Blog

This week was mostly focussed on getting the game’s heads up display working nicely. I spent some time rethinking my designs a bit in Figma on monday, trying to differentiate the HUD a bit from the rest of the games UI language, and also trying to make it feel…. less utilitarian here you can see the changes from old on the left, to new on the right. Its no master work of UI design, but its certainly different to the old layout! There’s a couple small details I added like the dot texture on the touch controls, the repeated diamond shapes across the UI, reprioritising the colours in the loadout view etc. It still feels crowded, but I’m not sure there’s much I can do about that, pretty much every element on screen is necessary, and there’s many elements that could be added! Honestly I can’t say I’m happy with it, but you have to stop working on stuff at some point and this will do. ...

This week I’ve been gunning it on the UI front, trying to get a basically playable build up and running. Well, the build is up, and it… can be played. Likely the most buggy build of anything I’ve ever distributed, but its up, and it’s Beta, so its fine. Xcode’s organiser says it’s been a couple months since my last build, and while I find it hard to believe, it’s probably right. So for those who run the Testflight verison of the game, I’m sorry it’s taken so long to get this build up. Last build 10, November, 2023, current: 19 January 2024… thats a long time ...

2023 existed, happened, is done. 2024 also looks to exist. First week back at work was a slow one for work, I caught up with some old mates, we had our place sprayed for roaches, boxes arrived for our upcoming move, I had a job interview, and a mole (maybe skin cancer?) removed, and finally, caught up with my stepdad. In amongst all that I managed to rework a couple unexciting UI classes, and built out the start of the model for the standard Exo. ...

Preface: I wrote this up for a job application (don’t worry, going to keep working on Exoloper) but I figured it might actually work as a nice little showcase of how I code. It’s worth keeping in mind that I’m 100% self taught here, so there’s likely some very odd choices being made. UnitMover.cs UnitMover.cs Here’s the file, feel free to download it So the main file of focus is UnitMover.cs. The purpose of this file is to be the one stop shop for moving for any kind of unit within the game. All units’ movement is controlled via a standard Unity NavmeshAgent, though their inputs will vary based on unit type and whether it’s controlled by the player or an AI. ...

2023 was a year Philly happened Sick a lot New apartment Exoloper and Charge Other prototypes

Capping off the year with some more personal work, I decided to rebuild my website. A couple years back I put the last iteration together, which included some fancy three.js models from both Unstoppable and Interloper. The idea was cool but I was never quite happy with the execution, I might revisit it in the future but for now I’m taking it in a more minimalist, and easy to maintain direction. ...

This week my motivation was rock bottom. Working on the UI for so long and seeing such incremental results, combined with searing temperatures and a couple weeks worth of distractions had led to a kind of burnout. In art school the lecturers always stressed the importance of stepping away from a task when you feel it isn’t working, to go occupy yourself with something else, So I did. 3D modelling, like anything else in gamedev, looks like rubbish until it’s done. ...

Another slow week this week unfortunately. I vaguely remember saying something to the effect of “maybe this week will be better” in a previous post, but alas, that was not the case. I started this week with the intention of knocking over the post-campaign screen layout, the settings layout and cleaning up a couple issues with responsivity in the existing screens. It turns out that real-estate agents can waylay even the best laid plans. After a rollercoaster of outcomes, emotions, and cash, it looks like we’ve finally bought this apartment we’ve been chasing for three weeks now. ...

This past fortnight has been a bit rough. It all started on the Sunday before last when my kid came down with a fever. They’ve been having issues with regular infections for the past year and a bit, and every time they get one it means theyre sick for one or two days, and bored for the following three while they go through their course of antibiotics. Last week was no different. The doctors couldn’t find a cause for the fever, they gave my kid antibiotics and then I spent most of the week dealing with a bored cranky kid. ...

This week was a bit slow. We’re in the middle of trying to buy a new apartment (and sell our existing one) which has been particularly stressful. The main brunt of the work for this week has been reworking the existing UI in the main menu to match the newly made graphic designs. There was one major issue preventing me getting started with this though. The UI framework I’d built was primarily built for mobile screens. ...