Monday 30 June 2014

High-Res Shots

I realized that I haven't been posting great quality shots, so I thought Id quickly post some.

Obviously the Vita's native res is only 960x544p, which is great on that size screen, but just don't expect this res on the actual Vita, I just wanted to show some nice quality shots.














ON CALL Progress Report

As you should know, we've been hard at work making our first PS Vita game. We've been crafting the various required assets, scripts and systems as well as concepts for the rest of the game that we still have not gotten around too.

Were proud to show off our progress in areas such as Space Travel, as well as working Guns and the progress of the next level "Life Support"

Here's an update video and some screens:






I'm also happy to report that so far we are only having minor performance hiccups with frame rate still staying above 40fps in the most demanding / un-optimized places and running at 60fps 90% of the time.

Friday 27 June 2014

Thursday 26 June 2014

On Call progress report

So its been a few days, we've been hard at work on concepts, story, characters, design, planning and even sounds.

So far we have the Prologue area nearly done, with the Space area entering into development.

From here we will design and make the hanger, as well as several levels and objectives for each level.

So far, our target of 60fps at native res is achievable, but we have a lot to do that could drop frames, particularly in terms of AI.

We will keep you posted as often as we can, we are a small team, but progress is going well.

My next post will likely be about the story / objectives and will feature the hanger area and possibly some other levels.

We hope you are as excited as we are about this project.


Wednesday 25 June 2014

Vita Light mapping test

Here's the results of my first test with baking lights on the PS Vita




Unity Vita

Behold! The answer to all your Vita development woes!

Beast Light mapping.

I will post some screens, but my testing has revealed that its great for performance and graphics, so win/win.

Tuesday 24 June 2014

Playstation Vita

So I got my Vita Unity PSM license yesterday by email.

Man I was so excited to get started working on the Vita, So I installed the new versions of Unity and PSM and got started testing to see what can be done.

I know that Unity is still in its first phases on Vita, so some of my issues will likely be sorted out in coming updates and such.

So far my biggest complaint is performance. I wasn't expecting much from the Vita, but what I got was quite frankly unexpected.

Pros

  1. Polygons - the poly count is extremely reasonable and makes up for its shortcomings as detail can be squeezed into polygons.
  2. Lens flares / halos - They not only look great on the Vita, they don't seem to drop performance by that much, meaning many fake lights / effects.
  3. Controls - A mobile device with full on controls / analogs. Simply put. More control options = more gameplay possibilities.
  4. That screen - Holy cow, the screen is amazing, the colors are vibrant and the picture is crisp.
  5. Workflow - Unity and the Vita work perfectly together, once you've set up, you can test your game on the Vita with the click of a button. Its fast, its easy and its reliable.


Cons

  1. Shadows - Low res (literally block shadows) and halve frame rate.
  2. Particles - Every particle effect takes off 15fps.
  3. Textures - Buggy.
  4. Normal maps - If the player gets close to them the frame rate dives down low and they are buggy.
  5. Lights - having more than 3 lights in a scene rapidly decreases performance.
  6. Substances - No support for substances. Having Just 1 in my scene caused MASSIVE load times... as in, My Vita and PC want to sleep, I played some Resogun, I had dinner and it still had not loaded in.
Obviously I've only had a few hours with to try things, so I have no doubts that I will figure out what exactly the Vita is good / bad at, which will allow for better optimizing, but for now this is what I can hit at 60ish fps.




Fixed issues

Ive fixed all the issues on my end, turns out it was nothing more than needing to wait to be verified.

It has no impact on anything other than me being able to see whats going on once its online haha.

Well, thats one adventure down

Heres the link again now that I know it works:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.FtC.PenguinsTest1

Monday 23 June 2014

Webpage

I've started work on a webpage where I can store everything in a more professional way.

The blog will be a more personal development orientated er... thing... Where as the site will be a collection of all My projects and some news.

Obviously this blog will be updated more regularly as I tend to update when I'm working on something exciting, where as the webpage would be updated at the start and end of a project.

Anyways, its not much, but here it is for now: https://sites.google.com/site/4tcgames/

Pebbles the Penguin RELEASED

Its finaly out there!

After many long days of trying to figure out what to do to publish an app on google play, I think Ive done it... Now, Im not sure Ive done it right, as I know just about nothing about this stuff... But thats why I decided to make the game.

Ive put the price as low as Im aloud to (Idk why $1 is the lowest) But I needed to learn how to do this stuff and therefor hope that Its done right so I can start making some cash and making many more projects in the future.

Just a reminder again. I have no idea what Im doing, I think that Ive done this right, only time will tell, but if anything is wrong I WILL fix it.

I know its small and I know it only took a week to make, but none the less I hope you enjoy.












Edit, having some difficulties on my end, nothing to worry about on your end tho.


Saturday 21 June 2014

Pebbles the Penguin

Heres some screens showing how work is coming along with the game.

There are now 6 different levels, I've also added in more bonus objects as well as refined the risk vs reward nature of these types of games. On top of that I've added effects such as halos and trails to help liven up the screen.










Wednesday 18 June 2014

Pebbles the Penguin Alpha


Ive decided to create a simple game to get my head around making games for Android. 

Ive selected an easier project so that I can learn essential skills for the platform such as knowing how much the hardware can handle graphically to optimization, controls and publishing to the store.

It will be up on the store within the next few days, but here's a short demo video of the latest build:



Tuesday 17 June 2014

Update

Right.

I wont lie. Its been a long while since I wrote an update. So here goes.

Firstly, Ive been hard at work this semester at Uni, so Ive had far less time to devote to projects. I have however been practicing in several key areas that Ive felt I need to improve on.

Firstly, terrain sculpting, painting and creation. Ive been sculpting out terrain in programs like Mudbox and Sculprits and painting them as well as optimizing them for games. Its a skill that I feel is extremely important.

Secondly, Optimization. Ive coded several scripts to help optimization with Lods and such. For example, the performance in inStasis has more than doubled, with my pc running the game Maxed out at 1080p45fps, where as it was running at High 720p30fps. These optimizations help me when it comes to making games for android, ios and vita. Ive applied for a Vita license, we will see how that turns out. And Ive made a simple 'runner' to put up on the app-store some day to see if the income is viable as a student making small games.

Thirdly, As none of my classes at Uni have anything to do with game dev (We do maths and Programming, which does help a lot, but no animation, modeling or game scripting of any kind) so I no longer have access to Unity Pro, 3dsMax, Maya and Mudbox. This is fine, be it some what of a hurdle. Ive expanded into programs like Blender, sculprits, gimp and Unity Free and My workflow is practically unchanged. So I benefit from learning more programs, which is a bonus.

I will continue to work quietly in my spare time and will upload screens of anything interesting that I make, or indeed playable demos of my work when they are ready.

For now I will be focusing on Uni, filling my portfolio with practice and demos as well as publishing smaller games on ios, android and wherever else I can. I hope this goes well.