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Global Game Jam 2018

Having spent the past 2 months working on both the Microcosm Framework and Super Blasty Blasty V2, I felt that I needed a bit of a change of pace and decided to join in with #GlobalGameJam2018. This was the perfect opportunity to put the framework into action with a fresh project that could be far smaller scope than Super Blasty Blasty V2. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any time on the Friday or Saturday to take part but I wasn’t ready to let that stop me taking part, so on Sunday morning, I set myself a challenge to get something built and “released” in 12 hours.

Needless to say, this was a bit ambitious. But I did it! My initial plan had been to get a fully polished release on the Google Play Store in these 12 hours, looking back this was a ridiculous goal. The version I quote unquote released was far from polished, but it was functional on Android devices and had some great features, mostly thanks to the Microcosm Framework doing its job exceptionally well in saving me development time.

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Looking Back At Bob’s Space Crusade

Bob’s Space Crusade was the first game I ever published, it was released on Kongregate, on the 30th of December 2011. It was my first project using Unity3D and it served as a great learning experience in actually getting something out there to be played by the world. It was by no means a masterpiece but the character (who I still have plans to resurrect in future projects) and core mechanic was great. This post will talk about how Bob was originally brought to life and the process that was behind that.

Going into this project I had a single focus, keep things simple. I didn’t want a spiralling list of features that could never be achieved, I just wanted a core mechanic that was fun and simple. This was for a couple of reasons, the main being I didn’t have enough experience to actually finish a large expansive project. The main goal of the project was to finish it, which I did. In hindsight, I would say the scope was too restrictive, the project in its initial state didn’t play particularly well and would have benefitted greatly from an increased development time.

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#30DayDev January

Sometime during 2016, I helped my friend Liam Twose found the hashtag #30DayDev and push it to become of the most widely used game development hashtags on Twitter with a huge number of people actively taking part and even more people seeing the content being developed by the hashtags ever-increasing reach. However, throughout 2017 activity wained as algorithms on hashtags were changed and focus was directed elsewhere into other endeavours. We decided it would be a good thing for the game development community at large to try and revive the hashtag going into the new year and this is what this post will cover, my plan of action for the first #30DayDev of 2018.

This month will be the first month I’ve gone into with a solid plan of how to tackle #30DayDev pretty much since its inception. I’m not solely focusing on game development this month with some time being dedicated to trying to help revive the hashtag as well. I’m essentially splitting my 30 days into 3 tasks; Twitter Bot, Super Blasty Blasty V2 and knowledge sharing. Between these 3 tasks, I think I should be able to learn a fair few new things as well as produce some quality content.

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The Microcosm Framework

Over the course of my past few game development projects, I’ve had to write a lot of code multiple times and every time I’ve been slightly more inconvenienced by it. This ends up wasting valuable time that could be spent doing fun stuff. So I decided enough was enough and I’d create a reusable framework for use with all of my future projects. The premise was simple, I’d outline a set of basic requirements that every project I work on will have and then create a unity package I can import at the start of development to avoid having to try bodge implementations from other projects into a new one.

The initial requirements were simple; a menu system, basic AdMob integration, generic object pooling and simple game management systems to track state/play sounds/etc. These were picked as the requirements because they were the things that I had found the most tedious to set up fresh in every project. However, as I began implementing these features it dawned on me that this limited scope would definitely need to be expanded, what if I wanted Analytics in my games? I would need to first update the framework and then update the package in all subsequent projects it was used in. With the thought of a tedious upgrade process in mind, I went back to the drawing board for my requirements. The final scope was far bigger but added far more value to my future projects, these components and why I chose them are explained in detail below.

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Annual Hackathon 2017

Every year I participate in a 48-hour hackathon at work. It’s an opportunity to write software you otherwise wouldn’t get to write, this could be a neat automation tool to save you time on daily tasks or something totally unique like a virtual reality Blackjack game that will never see the light of day. As long as you think you can write it in 2 days nothing is off limits. There are several prize categories; Most Creative Hack, Most Business Value, and Non-Technical Project. This year I decided that I’d give virtual reality a crack and aim to at least get an honourable mention in the Most Creative Hack category.

The hackathon typically starts on a Thursday and finishes on Friday afternoon before our annual Christmas party. Given its participated in during work time, most teams don’t go hardcore and spend the full 48-hours on their projects like some hackathons you hear about. It is a lot more laid back than that and most hacks usually never have more time spent on it than the 16 working hours, I think this reduced timeframe adds to the pressure of creating something that is worth entering in the contest.

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