Still no real screenshot to show yet. Just been pottering away in R&D mode. The first three missions of the game are set in Japan's Shizuoka Prefecture, so I'm working towards implementing a simplified, scaled down (maybe 1/4 scale or less) but still somewhat recognisable version of that in Unity. (The reasons why I chose Shizuoka are two fold, one is because of the view of Mount Fuji, and the second - which I only found out after I had already made up my mind on Shizuoka - is that it's entirely appriopriate to have giant robots there because of this)

I think I'm growing more and more fond of Unity the more I use it. I really like the "convention over configuration" principle that Unity has (assuming you want to do something the most common way but making it as easy as possible to customise), especially on the enormously flexible and configurable Game Objects. Thinking about it further, Unity's Game Objects are actually kind of analogous to Drupal's Nodes.

Been dwelling on how to implement turning in Battlesuit. While most First Person Shooters only limit the player's maximum rotation speed by how fast he can physically move the mouse, I'd like to have different limits on rotation speed per mech so it feels more authentic and the lighter mechs handle more distinctly to the larger ones. The current idea that I've been thinking about is kind of a hybrid of the traditional PC FPS controls and the Wii FPS controls. The player will rotate towards where they've placed their cursor on screen, which will be dragged back towards the center (ie, the player will always be aiming at what is under the cursor). I also think it'd be cool to aim and fire at something you're not directly facing (which is neat on Wii FPS games, even if overall the controls are more frustrating). This should also add some tactical depth as you can't just spin on a dime if there's an enemy behind you. Any thoughts or suggestions?

I haven't had a lot of time for the project, partially due to my Toshiba Laptop (that had just marked the milestone of being my tool for four consecutive Global Game Jams) finally packinging it in couple of days ago. I guess I can't complain, the laptop wasn't ridiculously expensive for the performance it had and it lasted me a fair amount of time. Still, I'm much happer with my new laptop. Everything is vastly better - Performance, Battery Life, Weight, Construction, Windows 7 (I never upgraded the Toshiba past Vista). The only downside is a marginal downgrade in the amount of screen real-estate. Despite having a 2GB Graphics card, 15.6 inch screen, 4GB RAM, i7 processor and 750gb HDD it was also pretty inexpensive - cheaper than even the most bare basic Mac laptop at approx $1,200 NZ. Cheers PB Tech.

My team is coming together very slowly. I wrote a basic draft pitch for the game that I have used to approach potential team members with, which is:

Emi Muharu, a sixteen year old Japanese High School Student, has no idea that she is about to be thrust into the front line of a war she thought had been over for forty years.

The year is 1987 and the Mars-based remnants of the Third Reich are in conflict with the Space Navies of NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Bolstered by superior technology and a seemingly endless supply of German war hero clones, the Axis forces have gained the upper hand. Their leader is Adolf III, the reckless teenaged clone of the notorious dictator with malicious designs on Earth.

The weapon of choice for both sides is the Battlesuit, a 30-foot tall bipedal tank equally capable of land and space combat. The Battlesuit was invented by the kindly yet deviant "Professor" Muharu, formerly of the Axis forces but now the captain of the anti-Fascist privateer space vessel Shinano.

The Professor's squadron of elite Battlesuit pilots - the headstrong Karen McDonnell, the philosophical Kaya Mori and the carefree Catgirl Android Neko - are a constant menace to the Axis forces. At the beginning of the story, the Third Reich attempts to kidnap the Professor's granddaughter, setting in motion a series of events that lead to Emi becoming the Shinano's fourth Battlesuit pilot.

Features:

• A fresh gameplay experience that combines relentless First Person Shooter action with tactical planning and precision timing
• A darkly comic storyline that pays homage to the Giant Robot Genre of Anime, and spanning over two hundred pages of script
• Twelve different playable Mechs, each with unique characteristics
• 36 intense missions in three episodes (including a 12 mission free-to-play shareware episode)
• Online co-operative and competition modes

I know the pitch is ridiculous, but it's the game I'm going to make, damn it! Fortunately so far no one has been put off yet!

Well, that's it for today. Stay tuned for next weeks post. Same Battlesuit time, same Battlesuit channel.

I know it's only been a day since my last post, but I really need to stick to the habit of my weekly posts on the project.

Unity was one of my main options for Battlesuit's engine, and after playing with it at the Global Game Jam I can safely say that it's now going to be my main toolkit for developing the project. I now know Unity well enough that continuing development in Blitz3D would be largely pointless (not that the Blitz version was very developed). My next step will be to try and port Blow Stuff Up to Unity, which may form the core of the Battlesuit engine (I may actually leave the core gameplay of BSU in there as an "Arcade mode" of sorts).

That's not to say that I am completely free of misgivings. The Pro licence is expensive and I'm pretty sure I'm going to want what Pro offers when I get around to tweaking the game (especially to get shadows). I still have UDK in mind, so I might take a second look at that later down the track if I get frustrated with Unity.

There's fortunately another long weekend this weekend (Monday was a day off work because of Auckland Anniversary weekend, and next weekend is Waitangi Day) so I might be able to get something cool done in that time. I'm thinking of making a marathon effort to get the second draft of the shareware script done, for instance.

That's all I have to say for now. Maybe screenshot next week!

So, the game is done. You can play it here if you'd like:

http://earok.net/games/eod/WebPlayer.html

Controls are Cursor Keys and Left Ctrl for Player one, WASD and F for Player two, joysticks for player three and four. Press enter to restart the game if you die.

The objective of the game is to stay alive on the counter top for as long as possible while you come under attack by hordes of enemies. Don't get pushed to the floor, fed to the waste disposal unit in the sink or burned alive on the Elements.

This is kind of my "Hello World" of Unity development, and largely for that reason the game is well below my usual standards. Still, the opportunity to learn Unity is one that I'm extremely grateful for, so in the long run it'll be great that I ended up on a team where I could be mentored into the world of Unity. Once I've recovered, I'll think about posting my thoughts on this years event.

This is going to be a really quick note. Brainstorming etc is done, teams have been formed. Game is going to be in Unity, so I'm definitely jumping in the deep end (fortunately the team has an experienced Unity guru to mentor me into it, and I'm experienced in C# so at least the raw code side of things shouldn't be an issue). We're currently talking about what 'diversifiers' to add into the game. We've got a fairly solid idea for the game, but I can imagine the design is going to change wildly as we experiment and run into time and other constraints. Stay tuned.