NxtGen Media - The Freeman View

sfxr Audio Tool

I am not an audio guy by any stretch of the imagination. In learning Unity, I am finding that I have to wear a lot of hats. I’m a programmer, and even if not an expert in the other areas, I am finding that I still have to know enough to work with those that are. As for composing Music, I am just not going to touch it as I have my hands full with dealing with Blender. As for sound effects I can get away with the beep sound, but sometimes you just want to hear a sound that is in the ball park of what you intended. Somehow when your testing your laser cannon out, a beep just doesn’t do it justice. Enter, Dr. Peter’s sfxr utility.

Made in 2007 for a game dev competition for teams that did not have time to look for sounds in their mad rush to complete the game by the deadline. The utility allows you to choose from randomly generated sounds for pick-up, shooting, explosion, power-up, hit, jump, and select.  You can also tweak the sound and export it to a .wav file. Not the highest quality, but it certainly beats the system beep sound and will give you an idea of what your effect could sound like.

DCF

Blender Basics - Classroom Tutorial Book Review

One thing I have learned about Unity development is that you reach a point where you gotta create your own objects and artwork. I have been using Blender for modeling, and I must say that it is growing on me, but it is not an easy transition from tools like Truespace.  However, it is free and it does do a good job, so I am trying real hard to embrace it.

I have been watching a lot of Blender tutorial videos and have learned a great deal. Being old school, I also like having books on hand to reference. One great reference I found is Blender Basics - Classroom Tutorial Book, 3rd Edition. It does a great job of breaking down the tools that make up Blender. As the name implies, it was created as a class room accompaniment and pretty much walks you through the basics of Blender. I highly recommend it.

Check it out here

DCF

Unity Game Development Essentials Review

The book was written by Will Goldstone, and my hat goes off to him. This is a very good book. If you don’t know beans about Unity, this is a good place to start. That and it is the only book out there for Unity at the moment. This is not your typical game development computer book that takes you through the basics of game development concepts before it gets into the meat. Instead, the author gives a short summary of 3d concepts as they pertain to Unity, and gets you right into the fundamentals of using the tool that is Unity.

The book reads like a very long tutorial, and essentially that is what it is. You get short summaries of subjects like scripting, and collision detection that are just enough for you to get through to the end of the project. For experienced developers, this will be enough because really most just want to understand the workflow for Unity. As for others with less experience, it will be a good starting point, but is by no means the only reference you will need.

The book tackles designing a game for a first person perspective. No small task indeed. The author covers designing the terrain, using prefabs, basic scripting, ray casting, GUI design, game physics, particle systems, and menu and scene design and setup. Will does a great job of introducing one to the essentials of Unity, but he also subtly lets you know that there is so much to know about Unity and game development in general, and that Unity is no ‘click and play’ tool. Upon finishing the book, you are going to have questions, lots of questions and I think that was the point of the book. To introduce you to the tool, and get you thinking about what all you have to consider if you are going to use the tool to make a game or application. The book is a very good introduction to Unity and I highly recommend it.

DCF

Unity3d free?!!

Last week, I sent DiamondTearz an email asking him was he still excited about Unity3D. I sent this, because I was considering buying it, despite my reservations about player penetration and such. He wrote me back that not only did he love it, but that the indie version was free.

Shocking? Absolutely. The few things that were holding me back from pursuing development were obviously player penetration, and not really wanting to spend $200 on a technology that I was not sure was going to be around for the long haul. With the $200 barrier gone, I would be crazy not to seriously begin developing with this engine. All I have to lose now is time, and I am betting that with the release of the indie version, player penetration is going to increase and Unity will be around for some time to come.

Excited? More than you can imagine. The little bit I played with Unity before, gave me the impression that this was huge, but I was just not ready to spend time with something else over my beloved Flash. Too many years in the development relationship with Flash, but god was I tempted. Now with this release, I see at the very least I can begin to realize prototypes and experiments that were simply not possible in Flash. I would often go home from a day of working in Flash, and work on games and experiments in Flash. Now I will be doing that ‘homework’ in Unity. I can’t remember the last time I was so excited about a home project. Oh yeah, back in the days when I first started using Flash. This move by Unity was brilliant. It will be very interesting to see what happens in the industry as a result.

DCF

Linux Multimedia Studio (LMMS)

I love to dabble in both graphics and audio, even if I’m only a novice.  I have played with Acid and Fruity Loops, and really like them but could not justify getting the latest versions since money is tight and audio is not really where my development focus is. I have been on the lookout for an open source equivalent, and it looks like there is a good one now out.

Linux Multimedia Studio (LMMS) is a cross platform tool similar to Fruity Loops. Has a good set of features, and is pretty quick to jump into and create something. Has great documentation, and is really stable. Best of all it is free. If you have the desire to dabble in the audio end, this is a great way to start. Check it out at:
LMMS
Also of Note:
ZynAddSubFX - a nice open source synthesizer (great for creating sound effects).
DCF

BigDump - Large Db importer

Ever have a situation where you export a MySQL database to move to another location, only to find that you can’t load it to the new location via phpmyadmin because of script timeout? You can always load the script from the command line, provided you have access to the command line and know the MySQL commands, but suppose you don’t have these abilities. Bigdump.php may be the answer for you.

Bigdump is a staggered MySQL dump importer. It allows for the import of large databases to be broken up into small task so the system does not time out. I’ve used it on a number of database imports with great success. Just load it to your web server, configure it for your database, and run. It really is a nice utility.

Check it out

DCF

Flash Builder and Catalyst Betas

Been playing around with the betas of Flash Builder and Catalyst. I must say that I am quite impressed. There are still some things to be worked out I guess for the final release, but for the most part both builds seem pretty solid and are quite workable.

Admittedly, Catalyst is going to take some getting used to just in terms of work flow. Once folks are over the hump, I’m sure it will become a power tool in most shops. Just for mock ups and demos alone, it is worth it. I do remember when Dreamweaver first had behaviors and wrote code for you. Used to produce some scary stuff that the developer never wanted to touch. Such is the case now with Catalyst. As I play with it more, I’ll post.

Flash Builder is really good. The profiling and debugging tools are a needed addition. The new components and help are great as well. Definitely starting to feel like the “Borland Builder” environment of years past. I love Flash Develop and the work flow I have developed between it and Flash Professional, but now using Flash Builder, I could be enticed to make a switch to Flash Builder. Now that I get how to build SWC files in Flash Pro, it is beginning to make more sense to work in Flash Builder.

My designer colleague made an observation. He wondered why Adobe just did not go the route of a Dreamweaver, and make Catalyst and Flash Builder one product with a design view and a code view? Or why don’t they just improve the Flash Pro code editor to be more robust so those of us that have to work in Flash Pro don’t have to resort to a Flash Develop. This present move means I will have to buy a whole lot more stuff to get a happy medium. He does have a point.

Check out the betas at Adobe Labs

-DCF

Moving Day, part 3

After much planning and configuration, I was finally able to get my multiple site environment moved from our local machines to a hosting company. In part 1 and 2, I talked about how my company could save money by using an external hosting company and dropping the T1 line cost. We chose 1and1 for the initial move. For $20 a month, we could have pretty much what we had been maintaining in house.
Seemed like a great idea, until we ran into the 1and1 database limitation. It seems that on their most robust package which is their Developer Package, 1and1 limits the size of a database structure files to be 100MB! That is just stupid! At the time of the move, my structure weighed in at 107MB. There was no way to up the database quota, so we had to get another host. This was after moving gigs of data up to 1and1. Painful indeed.
We then went to HostGator out of Texas. I have nothing but good to say about them. For a mere $15 per month, we have unlimited everything! The move had some minor bumps, but all were easily addressed in the forums and tech support. The whole process was just a really good experience all the way around. While not as polished as 1and1 in the way of online admin tools (took some getting used to, but what doesn’t?), I highly recommend them. I will be keeping my personal 1and1 account, as it is great for what I am doing development wise. A small business could do well with such a package, but if you have some serious data going on, you better go with a host that allows for such throughput. HostGator is just such a host.

-DCF

My Unity 3D Trial

Well, my Unity 3D Windows trial has come to an end. I am totally impressed with the quality of the engine. I am amazed at what the Unity team has accomplished. Unity has so much power, and development capability, all deliverable via browser. The platform is simply incredible. So, am I going right out and buying a license? Will I forsake Flash for the opportunity to develop “real games” in Unity? Nope, or at least not yet.

Why not you may ask? Well, simply put, for the very reason that Flash is great. The ubiquity and ease of installation of the Flash player and the UI capabilities of Flash far out shadow its short comings. I can’t justify the time split learning Unity, when I still have so much to learn in Flash/Flex, and that is where my money is being made.

I had some designer friends checking out the features of Unity, and some of the games out there done in Unity. Feature wise, they were very impressed. Unity player download is what they felt absolutely sucked. Not that it was a horrible ordeal, but that it took longer than expected and interrupted their experience. That is the attitude of the net: Don’t make me wait.

The general consensus:
‘No one but diehard gamers will take the time out for installing yet another player. If casual games are your aim, then you lose your audience, because the player is far from a “casual” download. Conversely, diehards will not be convinced that their time won’t be wasted on a browser based game.’

Ok, I could have argued with them, but they did have a point. There will have to be a huge culture shift in terms of the game platform being in the cloud and not the console. Until we nail down this broadband bandwidth thing, Flash is still going to look pretty good for the casual game dev simply in terms of ubiquity and scale. In other words, grandma can download the Flash player in no time flat, and play ‘Texas Hold Em’.

If all goes well, and the US infrastructure enrichment plans come to fruition, Flash will have to ante up in the game dev area (particularly 3d) to remain competitive in that area. Until then, Flash is sitting pretty, and will continue to do so. If it continues to target business apps and is adopted, then it becomes even more entrenched. Unity has to bide its time, keep building its following, and offer more UI features. If you can make a 3D game with it, then you can most certainly do Rich Internet Apps with it. When and if Unity hits 50% browser penetration, then I will be seriously looking at it. Flash better look out.

-DCF

Flash/Flex/Air Debuggers

I am always on the lookout for a good debugger for the Flash environment. Back with Flash 8, I used Xray written by John Grden of Papervision3D and Red5 fame. It does AS3 now and works very well. Xray is definitely one of the best in terms of functionality. For the longest, it was the ONLY way to go. Well, now there is a new debugger out there called De Monster Debugger.

De Monster is an open source debugger for Adobe Flash, Flex and AIR. De MonsterDebugger was created in Flex and AIR by design studio De Monsters. It is an Air application that you install on your system. It is so easy to get going, and does much of what Xray does. Like Xray, it will work with Flex, Flash and Air. I work with FlashDevelop which some have found difficult to get trace information out of. Using either one of these debuggers with Flash develop will solve your trace problems if you have not figured out the recommended way to do it.

Which will I use? Well, looks like Monster is a new kid on the block, and I’m kind of liking the whole setup. Not that one is better than the other. I kind of want to see where these guys are going to go with it. So for now, I am going to be debugging with De Monster just for the sheer novelty and the support it is getting.

-Xray
-De Monster Debugger
-Arthropod

-D