https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dizpSFGx574&feature=youtu.be
Thanks to the snow I had an extended weekend to finish Dwarf In The Woods!!!
For now it’s just available on Android but hopefully I’ll be getting it to iOS and WP8 shortly
Download it and leave a rating!!!
About a month or so ago I started a rather large and ambitious platformer project, so naturally I temporarily lost motivation and chose to work on something new and simpler!!!
And thus my new project Dwarf In The Woods was born. It’s another infinite runner, but this time around it’s all about COMBAT!!!!
I’ve worked on it for about 3 days so far and I have the basic gameplay finished along with some pretty cool “flair”. You can do two things, attack and jump. Slice up enemies while avoiding an untimely death. There are two monster types, a goblin and a spiderbat which you can kill with your axe. Additionally you can kill goblins by jumping on their heads!!!
The environmental art that you see was clearly not drawn by me. It was part of an art pack I purchased recently from the unity asset store.
The Dwarf and the monsters however were all me!!! I sketched them out and then drew them up in Inkscape and exported them to Unity, I also did all of the animations 😀
I may add somemore depth to the gameplay (i.e. powerups, increasing difficulty, maaaaaaybe other monsters) but this depends on the feedback I get and what I feel like tackling.
the main work left to do is all the stuff I hate. This includes but is not limited to…
The title says it all. I have submitted All About Android: The Game version 1.0 to the Google Play store and it should be available in a few hours or so 🙂
Be sure to download it tonight or tomorrow morning!!!
EDIT: here’s the link!!! https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.MatthewHoltzem.AAATheGame&hl=en
I’ve been hard at work the past couple of weeks trying to optimize and finish up the core content, and I’m happy to say that All About Android: The Game is nearly complete. I still want to do a few days of testing to iron out any issues with new features and I will need to spend some time creating promotional content such as screenshots before I publish it to the market. That being said I hope to have the game available for purchase in the Google Play store by the weekend!!! I also plan to put it on the amazon app store around the same time 🙂
This is an initial release and I plan to keep on adding features and improving it! This turned out to be a larger project than I originally planned but it’s been a lot of fun and I’ve learned a ton!!!
This week I really concentrated on adding sound into the game so there isn’t too much to write about. I have to say sound really has a huge impact on the apparent quality of a game. In my last project “the wandering wizard” I had no sound effects due to time/ability constraints but since this game is so much simpler it wasn’t too hard. It really does a lot to bring the experience together. Anyway sit back and Just watch the awesomeness!!!
I’ve spend the better part of this week working on optimizing the game to run much smoother. It’s incredible how many things you can find in your code to improve if you really look for them. When I went in to this I had only one real thing in mind, that was to implement object pooling (I’ll describe this in a second) but once I got started I realized that no one thing was going to give me the dramatic performance boost I wanted. As a result I spent hours and hours finding where the bottlenecks were and how to fix them and learned a lot of cool things that will carry over into future projects 😀
After some digging on the Unity forums I found out about a best practice known as object pooling. You see in my game (and most games) there is a lot of creating and destroying of objects. You have to do this with modular level pieces, projectiles, particle effects, and basically anything that isn’t constantly present. Previously how I handled this was to just create them and destroy them. This works fine but since things are constantly being added and removed from memory it can cause the garbage collector to fire often and cause slight jitters in the game.
Instead of adding and deleting objects you simply create a “pool” of them. When you need one you pull if from the pool, activate it, and put it where you need it. Then when you’re done you disable it and add it back to the pool.
Although this is helpful it has the disadvantage of a longer level load time since all objects have to be created at the start of the scene.
Once I was mostly satisfied with the performance I went on to implement a few very important aspects of the game content itself.
First I created fly-out announcements. Basically just text that fly’s out when you pick up a powerup. This is important since the game is centered around humor and if you don’t know what the powerup is you will not get the joke. I haven’t yet decided if I want these to fire the first time you get the powerup or every time.
Next I added an in-game tutorial which will always appear until you complete it. It pauses the game and gives you instructions for each type of obstacle. It’s very simple but effective.
The last change I made was to implement a sort of animated comic that gives a bit of simple storyline behind the game. It’s not flashy and reflects my underdeveloped art/animation skills but it gets the point across. Seeing as this is something people will probably see only once if at all I think it is sufficient for now.
It hasn’t been long since the last time I posted but I’ve made some significant updates that I wanted to share!!!
The first thing was to change the jewels into android os themed desserts. A lot of people on Google+ suggested this and it was such a no brainer that I’m embarrassed I didn’t think of it in the first place. But no matter you will now see cupcakes, donuts, and eclairs!!!
I made it so that the game speed increases the longer you play (up to a maximum). Later I will add a powerup that resets the speed back to it’s starting value.
I made a lot of subtle changes to the modular pieces of terrain that can spawn.
Someone on Google+ (or a couple people) mentioned something about patent trolls which gave me an awesome idea! Now once you hit certain score milestones (200 point intervals for now), you will be faced with a mean green patent troll armed with deadly gavels and a mac pro jetpack!!! WATCH OUT!!!!!!!
The features are coming along nicely and unfortunately the next logical step is to either mess with sound effects or start optimizing (BOOOOORING!!!). But yeah stay tuned…
Recently I’ve been working on a new game based on one of my favorite podcasts, All About Android. This game is a 2d infinite runner with a fun Android theme!
The story for the game is not fully fleshed out yet so I’ll just focus on the game play for now. Your goal is to dodge rocks by jumping and ducking while collecting as many jewels as you can. Along the way you will collect various Android themed power ups to help you! You tap the left side of the screen to jump and the right side to jump. It is simple and fun!
My goal was not to make anything terribly groundbreaking but something simple and fun that would be appreciated by fellow Android nerds such as my self 🙂
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Well this is one more major platform to cross off the list. The Wandering Wizard is finally available on the iOS app store!!!
If you are an apple user and have been waiting for a chance to try out this fun and challenging game then NOW IS THE TIME!!!!!
After a few roadblocks and delays I’ve finally been able to release The Wandering Wizard onto the Windows 8 app store!!! If you have windows 8 head over to http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/en-us/app/the-wandering-wizard/39735284-732a-45e2-98bf-f22ae374c0ea and check it out!!!
Hopefully in the not so distant future I’ll be able to release the game on iOS and and Windows Phone as well.
The Wandering Wizard 