Minimizing The Unity Scene Count

     I want to use as few different scenes as possible. In TriGrid I made the mistake of having each level have it's own scene. Whenever I changed something not involving prefabs, I ended up having to reopen and edit all 60+ of them. I've been reading up on single scene development for RPGs made in Unity while drafting ideas for making it work.

    I considered having the background image behave like sprites and have it's own animation set (to swap the image for a new room) while the wall colliders could be prefabs. But that;s when I considered how much more efficient it would be to just have the background sprite, its colliders, and it's stationary objects be in one big prefab like the pause menu. That way I can have the whole thing quickly pop up after the loading scene closes.

Scenes look like this before loading now.

     Having the game set like this can make adjustments easier to do and room code management easier to make. Doing this is giving me the happy feeling of making the game more feasible and possible. It'll also make level debugging a matter of swapping prefabs and respawning Clover.

Gushing About: Spider-Man 2

     Everybody liked the Spider-Man 2 game right? One of the greatest licensed movie games ever right? But people only remember the most fun parts. The free roaming around New York and stopping crimes. Do you think a game with only that in it, fleshed out of course, would stand on its own?

     With the new Spider-Man movie coming out I got to thinking about how an HD game with just the free roaming of Spider-Man 2 would be. There is something that feels great about that game that I wish was expanded upon. This could work with Superman too even. Maybe I should make a 3D open world super hero game someday. Then of course there's Sony's inFamous which I think handles the idea really well already.

     What are your thoughts on Spider-Man 2 and super hero games in general? Talk with me in the comments below.

Lessons Learned From Feed The Plant

     Taking the detour of quickly making my spin on Flappy Bird was a very refreshing and fun experience. It's rewarding having a fun and simple game out there. It's a favorite among the people who normally playtest my games. I've proven to myself that if I were to make another arcade style game, simplification is the way to go. Feed The Plant was my chance to limit myself to a small game with no progression features or plug-in integration I wasn't comfortable with.

      It's pick-up and play nature has given me further insight into the bite-sized nature I have in mind for my future RPGs. Alongside that I learned a thing or two about shrinking my game file sizes, I practiced spriting to the point were I feel like I can draw anything, and I figured out an interesting bit about making app icons.

Have a postmortem-ish breakdown below.

PCT Open House - Spring 2014 (Gaming & Simulation)

     My college's open house happened on Saturday and some students and I volunteered to help with the Gaming and Simulation presentations and represent what BGS majors are capable of. I had a lot of fun and got everything I wanted and more out of the experience. Get the details of that experience below.