A little bit about Mustache Games

Hey there! Long time no see! You probably thought I gave up on the idea and that's why didn't write anything here... Well no! Quite opposite, actually!

Somewhere in July, I realised that it will be hard for me to achieve the aim alone. So I grabbed a few friends and we started working on a game togethere. We call ourselves MustacheGames, we work on the game called OfficeReveng and we're awesome! Well not so much... Everything is far not as perfect as it could be and it's natural when you take people who have no experience doing what they have to be doing and make them work and hope for the best.

Honestly the biggest problem now is me. I'm having some problems concentrating on the project. It's 2 months into production already and about 2 more ahead... and honestly I got a bit tired. I know the feeling won't last long, but... anyway)

So I just needed to post about it right before I get back to working. Posting always used to help me concentrate so yeah...

Also when we're done with the game, I plan to continue with the blog. I'll have a lot of expereince to share by then! I already have enough, but I do not have time to do quality posts, so far :(

Best wishes,
Alfred

UDK or Unity 3D?! Comparing Game Engines

One of the blogs I'm subscribed to is by Johan Sanneblad who is like a Pro at game development. You can read some more information about him here.  


So he lately had this seminar where he talked about actual large scale game production for mobile platforms, namely iPhone and Android. There is a lot of interesting things said there, but among all I enjoyed the process of him comparing Unity3D and UDK. UDK came out as a winner here for me, even though Johan's team choose Unity (they had their reasons... watch the video). I was really glad to see that, simply because I was still not sure if I did the right choice when choose UDK as the platform to study and develop on. I'd like to put here his list of Unreal vs Unity comparison and discuss it a little.


Target devices
UDK: Windows, iOS and consoles.
Unity: Mac, Windows, Android, iOS, Web, consoles.
Yeap! If you work with UDK you by default can develop only for Windows, iOS, Xbox and PlayStation. Which for sure is not a small market, but the lack of Android support is for sure a minus. BUT! You can't expect this to last long. Android is pretty popular platform and Epic (the creator of UDK) is a pretty serious company. There is no way they don't meet. And the words of Epic's vice president Mark Rein prove that. 




Host environment
UDK: Windows only
Unity: Mac/Windows (Mac for iOS render & remote)
Well, THAT is not good! It's not like it's a problem for me, or like I can imagine someone choosing Unity over UDK just because of that. But the fact might affect one's workflow not in the best way. It's just uncomfortable. I guess if I were a Mac user, I would choose Unity despite all other UDK pluses.
On the other hand UDK gives you a unique possibility to upload your game right to your iDevice from a PC for testing! 
So UDK might be a headache for people who have pro-mac pipeline, but a blessing for a pc-team.




Development language
UDK: UnrealScript ("the look and feel of C/C++/Java code")
Unity: Boo, C# or Javascript
I don't know about Boo, but I know C# is as popular language as C++ is. So I don't think this makes any big difference here. 
For sure any coder will need some time to get to learn the specifics of UnrealScript, but once he does it worth it. UnrealScript is the specifically designed to work with 3D games. It surely saves more time then a multi-purpose programming language.




Custom splash screen
UDK:No
Unity: Yes (in a Pro version) 
True true... If your game is made with UDK, you will necessarily have the "Powered with Unreal Engine"-kind of a splash-screen, when the game is launched. For a big scale product it might be an issue, I understand. But for the rest, mortal developers, I believe having a logo, of the company that sold Infinity Blade hundreds of thousands times and shocked us with EpicCitadel, is an advantage.




Other tools
UDK: UnrealKismet, MaterialEditor, Scaleform GFx
Unity: plugins, plugins, plugins
With UDK (which is free) you get all the advanced tools, that will speed up your work and increase quality of a final product. With Unity you'll have to buy the third-party plugins which are in beta stage yet. You know what beta means, don't u?)) lags and crashes!




Pricing
UDK: 99$ license. Free<$50,000 income. 25% of income>$50,000
Unity: iOS 400$ + Android 400$ + Pro 1500$= 2300
Well, her it's all up to you! Do you want to make 50 000$ and spend only 99$ (+99$ of Apple Developer's License) or maybe you have extra 2300$? Choice is yours...




One more word
I always used to say, that it doesn't matter what software or platform you use... The only thing that matters is what can you do with it. If you have a clear vision of a game, you will manage to do it with any engine.


I guess, that's it for today! Don't forget to have fun while making a game! ;)
Cheers!




P.S. I actually wanted to post the video only. But the video embedding process turned into a quick post :)

Creating User Interface in Unreal Development Kit (almost no scripting)

UPDATE: What I didn't know at the moment of writing this post is that, even though the technology is supported by UDK Mobile, it won't work on iOS. 


Hey there! UI (user interface) is very important in every piece of software and you can be sure that a game is almost impossible without a UI. Creating a good one isn't easy and takes a lot of knowledge and talent in my opinion. There is this great book about it, if u're interested, it's called Game Development Essentials: Game Interface Design. I couldn't make myself read it all, just because I have to limit how much information I consume... I might go crazy because of an overload of information soon ;)) I hope I'll finish the book some day. But I can say it's worth reading if you're serious about Game Development.


In my process of developing/studying I've reached the stage where I need to create a UI and a HUD. (heads up display - the thing that displays all the needed information during a game) I was trying to not jump into it as long as I could. Because programming a UI is fun and a bit familiar thing for me. I was sure there will be no difficulty in studying it.

I heard about the fact that Adobe Flash technology can be used for creating UI in UDK and today I watched a tutorial explaining how to do that. It's called Scaleform and it's super simple if you know Flash and just simple if you don't.

I'm really happy about the fact, because (long time ago) Macromedia Flash was the first animation software I studied, being a 8 grader. I have this weird warm feelings about the soft :) It's simple and elegant in many ways.

You can find the tutorial I mentioned on VoxHouseStudio's YouTube channel. It explains creation of a simple menu scene with usage of really basic Kismet functions (GFxUI). Even though the tutorial gives you really essential knowledge of the so called Scaleform technology, it's absolutely enough to understand the workflow, if you ask me.

Mougli on his blog shows us how to do the GUI and HUD using UnrealScript. You might want to check out these too.

Weekly Report #3: Weapons, INI Files and Still No Tutorials.

I'm starting to hate myself because of not finding enough time to share things with you guys. But you have to understand that all of what I do won't matter unless I show some achievements. Which means I need to post a game to App Store and start getting at least some income! I don't think I'll manage to share any useful information about how I do that yet. It's just that informative posts take a lot of time and energy, while reporting posts are like a simple chat with a friend. I hope you understand me. I will still try to share some information, but not as much as I would like to.

Now let me tell you a few words about how the study and game-dev process is going.
This week I had an accident with my project. I was adding an input zone through an .ini file and suddenly all of the configuration file got reset to the default settings somehow! I have no idea why that happened, but fortunately I had a backup of the project on my desktop PC so I copied the configuration files from there. Now I'm back in shape.

I know it doesn't look so pretty. It's just a placeholder graphics.

I finally managed to add a weapon to the pawn! :)) Although the weapon still needs some refining I'm still happy with the result. It might sound simple to a person who already knows how to add a weapon to a pawn, but for me it was like walking in a dark and trying to find a way out.

I also starting to work on the designs already! I was a bit afraid of this stage, because design is the thing that makes me nervous most of the time.

On this week's to-do list is finishing the weapon class and studying basic usage of AI classes. Also I need to get done with end game events, HUD, menus and transition levels. I don't think I manage to cover all of that this week, but what cheers me up is that as soon as I'm done with these I can start actual production of the game!

Things go really well! I actually can't believe I'm still doing it))

Cheers! 

Weely Report #2

Hey there! Yeah yeah yeah the weekly reports are supposed to keep me organized and make me do what I say I plan to do, but… you know me! I didn't do totally do what I was planning to do this week although I have some breakthroughs! So let's get started with that!


This week I managed to solve the picking up problem, but I did it a bit other way then I planned. I didn't use UDK's pickup factories. I created a peaceable subclass of Actor that just has a touch action to inform the Pawn and after that destroy the actor. The best decisions are always the simplest ones, you know! I have to thank Mougli for what he wrote at his blog! It really helped me with that! His blog is kinda the same one as mine is, but he writes only about UnrealScript and writes about that in a really good manner! He apparently has much better coding skills and took the learning thing much more serious. I believe he read the whole documentation of UnrealScript. I should've done it long time ago, but I thought it's too much of boring reading for me. But here I am now reading both his blog and the whole documentation and it really made me evolve much faster.



About the game design of our first game! Thanks to my girlfriend I came up with the better idea of the game! Now we have the character! And it's going to be a crazy grandma under RedBull overdose that hurries to come back home from a mall to feed her baby grandchild! She tries to get there as fast as possible, but the whole world is against her! At first it's just traffic and some seldom people, but then things go wild! Zombies, beasts and stuff like that stand in her way! But she just can't stop! Her child is starving and because of her overdose she has to keep drinking RedBulls, otherwise she dies from a heart attack! She has the ability to hit anything with her bag while she's on the go! But that's not it! She gets some crazy superpowers from time to time, like Crazy Moma Megaspeed or things like that! I didn't think through all the details yet! But what I like is that it still seams like not so hard to accomplish! I believe I'll get a draft of the whole gameplay in two weeks, now when I have the knowledge!

I see it all as a bunch of actors with touch actions and all we'll need to change after the change is a meaning of a variable that will represent the level of RedBull in blood, which in fact is health for the character! What also has to be changed after that is a touch actions, when the Pawn has the superpower! Seems pretty simple to me!

As to the video tutorial I've mentioned before! I just looked through it and it was all like "em", "aaahm.." and so on, so I decided not to post it so far the way it is. I need better preparation to do it, because it was all me figuring out what to do instead of explaining the whole process. I just don't want you guys to fall asleep while watching it! I swear I'll post it during the next few days!



As to the plans for the week! Well, if I manage to keep up the speed of developing and studying that I currently have I'll set up the obstacles scripts, superpowers and RedBull stuff too! I should already start thinking about the design, so far I just have the placeholder graphics for the things to bee seen and animated! You'll see the placeholders in the video tutorial, I really love em! The character's name is Walter! :P



So I guess that's it for this productive, but not much to talk about week!
Cheers and have a good time!

Game Design: Runner

Ok, here is the deal! We want to make a game, right? But there is a big possibility that this wish will vanish before we manage to do something! So what do we do to prevent that? We feed ourselves with something that motivates us! We read books, watch other people's success, imagine the bright future and simply try to stay on a good mood!

But I tell you, there is no better motivation then having your own finished product! I was lucky to play big part in some pretty serious (on my country's scale) projects that got finished. One of them was the first feature 3D animated movie in my country.

It's been 6 moths already since I decided to mess with games for iPhone, but so far I got stuck in the study routine. Study is good but, knowing myself, I can say this won't last long if I don't get some results. Financial results are desirable :)

So let's start talking about our first game! (for the second time) Let it's code name be simply TheFirst!

It's crystal clear that the first game should be fairly simple so we don't really get stuck! But it also has to be fun to work at and should have a chance to succeed! Why fight if you don't plan to win?

Few ideas about the Game Design of TheFirst!

• I see TheFirst as a running game! Like the one where you have to get as far as possible. There are lots of games like that on AppStore!
• It's not that hard to implement! It's simply movement and touch triggers! It's even possible to do it with Kismet only! But I'll use UnrealScript for the most part anyway.
• Enemy AI doesn't have to be complex at all.
• The fact that there are many games of the kind is not bad at all!
• People know how to play a game of the genre.
• There is already some number of fans of the genre who will be happy to see yet another running game in our implementation.

• The game should be all about the character's charisma! He should be well motivated to run wherever he is running!
• Game happens inside your mind and not in a CPU or on Display. If you're told that a red dot is Mars, you won't think of it as a collection of pixels of #FF0000... You will think of it as of a whole planet, maybe populated by aliens! Like in "I must run", a game with a fairly simple gameplay, I enjoyed the non stop running process, because I knew I need to come to the place in time, otherwise they'll kill my wife! I wouldn't spend a single minute playing the game if there was no story. By the way, last time I checked the game was free. Get it and see what I mean.
• Just pay attention to it. Most of the popular apps have a face on an icon. The more popular the character gets the more popular will be the app.

• I definitely want to implement the experience points, power ups and special powers into the game. Like super powers, because I'm a geek and I need epicness to enjoy a game/movie/book! What's the sense of enemies if you can't every once in a while kill a thousand of them with one press of a button?
• GameCenter implementation will be just awesome here!
• It also gives a big potential for future updates! New powers, new enemies, new maps.
• Some kick ass powers will be good for PR. You show 2-3 of your best ones in the trailer, mention that you have like 25 of them there and everyone thinks that all of the 25 powers are just as awesome.

• The game should be side-scroll runner, so it should have 2D logic. But it will have 3D graphics, that will give it a very beautiful look.
• 3D get's better when you know beforehand from which angle will a viewer see it. Now when the character and background will be locked in 2D logic, but will have the freedom of 3D, the visual part should be very joyful.
• Neither FPS, nor third person camera games don't work so well on a touch device, IMO. I mean ofcourse there are developers who manage to bring the comfortable FPS experience to touch, but... First - I'm not that good yet. Second - in my opinion non FPS games will still be more popular among different classes of users. It's just nicer.

• The controls and interface should be very simplistic! iPhone's design proved it's better like that :P
• I imagine 4 buttons, each in a corner of the screen looking like they are little holes in the game's image. 

• Question #1: Who is the main character?
• Is he a stereotype of a fighter or of a victim?
• What exactly made him run?
• Should the main character run from something or should it better run to something?!
• FROM: In that case we can explain the "don't slow down" factor! That can also give the game endless number of tours!
• TO: There is an end to the game. There is a destination point that can make the game more serious. When we think of running to something I imagine Nemo's father looking for him (from "Finding Nemo"), Neo flying to catch Trinity and so on. I just see more drama here.

Indie Direction Weekly Report #1: UnrealScript, Video Tutorials and a Book

Hey there! I apparently have some big issues with staying organised. This is obvious if you have a look at the way I post on the blog. It's been 5 month already, since I've registered the blog and we have only 6 posts here.
But I'm really taking the idea of the blog seriously, so that's why I decided to bring some system to it! We'll have weekly reports! Every Sunday evening (according to my time - GMT+4) I you'll find here a post about:

• What I've been doing about the project this week
• What I'm planning to share with you
• What I'm planning to do next week about the project

I think it will be both informative for you and motivating for me! I mean like, a word is a word! (Although we already had a case of me not keeping my word. I apologize for that.) One of the main reasons why I haven't been posting so much, is that because of my big pause in writing, we've got a lot of catching up to do. And I couldn't find a way to do that until now.I think it will be fun! 

So let's get started! I've got some exciting things to tell you about!

This week I've been messing with UnrealScript. It has actually been already more then a month that I'm trying to master it and I have to say it's not easy.

The main problem with UnrealScript is that most of the tutorials and information on the web about it (which is not a lot) is not for the mobile version of UDK. And you might think that there is no big difference, but actually difference is huge! UDK Mobile Editor and the classes that it uses have much less preset functions/prewritten scripts then normal UDK Editor has. That was actually a big disappointment for me to learn about. The excitement I had vanished at first... Things appeared to be harder.

So the situation with finding information about UnrealScripts classes mostly looks like this:

• You search for something you don't know how to do. (say create a weapon)
• You find an article with the similar headline.
• You read the article and it's pretty short. You feel relieved "It's not so hard!"
• Then you find out that the person who wrote it, is using UDK's prewritten UT classes, that have everything what you need already, but are not supported by UDK Mobile in the first place. 

But nevertheless I'm not giving up! I've already learned a lot, but I still can't claim that I clearly understand the way UnrealScript works and all of it's paradigms.

So this week I've been struggling with a Pawn's (character's) Inventory, PickupFactory and Weapon classes... I had some steps forward, but they were achieved by hours of struggling.

I have and idea of how I can speed up my UnrealScript study. I'll write about it in the ending part of the post.

What I'm planning to share with you should be really useful! At least I hope so! I'm preparing what I've always wanted to do... 

It's a video tutorial! I myself learned a lot of things from video tutorials, so I thought why not! 

Well... it appeared to be pretty hard! Actually much harder then I thought! English is not my native language as u might have noticed, so I have to really work hard when making a tutorial. I have to think of what I'm doing, I have to think of how to say it and I have to listen to myself carefully, so I notice mistakes. I never did that before and after the first 2 hours I felt like I was incredibly tired! I actually don't remember when I got so tired last. 

Also I'm not sure if I'm allowed to call it a tutorial, because, as you know, I'm still studying the subject. So let's say it's a student to student help ;)

I've got 3 topic on my mind at the moment:

1. "Side Scroller Game using Unreal Kismet" More then a half of it is already done and you can expect it to be released in a few days.)
2. "UDK Mobile Editor" I didn't plan to do anything about it, but when I was doing the Kismet tutorial, I understood you might need at least a brief explanation of how I imported and placed character, how I used volumes and stuff like that. BUT I will make the video only if I don't find a good one, that already exists and is free.
3. "Side Scroller Game using UnrealScript" That's the video I'm really looking forward to! It will show the difference between Kismet-only and UnrealScript approaches in it, continueing the topic of Kismet vs UnrealScript but also providing more detailed information! 

Also a topic to talk about is Game Design! Technical part is for sure important, but as far as we're in the situation of playing one man band's role, we also have to think of even more significant questions. There is no need in a technical knowhow if there is no idea and balanced design behind it!

I'm currently reading Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design and I have to say it's awesome! This book is changing the way I think about designing a game. It's filled up with tons of examples from real life! This is not only really informative and useful, it's also motivating. With every new page I read, I feel like I'm getting closer and closer to the community of game developers. I believe it's a must have for everyone following the same dream that I do. I'm really thankful to Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams for writing this book!
When I'm done with the book I will for sure write a few posts with resumes of the major topics I found important.

The following week I'm planning to spend maximum time working on understanding UnrealScript! I need  to finish the PickupFactory and Inventory things as fast as possible, because I've spent too much time on it already!
A few days ago I came up with the idea of how I can speed up my studying process and also give you guys more information, that I personally couldn't find anywhere on the Internet. I'm planning to get it from pro and half-pro UDK coders!
The idea is I'll trade my work for their knowledge! I'm not sure if you're familiar with IndieDB, but what you need to know is that it's a community of independent game developers. And in the same way as I don't have a   coder in my indie team, there might be a good UnrealScript coder who doesn't have a 3d animator/modeler/rigger on his team! It's also pretty common that they one can't afford to have a person like that on the team. (Like in my case) And as you people might have heard, I'm pretty good in animation, modeling and rigging.
So in a few days I'm planning to post a preposition of doing say 1-2 hours of work in return for 30 minutes of consulting from an experienced person. I can do even more work for the person, all I need is the answers!)) A small talk and few examples must be enough for me.


It's already not Sunday evening as I'm finishing to write this post... It's Monday in my city and the new week already started.
I just had this funny filling... I can swear I felt the smell of sea breath, saw bright sunlight and felt free! It's a silly thing, but with this project I imagine myself trying to break out from a prison by digging with a spoon :)
Cheers!