This is not a game dev related, but I found this interesting so I I thought I'd post a blurb on it.

On Friday, I went out to clean out and refill the birds' water dish, when I noticed that it had frozen over.  At this time of year, that in itself wasn't very surprising.  However, there was an odd feature on top of the ice that was ... puzzling.  It kind of looked like an upside down Hershey Kiss, but made of  ice.  Besides being kind of weird looking, I just could not figure out how this might have formed.  Maybe water welled up from a little crack or hole as the water froze, but how did it form such a perfect shape?

Kindle Fire

I just received a new Kindle Fire.  I already have the original Kindle, which I like very much for reading at night, on the go, and at the gym.  However, since I'm going full-time at game dev and game dev related work, I decided to treat myself to an inexpensive Android based tablet-ish target.  I am enticed by idea of dabbling in the Amazon App market.  The Fire will allow me to do general game testing as well as prep work for Amazon Apps.  Enough said for now.  Here is the obligatory photo:

About The Game

As previously promised, I am posting some details on the 'game' I submitted to the Unity Compo.  If you have had a chance to look at it, you may not be too impressed, and that's OK.  It is the barest of prototypes, containing only a few of the features I initially planned.

The final game was to be a mash-up of these game types:

• Puzzler - Solve mechanical, time, and movement puzzles using core mechanics.
• Scrolling-Shooter - Fight your way through some game segments with acquired technology.

The core mechanics were to include:

• Scan enemies ships and add them to a catalog.
• Morph player ship into known enemy ships for a short duration. (Uses Energy)
• Scan enemy technology (weapons, traps, etc.) and add them to a catalog.
• Generate learned technologies.  (Uses Energy)
• Cloak for short periods. (Uses Energy)
• Transform enemy ships into any known ship type, including player ship.

There were to be other features to, but lastly all interactions were to be one-button (mouse click) based.

I had wanted to create and submit a game based on the above mechanics with the following features:

• Main Menu
• Credits Screen
• Options Interface
• Tutorial
• 2 or 3 Levels

I got very few of these things done.  In fact, only the bold items are finished.  However, as I said before I'm pleased to have finished even this much in so few days. I got just enough done to start getting a feel for it.  I suspect there may be something good in this idea and I will continue to work on it.

Credits

I used the following free or paid assets and tools to build the prototype:

• Unity 3.5 Beta 6 (Free)
• Flash fixed version of  iTween  (for easy movement and spline following; Free)
• Genetica 3.6 Pro (for textures; Paid)
• Space Ship Art by Dave Toulouse at Over00 (Free)
• Sounds made with SFXR (sound turned off because of weird bug; Free)
• Paint Shop Pro X2 (Paid)
• FileZilla (for uploading to my site; Free)

This is just a quick post to say that, "Yes!" I did submit my game to the Unity Flash Game Compo.  It was a close thing, and I had to trim nearly all of the features I wanted to put in. OK, I admit it.  I only got a prototype done (with about half the features), and single tutorial level, but here it is.

CLICK ME TO PLAY

It's pretty slim, I know, but I'm still proud of what I achieved.  This was the third game idea I explored between December 28th and today.  In fact, I only worked on this for 6 days.  Considering I went in knowing nothing about the engine at all, I feel very good about it.

Note: I didn't put a credits page on the game, so I'll post again tomorrow with full credits and links to all of the content I used from other folks.

For now, I'm totally whipped and need to unwind.  Time for some wine, a little TV, and relaxation.  Good night.  More details to follow tomorrow (later today really.)

I follow What Games Are via Reader and I saw this post on predictions for  gaming in 2012:  12 One-Sentence Thoughts For 2012.  I don't necessarily know enough about gaming trends to speak to them all, but I can say that I hope these predictions turn out to be true:

#1 PC Gaming is back... - I don't actually think it was ever gone, but merely over shadowed, first by the years of the rising console, and then by a craze for mobile gaming on iPod and iPhones.

#9 Tablet gaming should emerge as distinct as mobile... - I certainly hope there is  an increase in this marked.  I've only developed one iOS game, but even so, I know that working on the small screen-sizes is a real pain.  I long for the larger screen of a PC coupled with the distinctiveness of a hand-held device.

#11 Amazon's Kindle Fire will grow...become platform in its own right. - I find this idea exciting for the same reasons as #9, but also because of the huge potential market to be found on the Amazon store.

#12 - The idea of the local game will start to gain traction. - I'm not 100% sure I'm interpreting this as he meant it, but I believe Tadhg is simply referring to a resurgence of games played by one or more players, played together on a single computer or a local area LAN (Yes, lots of interpreting going on here.)  In a nutshell, I'd love to see an increase in gamer playing together not across the web.  I was never a big fan of facebook-like social gaming, mmos, or any other geographically separated gaming (with perhaps the exception of multiplayer Tribes 2 and Unreal Tournament).  I'd like to see more people playing together.

Now, back to work on my wonder game