Phoenix Wright.exe Screen Size

     One of the big things to worry about in my forensics game is the resolution. What's the point of making the game if the whole thing breaks when screen size is adjusted. What if the teacher shows it in class and makes it full screen? What resolution works best on PCs in general? What about scaling a forced size like I do for my mobile games? Keep in mind the pixelated art style and how bad it looks stretched out.

     The Unity maximized preview didn't stretch properly (squashed with things cut-off on the sides) so I was worried the final game would look that warped. Luckily the built executable didn't do that and looked how I wanted it to. I settled on making it 1024x768 (iPad resolution) and set the scale to Fit Visible so it stretches horizontally and vertically evenly. The result looks pretty good now and that's one problem down.

Priority Switch (Balancing UQ and PWAA)

     With deadlines for two things I really want done before May 10th approaching I have to chart out my free time carefully. Unicorn Quest's milestone is more important personally (and in the long term) but the Phoenix Wright project is due for a major school grade where I'm struggling to maintain a B grade.

      With that in mind I've decided to switch what I'm working on day by day until I reach a point where I can see one being possible to finish up faster than the other. At that point I can wrap one up the focus on the other. It may seem completely stupid to tackle these two things at once (even though they're both pretty  small things I could do in a couple weeks) but I work well under pressure and practicing this kind of crunch will leave me better prepared for the real world.

      I have to teach myself how to become a better game developer because school won't do it for me. School gets me a piece of paper that might save my life. Actual practice will build my skills, create a tangible portfolio, make long-term money, and fill in the blanks school won't even acknowledge. I think of this as just another self-imposed assignment.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, The Fire Turnabout

     I finally got started with making the game component of the project. The written version was turned in and my teacher is reviewing it to make sure the information needed is there. With a little tweaking I'll just have to put them into the game in the form of a character driven story.

     I'm focusing on a few main game components to keep this as basic as possible. Once again, this is not a fan project so much as an interesting homework assignment I can't spend too much time on. If it were up to me I wouldn't even be doing this without the world's most amazing and thought out story up my sleeve.

See how I'm starting work on the project below.

Crazy Idea for a School Project (PWAA Forensics Report)

I love the Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney games.

     The final project for my Forensics & Criminalistics class is a report about a crime scene and how evidence was collected and analyzed to reach a conclusion. It's a pretty straightforward project but also a time consuming one. Given how much I hate school I was calculating ways to meet the project's requirements and finish it as quickly as possible until something the teacher said on Tuesday clicked with me. The information in my report could be submitted in any form of my choosing.

     What if I made video game out of it? She said that's fine. I suddenly cared a lot about this project.

     Phoenix Wright has been popping into my head every class throughout the semester because I'm such a nerd that I can't think about law without a mental image of "OBJECTION!" forming. This project could start a trend that will make school much more interesting for me. an even warmer and fuzzier idea is the teacher showing this to future students in my major and getting them excited about game development and ways they can make projects more interesting to do.

2 Day Simple Game Challenge

Presenting Feed The Plant! The shortest and simplest game I've ever made.

     Flappy Bird is an example of how far a simple game can go. Naturally after a hit like that there are hundreds of imitations. I hear about 60 clones being uploaded a day and scoffed at the idea of joining the frenzy. Countless times I hear "Hey Yotes, why don't you make a game like Flappy Bird?" and just roll my eyes. But then I got to thinking...

     Everyone is rushing for the leftovers of Flappy Bird's explosion, but they all upload the same game. They could at least try playing with the mechanics instead of swapping the sprites. What if there was only one set of pipes and multiple birds pass through it? What if they got eaten by a monster on their way through? What if you wanted that to happen? And after a doodle of a piranha plant eating bird on a note card I got serious.

     I was curious about my ability as a game developer. I see game jams all the time and wonder how people turn things out so quickly. My smallest and fastest project was Candy Shop Catch and even that took over a month. I feel like I could make a game quickly using everything I've learned so far, but is there any proof? I also found the idea of making a Flappy Bird game in under a week to be a great test for myself and a morale booster for spending the rest of the year on Unicorn Quest.

     As I'm typing this I have the finished game running in Unity and my phone. I'm working on promotional materials tonight so I can upload it to Google Play and post a video of it tomorrow. 

Planning Mach-Arena

     I am the designated project manager for my college group project. I was put in charge of making a development schedule and coming up with a unified system for us to work as a group to finish the game. As far as feasibility goes I already minimized features down to something my group of four can handle. The professor was pleased with the feasibility and has faith in our team being able to finish this project by the end of the semester.

     We're using Microsoft Project in class to maintain a schedule. Up to this point I've been using a checklist in Word and I've been experimenting with Smartsheet (a free online version of Microsoft Project). We have to decide who will be working on what and when they'll do it. Right now, we confirmed Ben and I handling most of the programming and I volunteered to make all the GUI assets and game placeholders. I set up a blank Unity project full of temporary game pieces for us to start with. I'm working with Ben to establish a coding standard so neither of us gets confused on how to script the game.

     The race is officially on! Our project is due in about 14 weeks. Development goes fast with four of us instead of just me so I'll post if anything noteworthy happens. Take a look at our pre-production checklist after the break!

Working on Mach-Arena (The College Project Continues)

     With all the crazy busy things I've been up to I nearly forgot about Mach-Arena until Gaming & Simulation class started! I'll get to work with a team this semester and create a 3D Unity game for the first time. We'll also get to show it off at the big BYOC in May (hopefully) which could be tons of fun.

    This is classwork so development progress is pretty much necessary. Tuesday through Friday I have a video game class at 9:30am and I'll be posting when something particularly interesting happens. Right now things are getting settled and everyone is transitioning into school mode.

     I can't wait to see how everyone's games turn out this year. Last year's Game Maker projects were interesting but poor since none of us new what to do or how to work together. Things are looking a lot better this time though as we all learn from our mistakes.

Dragon's Flux RPG (1st Attempt at Dream Game)

     After a week or so of scribbling on note cards in class I finally started coding my dream game. This was back in high school of course and I had no idea what I was doing. At that point I had only just made a Pokemon fan game game where you could walk around a small overworld and play around with menus. I just dived right into this ready to learn along the way. I was also silly enough to think I could juggle two other projects alongside this one in case I got bored with it. Yeah. I was a dumb kid. Glad I'm doing things more carefully now.

Watch the video demo here.

Dragon Ball Z Brawl

     This passion project came from my desire to make a fan RPG after being inspired by the Mane6 development team. It would have been a pony themed RPG but I didn't want to overload myself with just one fandom and get sick of it. So I thought of another thing I'm a fan of. I loved legacy of Goku which inspired my action RPG, but how about making a turn-based Dragon Ball Z game? I got started with this and had a blast.

Watch the video here or after the break.

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.

Gaming & Simulation Final Exam

     For my final exam in my  Gaming & Simulation Design Principles I course, my group had to present our game idea that we will be implementing in Design Principles II next semester. We talked about Mach-Arena and basically went over the design document to get the other groups and the teacher up to speed. My group went first, allowing us to relax and watch the other presentations for the rest of the time. 

Mach-Arena: Menu Systems

     We got around to making our menu layouts the other day. We needed to accommodate our new currency/leveling up mechanic and ship editor. Here's what we came up with.  

Mach-Arena: Game Progression

       Today in gaming class, we needed to make a document about story and character progression. Being that my group's game didn't necessarily have those things in a traditional sense, I came up with the four components of our game that had sense of progression. The fourth component was just added in today because it seemed so obvious and simple.

     Want progression in a deathmatch game? Let players level up. People go nuts for filling up bars and unlocking things (I know I do). So take a look at how our game flows.

Mach-Arena: Game Elements

 

     The game elements document basically elaborates on things I put in the mechanics  one. It goes into detail for each power-up and also explains the new concept my group came up with for customizable ships. Take a look at it below the break.

Mach-Arena: Artificial Intelligence

     One of the trickiest things we'll have to do for Mach-Arena is the pathfinding and other AI behavior. We are torn between making the AI adaptable and have set difficulties and have decided to create a system that allows us to easily change our minds later when we find out which one is more fun. Take a peek at my group project's brains by clicking on "More"!

Mach-Arena: Game Mechanics

      After loads of arguing and a pile of note cards, my group settled on game mechanics and a control scheme for Mach-Arena. We figured two control options and a radio button would be best. Check out what the game will be like after the break.  

Mach-Arena Introduction

     In case you're wondering if my college project Mach-Arena is dead, it's not. We just aren't starting class projects until next semester after we finish our Unity lessons. This semester is about building all the components of a Game Design Document (GDD) and putting them together. You can see the Concept Document here.

     So far 4 papers have been written for this game and submitted for a grade. My personal hopes are to finish it in time to be able to show it off at the upcoming BYOC at my college in May. Today I'm going to start posting the documents my group has made so far. 

    Check out the Introduction page for Mach-Arena below the break.

Just Being There

   There really is something magical about just being in the same room with people creating a game. I can feel the warm fuzzies drifting through the air emitting from each person involved. Last night I was in the same room as four of my friends were coming up with ideas for a horror game they were doing for their college project while working on a game mechanics document for mine. Watching their design process as an outsider was just so inspirational and insightful to me. They all took turns speaking and building on one another's ideas. I get to compare their way of doing things with my own and observe their individual creative personalities and how they blend together to form an actual product. I stayed quiet and let them do their thing for  the most part, only saying things to build on jokes and suggesting a clever name for the main character (which they actually decided to go with). I honestly can't wait to see how their project turns out in comparison to the one they described to each other.

College Project: Mach-Arena

   I wrote up a nice concept document to turn in for class yesterday and now I'm ready to share it with the world! This is the project I'll be working on over the next 21 weeks alongside my personal mobile game projects so I think it deserves a few dedicated posts. Read the concept document after the break to see what this college game project is all about.

Second College Game Project

   Yesterday in my Gaming and Simulation class at the Pennsylvania College of Technology groups were formed and project brainstorming began. My group of four got started with making our very first 3D game using the Unity engine. Watch as the game grows from idea to final product over the next 21 weeks. Find out more about the project after the break.