A new year, with new opportunities and good times ahead. It is early in the morning 6.30 right now, and I am about to go to regular work, but first I’ll do a quick post about my first entry to the one game a month challenge. I have decided to join this, to push myself into finishing 12 small game projects throughout 2013. It will be a challenge for sure, since it will not be a full time endeavour. I am sure it will teach me to think small and scope projects accordingly. Some months I might fail the challenge, but all in all I hope to get a double digit game release count this year.

Some of the games will most likely be a joint venture between me and Leigh Bamforth as well as the great peeps from Henchman & Goon, while some games will be solo projects, programmer art and spaghetti code FTW.

First project up is a Word War I plane game, inspired by classic Amiga side scrolling shooters as well as modern infinite runners with simple tap and swipe mechanics. Visual art style will be heavily influenced by art deco. Even thought the style came just after the war had ended, it works well when portraying bi-planes and anything that would look like war propaganda. Perhaps an unholy mishmash of art deco and art nouveau will be the way to go?

Unity will be the game engine of choice, of course, and LightWave will the trusty steed for content. I’ll be posting mini updates on twitter while major milestones will be posted hereabouts.

…2013, bring it on!

Right off the bat, installing the Android SDK was a bit of a “huh?” moment, but I came across this nice guide for getting up to speed with installing the Android SDK on a Mac: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTh1i-7D75o

So to recap and make it more geared towards Unity peeps, do this:

1. Download the latest SDK: http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html
2. Unpack it and place it somewhere, i.e. /Developer/android-sdk-macosx/
3. Fire up a terminal window go to /Developer/android-sdk-macosx/tools and execute the Android SDK Manager:   ./android
4. When the window pops up, check the boxes for target APIs you need, and hit “Install x packages” <- x the number of packages to install
5. Connect your Android device to your Mac with a USB cable and go to it’s Settings->Applications->Development->USB debugging and turn it on
6. When you build for Android in Unity the first time, point it to the /Developer/android-sdk-macosx/ folder when it asks for the SDK location

Tadaaa!

if(Tadaaa==false)
{
RestartUnity(“BuildAndRunAgain”);
}

Its 2012 and the local peeps are awesome. After attending Bergen Game Jam last weekend and the first international Join Game conference yesterday and today, one can not help but to be excited and inspired to get back into the game dev mode. I need to update some LScripts and I think some Unity/C# scripts should be released too. Sharing is caring.

If you so happen to be a Norwegian or a local Bergeneese, head over to spillmakerlauget.no and join in on the game dev fun. If you are in the 3D/CG realm, then also head over to cgbergen.org and join the mailing list.

Full steam ahead!

It’s been a few days since the Android version went live, and I am awaiting the approval process from the App Store. In any case, the swtor.com RSS reader marks the kick off for many iOS and Android apps in the coming months.

MentalFish and Scary-Monsters have teamed up to deliver an absurd experience in the form of a 3′rd person shooter named B.A.G. The game is a tribute to the 80′ies comic D.R. & Quinch and will feature ridiculous weaponry for disposal of annoying aliens.

Leigh Bamforth has created some awesome models and first up is one of the two characters:
Unity turntable of Quinch in all his splendor.

Hurry peeps, pre-order Unity 3.0 before it is released and save a few hundred bucks. I just got my upgrade to Unity 3.0 and an upgrade of the basic iPhone license, so it saved me 300$.

Also, check out the video of the Beast lightmapping demo, total awesomeness!

Awesome asset management in Unity 3.0
http://blogs.unity3d.com/2010/06/15/unity-3-feature-preview-asset-management/

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=12584179&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1

Just letting you know there will be some additions to the Unity Proto Pack, such as heli- and space ship flying modes. All existing customers of the pack will get it as a free update.

The first product is a prototyping pack for Unity, with some simplistic setups for player, camera and enemy behaviours.

http://mentalfish.com/store/

Here is a tutorial by Mikael Burman on how to create some nice water effects on a window, by using my UV 2 Morph LScript. The plugin is just a small part of it all, so watch the whole thing and you’ll see the overall coolness. This technique can also be applied to realtime 3D scenarios, animated normal map textures in Unity anyone?

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=8260532&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=ff9933&fullscreen=1

Download LScript