It's Screenshot Saturday! So what's going on in this above screenshot of OddBall? As you can tell, most of these graphics are still a work in progress and so it's probably not very clear what is happening, but I will try to explain.

In this level there are 2 green platforms that can move up and down along the sliders you see on the wall. These platforms will only move when you trigger them by pressing one of the green buttons. To press a button, you need to fire an OddBall into the level and use the Anvil Powerup which transforms the ball into a heavy anvil that drops down swiftly and depresses buttons.

So, in this screenshot I have just fired the red OddBall from the launcher and I'm about to press the Anvil Powerup button to transform it and fall onto the green button. This will move the green platforms up. Afterwards I will continue puzzling my way towards the blue target in which I need to score all 3 OddBalls to pass the level. Woo!

As you can see, there is also a red platform and a red button which makes this level require a bit of thinking to puzzle through. If none of this makes much sense don't worry because it will, someday, when the game is finally released and you've worked your way through the tutorials. For now, enjoy the bright colours :).

OddBall #screenshotsaturday #2

Holy long time no update Batman! Have no fear, Screenshot Saturday is here! What's that you ask? I'll just paste exactly what the website describes it as: "#screenshotsaturday is an initiative to promote sharing. To promote weekly progress, and to promote community feedback on projects in the game development scene".

In a nutshell, game developers share one screenshot from their game every Saturday on Twitter with the #screenshotsaturday hashtag. The website will pickup all of those tweets and you can view a wide assortment of in-progress game shots there. This is great for many reasons, not least that it gives me a weekly excuse to post progress on my own blog! You see, this blog has been getting stagnant. I've been working on OddBall daily, for hours a day, non-stop. However, it's been two months since my last update about it on the blog. Unacceptable.

Part of the reason I started my Home with House podcast a few years ago was to encourage my lazy ass to DJ more often. A simple self-imposed schedule and repeating deadline did wonders in forcing me to spin records even when I wasn't entirely in the mood. In the end I was always happier after I made myself do it, I just had to make myself do it. So, with my new self-imposed weekly schedule of, at a minimum, posting a new screenshot of OddBall every Saturday on this here old blog, stagnation will be dealt a swift punch to the gut. Now that I've said it aloud in hyper-web-space, I have to stick to it, right?

OddBall #screenshotsaturday #1

My first task was to go out and take a bunch of photos for textures to use throughout the game. Oddball takes place mostly in a factory setting, and so that theme requires various concrete, brick, wood and metal textures. I'm still working on many of the textures, but I've completed enough to show a few partially completed scenes now. My first iteration of textured walls looked like this:

As you can see the textures definitely help the overall look, but everything still looks pretty flat. This is because shadows and lighting were not processed in the screenshot. Lighting a 3D environment on a mobile device in realtime is expensive on resources. At most I could have 1 directional light in the scene to give a bit of shading, but it would not generate real shadows and certainly wouldn't show dynamic shadows on moving objects. So my next step involved using Unity3D's built in Beast Lightmapping technology. This essentially lets you setup a few lights in your scene and "bake" the generated shadows onto your static textures. The result is that objects that don't move (walls) can have shadows pre-processed and rendered for a more 3D and realistic look. I am still tweaking the settings for this, but here is a snapshot after this step (with a new background too):

The next step was to add dynamic shadows to the balls as they move infront of the wall. Having real dynamic shadows is not really possible on the iPhone, so it's all about faking it. Unity provides resources for shadow blobs (which basically project a shadow texture from an angle away from your object and onto other objects behind it). This works well, but again is a bit too resource intensive for a phone. It adds 1 draw call per object it projects the shadow onto. So depending on the angle, the shadow blob could often be projecting onto 2, 3 or 4 other objects at once. As I've mentioned before, performance is the name of the game with mobile game development, and keeping your draw calls low is important. So instead, I ended up scripting a simple system of my own that draws 1 single fake shadow texture behind each ball that moves with those balls. The result works well because my game has a single unmoving camera perspective and I can tweak it to look pretty good from that one angle.

As I continued to tweak those settings and those of the lightmapping (it's always a continuous process) I began concentrating on the look of the Oddballs themselves. These are the main "actors" of the game and it is important they look good. Using shaders designed for mobile graphics processors, I tested a few different looks. This part was especially hard because shaders can be very resource heavy if you want fancy effects like dynamic specular shininess, bump mapping, reflectiveness and other details. In the end I needed to find something that was fast (draws the balls in only 1 draw pass which means nothing too fancy) but that also made the balls look more 3D. After testing many mobile shaders, I ended up learning to write my own and created a simple spheremap shader that blends a base texture with an overlayed spheremap. The result (when viewed in motion) is that the balls have "fake" specular shininess and shading that moves as they move and it only costs 1 draw call:

Surprisingly, the simple sponge ball was the hardest to get looking good. The other 2 balls are shiny and that was easy to fake, but the sponge ball is just a dull material. It's also too small on the screen to show much detail for sponge holes so adding that detail was pointless. After many iterations I settled on the current look you see above.

I am still working on the rest of the game's graphics. As mentioned, this is a continuous process, but at least things have now progressed to a point where I have an art style and direction. Next on my list is to model a proper cannon, texture the firing button and scoring target, and to create more textures and level pieces. I will continue to post updates as the look and feel of Oddball progreses. For now, enjoy the leap day as it will be another 4 years until the next :).

Much of the work I've been doing on OddBall lately has to do with the in-game console. I should first describe a bit about my design of this game world in order to explain the purpose of the in-game console. You see, OddBall is primarily a casual puzzle game, but I have also built a bit of a story and world around the premise of the game. As a game designer, one of the things I endeavour to do is create compelling worlds and environments for players to interact with. Rather than solely having a set of sterile game mechanics and rules to follow (which can be fun on their own), I still want the player to be immersed in the game world. So having even a small amount of back story and "reason" that describes what the player's presence means in the context of the game world is important to me. The player can still choose to ignore this, but at the very least having a story provides me, as the designer, with direction for the game.

As a player in OddBall, you are a recruit assigned to test OddBalls in the OddBall facility. Through your iPhone touch screen, which is designed to feel somewhat like an interface for remotely controlling OddBalls, you fire OddBalls through test levels. By puzzling your way through these test levels with the OddBalls, you are in fact testing the OddBalls and their capabilities. Now, this isn't the most inspired or deep premise for starting a story, but it's something that gives some context when you start playing the game. Of course as you play and progress in the game, more of the story becomes revealed and you begin to unravel possibly more sinister reasons for being recruited. But, I won't spoil that. The point is, as minimal as this premise is, there is at least a bit of story that explains your place in OddBall.

As you play and progress through the OddBall facility levels you are given tips, instructions, sarcastic encouragement, and sometimes criticism from your trainer. In this way, you learn how to play and use new abilities, you are provided with feedback, and ultimately you are rewarded and learn more of the story. My goal in designing this part of the game has been to ensure it doesn't interrupt the player's regular flow of just playing the game. This is a casual mobile game after all, and I want players to be able to easily and quickly play levels without much hassle. But as I've described above, I also want to convey a bit more depth for the game world. Balance is key here. So, because audio is often muted by game players on iPhones, and because having lots of audio in a mobile game would make the game/app much larger in file size to download, I've opted to convey this information through a text console in the interface (rather than having the trainer talk with audio).

So far so good, but now we are dealing with conveying a modest amount of typed text within the game interface on a very small iPhone screen. Obviously I can't type much information in that space before it begins to block out the regular game view for the player. Again, balance is key here so I've designed the system around the regular flow of the game. At the start of every level (when there is a natural pause from playing to load the next level), the text console grows to cover most of the screen. In this enlarged console a series of short but succinct messages are provided to the player from the trainer. The player can skip these easily if desired with the click of a button. Afterwards, the level begins as usual and the console shrinks down to a single small window within the main game interface. When the text console is in this shrunken state, very short one line messages can still be transmitted to the player as he/she plays. This system allows me to provide a bit of story and feedback to the player from another character in the game between and during levels without being intrusive to the main gameplay.

This feature has been built into my game for a while now, but I've been continuously tweaking it and making improvements. For instance, in order to make the typed text feel more like it is coming from another person in the game (rather than just appearing on the screen like a pre-rehearsed script), I've developed a system to allow the text to appear one character at a time as if it were being typed out in real time by someone. And when that still seemed robotic, I designed a way to input brief pauses in the typing for even more of a realistic feel. But as always, balancing this is important because of the inevitable desire of players to just play and the possibility of it typing too slow. The text needs to appear fast enough that players aren't waiting to read it. They can always skip it, but for those that want to read the messages and don't want to feel punished for doing so, I need to make sure the text appears quickly enough that it's not frustrating. Balance.

So, at this point I have one character being typed every 0.03 seconds, with strategic pauses in between, and it flows quite nicely. However, this week a new problem crept up. At the end of every level I present the player with a scoreboard to show how well they did. This scoreboard is displayed in the expanded text console and styled in a way that looks typed out by the trainer. But I need this to type faster than usual because it is not text that flows like a proper sentence. It has padding, dashes, and other formatting in order to frame the score values nicely - nobody wants to read that typed out one character at a time unless it's really fast. And simply displaying it all at once is too sterile and robotic. So, having it typed at a faster speed makes sense, and making my system do this was simple because I've designed it to allow for dynamic speed changes. This is where I ran into an unforeseen problem.

You see, when I run and test the OddBall game on my MacBook it runs blistering fast at 1600 FPS. The iPhone is different of course. The lower hardware specifications and other restrictions on that device mean my game runs at only 30 FPS. Which is actually perfect. Anything less than 30 FPS would be a problem because it would feel stuttery and unresponsive, but once you get up to 40-60 FPS on the iPhone it consumes more battery power and it becomes a drain on the device. So 30 FPS is a good place to be. However, the keen observer will have noticed that I mentioned typing my usual text at one character every 0.03 seconds. But at 30 FPS, I'm only getting 1 frame every 0.033 seconds. So I can't physically make it type faster than that on the iPhone with the way I've designed my typing system. It works fine on my MacBook, but once I tested it on the iPhone - whoops!

So, this problem is what I've been addressing in my code this week. I've been working on adding support to my typing system so that it can type chunks of text every X seconds instead of just typing one character at a time. With this new addition, I can tell the scoreboard text to type chunks of 6 characters at a time, instead of just one. And it's almost working. It still needs a few tweeks before it is done. And I can hear it calling me now to complete it, so it's time to return to the code!

Happy New Year everyone! I've had quite a good break this holiday season and have managed to accomplish a lot, hopefully you've all had a successful holiday break as well. Having had 2 weeks off work at the end of 2011, I set myself up with a list of goals to tackle during my staycation in Victoria. First and foremost on my list was to get a good amount of work done on my iPhone game, which has now been officially rebranded with the name OddBall.

The new title of "OddBall" fits the theme and vibe of my game much more succinctly than my previous working title, plus it's just catchier. Besides the new name, all sorts of other work has been completed on OddBall and with my game company lately. Oh yes, I've now registered a business name for my game company: Velvety Couch Games. I've also updated my website a bit to reflect that in the Games section and have purchased a new web domain for it: velvetycouchgames.com. How legit is that? Super legit.

Additionally, my sister Ashley of Creative Lane Design has been working on an awesome logo for my company which I will be using to brand my website and game content. I'm excited to unveil that when it is completed soon. Also, if you don't already follow me on twitter for frequent updates and news, get on that and follow velvetycouch. All of this news adds up to an increase in content coming at you about me, OddBall and Velvety Couch Games. Awesome right?

More exciting news is that my friend Adam Quiney is now working on music for OddBall and has already started work on 2 tracks. Things are starting to shape up nicely indeed! Here are a few of the other notable OddBall updates that I've completed lately:

• I bought and upgraded my Unity3D package for iOS support
• I finally got OddBall onto my iPhone 4 and working smoothly
• I updated my mouse click code to also work with multiple finger touches on the iPhone
• I got OddBall onto my old iPhone 3G and it works
• I added some new graphics and have over 8 tutorial levels started
• I added code for working "fans" that affect ball movement in OddBall
• I increased the effeciency of some of my physics code for even smoother reaction times

In other news, you may have noticed that the sidebar of this website has been updated. This was another of my holiday break goals: to show my most recent photos instantly in the Velvety Couch website sidebar. Having a mobile camera (my iPhone) that is always on me means that I am frequently taking photos everywhere. Through the magic of the internet (and some custom coding on my end) those photos will now instantly appear in my website sidebar as soon as I take them. But don't worry, I'll be sure to filter out the embarrassing ones first (this disclaimer is only sometimes valid).

In even more interesting news, I went to my first Victoria technology startup meet last night. It was interesting to talk with enterprising entrepreneurs and developers about all the things they are working on. It was also good practice to talk a bit about what I'm working on and get some feedback from other developers. I made some new connections and look forward to attending the next meetup. I've also signed up for a few game designer meetups happening soon in Victoria. Hot stuff! I'm looking forward to having my new logo completed so I can finally get some business cards made up.

So things are going quite nicely and you can expect to see more frequent and varied updates from me moving forward. 2012 is shaping up to be a good year!

Hi. How's it going world? It has been a million years since I last updated. Ok, not quite that long, but it has been a really long time! You don't care about my excuses or reasons though, so I'm just going to dive right into this post!

What have I been up to these past few months? Lots. For starters, I have a new computer: a MacBook Pro. So I've been hard at work making my iPhone game again. Using my Mac and the Unity3D engine has been awesome, but it did take me a while to get back into the development swing of my game again. First I had to remember what I was even doing. Then I needed to upgrade my version of Unity and fix some bugs in my code that did not work after the upgrade. Then I had to remember where I was going with the game development. I'm a few months past that point now and I'm deep back into development. I'm loving it! So expect to see some new blog posts specific to my progress on the game very soon. The working title of the game is still "Bank Shot", but I've now come up with a proper title which I will announce in a future post. I'm really excited about it!

I've also been working on a new DJ mix. Actually, I started it about 5 months ago, but I scrapped what I had because I have a bunch of new music I want to work in. I'm not going to promise a release date for this next Home with House mix though. Why? First of all I'm really busy with work, personal projects (my game), complaining about my infinitely sore shoulder, and other life stuff. I know I can't stick to a deadline for this mix because it is not my highest priority at the moment. So I'm not making a deadline. I have no idea when I'll finish it, but it IS being worked on and I WILL release it sometime in the near future. I thank everyone for the continued comments you send me about my podcast. I know many of you want more, and I'll do what I can to continue making mixes. For now, I thank you for your patience with my slowed releases.

The past 6 months have gone by very fast. For a while I was super busy with contract work. But I realized it was sucking my life away. The extra money was nice, and even necessary for a while. However, after thinking about what my goals are, what makes me happy, and where I was heading, I came to understand that all that extra work was preventing me from doing what I really wanted to be doing. So I am no longer doing contract work. And it feels great! My time outside of my daily job is now my own time again. I'm working on my game a lot, which I have growing plans for. I also have multiple plans for what my next game projects will be, because I know I will be continuing to design and make games. This is a passion of mine and I can't see stopping any time soon. And maybe someday I'll even make a bit of money doing it. That would be nice.

My daily job has been going great too. I've been promoted to team leader for our professional services development. This basically puts me in more of a managerial position. I'm in charge of training our new developers, tasking out items to the developers, and managing the release schedules of multiple projects. I'm still doing some coding too, but most of my time these days is spent balancing priorities. It's an interesting shift, but I'm liking it. And if I ever miss doing the lower level software development and problem solving, I still have the game development that I'm working on in my own time. I'm wearing all the hats with that project as a single indie developer. And I like that.

So, life is good. Busy, but good. I have my personal projects, good friends, and I'm also dating an awesome lady. I've gone on a few small vacations lately too, including a wine tour, a hip hop battle, camping, and a visit to Mudge Island. So my absence from posting lately has simply been because of good old fashioned life development. I can't complain, though I still wish I had an extra 5 or 10 hours a day to work on everything I want. Now that I'm finally updating my blog again, you can expect to see more frequent updates going forward. Don't believe me? Well I guess you'll just have to wait and see ;).

Well, it sure has been a while! But there's finally a new Home with House mix here for you to enjoy. This one has been months in the making. And while I won't be able to keep up with monthly releases of the podcast at this point, I will be continuing to release periodic mixes - hopefully more frequently than this last one. This mix is almost two hours of deep and vocal and groove house music. And the first track should explain the title of the mix.

Episode 33 is called "69%".

Tracklisting:
1. Marshall Jefferson, Serge Imhof - 69% (U-Ness & JedSet Reprise)
2. Honom - Purplse Sun (Original Mix)
3. Lovebirds - Mandrill (Original Mix)
4. Thyladomid - The Voice (Original Mix)
5. Akabu - Another World (Andre Lodemann Mix)
6. Vernon & DaCosta feat. Corrina Joseph - All For One (Original Mix)
7. Raxon - Air Race (Spiritchaser Remix)
8. Tracey Thorn - Why Does The Wind? (Andre Lodemann Remix)
9. Physics - Don't You Want Love (Jazzloungerz Mix)
10. Samantha James - Subconscious Part Two (Strobe Remix)
11. Masahiro Mihara - Before Sunset (Ross Couch Remix)
12. Alain Ho - Sesaon's Change (Original Mix)
13. Ross Couch - Everlasting Night (Original Mix)
14. Nino Anthony, Venus - The Trumpet Sings (Original Mix)
15. Hideo Kobayashi - Fearless (Original Mix)
16. Hideo Kobayashi - Cosmogony (Original Mix)
17. The Craftsmen - One Day (Spiritchaser Vinyl Terrace Edit)
18. J. Axel - Keep Receiving (Every Part Of The World Mix)
19. Omar - Feeling You (Henrik Shwarz Remix)
20. Blank & Jones, Mike Francis - Survivor (Original Mix)

Another year has gone by and another few thousand photos needed to be sorted off my camera. The great thing about large camera memory cards is that you can fit tons of photos on them. However, the problem with large camera memory cards is also that you can fit tons of photos on them! Haha. After narrowing down the saved photos to about 1100, I then went through and picked a few dozen from different trips, hikes, evenings, boat rides, dinners, parties and other various events.

What survived is a few dozen photos that I've posted here. So if you're feeling awesome (or want to feel awesome), check out the links below and gain a glimpse at my 2010 in photos.

This year I'm going to try and post photos on the site more periodically. That way I won't need to sort through thousands at a time with a computer that struggles with 4 open at once. Oh yes, and I will also buy a new computer because this one is going to be thrown off the balcony at any moment now...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alright, it's time for a new Home with House mix! The last few have been chill and deep, but this one is upbeat, uplifting and all about making you want to dance. This month's podcast is a 2 hour long mix of grooves that should make you want to move from start to finish because sometimes, you just need to dance.

Episode 32 is called "Just Dance".

Tracklisting:
1. Charles Schillings - On Top (Massivan Remix)
2. The MD X-Spress - This Here Is House Muzik (Mike Dunn Main Vocal Mix)
3. Kelvin K. & Jon Grey - Heatwave Jackin (Joey Youngman Remix)
4. J. Rod, Pat Nice - Peter Pan feat. Joe Good (Landshark Remix)
5. E.B.E. - Relocated (Original Mix)
6. Lifelike & Kris Menace - Discopolis (Original Mix)
7. Mark Brown - Needin U (DJ Wady Ibiza Mix)
8. Michael Jackson - Stranger In Moscow (Tee's In-House Club Mix)
9. Benji Candelario & Vincent Kwok feat. Leedia - Quiero Saber (BC's DubStrut)
10. UPZ - Pure Surprise (Original Mix)
11. Dido - Everything To Lose (Fred Falke Extended Vocal Mix)
12. Ross Couch - Last One Home (Original Mix)
13. La Roux - Bulletproof (Tiborg Club Remix)
14. The Jinks - Spread My Wings feat. Mina Jackson (Jinkzilla Mix)
15. Blaze, Funk D'Void - Lovelee Dae (Jake Childs Remix)
16. Fresh 27 - Butterfly feat. Robina (Richard Earnshaw's RE-Touch of ElektroOrganik Mix)
17. Vincenzo, Lovebirds - Epic (Original Mix)
18. Kaskade, EDX - Don't Stop Dancing feat. Haley (Extended Remix)
19. Lovebirds - This Is My (Original Mix)
20. Thyladomid - El Loco (Original Mix)
21. Vince Melo - Rising To The Top (Original Mix)
22. Denzal Park - Filter Freak (Original Mix)
23. Spiritchaser - These Tears (Club Mix)
24. I'm Not A Gun - Make Sense & Loose (Ulrich Schnauss Remix)

It's the end of the month and the new Home with House mix is finally ready to download. This mix is chill and deep. It's about trying to achieve a goal or desire that you can't quite reach. Searching for something in the distance, endlessly striving towards your future.

Episode 31 is called "Distant Desires".

Tracklisting:
1. JetTricks - Love Hangover feat. AdeFunke (Original Mix)
2. Furry Phreaks - Soothe feat. Terra Deva (Chicane Jazz Mix)
3. Gera - Erevan - Part 1 (Original Remix)
4. TonkProject - One Night Stand (Artette's Aphrodisiac Edit)
5. Will Saul & Tam Cooper - Where Is It? (Steve Bug's 9 Minutes Of Freedom Remix)
6. Slava Flash feat. Alena Lvova - Her Jogging - Part Two (Dub Makers Remix)
7. Marvin Zeyss - Herz (Frankman Remix)
8. Broad Bean Band - OkiDoki (Fish Go Deep Mix)
9. Dolle Jolle - Balearic Incarnation (Todd Terje's Extra Doll Mix)
10. MonkeyFunk feat. Eva - My Way (Original Mix)
11. Bliss - Trust In Your Love feat. Ane Brun (Charles Webster Club Mix)
12. Bliss - Wish U Were Here (Charles Webster Remix)