Monthly Archives: May 2014

Networked Space Wars: My May One Game A Month is Online #1GAM

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The month is just about over and my attempt at creating a multiplayer game has yielded some interesting results. First of all, I did make a multiplayer game where players can host and join a server and then fly space ships around and blow each other up. I haven’t tested it too excessively, but I know it works on multiple computers over my home wifi. I am not sure how many servers can be created or how many players can join!? Here is a link to the networked Space Wars Online – you will need a friend to join you to make it fun…

Screen Shot 2014-05-29 at 10.09.20 PM

Game controls:

WASD – Move and Rotate

Space – Fire weapon

-+ Zoom in and out

I couldn’t get points or multiple hits working in time. Every change you make to a networked game seems to break it and require lots of debugging. I hope to refine it in the future and make it more fun. I’d like to be able to show who you are targeting, have ships that can take more than one hit. Selectable types of weapons to use.

Screen Shot 2014-05-29 at 10.08.57 PM

The start page has a place for players to enter their names and also customize their ship color. While not mind blowing, since I am still learning, it took forever just to get these two simple pieces of information to be shared across the multiple players. Colors would not show up for the longest time. I think I am getting the hang of it, the names are an attempt at a larger player management system with a shared scoring system but I need to wrap my head around handling collisions of projectiles and giving credit to the player who shot them. One day!

I used a lot of references to make this thing work –

Paladin Studios Unity Networking Tutorial – helped me figure out RPCs the best…

Palladium Games Unity Networking Tutorial

Unity Cookie networking tutorial -its in Javascript though so I had to change it to C#

Unity Multiplayer Games book by Alan Stagner

Unity Networking book by Lawrence Grant

Thanks to all of you for doing your best to explain a super complicated topic. After going through all that stuff, I can see the need for a few more tutorials. Perhaps if I ever understand it well enough I will give it a try.

Dev Log: Updates on Tap Invasion, SpaceWars, Giant Pixelated Robots and GIFs

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#Screenshotsaturday Making gifs is an easier process than I thought! Enjoy this Tap Invasion action gif.

tapinvasiongif

Above is one of my students making an epic run in Tap Invasion.

Dev Log Updates:
My April game (Tap Invasion) has stretched far into May! While the game was mostly completed in May, I wanted to port it to the Android Google Play store and get it out to the mobile audience for which it was designed. In that I succeed by about mid-month. I still need to port it to iOS. It was really created with the iPad in mind.

With that being said, I still am making good on my #1GAM challenge. I originally had noted that my next big attempt would be multiplayer. This weekend I finally got something working! The basic game for May is a multiplayer player vs. player SpaceWars game. It may not be super polished by the end of the month, but my goal is to have a game 4 players can join with one player hosting the server, a bunch of obstacles to fly around and hide behind and a scoring system.

Screen Shot 2014-05-24 at 5.35.39 PM

Currently the game has been tested on the desktop and through the webplayer on a server and both work so far. I will be adding interpolation optimization to the game to make everything smoother  in the next few days and then I will probably publish for folks to try out. Maybe one day I will rig up one of my old computers as an always on server for folks to log on to.

One of my main frustrations has been loading new players with their own perspective camera so that they could all fly around a bigger area on their own. The problem seems to be something a lot of Unity programmers have to deal with. I have tabled it for now, but I am hoping to make the space wars concept a little more massively in the future once I figure this thing out. So in the spirit of completing things in a month, the game now just takes place arena style on one screen with really small players.

Additionally, I came up with a one screen game – sort of smash-brothers meets joust meets explosions. I’ve been calling it Robot Destruction Dome for short. I couldn’t really make it this month because it took me so long to launch Tap Invasion and then learn networking (still learning that!). The RDD would require lots of new pixel art and I want to do it right! Here is my drawing of the game…

robotbrainstorm The guys with the motorcycle helmets are player one and two. They fight an infinite army of procedurally configured robots.

Tap Invasion and Tap Invasion Lite Now on the Google Play store for Android devices

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At long last! Tap Invasion and Tap Invasion Lite Now on the Google Play store for Android devices! I’ve even sold a few games!

Free: Click here to go to the Tap Invasion Free Version on Google Play.

Full Game for only $0.99! Click here to go to the Tap Invasion Google Play page.

The store description goes something like this: Fast, addictive retro arcade action! Aliens are attacking Earth again! Tap the invaders as they attempt to destroy your city. How long can you keep the city alive?

Tap Invasion Lite is a DEMO version that gives you the feel for the game and a boss battle. The DEMO has a time limit and only a few of the bad guys. But it does have a boss!

DEMO Features:
– Retro arcade action
– Simple but addictive gameplay
– Power ups!
– 8-bit pixel art transports you back to the 80’s
– Chip tune sound track!

Try it out and then buy the FULL version to get all the cool features below…

Cool Features of the FULL GAME:
– More Retro arcade action
– Simple but addictive gameplay
– Infinite levels – if you can tap fast enough!
– Randomized levels with increasing speeds and difficulty
– 5 bosses to destroy
– Power ups!
– 8-bit pixel art transports you back to the 80’s
– Chip tune sound track!
– Top Score Board – Can you beat your friend’s score?
– No in-app purchases!

Please support indie games and me! I make games for fun, but its also fun to be paid for your creative works!