The Long Awaited Update Is Complete

After many hours of working on it, the update has been released. Many new features have been added to improve the overall experience. The flagship feature is the power-up system. This will enable longer runs, and more variety of gameplay. It's also fun to dress Batty with different accessories to make him your own.

There is still more work ahead, this version of the game will have to be slightly modified for the Amazon store, and still to come is porting to iOS. I'm not sure how long this process will take, but all of the plugins I'm using should be cross platform (with some minor tweaking of course).

Feel free to let me know what you think about the game, you can just leave a comment here. If you like it, don't forget to tell your friends, don't hoard all of the fun for yourself.

Power-Ups Delayed, But Coming Very Soon

Working on the update became difficult to do while trying to work around real life. The power-ups are done, and we will be releasing some other content in this update. There will be accessories available to customize your bat, and the other bonus content to add that little bit of flair to the game.

I will also be waiting on testing before I release this update, but that should go well. If it doesn't there could be a few more days delay. Because there are some external things I'm waiting on, the goal is to get the update out by Friday, and so far it is looking good. After everything is working and the update is out on Google Play, I will be making a few small changes to release the update on Amazon (likely the next day I get a chance to work on it). I also plan on putting the game on iOS, since there are a lot of people that would love to play it on their iPhone. If I had to guess, I would say to expect it on iOS about a week after Friday.

Perfect Gravity Simulation Script

I took a break for a bit to just play around with something I had on my mind. I was wondering how I could do realistic body to body gravity simulation in unity, possibly for future use in a game mechanic. Unity's built in gravity must be set to 0, or it won't work correctly. I threw together a script based on Newton's law of universal gravitation, and came up with the following snippit.

 using UnityEngine;  
 using System.Collections;  
   
 public class GravityForAllObjects : MonoBehaviour  
 {  
   
   private float gravitationalForce;  
   private Rigidbody[] rbs;  
   
      void FixedUpdate ()  
   {  
     rbs = GameObject.FindObjectsOfType<Rigidbody>();  
     foreach (Rigidbody rb1 in rbs)  
     {  
       foreach (Rigidbody rb2 in rbs)  
       {  
         if (rb1 != rb2)  
           ApplyGravity(rb1, rb2);  
       }  
     }  
      }  
   void ApplyGravity(Rigidbody object1, Rigidbody object2)  
   {  
     // Real value for G is 0.0000000000667384 -- using larger value in order to use smaller masses i.e. true mass divided by 1,000,000,000 kg  
     // mass in killograms, distance in meters, yields force in newtons.  
     gravitationalForce = 0.0667384f * ((object1.mass * object2.mass) / (object2.transform.position - object1.transform.position).sqrMagnitude);  
     object1.AddForce((object2.transform.position - object1.transform.position) * gravitationalForce, ForceMode.Force);  
   }  
 }  

I'm not sure how useful this code can be, but I decided to share it anyway. Unlike other gravity scripts I've seen, this one actually takes the mass of both rigidbodies into account, and adds force to both. If you set up a few objects in the editor with a simple script to set an initial velocity perpendicular to the line between the object and a single more massive object, you can easily achieve orbit-like patterns. I'm not sure how well this can scale up/down.

Power-Ups! Go Batty Update Coming Soon

As I mentioned in my previous post, another update will be coming to Go Batty. You will be able to earn coins from game play that you can use to purchase power-ups from the brand new "Batty Shack" for big scores.

One of the power-ups will include reducing your speed, which will make longer runs possible. There will be several more I do not wish to describe yet to keep them a surprise. The power-up framework will allow the addition of more power-ups pretty easily with future updates.

Also in the update, there will be background visuals, making the game look more awesome. There will be some minor tweaks in difficulty, and the score screen at the end of the game is getting a new and improved design.

The Batty Shack will also include other new awesome features. So stay tuned for more update information as it nears completion. Have fun playing, and don't forget to click share below!

Go Batty Gets an Update, More to Come

Go Batty got an update. I've had a few complaints that the instructions were to vague, so I revamped them into more of a tutorial style. Because it would get annoying, I also only show the instructions at startup the first two times the game is started. At the end of the game, the instructions can be accessed by tapping the "?" button in the lower corner of the screen. I also added a rate this app dialog to hopefully get a few ratings, and an exit confirmation dialog to prevent accidental exits.

I have another update in the works to add more features to the game and to revamp the scoring system. There will also be improvements to the game's look and design. I will be making demo video after the update. Stay tuned for the latest Go Batty news.

Go Batty is Done!

Go Batty is done. We've come a long way in the past few weeks, my wife +W.D. Wheeler getting better at art, and me getting better at programming. At this point, I just need some people to play it and give some feedback so I know how it's running on other peoples' devices. If I get enough feedback, I will know what may or may not need tweaking. You can send feedback to stickykittygames@gmail.com or leave comments here. I encourage you to rate the game and/or write a review on the game listing page.

Go Batty Nearing Completion

Because of my traditional job, I haven't had much time to work on Go Batty the past several days, much less blog about it. Google Play has been implemented, and I have written an AdMob plugin that works with the current Google Play SDK. It's looking good for release by tomorrow afternoon.

I attempted to write my own Google Play plugin that I could eventually turn into an all-in-one plugin, but because of my inexperience with Android programming, that turned out to be quite futile. I ended up wasting a few days on this endeavor, so I just decided to just use the supplied plugin on this project. I will take up the challenge at some later point, since I would love to have Google+ integration. At this point, I'm waiting for icons as I begin to hash out the fine details.

Go Batty Status Update

I spent the day working on Go Batty. I have been working on implementing Google Play Services and AdMob. It turns out, they are discontinuing AdMob, and merging it with Google Play Services.

I was planning on using both the Google Play and the AdMob Unity plugins released by Google. Because of merging the AdMob functionality with Google Play, when I was trying to build my project, it decided it was not possible, giving me a cryptic error code. After a bit of searching, I found out this code apparently meant that both SDK jars (which need to be included in Unity for the plugins to function) have definitions for the same class. After realizing this, I quickly figured out I needed to remove one of the SDKs from the project, and obviously chose to remove the AdMob SDK, since its functionality is in Google Play Services. This also would mean modifying the AdMobPlugin.java file included in the plugin, as it will no longer be accessing the AdMob SDK. I hopefully made all of the necessary changes, changing all references to the AdMob system to the new Google Play Ads system. I won't know if this worked until my AdSense account setup is 100% complete (waiting for that deposit that shows Google I accurately gave them my account info).

After removing [renaming the extension to .jarbak just for an easy restore] the AdMob SDK, Unity then had another cryptic build error. This time it was some nonsense about the Google Play Services version in the manifest file. I made sure the correct lines were included, and Unity still continued to have the error. Apparently, there was another AndroidManifest.xml file hiding in the Google Play Plugin that was essentially blank, and Unity decided it wanted to use this one.

Art is coming along nicely (thanks to my wonderful wife +W.D. Wheeler who has been working hard on it today), users are authenticating in Google Play (or so it seems), and more extra implementation is done.

Next up on my list is to get leaderboards and achievements working, and hopefully that deposit will come in so I can test my ad implementation. Things are looking on schedule to be done by the end of the week. I just might have enough time off my traditional job for the next few days to get it done.

Announcing the Blog

Welcome to the first post of my blog. My name is Mike, if you haven't noticed by the blog title. I have always wanted to be a game developer. When I found out about Unity3D, I just had to try it. Over the course of a year, I have spent about 75% of my weekends learning, but not publishing anything. I decided that had to change, and I published one game, Milk and Cookies, on Kongregate for the sole purpose of showing myself that it's possible, and to see if it's something I still want to do. Obviously developing games is something I still want to do, or else this blog would be about chocolate or something.

I started this blog to keep and share a record of my indie game development journey. I will be sharing the progress on my projects, along with any tips or tricks I learn along the way. I am currently working on 2 main projects, and a possible third. The biggest project, an MMO, is going to be free to play, and will have pixel art. Development is not very far into this, as there is a learning curve to the server-side software I'm using. My other main project was inspired by Flappy Bird, and will be called Go Batty. This one will be available on Google Play hopefully by the end of the week. My wife +W.D. Wheeler is currently the only one helping me in these projects. She is taking care of the artwork, and I'm doing pretty much everything else.

I have found it useful for me to take little breaks from developing a massive project like the MMO to keep things fresh. If development on a single project becomes the daily norm, it no longer seems fun to me. I like to mix things up a bit by working on a smaller project that a good deal of the programming and design work can be done in a few hours to a few days. I'm just waiting on the art for Go Batty.