Four Shadows

Four Shadows - A Mobile Game

Tweeting the whole process of developing this game from start to finish!

[Four Shadows @fourshadowsgame]

Hi! My name's Jordan, and I'm going to make a game called Four Shadows. I'll tweet about it while I make it.

[Four Shadows @fourshadowsgame]

@MikaMobile Looks fantastic! Great work

[Primal Light @PrimalLightGame]

TOMORROW - Primal Light launches on Steam! This has been the culmination of a 3 year journey between my friend and I to make a darn game... and somehow we actually did. Retweets help a ton!!

Wishlist on Steam: https://t.co/Aq6Gk0fbWF

#godotengine #steamgame #indiegame #gamedev

[Four Shadows @fourshadowsgame]

If my maps were going to be complicated, and not just dynamic enemy generation and swapping backgrounds, I think I would go with individual scenes. I may still do a scene per area (think worlds in old Mario games) to avoid having to preload a ton of assets though.

[Four Shadows @fourshadowsgame]

I've been reading about scenes and scene organization in #unity3d. There are 2 main ways I could implement scenes for Four Shadows. Either the game maps are a single scene with level data loaded in/procedurally generated, or every map is its own scene. I'm going with option 1.

[Four Shadows @fourshadowsgame]

@FantomAtomYT Haha yes, all the fun parts

[Four Shadows @fourshadowsgame]

And...done! I created the initial project in #unity3d, and I have a blank workspace to start from! Now comes a whole lot of thinking, learning, and programming.

[Four Shadows @fourshadowsgame]

I've been learning about views and the differences among perspective/isometric/orthographic. Perspective is how humans perceive objects and has a vanishing point. Iso is 3D at 30/60°, without perspective/vanishing. Ortho is top down or side view. My game will be ortho/top down.

[Four Shadows @fourshadowsgame]

I mentioned choosing #unity earlier, so now I'm installing it. I already had Unity Hub installed from years ago, but never did anything with it. So today I upgraded Unity Hub, and then selected the latest Unity install, and added Android and iOS support options.

[Four Shadows @fourshadowsgame]

So in summary I chose #unity3d because it's integrated with the asset library and has an active community of animators who publish. That's super important to me for prototyping so that I can focus on the gameplay instead of wasting time rigging models. Ezpz.

[Four Shadows @fourshadowsgame]

Ok, I've finished evaluating game engines for building my #MobileGame #fourshadows. I'll explain in a thread why I chose it and what I did and didn't like about the other #gameengine options I evaluated.

[Four Shadows @fourshadowsgame]

I looked at other options like #GameMaker and #cocos but wasn't really looking for something that will only allow me to prototype, or that is super confusing.

[Four Shadows @fourshadowsgame]

@apico_game Ty!

[Four Shadows @fourshadowsgame]

Another thing I am trying to learn today is what the standards are, if any, for realtime animation rigging. Like if I follow some standard of developing and rigging a model in #Blender3d can I then just apply animations to my model?

[Four Shadows @fourshadowsgame]

One thing I like about #unity3d is the asset store. I'm new to modern game development so I don't really know where to get models and animations, or really how to rig them. It feels like a steep learning curve just to find marketplaces and see how to use assets.