Chase cam - quick and dirty...very dirty

Yeah it's a bit rough, but you know, I've never found a polished stone sitting out in nature, so I think it's okay to start this way.  Also I had to do it in 2 parts because it was too long.  I think I will keep a stopwatch on hand from now on.

I'm contemplating ways to keep the walls out of the way and maybe I will try ray tracing.  If it hits a wall, move forward a bit--something to that effect.  You know, the really crappy thing about doing things this way is that I feel like everything I want to do I have to re-invent the wheel.  But that's also the great thing in a way...I feel like my brain is expanding every day!  On that note, I think I will start a new feature soon where I take the API functions I have used so far and expound on them based on what I have had to figure out.  We'll see....

Vectors!

 

 This video is my attempt to explain the very basics of vectors and how to use them.  I specifically hit on normalization and how that is useful.

Effective advertising

So the end goal for any indie game developer is to make at least enough money to be able to continue making games.  I have been researching some of the options available for earning money from games and the tough part now is to decide on what to do.  I know that it may be a bit early to think about it when the game is so far from completion, but I like to have some idea what I may do in case it will effect the development.  So far I have heard of these options:

• Virtual currency
• Direct in-game purchases
• Pay to play(subscription)
• Charge for the game
• Charge for expansions
• Advertising
• Donations
• Sell to a publisher or game portal
• Some variation of the above

The difficult thing is finding the right balance.  You don't want money to get in the way of the game and yet you need money to continue to improve the quality of games that you can provide.  Even if you go strictly with open source and free tools,  and do all the coding, design, art and sound yourself, you will still have to worry about somehow getting test devices, upkeep on your hardware, application fees for app stores, etc.  And let's face it, if you work alone there is a limit to the kinds of games you can produce in a reasonable amount of time.  For a simple game like Radioactive, I think I am leaning towards either pay up front or make it free and pay for expansions, but we'll see!

Local and global coordinate systems

 

I wanted to get several videos done today, but life has a way of getting busy.  I have done quite a bit of work on the game in reference to trying to figure out the right way to code a chase cam that will act the way I want.  I think I have a good start and so now I am doing the videos.  The first is this one that talks about coordinate systems so that we have a basis for some of the code I had to write.  Next we will talk vectors.

3DConnexion SpaceNavigator profile for Blender 2.5

I had a request from my YouTube channel for the SpaceNavigator profile I use in Blender 2.5, so here it is: http://sites.google.com/site/subspacegames/blender.xml. Feel free to use it and modify it all you want.  If you have no idea what I am talking about, my video for the SpaceNavigator is here.

Added some walls

 

Nothing too exciting on this one--I didn't have as much time as I would have liked, but we now have walls and I increased the power of the ball.

Challenges with the diversity of the Android Market

For those of you interested in hitting the Android market, Gamasutra has an interesting article about the Android market.  I have to be honest, the idea of publishing to the Android is a bit intimidating, but only because there are so many different form factors to test.  The same goes for Blackberry, but to a lesser degree.  The nice thing about ShiVa is that everything scales to whatever resolution you are running in.  Of course you still need to check that things aren't too small, etc, but at least from what I have seen so far it works pretty well.  I'm hoping that the same can be said for Corona since that will be my next project.