New Flowers Created

That gif above is only my second Gif. Which is a little annoying to me as I promised myself I would create a number of them to show off parts of the game. I am happy however with the way this one turned out. This is one of the new flowers I just put into the game and it is a bluebell. This flower grows like this over several hours, not like it is above.

I also put in the Hibiscus flower and that looks o. Bit disappointed so no doubt I will be revisiting that at some point soon.

I have also been very busy working on the cave... that thing is a monster and taking up so much time. Still I also got a couple of the Lantern quests done for it. The other Major thing I have been working on and have at about 90% is Quinns Tower. The inside this time, which is a new scene. Bringing my total up to 36 scenes for this game! Wowza, I never ever thought it would be half this big. Well actually that's a bit of a lie as I did expect it to be about 18 scenes in size.

I am stoked with Quinns tower, and it only has a few extra things to do to complete it and that makes me feel good. One more scene done means one less to go.

I am going to go back to working on quests while I also try and get the Cave finished. Wish me luck.

Merry Christmas,

Da Voodoochief

VBHh Cave Progresses

The cave is taking a considerable amount of time to get done. I say done and what I mean is to progress. It is hard to get it just looking right enough to be publishable. So I spend a lot of time trying to get various bits right. Now I also realize that as I complete sections of the cave they can be reused or reworked fairly easily in other sections of the cave scene.

I also have to admit that there are a lot of pieces to the caverns within the whole cave scene. So many GameObjects. They take time to place and colorize correctly and so most of my last week was spent working on this. I must admit to quite liking what I have completed so far though. Even if I am only about 25% through it, gah! hahaha!

Leilani has been very busy working on the main story arc and it is now about fully spec'd out and she is nearly ready to write it all out. I am very excited to have that done. It is late in the game development to really be getting it in, but we did not want to rush it... so instead we worked on all the other stuff to surround it. I believe the result will show we made a good choice.

I have fixed up the Watergun mini-game and it now looks exactly like I wanted it to, phew. Done!

Rockfall has also has some tune ups by adding some animations it needed. Along with several bug fixes to mini-games now. It feels pretty amazing to say I now have 10 finished mini-games, the right number for this title.

So onwards as we add in more graphics and complete more sections of the game.

Laters
Da Voodoochief

New Minigame - Rockfall

I am a bit late for writing this weeks wrap up, up. That is because I have been suffering a Migraine this weekend and it really knocks me about a lot. I hope to be fully functional by tomorrow. However me and Leilani did already have a fully productive week before the weekend migraine arrived.

This last week we got through a number of things. As I am not working on a quest chain at the moment I got to work on something else and that is my Final minigame. OK, I say final as it is my 10th minigame. Though technically I call this one an Arcade Task, as it allows the player to fulfill an in game quest by completing the arcade minigame.

This image above is the title page for the minigame. Not the most interesting ting I agree.

The game is a simple timing game where you tap the screen at just the right time. Depending on how well you time your strike you will generate more power and smash the rocks faster. Faster of course equals more points! This is a unique style of game for VBHh and so fits in rather well. Now I have to hook it up to the Quest system and finish it off with a new animation of Jack swinging his Sledgehammer.

I also really finished off that Bermuda Love Triangle quest line and so much more.

Well on with the next week, where I shall be working on many a varied task.

Laters
Da Voodoochief

Cave Mon

We have been working hard on several aspects of the game this last week.

The image above is my first layout pass for the Cave system that I mentioned in my previous blog post. As you can see I have some detail already on the far left as that is the entrance. The rest is a major work in progress. Just sorting out the collision areas is taking me some focus and time. Still it will be awesome when done. This is one of my side jobs as I move the rest of the game forwards.

Another aspect of the game is the placement of the Quests.. or perhaps now I should call them narratives?

While I have been inputting some of the quests I have run into several things that were needed to support them, such as more Items in the game, and even the Baker Trader needed to have her inventory refresh set up correctly. This was an interesting piece of code to write.

We also in Fridays meeting got to discuss the Arcade Minigame Task we sort of had designed. It was not quite right. So Bam in only about 5 minutes we had all the extra bits sorted out and the design is done. Now the creation of that game is waiting on my todo list.

Laters
Da Voodoochief

Fridays Meeting

Each Friday lunch time me and Leilani meet up for lunch and discuss our current task list, we also get to discuss important things that have turned up in the week since the last Friday meeting. Important things can include reworking ideas for things not quite working out well this week when I am trying to implement them. This is also the time when we discuss any big ideas that have come to us during the week.

Friday (yesterday) we had one of these meeting and I had several items on my agenda... yeah, I always like an agenda when doing meetings, for my day job as well as this kind of development.

The image above is the major notes page we created. Notice at the top (ok, as I ran out of space on the page I ended up using a few extra lines at the very top).. I digress..... So near the top is the major meeting agenda, and it has three items. We pounded through these items pretty well making notes for what we decided on along the way. So we now know how the Trader inventories are going to be restocked... now I need to write that code.. haha

We also got down a new minigame task, which I felt like we needed to round out this area of the game. Well this new Arcade Task will go along with something else we came up with.. more on that later. The last major thing we discussed is the Trader UI.. as I have been feeling frustrated with part of it just not matching other parts. So after a good discussion we analyzed which bits I dislike and then re-designed them to match the parts I did like. Just gotta code it now of course. Leilani also came up with another modification to the Trader UI, so that was good.

Lastly we touched on the aspect of tools and needing more in the game, along with the fact we have a Gem trader who has no gems AND we need a bit more in game area to explore and hide stuff in. We ended up with this answer...

You can perhaps see that this is a new scene, or set of scenes to be more exact. These scenes are all 2D and are a cave system with various levels. This also opens up two new tools, a Lantern and also a Pick. The Lantern to light your way in the caves and the Pick to collect precious rocks with for the Gem collector. This area is now also designed to be opened up later in the game after you have gotten the Sledgehammer, and yeah, the new Task is related to the opening of the cave system.

It all came together and it is interesting that we discussed a Cave and Pick 18 months ago at the start of this game design. Everything has come full for this I reckon.

Laters

Da Voodoochief

p.s. I will try and update the blog at some point with why I have not blogged in quite a while, just a lot of frustration with some aspects of games from the past. At some point Ill be ready to write about it.

Screenshots improve your game #gamedev

Something I don't think I have discussed before is the way in which Screenshots can help with getting the art for a game completed, or moving along a much more complete path.

There are a couple of elements to this.
1. You want your screenshots for your game to be as good as you can make them. Most people only see a few screenshots before making a decision on buying the game, be them on the back of a box on a web page in a review. So you really want them to be as good as you can make them.... (they will Never be perfect!).
2. Screenshots highlight a section of your game, or level or scene or whatever it is. This highlight does not always show context. It is unlikely to show as well as if the level is scrolling, moving etc. This highlighting can be a bit of a shock to view. It will tend to be plain. And we don't want plain in our pictures. #1 has already stated how important they can be.

OK, so you can alleviate some of the screenshot stress by only putting the ones you like into your press pack etc. Simple...

BUT
There is another great use of screenshots that most people do not bother with, or have the time to use them for. I am talking about Sprucing up the area of the screenshot. Giving the area a nice working over to improve the look, and even perhaps make an average screenshot look good enough for the press kit.

I have just done this to a very limited extent to show Leilani how this works and how beneficial it can be. So I took several screenshots, then one lunch time we sat down and discussed what we liked and didn't like about them. Good fun and the food was great too! (Thanks Brick Oven).

 The image above is the original we discussed. Our negative points we came up with were:-

1. The Sky is missing something, it is too bland.
2. The trees look all the same color wise.
3. The front log is a bit over bright.
4. The shadows under the trees is a bit small, and is over the roots.
5. The area does not look dark enough for a forest.

In the image above we addressed the previous issues by:-

1. I placed some clouds in the sky, it was easy to pull them from another scene and place them.
2. I used to have a routine that gave the trees a variety of color. This was broken by me in the prefab. I actually moved the re-colorizing code to another class. So that was an easy fix.
3. Easy to darken the front log of course.
4. I spent most of my time working on the shadows for the trees. I had to get a good angle and also a good size for the trees. Now I think it worked out great, only I do believe I will darken under the trees a bit more, but the lengthy shadow is good.
5. With the extending the shadows for the trees it addressed the darkness of the forested area quite well.

I hope you like the example above. I now believe that this screenshot is much better than the first and also good enough for the press pack!

Good luck fixing up your game :)

DaVoodoochief

Alpha Demo is Ready - #gamedev

It is Amazing, but finally I feel the Alpha Demo is ready for people to view. Only...

Yes that's right. It means I now need to do a lot more work to support the Show and Tell I am planning for this Demo.

Let me explain a bit.

This Demo is going to be mostly for showing off the game to potential voice actors. I want them to see what the game entails and make sure there is some enthusiasm for their parts. It will also be a great way for me to get practiced at presenting the game and seeing what works and what does not. This will be a big event for me and Leilani, oh and the game of course. Also we have discussed having some associates here who have a large social following, as it would be silly to miss out on any promotional opportunities while doing something this big for the game.

I am currently working on a list of people I want here for the presentation. It will include Actors, friends who I hope to convince to help me test or finish some content in the game (create new quests etc). People to help promote the event (social media associates).

What's Needed?

So now I realize that if I am going to get the word out that the game exists, then I need a proper landing page and information on it. That must include at least a press Kit, and a way to have people sign up for an email list for more information. I will then be able to use that list to find Beta testers and get people to buy the game when it comes out. I am not sure what else, but I suspect a lot more!

Time to work
Laters
Da Voodoochief

Eye Catching Marketing - The Gif

However you pronounce it, the Gif is an eye catching element to any web page.

It can bring any Web page to life instantly. Generally they are very focused visuals which should make them even more inviting, noticeable and engaging.

This image above is my first Gif. Yes really! After more than 30 years in the industry this is the first Gif I have actually created myself. This one above is a test... can I do it, does this kind of thing work... or will it? Ok, so I cannot answer all those questions obviously at this time.

Why?
I am an avid reader of Gamasutra  and all the blog posts especially that appear there. A few days ago I came across one that was new to me, original and informative. It is titled Marketing in Motion: A Year of Making Gifs and it an excellent read. This got me thinking that I could spice up my static web pages with some exciting animations. Hopefully bring some of the initial connectivity to my casual visitors to the web page.

What?
The image above works ok, and for a first try I am quite happy with it. I used a tool called GifCam. This made it pretty easy to create and the tool seems pretty good. Once I have gotten to play with it a bit more I will have to donate for sure.
My only real issue with the Gif is the fact that this one is 354kb. Which is quite large for a small image and is due to the fact that the whole image is updating/moving. I will try to make more that are a little more static so they do not overload the web observers bandwidth.

Whats the point?
I am always looking for things that could help me promote the game. I do not however at this major development time want to spend hours on social media each day. That time will come and is not now. So poking things into the social media awareness is what I really need. Then I will have links and thoughts all across the internet for me to pull on later (I hope).

So something else I have never done though I have been aware of it in some way is a place called imgur. This place is awesome I have to say. I could easily spend a long time looking at stuff on this site. Anyway the point is that I could post my images to this excellent discovery web site and hopefully one of them could possible go viral, which means on this site that it could get half a million views.. yeah! Imagine my game getting half a million eyeballs on it.. Woah!!!!

Now imgur is an interesting place and I believe it will take practice to get the title of the image correct as well as the image itself. It looks to me like an art form I have never previously seen. I hope I can pick up some of the skills quickly.

Conclusion.
Marketing needs to be done, using Gifs on a site like imgur could be a good addition to a campaign.

Laters
Da Voodoochief

Adult Female in the industry

I know that title is a bit strange. Let me explain...

Today my Daughter turned 18. A huge deal where I come from in the UK. Over here in SoCal USA it is not such a big deal. In fact I had such a hard time finding a card with 18 on it, that I never actually did.

Now being 18 means she is now officially an adult. Yes, an adult. She has already started her college career at a local community college this summer, meanwhile she is also of course working with her Dad (me) on our first game development together.

Leilani has been working on Very Bunny Haha now for over a year and are still going strong. We really have been connecting well on the game and as the game has developed we have added, changed and improved so much along the way. In fact in the last year the game has developed from our first ideas to the way it is going now. It has added many, many months to the development cycle, but we are really enjoying the ride. In fact adding in Leilani's graphics are a real pleasure, along with working with her on scripts and other aspects of design.

Leilani is a wonderful daughter that has her own ideas, and works really well with me. Something we will always have, and hopefully when it is completed many other people will also get to enjoy our game.

Leilani has now been in the Industry making this game for over a year. Do you think she will get an E3 badge next year? I don't know, but I will certainly try hard to make it happen. She works every day on this game... she deserves it.

Congrats my sweet Leilani. Follow those dreams and work hard like you always do. I believe in you.

Dad,
DaVoodoochief

VBHh ongoing Development

Been a while since I last wrote up a Blog post. We HAVE been busy however.

First off I want to mention something I only got set up a couple of days ago, but I am really chuffed about it to say the least. That is MantisBT.

MantisBT is Mantis Bug Tracker software. This will allow us to track not only bugs, but also features we are working on or desire in the future. We can Rate, Group, Sort  and Assign these bugs between me and Leilani. Later when we get real testers on the game we will be able to give them accounts as well. Brilliant and awesome for the future of the game. I will mention my mate Colby who helped me set it all up in no time at all. COOL!

We have also been busy developing the game..

We have been creating characters, characters that feel more real. Easier to connect with, along with story arcs for a number of them. Motivations, desires and goals. This all came about several weeks ago when I read this AWESOME article on Gamasutra.
Lively Game Characters
This was such a good read for both me and Leilani, we decided to give it a test run over lunch. We picked fairly randomly 3 of the NPCs we have in the game and followed the main bullet points. What we did was create something we didn't have, something more than wonderful. Real feeling, rounded characters, but along with that we got a hefty bonus. More story for these NPCs meant we also had more areas to create quests for the game. FANTASTIC!

There has also been some new graphics created, though not yet in the game. Along with some programming to fix bugs and add more features.

Finally one of the big things we have done is to do a 10 minute walk through. Ok, so we did not make ten minutes before I called it as we had three pages of notes half way through. Now I am very busy trying hard to get all those notes done and soon I expect we will do another game play through and try hard to make it to the 10 minute mark.

So the game is coming along. Never as fast as we want it to, but we want quality more than we need it finished. Along with that Leilani has college to deal with and me the usual day time job.

There will be more coming and I intend to start work on the Press Pack once more as now I have gotten over the fact that screen shots will not be final. Heck, who cares at this point... the game still looks original and AMAZING!

g'night
DaVoodoochief

The Goodies - featureset #gamedev

I love calling them the Goodies. After a very British comedy program from the 70s that I watched incessantly back then.

Today though these Goodies refer not to a comedy trio, but to a Trio of features added into the game. Interestingly or coincidentally it has taken me 3 weeks to implement.

The Trio are:

1. Companions. Little friends to keep you company on your adventures.
2. Wearables. Items you can wear, such as a new Fluffy tail, or a Halo because you are so good.
3. Effects. There are a selection of different effects and effect attach points on your player Rabbit. So you can customize which Effect goes where. Fun little items.

The Goodies are selected through the in game menu. Selecting them brings up the sub Menu for you to choose what kind of Goodie you want to work with.

As you can see, this is the Wearables sub menu. Here you can select which items you would like to wear and in which slot on your player Rabbit.

Finally we have the player Rabbit. Your character ALL decked out in every slot, and being accompanied by your own Worker Bee companion.

We are very hopeful that players will appreciate the large amount of work put into this area of the game. It is not an essential part of playing the game, but customizing your character is always a fun thing to do. This will also double as rewards if and when we go and KickStart this game. I also think this simply adds value to Very Bunny Haha

Have a good night,

Da Voodoochief

Steam Greenlight and Failure

This is a fantastic read in my humble opinion. Although I think he I a bit down on his own project I feel this is the way a normal Indie dev goes about their business.

How I failed at Steam by James Buckle
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JamesBuckle/20160509/272192/How_I_failed_at_greenlight.php

Some people I know and have known are insanely positive about their products, and what amazes me is that a LOT of those products are trash. Poorly designed, poorly implemented and these people are just so happy to be publishing a game. I am not one of those hyper positive people with my game. Instead I feel like I have a critical and sometimes even impartial eye towards what I can do, what the game can do and time... always time....

So reading James article was really cool as I could see myself writing it a while back. Ok, perhaps 20 years ago (I have been making games a looong time!). Here I am at 50 and yet I started making games at 15.. wow how the time has flown.

Oh right back to the main point here. I need to work on marketing my game, my blog my whatever now. Or that is what people keep suggesting. However I need to get it done. How can I do both?

I am thinking about blogging more about features added into the game, though that kind of thing will be slow.

For instance I have spent the last 2 weeks working on the menu's and structure to allow us to have Goodies, which include clothes and effects and companions attached to the main player Rabbit. so IF I blog about features added I would still have to wait a few days as I am not quite done debugging this area yet.

What to do about getting a following...  Still working on it, any ideas would be welcome, and yes, I read stuff on this area most days of the week, but nothing concrete it feels like that I can run with.

G'night
Da Voodoochief

Adding a Companion is so easy! #gamedev

Yeah, adding one is so easy. In fact I would say it would take me about 20 minutes and that includes creating a flying animation for it as well.

The thing is that although  making the companion and attaching it to the player Rabbit is easy. Designing and creating the UI to control which companions are attached to your Rabbit is a LOT more time consuming.

The latter is what I have been working on for several days now, and will continue to work on tis feature set until it is done. It feels like a major blocker to the games development, however it really is a side thing compared to the game, ya know, such as creating more quests or adding more objects to interact with. The thing is though that this feature set is going to be needed for in game rewards... Like if you get Exalted reputation with the Queen bee, then perhaps you earn a Bee Companion :)

These companions are also central to one of the ways for this game to be monetized. Selling companions I hope will provide some financial reward to help pay for the game. Especially if it helps pay for me to work more on the game.

So here I am working for many days on something that from the outside looks like it should be done in half an hour.

G'night
Da Voodoochief

Random Disablilities

Just when you think that the game is coming along nicely, and your day job is going well, busy busy busy. Lots to do and doing it all.

and...

WHAM!

I have hurt my right elbow, and I am a righty. This is a major disability for my Tennis obviously, but it is also really bad for my day job and my own development.

The elbow is currently so bad that I have to have it suspended and at a certain angle just to not be in pain. Heck even writing emails is painful.

So if ya have something to do, keep on doing it cos ya don't know when random events will stop ya.

Enjoy
Da Voodoochief

2nd Thoughts on the Blog #gamedev #blogs

Q: What am I doing here with writing this blog?
A: Trying to give an honest and open account of the thoughts and work it takes to create games.

Q: Why?
A: I love what I do creating games. I put a lot of work into it and wanted to share this large amount of love, care and work I put into my games creation.

Q: Any other reasons?
A: Yes. I read about the need for social networking of an Indie game to help make it successful. It all makes sense so I wanted THIS blog and its connection through Twitter and my Facebook page to help me find a following. After all, it is nice to be popular is it not?

Q: Why am I writing this Blog post in this Question - Answer way ?
A: I am having second thoughts, ok, well more like 20th thoughts. I have been writing this blog now for years, and it isn't working. By writing this post in this fashion I hope to clarify where my current thoughts are at.

Q: What is not working?
A: I have tried promoting this blog in a variety of ways, and yet... The views are not going up. I had hoped for a steady improvement over the months. However it is not working and my viewership is still very low, showing no major improvement in the whole year since I restarted Blogging.

Q: So what's next?
A: I am still working on what is wrong with my Blog, the reasons why I think that it is not connecting with a wider audience. I am also looking into what I need to do to grow an audience for Very Bunny Haha, as that is the current focus of my development.

Q: Conclusions?
A: I believe in the social networking aspect of appealing to a whole group of people. I believe that VBHh being inspired by Harvest Moon is going to be a game that people will love. However if they do not hear about it, I will have failed. So I want and NEED to improve what I am doing. Also, it is great to read how well some people did with their social networking, but I am sure that for everyone that writes an article saying how you need it and how successful they were, there are people like me, trying very hard and simply failing.

G'night
Da Voodoochief

Redo of the Doors #gamedev

Experience has taught me that everything can be improved. This absolutely includes my code.

The doors I wrote many moons ago have worked very well these last 11 months or so. However I have learnt so much more about using Unity, as well as improving my own C# coding skills along the way. Now the Door control code has also got out of hand as I now have like 40 doors in the game, and not the several I had written the routines to control.

In short.. the door code is being inefficient and cumbersome, it was also not very Editor friendly. In fact the name of the Object was being string compared for me to know which door ID to use. Ouch!

Today was a time to refactor this code. Initially I was going to make each door a World Object, and then they would all go into my World Array. This has a number of benefits, but I realized before this update that this would add 40 Items to the World Array. An array that is cumbersome within Unity as choosing one of these Enums takes me time to scroll through the 110 plus that is already in there. I do think that Unity could do a better job allowing me to select an Element within this fairly Large array.

So instead of this answer I simply made a new script that only contains a Public variable of the Enum type that controls my Doors. This means that I can select which door this object is, and not have to rely on typing the name correctly, or comparing to some string I type within the game code. A Huge improvement, and I will only end up with more doors, so this is a good change for the future as well. Making my life easier and therefore saving more time in the future. Not bad for 20 minutes work (I had to go through every scene and fix up the Doors).

G'night
Da Voodoochief

Fountain 3D Spatial Blend Unity3d #gamedev

Well I got to spend some time on the audio today. Enough time to watch some tutorial videos from Unity (even if a few are out of date). I also read the docs on Master Audio.

However Master audio was not my focus today. Getting the Fountain working properly was my aim... and I SUCCEEDED!

I have placed an informative video onto youtube for anyone else interested in using the Unity Editor for auditioning your Spatial Blended sound Effect. It is Awesome!

In the Video above I show you a few things that took me a bit of time and research to find. I am hoping by showing them off in this video I can save others the time it took me.

Notes on the Video:
1. Top left there is a Speaker Icon that will allow you to audition your sounds while in the Editor and not having to Run the game.
2. Selecting an Audio Source in the Hierarchy will show you a graph which shows you relative distance of the listener as well as Spatial Blend and other control parameter curves.
3. Once you have set the Audition audio button, you can scroll the window around to hear how the audio sounds all over you scene.

Results:
My Fountain test audio works. It ALSO pans from the left and right speakers properly, which is really Awesome.

I am very nearly all the way through this audio set up, and I believe I also know enough about Master Audio to convert this work over to using it. That is for another day however.

G'night
Da Voodoochief

Game Audio Frustration pt #3 #gamedev

You know... I bought the Master Audio AAA asset for Unity so I could plough through and throw my SFX and Music into the game.

This is NOT the case.

Now I know that Master Audio is doing a good job at what it does. Heck, I just joined the forums to ask dumb questions today and there really is not much activity in there for saying many many people have downloaded this asset and are presumably using it.

The issue is me.. and my knowledge of the existing system within Unity. But if I have to learn all that anyway, why did I buy this asset?

I am stuck on two things:

1. I want to play a sound in a scene that the master audio prefab was not created in. I get some error I have not yet had time to work through. Something like 'MasterAudio could not find sound: SceneBus. If your Scene just changed, this could happen when an OnDisable or OnInvisible event sound happened to a per-scene sound, which is expected. Triggered by prefab: Fountain'. - I have No idea how to fix #1...

2. I want this fountain sound to have it's volume based on distance the camera is from the source object of the sound. Only I don't understand how to do this. I did post this question in the forums, but I do not understand the answer yet. The Mixer was mentioned along with this being basic Unity audio functionality. So tomorrow I will read again the docs on the mixer, and hopefully resolve this issue.

So this is where I am. I have been very busy with real work and so have not yet spent enough time on this, but I have read through the docs a few times... now if only some of it would stay in my head...

Must be getting old haha!

When I resolve these issues I will blog about them, so everyone will know the answers.

G'night
Da Voodoochief

Music in my Game part 2 #gamedev

Back again!

This time I have spent way too much time trying to decide on whether or not I should or even need to buy an Audio manager for Unity.

Other game development teams MUST have faced this problem. The Unity audio mixer seems pretty darned useful to me, and I am not sure of it's shortcomings. In fact I cannot seem to find a review about it, or even any real commentary of it's abilities. Yet reading the Unity docs on it, it sounds great (no pun intended).

So here I am wondering just what to do? Do I spend money and buy an audio manager from the asset store? Or is the built in audio control in Unity enough for me.

My opinion on this is that the built in one is most likely absolutely ok for my game. However... If I buy an audio manager, will it save me time, or perhaps make it easier for my Daughter to manipulate the sounds in the game? If either one of these is true, then I should buy one right?

I did find this one Blog review:-

http://blogs.unity3d.com/2014/11/27/the-sound-engineer-and-the-asset-store/

I like what this guy wrote, an opinion or two. I know this was a while ago and he was looking forward to the release of Unity 5.0 to get the new sound controls. We are of course there now, and I wonder what he thinks now?

He does mention several audio assets in the store, and I have been pondering a couple of them already. Watching their promotional youtube videos etc. I have also read a bunch of their comments.

Conclusion:
After watching the instructional/promotional videos for several of the audio assets. I believe that the Master Audio AA Sound is the one I am going to choose, as it looks like it will fulfill both the speed of use criteria AND the ability to allow my daughter to work in this area of the game.

Here is a link to this particular asset, currently at 45 dollars.
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/5607?utm_source=unity3d&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=ASContent_audio

I also looked at the now FREE audio manager called SoundManager Pro 3. But have not chosen this, because I believe the event system in Master Audio is going to be better for me personally.
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/9209?utm_source=unity3d&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=ASContent_audio

I hope to update at some point when I have had time to buy, import and use the Audio manager.

G'night
Da Voodoochief

Music in the Game via Unity #gamedev

Well today I wanted to get in some SFX and Music into Very Bunny Haha.

Oh oh, wait a minute. I should tell you why I feel I need to get some of the Audio into the game now.

Let's roll back to last Thursday evening. Where me and my family drove down to UCLA so we could watch a performance of Oklahoma by the Hooligan Theatre group. Starring in this performance is a neighbor of ours, who is such a lovely and talented young lady. Well her parents where there and we got to talking about stuff, and they also introduced me to another neighbor of ours, and he was really nice as well.

As it happens my neighbors are very talented musically, as one of them plays in an actual orchestra, and the other plays in a professional band overseas. I got to talking about things and they seem very interested in working on the game with me and Leilani. This could be awesome and so I want to get a better sample of the game being played with audio in it. Then I can demo the game to them and we can perhaps see what we can do for a collaboration!

Well now we roll forward to today and I am busy working on trying to get this Demo working.

Here I am though wondering quite how to set up my Music control for the game in Unity. I have created a Music Control script and I was initially going to add a public array to store all the audio (music) files and then drag all the music files to be used in the game into this array.

This method worries me a lot though.. wouldn't this simply load up front ALL my music tracks? This could easily eat many many MBs, and I do not want to have that happen when I get to tablets. So what to do?

My current theory is to store all the Music audio file names in an array instead and instantiate the music tracks I need when I need them. I am very hopeful that the one I am no longer playing will get cleaned up with garbage collection... but I am not confident.

I am not sure I have any other possibilities off the top of my head, and I only want to do this once, and of course efficiently. I think before I do any more actual coding I should read the Web and see what other people have written about this task.

G'night,
Da Voodoochief

New Mini Game for VBHh

Leilani came up with a new Minigame for Very Bunny Haha. This was only a few days ago, and I have to say I knocked it out Real fast.

Ok, so it is a fairly simple game of course, it in fact a variation of Breakout, the old arcade classic.

As you can see the bricks are made of veggies. The paddle is a Lime, and the ball is a Dragon Fruit, and that is why we called it 'Dragon Fruit Ninja'.

It is quite good fun, and the odd shaped ball makes some weird bounces of course!

Fun and only a couple of hours work. One more minigame into the game  (6th).

G'night
Da Voodoochief

A Full Cow #vbhhdev

This image above shows what I have been recently working on. Well actually it is something a bit extra that came out of what I have been working on.

I have enabled multi-part quests in Very Bunny Haha. So now I can for example be given a quest that has multiple parts to it and when I complete the last one I get the 'Finish' quest pop up. While I am doing the other elements/parts I get whatever other messages are appropriate.

I have added a Quest to feed 2 baby cows. When you do feed a cow I change it's type to a full cow, and this has two effects. Number one, is that it stops you just feeding the cow again. Number two is that it reads really well. I am very pleased with the way it has turned out to be honest.

Unexpected bonus from doing this multi-part quest feature.

G'night
Da Voodoochief

Back to Filling out #gamdev

The presentation is now completed. It was a success by all accounts. Though I believed I think more than my daughter that her presentation was going to be amazing. Still it is a relief to have that done with, and out of it has come some very useful marketing blurb.

I also got a recording of her practicing in the living room before heading off to the school for the presentation. I hope to use sections of that to help market the game. She is very dedicated to the game and I that shines through.

Now what?

Well now we go back to filling out the game. I have lots of Quests to create, and that means adding more content such as NPCs to give the quests out etc. This weekend while out camping (before the trip to ER) I was working on putting in 8 quests, but alas they are not quite finished yet. This will bring the number of quests up to 69 though :O Shocking numbers I think. Also I am now at 111 named objects in the world. That is just how busy we have been.

More Quests,
More Mini games,
More NPC characters,
More Audio,
More Music,
More accumulation of marketing materials,
etc etc

The list could be endless, but I will work on what I can, knowing each thing I add, makes the game more valuable and fuller.

I would say it is filling out nicely,

G'night
Da Voodoochief

First Focus #gamedev

Today I was thinking about the game development and what is my next most important aspect to get right. For me it is always (always has been so far) to work on gameplay. The way things balance and the way the player interacts with the game itself.

It then dawned on me that there are many other important aspects to creating a game and for other developers I would expect they would have other priorities initially (they can always come back to work on the gameplay and balance later).

So is it the way the game looks? Is it the way the game progresses? Perhaps it is the first experience the player gets that is most important (it certainly IS important).

Hmm, so many choices. I also wonder how important sound really is in a game when for most of a games development life there is no sound in the game, and then when it is, the game is muted so you can work on it around other people. I think that devalues sounds in a game myself, but I also do what I said above, as I work on the game around other people.

Conclusion:
Game dev is NOT a single path, it is a path with many forks and many starting points.

Have fun making your game and hope that some of that fun and dedication remains in the game for people to appreciate when you have it finished.

G'night
Da Voodoochief

ps. time to go away for a few days, be back Sunday

Tidy up for the Project Presentation

I have been working hard with Leilani to get this project all sorted out ready for her presentation on Thursday. I am so excited.

Saturday was amazing as we had tried to make sure we had all the ingredients (assets) sorted and on hand for the big Video we needed to make for her presentation. Instead of a powerpoint one, we decided that showing the game through video would more accurately show off all the hard work she has done.  Whereas static images would not show the live animated and interactive nature of putting artwork into a game.

I have to say that I expected it to take upwards of 9 hours, but in exactly half that time we were done.... We were shocked (especially me).

Now Leilani gets to practice her presentation and give me any notes on altering the video if required. So far I have not gotten any notes, and she is behind practice schedule (thanks to a surprise baby sitting stint on Monday night). Well anyway, she is going to present to the family tomorrow night. So tonight I just had to add some gameplay elements at the end of the video and finish with the splash screen artwork. BAM, Done... unless I get some notes tomorrow!

BONUS:
This bonus to doing this presentation has been that when I was trying to record elements for the video, I found issues. In fact I found a serious physics issue in the 2D Platforming sections, which I have now fixed. Along with numerous other small items. For the video to look good I had to fix these things and so the Bonus is that the game is now a lot more tidy than it was before this intervention.

Conclusion:
It is easy to spot which bits of the game need attention. When you show someone your game, pay special attention and note the areas you avoid going to, or the elements where you make excuses. These are the weak areas that need polish!

Ok, I am so tired, with lots to do at work and this as well, I need some more sleep,

G'night
Da Voodoochief

ps. regular posts should ensure from this weekend

More Free Music #gamedev

As you all know I have blogged a number of times about Kevin Macleods music at Incompetech.com.

Well there is also another wonderful creative genius with Music. Shane Ivers of https://www.silvermansound.com/free-music

You should check this place out if you are in the need of some great stuff. So far I have not had the chance to use any of Shanes music, but I expect in Very Bunny Haha I will find some opportunities.

Well worth checking out his site for free and paid music. Enjoy!

Da Voodoochief

Project before Game

A few days ago I asked my Daughter when her presentation was, being vaguely aware that it was near the end of March. Well obviously I realized we were marching through this month and erm... well we haven't got the project ready yet.

You see this game was born from my Daughters drawings and then when she had a Senior project to do for school, we came up with the bright idea of combining my coding and design with her artwork and story ideas. Hence Very Bunny Haha was born from that.

This still means that before the game comes the presentation for her Senior project though and I guess we have gotten carried away over the last 10 months and have not focused at all on the project stuff. GAH! Fortunately for us we have PLENTY of material to work with, haha. so much in fact that when we found out the presentation was only 5-7 minutes we groaned, as we feel we need 20 minutes minimum. Ahh well, onwards.

It hasn't taken long, but we have not just a plan, but also a script and I am busy recording various aspects of the game to go with her presentation. Tonight I have been grabbing plenty of characters animating from the game. Only I wanted them to be large, so I used the Scene view in Unity instead of messing with the camera.

Those in the picture are the ones I have grabbed so far. Now I will admit to these not being the greatest captures. Mainly because using the Scene gives me certain issues, like debug collisions showing up, sometimes over the animating character, which is a bit annoying. But at this stage of the game (less than a week to go!!!) I will make do. Also I hope that those lines showing interesting technical stuff might impress the people she is presenting too :)

OK, Time to go back to the videos. Oh, and YES, I will be posting various videos I conjure up from this once it is done with.

Conclusion: Next time, never forget the reason for working on something, and cover it as early as possible.

G'night
Da Voodoochief

Replayability in VBHh #indiedev

This is an odd word and not even a real word I believe. Feels like it is made up... yet... Everyone you say this word to that plays video games KNOWS what you mean. Amazing isn't it.

Well for some people replayability is of vital importance, yet when you first purchase a game you have no idea how playable it is, never mind replayable. I guess there are reviews from some good people who will point out this kind of thing, but if you just picked a game up off the shelf you simply would have no idea.

Yet it IS important. Just how important really depends on your gameplay. For example World of Warcraft Needs replayability. They have also built it in by adding so many classes and so many styles of play. People can keep playing it endlessly. Some games the first journey through the game is more important and it is likely the only one they will take through the game. Arcade style games that have added story and cinematics tend to be a mostly single play through experience.

I would also add though that some games need replayability for a whole new reason (ok, new in the last 4-5 years or so), and those games are the ones with some types of in game purchases. If you do not keep coming back then how will they make any money? Now I have to admit that a lot of those games with in game purchases update and add content to keep people coming back, but I view that differently than games that have replayability built in.

Now with Very Bunny Haha I would love the game to have real replay value. Though I do not think that is going to work for our plotline and our gameplay styling. With a single antagonist and quests that follow the plotline or are spun off from it, there is no major choice to progressing the story. We do have the plant growing aspect which can be dealt with in several ways, and in the First update after release I expect to get the animal farming into the game. This will also add some very valuable gameplay.

Conclusion:
I cannot build in replayability into VBHh directly, but there are a few endless factors built in already. I hope this is enough for the audience.

G'night
Da Voodoochief

Acorn Drop for VBHh #gamedev

Here is a picture of the newest Mini-game to be created for Very Bunny Haha. This one is called Acorn Drop.

That doodad at the top of the box moves of it's own volition back and fore across the screen. Then you have all those lovely acorns to drop into this Pachinko style game. I chose Acorns because of their interesting shape. They bounce all over the place, it is pretty cool.

In fact it is so cool I have made a development video... only I cannot work with my audio equipment till tomorrow at the earliest. It just arrived in the mail today. Leilani tested it already and says it works great, which is nice. anyway this development video shows the game mid dev, and what silly things happen when there is no restriction on releasing Acorns.

Oh yes, so the Acorns drop down the screen hitting the various fruits along the way. Wracking up a bonus score. Then when they get to the bottom they will explode.. or something multiply the score they have accumulated by the amount in the box they land in. Phew... Well then there is a score revealed for that acorn and once you have spent all 10 acorns you are done.

One final thing I am playing with is that each time an acorn hits a fruit peg, there is some audio naming the fruit. Such as 'Lemon' and 'Apple' etc. However I think it should be a childs voice... So I will likely be trying to find a volunteer for this one :)

g'night
Da Voodoochief

Forum Exposure #gamedev #community

Here is the Captains house. It is pretty crazy in here with all his memorabilia spread across the whole house like that. One might even call it cluttered.

Community. This is one of those buzzwords such as Social Media (dang that is two words... oh well). It is also something I believe to be important as I want VBHh to succeed, it could be helped by having a community that believed and enjoyed the product. So of course I will have to use Social Media to try and find and Engage with people to join this games community.

I have been thinking about this the last several days. I believe the First people in VBHhs community will be the testers for the game. Currently that consists of me and Leilani, but we will get more. Having testers is really where all this thought process started as I need a way for testers to interact with us online. To report bugs and ask for features and make any other suggestions etc. Somehow that information needs to get to me. Email is a bit cumbersome in my opinion. So why not use a Forum?

With a Forum for the game started now it could generate interest in the game alongside show people real progression on bug fixes and also how we listen to ideas for the game. Also the thought of 'why NOT start now?' jumps to mind.

I started trying to add my own forum to the www.verybunnyhaha.com web site. Alas I got confused by the set up and I figured there must be a better way. There is in the form of Free Forums... Yes it's true. So after quite a lot of research I am going to create one soon and it will reside on the www.Zetaboards.com site.

I will talk about it when it goes live some time in the near future. I will also discuss why I chose Zetaboards at that time,

Laters
Da Voodoochief

Bugs List and More #gamedev

So a few things in this Blog post.

#1 is that I have been busy making a bug list today as I tested out ALL the quests in the game. Now I wish I had tracked the amount of time it took me to complete all the quests.. perhaps next time. Anyway I made the list of mostly spelling errors and a few misnamed objects etc. Not too bad at all. It will be good to fix them, as a clean game can be tested any time.

Which brings me to:

#2 Testing any time. After a discussion with Leilani I realize we need several things in the game. As we want to kickstart this game at some point in the near future we discussed rewards for backers. It is my opinion that you cannot ever consider this kind of thing too early in a games creation. So we came up with several things, such as pets (simple enough to code and draw really, but great value). Then we came up with monthly holiday quest lines (brilliant), and perhaps we could skew a few of these for backers purposes. Oh oh, back to the point of #2... So I have been testing the game because we have also been talking about getting the game played by random people. I would call the game Pre-pre Alpha as there is so much  missing, though mostly sound and a few more quests....

and so:

#3 To that end I reckon we will have to put a forum on the www.verybunnyhaha.com web site, and perhaps even the downloadable executable.

Exciting times to even be able to discuss this kind of thing. As it means it is getting closer and closer.

G'night
Da Voodoochief

Pop Up Nameplates #gamedev

This is my newest feature added to the game. This pops up when you are touching something. Obviously the name that pops up is also relevant to the object I am currently touching. I also have a setup where you could touch 5 things at once... though so far I am only really able to touch two things at any one time.

So Why the pop up placard, name plate?

When I first implemented touching objects in the game I had them alpha cycle in and out. then I changed that later to darkening their color instead. But there were always problems with this approach.
1. Some of the objects looked bad cycling in this way.
2. When I introduced multi-sprite objects, only the first spriterenderer would alter it's colors. The children do not inherit this change.
3. I then created my first animating sprite and they were even less cooperative, as the base spriterenderer would not cycle as the color was being controlled from the animation.

I always knew that I needed to do something. So a few days ago I came up with the idea of just for now putting the list of objects you are touching at the top of the screen somewhere. Then in discussion with a friend of mine, he suggested I place it near the player. This ended up being the approach I have taken. What's cool is that the placard actually moves as you brush past objects. This is because I place the placard half way between the players origin and the objects origin. It gives it a really professional look.

I also put that faded back plate under the text, and I can color that if I want to show specific traits of the objects you are touching, and it scales based on long the string is.

I did have other ideas for how to handle showing what you are touching. They are a lot more complicated than this one, such as:- Having a render buffer and render the object you are touching (it's whole hierarchy) and then write an outline shader, or possibly a fill shader. finally take that buffer and render it over the objects you are touching. There are many possibilities with this technique, but I do feel it would be a bit of a resource hog on some platforms.

I really think this is a major addition to a problem I have had since I started working on this game.

G'night
Da Voodoochief

Color Scheme Demographic #gamedev

That image above shows my Main page, or title page. As you can see it has a few fluffy touches and the wallpaper makes it feel very homely. However I am going to talk about the Color scheme of the font, menu and buttons.

Color has power. It can influence your mood, how you feel and also how you attach to things.
http://www.colour-affects.co.uk/psychological-properties-of-colours

This Title page has color in it. I think it is quite lovely, but I have concerns about the color scheme as far as it might affect my potential player base. Now Very Bunny Haha is a children's game essentially, though I sincerely hope children of all ages play the game as it is pleasant rewarding and fun. With that being said Girls tend to gravitate towards the pinker color scheme and Boys towards Blue... or that is the traditional sense anyway.

I also wonder is this real? I do think that Teenage boys will tend to veer away from games that are predominantly Pink, but my game isn't pink. Just this title page and the Menus within. The game has a much larger color Spectrum. I really want to reach as many demographics as possible, so this is important.

Should I make an alternative color Scheme that highlights Blues? I do feel I could do that, but the VBHh logo will stay the color it is now.

Interestingly I have an idea that I could use both the Pink and Blue Menu color schemes and base it on whether or not you choose to play Jack or Jill (the choice comes up after you choose new game). I am not sure if I will pursue this, but it is pretty easy to implement, and could give the game a very different feel. It is a pity the game cannot SEE the player and know if it is a boy or girl.

Another idea could be for me to ask the player before this menu appears what their favorite color is, and possibly have several color schemes for the Menus. Hmm, I like this, but it is certainly more work, as well as asking an initial question before they have even seen the game played.

Such a Dilemma.

G'night
Da Voodoochief

VeryBunnyHaha Homepage #indiedev

This is the New Very Bunny Haha homepage as seen from the Web Serif editor I use to create it with. This page also shows off some of the new artwork for VBHh as well.

It is a fairly simple, but I think tidy page. In the coming months we will add several features to the Site and articles about the development, including concept artwork and more videos.

G'night
Da Voodoochief

Quest Trees Visually #gamedev

I was chatting with my Daughter several days ago about adding more quests into the game. Not just adding new quests, but also linking on a few quests that we have already designed and placing them into the Quest tree,

It is ok Having 100 Quests, but they also have to be unlocked in a good way. A good way can mean several different things.

 Such as logical progression... A quest to fetch something moves onto a new quest to deliver that item. Then to round it off it could finish up with you taking the delivery money back to the initial quest giver. A nice little island of a quest sequence.

There is also Association quests... these can be just about anything. For example you get a quest that has a Hammer in it and you have to get some nails, but also you get a quest that has you dancing to some Hammer time music. They are not naturally related, but by Worldly association (general knowledge) they can be partners.

Another aspect to Quest trees is actually HAVING a tree. So here we are with a Sharp Axe, but I knew I wanted to have a Blunt Axe and then get it sharpened and onwards to do several more Axe quests. I couldn't quite figure out where to put this in the tree to make it seem like the world is opening up, as that IS an issue with a quest line. It comes to an end eventually.

Along that way you want to expand the number of quests available to a player so they feel like the world is opening up to them, a wonderful feeling in my humble opinion.

This image above shows my Quest tree in it's new and current form. It was not always so spread. In fact it was downright bad. While I was busy trying to add new quests and not knowing where to add them to the tree. I figured I would put them into an excel file so I could get a more visual overview of them. WOW, did it shock me. I was so linear with them. Only a few quests ever opened up more and then they simply ran till they ended or went daily. After having this it was much, much easier to place a few new quests more meaningfully into the tree, including the Axe quests.

Creating the visual tree was essential in my mind to allowing me to get a true overview of what the player can experience at any point in the game. It tells me what will be available when etc.

There are probably other ways to do this, but excel was very easily available to me.

Good luck in creating meaningful quest trees.
Da Voodoochief

Announcing Very Bunny Haha #gamedev

I have just received my wonderful Very Bunny Haha Logo artwork. This means it is Finally time to announce the game on my Sorcerygames Home page.

http://www.sorcerygames.com/

The main Logo picture artwork is now on that site to show off how cool it is. I will be posting a lot more of the artwork in the coming week, though I have to go out of town fro a few days this week and I believe that will slow down my posting till later in the week. I shall do my best to keep posting though.

I have the title page artwork, and also an Icon and a few other pieces that will allow me to brand the game in a good way. I am looking forward to adding this artwork to my videos and screenshots in the future.

Hope ya like it as much as I do.

G'night,
Da Voodoochief

Hashtags in my Blog Posts Title Report #gamedev #blogging

Here is a summary of what has happened in the last couple of weeks. You can see that Mondays when people go back to work my Blog appears to get more popular hehe. Like most web pages I presume.

This is effectively 3 weeks and as you can obviously see the LAST week has a higher average on every day compared to the previous two.

The IMPORTANT thing is that the last week of that graph was when I was adding a Hashtag to each of my post titles. I alternated with #gamedev and #indiedev. I don't really know any others, well perhaps #gamedesign might be one I should use as well.

Still one cannot get over the stark reality that it made a difference. I will also add that for the first #gamedev, my first hashtag used got me a startling response. My most visited day in the last year and I got 127 visitors.... YAY!

I think it is a HUGE success and I intend to use them from now onwards. Though there has not been a significant jump since this first week .. in fact my visitor numbers have remained about the same. Which was a bit of a surprise, as I expected it to continually grow for a while, in fits and starts perhaps depending on my posts. hmm.

In Summation:-
Using Hashtags in my Blog post titles got me more visitors the first week.
Following week did not increase the new viewership number.

I hope you bloggers find this information useful and if anything changes, I will do another post.

G'night
Da Voodoochief

Minigame Discovery in VBHh #gamedev #indiedev #prism @NCHsoftware

This is a little video I knocked out a few days ago. This is important to me for several reasons.

#1 I have been struggling to create videos of the game. Every time I put what I had recorded with Fraps into Pinnacle video editing software. It made it look VERY pixelated. The main reason I think is because pinnacle could not handle non-standard resolutions.

As you can see I fixed this by using Prism by NCH software to convert the video into a standard 720p format. Pinnacle was then AOK with it.. except well....

#2 Pinnacle the video editing software I use has issues playing some video streams back all the way through properly. The initial .avi file I created for this would play properly till about half way through, and then just stop playing the video, but keep playing the audio. Gah!

I fixed that by using Prism again to this time convert to different movie formats. In the end Pinnacle really worked well with the .mov format. Phew, another annoyance averted.

#3 I was successful at recording ME. I used the laptop microphone and I am very happy with the results. To get the recording to match what was going on I had Wavepad Sound Editor open in one half of the screen and pinnacle playing the video in the other half. It worked out so great for me that this was my second take.

#4 I have been promising more videos of the game for a while now and when I have tried to create them they have been generally bad. Finally I feel like I have the method down to create the videos with enough quality that I won't be embarrassed or show the game in a bad light.

I am sure some of you are wondering why I use Pinnacle when I seem to have so many issues with it. Well I am only on version 12 (current is 19 I believe), and I love the way it works. The simplicity of it's timeline just gels with me. I can knock out great stuff with overlays and multiple audio tracks so fast. I just don't want to give that up.

Unusually for me I have listed several tools that I use for making videos of the game like this. I hope anyone else looking for these kinds of tools finds this information useful.

There is one last tool I do recommend. It is called CN Levelator. I use it on my recorded voice work as it cleans it up better than anything else out there imho.

Ok, done for now,
Have fun,
Da Voodoochief

Too Many Quests? #gamedev

Check out that image above. I'll bet like me you are very surprised to see so many objects with exclamation marks above them.

How did this happen? Surely it isn't right? What do those plings mean?

I'll start by answering the last question first, and then in reverse order. Those plings mean that the object they are above has a quest for you to take.
They are not right. In fact only Chucky the Beaver in the middle of the image near his large stump home should have a quest to give you.
It happened because of a programming change I have made. It is an important one as it happens for a couple of reasons I shall talk about in a bit. The short answer to why do all these stumps have a quest for me is because they ALL think that they are Chucky. Personally I think they are delusional.

When I first saw this screen I was stumped (ta dah!) as to what had happened. Then it dawned on me that a change I had very recently made had caused this effect.

Going to the Code now...
In my code I have an enum array that lists ALL of the objects used in the game. I use a prefix like 'W_' for a world object (house, tree etc), or a 'C_' for a consumable (pie, apples etc). Lastly I have a 'S_' prefix for seeds. Here is a portion of my array. (the yellow NONE was not there previously).
 
public enum ITEM_IDS : int {
  NONE,
  GOLD,
  SILVER,
  U_AXE,
  U_SLEDGEHAMMER,
  U_SHOVEL,
etc...
  END
};

The way I knew how many elements were in this array was to use the 'END' for loops and creation of arrays to match this list. It works great for those kinds of things. However I also used it for an INVALID object ID. I need this as I have objects in the world that do not really need to be anything. Walls, some plants etc. So I set them to the default END and have been testing for that as an early out when a player uses an object for instance.

There is a problem with using an ID at the end of the enum array to mark my objects as nothing. That is when I add a new ID into the game it goes before the END... which means that any objects I had marked as END now think they are the new ID.. GAH! This isn't a good solution obviously.

The Fix:
I finally got around to fixing this in the last week. I created the 'NONE' as the first enum in the array and have set all my default objects to use that. It will not change no matter how many more IDs I add to the array. So no more fixing up IDs on objects in the game each time I add a new one. Phew.

The Down Side:
Well there was a down side. Adding the NONE to the beginning of the array meant that ALL my objects in the game IDs have been increased by one. So I had to go through every single object in the game and set them to what they should be again (I set them using the Unity editor and a public value). This will be the last time I will have to do it though, so that is a good thing.

Laters
Da Voodoochief

Those Hiding Eyes... Will I be noticed? #gamedev

This video shows off the new animation I have created.

It is of a creature (Hedgehog? Porcupine perhaps?) hiding in a very large pile of leaves. This is not simply a background animation however. I am hoping that it is enough to attract the players attention and they will go over to the pile to see what it is all about.

In fact the player will get a Huge surprise as they open up another part of Very Bunny Haha. This is part of the Discovery system and I hope that when the player finds this they will be in awe of the Discovery reveal animations that then take place. That video will be published once I get a commentary sound overlay completed for it.

I have been having a lot of fun these last few days working on animations... I actually seem to be getting much better AND faster at working on them now, thanks to Unity.

G'night
Da Voodoochief

Rope Swing Test Part 2 #indiedev

Well here we are again, this time I have a video of the finished Test product. It all works rather well (as good as I had hoped). Though you will see some anomalies in the video, but they all have a good logical reason to be there.

As you can see When I attach to the Rope some times I am rotated to the side. This is in fact because I take the Rope segments rotation and put it on the player. So these segments have a rotation that puts the player on his side. In fact all the segments apart from the very last one (which is the right way up) are rotated in a odd fashion.

We now have the Rope launching out from the player in the direction he is facing and IF there is an Anchor point detected it fires directly towards it,.Pretty nifty eh!

When the player jumps off the rope you can see that he will always correct his rotation in a lovely smooth way and land on his feet, just like a cat!

This completed this test App and I have passed along the whole project to my friend. I will now do support for him until he gets the parts hooked up into his game. I hope it is soon s this app gets me excited about all the Rope Swinging possibilities.

G'night
Da Voodoochief

New Flower to Grow #gamedev

Firstly I am sure you will see that I have put a HASHTAG into the title of this blog post. It seems simply writing about game development is not enough to attract an audience. I would like to attract an audience for all my blogging, and I selfishly believe that some people will even find some of my posts interesting, or enlightening or hopefully entertaining. Obviously if you are reading this you probably know my posts already. So I am trying something a little different. I have noticed that many of the blogs and twitter feeds I read always use such hashtags, so perhaps I need one as well. - I will update everyone with it's results at some point.

Now onto the meat of this post.

This is my new flower as drawn by Leilani.

Looks a bit of a mess doesn't it. Looks like I attacked it with a scalpel or some such sharp device. This is what the flower looks like now I have chopped it up into it's animating segments. I need to do this so I can do a couple of animations for Very Bunny Haha, that is to have it grow from a seed and also have it Dance once it has fully grown. You should recognize the dance when I have it done (shhh spoilers).

As you can see in the above image it is from the Unity Animation frame. This is all the segments and their properties opened up to show how much work it is to animate this lovely sunflower. I have all the usual Transform properties and I also have a spriterender property on the eyes and smile, so I can make them appear and disappear in the animation. Pretty neat eh!

I already have the growing animation, and if I knew how to make a Gif of it I would. But it isn't the most interesting animation, and I think in the game it will play out over 24 hours... so ot going to be fast eh!!

I love this part of using Unity. It is using a tool to do the job that would be hard for me (heck I am a programmer really) in any other way. It is also provided for Free right there in their editor. Lovely eh.

I will get a video of the plants growing at some point from the game, but that is likely a few weeks away.

Well I am done, need some kip,
G'night
Da Voodoochief

Finger Helper Redo and Button Text

I have two things to mention today.

1.The Finger Help that I use to show people points of interest when they are new to the game has not been great. I couldn't quite put my finger on what was wrong, though each time I wanted to set and use a Finger Help I found I had issues.

There were several reasons for my having issues I now realize. One was that I could only have one Finger helper, and I simply moved that around, which caused me annoyances when trying to use it in multiple places. The second reason is that I really didn't like the way the code felt.. the class was dependent on another class creating it and yet then it was permanent etc.

I solved all my issues today though after a discussion with my daughter. It brought home the fact that I NEEDED to be able to display multiple Finger Helpers. This was then a catalyst to rewriting the code and making everything feel so much better. Now I can have this:-

As you can see in the Image above. I now have in this situation two helpers and I actually have a third just off the left side of the screen. This is very early on in the game and they al point out how you can leave this scene and get into another one. Great stuff. The code is not only cleaner, but also smaller and much more object oriented. Double Win I say.

2. Button Text
Now I have an issue currently with my buttons. Weird thing to say I reckon but let me show you the buttons I have from my Inventory overlay.

Now I placed them next to each other as the rest of the screen does not play an important role in this issue. What you can see however with these buttons is that the Cancel and Use both butt up against the right side of the button background. The button help (A and B) images are simply placed on top. That is why the Text is right side justified. I really need to leave a small border so the text does not butt up against the side, but I cannot figure a way to do that. If this was the left side then I could simply add a space into the text string. On the right side the Unity system simply ignores it. I added a '.' and that was alright, except now there is a period there, bah!

I am not sure what to do about this at all, so I will just have to leave it till I learn more or have an epiphany.

G'night all,
Da Voodoochief