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