Something fun

I have realized that I really want to work on an RPG. Nothing massive, just a simple down-scaled fun little RPG. I thought of first creating a typical top-down 2D RPG, but I wanted to create something that I could possibly turn into a larger game down the line, and I wanted to learn some more new things and hone my current skill set. Thus I have chosen to build a 3D RPG for the first time. I don't expect this to be a simple project, but I do intend to bring it around full-circle from concept to completion. I am creating a 3D remake of my SAWD RPG project. I am taking the game world and expanding from ASCII graphics to full-blown 3D. I am going with a low-poly aesthetic for my own sanity since I am the one modeling everything. I'm going to use low-resolution textures as well, with 64x64 being the most common size texture, with maybe 128x128 for characters. I'm not going to use normal mapping, or complex lighting.

3D modeling will be done with Wings3D for the static meshes, and I have yet to come to a decision for animated models. Textures will be created with GIMP. The game development will be done with Unity 5 using C# scripting.

Indie Legwork

We are trying to locate a publisher/sponsor for one of our HTML5 games, and have been contacting as many as we can find. You would be surprised how many there are, and how much effort it can take to dig up their contact information and write them! Each has their own set of quality standards and requirements too, and many are not English-native, so acceptance may require localization. Hopefully we find a bite soon and can actually see a return on our investment.

A change is needed

After much deliberation, we at Bang Bang Attack Studios have decided to change our course for our business. There is much work to be done on this front, and I may not be posting as frequently here as I have been until the work is done.
I'm not going to disclose our new direction just yet, but just know that there is going to be a very drastic change in what Bang Bang Attack Studios is all about.

Mobile Music Creation

Working on a piece in AudioSauna
(blurred notes and removed keyboard to avoid illegal reproductions of my work)

For one of my HTML5 games, I needed to create some music tracks which were not crazy-long and large files, and sounded great on my mobile devices' shitty little speakers. I typically use SunVox for my music creations, however, I recently have started using a web-based composition tool called AudioSauna.

This tool provides a multi-track sequencer and apparently a sampler (which I have not used yet) and a piano-roll for editing patterns. Two synthesizer modules can be used to create nearly an endless variety of sounds, which opens up the doors to creativity.

You can save your project files to continue working on them later, and you can export both loops and your full song to .wav format.

This amazing tool is easy to use, and I highly recommend giving it a try for your next music composition.

Disappointed

Why am I disappointed? Because my unityAds dashboard says

Revenue: $ 0.00

and it's not exactly what I was hoping for with releasing into the Pitch. Oh well, will just have to make a better game, and use a better ad provider. Clearly unityAds is a waste of time.

Spent much of today cleaning again. I'll have some dev-related stuff to report tomorrow though.

Spring Cleaning

Didn't get much development done today. Had a house to clean, and I've got an injured hand which makes it take even more time and effort. Probably will not get any dev done today, as it's already getting late. Oh well.

More Pixeling Practice

I had so much fun creating the MasterS of MagiC logo design, that I decided to create another one. Here is the Kingdom Carnage logo.

Kingdom Carnage NES Pixel-art logo design.

Once again, this was created using GIMP, and the original NES palette colors. (Except the watermark overlay)

I think that will be all the artsy things that I work on for myself for a little while. I have some freelance work that needs to get done, and it's time to work on the next game project for Bang Bang Attack Studios.

Pixeling Practice

In order to practice my pixeling skill,and to prepare for the possibility of getting an NES-style logo design freelance gig, I created this piece today.

MasterS of MagiC NES Pixel-art logo design.

Created using GIMP, and the original NES palette colors. (Except the watermark overlay)

Pouring Java

I've spent most of today working on some in-house tools for increasing productivity. I got tired of writing out boilerplate code for my Java classes, and using an IDE's class wizards was annoying me to no end, so I ended up writing a little command line utility which I call pour. Get it? You pour java...anyway...

I developed my little tool using Ruby, since it is so great for string manipulation, and easy file handling. Pour is short on features, but works exactly as I expect it to, and only outputs exactly what I want, and is far faster than any class wizard I've found.

I can specify a local template file to pour, and it will use it to create the classes, or, I can create a template in my home directory to use the template globally, or I can use the built-in template. I can specify to generate an entry point function, and I can specify a package. These few features turned a task that normally takes about 3 minutes, and turns it into about a 5 second task.

In addition, I set up gradle and grunt for a very simple auto-build workflow that allows me to focus on the code editing, and not on having to build the project, run tests, build the jar, and execute the program. I can just edit the code, save it, and my auto-build setup does the rest. Very fast workflow. I like it a lot, and I'm going to have to find a similar solution for my C++ development now, because this kicks major ass.