These maps are too damn big!

Hello,

So, I have made a butt load of progress today. I have set up all the maps, they still have some glitches though. Some glitches include not having the icon over the enemy when the player is looking straight at it. Another glitch is a fucked up rocket lock script. Which is weird because I have re written that script about 3 times over. Very strange indeed. All of the other problems come mainly from shitty map designs. All of the other maps that I haven't completely re-worked are very bulky. Although they do look cool, there is no flow to them at all. So I am planing on going back though and positioning some parts of the map differently so they are more linear and lead the player to optimal positions better. Our first/main map does this quite nicely I do believe.

So yeah, I need to fix a few glitches and fucked up map designs and it's off to the races for us. Oh, yeah. I also need FUCKING SOUNDS. PATRICK DO THE FUCKING SOUNDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We are finishing the game in 5 days. 5 FUCKING DAYS! Just do it!

Anyway...

Ahem...

Until next time...

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Woaaaaaaaah

Hello,

Today I finally made the push to do stuff that I didn't exactly want to do. Such as making a game over screen and making a points system.

I finally forced myself off of Reddit and put my resources towards game development. Once I redirected myself I started on the points system because I already had the framework down. I just had to make it put on points when an AI ship was killed.

Then I went on to do the game over screen which was a little easier to do than I though it was going to be. I had to tie in the game over screen into the GUI setup I had going on. After that I set up what would happen after you die from anything. Basically the camera detaches from the ship and floats/bounces out in space. Quite a good time.

I also cleaned some stuff up, such as the exit button at the beginning of the game which wasn't actually set up on the right game object. Now I just need to finish the whole main menu.

The game play seems to be down good enough and setting up maps should be able to get going here. That may or may not take a while, depending on how many of Patrick's mistakes I have to fix.

Until next time.

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Holy what the poop

Hello all,

So I decided to make a post because we almost got into a train wreck that could have thrown this whole game off course and potentially never finished. So what happened is I came home after going to the eye doctor, booted up my laptop, and started up Unity 3D for some ass kicking time. Then I took a nap and came back to my laptop after about an hour and browsed Reddit and YouTube for a few hours. Then I went over to Unity and saw some red text and the bottom. This usually means something is wrong in a script or something, so I looked at it and it said about 7 of our most major scripts were no longer in the project. This includes the script that makes the AI move, makes you move, makes the AI avoid collision, etc. I immediately went to my Google Drive where everything is backed up. I went to where on of the scripts are stored and found that it was an old version. Damn it. Wait, what if they are in the recycle bin? So I opened the recycle bin and there they all were, along with them were some skybox materials and other random files. How they got there, I have no idea.

The game is almost back to a working state, I just have to reapply the scripts to the prefabs that need them. The values are still stored so when it knows where to get instructions from it will go back to working just fine. Just a small inconvenience, nothing much.

Quick Edit: Got it back to a working state, if something is still screwed up I will find out later. Anyway, ONWARD TO DEVELOPMENT!

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SUCCESS

Hello all! I have very good news today I just got verified for Google Gheckout! We can now publish games for actual money now! One step closer to publishing the game!

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No more nonsense

Hello all,

So, a couple of things have changed since my last update. The really big news is that I don't have to work anymore, yey! This doesn't guarantee more homework getting done, just because I have 2.5 more hours to work on the game, that doesn't mean I have 2.5 more hours for homework. I just have more time to do what I please, homework or programming.

The other news I must share is our developer console being set up. Yesterday Patrick took the bull by the horns and made a developer console for NewStream Software. This means we can publish games that are free. We can't publish paid for games yet because we still new a Google merchant account. We do still have a pre-alpha 'sale' page being put up, we just need some fancy graphics and stuff. Although we are going to name it a very obscure name so it isn't found amongst the normal games.

As for development I haven't gotten much farther on it. I seem to have hit an invisible barrier. There is a glitch in the game that makes the AI invincible. Even though everything looks good. It's very strange but is probably an easy fix. I am going back and forth between that glitch and getting the cinematic cameras scripts and what not set up. After that all of the glitches are just annoying little things, of course I will fix them because I love games that are very smooth. I just don't need to fix them to make alpha/beta testing possible.

Until next time


Edit: I didn't realize Patrick already did an update. Oh well, just some stuff from the development side of things.

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A big push

Hey, so last night Grant and I made a push towards publishing the game. I set up a merchant account we have published our developer name payed the $25 fee and we have a Pre-alpha ready to go. Also yesterday I had the game downloaded on my phone and it is beautiful. Earlier builds of the game that I had used were choppy but this one is smooth....very smooth. We should all give Grant a big ol' hug and give him a pat on the back this game is imminent to being released.

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What is this black magic?

Hello again,

So, yesterday I was diking around and watching stuff on YouTube and Netflix. Then on YouTube I heard of the movie Indie Game: The Movie. It was on Netflix so I watched it and actually gained some pretty useful knowledge.

So I finished the movie and went back to programming, then I remembered a scene in the movie where someone had a black background for their code. I wondered if I could do that with MonoDevelop and I found out that I can. So I downloaded some files, changed some XML values, changed syntax highlighting and BAM. Black background. The reason for black backgrounds usually is so you can read it at night without it hurting your eyes, it also makes you as productive as fuck. Holy shit, I fixed so much stuff within a few mere hours. I was on fire, I still am on fire. Just tonight I fixed a glitch and was gunning to fix two more when I realized I needed to get some homework done. Stupid homework, always ruining all the fun.

Now, by just mentioning homework I have to go on a rant about the downright stupidest class I have ever taken, POE. POE, or Principles of Engineering, through Project Lead the Way is the most poorly set up class in existence. Some reasons include, a shitty teacher, math that is so structured it isn't math anymore, and math built up around plug-and-play. First off, the shitty teacher isn't necessarily the teacher's fault even. The teacher has to go to a 2 week long training course for the class, 2 WEEKS. You can't teach someone how to be an engineer in 2 weeks. It's just not possible. As for the math portion, it isn't even math. They don't tell you how or why stuff works they just throw a bunch of variables at you while yelling 'learn this you piece of shit'. Then you're sitting there with a bunch of variables struggling to 2 and 2 together because of their shitty teacher + shitty concepts = success plan. As for the plug-and-play system, that's the worst way ever to teach math. They don't teach math, they teach formulas and how to use a calculator. Sure it's fine for stuff that's pretty straight forward such as trigonometry, but for thermodynamics they just throw variables and functions at you and expect you to learn. They didn't even explain heat capacity, you can't teach thermodynamics and the math behind it without even mentioning one of the most important parts of it.

Well, that's my daily rant.

Until next time

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Ok, actual gameplay advancements this time

Hi,

My last post was my bipolarity showing through, I'm not actually diagnosed as bipolar but I'm sure I am. I feel like laughing all day long at one point, then killing everybody I encounter.

Anyway, actual gameplay improvements have just occurred, I just moved the player spawn closer to the actual map. Maybe that will convey the message that you need to stay next to the BIG FUCKING FLYING THING THAT HAS SHIT TO SHOOT AT FLYING AROUND! I swear, everyone that I have given this to play flies toward earth like they can land on it, they actually ask if they can go to earth. This is an android game, do you honestly think you can go to earth? Maybe I should have made a crappier render of the earth then, something that actually looks like you can't go there, it just has extremely shitty textures and everything.

What we are planing to do now however is making a huge sphere around the arena that will stop you from flying away, you can act like you are flying away but the AI will come and anally rape the fuck out of you. Ah, trolling, never gets old. It also teaches the players that they are indeed fucking retards.

Until next time

Grant Oberhauser - :D 

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Back to work, for a moment

Hello all,

It's 11:17 on Saturday night and I am beginning development for the day after having to work for my dad, again. I'm not going to get into that whole subject again, you can find my feelings on that whole issue in other posts. I also procrastinated be watching The Walking Dead on Netflix, completely legit excuse. I also browsed reddit for a few hours. The truth is I feel completely drained and I don't want to work on this at all, I just want it to finish it's self and leave me alone. I am also feeling anger and fear and the same time, which is quite a weird experience. I am angry at the circumstances, that I can't work on this right when I get out of school to when I go to sleep. No, I have to go do work, do homework, eat. No time at all for this, for what actually matters to me. I am also afraid, I'm afraid that because of the circumstances I won't be able to finish this in a timely matter. That for some reason or another the game will be rendered unfinishable. Either that or it doesn't get noticed at all and everybody that comes across it thinks it sucks, like we tried too hard. Then the last year of my life that has this awesome life source rippling through it stripped out of it, and it dies. That is my fear.

Now you are pretty much caught up with exactly how I am feeling right now, tired, angry, and scared.

Until next time

Grant Oberhauser - Hating The World

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New Menu

Hello,

all of today and yesterday I have been setting up the new menu system. I was having some problems with the loading screen earlier but that should be fixed because I just crashed Unity. That makes no sense at all, but it does, trust me. The progress is going pretty good on it too. We had to break our no language rule, but we can bring it back with some fancy graphics if we need to. The credits will still be in letters because, well, it's a bunch of names. Actually it's only mine and Patrick's name, we also thank the Blender Foundation, the Gimp Development Team, and Unity Technologies ApS. I'm just rambling right now, just wanted to update you all and let you know we are still trucking along.

Until next time

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The mountains are behind us.

Hello,

Yesterday I was going to work on the game, but I wasn't because I was playing Halo 4 and going on the internet and stuff. I knew I had to work on it because we need to get it done. So I forced myself to work on it. Then I realized something, we have already jumped all the big hurdles. This is GREAT! This means we are getting very close to finishing the game. We still have a lot of clean up to do now but we don't need to reinvent the wheel any more. All the big stuff has been finished. We do however need to put in a scoring system, a game over screen, setting up the maps, etc. For the most part we are done. We will probably run into some other big stuff we need to do, such as a game over screen, but we have most of the textures down and we can simply reuse code for that. Right now I am doing the skyboxes, I will include a picture here on how it comes out.

Until next time

Cool render!

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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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