Frustration. . .

I really wasn't sure what to name this post.  At first, I wanted to go with something like: "You never stop learning: how using Unity3D is simultaneously the best, and worst", but that seemed a little long for a title.  (This then lead me to being frustrated over not being able to come up with a good title, after already having been frustrated by some things in Unity that I'll talk about in a second) . . . anyways.

The fact that we're using Unity to develop our new game opens up a plethora of new avenues we can explore to bring better gaming experience to the user.  This ranges from simply being able to give android users access to our game, to having more built in functionality.  However all of this comes at a price.  The price of having to learn a new tool.  For the most part it's been a quick learn.  I think we have accomplished a lot using the new environment (and language) having only seen it for a month.  (Although Austin had used it a little before me, so that helped me get up to speed).  But for the most part we've been able to code what we want to, with a few minor hiccups quickly cured with some googling.  However, these minor hiccups are starting to add up.

Honestly, I'm writing this post because of a specific hiccup that is causing me more problems than it should.  How do I know it's more of a problem than it should be?  Well, because I would know exactly what to do to solve the problem if we were using one of the other environments we have used in the past (specifically Cocos2D or SpriteKit).  All I'm trying to do is transition from one scene to another with a fade through color.  And in the previous environments this can be accomplished in two lines of code utilizing some very helpful built in functions.  However, in Unity, (as far as I can tell from the 20 minuets or so I've spent searching the inter webs trying to fix this problem) the only built in function to change scenes does a hard cut.  I'm not sure why Unity doesn't have a built in "transition through color" function.  Especially given the fact that it's a bigger and better game engine than the others we've used in the past.  But I guess you're just supposed to handle that on your own. . .

The thing I'm most frustrated about is that it's all of these little hang ups that end up eating time out of the dev process.  And for a small team (two people specifically) it can be really detrimental to the overall development of a game.  The two of us have other things we are doing, school, day jobs, other hobbies, so when we have to spend all of our dev time to try and figure something out that has already been figured out before, it can harm the overall development of a game.

There are a lot of things that are really nice about Unity and in the future it will allow us to make bigger games, but it's still frustrating when you have to spend time re-inventing the wheel.  Anyways.  That's all I have to say about that.  Just a quick little rant.  With all of that being said we are actually more or less ahead of the schedule I posted about in our announcement post, so at least there's that.  I'll be sure to post another update about Zen Balance which should include a better timeline for when we hope to have everything done by, so be sure to check back for that.

As always, thanks for reading,

-Matt.

Announcing Zen Balance

I've been super excited to write this post and even more excited to share this awesome news with you guys.  If you read our last post then you already know that we are working on a new game and (as of now) the game is going to be called Zen Balance!!!

There's so much to talk about that I don't really know where to start.  So I guess I'll just start with a basic description of the game.  (I guess now is as good of a time as any to put in a little disclaimer of sorts.  The game is obviously far, far away from it's final form so anything I say about the game, including the name, or any pictures that you see could, and probably will, be different from the final product.  So just keep that in mind as we move along.)  With that being said let's get into where we are now with Zen Balance.

Zen Balance is going to be a a pick up and play type of game.  Something where you can play for as little as a minute, or as long as you want, and anywhere in between; but something where you won't have to put in a large time investment if you don't want to.  The theme of the game, if you will, is about finding balance with the things you can't control by changing things you can control.  The game is all about circles; and different colored circles at that (if different colored circles isn't your definition of a fun game then I guess we can't be friends anymore [just kidding we can still be kind-of friends]).  The basic idea is that there are player circles and computer circles and you (as the player) can change the size of the player circles, but not the computer circles.  Your goal in the game is to keep the total area of all the circles the same, while the computer changes the size of the computer circles and also introduces new players and computers.  I know it's probably hard to get excited about a game from just a text explanation but trust me, the game is a lot of fun.  Later on this week I'll try and put together a video demonstration of the game play so that you can get as excited as we are.

But perhaps even more exciting than a new game in the works is the way we are developing Zen Balance.  This will be the first game that we develop using the Unity3D platform (the game is only in 2D but the name of the software is Unity3D, so that's just a tad confusing).  Now, can anyone tell me why it's super dooper exciting that we are using Unity3D to develop our game?  Anyone?  Well I'll tell you.  It's super exciting because this will allow us to release Zen Balance for iOS AND Android!  That's right, if everything goes well, Zen Balance will be our first multi platform game!!  So now everyone with an Android going "Aw man, I wish I could play some of those awesome games they make at Symbiotic Studios" we have answered your cries for awesome indie games!  And I don't know about you guys but for Austin and I this is a pretty big deal.  And it's not just limited to iOS and Android, with Unity3D we could also release the game on Mac or PC (although we would have to pay an extra developer fee I think, so don't expect that anytime soon).  So yeah, we're a little excited about the idea of cross platform and we hope you are as well.

As of now, we've had five or six good meetings just working on the game and we have a lot accomplished.  The basics of the gameplay are working and, for the most part, a person could "play" the game.  However we are still missing a main menu, different game modes, a scoring algorithm, art, and a good deal of game tuning.  So we still have a long way to go.  As for a release date. . . as a team we haven't really discussed one.  That being said, I think we could easily have this done before the end of the year and most likely a good while before that.  If you're excited as we are then keep checking back here for more updates about the development of Zen Balance and a more specific release date as we get closer to a finished product.  We will also be looking for beta testers (both iOS and Android) so let us know if that's something you would be interested in.

as always, thanks for reading!

-Matt.

We're at it again. . .

*sounds of computers and other machinery starting up in the background*

Well. . . it's been. . . a little while.  Almost a year, in fact, since we've made a blog post.  (Although, to be fair, I think we have done some dev work in between that blog post and now, so we haven't been totally slacking; just kind of totally slacking).  But here we are (again).  I'm sure there are more than a few previous blog posts about how we are going to really start trying to blog more and how we are getting back into the swing of things and all of that, so I'm not going to repeat myself.  This post is mainly to say that, for the near future, Austin and I are back and hard at work on some new and exciting stuff.

Old News Updates

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For anybody who used to follow the blog and might want a little bit of an update on some things we had previously talked about (mainly block'd! and Collar Fall (or Spectrum))  the next section is for you.  If you're knew to the blog or don't really care about any of that stuff and just want to know more about our new and upcoming ventures, feel free to skip ahead to the "New and Exciting Stuff" section further down this post.

If you're wondering what happened to all the stuff we were talking about a year ago (like the block'd! version 1.1 update and the game we were working on Spectrum (formerly known as Color Fall!)) the short answer is none of that stuff is going to happen.  Or, rather, none of that stuff is going to happen in the near future.  As far as block'd! goes, we have 30 new levels and a new color scheme that are all almost ready to go.  The only thing left to do is make sure all the new levels are beatable.  But as for some of the other features we were hopping on adding to it. . . I wouldn't hold my breath.  If we find that we have a little bit of down time in between projects or we need to take a break, we might push out a quick little update with the new colors and levels, but probably nothing more than that.

Spectrum (or Color Fall!) was actually, kind of, almost ready to go but then. . . something happened. . . I think it was cleaning up the UI. . . and we just kind of let it die.  Also, we noticed that someone had beat us to the punch on the general idea and game play of Spectrum so we lost a lot of moment there as well.  So, similarly to block'd!, if we find some down time or want to take a break, we might end up releasing Spectrum, or we might not, who knows.

I think that's all for old news so no onto the fun and exciting stuff!!!

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New and Exciting Stuff!

Yes, we are working on a new game!  And I don't know about Austin, but I'm pretty excited about it.  It's taking us in a new direction that I think will really help us grow and reach more people.  I don't really want to talk too much about the game here (because there's a lot to talk about) but our working name for the game right now is Zen Balance.  We've been working on the game for a little less than a month now and over the course of only four or five meetings I think we've made a lot of progress.  I'll be making another blog post soon to talk more about the specifics of the game so make sure to check back for that.

Other than that I'm not really sure what else to talk about as far as new stuff goes.  We've updated the website a little bit.  It's fairly similar to the look of our previous website but we decided that our new game called for a new website so here it is.  If you have any input about our website feel free to let us know.  Also, Austin and I are now living in the same area (for the first time since we founded Symbiotic Studios, I think) so we'll be able to meet more often, which will hopefully improve our output (in both blog posts and games).

I think that's all I really want to talk about in this post.  Make sure to check back for our post about Zen Balance.  We're really excited about it and we think you guys will be too.

As always, thanks for reading.

-Matt.