R.G.B. Blocking It Out

Hello again,

So, lately I've been running into trouble with the game. The problem that I'm having is that I'm not exactly sure how to make puzzles correctly with the tools I have given myself to make the puzzles with. We are adding another feature to the game that should fix everything up, but we're going to try a different tactic for a little bit.

What we're going to try to do is block out some levels right now on paper. We're going to try to make puzzles that are actually fun on paper, and see what we need to be able to make those puzzles. The main problem we've been having is working slow motion into levels so it actually has a meaning. Right now, all it does is make time go slower. The problem with that is that you have very fast reaction times, and nothing to do with them. You literally can not interact with the world while under the effects of slow motion. So, a way to fix this? Consumable power ups. Consumables will let you have a different effect regardless of the light that is currently giving you an effect. This way, you can have two effects going at the same exact time. Pretty nifty. It will also give us a lot more freedom in the way we make puzzles. Hell, we could just make puzzles with only consumables in them.

Anyway, that was my short and sweet update.

Until next time

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R.G.B. Update 2

Hello again!

So, I think I'm just going to do a bit of an update and a rehash on what we had been thinking about doing in the last update.

The first thing we changed was what happens when you are under the effect of a yellow light, or a "slow motion" light. We still want yellow to be slow motion because anything else just doesn't seem to fit. However, we ran into a problem with this. Messing with acceleration and velocity in the character controller makes for a very messy time. There's some really weird math going on all over the place, and it didn't seem worth the hassle. That being said, the yellow light is still going to be slow motion. The character will just move slowly instead of moving the some speed relative to real time. If that makes any sense at all.

Next up, we started tackling the levitation script problems. I'm actually still doing stuff for this, but it's going pretty good so far. We have actually got the cubes to stop pushing through the walls. Yay! I still want to clean that part up though. I know it should be possible to do, but the math is just a little iffy right now. When I get it down, it will be pretty smooth though. Actually, I think I just figured it out... Nope, no I didn't. Onward with the update!

The other updates that we did were also with the physics engine. Mainly, the ability to flick stuff is now in the game. Which is actually really fun to play around with. Flicking too fast can be a problem though, so we're going to find a cap on that. It may look weird if a cube was supposed to be thrown really fast, but I think people will get over it.

So yeah, I think that's pretty much it. After the physics, I'm not sure what we'll tackle. Maybe reprogramming the light manager, because the new shaders make some simplifications possible. So I'll be doing that.

Anyway, I have to get back to doing a paper.

Until next time 

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R.G.B. Update 1

Hello again,

I'm not sure what stage of development R.G.B was in last time I posted, so I'm just going to give you guys the whole spiel.

So, basically, the point we are in development is making cool ideas up while programming the ones we have already. Also, by "we" I mean me and Adam. Yes, I let him in on this game because I am experienced enough to take on his crazy ideas. I didn't let him even know about the last one because I needed experience more than a working game. If that makes any sense. Also, if you're wondering where Patrick is. He comes in later if we want to fancy it up a bit. Right now we are using Unity's in engine cubes and other such things.

Anyway, back to the progress.

One problem that I was having was making the light's edges hard. Usually when you put a light into the world it kind of dissipates as it goes outward. This isn't very good for this type of game because we need the player to know they're inside of a light's range when they get into the range. To combat this problem I did a little dabbling in the shader side of things. Now we have pretty lights that don't destroy frame rates. Yay!

The next problem I'm trying to fix is the acceleration of the player when it goes under a yellow light, which is slow motion. The problem stems from the fact that the First Person Controller script wasn't made for going in slow motion. So I have to go in and tweak the script for proper acceleration. It's all going swimmingly, except for acceleration which is still in slow motion. So I'm just going to jack it up while under slow motion effects. Then put it back to normal afterwards.

After I fix that, I have to fix the levitation script so it doesn't let you put stuff through floors and walls and such. Then after that it's just ideas that we have to make up for cubes and stuff. That's when the fun part of making the levels comes in.

So yeah, that's my little report on the whole deal. Now I have to make questions up for an interview assignment

Until next time

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R.G.B.

Hello fine people of the universe.

We launched our game to the silent applause of about 6 chirping crickets, but hey, I don't give up easily. In moving forward we are taking all of the mistakes we made in every aspect of the game and not doing the same thing. That's on both the marketing and technical side of things. I'm (Grant) going to be programming things so it becomes very very easy to start throwing new levels together. I am also starting with marketing now with tweeting people and getting screenshots out there. So, without further ado, the details on the game.

Our next game is going to be a puzzle game. In this puzzle game there are lights scattered about that are different colors. When you go into the range of a certain colored light it will give you the effect associated with that color. Lights can mix too. If you mix red and green you make yellow. If you go into the yellow light you only get the effect of the yellow light and lose the effect of the parent lights. So yeah, it's all good and fun. Making the puzzles for this game is going to be really fun and really challenging.

Until next time,

Grant Oberhauser

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Almost done! Seriously...

Hello guys,

We should be done with this game by midnight tomorrow. That's the deadline that I put down for myself and I plan to stick with it. Unless there are glaring holes or glitches in the game obviously. That means it's time to strap it down and get coding. The thing that I'm finishing up on right now is the sensitivity settings in the pause menu. The tutorial decided to stop working though, so I had to go and figure out what that was all about and fix it. It should be good now though. Now I'm making sure the levels all cooperate so I can release a patch for that. After I fix that I am going to rearrange the main menu because we are getting rid of it. Everything that is needed is accessible from the pause menu. Everything that's not in the pause menu can be handled with code. Such as figuring out if the player is listening to their own music, then we can turn off our sounds in game so the music isn't ruined by atmospheric tracks that we have going. Other stuff I want to do is get rid of annoying little glitches and details. This is my list so far:

• Make the main menu have screens on either side of the main part.
• Make the map list able to be scrolled on when you push on the names.
• Make the pause menu select when your finger comes up, not when it first touches. (it can be annoying)
• Make the options menu have names of the buttons underneath them.
• Make the enemies look like they are shooting when they attack you. 
• Make the enemies more fun to play against.
• Make the enemies kill you more. (more health draining and from farther away)
• Make the animation screen skipping more fluid. (no that big of a problem)

Some of these problems can be fixed after release. It's always good to have good first impressions though. Especially since the first people this game is going to is straight to the press. 

Anyway, back to programming

Until next time

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Almost done... still

Hello people,

Now, before I get into this post I must preface that I am indeed almost done. I have a few things that are going to be hard to do, but they shouldn't take too long. I nailed down a lot of stuff I wanted to change in the last week and uploaded that update. For example, I changed how the cross hair aims. Now you don't have to be an insanely good player to be able to kill stuff. You can just kill the stuff you want to kill, simple. We also changed an annoying glitch that happened when you would pause and unpause a lot, it basically froze up your screen and you would have to quit back to the main menu. Another glitch that we fixed was the menu not being "locked down" I guess. It would offset a little bit each time you went back an forth between screens. However, we didn't just fix glitches this time around. We also added a system that changes the quality of your game so it will always run at a higher framerate than 10 FPS. It will also bring the quality up a level if the framerate gets above 24 FPS.

As for our next update we cleaned up a few things we probably should have stuck into the last update. We didn't know if we were going to get the glitches fixed in the first place though because one of them was an engine problem and the other one was stuck in a very messy hunk of code. The one that was an engine problem was actually a problem with the camera, basically the edges in the world would all look very jagged and ugly. It turned out to be a problem with the Z-buffer of the camera, or in laymans terms the render distance was too far. So I pushed the start clipping edge out a bit and the problem went away. The other glitch was the camera being a glitchy piece of shit while the spaceship was rolling.

That's pretty much everything I have to share with you guys. Also the fact that we didn't die in a horrible accident, that didn't happen either.

Until next time.

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I Finally Figured It Out

Okay, so I was browsing YouTube just a few minutes ago and looked at my videos for some reason. After that I looked at an old video I posted for the game just for shits and giggles. While I watched the video I noticed something. I noticed why I don't like the game anymore. I don't like it because it's too face paced. Everything is really fast and you can't get close to your enemies, they are simply distant objects that you shoot. I think the reason I liked it before was the fact that you could get up close with the enemies. There was an actual danger of hitting the enemies before that there isn't now. Now you fly a good distance away from the enemies. For this reason I want to bring back the slow motion ability. It would take to long to implement and people would get mad though. So I won't.

The video I'm talking about is here:


Until next time

Oh yeah, who's the Russian dude that's always searching for this blog?

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Escaping details

Hello again everybody,

You know that feeling when you are close to finishing something but there are only small things to do left? That's pretty much me right now. Except I have a lot of really small things to do. Some of which I don't want to do at all. Basically because it takes a while to do these said things.

Off the top of my head I need to:

• Make the rest of the sky boxes
• Make the settings in the main menu have sensitivity options.
• Remove the sound button from the pause menu
• Possibly add sensitivity to the pause menu
• Make enemies look like they're shooting 

Now that I think about it, that's not much stuff to do at all. I'm going to get cracking on it and see where it takes me. Then I'll remember 10 other things I need to do.

Until next time 

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Well, that took longer than expected

Hello errbody

Yesterday I put on the last touch of what I wanted on version 1.2. All of the changes include a cinematic camera mode, changed skybox for Earth that actually has stars in it, and changed pointer dealy-os. I think that's pretty much it aside from a few tweaks here or there. A change I want to implement in the future is a tutorial that teaches you how to fight, even if it doesn't let you fight and simply tells you. After that I would like to put in skyboxes that have stars in it for all of the maps and not just Earth's. After that I don't really have much else to do other than add sounds which won't happen, I want to see how people will respond to a relatively realistic space game that has no sounds or explosions with flames.

Now I have to go and figure out what I haven't studied for good enough and study it.

Until next time

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The Clunk

Hello all!

I just wanted to update you guys on what we will be working on for the next couple of weeks.

First off I don't exactly want to work on what I've been working on lately. It starts to get a bit bland after a little while. Because of this I have started working on the cinematic camera mode again. However, I am approaching it differently this time. Instead of having a bunch of different cameras that will turn on and off when needed I will have one camera that I tell where to go. So, for example, if I am flying next to a wall the camera will attach to the wall and watch the player from there until A. they are out of sight or B. they are too far away. After that the script will calculate a new position to place the camera and so on and so forth.

After I get that done I will go back to the tutorial and fix that stuff up. I don't really like to do that type of stuff now though. I found out why this is and I will try to explain to the best of my ability.

Okay, imagine you are going to make a building all by yourself. You have the basic ideals of how to make a building down and everything so you just start building your building. You start adding the foundation and then the supports and the walls. As you build you find flaws in your building design though. You don't have time to fix these flaws so you just build around them, making an even clunkier building. This goes on for a while and you start finding flaws in even the places that you built around flaws with. Eventually you don't even want to work on this building anymore because it feels dangerous to even set foot inside of the building. The building just feels like a mess. You know have enough knowledge to make a building from the foundation up the correct way, yet you have to finish this building first before going on to the next building.

This is the stage that I'm at right now. I would like to write more about it but I need to get to bed.

Until next time

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Beta!

Hello guys,

Yesterday I updated the Beta to version 1.1. I added in a tutorial map that you must play before you play any of the maps. It's basically just for setting your sensitivity for the accelerometer. I also added Justin's name to the credits. I completely forgot about him. That sounds mean. I didn't exactly forget about him, I forgot he helped us with concept art. Is that better? Anyway, I added his name to the list, moved an asteroid, and found out how to save stuff. Expect stats to be saved more in the up coming updates. I would like to save stats, like best score and what not. I would also like to save the calibration so if the device is dropped or not in the range of calibration while the game is starting we can simply use the saved calibration for the calibration for that time around. Also, another thing about saving stats. Float variables don't save correctly for me when I use player prefs in Unity. The way I got around this was multiplying the variable I wanted to save by 1000 then saving it as an integer. When I asked for it back I just divide it by 1000 again and apply it. I may loose some data this way but if I need more data I can just multiply by a bigger number.

A thought that I have been having for the game is a race mode. I won't add it until a little bit later when we have all of the main glitches fixed and finish the tutorial level. Which could take about a month at this rate. I'm not sure if I would just want to release the game then though. Probably not, I think of us kind of like Valve. We take a while to do stuff, but in the end it will always work good. It won't be half assed. At least what I do won't be half assed. What Patrick does might be half assed. I don't get why he doesn't spruce up his models now though. He has time to do it because I am taking a little while on this game. It would be kind of a pain to update all of the models though, so it might be for the better...

Anyway,  I have to go get my Calculus homework done.

Until next time

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I'm done, I'm finally done

Hello all,

Okay, so I just took the second part of my final for AP Comp Sci. 100% sure that I failed it. I don't care though. I just want this stupid class to end. It doesn't teach you much of anything that you can't just find on the internet. All of the resources are actually free. Yep, that's right. 100% free. The teacher it only there to grade your shit you fail. Honesty, if you wanted to take this class you could download the book and away you go. Learning what AP Comp Sci students learn without even having to spend 1 cent of yours, or the states money. Complete joke.

Anyway, we have currently, as of this morning, got 28 total user downloads and 19 current devices that have the game on it. This is a steady climb from yesterday with 9 current devices. So if you are sharing our game, please continue to do so to get it out there and get our name out there. You guys are awesome :D

We are also making a tutorial map to help teach how to play the game. Some special scripts need to be made and what not. So this map should be done in maybe 2 weeks. Actually more than that, because I have to go work for my dad again. Time to say goodbye to efficient game development and good Calculus grades, and time to say hello to mostly constant anger :D

Until next time

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Beta?

So, for the last few days I have been setting up the game for a beta release this weekend. I only have to change a few things in game, take a few screenshots and make a video for the page. I have also successfully communicated with our website, which is freaking awesome. Hopefully I won't have to take that feature out due to DDOSing the server, then again, hopefully I do. Actually, that would suck. At least we know a lot of people would be playing the game then :D

Anyway, I need to go take a few debugging things out of the game and change up some maps. Then it's onward to beta!

Until next time.

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Well... That didn't go as planned

Hello again everybody!

So, we haven't actually released the game yet due to a lot of hectic stuff I have been doing lately. Such as finishing an AP Comp Sci class in a week. It's pretty easy mainly because programming is just adding on new things you can do then incorporating that into your code. Pretty easy if you know what you are doing. So there's that class and Calculus which is anally raping me so I have to study it pretty much every day, also the final for Calc is coming up soon too so I have to prepare for that. I am feeling good for that though because I have a lot of the 'Calculus' down, I know how to do Calculus. It's just the stuff I will have to memorize that will get me. Like the derivative of Cos(x), that one is easy, it's just -Sin(x). The ones that will get me are like the derivative of Tan(x) and Csc(x) and those other different ones.

Anywho, I should be getting back to development after all of the finals are done. My schedule should die down a little bit. With Comp Sci out of the way it should be smoother sailing. All of my other classes are easy, such as SIG, English, POE (joke of a class), Physics. Then I can set my sights on Calc.

Also, I had the feeling that our game isn't enough of a game to release it yet. I'm not sure if people will want more of a game, more features and flashing lights. Maybe we should just release it and see if people do actually want a hard game that goes until you die. A game like the classics, but better graphics. Our game would be akin to space invaders. That's a nice thought, we made a space invaders remake.

Until next time

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