Author Archives: A.H.

Facing the Camera: “Physics.Raycast” vs “Vector3.Dot” in Unity3D

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I had a great time this week, having been given the opportunity to present a talk at IGDA – Ann Arbor in Ypsilanti, Michigan this month. I’ve been attending their meetups for over a year, and they consistently get a great turnout and great discussions. This time, group was a good size, the audience seemed interested, and I didn’t mumble as much as I tend to. Of course, the talk was about “3D Cel Animation.”

But with many developers and programmers in the room, they brought up some suggestions to optimize how I check which ‘perspective’ of a character should be shown at a given frame. A common suggestion was to use “dot product” at a low-level instead of relying on “Physics.Raycast.” Even years ago, this had been suggested to me. I had fears about its’ efficiency, but after a few one-on-one discussions, I agreed it might turn out to be more efficient, and it wouldn’t be hard to implement.

I felt like such a fool. For 5 years, I’ve preached the brilliance and simplicity of my design! Was an alternate solution so obvious, and really better?

So I gave it a try. And the results surprised me.

A visual comparing “RaycastAll,” “Raycast” and “Dot Product” as they relate to knowing what orientation a character is in.

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2019 Before I Knew It

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As I write this hours before New Year’s Day, it’s raining outside. Weather has been unusual this season: snow came much earlier (cumulating on the ground in November), but then went away during a warm spell, making this the first non-White Christmas I can recall near Windsor, Ontario. 2018 has come and gone.

Around this time last year, I remember writing I would have a playable version of my indie game “True King” by the end of 2018, no matter what. I’m actually not far off from that goal… sort of. While the game is far from finished, it IS playable, at least for the first few minutes of gameplay. And I owe a lot to keeping my New Year’s resolution from last year.

Juggling so many things… well, it’s never boring!

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Online Stores to Sell Indie Games in 2019 – Revenue Splits and Audience Reach

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In December 2018, Epic Games announced the “Epic Games Store,” a direct competitor to Steam to sell digital PC games. To help entice developers, they advertise a 88/12 cut in favor to developers, and a full 100% of profits to games that use Epic’s Unreal Engine. To entice gamers, they made several announcements of exclusive indie titles for the platform. Steam tried to counteract this by offering a new profit-split deal, and Discord’s Game Store announced they would beat Epic’s revenue split (90/10) sometime in 2019. For the first time in nearly a decade, there is genuine competition in the space.

That escalated quickly in just a few weeks, didn’t it?

Just a handful of stores to sell your indie game in 2019…

 

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A History of Pseudo-3D Games – Using 2D Animation With 3D Gameplay (as of 2018)

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In 2014, “Drew and the Floating Labyrinth” was released, and was hailed as a revolutionary title for being the first successful case of utilizing 2D animation in a fully 3D game.

… well, not really. It’s been quickly overlooked. But years later, I took some time to look up the idea to see if any other games were using a similar visual concept. Over 7,000 games were released on Steam in 2017 alone, by now there are tens of thousands of indie games across Steam and itch.io to choose from: surely, not all of them are using sub-par 3D models or 2D pixel art?

I’m surprised I haven’t really written a more formal article like this before. It should act as a good resource of existing games (both past commercial and more recent indie titles) that tackle the animation concept. I won’t be including purely 2D games that use 2D animation: while there are several excellent examples (2017’s “Cuphead” and 2018’s “Gris” come to mind), high-quality animation in these genres have existed for over a decade now, with far too many to count. We’re looking at “pseudo-3D” here, from over 30 years of history.

Latest Screenshot for “Unfinished – An Artist’s Lament”

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How To Showcase Your Game: Is E3 Obsolete?

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This week, Sony made a startling announcement: in addition to not having its’ usual “PlayStation” event at the end of 2018, it would not be attending the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in 2019. This would be the first time in the event’s 24-year history that Sony wouldn’t be present.

There are some reasons why this could be a good move, or at least, a necessary one. But as a developer, it makes me question how games are revealed to the mass public in the first place.

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