Does anyone know how to get chiptunes, or indeed any non-apple, instruments into garageband? I tried the YMCK plugin, but it just created a horrible loud beep which I think messed up the audio in garageband, I had to restart the program.
 
edit: aha, the Bitcrusher effect has a number of retro filters which you can apply to any instrument. You can get some pretty oldscool sounding stuff.

Thanks for the advice. I agree that in some circumstances it would be useful to hand over tracks to a musician to spruce up, or to make some remixes and derivative accompanying tunes. That's definitely a good idea and something I'll bear in mind in future.

I think for now, however, I'm quite enjoying the idea of working solo on my games, at least for now.

Thanks, I'm glad you like what I have so far!

There's a lot to fix with the melody at the moment, and the transitions are clumsy as well.  The twangy noise is some sort of acoustic string instrument, but not electric guitar.  I'm feeling far less wary of making my own music for games in the future now, which is a massive relief. It's also quite a fun and relaxing task to work on. 

I think I need to take my time and keep practicing with this.

can't get the link to work :/

whoops, fixed!

Thanks for the advice everyone, and I'm glad some of you enjoy my game!

I took everything on board, and this morning I decided to fire up Garageband and have a go at making a song for the first time ever.

I don't play an instrument, and I haven't followed any tutorials, but I am finding Garageband pretty easy to use.  So far my music sounds like this: musictest02.mp3. Obviously I have a long way to go, but I'm actually enjoying making music and I think it will be worth taking the time in order to gain more control over my games.

edit: URL fixed.

I was surprised as soon as it started, because it has the music from Metrocross. I played that loads in the arcade and on Commodore 64 as a kid, so I already knew the tune.

Whereabouts in London is the venue?

Wow dock... I think that's the nicest workspace yet. I feel productive just from looking at it.
The NES controller is a nice touch.

Thanks! As of yesterday I upgraded from the USB famicom controller to this USB bad boy:

So... It's a double-sided question. Does "Agatha Ragata" really sound bad in English, or do you have a better name suggestion? (The advantage of "Agatha Ragata", in my opinion, is that it's probably more rememberable than standard game names.)

I already answered this question on the IRC a while ago, but I'll answer agin. I really like the name, it's cool. (though Ragatta might work better for you)

I'm surprised and disappointed to see derision aimed at both approaches... programming from scratch, and using an engine.

'Game makers' engines are inherently limited, but so are people. I know that I'm not good enough of a programmer to be able to make something that would produce the results I want, so instead I'm willing to work within the limitations of a game engine.  Indeed, even though I'm using Unity I tend to try to design games around my own limitations, and to make the most of my skillset. I also try to design around the parts of Unity that I'm comfortable working with, which is why I tend to play around in advance to be sure I'm comfortable with the technology I'm relying upon. I don't think the games I make will be limited.

Well here's where the magic doesn't happen. Sorry my camera is crap, old it is.
http://i150.photobucket.com/albums/s96/Degal/MyWorkspace.jpg

Whoa - you should be careful of using your mouse placed like that, you can get carpal tunnel syndrome from the weird angle.

dphrygian, very neat and readable code! I wish I could say the same for your username!

One interesting thing about working with Unity is that you tend to adopt some of the style habits of Unity itself. For example, they encourage you to write your variables like this:

var numberOfLives = 5;

This is because it will extract this variable and make it visible in the GUI as

"Number Of Lives"

So you tend to use their rules of capitalisation. Same goes for capitals on Function() stuff.

Funny that as it stands coding your own is more than all the other options combined!

Of course, I'm all for self coding. No point learning an environment that won't be valid in 5 years. (Klik 'n Play anyone?)

What is wrong with the Knytt and Noitu Love games?
They're built on MMF, which is the latest iteration of Klik n play.

So, here are a couple of questions for you: their website makes it sound like you can use just about any 3D modeling and animation program to create in-game art. Have you used any, and is it really as easy as they claim? They also say that Unity supports Javascript, C#, and "Boo." Which of these do you use? Does it work well?

With iPhone publishing, don't forget you have to pay for a seperate iphone Unity license as well as the regular Unity license.

With 3D software, they basically have a really robust FBX importer, so that's what you'll be using to import files. I'm doing all my 3D models in 3DS MAX at the moment and saving them directly into my Unity project folder over the network as FBX files, and Unity automatically updates all instances of that object in my scenes, and keeps my edits intact.  If you have mac software like Maya it is even better, as you can save your .ma files into the project folder and it'll automatically export the FBX files it needs from there, and you can double click on them to edit them at any time. Pretty solid.  

I tend to assign materials and textures in unity itself, but I've only done a basic project so far.

I tend to use Javascript because I'm not familiar with any of the languages, and much of the documentation examples are in javascript.  Apparently it isn't 'real javascript' and is a special extended Unity version of the language, whatever that means, haha.

I'm quietly confident that Unity will work on Google Chrome when it ceases to be a beta product, but.. yeah, nothing I can do there.

Thanks again for the front-page!

I'm going to seriously rejig the order of the levels in the next version, I need to start figuring out how best to test the difficulty.

I'm still hunting for music for Tumbledrop, and I can't seem to find anything that really sticks with me. I tried hiring a musician once, but the music tracks that he sent me weren't to my liking at all, so I had to let him go. I was wondering whether anyone has any music libraries that they could recommend. One of the problems I have is finding music that has a very short introduction, so that it fits neatly into the 10-20 seconds before gameplay starts, but in general I think I need to find more libraries.

The sites I've been using are as follows:

www.neosounds.com
Very good site with a lot of good music. I even bought one track which I thought would be perfect, but when I put it on the title screen it totally clashed with the visuals and timing.

www.sounddogs.com
I found this site a bit difficult to get around, but I suspect there seems to be some good tracks on there. Finding something suitable might take a while though, especially as their audio preview seems to respond slowly.

The other option is to make my own music. I worry about this, because I'm not musically trained or anything. I'm just a guy with a copy of Garage Band on the mac. The advantage would be that I could tailor my music to fit the sections that it would appear, but the disadvantage is that if my music is poor quality it would bring down my entire game.

Any thoughts or advice on obtaining music?

The code in my game is a mess, and it's something I really want to make efforts to tidy up for my next project (it's too late for this one, haha).  Is there any sources for 'advice' on code style for games in general?

I use Unity for my game development. Just finished my first game ever thanks to it (Tumbledrop). I really love using it, and I actively look forward to making more games in it.  It's Mac-only for development, but builds games for web, and Windows too if you buy the pro license ($1500).

In the past I have dabbled in Blitz 2 (Amiga), Blitz 2D, Blitz 3D, Torque Game Builder (worst experience ever, never touching torque again!), all of which I bought.  Oh, and Verge 1, if that counts.

I really liked Blitz3D a LOT, but I found it very difficult whenever I ran into a bug.  It's a shame that Blitz became strange once BlitzMAX came around, as it never really replaced Blitz3D and the whole community became very anxious and weird.  I feel slightly guilty 'abandoning' Blitz, but I'm having a much happier time with Unity and it feels like a product moving forwards, rather than seven-months of silence in the Blitz community.

It's worth noting that Unity was one of the things that pushed me over to owning a mac, and it's been only 10 months or so since I learned that Unity even existed.

DaveGilbert, good to see your entire development setup is a laptop! Very cool and minimal indeed.



Took this photo a week or so during 'crunch' on Tumbledrop. Using a old Windows laptop and a new-ish dual-screen 2.8ghz imac.

I absolutely love it, so polished and magical. The thing that really stood out for me was the emotional connection I felt with the pieces, because if felt sad to drop or remove any of the yellow guys, so I really wanted to do each level with as few moves as possible to see as many smiling faces as possible.  Surprisingly deep!

Thanks muchly, really glad you enjoy it! I put a bit of time into the expressions on the blocks so that they were fun to look at as they collide with one another, so I'm pleased that you enjoy them!  I'm actually looking into doing a special medal in the final game for people just like you! ^_~

Yaay its really good i was playing it more, but this one time i pressed restart and it loaded the level on top of itself.. so there were double pieces and it exploded everywhere...

it wasnt really game-breaking though i just pressed restart again and it was fine.

great work though!!

Ahh, this is my least favourite bug in this release, funny though it is! Haha, at least it doesn't break the game though, and don't worry - I'll be sure to fix it!  I'm really happy that you like the game. ^_^