Fledgling Videogame Developer

There are several ways to create mirror in Unity3D. Some of them require more scripting than others, but I will now present an easy way using just one extra camera and RenderTexture.  In this solution you will use RenderTexture on an object and place camera behind that object. This is easy option that does not require scripting. Alternatively you can use reflective shader, but it requires some more work. Seven small steps to create object with mirror RenderTexture: Create new Unity project. It is recommended to use latest LTS version (Long Term Support).I was using Unity 2020.1.3f1 version for this example.   Create plane object for ground and Cube for the mirror object. Scale both objects to match your needs.  Create new camera for attaching the RenderTexture. Position it inside recently created cube and adjust direction so that it is pointing out to the direction where mirror should be reflecting the image.  Create RenderTexture. Name it as you wish. No need t...

Our reasonably popular Flamingo Tap Tap Run Android game is celebrating 1-year anniversary after a major update in the beginning of January 2020. In this update we introduced several playable Flamingo characters and did some improvements and fixes to gameplay.  Although the game has not been a real breakthrough, the number of new downloads has been fairly steady throughout the year. Advertising revenue has also been steady, and even increased towards the end of the year. We are still talking about less than 10 Euros per month, but with current investment and effort it is just ok. All Flamingo game downloads are organic , since no paid advertising used. And yes, we have not included any in-app purchases in any of our games. I collected couple of graphs showing how the total number of installations and number of new installations (28 days moving average) has developed since the very first launch date in September 2019. Major update was done in the beginning of 2020 and that has be...

  Today we published new hyper-casual game to Google Play Store (beta version, still).  Game is called "Rocket Orbit" and it is some kind of a facelift for "Rocket to Uranus" game that was published about two years ago.  Biggest modifications were done in visual outlook where original multi-colored UI with (almost) all possible colors is now replaced with restrained set of colors. Main theme consists of different shades of blue. We also added a UFO to bring some randomness to the game.  Playing Rocket Orbit game is simple: You are controlling small blue rocket that is jumping between the planets from one orbit to the second orbit. You need to schedule the tap accurately so your rocket can get to next planet orbit safely.  🚀 Rocket Orbit game features:  ✔️ Easy to play hyper-casual game mechanism ✔️ Yet challenging and hard to master ✔️ Annoying UFO disturbing your perfect game ✔️ Google Play Services Leaderboard ✔️ No levels, just endless space in front o...

I will now present a realistic summary how "Flamingo Tap Tap Run" Android game did over the first 6 months. For that I created a graph that shows moving 30 days average for new downloads. It should give a good idea how the number of downloads has evolved after the updates. Graph looks great (really steep slope after major update) as long you don't look the scale on the left hand side. But here come the details: First major version of Flamingo game was available on 3rd of September 2019. It had just one flamingo character and there was no use for collected shrimps. This version got around 50 downloads per month, that has been pretty typical for most of our released little games. Second major version with large update was released on 3rd of January 2020. This one had total of 8 playable flamingo characters which player could buy using the collected shrimps. This update increased the number of monthly downloads to 200+ and it can also be seen from the attached graph. ...

Edit 9.9.2019: It seems that Flamingo Tap Tap Run is our most downloaded game after one week from publishing. However, I have to admit that few tens of downloads is enough for this "achievement". :)  My game development journey continues with " Flamingo Tap Tap Run " Android game, with pretty simple visual outlook and simplified mechanics. Please download game for free from Google Play Store and have a try! My emphasis with this project was on character animation because my previous games have been using animations for maximum of 4 frames per move. Therefore, this was first time I used Spriter tool for creating and extracting complex animation spritesheets for Flamingo movements. For example, I was using 64 frames for walk animation. After all messing and fumbling result looks pretty ok and at least character animations are lot smoother than in my previous projects. Game logic was created with Unity3D and C#. New tricks (or structures) for me were delegate...

Hello, guys! Bananamarine project has progressed almost as planned, and release day is close. From gameplay point of view everything is roughtly done, only some polishing and finetuning is still on To-Do list. I guess most work still to be done is on UI and Google Play Store integration. Then we should be ready for launch. And yes, lots of intensive playtesting is required still. Lots of work has also been done on side activities: We opened yesterday Bananamarine landing page , and Facebook page has also been active for several weeks. There is also new playtesting video available at Youtube (embedded below). Please check it to see how game looks today. I don't want to fix exact release day just right now, because this work is done on hobby basis. But current guess is the week after Midsummer (26th-30th June 2017). So please wait one more week for release. :) -Jussi.