Game In Progress: May 2019

The year is basically half over and I'm still chugging along with this little project. As I said in my last post, being an adult with responsibilities is taking more of my time than I would like. But it is what it is. 

The overall goal would be to save enough money and get enough experience under my belt, where I can comfortably focus solely on making a game that I feel is fun. Right now it's more of an experimental phase - getting to know the tools, learning, and putting it to use, and whatnot.

One of those learning moments happened since my last post. I complained that the levels my sister had made were a bit more complex than I liked. So my choices were to find pre-made shapes that fit them, or make them by hand. Well I found a nice middle-ground that would allow me to save considerable time in creating my basic levels.

It's called ProBuilder and it's an easy way to create pre-made shapes. It is actually already integrated into Unity. All I had to do was download it, since it doesn't come pre-installed.

As you can see above, it has a shape selector with the basic shapes anyone would use: arches, stairs, cones, and a few more. From there you can adjust the settings to get other shapes. It's a simple, but very powerful tool. 

Easy stuff

This is perfect for me because I am NOT in any way creative or have the time to meticulously design each set piece, or ramp, or whatever. Because it's integrated with Unity and due to it's simplicity, I can easily test each shape/terrain that I make. More steps? Done! Longer curve on my platform? Easy!

It's got a bunch of other options I still need to mess around with, too. So far I only used the coloring option, but it wasn't too hard to figure out. I imagine the other options won't be too hard to use either.

Still not sure what those 4 icons are for tho :)))

That last pic is about where I left off. My sister, the level designer, made a moon looking thing at the beginning of the level so I still got some work to do on that. But we're getting there! Progress is progress!

But even though I have yet to finish this project, I am already looking ahead. VR/AR is rapidly becoming a booming area of interest for gaming. I remember while in college I researched a few things about what was already being used with this tech. Car makers used them to design and test cars without ever having to make it in real life. Teachers using them for education. And some designing movies, too. But gaming hadn't yet taken off. In just a few years since, it has gone mainstream. 

As more and more people find incredible and creative ways to use the tech, it's become very popular. It's gotten out of the Enterprise world and into the hands of consumers. And everyone is getting on board.

There's tools being used right now that will let you edit in a virtual space. For me, I think that's amazing. The inuitiveness of using your hands along with other inputs means I won't be tied to a mouse and keyboard. 

For instance, this guy made what look like a very basic racing game.

https://twitter.com/leonardschoelch/status/1139824281557372928

If you can't see the above tweet, it'll be in the comments

He used Google's Tiltbrush tool, which lets you create, paint, draw, in virtual space. along with Unity. Yes it looks very very simple and bland, but he did it in just one weekend. The ease of use and overall better workflow for creation is what I am after. Imagine putting more hours into it and polishing it up.

And there's also this

It's exciting times for sure.

LOOK WHO CAME:

Osc