I have decided to feel for what it is like to port my simple space shooter game into Android using Unity.

Turns out that it was lot pain free than I have expected. Sure, I had to add some extra code to take care of inputs like acceleration so I can tilt device to control moving player let and right. But all in all , it was really fun to see it running in Android phone.

Made new tweak to that min and max position of the player is now confined in screen position instead of world position. This was to make it resolution independent.

Started fiddling with free shader editor called Strumpy. It is not as good as stuffs out there, but it is built into Unity and it is free! I also think it has lots of potential so I am keeping my eyes on it.

Also just found out that Unity only supports 2 uv sets , which is bit of bummer and I am wondering why that design decision was made. Perhaps it was considering more on cross platform (especially into mobile) so decision was made to not over load GPU with too many multi uvset assets.

All in all , still having fun!

Finally, I had some time to play with Unity and while I was looking at it I found some cool videos from Buzz (thanks Buzz).

They are remake of simple space shooter game designed to teach basics of Unity in C#.

I personally find Buzz’s videos very entertaining to listen to so I gave it a go.

Turns out that playing with Unity was more fun than I have expected, I even began to think that Unity and Maya shares some similarities on how things are organized and components are linked up.

After watching videos and fiddling with Unity for couple of hours, I was able to follow it till the end in 2 days. And I have just started adding some extra fun stuffs on my own now. It will be very interesting how this game turns out in my Android phone.

For those of you who have not dealt with Unity before, follow the link below and just spend couple of hours and bang, now you know Unity.

-Over-7-hours-of-Unity-Training-Videos-Download-them-now…

And here is my build of the game for those of you terribly bored.

My very first Unity game!

Another good news is that I have compiled x64 version of Cas uv mapper Maya 2012 version so I will release that soon too.

I think Google is trying to get me killed.. or is it being really smart? Anyway, check out what Google map shows me when I want to find direction to my next fishing spot.

haha… walk and swim into sea…

well you know it must be a joke right? !

It is well known that Maya’s insert edge loop tool does not work properly when camera is visiable in the display view port. I thought I would add my work around to the problem.

My work around involves placing all the cameras in the scene into a display layer and turn its visibility off. I normally run this script in the beginning to avoid the insert edge loop tool bug. This bug is very annoying if you don’t know why it causes and can spend many hours trying to figure out how to work around it. Controlling the visibility of camers through use of layer is neat because I have full control of the scene and not touching unnecessary attributes of the actual cameras.

{
string $oldSel[] = `ls -sl`;
string $cameraNames[] = `ls -type “camera”`;
string $cameraTransform[] = `listRelatives -p $cameraNames`;
print “cameras to move to new layer : \n”;
print $cameraTransform;

select $cameraTransform;

string $layerName = `createDisplayLayer -name “cameraLayer” -number 1 -nr`;
string $attribute = $layerName+”.visibility”;
setAttr $attribute 0;
if (size($oldSel) != 0)
 {
 select $oldSel;
 }
}

Come on Audodesk. FIX THIS BUG!

I thought that I should give a go with Python programming that does not involve Maya for once and I just followed Buzz VTM’s Introduction to Python : Pong and got this done in about 3 hours.

my first Pong!

It was fun… and very easy to do. I am using Python 3.1 so if you want to run this (haha) then you will need to install following :

Python 3.1 (just get the latest one)

Pygame extension (also for Python 3.1)

 pyPong.zip

! important !

update on pong game now with sound effect! But there was a bug with pygame lib that was not working with python 3.1 But I have run the game under python 2.4 and it worked fine. So please do not run under python 3.1

Offworld Gallery: The games factory, how Mario, Tetris, Sonic, Pong were made

Tetris

Arkanoid

Mario

Pong

Sonic

Interesting first peak at Direct X 11 demo. I like what I see, especially the Detailed Tessellation method. This is very similar to the idea I had when I fist encountered P.Occlusion mapping and been trying to convince our programmers that this kind of thing would be cool and doable.

AMD invited Legit Reviews up to their private suite in the hotel that Quakecon 2009 is being hosted at for a first look at gaming on one of their upcoming DirectX 11 graphics cards. This graphics card has not been officially named yet, but it has the internal code name of ‘Evergreen’ and was first shown to the media back at Computex over in Taiwan earlier this year. Once we arrived in the AMD suite we were introduced to not one, but two systems running DX11 hardware! One system was setup running a bunch of DX11 SDKs and the other system was running the demo for the upcoming game title Wolfenstein. The Wolfenstein video game demo uses just DX9, so it really doesn’t show off DirectX 11 performance or functionality, but it does show that the GPU is up and running.

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1040/1/

There was interesting article about South Africa’s game development : Past Present and Future.

It was particularly even more interesting for me as it revels part of my history.

While you may read and hear whispers about some or other game development effort on the African continent, with news occasionally coming from places such as Egypt, Kenya, and Morocco, there is one country in Africa that is desperately trying to wiggle its way into game development prominence — South Africa.

Full article at : http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4098/the_south_african_game_development_.php

Here is cool news about intergration of Xbox 360 Avater into Guitar Hero 5 !

When fans take home Guitar Hero 5 on September 1, they’ll be able to import their Avatars, choose their instrument and play along with their personalized characters rocking out to any track on the epic 85-song set list. Taking full advantage of the latest technology available from Xbox LIVE, gamers can choose their band mates and mix and match their Xbox Avatars with Guitar Hero favorites like Judy Nails, Axel Steel and Lars Ümlaüt, or even rip it up alongside in-game talent. Xbox Avatars will also get a Guitar Hero makeover in the game’s Create-A-Rocker mode, where players can further customize their creations with exclusive Guitar Hero clothing and accessories to ensure they look performance-ready.

Guitar Hero 5 features a wide variety of the hottest rock ‘n’ roll bands and will be the most rocking Guitar Hero game yet with new social and interactive features. The entire Guitar Hero 5 set list is at players’ finger tips from the start, featuring genre-defining hits from more than 80 of the biggest rock artists and bands of all time, including The Rolling Stones, The White Stripes, Kings of Leon, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan and Vampire Weekend, plus more than 25 artists from a variety of rock music genres that will be making their music video game debut. Players take complete control as Guitar Hero 5 allows gamers to personalize and customize how they experience music by being able to play with any in-game instrument combination — multiple vocalists, guitarists, bassists and drummers, in any game mode. With the game’s all-new Party Play Mode, getting the band back together has never been easier. Players can now jump in or drop out of gameplay seamlessly, without interrupting their jam session. Elevating the Guitar Hero series to new heights with unmatched social gameplay, an enhanced style, and new in-game artists, Guitar Hero 5 features new surprises and challenges that will fire-up long-time fret board fanatics and create a new generation of addicts.

I mean , you can copy some other games like ideas and so on, but bluntly stealing even the name of the game is just another level. Come on.

http://www.koreaittimes.com/story/4244/china-goes-too-far-plagiarizing-korean-games

A local enterprise produced an imitation of the Korean game MU

Chinese game producers have crossed the line in plagiarizing Korean games.

According to industry sources, The9, a Chinese game manufacturer, has created an imitation of Webzen’s online role-playing game MU, called MU X.  It plans to exhibit the game to the public on July 23.

The company that administers MU in China, The9, blatantly stole Webzen’s characters without any contract or agreement.

Moreover, The9 has been expanding its cooperation with Korean companies after it failed to renew its World of Warcraft contract with Blizzard Entertainment.  This is an alarming move that calls for stronger protection of the intellectual property rights of Korean companies.

The9 is known to have planned the creation of MU X two years ago. It displayed an image of characters that closely resemble those of MU with a short comment that says it has inherited the world of MU on the teaser site of MU X, mux.the9.com. …