Quick Update

It's been more than a year since my last update, a lot has happened and a lot will be happening in the near future.

This is just a quick update on what's going on.

I moved from Dublin to Cork and got a new job at Apple doing software testing and automation. In a lot of ways this is a real step up for me as I get to do development work professionally now.

I unfortunately never finished Jurassic Adventure. I think in the end the gameplay was just not thought through enough. It was a fun thing to build in Unity and make the assets and I learned a lot, but I don't think I will finish it.

I got a consumer edition Oculus Rift, which I've been having a lot of fun with, but have not gotten around to developing for, but I want to.

I've decided I want to update Jungle Jumper and Space Sheep and my homepage and start doing regular updates on this blog before getting into yet another new project.

Look out for more updates soon,

Taking a Break

So I was stressing out quite a bit about basically finishing the whole game this week and did quite a bit of work in the beginning of the week, but then I decided to take a break.

I was stressing out and I have not had any vacation for a while so I decided to instead relax my deadline trying to hit the Jurassic World release and instead take a step back and be sure I don't run myself into the ground and that I actually create a good game, now that I have put so much time into it.

So since I had just bought a fancy new GeForce 970GTX I played a bunch of games and relaxed with my girlfriend.

So I played a bunch of Batman - Arkham Origins, I played through most of Broken Age, I tried out Assassin's Creed IV - Black Flag and I played some Hearthstone.

And all of it was great. I actually don't play games much for someone trying to be a game developer. I actually have this stupid stigma built into my brain that it's a bit of a time waster - more than movies or books - even through I know that games is an art form in their own right and have loads of other benefits, like improved motor skills and cognitive skills that other entertainment does not have. So I'm glad I spent a bit more time playing and I'll try to keep it up for a while and finish some good games, I have The Witcher 2 and 3 to finish as well.

I'll be back with an update again when I've had a bit more time to relax and maybe reconsidder the scope of the game and a new schedule.

Project Happy - Dev Diary 7

Well better late than never.
Missed two Sundays. Not so good.
Well I ended up getting pretty sick and then I got a bit stuck with the game.
BUT! I have taken the rest of this week off so I will be working on the game a lot this week which is indeed very needed if I still want the game to be finished around the 12th of June.

So my last task was to make the game run well on Android and I have definitely managed that.
I ended up stripping off a lot of the cool effects and scaling back on some of the models and textures. I found out that the terrain was causing a very high poly count and so was the water. The fade out effect of the trees when you go behind them also seemed to cause the fps to drop dramatically.
What remains that is really expensive rendering wise is the drop shadows and the light cookie (the effect of light coming through tree branches. I think I'll end up with no shadows. This is a shame, but the game still looks OK as long as the light cookie is there.

Other than all the optimization stuff I:

• Implemented the Triceratops.
• Setup a start menu, pause menu and game over menu.
• Made some better UI textures.
• Implemented a point counter.
• Made sand textures for the terrain.
• Made a temporary sky box.

And here is how it is looking at the moment:

So I might have scaled back the graphics a bit too much, but I can always put stuff back in if I have the performance headroom.

So for the week I will have to be very productive if I'm going to finish this off soon:

• Make a velociraptor.
• Make tourists you can eat.
• Make eggs you can collect.
• Make missing animations.
• Make a real skybox.
• Decide on a Final name
• Finish all the UI.
• Probably way more stuff

So if I manage all this in this week then I'll have next week to polish things off and implement Play Games services and in app billing.

Wish me luck. I'm going to need it :P.

Project Happy - Dev Diary 6

So another week has gone by.

I feel this week ended up being a bit unproductive.

I did not manage to create quite as many new assets as I had hoped.

I started the week out working on textures and had a bunch of problems making as good ground textures as I wanted, so I have added two a rock one and a grass one, I'm not very pleased with either, but I learned a lot, so hopefully I'll be able to make improvements.

I then did the Triceratops and I'm really happy with how it turned out. I haven't yet rigged it or anything, but I have the model in the game and it is looking good.

I then made a texture to use for the bottom of the screen to indicate not to go farther down and I made a new big tree model to block off the top of the map.

I also got rid of the block rocks I've been using and just used the terrain with my new rock texture, this is OK for now and I think will work fine when I get some boulders in there that I can spread around a bit.

I also played a bit around with the light.

And here is how it's looking at the moment.

Goals for next week:

• Get game to run well on Android

At the moment the game does not run great on my Nexus 5. I don't know if it is due to texture sizes or polygon counts or something completely different, but I believe I have to figure it out before I work on any more assets. Hopefully I'll be able to do a few more things as well.

See you all next week.

Project Happy - Dev Diary 5

So another week has gone by and I've made quite a few improvements.

I got the game back to being playable with a game-over screen and that you get energy from eating. The stegosaurus' are re-spawning after you eat them.
And I've hugely improved the T-rex animation. I redid the walk animation and did a running animation and an attack animation and I have the all set up in a working blend tree.
The stegosaurus now runs away scared when it sees you.
I added some grass and modeled the tree log.
And as you can see I have ugly (but functional) touch controls on it now.

And here you can see it in action:

Goals for next week:

• Model the triceratops
• Model the cliffs
• Model the big trees blocking the top
• Make different better textures for the terrain

I plan to focus this next week on getting rid of all the blocked in stuff so I really get an idea of hold the game will look and hopefully I'll have time to do a few more things as well.

See you all in another week

Project Happy - Dev Diary 4

Today is my 30th birthday!

And it is going well with the project.
I managed to get quite a few things done this week.
I created a tree and a fern for the game, which has really improved the visuals.
I got some animation working on the stegosaurus.
And I figured out using Unity's navigation system for character control and AI.

The AI is still very simple. At the moment the stegosaurus is just selecting a location and moving towards it and when it get there, choosing a new location. This will of course be improved with other actions the dinosaurs can take and reacting to the player. But I am getting all the nice path finding etc.

Here is a video showing off the stegosaurus sped up and highlighted to show their behavior.

And here you can see it being played. I've sped up the player a bit to be able to cover more gound, but you get the idea.

So another productive week. So for next week I really want to work on the gameplay and logic so:

• Get game playable again. You loose health and have to eat dinosaurs to survive etc.
• Make herbivores act better. Run away from player etc.
• Plan out and implement some simple menus.

See you all in a week.

Project Happy - Dev Diary 3

So everything slipped a bit and I didn't manage to get this blog post written yesterday.

But everything is going well. I have been a bit sick this last week, but I managed to put in some good work anyway I think.

Firstly I modeled the real tyrannosaurus model.

Full resolution:

Low resolution in game:

I then spent a disturbing amount of time figuring out how to properly rig a character. I've never done this properly and it took a very long time. After this I made the following test:

After that I ran around in circles for a while trying to figure out how to best import animations and how to set up root motion.

Finally I sort of figured it out and made a walk animation and an idle animation and got them working with root motion in the game and here is the result:

Additionally after thinking more about the game. I've decided to drop the idea of growing bigger as you eat. You will simple have to eat as much as possible so you don't die and then you earn points of some kind that you can unlock bigger dinosaurs with. This will mean I will have to make more different dinosaurs though.

So everything is going pretty well. This next week I want to really start working on getting the game playable and fun. So I'm going to concentrate on getting enough animation for the T-rex and one herbivore and then work on the player controller and the AI for the herbivores.

• Make run animation for T-rex.
• Rig and skin stegosaurus.
• Make, idle, walk and run animation for the stegosaurus.
• Make a herbivore controller so stegosaurus can run around the landscape.
• Make T-rex able to eat them etc.

See you in another week :)