Pitch Update

I've been working on Pitch off and on since I got up today, and  have been making decent progress. This post will be short compared to my last one, as I don't want to spend a lot of time writing it so I can get back to Pitch. :D

Splashing Around

In the final 2 hours last night before I headed to slumberland, I managed to rework all the assets for Pitch, and build the Splash Scene over from scratch, and I think that it turned out pretty well. I am going to give a quick rundown/tutorial on things here both to add more non-rant content to my blog, and to have it as a reference for myself for future projects. :D

First things first, I auto-cropped all of my texture pieces individually with GIMP, leaving me with a folder of images which I then tossed into CodeAndWeb's TexturePacker Pro (Which is worth every penny for the Pro license!) and exported a Unity - Texture2D sprite sheet and packed PNG texture file.

Then I grabbed the TexturePackerImporter C# script from the Unity Asset Store. It's available for Free, and simplifies the process of getting your sprites into Unity greatly. Once I had the TexturePackerImporter.cs file in my Unity Project under the Editor folder, I was then able to drag in my sprite sheet and packed texture files (textures.tpsheet and textures.png) right into my Assets and the TexturePackerImporter script went to work and sliced up the packed textures into nice little sprites for me to use in Unity. Excellent. HUGE time-saver.

The last iteration of this project I had sliced my textures manually, and it took me a couple hours to do. This iteration took me all of 3 minutes, and that time was mostly for my LAN folder browsing! Thank you to CodeAndWeb GmbH!

Now, with the sprites in my Unity project,  I now started with a fresh scene, and added a UI Image to my project which adds in the Canvas and EventSystem objects which are necessary to drive things with the new Unity UI.

Next, I dragged my splash sprite from my imported assets into the Image Component's Source Image field and clicked on the Set Native Size button to quickly set the Rect Transform's dimensions to my source image's dimensions.

Then I opened the Animation window with Ctrl+6 and clicked on Add Property button and added a key frame to the Image.Color property, and then tweened the Color.a property from 0.0 to 1.0 to fade in, then a few seconds later in the animation, a tween from 1.0 to 0.0 to create a fade out.

At this point, all I need to do (and have not done yet) is toss a new Script on my Main Camera and use a Coroutine to wait the duration of my animation and then call Application.LoadLevel to load in my next scene. And Boom, my Splash Scene is complete.

(The Splash Scene in Pitch is actually more complicated than this, but the same techniques shown here were used for all the elements. I'm just using several animations and Images in the Pitch Splash Scene)

So much for that

Doesn't look like I will be getting any progress on Pitch today either. I spent most of the day doing accounting crap for the wonderful taxes that need to be handled. 10,000 Deaths are not enough for the asshole who invented taxes. And 10,000 Deaths are not enough for the assholes who continue the tradition.

Wasted Time

Yesterday was a total bust. My juices just were not flowing I guess. Everything I tried to do went to shit. I haven't had a day like that in a long time. Whatever, here is hoping today is better.

Programming takes time

Pitch progress went to the back burner again as I spent most of today working on some in-house tools to help make my freelance art jobs go a bit easier. I've got a lot of stuff that needs to be done, and I haven't had the right tools to get the job done without a lot of trouble, hence the need for specialized tools.

Lots of Ruby scripting has taken place today. Far more than I had planned, and time just flew by. I'm maybe 30% done with the first of a set of tools, so it looks like Pitch will have to wait a bit longer. I wish I could clone myself and work on multiple projects simultaneously without worrying about if it were done or not.

Friday the 13th

Well, the infamously superstitious day has struck me down. In the process of adding the settings menu screen to Pitch, somehow the planets aligned and virgins were sacrificed and the rest of the screens stopped functioning correctly! And to make matters worse, I've learned that I need to restructure things globally throughout the game to accommodate the needs of handling sound and music volumes separately. So, it's pretty much back to the drawing board for Pitch. The beta will have to wait a bit longer. Looks like I am back to a blank slate once again. I've got some kinda luck...

Premature Pitch

Well, okay maybe I was a bit too hasty. I realized that I forgot an entire menu screen in the game, and so I've been working on fixing that today. I am considering giving TestFairy a try for my little beta test, which will begin as soon as I finish adding in the missing settings menu screen!

Pitch Beta

Well, today I got Pitch from alpha to beta. I've got everything in-place, now it's time for a tiny beta test. Nothing complex, just contact me if you want to test the game out, I will send you a build of the game, you install it, play it, and then just answer a couple questions, like did you like the game? Would you play the game? Would you tell others about the game? Simple.

Requirements are that you have an android device, and that you have the ability to install APK files to your device locally (so not from any app store)

Pitch, Pixels, and Music

I've composed two background music tracks for Pitch, and I have been working on these Chronos tiles. Might be silent here for a week, as I will mostly be working on a new larger commission of tiles for Chronos. Pitch is still in development, but is taking a bit of a back-burner status while I tackle some freelance jobs to get my bills paid. Anyone want to donate some funds towards the development of our projects, please feel free to get in touch.