Month: November 2020

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November 21, 2020 #YGTInspiration

Posted on by Patrick Fluke

Got a game to make but stuck in the muck? Want to get going down the path to your completed game? Maybe this week’s #YGTInspiration will help you out! I waited a bit longer into the day to start searching through the #GameDev, #IndieGameDev, and #ScreenshotSaturday hashtags to try and let more of you get your creations up this week. I think last week I went a little early, though I can’t say I regret it because there was an awesome showing!

If you were on last week, don’t worry I’m not judging against you this week. I am going to try and feature as many different Indie Developers as I can. When you are trying to figure out how to make a game, you may connect with different Indie Developers than others. That’s okay, there are all kinds of us! So, without further adieu, these are the top ten that stuck out to me today, in no particular order! 

First up this week, Heredity. Another one of those games that would fit right in with the newer AAA line up. It’s a sleek-looking RPG looking for a 2021 release. Judging from the cascading waterfalls in the trailer that @HereditytheGame has pinned on their profile, I think it’s coming along nicely too. Certainly one to look for in 2021.

Use Everything Available to You

Here’s an awesome looking 2D game made with the Godot Engine. I feel like since Unity and Unreal spend big bucks on advertising that the Godot Engine tends to get left behind. Here’s Adam showing that it’s certainly not out for the count. It’s an open-source tool that can definitely help speed your project along. If you’re making a game you should know all of the options available to you. Check out the Godot Engine and remember that Adam sent you their way!

Innovative Puzzle Game


 

What a unique take on those awesome puzzles that we all used to have as kids. Moving the board pieces around can lead you to your goals or down the path of ruin. I love how César used this to his advantage and created a puzzle game that will have you focused not only on how it should fit together, but also how to best avoid the mobs and pitfalls that await you. Very innovative!

Survival Games Hardly Ever Go Here!


 

The survival genre is absolutely nothing new. Usually, however, we see this survival genre taking place in a desert, in space, or some fancy island. You know what there isn’t enough of? Northern landscapes like you’d find in Sweden – Not at all because it’s basically like Canada right? – and this game sticks out for it. If you go to Tim’s profile and scroll down a bit, you might even catch a moose!

Combo x5

 

Wheel of Persona announcing that they’ve completed and are showcasing their combo system. Look at the fluid attacks and those health bars melting away. I’ve got to say that I actually really enjoy the graphics and the gameplay on this one. First off, I’m distracted by shiny things so I’m immediately drawn to all the glowing elements, but also I love how the gameplay almost reminds me of a 2D hack and slash. Certainly, an interesting game to watch!

Ready to start building your own game today? 

 

Technically Impressive and Ready for Alpha!

 

This one looked good, but when it switched to the camera view I lost it. This game looks technically sound, to say the least. The lack of colour is reminiscent of the old retro gaming days, and yet it is fluid and modern looking. It’s moved to alpha now too, so if you’re looking for a lot of inspiration, go check this one out!

Use Everything Available to You

 

Below the Stone! Get’s my interest immediately and seems to be borrowing from the biggest crafting games out there now, and then using them in a Rogue like world. It’s exciting, and looks like it’s coming along well. You can wishlist this one on Steam now too!

Triple A Game and the Clock is Running

 

Here’s Sergey with the ambitious goal of getting a AAA worthy game together, using Unity3D, in six months. Given the preview on his tweet here, I think he’s gonna… cleave it… No, that didn’t work. But seriously check out Sergei’s work!

Entering System Nostalgia

 

This cockpit sent some serious nostalgia vibes right through me. A good flight simulation game has become increasingly difficult to find, and this one, at least from this preview, seems to be going for the throne. Check it out!

You Wanna See My Axe?

 

When you want to get into Game Dev you gotta smash down the door! With your fists! Okay maybe you can just make an amazing game, but it seems like Chris over at Cobble Games is doing just that. Check out this sure to be delightful alien smashing game!

So that’s it for this week’s #YGTInspiration. Did you want your game here, use the Contact Me form or tweet at @YourGame2Day and let me know. I can’t promise I’ll get to everyone, but I’ll do what I can! Are you ready to make your game today? It’ll be great!

Lego Game From Unity

Make Some Games with Your Kids

Posted on by Patrick Fluke

You know, in today’s world it’s easy to forget to spend a few minutes with the people around you. Have you ever thought of making games with your kids? The bonus of game development is that, in general, kids love games. You know what else? They tend to love making games too! If you’ve got children, or a younger brother or sister, take the opportunity to share what you can with them!

Lego Game From Unity
Lego Game From Unity

Tonight, my son and I took a spin with the Lego tutorial from Unity. I’ve got to say, it went pretty well all things considered. The tutorial walks you through each step of the way, and you accomplish small goals as you go. Overall, the game making process was turned into a game itself. All while building real skills which he can then turn around and use to make his own games someday! Mind you, the lego game had these condition blocks which may have changed the mechanism for a lot of game building, but that’s okay!

My son was excited, although maybe spent a little too much time actually playing the game. He’d click Restart faster than I could explain to him what the next step was. But he was engaged. Have you tried getting kids engaged these days? It’s a nightmare!

Take Part in their Learning

You’ve really got to be there. You’ve got to sit with them and explain what Unity wants them to do. Otherwise, if your kid or sibling is anything like mine they’ll just play the game. Once I explained it though, once I explained triggers, and variables, and the like, lightbulbs went on, and better yet, they stayed on. My son is excited to keep learning with Unity, and since this is literally a professional game-making studio, his journey certainly doesn’t have to end with the lego game. No, this skill can grow with him, and become his hobby or even his career.

At the very least, he’ll learn some coding. My son was already learning Scratch, so the jump to Unity isn’t insane. I sat with him and we worked through this little book that we bought him that has a ton of these little scratch projects. We found that about two-thirds of the way through he felt limited. He felt as though the program itself was preventing him from making the game he wanted. I thought back then about trying to jump to Unity but we decided to stick it out, and wait for him to finish off Scratch.

Suffice to say he lost interest. Time passed, and I wasn’t sure whether or not he was going to get back into programming. Then Unity has their super sale. While I was checking it out, I stumbled across this beautiful tutorial. The Lego tutorial from Unity has rekindled my son’s love of programming, and I couldn’t be more thrilled.

So, I’m going to keep making games with my son, and when my younger son is ready, him too. If you’ve got someone you can share this with, I hope you do. If you don’t and maybe you just want to get into programming, check out all the Unity Tutorials, they’re very well done, and very good at getting you up to speed.

Have any family co-programming stories? Comment below!

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Unity’s Super Sale

Image posted on by Patrick Fluke

It’s that time of year again. Black Friday sales are ramping up and the game development world is not exempt. Wondering what you should get from the Unity Super Sale? Unity is launching their Super Sale this week and if you’re building a game you really need to check it out!

As a Unity affiliate I may be compensated if you make purchases through the links below, so if you’d rather that didn’t happen just read here, and then access https://unity.com (or click here, no tracking number here, hover and see!) 

There are tons of assets on sale, and I really only went through a page or two before I found some that really stood out to me.  This list is certainly not all-inclusive, and I’ll certainly provide more thoughts tomorrow when I have more of a chance to go through Unity’s offerings.

This one isn’t even really fair. It’s the deal of the day, and for what you get it’s well worth the total price. If you manage to catch it on sale like today, you’ll be glad you did. It’s great for any hobbyist looking to make games without perhaps the time to sink into building all of the assets for your post-apocalyptic world yourself. Think of the worlds you could build… and destroy! Maybe it’s a typical zombie game. Maybe your protagonist is actually a necromancer and this is your legion. Maybe it’s zombie battles? You know, Necro v Necro. It’s up to you! Check it out!

 

The Ultimate Sound Effects Bundle is 50% off. That’s a good deal! You’re getting over 9000 different sound effects. It has what your game needs I’m quite sure of that. Bullets, dragons, magic, sci-fi, and even some zombie sounds for the apocalypse pack you just nabbed there too. Honestly, it’s a fantastic price for an outstanding pack.

 

The modern UI pack. I mean just look at those gorgeous buttons. If you struggle with coming up with the best for your game, you know if you’re anything like me, UI packs are a godsend. Progress bars, buttons, sliders, and they’re customizable. Check this out as well.

Tomorrow I’m going to do a write up for you all that covers the various reasons you might want to consider the Unity Pro membership, and maybe one or two reasons you wouldn’t. Indie developers don’t need to spend money they don’t have to, and unless it’s not going to help your situation, I’m not going to recommend it. However, on the off chance, it’s what you need, maybe it’s worth checking out!

I think that’s all I’m going to cover today. Check these out either with the links above or by going to Unity.com and going to their sale page. Once you integrate these into your workflow you’ll be making more progress in no time. Have a good night everyone!

Using Third Party Assets In Your Game

Posted on by Patrick Fluke

When building a game, there are quite literally one million things to do, you really need to consider using third party assets in your game. Not only do you have to handle the conceptual work which can be a nightmare all on its own, but you also have to come up with visual, and audio assets, and then mesh them together coherently, debug the gameplay, and tweak everything until it’s just right. The development cycle for an indie developer can be years.

You don’t have an army of artists at your disposal or have coders lined up to finish your scripts. You have you, and maybe a couple of friends. Wouldn’t it be great to speed up your development cycle?

Reminder, as a Unity Affiliate I may be compensated if you make purchases after accessing the Unity Asset store with some of the links below. If you’d rather that didn’t happen, access Unity.com and navigate to their store directly after reading below to find out more!

Get Over Your Fear of Third Party Assets

In the indie game development world, there was long a stigma of “build your own engine, don’t use a framework,” and thank god that has fallen by the wayside. Unity, Unreal, and GoDot are all frameworks that are extremely commonly used by the game development community at large. Why then, does the stigma still exist when it comes to assets? This doesn’t have to be visual assets, there are programmatic assets, extensions, and more that can literally save you hundreds of hours of work. Now let’s consider the Easy Save asset from the Unity Store.

Easy Save - The Complete Save & Load Asset

This asset gives you the required functionality to save data in your games, and it works on all of the platforms that Unity provides. It provides a light-weight framework to accomplish all of this, and it is well documented and ready to go for your game. Now, stop to think. How long would this take you? If you happen to be an expert, or you can steal your own code from an old project, this may not be a concern. However, if you’re a first-time developer, or even if you have a few projects under your belt, but saving has never been an issue, this could be an absolute lifesaver! Sure, there is an upfront cost, but in the long-term, you’ll have this functionality for every game you build going forward. In total, how much is your time worth?

Building Your World

So you’ve chosen an engine, and you’re ready to build up your world. How do you get started? If you’ve chosen Unity, the framework is built such that you have an enormous number of options. That means that there is a lot of setup involved in getting various things to work. If you’re trying to build a 2D game, you’ll have to know which options relate to 3D, and which options you need to change, and so on.

It’s a lot of work.

It’s time-consuming.

That’s why there are assets like the Corgi Engine.

 

Corgi Engine - 2D + 2.5D Platformer

The Corgi Engine takes a lot of the setup work out of setting up your 2D world. It’s an amazing little toolkit for your Unity game development kit, and it lets you get to market faster. Again I ask you, how long would it take you to get to this point. How long would it take you to build all of the features you need? It’s time consuming, and again, this gets it done for this project, and EVERY project going forward. Both assets that we’ve looked at so far have little to do with what you actually see. Further, what about visual assets?

How long does it take you to build a 3D model?

Well, for me, a long, long, long time. I’m just not a modeller. Perhaps you are, maybe you built all your models before you even started with building your game in Unity. If that’s the case, good for you. If, however, you are more like me, you may want a little help. Paying a freelancer to build your models will be excessively expensive, and though you may want to for your main characters, or pieces that will be symbollic of your game, the background objects, walls, and other innane features of your game can often be picked up rather cheap on the various asset stores. Check out this Sci-Fi pack from the Unreal asset store!

Sci-Fi Pack Unreal
Unreal Assetstore Sci Fi Pack

This is a perfect example of how you can build up your world in much less time relying on third-party assets. These aren’t going to steal the show, but poorly constructed background assets may stand out. A compromise on some of your assets can cut down massively ont he time it will take to put your game together.

I Don’t Want to Spend ALL My Money

Honestly, I hear you. Bootstrapping your game from scratch, with no promise of commercial success can be daunting. That being said don’t be afraid to check out the free assets on the various asset stores, often times you can find all kinds of useful tools!

There are assets in all different categories for free for both engines, and they’re well worth checking out.

Well there you have it, I think it’s pretty clear you can save a lot of time by relying on some third party assets, and I honestly think you should. Do yourself a favour. Happy Coding!

Game Developer Working - Photo by hitesh choudhary from Pexels

November 14, 2020 #YGTInspiration

Posted on by Patrick Fluke

Here is the first of a series, your November 14, 2020, #YGTInspiration. I wanted to aggregate a lot of the awesome games that were being made and shared all the time by people just like you. So this morning I perused the #ScreenShotSaturday, #GameDev, and #IndieDev hashtags, and I’m bringing you some of the coolest things I could find. Just to be clear, I have no connection with these folks, and I’m just perusing awesome projects in the works. Check these out!

Simple and Very Satisfying

There’s something to be said for being able to make a minimalist pixel-based world come to life. This screenshot encapsulates that perfectly. I mean come on, you can see the grass moving, you can feel the slight breeze that has the power lines swinging back and forth, and the clouds moving across the sky.

Colour is unnecessary in this world as the artist and game dev has done a fantastic job of bringing it to life with the fewest details they could. As a point and click game, it seems fascinating that you could get lost in a world that seems so simple, but just from this quick demonstration, I can tell that you totally could. Give Joakim a follow to see more. Looks great Joakim!

Canada is Full of these Menacing Beasts!

As a Canadian, after stumbling across this I simply can NOT share this one. Toronto the moose warrior!

This game has some slick looking graphics that remind me a bit of a more modern early 90’s game style and has fighting mechanics that would make a certain band of warrior turtles proud. I love the artwork on this one. Check out Veredilia on Twitter to see much more in their timeline!

A Battle for the Ages, or Until the Next One!

This one from Alain is a reminder that Indie Devs are on the heels of the AAA games. With a mob that looks like he’d be right at home in any of the mainstream RPG’s out there, and a combat system that appears to be top-notch even if still a work in progress, Alain seems to be on the right path here!

Honestly, look at how lush that boulder covered landscape is, and this short video does a great job making me want to see what’s in that encampment over there. Certainly not long enough.

Ho! Ho! AHHH!!!

Here’s one that you can wishlist on Steam, and it’s a perfect fit with the season. Headbangers in Holiday Helllooks to allow you to ravage the holidays like never before. Don’t take “out of stock” for an answer, if you catch my drift.

A perfect example of an indie game brought to completion, I love seeing these and I know as an aspiring game dev you do too!

Every Good Game has a Platypus

This one from Cheekynauts Entertainment has a demo up on Patreon. Evil mutant tomatoes, and a platypus. What more could you ask for?

I love the fun colours in this game, and the world seems to be interesting and exciting. Kind of like a lost island, with crates and barrels lying around. The UI seems simple and intuitive, and that death scene is both embarrassing and quite well done! 

Indie Dev with Pre-Rendered Cut Scenes

I said it a little earlier, and I’ll say it again. There are few things that the AAA’s can pull off that indie’s can’t and the gap closes year after year. This space-based Tactical RPG in development with ZeroPoint is a perfect example. I mean just look at this test render!

I can think of few games that pulled off tactical space combat really well, and none of them were released that recently. I think this one has a great shot at the market. Especially with visuals like this.

I’m Not Locked in With You, You’re Locked in With Me

Remember when it seemed every game had you reach a boss, the gates would close, and you duked it out? Well, this game gives me that kind of energy, except, well whoever’s playing isn’t messing around. See those columns flying. Stunning.

The mobs are well animated, the world is detailed and beautiful, and all of that won’t matter because you’ll be too busy avoiding massive spikes, and running that enormous sword into your enemies. Looks awesome!

First FPS Game, Nails it

So In4 here is trying to tell us this is his absolutely first attempt at making an FPS game. If it is a friend, kudos because this is fluid and epic. I’m a big proponent of the fact that graphics don’t need to be AAA quality for a game to exceed what those big studios can do. Games need heart, this video has it in spades.

Looking forward to watching this develop!

Impossible Becomes Possible

There’s no escape, or is there? This Top-Down to a side-scrolling mechanic is one that I think is pretty novel. I’ve never encountered it before anyhow. Looks like it would add a layer of intricacy and difficulty to two well-explored game types. 

Gone for a Swim

Wrapping up this first post with a nice swim in a pond. Watch the beautiful transition to the water in this one. The world is lush and filled out, and you can feel the tranquility through the screen.

I don’t know much about the game itself, but I know that this was done really well, and was worth sharing on a post meant to inspire you and allow you to get ideas for your own game dev adventures.

See any games out there that I missed this weekend? Want your game featured next week? Let me know on Twitter, or use the Contact Form! Happy Coding!

Person playing xylophone.

Getting Great Music for Your Game

Posted on by Patrick Fluke

With all of the challenges in getting your game ready, getting great music for your game can fall by the wayside. All too often in the process, it’s easy to forget that you need music too. If you’ve got the talent and the time to sink into working with LMMS or Garage Band then all the power to you! These skills will serve you well as you delve deeper and deeper into your game development journey.

That being said, what if you don’t have any talent when it comes to making music? That’s certainly been the case for me. I’m awful at it. Though I’ve been practicing it’s been a slow process and it’s certainly not something that I want to hold up my Game Development aspirations for. Getting great music for your game doesn’t have to be a bottleneck requirement, and it certainly shouldn’t be something that you sacrifice quality on.

The Ultimate Game Music Collection

The Ultimate Game Music Collection from John Leonard French is an astounding selection. You get music that fits great with all kinds of different games, and the best part is that you can use it for this project, the next project, and the next. You get the idea. Whether you’re building casual games, or you need something a little more for the high-intensity first-person shooter you’re developing, you’re in good hands with John. 

John has continued to update this product, adding new tracks and genres over time. If you’re lucky you can even catch it on sale. As of writing, the package contains over 200 tracks and counting. You’d definitely be adding a valuable asset to your toolkit with this purchase.

If you’re ready to have high-quality music for your apps, check out the Ultimate Game Music Collection on the Unity Asset Store! It’s really worth the little bit of money that you’ll put in to be able to have a complete score for your games going forward. For those of us without the musical bug this is an absolute godsend.

Getting Great Music for Your Game Shouldn’t Be a Struggle

Remember, a game that never gets done isn’t going to do you any good, and ear-splitting music isn’t going to help sell your game. A package like this may seem like a copout, but as your business grows you can hire freelancers to make you custom music later. This will help you in getting great music for your game today!

Happy coding!