col000r

This blog is moving

2012-01-23T14:24:00.001+01:00

I'm writing about my work as an indie game developer, so I might just as well give this blog a facelift and move it to my own website!

Update your bookmarks: http://blackish.at/blog

Thanks for reading!

NEW ORBIT Released!

2011-12-19T12:28:00.000+01:00

NEW ORBIT is now available for iOS! Get it here on the AppStore!

Building for Distribution with XCode 4.2

2011-12-08T18:15:00.001+01:00

A bunch of links that helped:

How to build and submit [...] with Xcode 4
Xcode 4 user guide - but don't set that one value to YES or the archive will never show up in the Organizer as described here on stackoverflow

Just so I remember the next time I need it...

Lion + Xcode 4.2 + Unity 3.4 + iPhone 3G = Disaster?

2011-12-08T13:25:00.001+01:00

Or: How to make a universal build that also runs on iPhone 3G or 2nd gen iPod Touch with Unity 3.4.2 and Xcode 4.2 on Lion.

No easy task, but with a little help from all over the web, I figured it out...

Step 1 - Unity:

In the Player Settings, choose SDK Version 4.3 (Yes, Xcode 4.2 comes with iOS SDK 5, but don't set this to iOS latest or you'll get a bunch of errors when building...)
Target iOS Version: 3.1.3 (Choosing something lower doesn't work thanks to a bug in Unity)
Target Platform: Universal (more about this later...)
Target Device: iPhone + iPad (just because I want it to run on both) - not sure these matter, as XCode seems to ignore them...

Build and open it in Xcode

Step 2 - XCode:

• Set the Base SDK of the project and the target to iOS 5.0
• On the target, set the Targeted Device Family to iPhone/iPad
• Still on the target, set the iOS Deployment Target to 3.1.2 (Notice: That's below 3.1.3! I use this just because it's the version my 2nd generation iPod Touch is running)

And now for the part that actually makes it run on old armv6 devices:
•Both in the project and on the target, look for Architectures, click on $(ARCHS_STANDARD_32_BIT) and choose Other... from the popup. Hit the plus and add armv6. (More info on here on stackoverflow)

• Select Unity-iPhone > Your Device from the top and Build+Run!

Unity: iPad Splash Screen Rotation

2011-12-06T19:38:00.001+01:00

In XCode open Info.plist and look for UISupportedInterfaceOrientations
Add all 4 of the following items and the splash-screen will match the current device-orientation:

UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeLeft
UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight
UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait
UIInterfaceOrientationPortraitUpsideDown

Tested with Unity 3.4.2 and iOS SDK 4.2

Behind the scenes: Age of Curling Prototype

2011-12-01T18:23:00.000+01:00

A blast from the past - This is what the first prototype and the first test-level of Age of Curling looked like.

Unity: Editor Selections (EditorScript)

2011-11-02T16:05:00.000+01:00

How to set selections in the Editor from an EditorScript:

Selection.activeObject = myAudioClip; //single Object
Selection.objects = new Object[3] {obj1, obj2, obj3}; //multiple objects

Unity: C# Function Survival Guide

2011-10-31T18:00:00.000+01:00

Let's say you have a function that fades the screen to black, loads a new level and then fades back in.

public IEnumerator LoadLevel(levelName) {
     yield return StartCoroutine(FadeOut());
     Application.LoadLevel(levelName);
     yield return StartCoroutine(FadeIn());
}

Said function lives in a script on an object that doesn't get destroyed when a new level is loaded. But if you call that function from another script, the screen will fade out, the level will load, but the screen will never fade back in.

WHY?

Well, if the caller gets destroyed the function will stop running and never reach the point where it could fade back in.

And the easy solution is: Create a second function (in the same script as LoadLevel of course) that does nothing but start the primary function.

public void InitiateLoadLevel(string levelName) {
     StartCoroutine(LoadLevel(levelName));
}

Unity: How to create an array with values in it

2011-10-20T13:20:00.000+02:00

C#: public int[] val = new int[3] {1, 2, 3};

JS: var val : int[] = [1, 2, 3];

Greatest App Ever - Rejected

2011-10-18T15:52:00.001+02:00

In early 2009 the App Store hype was at its max, everyone loved reading stories of one-man-companies getting filthy rich with ridiculous apps. Well, I was getting a bit sick of it to be honest...

So I set out to end it all by creating the ultimate iPhone app.

I stripped away piece after piece until I arrived at the pure and beautiful core - the heart of it, if you will - and created the ultimate App Store app to rule all other apps. Simple, yet deep. Fast to grasp, yet always new.

Unfortunately the Apple App Store review team didn't recognize the artistic value, let alone the cultural importance of this app and rejected it for offering "no value to the user".

Money Generator

An app that does nothing but display

how much money it has generated.

PS: There was also going to be a free trial version:

Unity: Calling C# functions from a JS script

2011-10-18T09:20:00.000+02:00

In short: the C# script has to be compiled before the JS script for this to work. To achieve this you have to move the C# script into one of the following directories: Plugins, Standard Assets or Pro Standard Assets.

It also works the other way around - if you want to call JS from C#, move the JS into one of the folders.

It does not work both ways at once however.

More info about script compilation order can be found in the Unity docs here...

GameDev Audio Workflow

2011-10-17T14:48:00.000+02:00

This is my current workflow for recording, mixing and exporting audio for use in my games. (Currently recording dialogue...) I'm very interested in your approach, so leave a comment, tweet to @col000r or send me mail if you want to share your workflow!

Apple Logic Express 8:

This is where I record and mix all the Audio. (Or at least try to, because IMHO Logic is a mess)

To make my life easier I usually cut all the dialog into separate clips and name them with the first few words of the first sentence in the clip, split everything into separate tracks for separate characters and use color-coding to mark the clips I like best if there are multiple takes. (Rarely do I use comps, I just don't find them very helpful...)

I currently keep all the dialogue in one big file (so I can tweak the sound of individual characters all at once). It's not possible to batch-bounce files from markers, so I just add a region marker for each mission, select that range and bounce the whole mission to a WAV.

Adobe Audition CS 5.5:

That WAV goes into a multitrack session in Audition where I split all the dialogue into small pieces by creating named marker regions and batch-exporting them to files. (They need to be short because they're going to be loaded at runtime and any file larger than a few KB will cause a short pause on iOS devices...)

I add markers to a multitrack session and not directly to the WAV because there is no way to copy/paste markers, and if you copy/paste audio from one file to another it clears the markers. Thus this is the only way to preserve markers when you want to re-export the files from a new bounce without having to set up everything anew.

A short how to:

Move the playhead to any position
Press Shift+Cmd+M to create a region marker
Adjust the in and out points of the region, open the the Markers window and rename the marker (we'll use the name as the filename later on)
When all markers are done, do a Multitrack > Mixdown to new File
Select all the markers in the Markers window and click the "Export audio of selected range markers to separate files" button.
Done!

Unity 3.4:

Back in Unity I'll set the audio-files to mono 96 kbs Compressed StreamFromDisk - that's the best setting I've come up with for the iOS version of the game. I wrote an Editor-script that lets me batch-change the audio format of all selected files to this, to save some time. I haven't looked into the best solution for the desktop version yet, but the base files are all 44.1khz, 16 bit stereo WAVs, so there's room for improvement...

Then I'll drop everything into a custom editor window (as blogged about before here), copy/paste the dialog from the script, call the right pieces at the right time from script and finally in the end it looks like this:

(If you want to see and hear it: http://beta.blackish.at)

Monetization Horrors

2011-10-11T10:40:00.000+02:00

Monetization in progress... Oh the horrible ideas that come from being able to sell stuff via in-app purchases...

Wacom Bamboo Paper: A notebook to draw in. Nice! But if you want more than one notebook you have to pay. This feels so wrong... You're not paying for new functionality, you're paying for more of the same and it feels just plain wrong. It's a bit as if Adobe started charging for colored pixels : "Your blue digital-ink is low, buy 1000 milipixels for $10"... but speaking of Adobe:

Adobe Ideas. It really is a nice and clean app. $5.99, huh, well, okay... Peanuts compared to the huge pile of money I threw at them for the Creative Suite, right? So what have we got here? Pencil, eraser, colors, buy layers... BUY layers?! What the hell! What did I pay $5.99 for? Now I need to pay another $0.99 to use layers? Screw this!

OffMaps 2: The first OffMaps cost $4 and would let you download map-data from the OpenStreetMap project to navigate while offline (on vacation, etc.). You would just select any area, choose how many zoom-levels you wanted to download and go: download! Easy to use, worked well. But then the greed set in and they built OffMaps 2 where you pay $0.99 to find out that the app comes with 2 download tokens that let you download data for only 2 cities and then you need to pay for more tokens. Oh baby, now I'm being properly monetized! I picture suitcase-carrying yuppies triumphantly shaking hands behind a mirrored glass wall while the test-subject eyes the buy button...

I could list many more examples...

I'm not saying all this it doesn't work, I'm just saying it doesn't feel right. If you care more about short-term income and less about if your customers feel cheated or mocked, go ahead. But your customers will remember. Or maybe you're lucky in this 5-min-attention-span market and they won't. I'm just noting that if your expectations are built up and then you hit pay-wall after pay-wall before you can get to the expected experience, it's not a good feeling. And no, no one reads the description text before getting a free or cheap app, they look at the screenshots - *bam*, expectations created - download - disappointment.

So when do in-app-purchases feel right?

A few criteria:

The app has to deliver a satisfying experience by itself. An app that is obviously crippled without purchasable add-ons is no satisfying experience.
Don't shove in-app purchases in my face from the get-go. Let me breathe and experience the app. If I want more, I'll check if there's more.
Don't charge for something that is obviously just a simple change in code (like more notebooks). Yes, it could work, it could even sell very well, but I'll feel like you're mocking me and I'm not going to buy it out of spite.
Be clear about what's included and make it very clear from the get go that there is additional content that can be purchased.
Don't tell me you have Downloadable Content (DLC) planned from the start. It's like saying that you're planning to charge me over and over and over again to get the full experience. (Assassins Creed 2 had a few chapters in the story arc reserved for DLC - WTF?! I paid EUR 60,- for this and then there's holes in it?) Rather say something like this: "If a lot of people are interested, we'll think about developing more content in the form of expansion packs. Those will be available at low cost and if it sells well, we might even give some away for free!" - This feels nice, doesn't it?
Naming the additional content "expansions" or "expansion packs" also feels nice, it sounds like good stuff, it sounds like the old days. "DLC - Downloadable Content" on the other hand is sounding more and more like corporate talk. When I hear DLC I think of corporate manager-types with dollar-signs in their eyes who use the word "monetizing" in every second sentence...

This is not a guide on how to become rich with in-app purchases, these are my very subjective feelings when encountering them in the wild.

The trouble with Angles

2011-10-03T17:34:00.001+02:00

The problem is this:

Both calculations give you the same result!

float a = Vector2.Angle(Vector2.up, new Vector2(5f, 2f)); //a = 68.19859
float b = Vector2.Angle(Vector2.up, new Vector2(-5f, 2f)); //b = 68.19859

So how can you get the angle of a vector between 0 and 360 degrees?

double radians = Mathf.Atan2((y2-y1), (x2-x1));
double degrees = radians * 180f / Mathf.PI;
if(degrees < 0) degrees += 360; // degrees are now between 0 and 360

float angle = (float) degrees; //cast to float if you need to

Just use the correct orientation for (x1, y1) and you're good...

Life is hard, but so am I

2011-08-18T17:16:00.000+02:00

5 years ago I started this blog with a Dresden Dolls quote. Believe me, it was way funnier back then...

The last months weren't easy. I guess brain surgery is never much fun, but being self-employed and the father of a 1-year old kid... well, let's just say that quite a few things were riding on my survival...

With a little less careful planning and a little less luck this could have ended my "career" as an independent developer quite abruptly.

But it seems I made it through and so I'm finally back at work on my next game now.

Behind the scenes: New Orbit Story Tools

2011-03-31T21:23:00.000+02:00

I've put quite a bit of thought into making the tools for the story-part of NEW ORBIT as reusable and practical as possible.

So here's how Story, Subtitles, Voiceovers and Character Portraits play together:

I have a generic class called OnScreenTextController that takes a string, fades it in, displays it for a certain amount of time and fades it out again. In NEW ORBIT I use two classes that are based on it: SubtitleController and CenterScreenGUI - one displays the subtitles and character portraits, the other one shows the current objective in the center of the screen.

Both are being fed with LocalizationDBItems from the LocalizationDB. (basically just an object that holds an array of LocalizationDBItems) A LocalizationDBItem contains the actual text, the location of the voiceover-soundfile, the ID of the character who's speaking and the duration.

The story itself is driven by a Mission-script that knows when to display something and when to wait for certain events to happen. The Mission-script only knows the IDs of the messages and works with the durations it retrieves from the LocalizationDBItems, so I can simply load a different LocalizationDB to switch to a different language and all the timing will adjust automatically.

I've created an Editor-window where I can manage all the text and audio in the LocalizationDB. If I drag in a new voiceover-file it automatically writes in the path and the duration. But if there's more text in the file than fits into the subtitles-bar I have to manually split it into multiple entries and divide the time.

NEW ORBIT

2011-03-31T18:24:00.001+02:00

Let me introduce my next game: NEW ORBIT

It's an episodic space action adventure (or whatever) based on realistic gravity simulation.

Try the beginning of the game right away on http://beta.blackish.at

Together with the beta I have launched an experiment: The BLACKISH Beta List. Join to be kept up to date on the development and to receive exclusive behind the scenes material on a semi-regular basis.

Unity Webplayer: crossdomain.xml

2011-03-26T08:41:00.004+01:00

In preparing for the deployment of the very first beta of the next game as a webplayer, I've run into a few troubles with webplayer security policies, so here's how to do it right so it will work in the Editor and in the webplayer:

In Edit>Project Settings>Editor enter the location where your final webplayer file will be deployed.

Create a crossdomain.xml file as described here in the docs

(Now comes the part where I went wrong) The unity docs only give the following example:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<cross-domain-policy>
<allow-access-from domain="*"/>
</cross-domain-policy>

Now this allows access from any domain, what if you want to restrict it? My mistake was to include http:// with the domain, here's an example that works:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<cross-domain-policy>
<allow-access-from domain="beta.blackish.at"/>
<allow-access-from domain="*.blackish-games.com"/>
</cross-domain-policy>

More info available in the Adobe CrossDomain Policy File Specifications

The crossdomain.xml file has to be placed at the root of your server and I haven't found a way to access a subdomain yet. If you know how to do that, please let me know!

2010++;

2010-12-28T10:31:00.004+01:00

2010 has been a pretty damn good horrible year for me.

Age of Curling sold extremely well (at least for a game about curling), I got married, became a father, moved to the countryside and learnt that I'd have to undergo brain surgery again.

The year started out with me working on a prototype for the next Battle Bears game for Skyvu and releasing a PC/MAC port of Age of Curling. I knew I didn't want to do all the coding on another BB game all by myself, so I got some very competent help, and a couple of weeks later, when I learnt that my brain was acting up again, I left it for him to finish and took a long while off to prepare for the baby and nurture a well-deserved depression. (You know, I kept telling people that I'd rather kill myself than go through that again, but now that I was about to be married - with a child on the way - it was no longer that simple... but well, I guess it never actually is that simple anyway...)

Eventually I managed to convince myself that it could be much worse and at least this time I'll be prepared for what's to come. And so I got back to work and started working on some prototypes... Most notably (as in: I hope to finish this one someday) a SciFi adventure.

When the baby came I took a few weeks off to support my wife, and afterwards I didn't want to start any big projects because I though I was going to be called in for the operation any day. So I started working on smaller stuff and reusable pieces and that's how GameAssets.net happened.

When it became apparent that the OP wasn't going to happen in 2010, I finally decided to start fulltime work on a new game. And this is where I am now. Working fulltime on a new game.

My super-secret plans for 2011? Embrace open development, finish the new game, survive, recover and maybe even finish another new original game after that.

Lightmapped Planets

2010-12-11T11:15:00.004+01:00

And this is why I needed that shader. Lightmapped rotating planets where the lightmap rotates in the opposite direction of the mesh (I'm animating the TextureOffset of the Material)

Unity: Minimal Lightmapped Shader

2010-12-11T11:07:00.003+01:00

With some nice help from the #unity3d IRC channel, I managed to build a Minimal Lightmapped shader. All it does is multiply a lightmap with a texture. And nothing else. No lighting, nothing.


Shader "Minimal Lightmapped" {
 Properties {
  _MainTex ("Base (RGB)", 2D) = "white" {}
  _LightMap ("Lightmap (RGB)", 2D) = "white" {}
 }
 
 SubShader {
     Tags { "RenderType"="Opaque" }
     Pass {
          SetTexture[_MainTex]
         SetTexture[_LightMap] {
             Combine previous * texture
         }     
     }
 }

}

Any suggestions for a good book about shader programming? I'd like to get into it some more eventually...

Unity: Easy mistakes to make: NPOT GUI textures scaled to POT

2010-10-27T16:59:00.004+02:00

If you import non-square images into Unity 3 it automatically sets the texture import setting Non Power of Two to ToNearest. This will cause your image to be scaled to fit the nearest power-of-two dimensions. Now it can be compressed - yay! Or wait... If you want to use for a button or box or something in a GUISkin, then this will break your GUISkin since your carefully measured values will no longer be valid and it might not be immediately obvious why it looks wrong...

Well, you could deliberately set them to a certain POT size and calculate values that would work with that size, but I'll always prefer uncompressed GUI images over compressed once. (or at least until memory runs out...)

Note to self: Add to list of things to do once I retire: Write a script that automatically calculates and adjusts the border values of all elements where a NPOT image has been scaled to a POT.

Unity iPhone 1.7 with SDK 4.1

2010-10-02T10:28:00.004+02:00

Problem: I have SDK 4.1 installed and try to make a build with Unity iPhone 1.7 (iPhone SDK version set to Unknown). The build doesn't work on iPhone 3G, because it says it was only made for armv7 architecture and the device is too old to run it.

Solution:

• Select Targets and Unity iPhone in the left pane of XCode and click the info button (or right-click and choose Get Info)

• Build Tab - Set Architectures from Optimized (armv7) to Standard (armv6 armv7) - Hint: you might want to also set the iOS Deployment Target as low as possible while you're in there...

• In the menu choose Project > Set Active Architecture > armv6

• Build and run on iPhone 3G!

The downsides of using middleware

2010-10-02T09:39:00.003+02:00

Unity 3.0 is out! yay! and nooo! Because this will be the death of Unity iPhone 1.7. "No problem, just upgrade your project to 3.0" you say? "Well, it's not that simple" I answer.

A lot of stuff changed, a ton of great stuff was added in 3.0. But PhysX was upgraded to a newer version and behaves very different now. On Age of Curling I spent a lot of time tweaking the physics, so upgrading the project to 3.0 breaks it completely and this won't be easy to fix.

So two options for me: Do I spend a lot of time trying to upgrade the project, just so I can continue to release updates? or do I continue to work in 1.7 until the day comes where Apple has added enough changes to the SDK and 1.7 will finally no longer cut it?

I chose the second option for now and just hit the first hurdle. I'll probably make a new post about it and delete this angry mumbling of a post... Or maybe I'll post it just so the last 15 mins don't feel completely wasted.

GameAssets.net

2010-09-27T13:58:00.005+02:00

An old new project of mine finally came to life:

Top quality assets for indie game developers - so far only interface-related things though.

Visit GameAssets.net and/or follow us on twitter

Unity: Have scripts run while the game doesn't

2010-08-10T18:45:00.002+02:00

There's a way to force scripts to run even if the game is not running in the Editor:

In Javascript, simply put this on the top of the script:

@script ExecuteInEditMode()

And for C#:

[ExecuteInEditMode()]

Unity: Dates

2010-03-18T12:28:00.000+01:00

An example of how to deal with dates (more info here):

var day1 = new System.DateTime(2010, 3, 12); // Year, Month, Day
var day2 = System.DateTime.Today;
var timeframe = System.TimeSpan(8,0,0,0); //Days, Hours, Minutes, Seconds

print(day1); //output: 03/12/2010 00:00:00
print(day2); //output: 03/17/2010 00:00:00

print(day2 - day1 + " < " + timeframe + " ?"); //output: 5.00:00:00 < 8.00:00:00 ?

if(day2 - day1 < timeframe) {
  print("Within time period");
} else {
 print("Time period exceeded");
}

Maximum Texture Size

2010-02-19T17:13:00.005+01:00

All textures bigger than 1024x1024 show up black on old graphic-cards. The game runs normally, but it seems to ignore those textures. It would be easy to fix - I could just make the textures smaller - but that's not a perfect solution...

So I searched for some way of getting the maximum texture size that the system is capapble of displaying, but I found nothing.

The best solution I have so far is to have the lower res texture on by default and only if(QualitySettings.currentLevel == QualityLevel.Fantastic) I load the bigger one from the Resources into the material.

Got a better solution? Please let me know! :)

How to create nice DMG Disk Images for Distribution

2010-02-16T05:22:00.008+01:00

Here's my findings on how to create those nice-looking DMGs that people distribute their software with...

Create a new Disk Image with Disk Utility (Give it a good name, Make the size large enough - we'll shrink it later, Format: Mac OS X Journaled should be fine, no encryption, single partition, read/write disk image)
Make a folder on the new volume and copy the background image into it
set up the background image + icons, etc. (Cmd + J)
hide the folder by doing this in the terminal: /Developer/Tools/SetFile -a V /Volumes/your_volume/folder_to_hide (big V hides it, small v makes it visible again)
If you want a shortcut to the Applications folder in there, simply drag it in there with alt+cmd pressed (this creates an alias)
Make sure to empty the trash if you deleted or overwrote something on the new volume (you wouldn't wanna ship items in the trash with your DMG...)
drag the dmg into the bottom left sidebar in Disk Utility, right-click and choose "Convert". Image Format: compressed, Encryption: none

Your disk image is now as small as it can be and set to read-only!

Bonus: You might want to make your dmg internet-enabled - this only means that if it's downloaded from the web it will be unpacked into a folder automatically... (use hdiutil for this)

Want to see the result in action? Download the free trial of our curling game!

Resources: stackoverflow, bloem.be

Unity: Windowed, Fixed-size OS X Apps

2010-01-18T14:32:00.004+01:00

I want to build a desktop version of an iPhone game... It doesn't look very well in fullscreen mode because the GUI simply wasn't built with fullscreen in mind. So...

Edit > Project Settings > Player
Set Default Screen Width and Height to 320 and 480.
Set Display Resolution Dialog to Disabled
Set Default is Full Screen to Off

If I build the application like this it will pop up in windowed mode and in the right size. BUT I can still go to the menu and do Window > Full Screen (or press Cmd+F) and break it! Damn... And to make it worse, if you swatch back out of fullscreen mode it doesn't go back to the default resolution I set in unity, instead it maximizes the window to the entire screen...

Luckily ToreTank pointed me to this thread on the unity-forum that holds the solution:

Build the App
Right-click on the App in the Finder and choose Show Package Contents
Navigate to Contents > Resources and open MainMenu.nib in Interface Builder
Select Window > Full Screen from the small floating representation of the menu und hit Delete (If it's not open already, double-click MainMenu in the Interface Builder Document Window)

And while you're there you might also want to add your copyright to the About Box...

Unity: Making the Switch from JS to C# (Part 2)

2009-12-10T17:46:00.004+01:00

3.a) Functions

Basic functions are simple enough in Javascript, but might seem weird in C# at first. You just need remember this: [scope] [return type] [FunctionName] (varType varName).

function WriteSomething (str : String) {
  print(str);
}

public void WriteSomething (string str) { //"public" means it can be accessed from everywhere (scope), "void" is the return type (void means it doesn't return a value)
  Debug.Log(str);
}

3.b) Return

In Javascript you just do it, in C# you need to think ahead and put the return type in the declaration of the function...

function ReturnSomething () {
  return "Something";
}

public string ReturnSomething () { // In C# you have to define the type of the value that will be returned - in this case it will return a "string"
  return "Something";
}

3.c) Yielding

In Javascript yielding is easy... Just use yield. In C# you have to set the return type to IEnumerator if you want to yield inside a function. (This should also make you understand why you can't yield and return inside one and the same function...)

function Start () {
  yield new WaitForSeconds(2.0);
  yield DoIt();
  print("Done!");
}

function DoIt() {
  print("Doing it...");
  yield new WaitForSeconds(0.5);
  print("Almost done doing it...");
}

//Output:
//Doing it...
//Almost done doing it...
//Done!

IEnumerator Start() { //if you want to yield inside start you have to change "void" to "IEnumerator"
  yield return new WaitForSeconds(2f); //notice the f after the 2! - float
  yield return StartCoroutine(DoIt()); //Note: without the "yield return" it would simply start the coroutine and continue, thus printing the "Done!" before the "Almost done..."
  Debug.Log("Done!");
}

public IEnumerator DoIt() { // "public" isn't really needed in this example, but you need to use it if you want to call this function from outside this script!
  Debug.Log("Doing it...");
  yield return new WaitForSeconds(0.5f);
  Debug.Log("Almost done doing it...");
}

//Output:
//Doing it...
//Almost done doing it...
//Done!

Unity: Making the Switch from Javascript to C#

2009-12-10T12:21:00.003+01:00

First of all: It was a lot easier than I expected. And if you're planning to switch as well, I hope I can make it even easier for you with this series of posts.

First I bought C# in a Nutshell, a very straight-forward book that teaches you almost everything you need to know in as few sentences as possible. Cheap and good - you really don't need much else. It is, however, not Unity-specific and that is where I come in!

1) Variables and Types

var size : float = 0.5;
var keyword : String = "Skylight";
var isOn : boolean = true;

private var hiddenVar = 0; //in JS variables are shown in the inspector by default and you have to mark them as private to hide them
var visibleVar = 1;

float size = 0.5f; //you have to add an f to make it a float-value! (without the f it would be a double and wouldn't fit into a float variable)
string keyword = "Skylight"; //notice the lowercase s!
bool isOn = true; //notice: bool instead of boolean in JS!

int hiddenVar = 0; //in C# variables are private by default...
public int visibleVar = 1; //...and you have to mark them as "public" if you want to see them in the inspector or access them from another script

//Add the f even if you're not using a variable - if a function is expecting a float value, it won't take anything but a float!
GiveMeAFloat(0.25f);

2) Type Conversions (Casting)

You want to convert one type to another? Here's how:

JS

var f : float = 0.08; // create a float
var i : int = f; //assign it to an int
print(i); // Done! - Result: 0

float f = 0.08f; // create a float
int i = (int) f; // in c# you have to use explicit casts (the target type set in braces) if any information is in danger of getting lost during the cast
Debug.Log(i); //Result: 0

The other way around works without explicit cast though (as no information is in danger of getting lost)

int i = 5;
float f = i;
Debug.Log(f); //Result: 5

Unity: How to relay messages sent by AnimationEvents

2009-11-25T16:40:00.002+01:00

Here's a reusable script for preloading AnimationClips with AnimationEvents: (in Unity 2.6 you can do this directly in the new Animation Editor, but in Unity iPhone this is a nice way to do it)

//PreloadAnimClipWithEvent.js

var targetClipName : String = "idle"; //Where should the Event be added? (the name of the AnimationClip)
var throwTime : float = 1.3; //When should the function be called?
var throwFunctionName : String = "MyFunction"; //What's the name of the function?

function Start () {

var throwEvent : AnimationEvent = new AnimationEvent();
throwEvent.time = throwTime;
throwEvent.functionName = throwFunctionName;

animation[targetClipName].clip.AddEvent(throwEvent);

}

And since my scripts are never in the right place to catch messages sent by AnimationEvents, here's a script to relay a message. If this script catches a message called RelayMessage it sends message to target. So just set the AnimationEvent to send a message named "RelayMessage" and then enter real target and real functionName here.

//RelayMessage.js

var target : GameObject;
var message : String = "FunctionName";

function RelayMessage () {

target.SendMessage(message);

}

To sum it up: With the first scripts you can add an AnimationEvent to an AnimationClip and with the second script you can easily relay that message from the gameObject that holds the animation to some other gameObject that is the intended recipient.

Unity: Non Power of 2 Textures

2009-11-24T17:15:00.005+01:00

Ever tried changing the texture import settings of 5+ images in Unity iPhone? - Yes, it's painful. Luckily someone wrote an Editor Script that can automate the task and put it up on the nice Unify Wiki. (There's a version for regular Unity available as well here)

I just added a new menu to the Unity iPhone version of this script that lets you automate the changing of the Non Power of 2 setting as well. And while I'm at it... What's that setting and why is it important for iPhone development?

First the basics: The iPhone can use PVRTC-compressed textures and you might want to use this compression for 2 good reasons:

It helps you keep your app install size down (a 512x512px image in RGB24 has about 768KB - in PVRTC 4bit it has 128KB)
It will be harder for your app to blow up the texture memory. - If your game has a complex menu with 20 full 480x320 screens, it will most likely run out of memory and crash.

Now this is where the Non Power of 2 setting comes in. PVRTC can only be applied to textures that are square and to a power of 2 (128x128, 256x256, 512x512, 1024x1024 or 2048x2048). - Your 480x320 screens can thus not be compressed unless they are rescaled to a power of two. The non power of 2 setting gives you 4 options:

None - Keep the original dimensions
Scale to nearest
Scale to larger
Scale to smaller

Even if you choose to rescale your image you can of course still display it in it's original size.

Yes image quality will suffer, but if I have to choose between a slightly blurry main menu and a crash, I'll go with blurry...

It doesn't always make sense to do this as changing a 320x20px strip from RGB24 to a 512x512px with PVRTC will most likely result in a larger filesize. I'm sure you get the general idea; same as everywhere: Thinking never hurts...

Oh, yeah, also don't forget to turn off Mip-Maps for all your gui-images! Saves a few KB as well...

OpenFeint Unity Integration

2009-11-19T18:18:00.009+01:00

EDIT: This was written over a year ago and won't help you with the current version of OpenFeint, sorry.

Integrating OpenFeint in a Unity iPhone project is pretty straightforward, just sign up, get the sdk and follow these steps. A few additional notes though...

Unity:

I didn't really manage to access the OpenFeint singleton from Javascript, it kept giving me 'singleton' is not a member of 'callable() as void' . So I wrote a simple C# script just for calling OpenFeint and call that from Javascript:

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;
//Notice how no "using OpenFeint;" or something like that is needed!

public class OpenFeintStuff : MonoBehaviour {

   public void LaunchOpenFeint () {
        OpenFeint.singleton.launchDashboard();
   }

}

SDK Integration (XCode):

ad 5: If it says Multiple Values next to "Other Linker Flags", select only the active config, then edit the line. This is what it should read: -ObjC,-Wl,-S,-x

ad 6: The place to check for this is under Targets > Unity iPhone > Get Info > General - then look at the bottom and add the missing frameworks with the [+] button on the bottom left.

ad 11: Your product key and secret key need to look like this: @"x238476d-etc" (this is what strings look like in Objective-C)

Edge of Curling

2009-11-12T10:21:00.002+01:00

Read more here, and also here, here and here if you got the time...

Unity: Random Hint of the Day

2009-10-28T09:50:00.002+01:00

Ever wanted to scratch (right-click-and-drag-to-change) transform values in Unity iPhone?

Ever wondered what the real names of the color-fields of a shader are? (If you want to do something like renderer.material.GetColor("_SpecColor"))

Ever wanted to see your private variables in the inspector?

Ever noticed the little Debug Tab in Unity iPhone or the little Debug option in the Inspector Menu in Unity 2.5?

Unity: How to blow up a mesh like a balloon

2009-10-22T11:30:00.005+02:00

Say you wanted to blow up a mesh like a ballon - simply scaling it up isn't good enough. There's an example in the documentation that teaches you how to move vertices along normals, but it doesn't quite do what I want it to, since the mesh falls apart in the process:

Here's the slightly modified code of the example, as seen in the video above:

function Update () {
var meF : MeshFilter = GetComponent(MeshFilter);
if(meF) mesh = meF.mesh;
var vertices = mesh.vertices;
var normals = mesh.normals;
for (var i=0; i<vertices.length; i++)
{
vertices[i] += normals[i] * 2.0 * Time.deltaTime;
}
mesh.vertices = vertices;
}

To prevent this disintegration from happening we need to find all vertices that share identical positions and find one average normal per group of identicals. First the result, then the code:

private var mesh : Mesh;
private var vertices = new Vector3[0];
private var normals = new Vector3[0];
var finalNormals = new Vector3[0];

function Start () {
var meF : MeshFilter = GetComponent(MeshFilter);
mesh = meF.mesh;

vertices = mesh.vertices;
normals = mesh.normals;

//Find identical vertices
var vertexIDs = new int[vertices.length]; //this will hold an ID for each vertex, vertices at the same position will share the same ID!
var counter : int = 0;
for (var i = 0; i < vertices.length; i++) {
for (var j = 0; j < vertices.length; j++) {
 if(vertexIDs[i] == 0) {
  counter++;
  vertexIDs[i] = counter;
 }
 if(i != j) {
  if(vertices[i] == vertices[j] && vertices[i] != 0) {
   vertexIDs[j] = vertexIDs[i];
  }
     print(i + ", " + j + ":" + vertices[j] + " (" + vertexIDs[j] + ")");
 }
}
}

finalNormals = normals;

//Calcualte average normals
for(k = 1; k <= counter; k++) { //counter is the highest vertexID, now go through all the groups and collect normal data
var curAvgNormal : Vector3 = Vector3.zero;
for(l = 0; l < vertexIDs.length; l++) {
 if(vertexIDs[l] == k) {
  curAvgNormal += normals[l]; //Add up all the normals of the vertices with identical positions
 }
}
curAvgNormal.Normalize(); //Normalize the result
for(m = 0; m < vertexIDs.length; m++) {
 if(vertexIDs[m] == k) finalNormals[m] = curAvgNormal;
}
}
}



function Update () {
for (var i = 0; i < vertices.length; i++) {
   vertices[i] += finalNormals[i] * 2.0 * Time.deltaTime;
}
mesh.vertices = vertices;
}

This code is horribly inefficient though and calculating the average normals will take forever. (Unity will hang and the little colorful wheel will spin until it's done) So don't try this on any object with more than 200 or so triangles unless you have a lot of time... (please add your optimization tips in the comments below :])

Since the mesh is known from the start we could just as well pre-calculate the normals though, so that they don't have to be calculated each time at startup.

A Simple and crude way of doing this: Run the game in the Editor >> copy the gameObject once the finalNormals have been calculated >> stop the Editor >> paste gameObject >> replace script with a version that lacks the normal-calculations and is only good for use with a script that already has the finalNormals set:

private var mesh : Mesh;
private var vertices = new Vector3[0];
private var normals = new Vector3[0];
var finalNormals = new Vector3[0];

function Start () {
var meF : MeshFilter = GetComponent(MeshFilter);
mesh = meF.mesh;

vertices = mesh.vertices;
normals = mesh.normals;
}

function Update () {
for (var i = 0; i < vertices.length; i++) {
    vertices[i] += finalNormals[i] * 2.0 * Time.deltaTime;
}
mesh.vertices = vertices;
}

Okay, not bad. There's still room for improvement though: It will look even more realistic (well, that is if you would classify "blowing up a wooden table" as "realistic") if you also slowly scale up the gameObject with transform.localScale:

Unity: Animation-Events

2009-10-21T11:22:00.004+02:00

AnimationEvents are a way to make sure that something happens at a specific point during an animation. You boss-character stomping and shaking the ground at frame 65? No problem... Frame 65 / 30 fps = 2.166 sec. Add an AnimationEvent to the AnimationClip and a function will be called every time this AnimationClip is played at the specified time!

var boss : GameObject;

//create and set up the AnimationEvent
var myEvent : AnimationEvent = new AnimationEvent();
myEvent.time = 2.166;
myEvent.functionName = "DoSomething";

//Add the event to an AnimationClip
boss.animation.clip.AddEvent(myEvent);

//Play the animation
boss.animation.Play();

Now simply add all the code you need to the function DoSomething in a script on the gameObject that contains the animation.

From what I can tell the function really has to be on a script on that gameObject and nowhere else. myEvent.functionName = "transform.parent.DoSomething"; didn't seem to want to work...

The documentation points out that what actually happens is gameObject.SendMessage(animationEvent.functionName, animationEvent); - so I guess that explains why.

Update: Have a look at this new post for how to make it call a function on a different object (spoiler: I relay the message...)

gamegui.net

2009-10-14T16:00:00.000+02:00

I started gamegui.net in my sparse spare-time while working on the interface of the MMO Age of Conan. Having a good and easily searchable database full of reference material saved me countless hours of searching the web when trying to find out how other games have approached similar tasks.

I haven't gotten around to updating it much since I quit Funcom and started doing my own indie games, but it's still there and maybe the world should finally learn of its existence...

If you find it useful and want to contribute - let me know! (At this point I want to thank my friend Simon at Creative Assembly for being the only other contributor so far :])

PS: And if you can help me with one tricky SQL problem, please let me know as well! :)

Software that's making my life easier

2009-10-13T09:00:00.000+02:00

FTP: Filezilla

Backup: Time Machine

File/Folder-Synchronization/Backup: Synk Standard (I hate to admit it, but this is a lot more comfortable than my home-made python-tool)

HD-Cleanup: DaisyDisk

Time-Tracking: Jobs (iPhone)

Finance: iFinance

Screencapturing: Screenium

Webserver: XAMPP (on localhost, for testing stuff...)

Not all of these are free but those that are not are worth the money.

If you've got any recommendations - I'm looking for a simple and cheap/free Wave-Editor for Mac to replace Audacity... (I don't want to have to start up Logic Express for simple wave-editing...)

PS: I like Schwarzkopf hair shampoo

SPEEDLAP RED - Behind the scenes

2009-10-07T16:59:00.006+02:00

A screenshot from inside Unity, showing one of the tracks of our upcoming futuristic iPhone racing game "SPEEDLAP RED"

Age of Curling: Thoughts about Online Multiplayer

2009-10-07T11:14:00.000+02:00

Lots of people have been asking for online multiplayer for our iPhone Curling Game "Age of Curling".

Here's why it's might not happen:

It's a niche game with a fairly small number of players. Don't get me wrong, while it made less in half a year than the few top apps make in a single day, it made enough to pay the rent for a few months, which makes it a success to me!

And I'm proud to say that it seems to be doing quite well on replay value - the numbers suggest that each day there are a few hundred people playing the game. But 500 people / 24 hours / 30 mins (let's pretend each of them would spend 2 minutes in the multiplayer lobby) = 0.69 - So, on average you'd have a little over half a person in the multiplayer-lobby waiting for a game... Not very "multi"...

But here's why it still might happen eventually:

It's only the beginning of autumn, the number of regular (and overall) players will most likely rise quite a bit during Curling season.

And anyway, it's all a matter of doing it right... With a scheduling system, push notifications and a weekly timeslot for tournaments it might well be possible to get together a whole lot of players on a regular basis. And I'm sure it would get some attention for that!

And now here's why it still probably won't happen:

It's a lot of work. - I am very committed to expanding the game (and I'll continue to do so as long as people are playing it), but I'm not sure if the goal can be to make it the be-all-and-end-all Curling game and if it kills me.

Age of Curling is a mobile curling game that's fun to play with a friend while on a train. It's a fun game to play while waiting for the bus. It's not a 100% accurate curling simulation, it's not an e-sport-league game.

Each time I sit down to add something to the game I should really ask myself: "What can I do improve the strengths of the game?". You know... Do one thing and do it well... And there you go... I just told you the secret philosophy behind BLACKISH and how we're planning to survive as indie game developers.

(this post was somewhat inspired by this talk, mostly from min 46 onwards)

Creating a bootable backup of the entire HD

2009-10-04T22:49:00.005+02:00

Spent a bit of time upgrading an Intel MacBook Pro from OS X 10.4 (Tiger) to 10.6 (Snow Leopard).

We wanted to do a clean install and in order to not forget about anything we wanted to create a bootable backup of the entire internal HD onto a 2.5'' external HD.

We formated the external HD to HFS+ (Mac OS Extended (Journaled)) (Partitioning Schema set to GUID) and tried 2 free cloning-tools: Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper! - Both produced backups that did not show up in the boot menu (the one you get to when you press ALT while booting). (It did show up as bootable on the iMac with OS X 10.5 (Leopard) though for some reason, but that wasn't good enough)

So this is what did work in the end:

We connected the MacBook Pro to the iMac with a Firewire cable and booted the MacBook into Firewire Target Mode (press T while booting until the Firewire Logo shows up on the screen), which allowed the iMac to use the MacBook like an external HD. Then we used Carbon Copy Cloner on the iMac to create a full backup from the MacBook HD to the external HD (connected to the iMac of course) - The result was bootable on the MacBook Pro!

The actual upgrade was easy then. Insert DVD, start Installation, right after it reboots open the Disk Utility from the menu on the top, format the internal HD and install...

Unity Web-Player HTML Problem

2009-10-04T17:54:00.008+02:00

Just found out that people who didn't have the unity web-player installed already, saw this on the page of our new futuristic racing game:

Not nice... So I uninstalled the unity web-player plugin by deleting it from /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/ (browser-restart required) and went bug-hunting...

Turns out the default unity html code opens an iFrame and never closes it again. So if you change line 141 (at least that's the line number for the html that comes out of unity 2.5) and let it just close the iFrame again like this, you should be fine:

document.write('<iframe name="InstallerFrame" height="0" width="0" frameborder="0"></iframe>\n');

et voilá:

Unity WebPlayer Anti-Piracy

2009-09-30T15:00:00.002+02:00

If you want to prevent people from downloading your webplayer and putting it up on their own site, you might want to have a look at Application.absoluteURL in the documentation. It will allow you to detect if your webPlayer is still where it's supposed to be or not...

This still doesn't stop anyone from linking to your webplayer directly though, which might be even worse since you're now also paying for the traffic.

If you want to try and stop other people from linking to your webplayer from within their websites, check out the example given on the bottom of this page...

Using PHP to forward/fork to unity webplayers

2009-09-29T17:25:00.002+02:00

All in all I think using AWS is a pretty decent solution that should keep me from getting kicked from my normal shared webserver for generating huge amounts of traffic ("unlimited" can be pretty limited if there's a "fair use" clause attached).

Since I'm already paying for it though, I'd like to use the shared server as much as possible before generating any additional costs through AWS.

So... Instead of linking to the webplayer.unity file directly (on the local server or on AWS), I set the link to webplayer.php (a super-basic PHP page, that does nothing but forward to the real unity-file)


<?php
header("Location: http://d2s94hjscj93hx.cloudfront.net/webplayer.unity3d");
?>

The next step would now be to make the webserver aware of its state and make it switch to AWS automatically as soon as certain criteria are fullfilled... Several ideas are:

If you have a traffic-limit it could count the number of downloads this month and switch as soon as it gets close to the limit
It could switch to AWS if traffic goes beyond a certain amount of downloads per hour
switch to normal service during the lower-traffic times of the day

Unity WebPlayer Content over Amazon S3 + Cloudfront

2009-09-29T17:00:00.003+02:00

In the wake of big plans, I've been looking into low-cost ways of digitally distributing large amounts of data to lots of people. Here's what I've set up so far:

Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is a place where you can cheaply put large files for download - You currently pay $0.15/GB for storage and $0.17/GB for outbound transfer.
An example: You have a 20MB game and 1000 people a day play it: 20*1.000*30 = 600.000MB traffic per month = 586 GB * $0.17 per GB transfer + $0.15 for 1 GB of storage = ca. $100 per month

Amazon Cloudfront makes sure the content is delivered to the end-user with low latency. Your data will be delivered form the closest of currently 8 locations in the US, 4 in Europe and 2 in Asia. It's also supposed to scale really well, so you should be immune to the famous slashdot-effect (the content will be immune, if the website that links to it goes down you're still f*****)

The cost here will be slightly higher, but not substantially: Running the example given above through Cloudfront should amount to about $110.

Both of these Services are part of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) and if you already have an account at Amazon (and who doesn't) it's super-simple to sign up.

Once signed up to S3 and Cloudfront, get the S3Fox Firefox plugin and log in with your access key and secret key.
Create a new bucket (=directory) and upload your file to it.
Change Permissions (Edit ACL) and allow Everyone to Read.
At this stage you could already access your file through normal S3, but we want to get it through Cloudfront, so:
Manage Distributions on the bucket - Create Distribution. Once it is deployed you'll see a Resource URL, copy it - this is the link to the directory. (If you go to Manage Distributions on the file it will show you the complete URL to the file.)
Put the link up on your webpage, you should be able to get your file on S3 through Cloudfront now.

SPEEDLAP RED

2009-09-19T20:30:00.002+02:00

Announcing Speedlap RED, a highly focused, futuristic single-player racing game developed by BLACKISH - Coming to iPhone and iPod Touch this November!

Thread on TouchArcade Forums

Thread on the Unity Forums

Unity: Changing shader color properties

2009-09-16T18:37:00.002+02:00

If you want to change a color-value in a material's shader you can use Material.SetColor("_PropertyName", Color.white); If you don't know what that color value is called in the shader, get the the source of all the shaders in Unity here and have a look inside. This page in the docs might help as well...

BATTLE BEARS

2009-08-31T09:10:00.002+02:00

BATTLE BEARS is an iPhone game developed by BLACKISH for (and in colaboration with) SkyVu Pictures. It's been released on the AppStore today! Get it here!

Age of Curling: Scotland - Behind the scenes

2009-08-30T11:13:00.002+02:00

Unity: Rotated GUI-Text

2009-08-28T11:55:00.011+02:00

The way to rotate gui-elements isn't exactly straight-forward in unity... But after some hassle I manged to rotate a piece of text:


function OnGUI () {
   var pos : Vector3 = new Vector3(100, 200, 0); //position for matrix
   var quat : Quaternion = Quaternion.identity; //rotation for matrix
   quat.eulerAngles = Vector3(0, 0, 90); //set the rotation to something - rotate around z!
   GUI.matrix = Matrix4x4.TRS(pos, quat, Vector3.one); //Apply the matrix 
   GUI.Label(Rect(0, 0, 200, 20), "Some Text"); //notice how the rect starts at 0/0 and the matrix handles the position!
}

This is still not ideal since the text will be a bit blurry, but it's better than nothing...

Age of Curling: Venice - Behind the scenes

2009-08-28T10:57:00.003+02:00

Modeling, baking, paintover - all done in modo 401

Age of Curling 1.3

2009-08-25T14:18:00.006+02:00

A sneak-peak at the new venue that will be in version 1.3 of Age of Curling (a free update, currently in review by Apple)

How to put a variable into a variable name: eval();

2009-08-19T12:23:00.008+02:00


var id : int = 1;
var item1 : String = "ho";
var item2 : String = "hum";

print(eval("item" + id));

This can of course be used for a lot more than just variables...

I'm guessing that this won't work on the iPhone due to the ahead of time compiling, but I haven't actually tried...

Individual track heights in Logic

2009-08-14T15:59:00.000+02:00

I though this wasn't possible and almost gave up on Logic over this. I couldn't find anything about it - neither in the manual nor in the settings, but now I stumbled upon it in some Youtube video... What a pleasant surprise!

This is how it's done: click and drag the bottom-left corner of the track-title. Simple, I know - I tried dragging the bottom of that area about 50 times with all imaginable key-combinations pressed at the same time... well... now I know...

The technical term seems to be "Individual track zoom" and the cool thing is that if you now change the track heights globally through the little slider on the bottom-right of the window, it all scales relatively - and up/down to a certain max/min

Sonar to Logic

2009-08-14T15:17:00.006+02:00

I spent half of yesterday going through old music-files, trying to see if there's a way to somehow bring the few good things over to the Mac and into Logicsomehow.

Some web-searches taught me that there's no way to open my old .bun or .cwb files from Sonar 1/Calkewalk Pro Audio in Logic, so I started by bouncing tracks to individual files, but that's not a good solution because even if a track only contains a short sample it will still result in a full-length and mostly empty wav-file... Furthermore all effects get baked in and all virtual instrument settings and midi information is lost.

And then I noticed the Export OMF item on the menu... Turns out OMF (Open Media Framework) is a decent solution. It packs all audio (no midi) into a single file leaving all clips intact and it imports flawlessly into Logic (or, well. it loses most settings, ignores muted and archived tracks, etc. - but still, all clips are there... luckily I never got into mixing much...)

Komplete Logic

2009-07-22T09:43:00.006+02:00

After some years of marveling at the wonders that Native Instruments are developing, I finally pushed the button when I heard about the current Komplete 5 offer (now apperently sold out). So after 2 1/2 weeks of waiting and 6+ hours of installing/updating the 50+ GB of samples and instruments I'm now all set up to make some music again... (not that I really have the time right now, but I'm set up for it! yay!)

So expect the next game (the one after the two that I'm currently involved in) to have a nice home-made soundtrack! - BTW: This will be a step down, as the soundtracks of both aforementioned games are being done by professionals...

Lessons learnt so far:

How to use virtual instruments in Logic: After an hour of trying to drop KONTAKT 3.5 into an Insert Slot on a Stereo Audio Track, deleting and re-building all Audio Unit Caches, searching through support forums, and some desperate borderline-voodoo stuff, I finally had a look at the Logic Express Manual and learned that I have to make a Software Instrument Track and set its Input Slot to KONTAKT... Another lesson learnt the hard way...

How to use 2 audio devices at once in Logic: Create an Aggregated Device with the Audio MIDI Setup in Applications/Utilities

Unity: Converting int to float

2009-07-17T13:23:00.003+02:00

a quick lesson learnt:

var num : float = 20 / 44; //result: 0

var num : float = parseFloat(20) / parseFloat(44); //result: 0.4545455

and just to be complete:

var num : float = 20.0 / 44.0; //result: 0.4545455

Unity: Animated menus when the game is paused

2009-07-06T13:21:00.012+02:00

You can pause your game by setting Time.timeScale = 0.0;
If you set it to zero, Time.time will no longer increase and the FixedUpdate function will no longer be called. In principle this is great. It is not so great though if you want to have an animated menu on top of your paused game because...

yield new WaitForSeconds(x); will no longer work,
and Mathf.SmoothDamp will also stop because it relies on Time.deltaTime

But there's a way around this:

1) Create your own version of WaitForSeconds that works with realtime instead of gametime:

Wait.js:


static function WaitForSecRealtime(sec : float) {
   var waitTime : float = Time.realtimeSinceStartup + sec;
   while (Time.realtimeSinceStartup < waitTime) {
      yield; //wait until next frame
   } 
}

You can now call this from any script by doing something like this:


yield StartCoroutine(Wait.WaitForSecRealtime(2.0));

2) Calculate a realtime deltaTime and feed it into Mathf.SmoothDamp instead of the default Time.deltaTime


xPos = Mathf.SmoothDamp(xPos, targetPos, xVel, sec, Mathf.Infinity, realtimeDeltaTime);

Thanks a lot to Digitalos, ducket, NCarter and ToreTank on IRC #unity3d for helping me with this!

Modo: A faster way to model race-tracks

2009-07-05T11:16:00.008+02:00

I knew the Curve Extrude Tool, but what I didn't know was that you can not only draw a curve interactively, but extrude along a pre-existing curve!

So, let's create a track-curve. Geometry > Draw > Curve (or select the Curve Tool from the Basic Tools palette)

Then create a simple polygon, select both the polygon and the curve and do a Curve Extrude (Geometry > Duplicate > Curve Extrude)

By the way: This works with the new Profiles Feature that was added in 401. If you create a curve, then save it as a Profile (Geometry > Profile > Save...) and select it in the Curve Extrude Tool, it uses the profile to perform the extrusion.

If you want to adjust the curve interactively you can still do that. Just remember to check Create Polygon under Curve Path in the Curve Extrude Tool, so you'll have the newest version of the Curve available once you drop the tool. (In case you want to re-create the mesh later on)

There's no denying that creating a track like that would be a bit more straightforward in C4D using 2 Splines and a Sweep NURBS (you wouldn't have to re-create it each time you wanted to change something), but I'm glad that it can be done in modo...

One advantages of doing it this way is: You get pretty clean UVs. - No need to use the UV Peeler Tool... (But only if you're extruding a polygon with a propper UV Layout - I haven't figured out if there's a way to get good UVs from a Profile...)

How to prevent XCode from adding a shine to Icons automatically

2009-06-20T20:54:00.005+02:00

Open Info.plist

Add a new row

name it UIPrerenderedIcon

right-click and set Value Type to Boolean

set the checkbox to true

Update: This is obsolete since Unity iPhone 1.5 - just check the UIPrerendered Icon flag under Edit > Project Settings > Player

Getting past the physics-timestep barrier

2009-06-15T14:30:00.007+02:00

A serious problem that any racing game has to deal with is the battle between laptime-accuracy and performance.

On one hand you can't do too many physics calculations per second because it kills the frame-rate, but on the other hand you want to do as many as possible to be able to measure lap-times in as small timesteps as possible. (Set the physics to be calucalted 20x/sec and your highscores will only be measured in 0.05 second steps. Now have 1000 people play and 50 of them will share the top spot. Not good... - Set the timestep to 100x/sec and you'll have a lot more accuracy, but none of the 1000 people will enjoy playing at 5 fps.)

But there's a clever way around this:
Record the position of the vehicle at each physics calculation and once it crosses the finishing line, use the distance between the last and current points together with the position of the finishing line to calculate when exactly the vehicle must have crossed the line during the last timestep.

Unity: Triggers and Colliders

2009-06-08T13:14:00.003+02:00

I just learnt an important lesson: If I want a collider to react with a trigger+rigidbody, the rigidbody has to move to cause any effect. If trigger+rigidbody are on a static object, the colliders run right through it without a beep...

Triggers and Colliders are a bit weird...
2 Triggers with no rigidbody don't do anything at all.
Same goes for 2 Colliders with no rigidbody involved.
2 Colliders where one has a rigidbody attached will cause a Collision.
1 Collider+Rigidbody and 1 Trigger will cause a Trigger.
1 Trigger+Rigidbody and 1 Collider will also cause a Trigger.
1 Trigger+Rigidbody and a second Trigger will again cause a Trigger.

It doesn't matter if the rigidbody uses gravity or is kinematic, BUT in all these cases the effect will only be there if the object with the rigidbody is moving...

3 random Photoshop tips

2009-06-08T10:57:00.003+02:00

You can change multiple text layers at once: select all layers - activate Text tool, but don't click on any one text - change font/size/color/etc. in the tool-bar.

Shortcuts for Layer-Blend-Modes: Shift + Alt + M = Multiply (or: N = normal, O = Overlay, G = lighten, +/- on the numpad cycles through all of them)

If you're making a selection (using the Rectangular Marquee Tool, for example) you can press and hold Space (all the while not letting go of the Mouse-Button) to move the selection. (thanks to Helga)

Unity Physics Optimizations

2009-06-02T14:06:00.002+02:00

Fixed Timestamp
All physics-calculations happen at fixed intervals - if they are calculated more often they are more accurate but more processing power will be needed. Generally it might be a good idea to adjust this to your target framerate. So if you're targeting 25fps, you could set it to 0.04 (= 1/25). - This can be set under Edit > Project Settings > Time

Rigidbody Interpolation
If you set the physics timestamp lower than the framerat, physics objects might start to stutter. This can be fixed by setting the Rigidbody to Interpolate or Extrapolate in the Inspector. Unity will then calculate intermediate values for every frame where physics is not calculated based on the previous or next frame.

The Next Game...

2009-05-22T15:13:00.007+02:00

...is a racing game

AppStore Dangers

2009-05-22T14:04:00.008+02:00

Approval
Let's say you're not one of the me-too developers and you spend months developing a controversial game and even though you're certain you're not violating any part of the iPhone SDK Agreement, some anonymous Apple-employee deems your work inappropriate for the AppStore. ( - Before you even started development you contacted support and explained your idea to them asking if they saw any problem there, but of course you never heard back...) So you can reply to appreview@apple.com (of course no one ever mentions a name, a phone-number or a proper reason in those rejection mails) and argue, but unless you're able to make a big fuzz, you won't ever hear back from them. Unless you now want to cripple your game by changing random things and hopeing that this will make it more appropriate for the AppStore, the only thing left to do is to try and submit it again as it is and hope for a more open-minded Mr. X to review your game this time around...

Payment
Apple splits the world in 7 regions and you're only paid for each region where you sold more than $250. If you sold less your money won't go away, but Apple keeps it until you reach $250 in that region.
At the end of each month you have to wait for the Monthly Reports. You'll get one from each of the 7 regions about 2-4 weeks after the end of the month, detailing how much you've sold in each region. Then you have to wait about another month until you're actually paid.
So if you're spending your last money on developing the next big hit, remember to save enough so you can pay the rent for at least two more months.

Refunds
Even though you only get about 70% of the price, if someone asks for a refund you pay the full 100%, leaving you at a 30% loss. So if are an indie and huge crowd decides they're unhappy with your App, they can effectively ruin you.

These are just a few things to be aware of when developing for the iPhone...

Raw Data, XML and PHP

2009-04-21T13:51:00.010+02:00

Tim Berners-Lee did a talk at TED about open, linked data, and even though the talk was a little weird, it was also sort of inspiring...
In short his point is this: Don't just put your documents on the web, put your raw data on the web.

So for the next game I will release highscores-data as XML-files! (Of course I'll also make a pretty website for all the people who don't appreciate raw data as much as Tim Berners-Lee...) The cool thing about the highscores in XML is that everyone who's willing can easily create his/her own highscores-site!

Now for the boring part:

The XML files are created with PHP5's XMLWriter class. Since I couldn't find a good enough example on how to use it, here's one for you:


$writer = new XMLWriter();
$writer->openURI('myXmlFile.xml');
$writer->startDocument("1.0", "ISO-8859-1");
$writer->setIndent(true);

$writer->startElement("highscores");
$writer->startElement("record");
  $writer->startElement("rank");
       $writer->text("1");
  $writer->endElement();
  $writer->startElement("player");
       $writer->text("Racer1");
  $writer->endElement();
  $writer->startElement("countrycode");
       $writer->text("US");
  $writer->endElement();
  $writer->startElement("laptime");
     $writer->text("26.42");
  $writer->endElement();
$writer->endElement();
$writer->endElement();

$writer->endDocument();
$writer->flush();

This will result in XML-file like this.

I'll post more info about where to access those files and how to use them once the game has launched...

Возраст Керлинг

2009-04-15T13:10:00.008+02:00

Wow. Yesterday saw 1426 unique new players entering Age of Curling!
Too bad only 50 of those actually paid for it...

The 50%-off-sale together with the World Men's Championship caused a bit of a spike in sales, but nothing compared to yesterday's overall-users-spike when version 1.2.8 got cracked and put up on every single russian iphone site in the universe...

Phew - good thing I live in fairytale-land where you don't have to pay for food and rent...
Well, at least it's out there and people seem to like it... on that note (google translation):

Надеюсь, вам понравится игра, пожалуйста, сообщите своим друзьям!

PS: boring bonus-fact: Overall piracy rate isn't too bad. Currently it's at about 66%, so for each paying customer out there, there's 2 pirates... Rumor has it that for PC-games it's about 90%...

The Next Game

2009-04-08T10:25:00.002+02:00

MAY 2009

well, sorry, it's still a little too early to tell you any more than this... BUT: if you've got an iPhone or iPod Touch and want to be a beta-tester - let me know now :]

Not the next game

2009-04-08T09:39:00.004+02:00

This was supposed to by the first BLACKISH game. I basically only started work on Age of Curling because there was a bug in the first release of unity iPhone that prevented me from finishing this game. But it's still alive and kicking, the bug has been fixed a long time ago, and it will see the light of day sometime this year...

Modo script: Export As FBX

2009-03-31T12:07:00.006+02:00

Unity doesn't support Modo's LXO file format directly, so we have to use FBX. I can't save all my files directly as FBX though since FBX doesn't store much of the Modo-specific information that LXO saves (try saving an LXO as FBX, close it and open up the FBX, you'll see...)

That's why I work with LXO files and only export to FBX every time I want to see the updated model in Unity. This results in going through the boring Export As dialog quite often. well... not anymore!

This little perl script exports your active scene as an FBX with the same filename and into the same directory! Install, set to a shortcut, 6 clicks and 10 seconds saved every time you export!

Installation:
• Copy into /Users/LoginName/Library/Application Support/Luxology/Scripts/
• Execute by typing this into the command field at the bottom right in Modo: @ExportAsFBX.pl
• Set a shortcut key by dragging the command area big enough to see further options, go to the Undos tab, right-click on the entry of @ExportAsFBX.pl that was just created when you ran the script, select Map Command to Key... and choose the shortcut you want!

GDC from home

2009-03-24T09:14:00.005+01:00

Since the cost of going to GDC equals funding of about 2 months of development, I'm watching the events from home. Here's some articles that caught my attention and some random comments to go with it though:

2D Boy talk about the development of World of Goo. They calculated that development cost about USD 96.000,- (that is for a team of two and two years of development time). Of those 96k they spent 4k on hardware, 1k on software, 5k on QA, 5k on localization and 5k for legal fees. That leaves 76k for living, thus around USD 1.500,- per person per month. (at the moment that converts to about EUR 1.100,-)

That's pretty close to what I'm currently aiming for... It doesn't take big investments to become an indie game developer - you need a home, a computer+software and enough money for food. - With a normal place, normal insurance, no car and no special treats it should be possible to get by with around EUR 13.000,- per year. The problem is this though: If you don't manage to make a great game in that time, you could just as well take that money and throw it out the window... or go on a half-year vacation... or give it to charity... It's all about the quality and originality of the game!

Monkey Ball iPhone Lessons: mostly blah blah, but 2 interesting points: They think waiting a long while before dropping the price caused it to have a bigger impact then. Who knows... could be true...
And number 2: For iPhone games, user reviews are much more important than any review score anywhere on the web. My experience is the same and I have data to support it... :]

Skip this boring list of game development tools, Unity is the way to go.

Neill Young hypes his own business field, announces endless sequels to best-selling game and wow - ngmoco managed to secure $10 million in funding? impressive...

Unity 2.5 is out and iPhone OS 3.0 was announced

2009-03-18T14:01:00.005+01:00

Unity 2.5 is out - New Interface, lots of improvements and Windows support. Looking good! Almost too good... oh please don't get bought by Autodesk or the likes...

iPhone OS 3.0 was announced... lots of interesting stuff, but not all too much that will change my life drastically. The one novelty that caught my special attention was ingame-purchases.

On one hand it's a good idea: it allows you to set a very low price-point for your game (which lets you stay competitive with all the low-price-crap - 25000 Apps are out there now), yet gives you the opportunity to make more money from people who like the game. BUT on the other hand it's very very very bad because I can already see everyone trying to charge for everything possible...

Alpha Issues

2009-03-02T10:58:00.003+01:00

Unity being able to read PSD files is great! But not so much if you're using transparency, since then all files end up as Premultiplied with White, yet they are treated as Straight RGB by Unity...

Look at the first row here:

Broken... Here's 2 ways to fix this:

Create your own straight RGB + alpha channel. The simplest (slightly hackish) way to do this is the following:
1. Flatten everything (make sure you have no background layer), Select Pixels (Cmd+LMB on the layer thumb), switch to Channels, create New Channel, fill with black, deselect, invert.
2. switch back to the layers palette, duplicate your layer about 50 times until pretty much every pixel that's not black in the alpha is opaque here. fill the background in any color you like, it won't matter... (unless this is for a texture that will be mipmapped... in that case choose the color wisely or use something like the (free) Flaming Pear Solidify A Filter in Photoshop to fill the gaps...)
Save for Web and Devices as PNG - this will save it Straight, will look right in Unity

Premultiplied vs. Straight RGB

2009-03-02T10:17:00.005+01:00

A simple example of what's the difference between premultiplied and straight footage: Here's how a black pixel at 50% opacity is treated in two different cases:

Premultiplied with white: in RGB the pixel is saved as grey (half-transparent black on white) and the Alpha-Channel is the same grey (fully opaque is white, fully transparent is black, so 50% opaque is 50% grey)
Straight: RGB: any transparency is being ignored, the black pixel is saved as straight black. Alpha: 50% grey

Note: Premultiplied with black would coincidentally yield the same result as Straight in this case - but not if your image contains anything else than black and transparent blacks!

No matter what the RGB is, the Alpha is always the same.
So why would anyone ever want to use Premultiplied?
Well, 2 reasons:

Some programs can divide the background-color out of the image and display a proper result (check the Footage Interpretation dialogue in After Effects for example), it's only a problem when a program interprets Premutliplied footage as Straight...
because premultiplied footage is easier to look at and doesn't look broken to anyone who isn't "in the know"...

Modeling Racetrack Collision Meshes

2009-02-26T14:57:00.006+01:00

While working on a racing-game-idea, I noticed that sometimes parts of a track seemed to be really bumpy for no apparent reason. Have a look:

Looks alright, doesn't it? Well, as I already suggested there is of course a reason for this and it's actually not all that non-apparent now that I figured it out...

What happens is this: I model a track in quads, change it around a lot, finally export/import it and notice that it's bumpy in Unity. The reason is that the quads get triangulated automatically on import as game-engines only work with triangles. This is not a problem by itself, it only becomes a problem if the quads are non-planar (- that means that not all 4 vertices of a polygon are on the same plane). If you triangulate non-planar quads you get this result:

not so nice... now there's several possible solutions:

1.) Try to make all polygons planar by hand - this is a pain, as fixing one breaks two others...
2.) Subdivide until you have enough polygons to ensure a smooth ride - this is suboptimal because performance goes down if the collision mesh is too dense. But how much polygons you need depends very much on your track and game, so only testing can determine if this is a viable solution...
3.) Change the texture to something that looks bumpy ;)

or 4.) Recreate the polygons in a way that ensures they're planar: Create a Cone that contains the wanted curve, delete the base, flip the polygons, delete all the other polygons you don't need and replace those non-planar troublemakers...

PS: Modo-Tip: In the Statistics pane under Polygons > By Type > Non-Planar you can select all non-planar polygons to see where troubles might occur

UnityScript: Splitting strings and some type-conversion

2009-02-19T14:34:00.006+01:00

How to split a string of values into an array and convert the result from string to float:

var myString : String = "22.1|23.2|26.8|31.4";
var myStringArray = myString.Split(char.Parse("|"));
var myFloatArray = new float[myStringArray.length];

for(i = 0; i < myStringArray.length; i++) {
myFloatArray[i] = parseFloat(myStringArray[i]);
}

Making a living with iPhone games

2009-02-17T11:15:00.007+01:00

You might want to skip this post, it's all tax talk and the numbers are specific for Austria...

Anyway, what I wanted to share are some of my calculations as to what's the bare minimum a single indie-game-iPhone-developer needs to sell to survive. (If you ever want to go on vacation, get a car, have kids or something like that, you should aim a little higher...)

If you stumbled upon this looking for actual app store iphone game sales numbers, get some here, here, here, here, here, maybe here or if you really want to even here for god's sake. But now to my story:

App Store
Hypothetical iPhone Developer X has made a little game and is selling it on the App Store. How much does he need to sell to make a living?

Let's say he has 3210 sales in one month (about 107 a day) at EUR 0,79. (or 1600 at 1,59 | 855 at 2,99)
3210 sales x EUR 0,79 = EUR 2.535,90. Wow, no trouble surviving on that, right?

End of story.

Or wait, we forgot to subtract a few things. Apple keeps upwards of 30%, the rest of the money is transferred to him from 7 different places so he might have to pay a transaction fee of about EUR 10,- for all payments coming in a different currency from outside the EU and what he gets also depends on where his game was bought (what the actual price is in that country) and what the exchange rate is at the time of the transaction.

X's bank account
What makes its way onto X's bank account will be more like EUR 1.500,- I'll call this his turnover

- 20% Value Added Tax: well, not in this case, no VAT left in the money he gets from Apple.

- work related expenses, let's assume EUR 200,- for internet, phone, domain hosting, work-related insurances (liability, legal protection) and all other stuff he can deduct from tax.

Income Before Tax
EUR 1.300,- left now. This is called Income Before Tax and the following is subtracted from it:

- 25.18% for Social Security (EUR 327.34)
(16% retirement insurance, 7.65% health insurance, 1.53% self employment provision)

- EUR 7,84 Accident Insurance (fixed amount of EUR 94,08 annually)

Income
What's left now is his Income: EUR 964,82

- income tax: Almost none in this case, as the first EUR 11.000,- per year are tax-free, but let's assume he has an income of around EUR 1.000,- per month or EUR 12.000,- per year. That's EUR 1.000,- above the limit and X has to pay 36.5% taxes for that amount, which is EUR 365,- annually, or EUR 30,42 income tax for this month.

So of the initial EUR 2535,90...

Apple gets about EUR 1000,-
EUR 335,18 are payed for social security
EUR 30,42 are payed as income tax
EUR 200,- were assumed for work expenses

and that leaves X with EUR 970,30 to pay for rent, food, transportation, savings, entertainment, etc.

PS: Of course all the taxes aren't calculated monthly, where would be the fun in that? Instead for social security for example you tell them expected annual earnings, they calculate the tax off of that, you pay it quarterly in advance and at the end of the year there's a tax invoice being made that has all the right numbers.

Conclusion
Put half of what you get into a separate bank account, don't touch it for the rest of the year (until after the next tax invoice) and you should be on the safe side...

A solar system

2009-02-16T17:42:00.004+01:00

This is the sun, it's about 10 cm big. The earth is traveling through space somewhere around 12 m from here. It's not even 1mm big and traveling at a slow 4.5mm per hour...

Let's say you're working on a game set in space and you wanted to make it a bit more realistic than the average space-game - you might not want to be all too accurate with the numbers or it will be very very empty and very very slow...

Age of Curling Trailer

2009-01-29T18:09:00.004+01:00

Age of Curling: AI

2009-01-21T16:12:00.004+01:00

Since a lot of people asked for it, I've been working on a computer opponent to play against. After some weeks of work it's now close to being done and I'll let you have a first look at it!

What was that? AI can't really be seen in a screenshot? Ok, well then let me tell you something about it instead... ;)

It analyzes the position of the stones in play and decides on a throw based on the current score, the position of the stones and the phase of the end.
It knows more than 50 moves (and I'll keep adding even more with every update)
It has a skipper to give you a basic idea of what it's trying to achieve
You don't have to watch the entire throw, you can fast forward right to the point where it gets interesting (= where the stone crosses the far hog-line)

Now just a few more days of polish and testing and it will be ready to go live!

Standard Arrays can not be typed

2009-01-20T17:24:00.005+01:00

A long-time mistake of mine: Trying to type standard arrays like this:

var arr = new Array(int); //stupid - standard arrays can't be typed

This is very wrong, as it puts the Type Int32 into the newly created array which of course causes problems once you're trying to get to all those other ints that you stored in the array. So everytime I tried to use this I had to come up with some other solution in the end... converting back and forth from standard to builtin, etc...

The correct way is of course to just create the Array with var arr = new Array(); - then fill it and once you're trying to use the contents you type each value as you take it out of the array...

Builtin-Arrays on the other hand are typed, so if you don't need the extra functionality and flexibility, just do it this way:

var posGridA = new int[7]; //builtin arrays are typed!

- Thanks to NCarter for enlightening me!

changing prefab-script-variables from within the game

2009-01-15T13:03:00.004+01:00

I was looking for a way to save moves that happen in the game. After some discussions on IRC and getting very close to writing out textfiles, I figured out a way to do it more easily:

If I Resource.Load("name", type) a script that I have on a prefab in the Resources folder without instantiating it, I can then write my values in there and they persist even when I stop the game!

PVRTC Texture Compression News

2009-01-07T12:02:00.004+01:00

Turns out textures only get PVRTC-compressed if they are square, but Unity only complains if the size is not a power of two. So it doesn't complain about a texture being 1024x512px, but this texture also doesn't get compressed. The result of this is that 3 of the now 4 venues in Age of Curling have uncompressed textures. Still that's 2x good news for the players:

Since the game is optimized enough to still run at great speed even with uncompressed textures, the 3 older venues have crisp textures without compression artifacts!
The new venue (plus future venues) can use bigger textures since we can fit more of them into the tiny iPhone-memory!

Sneak Preview

2009-01-04T20:16:00.005+01:00

Age of Curling v1.1 will be out in a few days. Among other things, the update brings a new venue - an 18th century Scottish castle:

Snapping in Modo

2008-12-28T13:06:00.004+01:00

As intuitive as most parts of modo are, I don't think snapping is all that easy to "get"... Or at least I haven't really gotten it entirely yet. But I came one step closer today:

The Task: Find an easy way to snap a vertex to another vertex within the same Item

Solution: Enable Snapping in Geometry Mode and then in the Tool Properties on the left, make sure to select either "Foreground" or "Both" under Layers (not realizing that this option exists was my long-time mistake, as it was set to "Background" by default). Now press [t] for the Element Move Tool and start snapping vertices!

Bonus Tip: Check the Snaps and Precision pop-out-menu unter Basic Tools...

Age of Curling

2008-12-15T10:14:00.004+01:00

Out now for the iPhone!

http://games.blackish.at/ageofcurling/

Modo: Spherical Maps

2008-12-08T19:44:00.001+01:00

More details about my findings when trying to create spherical reflection maps...
This is a scene from the iPhone-game I'm working on:

I placed a sphere in the center of the scene, applied a 100% reflective material (no specular or other stuff) and tried Render > Bake to Render Outputs...

Well... Not all that great. Turns out the position of the camera is quite important here too. The trick is to place the camera inside the sphere:

Voilà - perfect result.

PS: Well, a couple of other things needed to be set up too... Render/Global Illumination: Ambient Intensity to 1.0, Ambient Color to pure white, Final Color Output: Gamma to 1.0...

Well, just see for yourself. Here's a file containing the setup for both cubemap rendering and spherical map baking: cubemapBakingSetupEmpty.lxo

Modo: Rendering Cubemaps

2008-12-08T19:06:00.008+01:00

So... A few more details about the cubemap rendering setup:

Cameras set up so that the image-planes meet at the edges, oriented correctly and named correctly.
Now set the Renderer to output a square size and render an image with each cam (if someone finds a way to automate this with a script or something, please let me know - it gets boring after a while...).
Assemble the pieces in Photoshop (or the likes) and done we are:

Modo: Rendering Cubemaps and Baking Spherical Maps

2008-12-03T18:51:00.003+01:00

The other day I wanted to get some good reflections on an object but didn't want to place it in another scene. (I should have, it would have been faster. But at least I learned something new this way...) So I set up a scene with 6 cameras and rendered a cubemap to use as an environment texture for the new object. Turns out it's not that simple as modo doesn't quite like cubemaps on the environment. So I had to come up with a new way and created a spherical map, which worked out great...

Cubemap: set up 6 cameras and render an image with each one; assemble in photoshop...
Spherical Map: make a reflective sphere with a good uv layout and bake to texture...

remind me to go into more detail and post some screens...

Animating Cameras in Modo for Unity

2008-12-02T10:10:00.008+01:00

There might be a better way, but this is how I'm doing it right now:

Set up a scene with a little mesh and a camera parented to that mesh.
Match the camera settings in modo and unity (Since cameras take Field of View in unity and Focal Length in modo, you might want to look at this converter)
Animate not the camera but the little mesh
Export the scene as FBX and import it into unity
Put a camera on the little mesh, set the y-rotation to 180

Ideas for the future: Test if it would work to just animate the camera and after importing into unity replace the now empty camera-item with an actual camera that has the same name...

Draw Calls

2008-11-06T11:17:00.004+01:00

Based on a bit of research, watching the Unite '07 Performance Optimization talk and talking on the unity forums:

Each material on each mesh causes one draw-call per frame, per light that affects it and per camera that sees it.

If I have 1 mesh with 20 seperate textures, only ambient light, one camera, this will also result in 20 draw-calls. If I would combine the 20 textures into one atlas the scene would now only need a single draw-call.

If I have 20 meshes with one texture each, only ambient light, one camera, this will result in 20 draw-calls. If I would combine all the textures into one big atlas, the scene would still require 20 draw-calls, even though all the objects would now use the same texture.

The only way to optimize here would be to combine meshes. But you can only do that if your meshes aren't to move around independently from each other.

PVRTC Texture Compression as seen on the iPhone

2008-11-03T18:06:00.003+01:00

PVRTC is a block-based texture compression, that means that it works with groups of pixels. Problems mostly show up in high contrast areas where too many different extremes meet.

"It uses a representation that is based on the blending of two 'low frequency' signals using a high frequency but low precision modulation signal." So when compressing, it takes your image, creates two small blurry versions and a modulation image. When putting it back together it calculates the value of each pixel like this: It scales the 2 small images back up and samples the 2 colors from the right location, and then decides which shade in between the 2 values to take based on the modulation image.

There's an example on page 4 here, just look at Figure 3 and Figure 2: http://web.onetel.net.uk/~simonnihal/assorted3d/fenney03texcomp.pdf
(This is the doc I quoted above)

So the solution is very simple, isn't it? Just try not to use more than 3 different colors in each 4x4 pixel block... ;]

A thread on the unity forum about this topic

Modo: Baking Textures with Indirect Illumination

2008-10-31T10:21:00.004+01:00

Camera Position matters a great deal when baking Indirect Illumination! Look at the example below. - This is part of the ceiling of a room where the camera was on one end when baking. Notice how the quality deteriorates towards the right:

Once I moved the camera below the room, moved it a bit away from the scene and pointed it up, the result improved greatly. (Of course I had to adjust the Indirect Illumination settings a bit to get good results with the camera further away from the scene)

And while I'm at it:

A short summary of what the Irradiance Caching Options do for future reference (info from the modo user guide):

The difference between Indirect Illumination with or without Irradiance Caching is that "Irradiance Caching relies on much higher quality samples distributed sparsely across the project whereas Indirect Illumination without Irradiance Caching uses lower quality samples at every pixel."

Irradiance Rays: Number of rays fired
Supersampling: After all rays have been fired, this fires 25% additional rays into difficult areas
Irradiance Rate: Minimum distance between screen-pixels on the surface where irradiance is computed
Irradiance Ratio: Ratio between minimum spacing (Irradiance Rate) and maximum spacing between computed values
Interpolation Values: How many nearby values are required to interpolate? if not enough values are found, it forces the computation of a new value

Modo: Push towards Mesh Constraint

2008-10-30T10:49:00.004+01:00

I knew I had seen this in a video somewhere and had tried it before, but now that I needed it, I just couldn't figure out how to do it. (And I couldn't find the video anymore either) So it took a while, but I got it to do what I wanted it to in the end:

I had a sculpted asteroid and a simple sphere and I wanted the sphere to match the asteroid as closely as possible. This is how it works:

Make the highpoly mesh be the background
Under Snapping select Constrain to: Background
Use the Push Tool (under Deform) on the Sphere to push it towards the constraint

Some Unity iPhone related findings on the forum

2008-10-27T15:58:00.006+01:00

How to use position from touches (my script)
Simple tilt to move demo project
Writing a file to the iPhone and reading from it
useGUILayout = false can prevent huge framerate drops when touching the screen
how to change the default xcode project that unity uses as a template for every build

I'll continue updating this post...

Unity for the iPhone has been released!

2008-10-23T11:44:00.004+02:00

Some first findings and useful bits:

Change to horizontal orientation (Widescreen):
iPhoneSettings.verticalOrientation = false;
You have to make a typed reference to a script before you can use it like any other component:
var xy : myscript = myobj.GetComponent("myscript");
xy.DoStuff();