DragCore is Available on Google Play and Amazon Apps!

     It's been a long time since I started this thing. Way back in 11th grade I thought this would be a nice, simple project that would let me prove to myself that I can make a complete game. It accomplished it's goal but it was far from easy. I'd say it's my best game yet, at least on par with TriGrid.

     All the last minute changes ended up being the error causing add-ons so I simply removed them. The in-app purchases and Game Services are gone, leaving the game simple and pure. Just a fun and free game to play on your phone. It's nice having 4 games under my belt now, a nice portfolio and proof of tenacity.

     DragCore can be found on Google Play today and Amazon Apps on March 6th so go and give it a try if you're curious. You can watch the trailer for it on YouTube too. It's fast-paced action with kamikaze aliens and electric dragboxes. That's a pretty cool concept when you think about it. Give it a try today!
    And good luck to anyone who can beat green and black enemies on the hardest difficulty!

DragCore is Finally Done...

      I finally managed to finish DragCore, but not without a bunch of scars. In short, a lot of things were cut. Nothing gameplay wise but things that required plugins (purchasing, ads, game center, etc.) don't work at all on iOS and Game Services don't work at all on Android. To top it all off my old Macbook is officially too old. It's unable to run OSX 10.8 or higher and thus can't publish apps to iTunes anymore. That means my games are Android exclusive until I can afford a new Mac. So not for a very long time. I'm also debating if I should let my developer license disappear on that platform. My games are not selling well enough to pick up the $100 a year.

     All these things should spell crushing defeat for me, but they don't. It's a new day for me. It's time I finally be true to myself. It's time I make something for me. I've been trying too hard. Chasing the idea of what a successful app should be instead of making the best game possible. That's what I'm going to do now. No more features and gimmicks that I don't believe in. No more outside advice. My next game is coming from the heart and I'll see how that goes for me.

Preparing Achievements and Leaderboards

     My last hurdle with DragCore is getting the Game Center / Google Play Game Services functionality working. Every time I try to activate achievements o leaderboards the game crashes. A very annoying type of roadblock. Today I'll be re-watching setup tutorials and tracing my steps to make sure I'm not overlooking something. 

     Something I can talk about here though is how I prepared achievements and leaderboards for the first time. It was an interesting experience and I hope to better take advantage of these tools in the future. Details are below the page break.

Fixing Audio With Audacity

     Audacity is a free program I use to edit music for my games. I'm slowly beginning to master it but I really only use a few of it's features to edit the open source music and sound effects I find. I like the Effect menu's Amplify, Change Pitch, Reverse, Change Speed, and Change Tempo features the most. I also tried recording my voice for videos here once but the quality was awful so I decided to use text instead.

     As far as lessons go I learned how much amplitude and dB effect the final sound and I've made a habit of maximizing the volume before exporting the files and using them in Unity. I still haven't mastered making songs loop nicely. It's always a noticeable skip and me messing with it usually ends up with the song sounding worse. I'm planning on teaming up with a friend for music in my next game so hopefully this won't be a problem anymore.

     Another lesson in efficiency was making audio playing game objects load when they're needed. Loading every sound effect and song could make the initial load time take forever and some scenes should have their own files for things they need. All this knowledge will make my future games all the better.

Last Minute Errors

     Of course it had to come back. Like a vengeful ghost in the form of computer code, the dreaded Internal Compiler Error of Unity has com back to torment me. I turned on my Firewall for just a moment after having issues with a file converter I downloaded and removed. Being silly me I forgot to turn it off before opening Unity. Now even though it's off Unity won't run any projects. I tried to recreate how to fix the problem yesterday, but I may just try uninstalling Unity and downloading it again. This annoyance delayed DragCore another day.

     So once I figure this mess out, I'll only have to implement Game Center and test everything one last time and finally submit. I'm really sick of pushing the deadline back, but it's all part of the learning process I suppose.

DragCore Almost Done

    DragCore is ridiculously close to being finished. Literally just two more things to do. I need to fix bugs I'm having with Game Center/Google Play Services and script the sound effects and background music I found. I even have the app stores setup and awaiting the game's final build.

     Today I want to script all the sound effects and music. Once they're in I can tweak them until the game sounds just right. I have all public domain audio including 4 alternating background tracks. Getting audio to work is something I've done before though. Making Game Center features work is new. The game keeps crashing whenever I do anything leaderboard/achievement related so I need to work on that annoyance next. Getting this stuff down with DragCore will make programming it into my future games much easier.

     I keep promising myself I'll be done with this game by Monday at the latest. Then it's just a matter of sending review requests again.

DragCore's IAP Pop-Ups

    I have pop ups in DragCore that will hopefully boost profit a bit. There are 3 of them and they appear only one time each. They come up when the player is able to max out their crystal total by buying the biggest IAP pack available. When the player passes 99 minus the number of crystals in an IAP, the button never appears again. If the player buys something or dismisses the prompt it doesn't appear again until the crystal counter reaches the next milestone.

DragCore Tutorial Pop-Ups

     DragCore needs some kind of instructions for new players explaining things that may cause frustration if one has to figure it out for themselves. People generally skip through instruction screens (as I learned from watching people play my other games) and making a gradual hidden tutorial for DragCore can only go so far. There are just a few mechanics that need to be explained.

    For that purpose I made a few images that pop up in the early levels of the game before the level starts. Only one will appear per level and only on certain levels that would need explanation. They are timed to disappear after 4 seconds or can be dismissed by tapping the screen, a natural action for people who want something on screen to go away. You can see the tutorial images below.

Using Multi-Touch in DragCore

     One of the things I wanted to try out in DragCore was multi-touch. Main features of the game requires at least two separate fingers on screen to play. I thought it would be a complex problem due to the way I coded input up to this point. It turns out Unity has always supplied a simpler method that I never bothered to look for until now. It's a simple Input.GetTouch(number) method. Proof that I still have lots to learn from making DragCore.

    In TriGrid I used raycasts (invisible arrows going straight down to collide with game objects) and invisible objects representing fingers. In Candy Shop Catch I only used 2D Toolkit's built in button controls. Now with DragCore, touchscreen input is much simpler and I feel a bit silly for going to such great lengths before. Using multitouch will be much easier for me in the future now.

Game Center Support in DragCore

     I wanted DragCore to be the first game where I implement things like achievements and leaderboards. These social features could greatly increase it's popularity and longevity. Achievements provide some incentive and reward for playing and the leaderboards can drive players to play more or introduce the game to friends. My future games will have achievements too. I even have plans for some way of implementing leaderboards in my upcoming RPG.

     I found plugins that totaled in cost at about $25, a steal when you consider Prime31 offers the plugins I require for $75 each. It's a good thing I did my research before purchasing that. The Unity asset store is really amazing during moments like this. Now I can easily implement Google Game Services for Android and Game Center for iOS courtesy of Plato Evolved and blaQkSheep.com.

Finding Sounds for DragCore

     I need to start putting sounds into DragCore soon. In normal circumstances this would be done earlier, but I'm working alone on this project and I can't make music at all. I also don't have a good microphone for foley art or software for making sound effects/music that I can use to make audio files. It's faster to work this way. I just find public domain stuff and edit them for my needs in Audacity. For future games, I'll be teaming up with others (don't know who yet) for audio creation.

    I'm thinking about using a lot of things from TriGrid as a starting place. I know new sounds I'll need are beeps, a power down sound, and some celebratory tunes. For background music, I want to find some new public domain stuff. Just a track or two that fits the theme and I'll find a way to make it loop nicely.

DragCore Loading Screens

     DragCore tends to freeze for a second or two when switching scenes. I think it has to do with the objects being created on the spot. I want to try new ways to cover up the lag. I'm debating how they should be, a loading image obstructing the scene before the freeze happens, loading a nearly empty scene with  load image then use a global variable to decide the next scene to load, or having some "please wait" text or symbol pop up in a corner.

     I think this is something to play around with near the end once I get a feel for how long loading takes when all the game's assets are ready and working together. I also kind of want to figure out how loading bars work. I have no clue how the measure loading completeness. It might even be based on expected load time, which I think depends on RAM. It's a complex thing and I think I should hold off on that for now though. DragCore is behind schedule and I want to finish what I started first.

Enemies By Accident (DragCore Design)

    Much like Rockstar accidentally inventing reckless police car chases, I made a feature of my bugs. When trying to get enemy behaviors from the DragCore prototype to work I came across interesting patterns and decided to replace the old features with the happy accidents.

     Orange and green enemies were supposed to dart away when the grid gets close. Now, the green ones only move when the player touches the screen and the orange ones change directions to move toward the player's finger's last position. The way I transitioned from one idea to the other is too complex to explain and I don't really remember the back-and-forth that took place in my head.

   Basically, enemies in the new DragCore are better than they were in the prototype. They are more varied and interesting this time around whereas the old ones felt like clones. When the game is closer to release I'll make a post with details on how each enemy works.

DragCore's Unfinished GDD

     I never bothered to finish it because it's all in my head now. The final pages of the document because my dumping grounds for spur of the moment notes. Game Design Documents are the most important tools for keeping a team on track and working toward the same goal. It's good to practice writing them, but this is a project I'm doing alone. If I understand everything down to the byte I could just save myself the trouble of writing 20 more pages and just start development.

     Here is the link to DragCore's GDD. I wanted to post a completed one a month ago but I decided it was better to use my time actually making DragCore. What you find in there is pretty much everything about the game and some concept art. The programming sections are empty and the last pages full of random notes. I think I'll make future documents more general and organized.

DragCore: Combo System

     DragCore is about getting a high score in a hectic game of kill everything on screen. Players goals are unlocking content on a macro scale, but from game-to-game players should be looking to get the highest score and climb leaderboards. In order for points to matter and make sense, I made up a combo system to go with the basic depleting points as enemies touch the Earth.

DragCore: The Crystal System

    Players like progression. It's fun to watch bars fill up when you play. Having a sense of purpose makes a game more fun and addictive. It works because in your mind you aren't wasting time, you're working toward something. My favorite thing about Call of Duty multiplayer was leveling up and seeing the yellow text with "+2" or something on it. It's fun to grow and earn rewards. 

     I came up with something to put those values in DragCore. I call it the Crystal System. It's changed a few times as I've been trying to decide to use it as either an experience level or currency. I ultimately decided on experience level presented as currency. Read on to see an explanation of this madness.

DragCore: Spawning Enemies

     Making enemies pop out was a big pile of code in the old DragCore prototype. With the new one it has been simplified to a few lines of code thanks to the greatness of Unity. What used to be an array and tons of code to alter each of the 200 elements became a matter of instantiating up to 20 objects and have them reset themselves. See the code that makes it work below the break.

DragCore: How the Grid Works

    The electric grid in DragCore is how you attack enemies and kill them with intense electrical fury. You drag your finger across the screen to create a box. Enemies that touch it die instantly, or at least most of them. Some enemies are a bit trickier than that. Here is a look at how the attack grids work.

Dragcore's Prototype

     I've been putting this off for a while now, but here is the video of gameplay from the original prototype of DragCore that I made in high school. It's amazing how different it is from the version I'm making now. Today I finished copying a bunch of the code and now I'm making things nicer for myself behind the scenes to help finish development.

Watch the video here or after the break.

DragCore Mechanics

     You may be a bit curious as to what DragCore gameplay is like, so I'll show what I wrote in the design document. These are based the mechanics that I had in the prototype I made in 11th grade. I altered them a bit to better fit a long lasting mobile game broken into small pieces rather than the endless arcade style game I originally planned. Some are subject to change as the final product starts to evolve, but it's basically what I'm going for.

Take a look at the stuff DragCore does.