Game Development

Will Goldstone is a multi-talented individual from Bournemouth, Dorset UK whose recently put on a author hat to release the book Unity Game Development Essentials
. I’ve asked Will to come on 8bitFeed™ to help explain what Unity 3D is and why those whom are interested in either working in the video game industry for themselves or a corporation should take note. In addition to his recently published book, he is deeply involved with helping to educate others. He has uploaded and gathered great video tutorials via Learn Me Silly & Learn Unity 3D, in addition to instructing the future talent of students whom are at Bournemouth University. Regardless of your technical proficiency, if you’re interested in the game market download Unity 3D (it’s Free), and take advantage of all the available resources.

via 8bitFeed.com

Joseph Burchett is a great Software Engineer in the Sacramento, California area who’s been focused on Adobe’s Flash & Flex framework. He is here to share his knowledge for those wanting to gather information about getting into the game developer market. Regardless if your interested in creating either casual games, or are more interested in being apart of a larger team and company like Electronic Arts, you need to start somewhere. Joseph does a great job at explaining where he thinks you should begin, or if your already involved, what are some other great tools out there for you to use.

via 8bitFeed.com

I woke up this morning wondering how much longer it would be until Unity iPhone 1.1 landed later this week.  Tom Higgins, had mentioned an update this week but was mum about the version number.  When I woke up this morning and checked the news I was confused by the newswire talk of Unity 1.5 release.  At first I thought it was an update to the iPhone pro version and kinda shrugged it off.  By this morning the message had gotten louder and was clear- Unity iPhone 1.5 is out and it’s got goodies for days. 

You can read about what’s new in Unity iPhone 1.5 on the Unity Technologies blogs.  Hilights that caught my eye are as follows.

1. Up to 3X faster than 1.03.  Though 1.03 was just a security update,1.02 it’s predesescor also provided a boost in performance.
2. Full Native Objective C and C++ access- I need to dig deeper into this to fully grasp what power they have unleashed.
3. Full Keyboard control and video scripting
4. GPS access- I’m thinking Augmented Reality subway Apps in virtual worlds!
5. The docs have been improved- The Penelope tutorial and over 100 pages of iPhone-specific documentation!
6. Standard iPhone Assets Package
7. Better XCode Integration- Ya’ll must’ve heard me whining way over there.

Like I said, there’s much more listed at the Unity Technologies blog.  Join the discussion at the Unity iPhone Developer forum and check http://news.infiniteUnity3D.com for more news.

And you thought this bad boy was the most popular game engine before the possibilities are now infinite!  Speaking of Infinite and Unity3D… wait for it… Submit your latest info and your showoffs to http://news.infiniteunity3d.com  so that the community can hear about it, provide you feedback and  vote it up and send droves of traffic to your blog! 

Also stop bu the Infinite Unity iPhone Tutorials and Tips…after you’ve read the new and improved documentation that the team at UT has put together.

Check the response on the web:

1. Unity 1.5 for iPhone- Press Release
2. Unity Revamps iPhone engine
3. Get a Threefold performance boost with Unity iPhone 1.5 -PocketGamer
4.  Unity 1.5 Adds Full support for iPhone 3GS -Macsimus News
5. Unity iPhone Development Platform hits 1.5  Mobile Entertainment
6. Unity game engine for iPhone offers 3x performance boost -iPhone Central
7. New Software Aims to push the iPhone Further

When I first played Bedeviled I had no idea what I was doing…because “it fails to follow directions and it loses at the game”.  Luckily I do watch videos and I picked up the video above.  This explained why the ball that was moving across the screen appeared to be teleporting.  Big bright light over geek’s head- Oh….  The goal of the game is to slide the squares around so that the ball is NOT teleporting but moving from block to block in the normal fashion in the grid.  With that realization went 2 days of my weekend.  I then handed it off to my wife.  I guess watching my wife play a game while she gives me the Heisman every time I lean forward thinking I’m reaching for the iPod Touch kinda counts as quality time. Kinda…  Stop by the AppStore to check it out.  Stop by the Bedeviled homesite

Check here for mention of Bedeviled on PocketGamer

Unity3D Zero To Hero is temporarily giving out free redeem codes for his iPhone App On The Oche Darts Game.  Please Go here for details.  We all know how important the initial inertia is to the survival of your iPhone game and many of you have iPhone Apps in the pipeline to release soon.  Please support your community and provide some honest feedback at the store.

I Updated to Unity for iPhone 1.0.2- and then my world melted. I had my UnityRemote happy up until this point.  Now I’m getting an unexpected error 0xE800003A…Thanks.

I did some research and initially I thought that it was because I had a previous version of UnityRemote installed in my iPod Touch.  As far as I know this is gone now.  Either way- most of my iPhone dev recently has been about troubleshooting crappy cryptic errors instead of actualy building my next million-dollar game.

When I was building the virtual world at Modosports Barry Hawkins our SCRUM Manager) said something that I have carried with me. Actually Barry said a lot of things that I have carried with me, but I digress. 
Barry said something relating to the principle “Do the hard thing until it’s not hard anymore” aka “work through the pain”.  When  moved on from ModoSports I took that and many other messages from him.  Right now I’m working through the pain of getting my iPhone App together.  This essentially means that I’m going to start from the durn begining and reread as if I’ve never seen this stuff or this code.

Wish me luck and await an update.  I’m about to rebuild my Unity / iPhone App from scratch.  In the word of Stiffler , “Oh Boy!!”

Unity for iPhone update 1.02 has been released. Go find out about the new features including the 50% reduction in the size of the Mono Runtime, memory use reduction by textures 50%, Long list of bug fixes including the PhysX memory leaks.

Another bonus is that scripting examples for the iPhone Specific API elements have been dded. I needed this one badly! I appreciate that the Unity team is putting in the footwork to tighten up the increasingly popular iPhone dev tool! Go check out the changes in Unity iPhone 1.02 here!

I just found a hand-picked collection of iPhone Resources at iphonetoolbox.com.  They have categorized the content and have a wealth of resources from iPhone Application Development guides to a collection of tips and tricks and links to different iPhone simulators.  The site even has the Ultimate List of iPhone Tips and Tricks!  As you may have guessed, I have been looking for ways to get iPhone Applications out without having to learn yet another programming language.  My favorite approach thus far is Unity.  You probably picked up on that.  I still keep an eye out for other tools that simplify specific aspects of developing the applications and enjoy seeinghow other developers are approaching the iPhone Gold Rush and who’s sitting out and why.

Zombieville, USA built with Unity 3D, hit number 1 on the iPhone Game charts and # 2 on the App Charts! Congratulations to Mika’s Mobile and to Unity 3D Game Engine! – dicovered via gamesplay.org

Great review of 3D Engines for the iPhone on Never Read Passively blog.  Also referred to another iPhone 3D engine review done in 2008 by Matthias Gall.