Category: Gamedev

Event Hubs in Unity

I’ve abandoned more Unity game projects than I can count, and it’s only recently that I’ve started to develop in a way that feels sustainable. Something I’ve always struggled with is how to organise my code — designing a game that’s fun to play is one thing, but designing systems that are easy to work with and don’t become unwieldy and bogged down after a few months is another thing entirely.

Turns out it only took a year of working in software professionally to show me that there are some really easy ways to fix these project-destroying patterns, and you can start using them immediately.

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May 26, 2020 Add Comment

Devlog #3

NPCs: Your Floppy Friends and You

A superhero isn’t a superhero without bystanders to rescue and/or terrorise. I’ve already decided that for the game to work it needs a city that reacts to the player’s presence. That means people, and people means ragdolls.

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January 26, 2020 Add Comment

Devlog #2

Flopping at Speed

Speed is critical on solo game projects – you don’t want to be grinding away for too long on a doomed project or you’ll wake up realising you’ve wasted nine months on a game nobody will ever play – so prototype quickly, iterate in small chunks and playtest often.

Step 1) create a city environment
Step 2) make the player fly around
Step 3) make the player turn into a ragdoll if they hit a wall

I’m using Unity as a game engine, so there’s a few ways we can save time here.

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January 26, 2020 Add Comment

Devlog #1

Making a superhero game

I’m a big fan of blogs about the experience of making a video game – Tom Francis wrote a great series about the development of Gunpoint – but I can never find enough to read, so I thought I’d write one myself to do my part in the effort to clog up the internet until it finally stops working for good.

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January 26, 2020 Add Comment