Rock, Paper, Shotgunity, Part 10
Hard to believe we've reached part 10 of the Shotgunity series, but it's true. As the end of our first experiment with the free Unity game development suite rapidly approaches, the mad scrabble to generate assets threatens to be all-consuming. But I'm still managing to make time for what other people are doing with Unity. Call it gathering inspiration, or just plain plagiarism, there's some good stuff out there. After the cut you can see some of it, and also have a doodle...
(Get the most recent build here.)
The perennial disappointment in my life has been realising other people got there first. My missus has a Philosophy Masters and before I met her I used to think I had some pretty deep ideas. Of course, as it turned out, all my cleverthinks had already been cleverthunk several thousand years before my birth (which proved a right bugger when trying to dazzle her into bed with my intellect). Having an original thought is hard. People have been thinking for a long time. For example I used to think it'd be neat to make a Wolf sim. Multiplayer elk hunting in packs had to be a giggle, right? Naturally, someone got there first. But excitingly, they got there first with Unity. WolfQuest is a full on multiplayer wolf pack simulator, detailing the life and trials of a pack of wolves in Yellowstone park. A new version offering four new kilometers of parkland is due for a release at the end of the month (annoyingly you can't download ANY version until then...) and promises such exciting new features as “maintaining your territory with raised-leg urination... and howling”. And howling? I'm in.
Keeping with the slightly ego-centric theme of this post, I've just passed my driving test. During the learning process I hankered for a really good driving sim, preferably one with Track IR, working indicators and clutch support for my logitech wheel so I could actually use my mirrors, then signal, then maneuver. This new Unity-based offering from Dutch developers Sticky Studios isn't quite the fully fledged driving sim I needed, but at least you can get busted for not signaling correctly and speeding. Rules are FUN!
OK this one from the makers of Zombieville is only for iPhone but it does feature both Ninjas and Pirates so that makes up for it. What really drags it back to being OT (apart from being made with Unity) is that like this chap I thought it would be a good idea to make some 2D bad guys for Shotgunity. Wait, hear me out. If I make 2D sprites and animate them based on simple animated tiles then RPS readers can simply paint over arm, leg, torso and head templates and voila we have a range of reader generated baddies without having to get people to go to the trouble of animating them (which is proving to be the bottleneck on the Shotgunity forums).
So, below you'll find a template. I want you to design some baddies on it. Paint anything you like but remember our four levels are themed around the Hivemind (Jim, Alec, KG and John) and the RPS site in general so try and make baddies to suit them and it. You'll see from the example monster that you can go outside the lines as long as you stay inside the box for each limb/component. You'll also see that I'm no artist. Also remember that these baddies are being viewed from the front, not the side. They'll always be rotated to face you. It's not a perfect system, but I figured it'd be a good way to get lots of people generating lots of assets - something we desperately need at this stage of Shotgunity. So, if you've yet to contribute, please have a go at scribbling some monsters over the below template during your lunch hour. You've gotta be bored of playing in the snow by now, right?
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