Unity Game Development: My Game Design Story (Cliffsnotes)

Hello Everyone!  If you don't already know me, let me introduce myself.  My internet name is Belart Wright and I like to create stuff.  I've been doing it for a while now and currently my imagination has extended to the formats of books and game design.  I'm only decent at one of them though.  The other, I have no clue where to begin.  I'm on the cusp of releasing a book this year so you can clearly infer which one I am lost in.

To give a little history, I began my experiments into game design a little before 2007.  Back then I made a few crappy flash shorts and some interactive stuff.  None of it elevated beyond the level of a child playing with finger paint for the first time.  If I had examples, I'd show you.  Actually I do have one example from my newgrounds.com account.  You can find it here http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/509076 in it's full barely animated glory.

I've made worse and tried to get them through the portal but that's the only one that made it.  Anyways it started then and continued into 2007 when I went to a game design school.  There I barely learned anything at all really.  I did pick up some beginners programming and made some cool text based games with that.  I also made a pretty neat board game but beyond that I didn't learn much more about the craft and with the flood of Gen Ed high school level classes I was getting along with the slight peppering of one or (if I was lucky) two game related classes I honestly couldn't justify spending so much money on that tuition.  So I quit and dealt with other personal problems I had at the time.  I also wrote my first book around that time so that was awesome.

My Flash Bros. "Artwork."  All images belonging to Crystal Dynamics, Silicon Knights, Sega, Ubisoft, and Nippon Icchi.

Since then I've been dabbling with a few experimental game design projects.  I've played around with M.U.G.E.N. and RPG Maker.  I made a pretty funny and irreverent RPG back in 2009/2010 with the lovable fighting game character parody, Ipatch Hedband and the boss character Pimpmaster Poundmax along with the Overpowered/Game Breaking fusion character call Mayan Jesus, who could of course walk across water.

All fun stuff but it didn't really feel like I was learning anything lasting in the field.  My closest friends and I were talking in depth at the time about designing a fighting game and all came up with amazing ideas and characters for an epic pet project.  This was the unofficial beginning of our game design group, at the time called Digital Dragon Studios (more on that later).  Now, many years and project concepts later we've finally come up with a solid game plan (no pun intended) and now have the technology and ease-of-use of it to back us up.  We've always had ideas but little money and now with jobs and other priorities, little time.  Unity3d software is our beacon of light guiding us through the depths of hell.  With it, a lot of our design and monetary nightmares are put behind us and we are free to just worry about designing our games.

With that said, I still suck.  I'm honestly still a beginner at game designing.  I've been out of design school since about 2008 and my only frame of reference are my various critiques of the games I like and dislike and my own friends.  It's my fault because I didn't take game design seriously.  I didn't think I could do it all on my own, with no one to teach me.  I didn't think I had the time to do it.  My life was not easy, by any means, back then but I had many choices and I could've chosen to dedicate more time to it.  I deeply regret that.  I do understand however that I was ignorant.  If I had known such a resource as Unity was available, I would've jumped on it long ago and experimented with it.

My game design group, Flubberknuckle Studios has been consistently working on games for a few years now.  I've picked up a few tips and skills working closely with my friend Ryan.  I've given up programming long ago, leaving my skill at the beginner level but my friend Ryan has flourished after rigorously teaching himself the craft.  I've crafted the design documents, created some concept art, designed menus and other UI, written a few things, and co-crafted a few gameplay systems.  All that stuff was very involved but I definitely want to get more hands on.  So to that end, I'm delving into Unity creation.  I've done a few tutorials like learning the interface and Roll-A-Ball.  I'm about halfway through the Space Shooter one so I think I'll start posting my progress here.  Maybe somebody out there will find this helpful.

So that's my story, the summarized version anyway.  What about you guys and gals?  Anyone interested in game design?  Anyone going to school for it or doing it solo dolo?  What's your experience been like and what software do you swear by?  Please if you have any opinions go ahead and comment below.  I'd love to hear from you.  This has been Belart and I just want to again thank you wonderful viewers for the browse!

Card Game Creation Quest Part 2

Protection

So if you don’t already know from Part 1 of these Card Game Creation Quest posts, my partners and I at FlubberKnuckle Studios are hard at work creating a new card game called Flipz.  At this stage of the game I am researching what we need to get the physical version of the card out of the idea phase and into production and on hobby store shelves.  Before production and self-release, I believe our first step should be protecting our IP so that the idea isn’t whisked away while we’re shopping our product around.

So this thinking has led me into the world of copyrighting, which I am considering for my own book Average Joe and the Extraordinaires.  Further research has taken me into the realm of trademarking and patenting as well.  So I wondered which one of those we would need and looked up the differences between them.

So which one does our group need? 

Well I’ll tell you, first however I’d like to explain the difference in layman’s terms because I’m a simple man and found most of this very confusing.

Each of these methods: copyrighting, patenting, and trademarking are used to give you (the creator) certain protections on your creation.  You can sell your product all willy-nilly and make money off of it but if someone suddenly wants to market that product, idea, or service themselves or take the steps of copyrighting, patenting, or trademarking the work/invention that you made then they have that right.  What’s more, they can tell you that you can’t market the product that you created/conceptualized and they would be valid because the law would be on their side since you didn’t have the proper protections.  If you create anything and think you’ll sell it or want credit for it then one of the below methods of protection should be sought out.

So I’ll start with copyrighting, since that’s so near and dear to my heart (and my novels).  With copyrighting what’s protected are intellectual properties (IP’s) such as books, music (lyrics and beats), plays, movies, T.V. shows, and scripts.  In a nutshell, it protects any images, words, or sounds that have been authored and considered tangible forms of expression.  It does not however protect a slogan or a single word (trademarks do that).  It has to be substantial and it has to be original.

To seek out a copyright you want to head over to the Copyright Office over at the Library of Congress.  They have a phone number which is, (202) 707-3002 or 1-877-476-0778.  They can also be conveniently reached at their website (http://www.copyright.gov/).

Copyrighting is said to be a much quicker and cheaper process than either Patenting or Trademarking/Service marking.

After reading up on copyrighting it definitely looks like what we’ll need for our card game.  But I still want to read up on the other two, so next is…

Trademarking or service marking is actually explained by looking at the word itself.  When I read up on what trademarking does I had to go “oh, that makes sense.”  I’m sure many of you will have that moment too.  You see, trademarking is used to basically separate your product, or service for service marking, from other products and services.  Useful for federal trading of your product, and local too.  This is done by registering a symbol, word, or phrase to your product.  Think the McDonald’s yellow (golden) arches and the words McDonald’s.  These are trademarked symbols for the company.  Trademarks are basically used to stop others from using similar symbols to confuse or steal your customers.  A trademark does not prevent your product from being used or sold by someone else though.  Trademarks/Service marks can be sought at the Trademark and Patent office.

Patent and trademark info can be found at http://www.uspto.gov/.

Trademarking didn’t seem like a NEED to us but I figured we’d need to it anyhow.

So now we get to patenting.  A patent is used to protect an inventor’s inventions.  It prevents others from being able to make, use, offer for sale, or sale your invention but only applies to the boundaries of the United States.  A patent does not protect you from having someone overseas recreate your invention and sell it under their name overseas.  You’d have to seek a patent in that country to secure your rights to your invention there.  Patents, like trademarks, can be sought at the Trademark and Patents office.

After extensively researching each of these methods I’ve come to the conclusion that our card game will need a copyright…and a patent…and a trademark.  The copyright will be applied to the game’s concept, artwork, and rules.  The patent will apply to the actual physical card game and the overall mechanics.  The trademark will be used for the logo to ensure branding.  We’re going to have to spend a lot of money to get this board game off the ground.  Next up, I’m going to check out the costs of manufacturing and see if I can get a few of these companies on the horn.

Here are some links to the articles I used for research:

Copyright vs. Trademark vs. Patent
http://www.lawmart.com/forms/difference.htm

http://www.copyright.gov/

http://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/basics/trade_defin.jsp

http://www.uspto.gov/patents/index.jsp

The Cost of Various Patents
http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2011/01/28/the-cost-of-obtaining-patent/id=14668/?spammer=confirm

Patenting Board Games
http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2011/12/22/patenting-board-games-101/id=21356/

Card Game Creation Quest Part 1

The Rundown

I, your humble blog writer, and the group to which I am a part of, FlubberKnuckle Studios, have a plan to release an awesome card based videogame called Flipz.  Our card game started, ever-so-humbly, from a college assignment made by my close friend and business partner, Hawk.  Back then it was a physical card game and made with random graphics taken from the internet taped to the back of playing cards and placed inside of a card sleeve with the picture facing outwards.  The game proved to be a hell of a lot of fun.  Because we haven’t officially released anything yet or even copyrighted the thing yet I’ll hold off on describing the game itself, for now at least.

We’ve been hard at work making the digital version of said card game for well over a year as our studios first foray into videogame production.  It’s been a hard road and the journey has taught us a lot about ourselves and our potential.  I’ve demoed that game a hundred times at least and can say that it’s very faithful to the physical card game which we’ve been perfecting these last two years.  Now, however, we want to pull back a little and go for a different approach than the one we were planning.  We’ve had some changes throughout the group, mainly in how we operate and what we’re shooting for.  We’ve come up with a new strategy and new software to use for Flipz.

Now the first step will be to make the physical card game and release it.  That is our current focus.  We will use Hawk’s prototype and expand it to actual production and we will sell it to as many hobby stores as we can and market the hell out of the thing.  These physical copies will let the purchasers know that pretty soon, they can look forward to a digital copy of the same game.

I will chronicle out steps to production here on my blog for anyone else interested in learning about indie card game production. 

My NaNoWriMo Story Part 2 ½

The Trials

Obligations

The first week of NaNoWriMo brought plenty of excitement but it also brought its fair share of trials.  I had sworn off all forms of communication with others unless it was an emergency or near emergency but not everyone knew this and I’m a sucker for not wanting to make people feel unwanted for lack of a better word.  I also had a few obligations going into the month that I didn’t or forgot to cancel.  The first of which was a date.  I hadn’t had a date in quite some time so I wasn’t ready to cancel this one.  I also really wanted to reconnect with this person so canceling was out of the question.  It was a fine distraction though and I did actually get a lot of writing done before the date so in hindsight, I had no cause to worry.

Other obligations I had were to my family (my niece in particular), and the videogame studio I’m a part of, FlubberKnuckle studios, not to mention work obligations like a friend REALLY needing me to work a day for them so they could interview for a much needed extra job.

I don’t get to see my young niece a lot so when I do I like to do things for her.  She usually invites me on field trips and other school events with her so if I have time I like to go.  I couldn’t say no this month even with NaNoWriMo looming over my head.  The NaNo gods must have looked over me for the month though because her event (along with a lot of school days) was cancelled multiple times until the next month.

My game group, FlubberKnuckle Studios, is restructuring and focusing on further building our designing skills and so everyone is hard at work learning new software and creating new deadlines for various projects.  Every week we check in with Wednesday conferences updating everyone on our progress with whatever we’re doing.  My goal before the month was to learn the Blender and Unity software.  I started a few tutorials and played with the software but didn’t accomplish much.  With everyone in the group working so hard and taking our deadlines so seriously I felt that I couldn’t entirely shut out my FlubberKnuckle productivity so I continued to build my knowledge of the software and participate in conferences, though I missed two.  What I learned is that I don’t like juggling important tasks like that without a dedicated workspace.  Unless I have a desk and a quiet space to work—in my home next year—I will only participate in NaNoWriMo if I have no other obligations and vice versa.

Life Doesn’t Pause

Distractions, distractions everywhere!  Time I find is such an easy resource to waste especially for myself.  I take life slowly most of the time and like to just stop and think about things, everything really.  I don’t have a space of my own and I don’t own a car so finding that precious quiet time that writers crave is like mining for gold and precious gems.  It’s a task it really is.  I stay in a one bedroom apartment with my mother in an impromptu (what I thought temporary) move to save money.  I stay in the living/dining/now bedroom and my mom likes to watch T.V…a lot.  When I write, I typically write for a stretch and then pause to think about what I wrote and what I’ll write next.  Problem is whenever I pause and the sounds of the T.V. travel over to my ears and my eyes begin to wander in a search for something newer or fresher than the bright whites of my notebook or laptop screen.  It’s astounding how much time I actually wasted absentmindedly watching the crap she was watching at the time.  When I realized how little work I had gotten done it started to piss me off.  My mom is wondrously considerate like myself and I knew if I had asked her that she’d go quietly to her room but that shit wouldn’t have been fair of me so I kept my crabby attitude and tried to work through it.  I knew then that I needed some other work space but it was cold and the buses really ran like shit and I couldn’t think of any decent places to go where there weren’t many distractions around.  There aren’t any nearby coffee shops where I stay, at least any that didn’t require an hour and a half bus wait.

The buses were where I wasted the bulk of my time for the month.  Mostly during my travels to work.  Don’t get me wrong, I still crammed as much work into my bus ride as I could and actually did some of my best work on the coach.  But even writing on the bus proved to be inconsistent.  Getting a seat on the bus (especially the one I catch) is never guaranteed and about 70% of the time I stood up on a crowded coach.  Waiting for the buses alone wasted about 2 to 6 hours out of my day depending on how late they were.  But on the good bus rides I could easily write between 400 and 1000 words because of the lack of distractions (when other people weren’t acting crazy).

The writing itself was a whole other trial.  My plot, I now saw, was not fully fleshed out.  I wrote from the outline but added new details, locations, and characters as I did.  The outline kept changing and the chapters filled out more.  The writing came slowly and I found that I was truly a slow and methodical writer.  I had to pause to figure out every little detail about what I was writing even words and word arrangement in a sentence.  I was entirely too slow. 

So now I saw that if I wanted to win this contest I needed to change where I wrote and how I wrote.  So I brooded on that for a while whilst continuing to try to blot out the distractions at home with earbuds and music which proved only marginally effective.  I knew my next step but it would take a large setback to make me implement it.

Up next, the pitfalls that nearly destroyed my resolve.

Focus is hard to find

I had plans for this week but have only barely accomplished any of them.  First and foremost on my list was to write some chapters on my nearly complete book Average Joe and the Extraordinaires which can be previewed here.  Then I wanted to work on the characters and AI ratings for FlubberKnuckle's game Flipz.  I wanted to finish the latest Story of K chapter and finish my latest analysis of Guardian's Crusade for my A Closer Look series.  None of that was done and I blame it on my wavering levels of focus.

I did have plenty of distractions such as video games, my friend Will, The Young Turks on Youtube, my friend Will, Facebook, my friend Will, and just generally forgetting about everything that I wanted to do.  Now to be honest it's totally not fair to blame Will for my lack of concentration, that was my own doing.  It is indeed tough for me to find a groove to start any sort of writing that requires concentration as long as I'm distracted but that's something that I definitely have to work on and I also have to work on saying no which strangely enough has become a lot harder lately especially since I'm becoming more tolerant of other people's desires.

I did manage to plot my story out to its end over the last few days which I am glad of.  Writing for me is weird like that but I notice that I can definitely do more of it and better quality while alone which is why my next move must be a singular one.

I'll have to either learn some meditative concentration techniques or hope that this move happens sooner rather than later.  If anyone has any suggestions please let me know because other than having fun this week has been disappointing as far as productivity.