Every little thing in making a game is a hurdle, or at least a dozen google searches then a hurdle
Today wrote my own InputManager for multi touch, made it way smarter than I should have, it will look for a special component on the object you touch ( which it find by doing ray cast from the camera ) if none was found it can look at the object parent, and parents parent etc till it finds one, it can also contact ALL parents if they have a listener on them, simple really. I can also have it auto add a component to the touched object that caches all this so it is fast without having to perform lookups every time.. like a boss
So code to have good component orientated design to handle touching the iPad screen:
But that's a bit misleading as that contains code to auto add components and handle duplicate objects, singletons and such
:-)
But you get the idea, every little tiny thing, involves 100 other tiny things and so on
Lets not even think about how the ray cast to find the touched object itself is leaning on 1000's of lines of physic engine code and scene caches to aid in speed
Speaking of ridiculous code, I have been slowly write examples for various c# concepts and functionality...
All of this, and none of it actually visibly does a damn thing. In fact at his point all I have done in Unity is make a box move, but I decided to learn the language first so learn it I shall *grumble*
Unity3D is amazing, great, wonderful etc etc
And then you get all excited about having spent all year reading and learning C# in depth like a boss. Having read the entire Unity manual, 100's of articles.... 1000's of articles....
And then... aaaand then... you can't even figure out how to draw a simple rounded rectangle on the screen to make a button. Basic things you take for granted in Flash completely missing in Unity. As Unity really is more of an operating system for making things. And so off you must head to the asset store and goole to find someone else's code to solve this. And then you find dozens of approaches, some long ago abandoned and longer updated, and the best ones no longer developed as Unity snatched the debs up and employed them! How is drawing a simple shape so complicated!
In any case, I decided to create a rounded rectangle in vector style using no bitmap data, found Vectrosity was super good at turn lines into polygons that then draw on the screen to look like well... lines. Nicked some kind to draw circles, put them together in a class and tadda the rounded rectangle drawing class was born:
And yah it has a glitch in it, but otherwise good job team me only took me several days of googling and trying to find a compromise
Ok now to just draw it the size I want and make it fit the width of the screen on ipad/ios etc etc...
Seriously... ok this too is hard apparently!
Which sprite / UI manager do I use, NGUI, SpriteManager, EZGUI..... on and on, oh Unity is bring out a new GUI system... they said a year ago... ok can't wait for that
Screw it, made my own Transform like class with relative scaling, positioning and all that fancy jazz. Took longer than I thought... many days arguably wasted
:-)
Now I need to draw my Logo, but at a different location and scale depending on the screen size, screen dpi.. orientation... oh god, what can of worms is this....
So I write that by having multiple copies of my special Transform and a script that picks which one of those to use based on criteria....
And there you have it, several weeks to get my logo and a rounded rectangle drawn to the screen exactly where I want it
This while making a game thing... could end up taking quite some time I think :-S
In the process made some weird looking stuff!
First attempt at rounded rectangle created some weird bacon like creations:
Rectangles ahoy:
Playtime with procedurally rounded rectangles!, Oh the fun I have:
Tinkered with making 3D looking text:
While a dead end due to technical limitations amongst other things, I enjoyed exploring the visual style of what I cam to call 'Lumen'
Here are some of the explorations
So here it is My new Logo / Brand for producing software and games under.. that is if I ever get anything finished -_-
This has taken a disproportionate amount of time for how important it really is. But it mattered to me personally to get right.
On iPhone and iPad:
This is what 100's of hours of logo design and pondering possible names looks like condensed. Which scarily doesn't look like that much work, but naturally I am only taking screenshots when I remember to, shame I don't have a time lapse of this
:-)
It's not that I'm so smart, It's just that I stay with problems longer -- Einstein
The original round logo on fire used on my personal Portfolio / Gallery was started in Jan 2006
And the reworking was done November 2011 which produced 'Roundtree'
Though it bugged my how it sounded like a famous brand Rowntree so I restyled it to the Lonetree name around July 2013 which served me internally for a year and shows up in the work in progress for my game.
To then start redoing the name again in June 2014 as I was finally buying the domain and hosting and just didn't 'feel it'
So Below is the various historical progress / messing aboutness's
Funny I basically had the logo after about 2 minutes but took me several hours to turn it into a tree as negative space. But that's what art is, when to keep messing with something and when to stop
I have always loved the old Bungie Marathon Logo ( which supposedly represents the hollowed out moon of Mars; Deimos that forms the U.E.S.C. spaceship Marathon
This all started with me doodling over the top of my current Logo and distorting it as I just wanted to tweak it a bit, not redesign it
I am not including all the work in progress for this starting point logo, it is included in this blog inside Y2006-Mo01-Website article titled 'My Website'
And then somehow right away drew a circle, and cut a piece of it
So that was it, remove the other circle, and I had redesigned my logo in 5 minutes!!
Except I kept going because I hadn't seen the symbolism and pure minimalism in that logo.
So over the course of several hundred hours I kept inventing
A very cryptic version of Alex Lovett as an X and L, my cleverness knows no bounds, bounds such as being able to even read it.
And I'm always googling to see if other people have heavily copied an idea of mine before I use it
:-P
Link is a cool word, double also cool. Also. I probably should have just stopped here
Ahh had, I see for the first time, it looks a bit like a very neat tree. And I do very much like the name, though it lacks character being just a purely descriptive name. And I may have stopped here and revelled in my cleverness but both com and co.uk domains for it are not available. Though I could have had RoundtreeStudios.co.uk. But more concerning than all of that is the very famous Rowntree fruit pastel company that we have here in the UK. And I can't escape how annoyingly close that is... so on I continue
I finally give in and try to think of some other names that are not so close to Rowntree.
Lonetree is pretty good and has more character, and symbolic of how alone I am, a lone develop, the solitary tree that grows, if at all, grows strongest and all that. But it still bugs me how it sounds like 'loan tree' and that it sounds a bit sad and pathetic being 'lone' as cool as 'lone ranger'
And lone tree stuck for a long long time. But ever time it came to buying the domain. I'd flinch, It doesn't feel right. Mostly because of the 'loan' sounding part. I want a name I can say in conversation and not feel stupid or have to spell it out.
code core sounds cool, but is a bit cold and nerdy... which is how I have become lately but doesn't mean I want that reflected in my logo
Yes for a brief moment I feel in love with code root. Finding the WWW really annoying as the smaller newer UK suffix looks out of balance, I tried a few hundred permutations on joint W's and V's together in vein.
Back to the drawing board.. again
Oooh, Ghostree, I like that. it has character, for boding ness.
So close to buying this one, getting fed up... but I still find it a bit embarrassing to say out loud. And I keep reading it over and over and it has become gost-ree to me. The sharing of the T while amazingly clever is a bit of a bastard portmanteau really. Ghost and tree are not very smooth sounding words.
Wood is better, wood is a good solid sounding, smooth sounding word that goes great on the end of other words.
Hmmm... Make it more minimalist, by removing the eye and the hands, improves it I think
.jpg)
Yes I am taking the piss, gotta love the double meaning, it has been a long day
Ok ok, I got it... I really got it
Shadowood
Sounds bad ass, rolls off the tongue, letters look good apart from 'W' stupid letter. Is actually representative of what the logo is. And is available in .co.uk domain
:-P
But yes it is a lot less 'original' and has some million search results on google compared to 10,000 for Ghostree
Nailed it, Shake six, I'm out here
Well lets play with some colours now
:-P
For amusement here is my scratch pad of namingness, I went at this for 100's of hours, it is ridiculous. Serendipity takes hard work. Then it looks clever ( till you know what went on behind the scenes )
Tools
Link: www.litscape.com --- 4_letter_t_end_words
Link: forum.chaos-project.com
Link: www.werdmerge.com
Link: www.degraeve.com --- invent-a-word
Link: alienname.com
Concepts
Misspell word
Compound words ( 2 words added )
Gumtree
portmanteau ( combine two works by joining sounds )
Mixel
Stormtronics
Enterbrain
Microsoft
Use clever domain extensions
Art.sy
Lonetr.ee
Oxymorons
Ice on Fire
Old Babies
Backwards ( last resort )
Azzip -> PIZZA
Something vidid and stupid or unexpected
BlueBananaa
BigAssTree
Mediocre Games
AngryBee Games
Random
Porcelain Chicken
Chinese Fried Tofu
Common Name Structures
Here is a list of common company name structures I got from gamedevmap.com, where X is the unique part of your company name
Entertainment (Retard Entertainment)
Interactive (Your Face Interactive)
Studios/Studio (Amazing Studios)
Software/Soft (Very Soft)
Labs/Lab (Evil Minion Labs)
Company/Co/Corp (Shinra Co.)
Media (1337 Media)
Games/Game Development/Development (My Frog Died Yesterday Games)
Online (I Go Online)
Design (Curly Brackets Design)
Systems (Asterisk Systems)
Technology/Tech (Synsys Tech)
Productions
lonetree -- endings
studios @today
software
games
industries
-soft
labs @today
lab
workshop
interactive
Foundry
Factory
Oven
Furnace
Machine
Station
Garage
logic
Domain
tree
outofyourtree
solitree
codetree
gametree
digitree
riotree
upAtree
untree
nonetree
nontree
squirreltree
losttree
Deadtree
digitree
swiftree
lightree
idiotree
ghostree @today
riftree
lostree
rootree
rocketree
modestree
dreamtree
NullTree
VoidTree
BanishedTree
BlankTree
Nihilitree
notree
LonelyTree
LoneTree
notree
FireTree
Hidden tree
lemontree
peartree
orangetree
cherrytree
blacktree @today
-
treetop
treeless
treelike
treeline
-
treality
trealize
arbre ( catalan )
arbre solitari
arbol ( spanish)
albero ( italian )
arbre ( French )
arbre soliatire
arvore ( Portuguese )
wood
woodland
heartwood
roundwood @today
deadwood
redwood
firewood
blankwood
voidwood
nullwood
gamewood
talkingtrees
Linkwood
Dramatic funny odd
Angry
Bright odd colors pinktree
Emotional states or character traits
Negatree
Loopytree
Treeloop
Loopywood
Woodloop
LoneTree
Codewood
oak
blackoak
oakvoid
angryoak
forest
gameforest
roundforest
seed
Seedling
Sapling
green
evergreen
forevergreen
whatevergreen
nevergreen
n'evergreen
clevergreen
deciduous
shrub
bush
root
bark
Ring
Loop
Link
Linkwood
Zero
Zone
Point
Code
Node
Core
Woodcore
Treecore @today
corewood
hollowcore
oakcore
seedcore
coreseed
codecore
root
rootcore
coderoot
treerootnode
treeroot.co.uk @today
coderoot.co.uk @today
drus
trunk
timber
garden
plant
Park
Field
Basin
Bed
Patch
Plot
Yard
Terrace
Oasis
Nursery
Yggdrasil
dryads
plantation
ecology
habitat
dendro
dendrology
Arbourous - formed from trres
arborary, arboreal, arborical
arboreal
arboreality
arboreus
arbor
Arbor vitae
Tree of life
Yuan
Code
Creation
Forge
--prefix
my
our
the
all
in
on
un
--sufix
ly
sy
er
it
ie
io
am
ia
ora
ero
ist
ism
ium
ble
ify
ous
ing
thru
ium
Ented
Arium
Electric
Red
Digital
Round
Singular
Dream
Epiphany
Chromatic Abberation
Solitary
solus, secretum, singularis
Secluded
Solo
One
Augmented
Mirage
Horizon
Circular
Fruits
Seed
Abstract
Creative
Illusory
Illusion
Elusive
Summer
Spring
Elusive Tree
Distorted Reality
Game Garden
Lone tree
Sole tree
Great company naming tells a story that engages and compels
Great company naming glides off the tongue and lands gracefully on the page
Great company naming stakes a claim that is distinctive and trademarkable
And great company naming must do all of this in just a few short syllables
Emotional Bonding Power - When naming a business or developing a product name, are you connecting with your target market? Are you measuring the name's emotional bonding power?
Memorability - Brand name research shows memorability is the true litmus test of exceptional names. Can your target market recall the new product name after seeing it just once?
Latent Association - What negative and positive associations exist with your new corporate name or product name? What barriers have to be overcome with negative latent associations? How does sound symbolism or phono-semantics (the meaning of sounds) affect the evaluation of a name's latent association?
Fit to Concept - Which brand name candidate best positions your company, product or service offering?
Pronouncability - Brand name research reveals what should be common sense: If your target market can't pronounce the brand name, they won't ask for it.
Can you quantify your product name pronouncability?
Sound Symbolism - Does the product name sound right to your target customers? If you're naming a business, does the name sound powerful and established?
Finally making some progress, using new Vray 1.2 It's possible to use proxies with mograph thus allowing vast numbers of polygon objects to be rendered. Image below is made up of thousands of transparent spheres, thus creating a volumetric effect like fire where each sphere is additive so when they clump or overlap it becomes brighter shifting the color up thru the hues to the point of white, which is how light behaves opposed to say paint where it gets darker as you add things.
You can render it using an unbiased light cache method too which actually works pretty fast considering, and gives it a more noisy/stochastic kinda look which smooths out the longer you render (like maxwell render)
Getting it to balance memory and cpu cores was a bit tricky, default render settings tend to lock up and not use multi cores properly when geometry is this dense. Also it seems when polygons overlap exactly as they often do in these cases the renderer locks up focusses on one thread/core hanging all the others and then eventually pushes thru. Tweaking render settings seems to have removed this issue or at least made it less apparent keeping all cores at 100%
In any case it renders fairly fast now compared to previous efforts, though It's still devastatingly slow for animation.
Lots of balls
:-)
And cubes
