images in the UI. The thing is that only some of them Render in the HUD. Why has baffled me now for all this time, until...

Yes, you guessed it, I have solved the issue and as I expected it is something simply, something obvious really, and I missed it several times trying to solve this bug.

I was using a Sprite renderer in the Canvas, Instead of using a UI->Image. See, told ya it was simple. Changing the images that are not showing up to this kind of renderer has completely fixed the issue, though I have a few more buttons to fix.

As you can see in the above image, the Yes button has the new UI Image for it's button help graphic, and the No button is still using the Sprite renderer instead.

Now I have been busy thinking about and occasionally spending a few minutes writing code to bring in the Main Menu of the game. This also doubles as the Main Menu inside the game when you press escape. It contains the ability to load and save a game, along with several other features, namely Quitting the game. I have about finished this now and this means that very soon now I will move onto the Saving and Loading code... a very exciting development for a Quest and growing based game.

All right, I need to sleep now, been a rough few days health wise.

Laters
Rob

Very Bunny Haha on Android

Here is a picture of my good old Amazon Kindle, with Very Bunny Haha on it.

Today in Unity Club our task was to create the simplest of projects and get it to download to an Android device. For this we had my Laptop and Khalins phone.

With some fumbling and bumbling we managed to get the Phone set up to allow the ADB bridge to connect to it. Meanwhile I was working with a few of the guys creating the simple App and then trying to get it to create an apk file. It went quite smoothly and within 30 minutes we were trying to upload the App to the phone.

We all cheered when the simple check mark of the App showed up on his phone. I am sure we are all thinking of the power this gives us to write stuff, any kind of stuff for our phones.

This of course is not my first time running my games or code on devices such as phones and tablets. But I have to say I am extremely excited to see my first Unity project on there... and it made me Need to try and upload the same App to my good old Kindle Fire (1st Gen).

Ok, so it took me a bit of time to get it all correct tonight, uninstalling the original driver I had and installing the new one. Eventually just as I thought all hope was lost and was pondering the expense of buying a newer Android device.. it goes and freaking works! Woohoo!

The picture up top of this post though is what I did immediately After the check mark App installed. I tried Very Bunny Haha, and it worked first time (Thanks Unity). And I have to say that the game looks simply stunning... Really impressed at how good it can look. Now of course I am thinking I need to get that point and click interface done sooner rather than later.. haha.. always more to do.

Well I feel I have earned a good nights sleep,
Laters
Da Voodoochief

Rocky Video, Navigating

I wrote a fair while ago about buying a very useful bit of code from the Unity store. Here it is in operation once more, but not for the Generic rabbits like the first time.

This time it is for Rocky. One of the Mysterious creatures you will meet in Very bunny Haha.

This video also meets much more of my expectations for videos and I will continue to improve as I do more. This is a very exciting turn of events, and next time when I use a microphone set up, it should make me a lot happier.

Hope ya like this new video,
Da Voodoochief

New Video method

I have been rather frustrated with the videos I have been trying to make. I cannot seem to get them quite right even though I have been able to improve what I was making. There were several issues... for example.

1. The video is none standard rez and aspect ratios. This is because some videos I want to create from the Unity3D editor itself. The other videos I created that were better required me to take extra steps of making an actual build to record.

2. I record the videos without sounds in them, I really want and need to make an audio overlay (commentary) for the videos to make them not just more interesting, but also more personal (something I wholeheartedly believe in).

3. When I re-process the videos, even without my audio they become all blurry and indistinct.

I really need a way to take whatever I record and crop the video to allow me to make it letterbox and conform to normal resolutions, such as 720p.

I HAVE the ANSWER!

Yes it is true. I can take whatever odd sized and aspect ratio videos I record and can process them in a way that crops them (no stretching or shrinking  is very important). To do this I needed to resurrect an App that I have not used since I worked on the Shaq game 20 months ago. With this newly processed video the video software I use will not rescale it and so it looks great, and though I have yet to do it, the audio should be easy to add (wish me luck).

The Answer.
I process the video using something called Prism, which is a video converter created by NCH software.  http://www.nchsoftware.com/prism/

In that previous image you can see that I used Prism and set the video reprocessing to Crop. I also set it to create 720p video, which it did very nicely.

Then I loaded the video I created into the video editing software I use. This is called Pinnacle Studio, which can be a bit buggy to be honest, but I love its simplified timeline to edit within. It really needs some more output options nowadays. http://www.pinnaclesys.com/publicsite/us/home/

Well back to work on the audio commentary now for my latest video.

a Voodoochief

Incompetech and Kevin ROCK!

Incompetech is a site that Kevin Macleod owns and operates.

http://incompetech.com/wordpress/

Anyone who has ever needed amazing music for Videos or Computer game (ME!), knows this place and also just how good his music is.

Now I haven't needed music for well over a year and a half. But now I need some for the minigames for Very Bunny Haha, and of course I cannot forget Kevins incredible stuff. I wasn't sure if the site was still going, but I find that there is now more music than ever.

WOWZA.. so I spend way too much time tonight listening to the music scores. Simply wonderful.

Thanks Kevin, you really do Rock.

Da Voodoochief

p.s. I look forward to Donating once again when I grab some music from you.

Unity Update call order

I wanted to clear a flag I had at the end of a frame for physics collisions. This mean't I did not want to clear this variable when physics updates were perhaps taking place as it could end up clearing in the middle, which would be pretty useless.

So I tried to find something, using who knows what keywords. I wasn't really finding what I wanted, though I did find lots of information and several posts by people offering advice (most was correct as well). Still I wanted something simple, something obvious.

Then I found EXACTLY what I wanted: A Diagram...

http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/ExecutionOrder.html

That document shows the update stages used in Unity3D. Fabulous and obvious huh! the other benefit for me is that describe other sequenced calls that I was unaware of like the 'OnEnable()' call. That could be useful at some point.

Laters all,
Da Voodoochief

Porcupine Minigame pt #2 - Video of the Gameplay

Here it is, another video from Very Bunny Haha. I am finally getting the hand of doing the videos now, and I expect through a lot more practice I will actually get good at some point. This video is of my 2nd minigame Zoomy the Porcupine.. and yeah, the name WILL change a bit soon, along with some of the graphics, and erm.. I realize now that the instructions are not correct, DOH!

Always something missed it seems.

Still, I enjoyed working on this game whilst I flew to Seattle and more on the way back to L.A. as well. I think the gameplay itself has turned out pretty much as I expected it would (which is always nice), and so I am very happy.

I have several things to do to finish this game, such as add Sound Effects and finished artwork, but it is real close.

Hope ya like the video,
Da Voodoochief

Zoomy the Porcupine Minigame - pt #1

Here is a screenshot of the set up of the new minigame I have been working on (for Very Bunny Haha). I was at a wedding in Seattle these last few days and as such did not get too much completed. However I did get to work on this for a bit.

Now the game is nearly done, and I will do a video once I have the gameplay finished with... I am actually working on the effects when stuff happens at the moment, and though I am slow at that kind of work, I will get it done soon. Today I have another wedding reception to attend, so that could impact my productivity (hehe).

This minigame is another unique game and it involves Porcupines and currently a Tomato (something else later, like perhaps a beach ball). You must jump the Porcupines as they run around the screen edge.

Once again I have created the game to be easy to play, but if you use skill you can up your score.

Laters
Da Voodoochief

Input Delay Bug in Unity3D (editor and standalone)

Unity3D is nice. It is very nice, but it does still have a few bugs in it and these can be costly. Usually in terms of time and frustration. Any programmer knows this frustration and the best way to get past it is to solve the bug. easier said than done of course, and doubly bad when it is someone else's bug.

I have been very frustrated these past few weeks due to the Editor and the built game running on my PC suffering from an Input delay bug. It was random, though occurred about 80% of the time, it also varied in intensity from half a second to about 3 seconds. When I loaded a new scene in my game it could be worse or better.. there seemed no rhyme nor reason for it.

I tried many times to solve this problem, researching all manner of sentences in Google trying to find someone else with an answer. I did find several people with the problem, or something very similar (though mildly different). None had an answer for me that worked, and to be honest, some of the answers were unlikely to work anyway. Like a fevered man, I tried them all anyway!

Yesterday I had a bit of time to kill and so once more tread into the Bing search engine. Then unleashing several creative concoctions I call pseudo sentences to  find why the Input is lagged, or delayed. I got lucky, I found 'AngryMuppet' had posted the exact same issue, and somehow had also found an answer I could try.
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/unity-5-1-input-delay-when-running-in-editor.332581/

This is the problem he pointed out:-
If you have 'Virtual reality Supported' ticked in the standalone platform

So I tried it (ok, it took me a while to find the option to turn it off).. You can find it here:-
Edit->Project Settings->Player->OtherSettings->Virtual Reality Supported

Mine was checked, and my hope began to rise. I unchecked this option and click the play button on my game. Wham it came up fast (faster than it has recently), and when I clicked the buttons and controlled the Rabbit around the screen there was NO LAG.... My hope was now very high, but I was not convinced, I have seen it run ok before. So I ran from one scene to another several times and it was all solid. Then I stopped the game and played it a couple of more times, till I was finally convinced the BUG was Stomped!

My Hope had now been replaced with a sense of relief and contentment.

I do not know why this bug exists, but there it is. Input lag of seconds was due to supporting this feature in some way.

I sincerely hope that anyone looking to solve this issue them selves stumble upon this blog post and solve their issues as well.

Thanks AngryMuppet,
Da Voodoochief

Watergun Minigame pt #4 - the Video

Finally I was able to create a video of the game with a decent resolution. The resolution is a wee bit stretched in the horizontal... Something I will have to work out,

It happens because I have set Unity3D to run my game full screen when built, but also my game is designed for a 4:3 aspect ratio. I really needed borders to make it look right. Now I am not certain quite what to do about the issue. It is possible for me to code into the game the ability to dynamically set my screen widths... but perhaps there is an easier way, something to ponder on that is for sure.

I got the video created of me playing the Watergun Minigame, the first minigame written for Very Bunny Haha. I have already seamlessly added the game to the main game and so can enter it from a doorway, and when done you fade back to the main game. I am very pleased with the ways it is working.

 The game is missing a few things.
* I need to add sound FX, and perhaps some nice shanty that lasts for 30 seconds
* I need to tweak the gameplay a bit to get a proper balance to the shoot like mad, and skill shots

After that I need to write a second one as this was so much fun to make. I already have a design as well.

Talking to a friend yesterday lunch time he mentioned programming while on Twitch. This sounds very exciting to me and something I think I could enjoy doing. Only I currently program whilst sitting on my easy chair and watching the telly with me missus. I don't think that is the best way to do a programming stint on twitch, and anyway, I would want to talk about what and why I am doing stuff. Perhaps in the future.

Hope ya like the improved video.. still a bit to go, but getting there.

Laters
Da Voodoochief

Watergun game pt #3 - Finished

Here is an in game image of the game being played. Once I get a video of the game without the Lag I will post it to Youtube, but until then here are a couple of pics of the game.

 

This following image is the game as it starts... I realized that I needed to have instructions, duh! and of course I also needed the OK button to allow progression. I also use the same button for the game over screen to jump back to the rest of the game

Now mostly it is all done. Only I have a couple of bugs when going back to the game, namely the players Jack rabbit sort of shuffles along on his butt, and it looks like a dog dragging his butt along the ground. Most odd indeed.

Now back to working on bugs and the rest of the game. (oh it tok about 5 hours I believe to create the minigame).

Laters
Da Voodoochief

Watergun game pt #2

Here is a new picture of the minigame I am working on. This is the second picture of the game and as you can see, there has been quite a bit of activity. Though not all of it is connected up at this time.

There is now a background, and clouds that are the targets. So we can control the gun and fire the water balls at the clouds to get score. The further the target you have to shoot the more points the target is worth.

The little flash Scores as I call them pop up and then shrink away over about 5 seconds. They look quite professional I am pleased to say. They really show up as I put one of my lovely alpha'd texture behind it. Makes em pop eh!

I also placed the Cannon within a table and then shrunk a rock down and placed that on the table as large Rivet. I also made a dupe of that Rivet and colored it black and placed it underneath to make the rivet pop and have a 3d illusion. Also the shadows I placed under the table make things seem more 3d as well.

I spent most of my time working on the particle effect for when the water ball hits the clouds or floor. haha!

Still, coming along nicely. Now I just need to hook up the Timer control, which will mark the start and end of the game itself.

Laters
Da Voodoochief

WaterBallGun Minigame

So to allay my frustration with the Input delay problem within Unity3D, I am working on something much more fun, something we need for the bigger game, but also fun.

Did I mention I am working on something fun ? Well here is an early picture, with hardly anyting going on, but set up is where it starts.

All you can really see is that there is a countdown to the start of the game in the middle of the screen. Followed by the Cannon which I just added (it is also rotating by itself atm). Right above the Cannon you can see the first WaterBall, the very ting that will eventually be fired from the Cannon, and at various angles.

You may have guessed that this is one of the first minigames I am adding to Very Bunny Haha. a game that should span Skillful players with Novices. I am already enjoying how fast I can throw this game together... though in the back of my mind I am still searching for an answer to the input delay my game randomly has... GAH!

Laters
Da Voodoochief

Meeting about the Arcade Games

I had a good conversation with my Daughter today about the current state of the game. This was in the hope that she could clarify some of the many design thoughts running through my head. This meeting went very well and I now feel a lot more focused for the next sections of the game.

I also mentioned to her about the marketing blurb I have been busy working on lately. Some of the best stuff I have ever created IMHO. Following are a few excerpts.

"This is one of the best and most fun farming games you will ever play, and is more fun than you would expect. Planting seeds, watering plants, milking cows, collecting eggs etc, all probably sounds like tedious work. Instead it turns out to be engaging gameplay, all woven together to make the experience more than it's individual parts."

"As you play more of the game and explore, you will find that more of the world and the game will open up. As you progress in this way you will find that you can charm some of the village residents and eventually woo them, with the goal of either having them as a best friend, or perhaps even going on to marrying them."

Ok, back to my meeting with Leilani. We got to discussing how I can more seamlessly bring in the Arcade styles games to the gameplay. I do not want the Arcade games list such as is supplied in Webkinz. Instead I want it to feel more seamless, even though these games are going to be very unlike the world that Jack travels around. I think I have some good stuff to work on now, and so I can go ahead and make the code handle doorways into these arcade games.. Some will be hidden, all will be earned in some way.
 Ok, time for sleep,
Good Night all,
Da Voodoochief

Marketing materials always required

I have to admit that I am not the biggest fan of creating the Marketing materials for my games. (I would rather be writing more of the games!)

I know a few people who are far more skillful and adept at that sort of job than myself. Yet I also know that I can be competent enough to get something done, something created... and that something is usually better than nothing.

So Here I am working on this excellent game and I realized when I created the Web page that I have not got anything written down to describe the game. Geez, and the Web page could do with it as well.

So today I decided to write some stuff... but I didn't quite know where to start.

Then I had an inspiration (one I have had before for other games). I went looking for reviews of some of the games that Very Bunny Haha resembles or is based around. Games like Harvest Moon or Animal Crossing are about as close as you could get at this point. I did manage to find several reviews for these old games and I read them all several times till I got the gist, essence and mainly how they were saying things about the games.

Then I started to write... ok, it wasn't fast , but it was steady with some inspired parts.

• I know I need several bullet points for the game (as many as I can come up with in several flavors if possible).
• I also need a good paragraph to describe the start of the game.
• Lastly I need several small paragraphs describing what you can encounter or do within the game.

I now have several of these and I will try to embellish them a bit more before I publish them to the games Web site. Which should be this weekend, along with another video of course.

I really want to do 1 video a week. Then with all that practice, by the time the game is ready for the public I should be able to create a masterful video :)

Ok, started to waffle now, it must be bed time,

Good night,
Da Voodoochief

Better Arrays mean Easier coding

When I started this game I knew I needed strings. When you use one object on another object I wanted to supply either some useful information, or some comical sentence. This mean't that for every object in the game I would need to have a corresponding array that would contain the Text for the two objects.

I did this by creating a 2 dimensional array. Very easy for sure. And here is part of it....

 public static sUseStringsTable[,] CompleteUseStrings = new sUseStringsTable[,] {
  { // gold
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //GOLD
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //SILVER,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //AXE,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //SLEDGEHAMMER,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //SHOVEL,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //HOUSE_KEY,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //WATERINGCAN,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //E_KEY,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //PICKER
   // start consumables
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //APPLE,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //WOOD,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //STONE,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //WATER,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //MUSHROOM,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //tulip
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //daffodil
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //daisy
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //watermelon
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //carrot
   // start seeds
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //TULIP_SEED,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //DAFFODIL_SEED,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //DAISY_SEED,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //WATERMELON_SEED,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //CARROT_SEED,
   // world items
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //PLANT_DIRT,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), // tree
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //house
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //wooden log
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //baby duck
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //baby sheep
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //Delila
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //Rock
  },
  { //silver
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //GOLD
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //SILVER,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //AXE,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //SLEDGEHAMMER,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //SHOVEL,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //HOUSE_KEY,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //WATERINGCAN,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //E_KEY,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //PICKER
   // start consumables
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //APPLE,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //WOOD,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //STONE,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //WATER,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //MUSHROOM,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //tulip
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //daffodil
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //daisy
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //watermelon
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //carrot
   // start seeds
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //TULIP_SEED,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //DAFFODIL_SEED,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //DAISY_SEED,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //WATERMELON_SEED,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //CARROT_SEED,
   // world items
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //PLANT_DIRT,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), // tree
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //house
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //wooden log
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //baby duck
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //baby sheep
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //Delila
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //Rock
  },
  { //axe
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //GOLD
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //SILVER,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, "Giving an Axe the Axe"), //AXE,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //SLEDGEHAMMER,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //SHOVEL,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //HOUSE_KEY,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //WATERINGCAN,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //E_KEY,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //PICKER
   // start consumables
   new sUseStringsTable(false, "You swing at the Apple multiple times, but miss every time. The Apple is spared."), //APPLE,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, "That has already been chopped, why would you want to chop it again?"), //WOOD,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, "This isn't a sword you know."), //STONE,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, "Alas, my master! Careful the Axe doesn't fall into the water."), //WATER,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, "Not effective against badgers."), //MUSHROOM,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //tulip
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //daffodil
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //daisy
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //watermelon
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //carrot
   // start seeds
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //TULIP_SEED,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //DAFFODIL_SEED,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //DAISY_SEED,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //WATERMELON_SEED,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //CARROT_SEED,
   // world items
   new sUseStringsTable(false, "What do you want? An Axe tree?"), //PLANT_DIRT,
   new sUseStringsTable(false, "This tree is much too sturdy for that Axe, and your muscles"), // tree
   new sUseStringsTable(false, "You cannot chop your way in!"), //house
   new sUseStringsTable(true,  "Do you want to swing the Axe mightily and skillfully, to chop the wooden log into nice small planks of wood?"), //wooden log
   new sUseStringsTable(false, "I Axed you not to make me go Quackers!"), //baby duck
   new sUseStringsTable(false, "Using the Axe in Sheep form the counter helix still fires off."), //baby sheep
   new sUseStringsTable(false, "What a simply horrid thing to do!"), //Delila
   new sUseStringsTable(false, ""), //Rock
  },

I apologize for the sheer amount of code above. You see the BIGGEST problem with this 2 dimensional array is that all arrays are of equal size. This means as I have added more and more items into the game, this array has got OUT of HAND!  The example above only shows a few objects, but you can see how massive this could become. Imagine 100 items x 100 items. that is a 10,000 possible options right there.... simply a massive table.

The real downer about this is that it is cumbersome and hard to maintain. It also has the side effect that I do not want to create another Item, as I would have to visit every sub-dimension to add that new object to keep all the arrays the same size, bah!

What you can also see above is that the arrays are MOSTLY EMPTY. Whaaaat? Yes, it is true. Some objects simply cannot be used with others, Or I don't have anything witty to write for that combination.

I spent some time working on a replacement. I started by figuring out what I wanted, and simply enough I wanted to remove the empty combinations. A good plan like this can get ya excited and focused on what to do. Then I went looking at array documentation for C#. (always good to refresh my memory on this stuff!).

I FOUND THE ANSWER...
Jagged Arrays - this was my answer. It did not take very long for me to create these new arrays. And yes I had to write some extra search code to find the actual match instead of just using a second index from the Item type. Still very easy and as you can see below it works so much more clearly and succinctly.

 public static sUseStringsTable2[][] CompleteUseStrings = new sUseStringsTable2[][] {
  new sUseStringsTable2 [] { // gold
  },
  new sUseStringsTable2 [] { // silver
  },
  new sUseStringsTable2 [] { // axe
   new sUseStringsTable2(ITEM_IDS.C_APPLE , false, "You swing at the Apple multiple times, but miss every time. The Apple is spared."), //APPLE,
   new sUseStringsTable2(ITEM_IDS.C_WOOD , false, "That has already been chopped, why would you want to chop it again?"), //WOOD,
   new sUseStringsTable2(ITEM_IDS.C_STONE , false, "This isn't a sword you know."), //STONE,
   new sUseStringsTable2(ITEM_IDS.C_WATER , false, "Alas, my master! Careful the Axe doesn't fall into the water."), //WATER,
   new sUseStringsTable2(ITEM_IDS.C_MUSHROOM , false, "Not effective against badgers."), //MUSHROOM,
   new sUseStringsTable2(ITEM_IDS.W_PLANT_DIRT , false, "What do you want? An Axe tree?"), //PLANT_DIRT,
   new sUseStringsTable2(ITEM_IDS.W_TREE , false, "This tree is much too sturdy for that Axe, and your muscles"), // tree
   new sUseStringsTable2(ITEM_IDS.W_HOUSE , false, "You cannot chop your way in!"), //house
   new sUseStringsTable2(ITEM_IDS.W_WOODEN_LOG , true,  "Do you want to swing the Axe mightily and skillfully, to chop the wooden log into nice small planks of wood?"), //wooden log
   new sUseStringsTable2(ITEM_IDS.W_BABY_DUCK , false, "I Axed you not to make me go Quackers!"), //baby duck
   new sUseStringsTable2(ITEM_IDS.W_BABY_SHEEP , false, "Using the Axe in Sheep form the counter helix still fires off."), //baby sheep
   new sUseStringsTable2(ITEM_IDS.W_DELILA , false, "What a simply horrid thing to do!"), //Delila
   new sUseStringsTable2(ITEM_IDS.W_POND , false, "Water makes Axes go rusty, and you don't want a rusty Axe do you?"), //   W_POND,
  },

As you can easily see this covers all that data from the above example, but in a much smaller format. So easy to use, so incredibly easy to add another item to the list as well.

I am so pleased I spent way too much time redoing this list now, as it would only take me a lot longer if I left it till I had another 60 Items in it :o

Laters
Da Voodoochief

Made another Video

So tonight I created another simple gameplay video of Very Bunny Haha. It was a bit frustrating to be honest as I cannot seem to get the aspect ratio correct when I output the edited video.

So instead I end up with it being stretched vertically and blurry to boot. I am going to use this as a catalyst to do much better next time.

Starting with recording in much better (and set) dimensions. This one was recorded in 780 x 404, which is certainly not very standard. Perhaps that is why it wasn't working out for me.

Next up I should record the voice over on my nice headset that I bought a while back for just such a purpose. Only I couldn't do that tonight as my son has apparently been using them and so they are in HIS room.. and he of course is asleep. bah!

Hope you like this off aspect blurry video...

Laters
Da Voodoochief

Scene view of the Well

I have been working on the Well for the last few days. It was already in and working, but like every other scene in the game it needs some love and attention to make it more final, more finished.

Here it is (elongated look from the Scene view in Unity).

Yeah, pretty neat eh! This is one of those puzzle to get through type of Scenes and so far in Very Bunny Haha it is the only level where you start at the top and work your way down. Although the trap doors are now fully functional along with the switches, there is no reward currently at the bottom of the well.. perhaps that is tomorrow nights job :)

What you can also see in this view is the way I have tried to make the well look interesting by using various shading shapes. I have even tried to make it look pseudo round by darkening the middle area.

Hope ya like it, it is a jumping players paradise.

Laters
Da Voodoochief

New Very Bunny Haha Apha Gameplay Video

This is my new video. Not a long one as I am experimenting with creating these. Net one will perhaps have some audio from my talking about various aspects of what the video is showing.

Hope ya like the potential here and there is a LOT more to see.

Laters
Da Voodoochief

Keeping moving forwards

This is the way to get stuff done. And once it is all done.... Well you usually find more to add, haha!

Still I made a list and today got 5 items knocked off that list.

• I placed Chucky into the forest, near his hut
• I redid the top of the Well, not quite complete, but much closer now
• I removed the scaling Log from the wooden log chopping effect
• Tested and fixed the Sledgehammer breaking the rocks, and removed the scaling rock from the effect
• Redid the old signs, making them look shiny and new (like all my new signs)

It was fun and moves the forest forwards.

Here is Chucky :)

The house will be replaced by some unique artwork once it is prepared.

I really dislike the web page I set up last night, but gah! Yeah, it is set up, but man it sucks. I will try to do something with it this weekend, though I am not certain quite what at this time.

Tomorrow I have Webelos woods to help out initially, then some work on my house. After that I hope to get a few more items off my list, and perhaps do something with the web page.

Laters
Da Voodoochief

Basic Web page set up for Very Bunny Haha

Yeehaw!  Only took me several weeks to finally get something set up. I know it is not very good of course, but it is the first place holder look, and most importantly it means that I have a web site project set up in the Editor of my choice, which just so happens to be
WebPlus x5 (I have had this particular version for some time and not really used it much lately).

I will have to set up my Daughter with something similar so she can also add to this Web page with comments, Blog posts and artwork.

Very Bunny Haha Web Page

Ugly I know. 

Here is the page in the editor I mentioned. I love this editor. So easy to use, so obvious and so fast. I can get stuff whether it be menus or youtube videos up in seconds.

I know this editor well as I have used it a number of times (ok, a slightly older version) to edit my main web site at www.sorcerygames.com now for several years.

Have fun out there, and expect more updates soon so show you some of the goodness that is Very Bunny Haha.

Laters
Da Voodoochief

First Video for Very Bunny Haha

I have finally created a video of something from Very Bunny Haha. Yeah about time for sure.

I was working on this aspect of the game a few days ago, so this is the newest addition to the game and I think it is pretty cool as a first pass. I will also try and post more videos on different parts of the game.

Check out the link for YouTube
https://youtu.be/Ka45bePc4Ns

Laters
Da Voodoochief

New Unity Effectors, Wow!

Today I gave a talk at the Unity Club meeting about the new in 5.0 Physics Effectors.

I have been playing with a Bit because I switched out my own Jump thru platform code with the New Platform Effector I read about in the updates to Unity 5.0. Now was the time to finally play with it.

Surprisingly the update and the removal of my own Jump-Thru code only took a few minutes, which was very nice. Then I did some research and a bit of playing with the other types of Effectors.

I gave my dissertation in about 20 minutes, talking and being very excited about how many gameplay features could be introduced into a game simply by using the editor and it's Effectors.

Here is the list of Effectors and a VERY bried account of each one.

• Platform Effector: allows me to do such things as Jump-Thru platforms and angled edges and sticky edges etc.
• Point Effector: This one is pretty cool and allows gravitational effects to go to a point, or away from said point. Pairing several of these together could do some Amazing experiences.
• Area Effector: This can do easy Wind style effects in an area. Myself I have an idea for a Kite flying game. Pretty neato.
• Surface Effector: This can do things like conveyor belts, which can be notoriously finicky to put into a game normally.

Ok, so I have not shown you how to use them, and the reason for that is because the info is already out there in both video form and tutorial form. just go search for what you want, knowing what you want is the harder thing though, as the possibilities are endless in my humble opinion.

Laters
Da Voodoochief

Buttons where Mouse Clicking now fails

I am so frustrated. I hate spending so much time on something so rudimentary, so base, Gah!

So I have several buttons that form my Main Menu for my game. When I first put them onto the Canvas they would interact very nicely with the Mouse Cursor. They would show their highlight color when the mouse pointer was over them, and along with that they would work when you clicked them with the Mouse Button.

I have attached an OnClick() call to a function for each of the buttons, and as I said that was working great.

Not any more. I have no idea what broke it, or how it could have broken. Well perhaps it was me continuing to develop the screen. In fact I simply altered the Input Vertical to work of the Up and Down arrows.... and erm. I think that is it for the Buttons.

I have spent literally hours on this over the last few days, and look at this explorer bar where I have been searching and reading everyone else's similar (but not quite the same) problems.

As you can see I have been busy. But I have still out found out what has broken the automatic experience between  Mouse and Button. What is also odd is that when I go into my next scene, the Buttons in that scene work correctly. This has led me to try all sorts of copying and pasting to no avail.

For now, I think I will have to leave it for a bit and move to something more productive for a week or more.

Grrrr, Hope your Unity is going better than mine atm,

Laters
Da Voodoochief

How do I miss the Obvious ?

Some times I am surprised by my own idiocy. I guess I could try and cover my ideas with the rational of trying so hard to be creative, to try and streamline the process for a player.

In the end I really need to just see the trees and not the wood. As you can imagine this kind of situation has occurred once more.

Let me digress...

I have been trying very hard to make the start of Very Bunny Haha be as simple and obvious as possible. Trying hard to make it so people can simply get into the game immediately and all distractions and choices are supposed to appear at just the right time, one that makes so much sense I do not know why others have never done it before. To this end I have spent way too much time and brain power trying hard to achieve this end.

A couple of days ago I was chatting with my daughter Leilani about how to synchronize the start of the game with offering a tutorial and how to make this as seamless as possible. When she Whammo'd me with such obviousness, such ease I was.. as I said, Whammo'd.

She said 'Hey Dad, why not have a start menu  for people to just select the tutorial or not'.

GAH! was probably my reaction.

I have spent so much time trying to not have a start menu, that I never ever thought along the way how much easier that could be. Now of course thinking about all the options I need it solves so many for me. such as allowing a player to have multiple save games and being able to load them. Start up a new game from scratch or many many other options that are best displayed as a menu/list.

So my daughter just cut through months of my hard work to find the answer that so many other game designers before me have done.... this one just took a while.

I expect I shall be working on that very soon now. As I have just finished the Inventory selling functionality.

Laters
Da Voodoochief

Unity Gui Image Sliced type - not working

This seems so easy. I watched some tutorial on it months ago and implemented my buttons then. Not at first realizing that they did not look as they should.

My buttons have ended up Square at the corners, yet I wanted them nicely rounded. Check out the Square cornered buttons I have.

Searching the web I found lots of people having issues like mine, or similar, only none of the answers seemed correct for me, or I could not interpret them correctly. Then I found this page...
http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/874743/9-sliced-image-in-the-ui-46-not-working-as-expecte.html

On there I could see and read that this person had exactly the same issue as me.I had to read it several times before I understood his own answer to the problem. It comes down to a setting in the Canvas itself.. which surprised me as I had been focused in the wrong place... the artwork for my rounded button. Below is a screenshot of what on the canvas needs to be altered. (I clicked on the Canvas and opened the component called 'Canvas Scaler'. In there I have a value of 1. This is BAD. I am not certain why it is bad, but I played with this value and Lo and Behold it rounded my corners.

As you can see that appears to be nothing special, but changing it to a bigger value such as 50 or 100 allowed my rounded corners to show up as you can witness in the image below.

 

Phew, one long standing problem sorted, who's next?

Da Voodoochief