Game progress – Escape the sector maps

So I’ve been creating maps! This game will be a race against time to reach the end of the level. And I wanted it to be set in space. Because space is cool, and spaceships are cool.

But, space is full of nothing, so what is the map made of?

I wanted it to be made of asteroids. The best spaceship sequences in Star Wars, Star Trek etc are when there’s asteroids, otherwise space is just big, empty and boring.

Continue reading Game progress – Escape the sector maps

Game progress – Escape the sector

So I’ve been working on a game which I’m calling “Escape the sector”. Haven’t yet decided if it’ll be Android-only, or for desktop – but I’ve noticed you can export to WebGL, which means it’ll hopefully work embedded in a browser without much effort.

This started out as a project called “Escape Vector” which I’ve been writing about on IndieDB (see here). I created some 3D assets, rocks and buildings which I really liked the look of in 3DsMax because the lighting made it look really nice and lego-y, like this:

nice shading lego Continue reading Game progress – Escape the sector

Unity has a 8 digit Hex color, and that’s insane!

hex in unity

I noticed something today. Unity has a hex value for colours, which is great – I hate having to remember RGB values between various graphics programs. But Unity’s hex value has 8 digits (see above), which is INSANE! Hex should be 6, it’s always been 6. It’s literally Greek for 6!  Continue reading Unity has a 8 digit Hex color, and that’s insane!

Particles in Unity appearing in front of mesh

I had a weird bug in Unity today where particles that are supposed to be in the background were actually appearing in front of meshes that are closer to the camera.

After quite a lot of searching, the solution is actually simple, but wasn’t obvious so I thought I’d write it here.

So my particles are exactly where they are supposed to be, behind the land mesh. But are appearing in front (see image above).

Unity particles behind mesh

This is actually caused by the particles being scaled. I first found out about it from this thread on Unity Answers, linking to this forum post about it.

If I set the particles’ scale to 1, it resolves itself. I thought I’d have to muck about with sorting orders or layers (still not got to grips with those in Unity yet. Doesn’t seem to change anything to me).

My BotSumo game is now on the Android store

The simple & quite mediocre Android game (I’ve written about it before, here) is now on the Google play store. To download the game, go here:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.DavidDickBall.RoboSumo

It would be so great if you could please rate it, and leave a comment. If you find a bug or have a suggestion, leave that in the comments too – or tweet me @davidonionball.

Here’s a gameplay video!

The controls are dead simple, you have one button to drive the character forward. It spins by default, so it’s about timing. There’s an on-screen button for 2 players, the idea is you grab a friend and play using the same screen, just like the Microbattles Android games.

It’s only available on Android?

Yes, I’m going to only make games for Android whilst I’m doing it as a hobby, as it costs money for a licence to publish to the Apple App store. And if I’m not making any money out of this hobby, there’s not much point!

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