There are a total of 0 books on advanced Unity 3D with C#
I mean... seriously, what are you doing learning Unity if you need this bit explaining this verbosely:
That explanation did not need to take up that much space
:-D
Speaking of learning to code, it is funny to think how far I have come, even if it feels like I am not moving sometimes
Not long ago something like this would have made me quite emotional:
And now it just makes me screw my face up a bit
( it was complaining because I was using a nullable values represented by question marks. Your chance of figuring that out if you just started C# about the same as == null ?? -1
It is always darkest, just before it goes pitch black, so only shadows comfort me
Got Unity tracing to Terminal.app in ANSI Color, and with stack tracing if needed wool
And Syntax colour for MonoDevelop, bit pink but what the hell, based on Xcode but Dark
Finally Photoshop has a Dark UI! Rejoyce!
Got Unity tracing to Terminal.app in ANSI Color, and with stack tracing if needed wool
And Syntax colour for MonoDevelop, bit pink but what the hell, based on Xcode but Dark
Finally Photoshop has a Dark UI! Rejoyce!
This is a Logo I recently designed for my new company... which will just be me.. for now
:-)
And of course by company I mean I thought up a name and made a logo nothing official yet
And of course by company I mean I thought up a name and made a logo nothing official yetI have been tossing around various concepts for games for ages now, along with learning real programming languages for the first time unless you count Flash AS3 which is close really.
I didn't mean to design a logo before I even have a game or even a wireframe of a game, but one thing lead to another and out it popped one day.
I guess I have just been so utterly bored of writing code (AS3 with this Topps Tiles job) and studying the manuals of Unity 3D and C Sharp without having produced anything tangible or visual in forever.
I am swinging between incredibly apprehensive and eager to start making games by myself. I just know It's going to turn out to be way more difficult and wrought with disaster that I expect, and I already expect it to be the toughest thing I have ever done. I think I have a relatively unique edge over most people though, it been a long time coming; things have guided me down this path for my whole life I feel, it is my destiny!
I would really love to work with a small team of people instead of it just being me, but to start off it really has to be just me. If it works out, if at some point I prove I have got the taste, the broad skills to pull it off even on a small scale.. then I can start thinking about investing in people to work with.
Right now It's early days, a delicate and fragile thought that could poof out of existence unless carefully nurtured and then fiercely executed.
I have learned a tremendous amount of skills especially over past few years that go nicely towards this, sadly not much in the way of physical evidence to show for it, but It's in my head all right.
If I can just nail execution, and work hard, I can do it
And if I can just stop thinking about how incredibly over saturated the market is and how I could just as easily make $100,000 as I could drift off in the wind and make nothing...
:-|
And that's even if I can pull my shit together and execute 50 hour work weeks for 6 months and not implode, creating your own deadlines and sticking to them is tricky stuff. Creating your own inertia with no guarantee of payoff.
Ok heres the various historical progress / messing about:
Link: helios.mine.nu --- Y2011-Mo11-RoundTree
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?
How to create a super duper SuperTexture, and why you want to
I've been looking into ways to make maps more interesting given the games limitation of 8 ground textures per map, so I set about thinking about possible ways to add unique textures and details for my upcoming mods and maps, I had a few weird ideas I've attached at the bottom for laughs and to possibly spread ideas and find some use for it for someone!
I ended up finding a really nice way of doing it using Doodad-Decals or as I like to call them: super duper SuperTextures, Why would you want it, what is it, what can it achieve?
It should even be possible (haven't tried it just yet) to animate move/show/hide Decals during game play. So you could have the ground texture moving or fading from one texture to another, say to go from Grass to Snowfall and all sorts. Imagine lava rising and covering the lush green planes of your map, with this you could have those lush grass planes set on fire and permanently be replaced by scorched earth after the lava retracts. Note if you animated It's height position it would animate the area it affects fading in.
I did a quick test, this is all done with one single big image texture (2048x2048)
Link: lumen.mine.nu
So this is all done with A single Doodad-Decal, Yes, turns out decals are pretty powerful:
Decals are normally only used for small little arrows, numbers or border lines, turns out nothing is stopping you from making them super large and high res, possibly even covering an entire map in one go.
Other bonus is they can have an alpha mask so they show thru underlaying terrain or even other underlaying Decals. And I believe in theory they can have an emissive map making them glow in the dark or even bloom with a glow. Many fancy effects should be possible once we can edit materials/shaders (which we can't do right now rule as Blizzard have not released proper import/export tools for .m3) For example if we could edit the shaders it should in theory be possible to make the floor reflective like water I think, no idea what would happen over uneven terrain.. id like to find out though! But that's just a theory. It might even be possible to animate them or do any of the fancy visual effects you see on units in the game.
They also support Normal/Bump maps so you can have roughness and bump detail painted over uniquely,
They follow the terrain perfectly, though they are limited in the height range they cover intentionally (this may even be hackable in the .m3 file)
So for example if you place a decal at the bottom of a cliff it won't affect the top of the cliff even if it overlaps. You can adjust the height of a Decal using page-up and page-down and you can see It's effects work in all 3 Dimensions. So if you duplicate the decal and place a copy in exactly the same spot but at a different height you can have it affect all heights like shown in above image. It even draws over the cliff face albeit stretched. So above example is done with 2 of the same decals that overlaps.
This should allow for painting in unique details like snow banks/drift, tracks in the mud or tracks snow, all kinda of unique texturing possibilities.
But must be careful of the file size and memory load!
Above is example showing how by changing the height of 2 decals you can make them join in the middle or have a gap of varying size:
Here the decal is lowered and it only affects terrain at that lower height forming a pool, notice the soft edges
It even works across man made cliffs:
So how do you do it?
You can start with the existing Decals the game has right now
If you are lazy and don't mind overriding the existing Decals skip to step 3
Step 1:
Open the DataEditor and goto Actors and search for Decal
You can then right click on that and duplicate it and check all the contents when duplicated:
You can then name it whatever you like mine is HD6Decal
Also Decals are generally small so you need to increase the Art - Scale. Increase this too high and the deal will vanish, not sure what the maximum is, I used a value of around 30 here:
You can also Scale the Decal once placed in the map using KeyPad+ and KeyPad- or by pressing Enter and entering a scale, the scale here is limited to 500% I think.
Step 2:
Now in order to not overwrite existing Decals you need to export the .m3 models it uses, once exported you can open them in a texteditor like notepad+ and search for '.dds' and replace any texture references with ones of your own liking. This is a bit beyond the scope of this guide for now.
Step 3:
Now the Decal set that comes with the beta comes with many variations
If you open up the Previewer, you can search and find the separate Decal m3 models and inspect them:
Here you can see it shows the Material uses a Diffuse Color Texture named 'Decalhazard01_Diffuse.dds' for Decal_14.m3
Knowing this you can go create your own high res texture and replace it. Or if you did earlier you can go into the exported m3 model and change the texture name to anything you like avoiding the need to override/overwrite it.
So go create a big texture can even have an alpha mask, make it 1024x1024px (can go bigger if you are brave and have good GPU) keep it to multiples of 8 in size so the size should always be divisible by 8.
Link: eliteforce2.filefront.com --- DDS_Converter;29412
Once you have the DDS, name it appropriately, if you are being lazy and overwriting then call it 'Decalhazard01_Diffuse.dds'
Then goto Starcraft Editor and click the file icon for Import:
Then goto Data menu and select Import:
Navigate to the folder you want the DDS from and only tick the file you want to import.
Also set Import Path to Assets/Textures/
The game will override any same named textures and assets it finds in your map, making It very easy to override existing models and textures without permanently replacing anything.
You must save the map for the import to work, then you should be able to select it and see an image of it on the right panel. It will laos tell you how big it is, for me a 2048x2048px DDS came out to 1mb with moderate compression and no alpha.
Assets you override or import may not refresh right away so try closing and reopening Editor or map
Goto the Terrain Editor and to Doodad Layer:
Search for your Decal:
And select it and then place it on the map
You can step thru a Doodads variations with ',' and '.' on the keyboard while you have the doodad selected in the editor, or specify it from the properties window (press enter while doodad is selected) You need to select the same variation you edited/replaced.
Once you see it, you can then adjust the scale and position.
Once you place a doodad select it and open the properties and tick on 'Ignore Placement Requirements' this will allow you to place them more freely and have them overlap.
It can be easier to make them overlap by entering the exact XY coords in the top 2 fields. Note you can also rotate Decals.
If you edit the terrain after placing a doodad it won't refresh in the editor, a simple way to refresh is to be in the doodad layer and select All with Ctrl-A then to delete, then to undo. That causes it to refresh and fit to the terrain underneath. It can make editing terrain difficult if a doodad/decal is in the way. In case you were wondering the decals do seem to update properly in game if the terrain changes, just the editor is borked.
I plan to use this extensively in my upcoming free maps and pay for mod:
Shameless Self Promotion:
If you found this helpful or inspiring please let me know and please please check out the work I am doing with StarCraft 2 and my upcoming mods and maps and ADD me or follow me!
Link: lumen.mine.nu
Link: www.facebook.com --- 121119821241522
I hope to be showing more interesting tutorials and tips, graphical tricks and sparkly shazzy free bits of re-usable code in future months to come
My name is Alex or Helios or HeliosDoubleSix and I am a Designer/3D Artist
I plan to produce quality content (some free for everyone and some pay for once marketplace is out)
I would love for others to work with so feel free to contact me directly if you are interested
E-Mail: sclumen@gmail.com
AIM: HeliosDoubleSix
MSN: msn@maniac66.idps.co.uk
Link: lumen.mine.nu
Technical Notes and Considerations:
Now 2048x2048 is probably going to kill some machines, older GPU's can't go over 1024, not sure what happens if it can't, maybe it explodes. Instead of one big texture I could cut it up into smaller squares and just align them. So in theory you can cover a whole map in as much or as little detail as you like. I can already think of one place that might help, if you want to make a Risk game with a big world map, currently a world map big enough to play on is impossible due to the map dimension limit, you could for example shrink the size of all units, zoom in and then rely on this texture to keep the terrain looking crisp and not blurry like it otherwise would be. No bets on how big in file size the map would be though or if it would crash some people? Theres all sorts of issues and limits and actually
Also when you create or export the 'SuperTexture' you can or should use .DDS and DDS has built in functions like various mip map levels which basically means it saves smaller resolution versions of the images, I have no idea if the game uses this at all especially when used on Mac in OPENGL mode. In theory if a computer couldn't load a 2048 pixel image it might fall back to a lower resolution, I am not sure.
When you import the Texture assets or change them you may have to quit and reopen the entire Editor to get it to refresh and update.
Older Experiments and Ideas
Some experiments I did prior from creating 5 solid color textures Cyan Magenta Yellow Black and White and mixing them together on the terrain to make a full color image covering the entire map, this does not use decals at all, and looks fruity as hell!
The color banding is from the low bit depth of the opacity masks used on terrain textures.
Decals just proved to be wiser given the fact the way it blends doesn't quite work to recreate CMYK/Full color image and it has a bit of a white edge along with the very low bitdepth/color banding AND you'd really need a custom tool to edit the masks directly and compute the image (no way you'd do it by hand) but otherwise in theory you could create a full color images across map at a lowish res. Oh and it doesn't support bump/normal maps so the surface would always be super smooth and flat looking.
More subtle example of It's colors.
