A Writer's journey into game development

No, this is not a video saying how good is godot. It describes its advantages (from the author's point of view, of course) and disadvantages. Check it out.

I have been quite busy lately and most of my work has involved fixing the UI for a little project I started a couple of years ago. I havent noticed that the UI was a mess, it worked for a resolution, but not for others. Took me some research and testing to make a bit (just a bit) less messy. The new UI, not so new now, was introduced in Unity 4.6. It was an attempt to replace IMGUI with a decent system, but the result was something counter-intuitive and not so good in perfomance terms. Yes, was better, but if you go from scratching you back with a cactus to scratch it with rough sandpaper, that can be considered good too. Lucky us, there will be a new solution, coming with Unity 2919.3, though it wont be official until 2020.1. Check this nice video and you will see all the great features it offers.

It is curious. I feel like reading somebody else, a familiar author I cant remember. Im quite happy with the result achieved by my translator and friend, Daisy, who also created, many years ago, the Elymuria name. I have completed the review of the first chapter, and expecting to have the whole process finished for Christmas, as a present to some special friends that are waiting for the book. So, stay tuned!

Got news from my friend working on the translation of my first novel: the heavy work is complete and we are now in the review stage. After that, I will make my own review, and then a second one, by an english speaker. Expect the book before Christmas! The profit will help to solve a few problems, including a weird health condition I suffer that forces me to eat three times every day. Also will fund my game project, based on the Elymuria universe, a nice and fun isometric RPG. By the way, if you can read spanish, there is no need to wait for translations, get the novel on Amazon . But lately I have abandoned a bit my writing tasks, in favour of programming. It was time to return to my younger age, when I toyed with multiplayer projects. A friend asked my help with an interesting idea, and I I jumped head on into connected games with Unity. Not a nice experience, I have to say. But, as y boss says, if you learn something from it, then it is worth the effort. I have invested two weeks ...

The actors that will cast the most important roles in Amazon´s The Wheel of Time have been announced. In case you are a modern reader and ignore what is it, Robert Jordan´s The Wheel of Time (finished by Brandon Sanderson) was in the 90s the novel every writer wanted to write. Like A Song of Ice and Fire is today. I hope you excuse my delay, but yesterday was a very busy day. So, here we go. Josha Stradowski will play Rand al'Thor. This is exactly the Rand I had imagined and period. If this guy can successfully portrait the darkness and burden of the character in the final stages of the plot, it will be perfect. Marcus Rutherford is Perrin Aybara. Same as Josha, Marcus is the Perrin I had in my mind. And also, Perrin is a character that faces hard decisions and has to change towards the end of the story, when faced with great responsabilities. Barney Harris will be Matrin Cauthon. Definitely I disagree here. Too much a pretty face. Mat is a gambler and a rogue, more charis...

Has been a long fight, but as usual, the hero (me) solved the problem in the season finale. After injecting in my brain some beer from carnivals (a sort of yellow and bitter water) I found the cause of the weird collision issue: the Rigid Body component. Seems beer, even the bad one, helps improve cognitive process. Too bad that I cant afford a beer every time I want to code. I have asked about this in the forums but people dont have a very explicit answer. Yes, the Rigid Body can go to sleep sometimes, and yes, I need them for collisions. But so far, the code works without it. So, my basic AI is functional and the idea wasnt that bad after all. But I dont feel too inspired to program lately and left the work unfinished until I feel I want to program again. Summer is too hot and that makes me lazy, I guess. When I recover from lazyness, my plans are to implement different AI modules or blocks for combat systems: warriors, mages, etc. I hope I dont have to write too many logic blocks a...

This year I plan to write two novels. I already finished the first one, but Im not happy with the result, and neither are my zero readers and reviewers. It was an idea I had for a literary contest, but I didnt spent too much time improving it. So, it was too short and a few characters were not very well developed, which is not good if those characters are important in the novel plot. Currently Im working to improve it a bit. The second novel is advancing slowly, because I have time to finish it and I want to gather as much ideas as I can before I start to seriously work on it. Took me three months to finish the first book, I guess I can finish the second in 2-3 months, when I decide to devote all my time to it. Also, I decided to do something really crazy: asked a friend to do the english translation of my first novel. As you can see, my own english is far from good. It is a short book, which passed unnoticed when published, but now it is considered among the ten best fantasy novels i...

Had the chance a couple of months ago to develop a small VR project for Android (which never was finished). The contractor provided me with a Samsung GearVR glasses and the controller, and nothing more. Was my task to research and create the prototype from scratch, which took some time and investment from my part. Never recovered the investment, and the knowledge... well, lets consider that as some sort of profit. It was funny in the beginning. But when I went deeper, I was discovering the disadvantages. In my case, the GearVR controller is only compatible with Samsung phones and I found it rather limited: too few buttons to be useful except for simple games. In general, the VR devices are too expensive and some people can't use them. By the way, I couldn't test if I am 100% "compatible". My app used an scripted movement through the scene, which is one of the methods that cause less side effects. I am pretty much convinced that, unless the prices go down a lot, VR wo...

Great news! Unity Editor will be officially supported in Linux . Maybe I will be able to recover that Linux installation I no longer use. 

I stopped updating this blog mostly because lack of time, and visits. There are no more visits than before, but to my surprise, I see that people keep coming. Mostly, I think, because of my little tutorial about isometric camera in Unity. I have been busy lately. I found a better job, and finished a large novel, which was a tiresome experience. I expected to take a long vacations from writing, but a friend convinced me to write a short novel for a literary contest. After some time without programming, Im now working on a VR project I expect to get paid for. It has been interesting, though Im still in the Jon Snow phase (don´t know nothing) and haven´t seen the project running yet. It is a way to learn and also raise some cash to fund the game project. The good news during this absence: my first novel was nominated among the 10 best fantasy novels in Cuba. Haven´t got any benefit from that yet. In case you can read spanish, it is available on Amazon . That´s all for today, tomorrow (ma...