Game Assets

Futuristic 2D Sprite Kit

by

I have recently released a sprite kit that allows you to create futuristic planes or ship, similar to the ones you see in my game DefOp. The kit contains multiple small parts, allowing you to mix and match to create awesome looking crafts. Suitable for top-down view games.

The Futuristic 2D Sprite Kit costs $5 and you can get them at the following sites:

If you have used these sprites in your games or projects, feel free to drop me an email over at developer [at] livingtheindie.com. Would love to see what you have done. Cheers!

My First Impression of Unity Game Engine

by


For a long time I have always wanted to give Unity a try but somehow will end up putting my time elsewhere. With the release of I.R.I.S – DefOp and Ninjas Don’t Fall, I decided that now is the best time to dive in and give it a shot. I managed to complete two tutorials (both 2D games): a flappy bird clone and a top down space shooter.

From Corona to Unity

Transitioning from Corona SDK to Unity wasn’t easy for me. In Corona, pretty much everything is text based. There’s no UI (except for compiling) and any adjustments (from object position to sizes to color) are done using codes. The advantage of this is that, you only need to specify the stuff you need. For an example, if you don’t need to make any adjustments the object size, you can just leave the out the code that does the scaling. This in turn makes positioning objects a lot harder since you have to make a guess on the starting X and Y coordinates.

Having so used to everything being text only, it felt quite overwhelming to see Unity’s user interface at first. Just dragging an object into the Scene will display a whole list of options for you to adjust. So … many … things. Nevertheless, I pressed on with the tutorials.

My First Mistake

And that is to go with the top-down space shooter tutorial instead of the Flappy Bird clone. Now, I’m not saying that the shooter tutorial is bad by any means but the tutorial on flappy bird was by Unity themselves and they do a better job explaining the mechanics. The game’s scope is also much smaller making it easier for newcomers to grasp. By the time I completed the space shooter tutorial, I have pretty much forgotten the first half of it.

If you are starting out with Unity and plan to make 2D games, my advice is go with the Flappy Bird tutorial first.

My Quick Opinion of Unity

With two tutorials completed, I’m just barely scratching the surface of what Unity is capable of but all in all, I’m starting to get real fond of it. I like the fact that I am able to preview my game without having to compile it first. (Come to think of it, pretty much every other SDK allows you to do that except for Corona … hmmm). Being able to deploy to almost every platform (including the new Nintendo Switch) is a huge plus. This means that I will able to create HTML5 web games without having to use another SDK (currently I’m using Construct2). Unity also uses C# (C Sharp) which is a very popular programming language. Even if you are going to develop games with Unity, having knowledge of C# will definitely come in handy.

If I were to point out my one dislike about Unity, that would be the ‘complexity’ of the user interface. No doubt things will get easier as time passes but comparing Unity with Corona, Corona’s process in developing and compiling games is much simpler and straight forward. Corona is also much more resource friendly since it’s lightweight.

That’s about it for now. If you wish to try out the Unity tutorials mentioned above, just click on the respective links below. Happy coding!

Flappy Bird Tutorial
Top-Down Space Shooter

Working on I.R.I.S – DefOp HTML5 Edition

by

With the release of I.R.I.S – DefOp version 1.0.3 on iOS, I was deciding on what to do next. The choice was either to work on a new game or create a web version of I.R.I.S. I chose the later because I wanted to take a break from programming and just focus on the design aspect.

Wait … making a game without programming you say? Is that even possible?

Short answer is yes. Back in 2013, I purchased a game making tool called Construct2. It allows you to create 2D games without any programming experience at all. What you do need is logic thinking; ‘what goes where’, ‘what happens if x is triggered’ and so on. I will talk more about Construct2 in my next blog post.

sample 'logic code' from I.R.I.S DefOp HTML5
sample ‘logic code’ from I.R.I.S DefOp HTML5

When it comes to making the HTML5 version, I didn’t want it to be just a straight up port of the mobile version. Having access to keyboard and mouse controls brings a whole new world to the table. No longer are you restricted to just touch controls. Having said that, I still want to keep the core gameplay of I.R.I.S intact while changing things up a little … whichhhhhh brings me to the idea of putting … turrets.

Whats better than having 1 turret? 2 turrets!

You see, in the mobile version of I.R.I.S, your main defensive weapons are the two beam gates located on each corner of the screen. Holding the L / R touch buttons will activate the beam, killing anything that collides with it. From here, you can probably see the limitations of this design concept. Yeap, all enemies will have to move past a certain area in order for the player to destroy them. I did manage to get creative with some of the enemies (the annoying Orange ship) but at the end, an object needs to move from point A to B, with B here being the secret lab.

With the addition of turrets, the game is no longer restricted to the original design concept. I can now create enemies that attacks from a distance away and their movement paths are much more open ended. I can even throw in boss battles now.

At the time of this post, the game is about 50% complete. I will post up an early build over at GameJolt soon so do hit that ‘Follow’ button to get notified. Oh, and if you haven’t register as a member at GameJolt, do sign up. It’s a cool place where you get to play both freeware and commercial games using either your browser or in downloadable format. See you there!

Edit: The game is available now.

Work In Progress. A lot of effects are still missing

My Game, I.R.I.S – DefOp Has Launched On The AppStore

by

I’m happy announced that #ProjectBeamGate , now known as I.R.I.S – DefOp is now available on the App Store. It took me a lot longer than expected (considering my last post was back in May 2016) but a lot of extra time was spend tweaking the game and fixing bugs. Tons … of them. There were even some that only appeared after it was launched.

The game is free to download so do give it a try and let me know what you think. If you like it, please leave a rating on the stores. It will really help me out. Also, if you have any comments or suggestions, please leave a comment below or hit me up on twitter @dylestorm.

Cheers!

Oh and here’s the game trailer. Enjoy!

Time To Talk Bout Project Beam Gates

by

ProjectBeamGate-Banner

It doesn’t take much to see that I’ve been neglecting my blog for quite some time, with the last post made back in April (and not game development related to boot). Unlike social media sites like Twitter or Facebook where you can easily popped in a quick thought or screenshot without spending too much time, making a blog post does take a bit more effort.

Today, I decided to gather any remaining strength I have from coding and talk about a new game I’m developing for iOS and Android codenamed Project Beam Gates (I haven’t finalize the game name yet). Before we get to the details, I would like to point out that the previous game I was working on (Project Wings) is currently on hold, at least until Project Beam Gate is completed. I didn’t like the way how the game is progressing and to be honest, the overall result would have been mediocre at best. Having said that, I did come out with some new interesting game mechanics for Project Wings. We shall see.

So what is Project Beam Gates? PBG is a game where you have to defend a secret arms lab from enemy invasion, using beam gates that somewhat look like a light saber. Successfully defend the lab for 5 days (stages) and you win.

Latest build of #ProjectBeamGate
Latest build of #ProjectBeamGate

If you think that this is a really simple game, I would have to say that you are absolutely …. RIGHT! The original plan was to create a single stage and then release it on the Appstore / Google Store within 2 weeks. As development progresses, I came to the decision to spread it out to 5 stages and include a simple background story explaining as to why the secret lab is being invaded. The main protagonist is a young woman called Erika, a character I’ve created during Project Wings development.

Sketches of Erika's character
Sketches of Erika’s character

At the time of posting, the game is about 80% complete. Gameplay mechanics still needed some tweaks and there are still game graphics to finish. By right Project Beam Gates should be out by end of May. I have taken measures to ensure that I don’t repeat the mistakes I made with Project Wings.

If you wish to keep up to date on my game devs, be sure to follow me on Twitter or like my Facebook page. I’m definitely a lot more active on Twitter.

Changes and Updates On My Mobile Game

by

I have to admit. I’ve started tons of blogs in the past but none really lasted long except for NoCommand. Lack of motivation and the process of coming out with the ‘Perfect’ blog post are the two main factors as to why most of them never pulled through. Heck, my last post on this site was over 6 months ago. That goes to show how ‘committed’ I was in keeping things alive.

Then a couple of days ago, I came across a blog post from Dale Rodgers titled “Bloggers, You Don’t Need To Get It Right, You Just Need To Get It Going..”. I will put a link at the end but long story short, reading what Rodgers wrote made me realised that I need to stop thinking too much and just get on putting contents on this site. It doesn’t have to be perfect nor does it have to be 10 pages long. The key point is to be consistent. And that is the first thing I’m going to change, my own attitude.

The next thing I’ve added is webcomics. I will be putting in some effort in making webcomics related to games and indie game developments (base on my own experiences). Yes, I do realise that there are plenty of game related webcomics on the internet but this is more for my own personal gain which is to improve my drawing skills.

Back in May 2015 I made a post about Project Wings and pre-maturely declared that the game will be out by June of the same year. At the time, I was pretty satisfied with what I have done. However as development progresses on, I realised that the game isn’t ‘fun’. It was just a simple endless top-down shooter with enemy planes coming in from the top or from the sides. There was no variation to the enemies movements, no cool boss fights, no interesting enemy projectiles. Stale would be the best word to describe it.

Since then, a lot of has changed on Project Wings. Codes have been optimized, there are more enemy variations, and I have added boss fights. Unfortunately due to time constraints there will only be one stage at the time of release. I will talk about it on a later post.

Well I guess that’s about it for now. As promised, below is the link for the blog post I mentioned earlier. Bloggers who are just starting out, you should definitely give it a read.

Bloggers, You Don’t Need To Get It Right, You Just Need To Get It Going…

 

How I Started Off With Project Wings

by

I have to admit though, Project Wings (not the final name, I haven’t figure out one for it yet) wasn’t the game I had in mind when I started out my game development. It was actually the result of a chain reaction of me failing to follow through all my previous ideas. Originally, I wanted to create  a simple “shoot to defend” game, where the player will tap on screen to destroy objects while making sure the damsel in distress is safe from harm.

From a coding and graphics point of view, it was the perfect game idea to start off with, at least at the time. I didn’t have to create objects that requires a lot of animation and no complex coding to deal with. It was just simply “spawn object from top, make them fall. Player ‘fires’ on object, object get destroyed. If the damsel in distress gets hit by an object, reduce reduce score by X amount”. Sounds easy no?

Read more