Spring 2014 Semester Is Over

     Today marks the last day of school. I am just one Statistics final away from glorious game development freedom. In case you haven't noticed the tone of nearly every single post this month, I'm very excited to have some free time this year. I'll overcome this last hurdle, pack up my things (all but my trusty laptop) and leave for home in the morning.

     I'd say the only thing I'd miss this summer is my girlfriend, but I'll just try to occupy myself until I get to visit her again. Shouldn't be too hard. After all I still have to finish every spell's upgrade, create at least 3 special enemies for each region, make 10 common enemies, design boss fights, code AI pathfinding, make a more detailed world map, make sprites for several spell upgrades, make a dynamic text box system, and create all the different items.

    Those are just what I have in mind to start with. I hope to get to a point where I'm just putting pieces together in late July. Once all the hard stuff is done, making a game out of it all should be easy.

Mobile Development & Senior Capstone Plans

 
     While my mind is mostly occupied with thoughts of how much development time I'll have this summer I also find myself organizing how my next two school game projects will be done. See my upcoming plans and obstacles below the break.

Animated Unicorn Spells

     I've animated the spells in Unity and made some adjustments to make the sprites look better. They arn't working in game yet, but I finally have all the pieces to do so. My next step is going through each spell one at a time and making them work in action. I'll start by making the spell switcher work so I can shift through each spell.

     In code form the currently equipped spell will be a string value and I'll have an array keeping track of which one you have on. That will allow me to easily swap their positions in the array so players can customize the switching order to put their favorite spells and combos closer together.

     Once everything is working I need to decide on what each spell's icon should look like and whether those should change as you upgrade them.

iOS Distribution Certificate Expires Tomorrow

     This is the last chance to get my iOS games for a while. My distribution certificate expires tomorrow and my apps will be removed from the app store. Until I get enough money for a new Mac they won't be coming back. Hopefully I can get one in 2016 and bring my newer apps to iTunes when I renew my developer license.

     Wow... My first game developer's license was for iTunes. I remember how awesome it felt to call my self a real game developer for the first time. I also remember how exciting it was working on my first app (a Friendship is Magic "Best Pony" Slideshow with random vectors) and Fish Feaster, a game I was actually going to finish. The moment I got a game running on my iPod where bunch of colorful rectangles with scribbled eyes to swim around a blue background and ate each other, I knew I was finally going to finish a game. Here I am about a year later taking baby steps to finishing games I always wanted to play.