Dark_Faction_Games
Roberto joined
Unity3D mobile and PC game development. Because everyone loves Indie!
My Blogs (0 - 10 of 12)
Hi there guys and girls,
Its been a while without any updates. Check out this review article on the Appliv website for AreaZ. These guys have a way with words. :-)
"Excellent graphics emulate the look and feel of new generation games."
Thanks to the team behind this! Hope some of you might give it a try and support indie game development.
Rob.
Hi Guys and Girls!
Finally, after 2 years in development, we have just released Planetfall for Android. This is an old school sci-fi fps game and can be found here:
Regards,
Dark Faction Games.
There comes a time during a development cycle for indie game developers, where good time management is key to success of the project.Well, i am by no means successful, but i have seen good projects struggle to get to release due to developers not having enough time to work at their day job, deal with the after work activities, and complete their day with a bit of “intelligent” gamedev.
I say “intelligent” because planning and having a game plan before you start your hour of development might surprise you how quickly you can accomplish something, fix bugs, or even add finishing touches to a project.
Play test!If you want to find out what needs to be fixed or changed, sit down and play your game! After playing a couple of rounds in Alien Outpost(our new android project), i quickly found a number of bugs or design problems with the game and decided i will need to start a list.Within 2 play sessions(of about 5 minutes each) i had already compiled a list of about 25 items. Everything from silly bugs to things i forgot to change sinse the last build. From there i found it easy to break my development sessions up and prioritize what needed to get fixed first.With all those issues, after decided what i needed to fix first, i completed all changes successfully within about 2 hours. This WILL work for anyone with any size project. Some might just take longer than others.
What it comes down to is:
- Play your game!
- Make a list
- Prioritize
- Kill those bugs!
It is something to take note of. Even doing this a few times during your development cycle might make the development go a lot smoother.
Alien Outpost:
Whats happening there is i am testing as much as i can and killing every bug in sight! Things are going well to say the least. I am however very nervous to start testing the multiplayer of the game, where a friend can join you and defend againsed the ongoing waves of enemies. I have a feeling that its going to be one big bug infestation! But for the most part the game is working well so far. Even the google play leaderboards.
Dark Project:
Dark Project has recently gone through a few updates and with its recent build, the compatibility with other phones should be a lot better. Also, dont forget about the price reduction! Get it while its hot! 
Further thanks for all the support these past few months! Our following has grown more that we ever would have imagined. Follow us on twitter, facebook or google.Stay tuned for more updates to follow, and hopefully with some pretty pictures! Rob
- Play your game!
- Make a list
- Prioritize
- Kill those bugs!
Hi everyone!
If you ever wanted to add Google play services to your mobile games but probably thought it would take too much time and be too difficult, think again. The last 2 posts on our blog page might give you some insight as to how easy it can be!
www.dfgames.co.za
Obviously this is aimed at those using the Unity3D engine. Simply install the plugin at the links provided and watch the video tutorial. This can take you as little as 30 minutes to implement. Totally worth the effort and bear you consume while watching the video :-)
Now that that's done in Alien Outpost i can focus on one of the other areas where bugs need to be fixed and maybe some polishing to be done.
Rob
Well, as far as development goes on Alien Outpost, things are going well, and the game has come a long way from just a month ago.
So its time again for another blog update. I felt like i needed to take a risk. Hopefully it would have been worth taking. I have decided to build 5 different scenes or environments for the player to play in. Here is the catch. The 5 “levels’ are being stored in 1(one) Unity scene as prefabs that will then be enabled or disabled based on the server being played. Obviously this will cause the initial load time to be longer, but there should be no other loading time necessary for the rest of the game.The player can choose one of the scenes and start playing. The other players can join the game and everything should be working correctly on the right scene.I am hoping i am not missing something here. There is always a chance that i will run into a few problems down the road. So i am holding thumbs!
Regards,
Rob
Hi all,
So when games start the second part of the development cycle, the polishing and balancing process takes ages! And is probably one of the most difficult parts to work on and to get right!
Most of the game mechanics are implemented and i have started working on the balancing.
The game is not yet balanced properly.
When the game starts the monsters do not spawn frequently enough and at round about the 3 minute mark, all hell breaks loose! :-)
Maybe just bad coding? Or my mind was elsewhere with the coding.
So the balancing process has started.
Once that is done then i will start working on more features and environments.
But for the most part, i am happy with the way things are turning out.
Don't forget you can check for updates on our website and twitter feed.
www.dfgames.co.za ">www.dfgames.co.za
Regards,
Roberto
Hi,
Don't forget guys and girls, you can follow our official blog at:
www.dfgames.co.za
That's where most of our updates take place. So by all means pay us a visit! :-)
Recently I finished a rather update addressing many of our problems we had with our game. The overall "quality" of the game i feel is much better. I am proud of the massive difference and i encourage everyone to give it a try and support indie game development! :-)
The game can be downloaded here:
Play.google.com
Stay tuned people! There are always new things to see by us.
Regards,
After quite a bit of effort i am proud to say that Dark Project is released on the google play store.
Play.google.com
Needless to say being the first one that we released, hardly anything went smoothly, and trying to contain my thoughts when they were drifting to the next game that i am planning on making, was no easy task. I had to focus on Dark Project one last time though.
Why not give it a try and help support indie devs! :-)
Thank you everyone for your interest and support.
Regards,
Roberto
Hi everybody!
I should take this opportunity to share a few updates that was made to the game with you before release of Dark Project.
Things have been going well, and based on peoples feedback, i ended up making rather big changes to the game. As much as i did not want to mess with certain "core" parts of the game, i feel like the end result was something better than originally planned.
The dual joysticks used for moving and aiming where removed. The player will now touch on the actual game screen. The left half of the screen is used for movement and the right half of the screen is used for shooting. After using the dual joysticks so long it felt a bit strange but i think the player will be able to get into it rather quickly. I decided to keep the USE button visible on the screen and tried to avoid touching game objects in screen as much as possible. This was just the design decisions. The end result is a very clean design of HUD elements that do not get in the way of all the action.
Another issue we addressed recently is the game tended to be too "dark" in many parts of the levels. To dark too much ended up being a bit frustrating for the player. So i had to work through all the levels adding extra lighting effects to parts of the level that were just too dark. Making the need for the flashlight a lot less.
There are so many issues to consider before releasing a game to the public. Obviously making the game as good and as fun to play as possible is a big part of it, but that includes making sure most or all of the bugs are dealt with and maybe streamlining the code to improve frame rates are some of the things i had to do to get the game ready. Finishing the help screen for a basic "how to play" for the person that likes to be prepared before they go into battle.
I had to make sure all switches in the level worked unlocking the force fields and the level end switches loaded the mission complete screen. I found that many of the game prefabs data was not inserted correctly causing all sorts of glitches in the game. I can not stress enough how important play testing is. By others and by yourself.
The players torch range and sharpness of the light was increased to provide more light. Some textures i noticed seemed to absorb a lot of the light from the flashlight. The caused some frustration when battling monsters. The degeneration speed of the torch was also decreased. I felt like the torch depleted way too quickly, causing the torch to flicker too quickly.
Another game feature we added was health bars on top of the enemies. This made it easier to see if damage was being dealt.
So i guess at this stage of the game development process is just polish polish polish! This is our first game to be released so i hope all the decisions i am making are the right ones! As of this time, the game is basically finished, but still being polished and being made ready for the release. And making sure the consumer will have a place to contact us if they have a problem!
Stay tuned for the official release date! Coming Soon!
Regards,
Rob
Hey all!
So were are making some minor changes to the game and improving on existing ideas. The first thing we are doing is adding more PDA's to the level for the player to find. Some of them will give you clues in proceeding, and some with just give the player random bits of story line. I felt that there were too few scattered across the levels some i am increasing the number.
Above is another obstacle. The steam valve needs to be closed before you can pass. Otherwise the player will take damage and possibly die!
Small changes indeed but i am sure its for the better! :-)
Rob
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