Thursday, May 17, 2012
Galaxy Ninjas: a 2D Game for Android made with the Unity3D Engine
Hey I'm two weeks in development for Galaxy Ninjas, a 2D side-scroller where you fight aliens on different planets while dodging obstacles. You can customize you ninja with different weapons, outfits, and scrolls which are power ups. Powerups include shooting fireballs. summoning lightning storms, and calling upon a mighty blizzard. There are many more things I want to add, and I'll be posting any updates on here!
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Speed Math is now out for Android!
Backyard Zombies took me 3 months, Speed Math took me a week. It's a pretty simple game with basic times tables with some cute graphics and a point system. Hopefully I can generate some more revenue with it! I plan on having at least 5 games out for Android before the semester ends. I need a constant flow of cash because I certainly do not want to work at steak n shake or any other crap job over the summer. I'd rather spend my time developing which not only helps me practice my programming skills but also art skills, time management, and overall just makes me feel good. I've got some good news, by the way. Amazon finally emailed me back about featuring Backyard Zombies as the Free App of the Day on their site. This is a huge opportunity to gain a good amount of exposure even though I won't be getting any money from the downloads on that day. I'm thinking that in the following weeks I'll see a spike in downloads. So wish me luck, I'm gonna continue working on the next game. It's similar to Speed Math, just a more childish theme and a few tweaks here and there to the game play.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Monday, January 9, 2012
Oh yeah, here's the link to Backyard Zombies if you want to check it out!
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.SmashGames.BackyardZombies
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Backyard Zombies Big Update Coming Soon!
While marketing I've been wondering what else could I add to BZ. I've got some cool ideas for some new characters that just didn't make the first cut. Perhaps a football player who throws footballs, a teddy bear with a mini gun, a robot with some laser, an astronaut that... Thows... Rocks? I'm sure I'll think of some more cool ones once I get back up to UCF. As for more levels, I could make settings such as a desert, an icy wasteland, a swamp, the moon, underwater, a really long bridge, a volcano lava place, or a forest. New zombie types could include a big zombie dinosaur boss, zombies running with bombs that explode if you are too close to them, a helicopter boss, and other zombies animals like bears or something.
One big thing that I would like to add is another game mode(or two more!). In Hardcore Mode you can pick any level but you lose if you shoot a single civilian. In Rage/Crazy/Horde Mode the spawn rate is like tripled and there is only zombies. That would add for some hectic shooting if you just want to release stress or something. I'll keep posting about development and updates!
Till next time,
-Sean
One big thing that I would like to add is another game mode(or two more!). In Hardcore Mode you can pick any level but you lose if you shoot a single civilian. In Rage/Crazy/Horde Mode the spawn rate is like tripled and there is only zombies. That would add for some hectic shooting if you just want to release stress or something. I'll keep posting about development and updates!
Till next time,
-Sean
Thursday, January 5, 2012
The Hardest Part In Game Development: Marketing
All I have to say is... Wow. How ignorant was I thinking that after I was finally finished with Backyard Zombies I could sit back, relax, and watch the downloads roll in. This has to be the most stressful part about making a game! Every morning I wake up and rush over to my computer to check to see how many more downloads I got. Let's face it, the numbers aren't what I was expecting. So I've been very active on a ton of forums trying to get involved and the the word out for Backyard Zombies. It's hard. But I'm going to keep trying as hard as I can, because I think if I can just get the game to be on the top new paid/top new free lists on the Android Market, It will take care of itself. It's hard to start a new project right now, too. I can't focus on an entire new project without worrying about how Backyard Zombies is doing... Hopefully this will start looking up soon. As the days go by the downloads are consistently increasing, just not by much. Now I know that marketing is definitely the hardest part about making a game.
-Sean
-Sean
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Backyard Zombies is now out on the Android
After thee months of hard work up at UCF, I'm finally done with my first game for mobile devices. Backyard Zombies can be bought for $0.99 on the Android Market or you can get the free Backyard Zombie LITE version, which includes only the first character and the first level. Over the course of the past 3 months there have been ups and downs with development, I guess I'll point out the most enjoyable parts and then the many instances when I wanted to toss my laptop off a cliff into a molten lava ocean of destruction.
Alright there were four main stages of development. Design, Assemble, Finalize Assets, and then Optimization.
Design is the fun part. It's when concept art clutters my desk and walls, catchy tunes start ringing in my head in the shower, and my focus in class is only to play other successful mobile games to learn what they did right and what I could do to improve these aspects. After a couple weeks I had a solid idea on what Backyard Zombies would be, concerning the game play and art.
The Assemble phase was fun, too. The Unity3D Engine makes it easy to throw a few objects together and slap on some scripts to prototype a game. Because let's face it, a game can look beautiful, sound beautiful, but if it's core game play isn't fun no one is going to want to keep playing. Towards the end of this phase I found myself playing Backyard Zombies more than working on it, so I think that was a good sign (Right?). My roommates and friends that came over played the early PC version and enjoyed it. One of the most glorious moments of my life was when I saw Backyard Zombies running on my Android Galaxy S. That's when my bathroom breaks became very long as I would sit and play as I pooped.
After I had designed how everything would work and made it work in the Assemble phase, it was time to finalize the assets. What I mean is up to this point all of my graphics and sounds were just place holders, so I needed to sit down and make some good appealing art as well as a theme song. These all came in time as I spent countless hours on photoshop and flash using that amazing brush tool (the one that, no matter how bad you are at drawing, makes the curves of your lines beautiful and cartoony). This was a tough phase because I could spend two hours on a character or the title artwork just to throw it away at the end of the day. It was a bit frustrating at some points, but in the end it was all worth it when i would play the game a few times and marvel at the little things I did to make the art look nice.
Optimization. What if you spent 3 months making the greatest chocolate cake in the world only to realize that before you ate it you were allergic to chocolate? That is how I felt during the optimization phase of Backyard Zombies. I had to go back and redo a lot of the scripts and cut a few assets to reduce lag. LAG. OH MY GOD LAG. The most aggravating thing in the world... There were times when I just wanted to redo the entire project(my friends talked me out of doing it) because there was so much to fix. I can't believe the Unity3D tutorials were teaching me the wrong way to do things all along! Instantiate and Destroy are very expensive functions, so I had to make a GameObject Pool which was A LOT of coding. But, once again, it was all worth it in the end. I can happily play my game without any lag.
Developing games is a very tough process. It requires creativity, patience, and most of all perseverance. Anyone can come up with a great idea, but it is very few who actually stay up day and night to work and make those ideas come true. Right now I'm in the design phase for my new project, which I'll regularly be posting about on here.
Till next time,
-Sean
Alright there were four main stages of development. Design, Assemble, Finalize Assets, and then Optimization.
Design is the fun part. It's when concept art clutters my desk and walls, catchy tunes start ringing in my head in the shower, and my focus in class is only to play other successful mobile games to learn what they did right and what I could do to improve these aspects. After a couple weeks I had a solid idea on what Backyard Zombies would be, concerning the game play and art.
The Assemble phase was fun, too. The Unity3D Engine makes it easy to throw a few objects together and slap on some scripts to prototype a game. Because let's face it, a game can look beautiful, sound beautiful, but if it's core game play isn't fun no one is going to want to keep playing. Towards the end of this phase I found myself playing Backyard Zombies more than working on it, so I think that was a good sign (Right?). My roommates and friends that came over played the early PC version and enjoyed it. One of the most glorious moments of my life was when I saw Backyard Zombies running on my Android Galaxy S. That's when my bathroom breaks became very long as I would sit and play as I pooped.
After I had designed how everything would work and made it work in the Assemble phase, it was time to finalize the assets. What I mean is up to this point all of my graphics and sounds were just place holders, so I needed to sit down and make some good appealing art as well as a theme song. These all came in time as I spent countless hours on photoshop and flash using that amazing brush tool (the one that, no matter how bad you are at drawing, makes the curves of your lines beautiful and cartoony). This was a tough phase because I could spend two hours on a character or the title artwork just to throw it away at the end of the day. It was a bit frustrating at some points, but in the end it was all worth it when i would play the game a few times and marvel at the little things I did to make the art look nice.
Optimization. What if you spent 3 months making the greatest chocolate cake in the world only to realize that before you ate it you were allergic to chocolate? That is how I felt during the optimization phase of Backyard Zombies. I had to go back and redo a lot of the scripts and cut a few assets to reduce lag. LAG. OH MY GOD LAG. The most aggravating thing in the world... There were times when I just wanted to redo the entire project(my friends talked me out of doing it) because there was so much to fix. I can't believe the Unity3D tutorials were teaching me the wrong way to do things all along! Instantiate and Destroy are very expensive functions, so I had to make a GameObject Pool which was A LOT of coding. But, once again, it was all worth it in the end. I can happily play my game without any lag.
Developing games is a very tough process. It requires creativity, patience, and most of all perseverance. Anyone can come up with a great idea, but it is very few who actually stay up day and night to work and make those ideas come true. Right now I'm in the design phase for my new project, which I'll regularly be posting about on here.
Till next time,
-Sean
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)