September 26, 2015 -- Weekly Update

Hey all, it's about time we started posting with regularity. So, we are starting a weekly update post to inform you of what has been happening with Zen Balance this week!

This was a bit of an uneventful week for feature adding, but what we did add are huge improvements. We implemented Unity Ads into our humble little game, and got them working to our specifications, (a post about our ad theory, and monetization of Zen Balance will be coming next week,) and we fiddled with a couple of the animations in the game, (specifically the game end animation.)

Remember to check out our video post to see what Zen Balance is starting to look like as we enter the final phases of development. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, drop us a line in the comments below, and look to us next week for a formalized release date!

Thanks for reading, as always,

austin

Zen Balance Videos

Hey all, I wanted to take a quick second to make a post of all the videos that Matt and I have shared back and forth while working on Zen Balance. Check out the videos before, or just check out the playlist on YouTube.

September 25, 2015

What will most likely be the end game animation moving forward. Yay gravity!

Just a short preview of our current game over menu. This will probably go through some iterations.

September 21, 2015

A short video showing off our redesigned main menu for Zen Balance.

September 17, 2015

One of our main menu candidates that we decided against, think differently? Let us know! 

Ooops!

One of our main menu candidates that we decided against. Think differently? Let us know.

Jus the slide in of the main menu.

A short clip of the count in animation.

A short preview of our first draft of the Game Over popup.

A quick preview of our working main menu animation.

Art V1.0

Hello!  It's been a while since we've posted so I figured now would be as good a time as any to give you guys a little update on where we are with Zen Balance.

The biggest thing we've been working on is the Art and UI for Zen Balance, and let me just say it hans't been the smoothest of processes.  We have been through quite a few different art schemes and menu layouts and even as I write this we are changing the main menu around yet again.  But more on that later, right now lets talk about the art.  We've come across an art concept for Zen Balance that intrigues us.  We don't hate, but at the same time we don't love.  So we figured we would share it with you guys and hopefully get some feedback on what you think about the art.  So here are a couple of screen grabs from Zen Balance game play with our current art.

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

As you can probably tell we decided to go with a photo realistic theme for the art in Zen Balance.  We had the idea to do a game with this kind of art a while back when we were noticing that practically every single game was using 8-bit art.  While that style of art does give the game a certain style we just got tired of seeing it everywhere.  So when we got to thinking about the art in Zen Balance we decided it might be a good time to try out a different style of art, something in the opposite direction of the 8-bit theme.  Like I said before, we don't hate this look, but at the sometime we aren't in love with it.  There are a few things we are thinking about tweaking with this art, but for the most part this would be what the final game would look like.

At the same time we are also thinking about doing a complete 360 and going with something illustrated.  We aren't sure if doing photo realistic art like this is different enough to help us stand out form other games, or if it's too different and just makes the game look bad.  If you have any feedback about our current art, one way or the other, we would love to hear about in the comments below.

Other than that, keep checking back for more updates about Zen Balance.  We also have an Alpha version of the game out for public testing (for iOS devices only), if you're interested you can read more about that here .

As Always Thanks For Reading,

-Matt.

2D Pinch Zoom and Pan in Unity

Hello!  After a long weekend of vector math and linear algebra I finally figured out how to get the zoom look for our new game Zen Balance.  This zoom is the same kind of zooming you see in Maps or Photos apps where the point you are pinching around won't move while you are zooming in and out.  It also allows you to do a two finger pan.  Below is the code I've come up with and it should be easy to implement in any other game.

Important Notes!! - - Please Read!!

A few quick notes before we begin.  

• This code is for a 2D Game using the Orthographic Projecting mode for the camera.
  • (If you aren't making a 2D game and your camera isn't in Orthographic Projection I have no idea what this code will do).
• I did not write the entirety of the following script.  It contains code taken from the Unity Learn website from the following URL: https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/modules/beginner/platform-specific/pinch-zoom

So with that out of our way, here's the FILE DOWNLOAD:

How To Implement

To implement the code in your project simply create a new C# script with the previous code and attach it to the camera you want to have zoom capabilities.  That's it.  Easy.  You can adjust the public zoom variables to change the speed at which the camera zooms, but I've found the 0.25 works best for us.

I hope this helps you out and if you have any questions feel free to let me know in the comments!

-Matt.

---

EDIT:  Here is a version of the pinch-zoom script that will not zoom out further than the initial camera size.  It can be DOWNLOADED HERE

Zen Balance in iOS Alpha

Hey all!  

We are super excited to let you all know that Zen balance is entering its first round of alpha testing! Which brings me to the point: if you're interested in helping us out with this process, shoot an email to dev@symbioticstudios.net.

if this is the first you're hearing about Zen Balance, please check out our announcement post, here.

Happy gaming.

austin