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.

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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.

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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

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.