I love Unity3D. The game engine is still one of the most intuitive I’ve used, it’s easy to port to almost any platform, etc.
But after compiling my final game project, I was surprised that some bugs popped up. I suppose issues like this are almost certain upon finishing a project, and I’m lucky I didn’t spend more than a couple days on it. But still, you’d hope what you play in the editor can be done in the exe.
I’m happy to announce that “Drew and the Floating Labyrinth,” my hand-drawn 3D puzzle platformer, is just about complete.
And you didn’t think I could do it! Well… ok, I didn’t think I could do it. I said months ago that this would be finished in August 2014. I hoped to get it done a few weeks ago, but even now, it looks likely to get released just before September.
Quick update on “Drew and the Floating Labyrinth:” my hand-drawn 3D indie game is seeking voice actors and music, two things that I can’t do on my own (well, I could, but it would be embarrassingly bad, and having it at decent quality does wonders for the final game). I admit that I should have contacted people I have in mind sooner… now hoping to get these things finished in the next couple of weeks, I realize most of my contacts are either not available during the summer or busy with other things. If only I started contacting a few weeks ago… but I haven’t gone through all of my contacts yet. And surprisingly, a lot of existing sources for both of these things exist to hire people/content on short notice, and I did expect to pay something anyway…
Now, the point of this article. Some months ago, I volunteered to help a session of high school students experiment with “Kodu Game Lab” on the Xbox 360. I had a conversation with another student about the software: it was meant as a simplistic visual interface to make games, cute and colorful, sort of like “Little Big Planet” on PS3, but with a greater focus on the actual programming and design of games. My point of view was that Kodu wasn’t that easy to pick up. Well, perhaps for a newcomer it may have been more inviting, and certain concepts would have come through. But in my mind, having learned programming in another class years prior, I felt programming in general was really easy to pickup. And so, I felt that Kodu was redundant, since you couldn’t actually do much with it, and any time spent learning to use Kodu could probably have been spent on learning a real programming language, and in the same amount of time.
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I haven’t made a post in a long time. Don’t worry, I’m not dead. I’m just really focused on development for “Drew and the Floating Labyrinth,” my hand-drawn 3D puzzle platformer, the first true hand-drawn 3D game of its kind. So a lack of posts this month is a good thing.
I actually spent most of this month still working on “Drew” ‘s animation. I was hoping I was mostly done in May, but part of the game is that you slowly regain Drew’s color as you progress through the levels. I’m talking adding color to each PNG file one at a time, now giving me over 8,000 unique PNG textures (please stop laughing). It’s a shame it took so long, especially since I still haven’t animated a planned idle animation for her, and I still haven’t animated a second “guide” character planned. But I have done more than enough to at least focus on the levels, which I should really focus on this week, just to see if it’s still possible for me to finish this for an August release (I still think it’s possible, but I’m really cutting it close).
Drew at the beginning and end of “Drew and the Floating Labyrinth”
When you make a game, project, research contribution, etc., where do you show it? Typically, you take to online and submit it to contests, conventions, conferences, and other places hoping for recognition.
I’ve been to a couple research conferences before, and they tend to be small events with dozens of awkward researchers saying hi to each other, while getting to make a powerpoint presentation of something they’ve dedicated years of their life towards while hoping in vain that someone else in the room is as excited as they are. Typically, this is purely meant as a resume booster, and I feel similar events are the same: it’s good experience, but it won’t change your life as much as you hope. When it comes to game development however, press and exposure is important even if futile, your game will not be seen if you don’t at least try to put it out there, and people won’t flock to you to see it without exposure elsewhere. Also, game conventions also tend to be exciting and get thousands of interested attendees, so the energy is better. The various online contests for indie games probably won’t get you attention, but can sometimes get you money if you win a prize, and can lead to your game being showcased elsewhere, all the better for you.
