In this in depth interview by Mark Boas Alexander Neuwahl and Pietro Polsinelli present the ideas and times of Da Vinci as the context where they defined Genio, the videogame and project soon to be on Kickstarter. [Read more…]
Game Development with Unity 2D – part 4: Oplites, Back to Basics!
16 February 2014 By 7 Comments
Game Development with Unity 2D – part 3: GUI, or No Text is an Island
02 February 2014 By 7 Comments
This is the third part of a voyage in Unity 2D development, where we document in video the design and development of a simple strategic game reproducing the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. Here are Part 1, Part 2, Part 4.
Video
In this part three we are going to have health bars, labels and winning conditions; here is the video (also directly on YouTube watch it in HD for a better experience): [Read more…]
Unity Audio: Concepts and Plugins – DAG pod 15
23 January 2014 By Leave a Comment
In this short but dense episode of the Design a Game podcast, we talk with musician and developer Stefano Cecere @krur about audio in Unity. Listen carefully because if you are beginning to use audio in games here you can quickly get several hints. [Read more…]
Game Development with Unity 2D – part 2: Javelins & Battle Cries
14 January 2014 By 9 Comments
Game Development with Unity 2D – part 1: The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest
06 January 2014 By 7 Comments
In this episode of our voyage in Unity 2D development, we create the first version of our Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.
Here are Part 0, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.
In this first video we see the basics of Unity 2D sprites and animations (as provided in Unity 4.3 and following), and a base class structure for a strategic game. [Read more…]
Developing Storyteller – DAG pod 14
06 January 2014 By Leave a Comment
In this episode of the Design a Game podcast we are with Daniel Benmergui who is an independent videogame maker whom many are following in his progress on Storyteller:
Storyteller is a puzzle game where you build visual stories by placing characters and props into a comic-like sequence of frames.
The podcast:
Design a Game podcast: Storyteller
Storyteller site is here.
Daniel’s RPG game on Kongregate Daniel talks about: Ernesto the RPG.
Works and authors we quoted: Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale, Undestanding Comics, Chris Crawford.
Game Development with Unity 2D – Part 0
23 December 2013 By 7 Comments
Before we start our tutorial, lets look at others. Here are Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.
Some cool Unity 2D (4.3+) tutorials
Unity now includes specific tools for building 2D games. This makes it an even more attractive environment where to begin game development. While the Unity fellows are trying hard to make things as easy as possible, the 2D tools are not entirely trivial to use – game development is intrinsically complex. [Read more…]
10 different books game designers could read
15 December 2013 By 1 Comment
I was recently made temporarily unhappy by reading 10 books every gamer should read from The Guardian.
Apart from the misleading title, the article is sort of ok in the sense that it presents books that have repeatedly inspired some game designers in creating games, and in this sense it is a historical reconstruction. But looking at literature is a unique opportunity for searching new roads and new ways to get inspired for your game design: so let’s not consider the little world of literature “for games”, but simply intense, inspiring literature! [Read more…]
Why is Unity so popular for videogame development?
05 December 2013 By 8 Comments
When I started studying the peculiar world of videogame development, I soon met the confusingly named Unity3D as the reference tool used by many practitioners of the black art of game creation. I (wrongly) classified it as a tool for those in realistic 3D games (a style many in Indie games today don’t particularly love – “We’re all effin’ tired of 3D”) telling myself “it must be a kind of Maya for games”. So I ignored it, as at the time the core of my interest was the game design dimension and not the development details, left to poorly paid slaves when needed (by which I mean myself, of course). [Read more…]
