Bitbucket Migration

Well, hello again. 

I just finished moving my code and assets to Bitbucket, an excellent project tracker and remote repository from Atlassian. I am particularly fond of Atlassian products and was previously using Stash to track my changes. Unfortunately I was using Dropbox for my cloud backups and my available size is about to shrink there. I was already eyeing Bitbucket due to the integrated issue tracker and wiki but the Dropbox issue forced me. 

Fear not that I have been neglecting the next release of Fragmented Galaxy. Fleets are well on their way! I already have much of the organizational functionality I wanted for the first iteration so I might just push out a build before coordinated movement makes it in. I will be moving the To Do page to the new issue tracker on Bitbucket soon, probably at the next public build. 

That segue's nicely into my next topic. I made the issue tracker public so anyone can report issues that I don't find in my testing. Check it out here. Report any issues you find. It will help me create a better game over time. 

Fleets

I home you are all having fun with the latest build! 

Fleets are coming along nicely. On my internal build fleet creation and generating a list of the fleets in existence is working very nicely. I am going to add the ability to rename and disband fleets this week. Then work can start on coordinating the fleet's movements with flight control. 

This first version of flight control will inform the ships where to place themselves in relation to a reference point or object. It will also inform the ships of the maximum acceleration they are allowed to apply so the fleet doesn't spread out due to differences in propulsion. 

Promises, Schedules

Hello again.

I just finished a bit of polish on the latest internal build of Fragmented Galaxy and I want to get it out to everyone as soon as possible. However, not all the features I had hoped for are included. I want rapid releases but I think I bit off more than I could chew with my latest To-Do list. To review, I had 3 major items that I wanted to include: 

  • Overhaul the mouse-UI interaction system. 
  • Add more detail to the cargo ship texture. 
  • Add fleet-coordinated movement. 

That is making for too long between releases. So, for that reason, I am postponing fleets until a future version and WILL have a new build available for download this weekend. It won't look like much but believe me when I say a bunch has changed under the hood. 

Happy Holidays!

Like most people in the US, I had a day off today for Christmas. How did I use it? Fragmented Galaxy, of course! 

Today I finished upgrading to the newest version of Unity, the new individual-settings system, and ripped out the old UI detection system. I am going to start on the new UI detection system shortly but I thought I'd take break and wish you all happy holidays. 

A new release might be arriving this weekend, so stay posted. 

Thanks all! 

Where Did the Weekend Go?

There will be no new release this week as I have to be in at work on Sunday. (oh, wait, is that today?)

I can report that many of the smaller things I wanted to get gone for the next release are done but fixing clicking on UI elements through each-other is going to take more effort than expected. In fact, I'm going to re-write the entire system so it is more maintainable and easier to use. As usual, you can see my plans on the To-Do page. 

New Ship, New Release!

Get over to the Fragmented Galaxy page and download the latest release! 

This is built from Unity 5 which includes many improvements including physics performance increases and physically based rendering. Also, a new movement system has been added to make ships move more smartly. Visit the Version History for a full list of changes. See the To-Do page for what is coming in the future. 

Screenshots and a video are below if you can't download right now. 

This Weekend

I got the movement and UI to a working state today. All I need to do is make the new ship a little prettier and a new build will be on the site. All I am promising is a new set of standalone executables. The web version is a different beast. I want to try to get the new HTML web player (yay Unity 5!) working since no plugin will be needed to play it. Unfortunately I don't know how long that will take. 

Stat tuned.  

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Today I decided to upgrade to the newest Unity 5 beta and a few things happened. 

The standard (physically-based) shaders were changed so I had to re-engineer my custom decal version. Unfortunately, the sky-sphere also broke so now none of the stars shine through the clouds and I'm still working to fix that. Also, my old specularity maps for the ships no longer function so I need to re-create them for the new metallic workflow. 

While disappointing, these are only cosmetic things. My brother and I worked on getting the new movement model implemented for another 4 hours today but still no dice there. He is going to play with the algorithm later today to analyze the output curves and try to make sense of them. 

Sorry for the downer post but I didn't want to leave you without an update. I'm still here, making some progress. 

 

I'm Back!

I haven't posted in a while. 

Yes it it is true but I am not without my excuses (read: totally legitimate reasons). Three factors contributed to this. 

First, Destiny came out. If anybody is wondering, it is a great game, though, somewhat lacking in the single-player department. I played a ton of it with my brother the week it came out but now my interest is starting to wane. The endless grinding for better equipment is starting to get to me. 

Second, work has been kicking my ass. My boss was out and, as one of the more senior folks in my department, I have been saddled with additional responsibility. 

Lastly was my own motivation was waning. I don't like to complain but having a real job and doing this on the side is a bit draining. My coding inspiration comes in cycles so I'll always come back. 

Now that I finally have a substantial update to show off, I have updated all the downloads and the web player. The main difference you will see is that there are multiple ships now! The full details will be in the version history shortly. 

I'll try to post updates more often in the future, not just for Fragmented Galaxy updates. 

Fragmented Galaxy Updates

I just pushed a new update for Fragmented Galaxy to the site. Read more about it on the Version History. 

Next week's update might not have much to see. My existing code-base is getting a bit ugly and needs some refactoring to keep me sane. Right now most of the scripts are hard-coded for the single ship interacting with passive objects. I am going to abstract the commands and various ship states so I can start to implement multiple ships. This goes hand-in hand with the modularization I want to do so I can swap in new algorithms more easily for faster iteration. 

While that all might sound like a bunch of buzz-words put together, I promise it will help the game. 

Thanks for the comments on the Greenlight Concept page and keep sharing! 

Welcome Back!

A new year, a new website, it seems. 

 

I am currently hard at work at Kiva Systems but in my spare time I program for fun and sometimes (read: rarely) create something decent. 

I am working on a few projects using Unity 3D. I call my project development process 'project-ception' because I will start something then make a smaller game to investigate a problem in my main objective, then deeper and deeper. It never ends. 

However, the Unity 3D Asset Store has helped me out a ton. For a few dollars I can get a re-usable module that I don't need to re-invent. That helps me stay interested and make progress more quickly. 

And, it helps me actually get something released. Speaking of which, check out the prototype for a space-based RTS control scheme I created. 

 

I haven't blogged in a few years (since during college) and wanted to start again now that I am making prototypes that I feel comfortable showing the Internet. My old schedule was once per month, I think? I might want to do something at least weekly now but the schedule is likely going to depend on interest. 

 

Welcome to my corner of the Internet, 

-Tristan

 

P.S. Bear with me as I adjust to Squarespace. Pages may move and change color in the interim.