Candy Crash – A Halloween Game
I recently had a sudden urge to make a Halloween game. As a result, I quickly whipped something together in about three days. Enjoy all its super amazingness+1!
Description:
It is Halloween night!
Well past your bedtime, you have landed the biggest score of candy ever. However, on your way back home, you have tripped and spilled your candy all over. Already high on too much sugar, your imagination goes wild as you find yourself caught in a monster mash.
You must recover as much candy as you can before you are overcome by your wild fears of ghosts, ghouls, vampire bats and spooky graveyards.
Features:
Local Scoreboard
Solid Touch Controls
Fun Challenging Atmosphere
A Kid in a Ninja Costume!
Pumpkins and Jack-o'-lanterns!
HTML5 Version
Play Now
Available for Android devices via
Google Play
Amazon.com
Direct APK download
Available for iOS devices via
iTunes
Available for Windows via
Direct Download
Available for Mac via
Direct Download
[Book Review] Unity iOS Game Development Beginner’s Guide
While going through this book, I tried to imagine myself as a beginner with little to no previous experience with Unity. With that perspective in mind, I felt like I came away with little to show for my time invested into this text. That isn't to say there wasn't useful information to help one get started out. However, there just didn't seem to be an appropriate pacing or coherent order of material to help me feel confident when continuing with Unity.
To the book's credit, I never felt like it was swamping me with too much information at once. It stayed reasonably comfortable to follow along with and had me never feeling completely lost. But again, the general topics covered seemed to jump around with little warning, at times feeling like a wild ride through someone's last minute check list. I had a difficult time anticipating where the instructions were going to inevitably lead me, and it offered myself only a slight sense of being an active participator in its exercises.
An example to help relate the book's textual inconsistency is revealed by the fact that quiz questions are given at the end of the first two chapters but fail to appear in the following chapters. This may seem trivial, but it is an odd pattern to begin with and to suddenly drop. And just so everyone knows, I love quiz questions at the end of a chapter! :D
I wish the book spent less time on how to use third party plugins and more time going through real world examples of how to achieve varied control styles or game mechanics tailored for iOS devices. I believe it could have benefited from including such a topic as raycasting, something which I considered vital for my own projects, as the iOS version of Unity does not recognize user input on game objects like the PC or Mac version. For example, the OnMouseDown() callback is not recognized on game objects for iOS, thus requiring raycasting to be used inorder to directly interact with objects when touched.
I found too many subjects just briefly touched upon. Some chapters have a sense of being incomplete and not following through with teaching the functionality promised in the book's advertisement. I wouldn't be so bothered by this fact if the book didn't advertise itself with overhyped expectations.
Being somewhat of an experienced Unity user, I was satisfied with some useful morsels of information which I gleaned from this book, but I am glad that I have the experience already behind me to fill in the blanks that I felt were missing on some subjects.
If you are a fledgling beginner with Unity and iPhone development, this book might be okay to start with. Despite its shortcomings, I still found myself able to get through it quite easily and learn some new things along the way. But, don't expect it to make you a whiz or even leave you with a well rounded knowledge of Unity basics. Expect further books, tutorials, and hands on experience to fill in the other basic concepts you will need to know along your adventures.
FINAL VERDICT: 5/10
[Contain] Released for iOS (Free)
Contain, my latest game for the iPhone and iPod Touch has been released.
This project was great for improving my skills with both Objective-C and Xcode.
I look forward to updating it to include Openfeint and other enhancements.
It is available as a free download.
You can check it out on the app store HERE
And here, I leave you with some amazing video footage :P
[Epic Tic Tac Toe] Released for iOS (Free)
After what has felt like years of development (maybe it has been) I have finally released my first game for iOS devices.
See here: Epic Tic Tac Toe on iTunes
Work on the game began early this year, but despite its apparent simplicity, many discouraging frustrations surfaced. I had to learn a new engine (iTorque 2d) and the ins and outs of working through Apple's process for publishing a game to their service. All of this was completely new and at times confusing. These things mixed with pockets of lacking motivation and haunting distraction really made this process painstakingly tedious.
But, what was truly accomplished?
1) A game was actually completed from start to finish!
2) I learned how to register and form an official business with my friend Cody Penner (DagurDragon.com)
3) Improved skill at working with engines at both the high (scripting) and low (programming) levels.
4) Maintained persistence and worked towards completion, even when unmotivated.
5) Established a foundation for further games (hopefully even more epic) to be released.
And now its time to see how yet another tic tac toe game is received out there. But I do believe it does have its own unique charm which should help it shine above the plethora of others.
Epic Tic Tac Toe can be downloaded for free from the app store.
