Back and Forth

So today I went back and forth about how much I'm liking this development environment. 

On the one hand, it's nice being able to publish to so many different outputs with so little effort.  On the other hand, I'm not exactly sure how fast this engine is really going to run if I don't use their prefab'd terrain models.  With a game like this one, you have thousands upon thousands of cubes that are drawn.  In my little demo, I tried to get 1000 drawn and it had some issues.

I still have a lot to learn.  Today I learned how to play with the mouse and get keyboard input.  I removed the mouse cursor and added a little reticle on the screen.  You can click on a block to delete it and there's no detection of the type of block, so if you click on the base set of blocks you are going to fall into infinity due to the gravity.  I also created some basic skins to make identifying the blocks a little easier.

At first I tried creating my own First Person Camera, but I got frustrated and found out that they have a prefab that I can use.  After putting that in there and realizing how easy it was to use, I ended up sticking with it.  Now I just need to figure out how to make it so you can view more than 60 degrees on the Y Axis.

Anyway, that's it for tonight.  Probably won't do much over the weekend due to Valentines day but I'll be back on this on Sunday.

Day One

While I've been playing with Unity for a few days, tonight was the first night where I seriously sat down with it.

When I started going through the 2dGameplayTutorial several days ago, I figured it'd be a good way for me to learn the interface without jumping into everything.  The 3d tutorial seemed too in depth for a beginner to really understand.  After getting towards the middle, I started wondering more and more about when I'd be learning the scripting side.  I decided to stop doing the tutorial and find something that tells me how to program.

I did end up finding http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/ScriptReference/.  This let me get a basic "Hello World" app up and running.  I also learned the beginnings of my minecraft clone:  how to dynamically create boxes on the screen.  Nothing fancy but it's a start.

I also made the decision to go with JavaScript instead of C#.  While I like C# more, I figured it'd be easier to use with this engine.  We'll see how it pans out over time.

So it's been a while since my first post. I guess I've been busy?

I decided to start this blog to document my adventures in game design. Video games are something I grew up with. When I first got my Commie64 clone (I forget its name), I didn't have anything to save my projects to. Everytime I turned the machine on I would have to rewrite all the code from the previous day. It was all I had for "gaming", so I would do this on a regular basis. After a while, I started changing little things here and there just for fun. 20 years later and I now work as a Software Engineer for a major company.

As for video games, I got my first gaming system from my parents in 1990. I had a bad blood disease that required me to stay inside at all times, so they got me that to help pass the time. Between the NES and the computer (I had one of those IBM clones by now), I had a lot of games to toy around with. My favorite of all of them was a game called Robot Odyssey. That game taught me a lot about programming without me even knowing that I was learning something.

Since then, I've gotten most every major gaming console and spent countless hours shooting zombies, exploring virtual worlds, flying virtual skies and racing on virtual tracks. Several years ago my friend asked me to join him in his latest gaming project: Pwned.com. I've been working on that for several years now and it's allowed me to meet some great gamers. I continue to work on Pwned to this day. I've also done some indie game development but have focused primarily on the iPhone. I've released SpeedR, vipValet and Traffic Lights.

So back to one of the first lines of this post: I decided to start this blog to document my adventures in game design. I've going to start with toying around on Unity. I've been playing a great game called Minecraft lately (trust me, do not get this game. You will lose track of your life). The concept of the game seems pretty simple, so I've decided to write a Minecraft clone in Unity. I'm currently on the 2dGameplayTutorial so I have nothing to post just yet.. but this is a good kickoff.

So until next time,
Roy
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