Unity 5 is out!

Well, I watched the live GDC launch event thing for Unity 5 on youtube today and I am really looking forward to trying out the new Unity 5. I am downloading and installing it now. Going to probably be moving Flip16 dev to Unity 5.

Missed a day! Well, sort of...

My crazy sleep schedule has once again become so crazy, that I completely missed being able to post on the 2nd. So a short recap of progress of Flip16.

I managed to figure out what was needed to finish up the main menu scene. Now it's on to designing the level select scene.

I will create a micro-tutorial on how to create a menu scene in Unity using the new UI soonish, and post it up here.

Unity is...

...interesting to say the least. Yeah.

So my wife and I both installed Unity and we are working on figuring things out for Flip16 simultaneously, and it was a fun time finding alternative ways to solve the same problem. Neither of us are familiar with the software, so we're both stumbling around and googling things to find answers.

It's going to be awhile before Flip16 is ready for prime time, but at least we get to work on this together, so that's a plus. :D

It's really cold 2 degrees F right now. And really late...so I'm going to sleep.

Flippin

PyQt GUI prototype of Flip16

I've worked on the Flip16 prototype more today, and I've nailed the mechanics down, and have implemented the game timer and multiple levels. Again this is still the prototype, and we are going ahead with trying Unity for the actual game. Just installed Unity and we will see how it goes.

I've learned a lot about PyQt with this prototype, and I think I will end up making a bit of a PyQt game prototyping template for building other small game prototypes with in the future. I might even clean it up and release it to the public under MIT license or Creative Commons or something. Only time will tell.

Another small game is in the works

It's no secret that several projects tend to be worked on concurrently here at Bang Bang Attack Studios, and for many indies out there. Some may say that it's bad to shift focus from project to project. I think that it's somewhat necessary to think about different things, so as not to get burnt out on one thing in particular.

That said, we've got another little game project which features an old puzzle mechanic of tile-flipping. Think the old hand-held Tiger Electronics Lights Out game from the 90's.

PyQt GUI prototype of Flip16

We are in the prototyping stage at this time, and last night I built a working prototype of one of the primary mechanics using Python and PyQT for GUI. Not going to use that tech for the final game, but for my needs of prototyping things, it worked out well. In less than 150 lines of code, and 2 to 3 hours I had my prototype up and running and playable. Most of that time was spent reading the Qt docs and googling for Python snippets to do what I wanted since I'm out of practice with Python lately.


Our target platforms will be android devices, and PC desktop. This brings the question of what tech to use for the game. We are considering using Unity this time around. It's undecided at this point though. The actual game assets and more mechanics prototyping will come first.