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