I’m accepting PoV’s October Challenge: Make a game, sell 1 copy. I’m going to extend and polish Stacker, my Ludum Dare 12 entry. It is the most complete game and best of all my Ludum Dare entries. I also have some ideas about how to make it more interesting than the current scheme of moving the goal line higher and higher each level.

Serendipitously, Unity 3.0 was released last week. I’ve been eyeing using it in future projects for a few weeks now, and have actually done several tutorials and watched a bunch of videos online. I was particularly impressed with the Visual Studio integration. If I had known about that earlier, I would have tried it much sooner. In the past, engines, frameworks and languages have caused me much gnashing of my teeth because their IDE was so painful.

Stacker in action

I’ve made some serious progress tonight.

I’ve gotten the basics now working in Unity:

• Yellow Blocks
• Physics and stacking
• Mouse position determines place of new block

I like the 3D-ness the block have now, even though the gamer is interacting purely in a 2D fashion.

Total hours so far: 11.5  This probably means that I’m already ahead of the LD12 pace.

Tags: screenshot

A small step forward.  Worked on getting the win condition to trigger.

Stacker Progress Screenshot 10/6

The trigger is firing, but I need to animated the target zone and the fact that you’ve hit it.  The text looks awful too.

I also got some business hat things done as well: signed up for Intel’s AppUp Developer whosywhatisit, Google Checkout thingy and a couple offical business forms with my county.  Can you believe you have to file for a permit to do work in your own home!?!  What is America coming too?  Anyways… tired… must sleep.

Total Hours To Date: 13.75

It was a real fight tonight getting the “Win” to be displayed nicely and in red. Took me a while to understand the relationship between the GUIText and a font material. Brother, sure wish I had figured it out faster.

Stacker Progress 10/7

On the business hat side of things I discovered that PayPal now has a microtransation option to their pricing structure and signed up. I have my reservations about the trustworthiness of PayPal after all the stories I’ve heard, but this will be my best option if I price Stacker at $1 like I was thinking.

Next Action: Some sort of visualization for the target area you are building the tower to.
Total Hours To Date: 15.75

Tags: screenshot

I created a nice visual target, literally, to aim for. It took me a little bit of time to figure out how to visually display the target separate from the collision mesh. Including, a slow walk down a lane called Child-Parent Scripting Confusion. But, now it is functional.

October Challenge Progress 10/8

Next Action: Level Two
Total Hours To Date: 18.25

Tags: screenshot

I’ve put up what I got. I’m not exactly proud of it as a whole. And, it probably deliverers just short of $1.26 of fun, but it is what it is.

Part of me wants to make it better, but another part of me is done with the idea and wants to move on!

Compo Link: Stacker
Website Link: Stacker

PS I’d lower the price, but BMT Micro has $1.25 minimum

Update: I switched to FastSpring and was able to lower the price to a dollar!

Tags: screenshot

Anyone interested in a meeting up for LD19 in the DC or Northern Virginia Metro area?

Woo hoo!  I had my first sale today!!!

Stacker - Bumps on a Log

I’m planning to use Unity for LD19 and was wondering if people had resources they’d recommend or share such as code, urls, blog posts etc. I’m especially interested in 2D tips and tricks.

Thanks,
MrPhil

PS I made a post on /r/gamedev too: What Unity Resources Would You Recommend for Ludum Dare 19 (Dec 17-20)

Tags: basecode, resources, sourcecode, unity, unity3d

Tags: motivation

I’m in!  Will be using Unity this time around.  This will be No. 10! Wow, ten is heavy.

Lock and Load:

• Unity3d
• XNA
• ExEn (Andrew Russell‘s cross-platform exapnsion of XNA)
• Visual Studio

Aim High!

Aim High

Tags: motivator

I’ve got a game idea and a plan.  It’s basically a Pac Man with an interested style and a little twist.

Who will be our hero?

Brainstorming

Honing in on the idea

The First Screenshot

Tags: brainstorming, screenshot

The XNA version of my game now surpasses the Unity version.  What’s working:

• Player display
• Player movement
• Player collision with items
• Background Board (no wall collision yet)
• Door key displays
• Player can pickup keys

• Wall collision
• Door display (Locked and Open)
• Level transition
• Enemy display
• Enemy following
• Enemy killing you
• More Levels

LD21 Screenshot 2

I missed the nano practice round, so I’m doing my own warmup. I’ve chosen the theme Mardi Gras because it’s Mardi Gras weekend (Mardi Gras is Tuesday, Feb 21st this year.)

Theme: Mardi Gras

No hard rules, timeframes, start or end times, or judging, just fun. Post what you make in the comments.

Tags: mardi gras, practice, warmup

I spent the day “working” on my warm-up MiniLD32.  I have the general design done, it’s a sort of gopher smash on the head game, except you are on a float throwing beads and doubloons at people in the crowd instead on hitting them on the head.  I was going to use Orthello2D with Unity but after some hair pulling figure out it hasn’t been update to 3.5.  Then, I started figuring out how 2D Toolkit worked, but it dawned on me an hour or so in that I couldn’t use that in a Ludum Dare because I can’t share all the code.  So, then I started floundering around trying to get some basic things working a la from scratch.  After Google-ing some problem I ended up watching 3 hours of YouTube Unity tutorials.  So, a most successful warm-up so far, as long as you think of warm-ups as making all the mistakes you can’t afford to during the actual Ludum Dare.  I’m headed to bed now, but I could still have something playable by the end of the day tomorrow, stress on the could.

Tags: mardi gras, practice, unity, unity3d, warmup, youtube

I’ve been practicing all month and looking forward to Ludum Dare 23 very much.  This will mark my 7th year!!!  That’s right, my first Ludum Dare was LD6 – Light and Darkness, April 2005!  Interestingly enough, that is the same LD that Phil Hassey’s new and just released game Dynamite Jack was conceived.

Excited!!!

I’m using a new technology, as usual: Flash/AS3 with Flash Punk

Tags: flashpunk

Here’s the command center, that’s right I code in a storage closet and that’s my cat Jack.  His hobby is to keep me from using the keyboard or mouse.

Mr. Phil Games Earth Headquarters

I also wanted to share this snippet of AS3 code that lets you choose a color and then convert pixels of that color to transparent pixels:

public static function MakeTransparent(source:*, color:uint = 0x00FF00FF) : BitmapData
{
// Get the bitmap data so we can fix it
var bitmapData:BitmapData
if (source is Class)
bitmapData = FP.getBitmap(source);
else if (source is BitmapData)
bitmapData = source;

// We aren’t use the transparent feature, hence the color
var bitmapDataNew:BitmapData = new BitmapData(bitmapData.width,
bitmapData.height, true, 0x00000000);
var pt:Point = new Point(0, 0);
var rect:Rectangle = new Rectangle(0, 0, bitmapData.width,
bitmapData.height);
var transparent:uint = 0x00000000;
var maskColor:uint = 0x00FFFFFF;
bitmapDataNew.threshold(bitmapData, rect, pt, “==”, color, transparent, maskColor, true);

return bitmapDataNew;
}

Tags: cat, code, codebase, desk, deskphoto, flashpunk

Game idea complete and fleshed out. I’m using ChevyRay’s missile command code and making it into a Nature at War game, it might end up with nanobots in it.

Screen Shot 1

Dinner 1

Snack 1

Tags: flashpunk, foodphoto, screenshot

I’m hitting the sack.  Here’s where I stand: Seeds Screenshot 2

Tags: flashpunk, screenshot