Spawn managing

This week I started getting down to business again, although it will make my grades struggle or induce a lack of sleep. Anyway, I have started working on the spawn managing system. I almost have it done, but it is having trouble figuring out which spawn point to use. The enemies are just spawned out of the same spawn point, it's probably an easy fix though.

After I get that done, I have to spruce a lot of stuff up. Like textures and what not. I am also going to put in a cinematic camera mode so we can make a trailer for the game. I am going to leave it in for the final build so people that get the game can make cool trailers/trick videos, or possibly even report a glitch from a different angle if needed.

Anyway, that is all I wanted to share.

Until next time

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I see the light

Hello again,

Since my last post I have made a pointing system that points to the enemy ships on the map. This system has a few glitches as of right now. It used to work great but I needed to swap out the ship we are using for the enemy ships and everything got screwed up. I am working on getting it back into a working state right now.

Other than that I haven't really done much because I have a job that takes up way too much time. Honestly, if I didn't have that stupid job I would be almost done with the game. The game would be in the polishing up stage. We would probably have it distributed for beta testing and everything would be going very smoothly. Instead a whole year of hard work and determination is hanging by a thread. I feel if we don't get this game out before Christmas we will miss our window. Here, let me lay this all out for you.

We don't have any money for advertising or getting the word out in any way at all. This raises the problem of the games proneness to sink to the bottom of the Android Marketplace. This however can be combated by releasing the game before Christmas, this makes sure the marketplace advertises the game for us by putting it on the 'new' list. Thereby making hype around the game and fueling a word of mouth advertising platform. If the game is released after this window we miss the biggest opportunity we will have for over a year. In this time a game such as ours could be created by someone that has more money and is able to get the word out better about their game. This is what I fear. This is why a near minimum wage job isn't worth it.

Now you should understand my frustration against how dense my parents are. This job also seems as if I will never be able to get out. The only way would be to release the game and make another form of cash flow and making my parents see that they should have a little more faith and stick to the plan.

Edit from future Grant: This marketing strategy would have been a terrible idea, but what did you know, you didn't do your research yet. Run along now.

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Re-motivation

Well, I haven't posted here for a while and I am sorry for that. The thing is, school started about a month ago and development has slowed to a crawl. So much of a crawl that my parents have told me that it needs to be done by the end of October or I will need to get a job. That was all fine and dandy. I still worked on it when I had time. Until today, my parents made me go to my dads shop today to work. Absolute worst job ever. This has sparked a flame in me, one they might not have wanted to spark. This act of putting me to work has told me that they doubt me, this is my fuel. I run on doubt. I run on challenges. This little bit of doubt has put me into high gear. I am now going to destroy this programming and prove them wrong. Nobody doubts me and sees me give up.

Until next time.

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Plowing through

Hey guys, I have a few things to update you on that are pretty major. We are getting close to a "beta-able" build. Actually we could probably bring the build we have now to beta. The reason being I let it all go yesterday and programmed the fuck out of the game. The things I programmed yesterday (and the day before) were a start menu for starting up a level, a start animation, rockets take health away from enemies, rockets explode with a flare (which looks awesome). These are only the major updates, other updates consist of stuff that were minor bugs that most probably wouldn't care about. I might make a video for this build, don't quote me on this. It would be a pretty cool video but I am kind of busy with programming and such. I'm also lazy, so that's the biggest thing.

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Damn skyboxes

Hey guys,

Quick update on the development side of things. For the last 3 days I have been try to get the skybox to work on unity3d without a cubemap. The reason I was trying to do this is because cubemaps don't work on mobile platforms for some reason. That being so I had to figure a way to make the skybox into 3 different pieces. So I tried to simply split them into 6 pieces and assign those to all of the sides. In doing this the sides were very easy to see and it simply looked as though you were in a big box. Now I had to find a new way to do this. After searching through the internet I happened upon a tutorial that kind of did what I needed. What they did was go into blender and assign the texture we used on the cube mapped skybox to a semi-sphere. They then took a ground texture and assigned it to a plane to make an environment that they would like in their game. After that they used a very interesting feature in blender that will assign the environment to the sides of a cube. You can then use this texture, split it up in GIMP and put it into your game. Very long process but it pays off in the end.

I might make a tutorial for this later. Kind of hard to see what I did through that paragraph above. I will even include pictures :D

Until next time. 

We also changed our name to New Stream Software. Thought you might like to know.

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So Yeah We Killed Him

Last night Grant checked up on Luke to see his progress on the sounds. To say it nicely he did not make the cut. So now the person you know as StelarLuke or The Music Man is gone from the team. Now it's just two shotgun wielding space cowboys left on this team. This means we have to make all the sounds now, also Grant is finishing up the programming. An ETA for this game to be out on the Android would be a month, school starts in two weeks though so that will delay the progress a little bit. I guess we will all just have to wait and see!

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Updates :D

Wow, do we have a lot of updates for you guys today. Where to start, let me check when you guys were last updated... (a few minutes later). I basically have to update you guys starting from the merging stage. I guess I should probably get started.

First off Patrick and I have started a stage of merging together our projects, this means getting everything on my computer so I can program in the menu systems, test the AI, making the animations work, those sorts of things. So far I have added a menu system from which you can pick a map and play it. We have 3 maps currently up and running, only one the maps actually has AI in it. The other 2 will get AI when the AI spawning system is exactly the way we want it. This menu system also has an options section but that doesn't do anything yet.

Next we updated the AI, this means if something is in between you and the AI it will find a way around the thing in its way to get to you. The AI can also drain your HP, it can't kill you yet due to some strange glitch I haven't looked into yet.

Another thing we updated was the controls. We actually have buttons that do stuff such as firing missiles, I have also made a system for sliders, that is being used to control the speed. The guns also fire and are able to take the life of the enemy by draining HP.

The guns in the game have improved quite a lot, just today I made 'bullets' that actually fly through space to wherever it is you are pointing the gun. It might need a little work, right now it looks as if you are Zeus shooting lightning bolts at everybody due to the length of the tracer bullets that we use. We might also have to add a mussel flash of some sort.

The rockets on the other hand haven't been update at all. Our plans for them is to make it so they will lock onto whatever you are shooting at. We were also thinking of a tagging system for taking out multiple enemies at the same time. We might save this for an update though because it is hard to implement this without making it very hard to tag an enemy.

Controls for the spaceship are how you would expect them, roll the device to roll the ship and pitch the device to pitch the ship. What we have added is a speed control that is a slider on the left side of the screen and a boost button. When the speed is changed to a higher speed the camera starts to shake violently and get farther away from the ship. This creates an illusion of speed and immerses the player into the game more.

I believe this is all I have for now.
If there are any typos in this or something doesn't make sense this is because it is 1:18 in the morning and I am tired as crap and couldn't care to look over the page at all.

Also I now have my main Google account on this blog so the posters name will be mine now.

Until next time 


 

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UPDATE STARDATE: 2012.215

Hello all, it's been a while hasn't it? Well, the game is almost done, Grant is just finishing up on the programming and we are very close to booting Luke off the team because he hasn't been doing anything. ANYWAYS we are maybe a month away from finishing if all goes well. Then it's time to start with our next game! But that is a surprise to you all. Shhhhh.

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Kicking ass

Hey guys,

Last night I was going to post about something because I was so happy, and that all of the pieces were falling together. I now remember what I was going to post. Basically we have android publishing powers, forever. Thanks to Luke for grabbing an android license when they were free. I remembered he said he had this license and asked him if we could possibly transfer it to my computer because I am doing coding and stuff and need to see if I'm maxing resources out or not. So I looked on the Unity site and saw that you can put your license on two computers at a time, I then asked Luke for his code and bingo we have Android publishing powers. I have since published our build and played it on my android and it runs very smooth for how good it looks, if you shoot rockets and they are just lingering there it will make the game lag a lot though so I have to fix that. For the most part though it looked very good for an android game. Now that I think about it, it just looks good for games period. That was what I was so happy about, the fact that this game is amazing and I haven't seen anything like it out there. It really shows the potential this game has and might possibly bring us to the top.

That's enough chatting though I have to work on my buddy drone, it is going pretty good. There are some logic flaws I have to iron out but then I will be able to code it and see this awesome thing work.

Until next time

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Update :D

Hey guys, I thought I would update you on my progress I have made on the programming side of things. First off I have added touch controls to the game, I would give it to you guys but I don't have a license for that. Luke does though so maybe we will bring the final product over to him to build it. Anyway I am getting of topic. The next thing I did was make a weird way of firing which isn't going to stay there for long, basically it shoots where you are touching on the screen. This is completely inconvenient so I am going to take it out and make the touching anywhere lock onto enemy ships for your rockets, this will be a perma-lock type thing that will stay on once you look away. Kind of like tagging people in Splinter cell then taking them all out in a matter of seconds. After this I am going to put in the "Special Weapons" button. This button will  launch various different types of weapons, you mush equip them first in the menus though. For example lets say you push the button and you have an AI gun equipped, the AI gun will appear beside your ship and will shoot your enemies for you :D. This button is basically for our "you know what would be cool" moments, we would simply program the weapon into the game and put it into the list of special weapons. The next thing I programmed was a speed control which kind of floats on the side of the screen and doesn't have an exact track to go on, it's actually kind of cool that it isn't exactly constricted for some reason, not sure exactly why though. I guess I will make a list of things I have to do, this is off the top of my head too so yeah.

1.re-program the rocket lock
2.program the rocket shoot button
3.make rockets know what they are locked to and how many to launch <- that's going to be fun
4.program special weapons button
5.program special weapons <- this is actually going to be fun
6.program pause (pausing everything in general, I think my AI already pauses.)
7.program health
8.program boost
9.fix active camera effects (The camera moves when you go fast, it loses the ship though)
10.program fancy shit

Yeah that is a pretty hefty list there.
 If I do a quick estimate that will take me about... a very long time so I better get started.

Until next time.

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DJG - Rivet - GetDarker

DJG - Rivet - GetDarker

This song is the shit.

That is all

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Some pics for y'all

Hey guys so you must all be like "what does this game look like?". So I took some screenshots so you can see more than that exciting test tube. Sorry there are no enemy ships to be seen but Grant is to busy looking at lolcats more than doing the job he has been assigned. Pics will be back have to re-upload grant had a temper tantrum.

Grant: I worked on the game WAY more than you did before the summer. Also it isn't easy make AI ships obey you. So shut up about me not working. Besides I am working on this other program that may possibly fund the game. Love, Grant

P.S. - I never look at lolcats, I may look at Uberhumor for a few minutes so I can see the pictures but I never Google lolcats.  
Patrick:Oh okay. Grant is our savior HAIL GRANT
Patrick:You know we quarrel here but then I ask myself WHERE THE FUCK IS LUKE! DID HE FUCKING DIE!?

Grant: He's probably looking at lolcats
Patrick:Yeah probably or he is like "YAY! I MAKE NWE NOISZE! :d"

Grant: I just changed his roll in the team to Lead of Lolcats Research. I also added a picture for you ->
Patrick: OH THANKS! :D
You know what? Lets go to Lukes house and steal his games.

Those pictures are back my fellow blogalites they are very pretty.

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New Surface Tablet by Microsoft

I love this song. It is the song in the commercial for the new surface tablet by Microsoft, enjoy.

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I just had to post this.

So I bet I just ruined MW3 for you guys.

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New builds immediatley updated

Today I just got the last of the kinks out of the webplayer on our blog. This is actually a huge leap for us because we wanted to do this for a long time but never had the smarts to do it. So a yesterday I built a webplayer and was looking around the html code inside and found where the webplayer gets the data from. I found it and linked it to a file on mediafire. That worked only temporarily until we found out that retarded computers like Luke's couldn't do that. So started looking around at other sites I could store files on, like Google Drive and Box. Then I happened upon Dropbox where the site actually gives you the link on their servers to where the file is stored. I got this link from Dropbox, put it into the html on the current build page and it work for me. I messaged Luke over Steam and it worked for him too :D. Dropbox is also extremely convenient because it will use the same link if a file is uploaded with the same name, that means I have to just put my build into Dropbox and it will update automatically on the blog. Also you will have to download Unity's special player.

Anyway I have to go teach some AI how to fight.

Until next time.

(Build Here)

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Coming together nicely

Hey guys, just wanted to update you on the progress of the collision avoidance system. So basically I programmed this all night and most of this morning and this is what I have to prove for it, the download link will be right here -> Download :D Anyway the collision avoidance works a lot better now because the ships can only get so close to you and they will never run into you, basically they value their life a lot. That being said you will also get a lot of close calls, this is a glitch in the code. That glitch should be fixed soon. Now I have to get back to making this game awesome.

Until next time.

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Good to be back

Hey guys, wondering where we were? We we at school and doing homework and other random crap, It has been forever since I last posted but I will do so much more frequently. I am now working on the collision avoidance system. It is going pretty good for now. I will update you guys on the progress later :D

until next time.

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No. We arent dead

No. We aren't dead. We are all living sadly that includes Luke too. But just an update I am working on ship models and hopefully this game will be out in the summer some time!

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AI is working again

Like the title suggest I have finally got the AI to work correctly again, tonight I am going to set the groundwork for the collision avoidance system. This should be relativly straight forward, I am just going to use the system for going to another object to make the spaceship change courses. This should simply take a quick edit of the "Look At" function to make it look to where it needs to go.

The truth is I might never get this done tonight due to my severe procrastinsation syndrome.

Until next time

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Just an Update

Hello guys, I just wanted to update you guys on what I am doing ant the time being and show you my todo list as of now.

Today and last night I have been trying to work out how to make the AI stop turning to the right. Actually I believe that might not be the problem at all, I believe the problem might be the fact that the spaceship goes up instead of turning to line up the enemy then going up, it just constantly goes up.

I also wanted to share my todo list with you guys.

To Do List:

General Todo:

        Main Menu

Fix Missiles

Fix Collisions

Saving Stats

AI Todo:

Unstick Turning

Collision Avoidance

Weapon Todo:

I don't have much on there as of now, but this should keep me busy for a while.

I have also made a page for Luke's sounds so it he doesn't have to clutter the main page with posts that he made a new sound. All he has to do is edit that page whenever he has a new sound. To check out his sounds there should be a link at the top of the page that says "StelarLuke's Sounds".

Speaking of pages I have also made one for the builds that we make, it is right next to Luke's link to his sounds.

Now I have to go do my chores, no big deal. I was procrastinating anyways.

Until next time

                                          -Grant Oberhauser - Lead of Development

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