This week I’ve: RF1 – Updated Django to 1.11.17 Misc – did some reading on unit testing and CI in Unity Misc – went to Bristech Misc – been on ScrumMaster training Read on

It’s been a really hectic week but I have: Oversteer Racing: refactored the code to work out how long a car should remain stationary in the pits. Misc: went to the local Unity Meet-up Read on

This week I’ve: Oversteer Racing: worked on rival car AI and now have rival cars that can put together a reasonable lap. The next step will be to help rival cars recover after a crash or off and make theme aware of other cars. Oversteer Racing: upgraded to Unity 2017.1.0f3 Glossary: updated to CakePHP 2.10.1 Read on

This week I’ve: Oversteer Racing: upgraded to Unity 5.6.1 Oversteer Racing: further work on customisation scenes Oversteer Racing: came up with some driver and team names Read on

This week I’ve: Oversteer Racing: updated the project to Unity 5.5 Oversteer Racing: wrote the latest dev blog RF1: spent some time looking at charting solutions to replace the deprecated static image Google Chart API Misc: updated content on the AES site Misc: went to the local Unity Meet-up Read on

This week I: Oversteer Racing: worked out how damage affects performance Oversteer Racing: set up debris for display after a collision Oversteer Racing: stopped the car being driven if damage is too great Misc: went to the October meet-up of the Unity group Read on

This week I: Oversteer Racing: fixed the particle issue introduced when upgrading to Unity 5.4.1 (seems like I was working around a bug in 5.3 that was fixed in 5.4.1, so then my workaround stopped) Oversteer Racing: now using the SpriteLamp shader and a normal map to dynamically light the car sprite Oversteer Racing: started work on the damage model for the car Web: updated RF1 to Django 1.8.15 Read on

This week I: Oversteer Racing: Upgraded to Unity 5.4.1 (this introduced some issues with layering, playing dust/smoke particles and resized the controls) Oversteer Racing: fixed layering issues caused by update Oversteer Racing: re-sized the controls Oversteer Racing: wrote my first dev blog Web: updated Glossary to CakePHP 2.9.0 Read on

Back in 2014 I blogged about how to solve the “Unable to convert classes into dex format” Unity error. I thought I’d post a follow up as I had the same error recently but with a slightly different message and cause. The error was: UNEXPECTED TOP-LEVEL EXCEPTION: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: already added: Lcom/google/android/gms/analytics/ExceptionReporter; I looked for ExceptionReporter and found it in: Assets/Plugins/Android/google-play-services_lib/libs/google-play-services.jar Temp/StagingArea/android-libraries/google-play-services_lib/libs/google-play-services.jar Temp/StagingArea/android-libraries/play-services-analytics-7.5.0/bin/classes.jar The original error report also said: Created unique file for imported asset as file... Read on

This week I’ve: Web: Further design and CSS work for my wife’s company Misc: Went to the Unity Meetup Read on

Still lots going on at home so all I’ve done this week is upgrade the current Oversteer2D code to Unity 5.3.1 Read on

Further work on Oversteer 2D. I’m still thinking that 2D physics throughout is now the correct way to proceed. I still need to set up an entirely new BitBucket repo as I don’t want to remove all the work/code from the existing one. I’ll just park the existing repo and start a new one based on my experiments to date. Read on

This week I… Updated the Glossary to use CakePHP 2.7.7 Updated RF1 to use Django 1.8.7 Did some more work on car handling in Oversteer 2D Wrapped up RF1 for another season Read on

I’ve been working quite hard on Oversteer this week. For some time I’ve been trying to get the “feel” of the car right and have not only been struggling with the controls but also the physics. Previously I’d assumed that Oversteer would use 2D models but with 3D physics. However, I want to spend some time trying 2D physics instead. In Unity the 2D and 3D physics engines are separate (although the API is quite... Read on

This week I mainly worked on Oversteer: Test driving using Virtual Joystick Added code back in to provide keyboard control Started work on controlling turn rate based on speed Read on

This week I… Updated the Glossary to use CakePHP 2.7.5 Updated RF1 to use Django 1.8.6 Oversteer: Tidied up a bit of code in Oversteer Updated Oversteer to allow us to easily toggle between the PS3 controller and the virtual joystick Tagged test scenery objects Stopped constraining the virtual joystick in a circle as this stops us being able to set full throttle and full turn Lots of tweaks to acceleration and deceleration rates Read on

I’ve not had time to do much work on my other projects this week. However I did try changing Oversteer so that the car turning code uses AddRelativeTorque instead of just AddTorque. This hasn’t had much of an effect on the handling so I may revert the change. Read on

This week I: Updated Oversteer to use Unity 5.2.1 Added some test scenery Created a new version of the car control script that combines the acceleration/deceleration code from one script I’ve been working on and uses the code for turning the car from another. Read on

This week I did… Further work on car control for Oversteer Updated the Glossary to use CakePHP 2.7.5 Read on

This week I… Upgraded RF1 to use Django 1.8.5 Fixed a minor bug on RF1 Updated Oversteer so I can play it with a PS3 controller (which better mimics a phone in terms of input) Read on

Still working hard on car control and physics Read on

This week I did… More work on car control and physics Added a virtual joystick to aid control Added a script to make the camera follow the car in a smooth way Switched to using “Visual Studio Code” as it’s a much nicer editor than MonoDevelop Read on

This week I: Created a new scene for the test track and corrected the orientation so that gravity is along the Y axis and not the Z. Made further tweaks to try and counter the over rotation when turning the car. Read on

More work on car physics… that is all 😉 Read on

I’ve not managed much this week but have mainly been focussing on car physics. Read on

This week I… Upgraded RF1 to use Django 1.8.4 Went to the Unity meet-up group and tried out a Samsung Gear VR More work on car physics – now trying out wheel colliders Read on

This week I’ve been doing a lot of reading and research on car physics… and that’s about it 😉 I’ve been reading: Brian Beckman – Physics of Racing Marco Monster – Car physics for games Punyawee Srisuchat – Development of a car physics engine for games Ted Zuvich – Vehicle Dynamics for Racing Games Read on

This week I’ve been working fairly solidly on the car control scripts for Oversteer Racing. At this stage there are three different things I want to try: Moving the car with transform.position and transform.rotation – the downside of this is that it conflicts with the physics engine in Unity. Reading around it seems that, if you want to use physics at all, then it’s best to do everything with physics in Unity. Move the car with... Read on

This week I… Updated Bubblision to use Unity5 and updated all the plugins Set up git repo for Oversteer Racing Created a basic start screen for Oversteer Racing Experimented with creating a test track and car model Read on

This week I… Did some 3D modelling for my new game.  I’ve created a pretty quick 3D model for a generic racing car in Blender and it seemed to work out OK… or at least sufficient for my needs (especially as I’ve not used Blender before) Created some normal maps for the 2D models. Tested out the normal maps. Tried generating normal maps from the 3D model. Read on

This week I… Did a bit of research on 3D models… and that was about it 😉 Read on

This week I… Created some more preliminary artwork for my next game… so far I’ve got: Car artwork Lorry artwork Test track Tyre barrier Read on

This week I… Upgraded Bubblision to be a Unity 5 project, this included: New version of EchoLogin Core Framework, GameAnalytics, UnityTestTools I had to change some code to work with the new GameAnalytics Unity SDK only to then find it won’t work with Android until later this month Fixed some display issues Fixed some new bugs to prevent code trying to destroy objects that had been destroyed I had to change the mesh renderer on power-ups as... Read on

For a few weeks I’ve been eluding to my next game project and doing a little bit of preliminary work (see: SunUp #15-27, SunUp #15-25 and SunUp #15-23) but I’ve not said much about it. Well, the time has come to provide a few more details I think… Introducing… Oversteer Racing Oversteer Racing will be a top-down racer for mobiles and tablets. The racing will be circuit-based with open-wheeled cars but will be entirely fictional and not based... Read on

This week I… Finally deployed the link fixes to RF1 🙂 Upgraded RF1 to use Django 1.8.2 Started some preliminary artwork for my next Unity game Read on

This week I… Upgraded Unity to v5 and began converting Bubblision Carried on with removing hard-coded links from RF1 Read on

I recently came across the following error when trying to build my game in Unity “Unable to convert classes into dex format. See the Console for details.” The console error is pretty long but starts with: Error building Player: CommandInvokationFailure: Unable to convert classes into dex format. See the Console for details. C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_38\bin\java.exe -Xmx1024M -Dcom.android.sdkmanager.toolsdir="E:/adt-bundle-windows-x86-20131030/sdk\tools" -Dfile.encoding=UTF8 -jar "E:/unity/Editor/Data/BuildTargetTools/AndroidPlayer\sdktools.jar" - stderr[ UNEXPECTED TOP-LEVEL EXCEPTION: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: already added: Lcom/google/android/gms/common/internal/safeparcel/a; at com.android.dx.dex.file.ClassDefsSection.add(ClassDefsSection.java:122) at com.android.dx.dex.file.DexFile.add(DexFile.java:161) at com.android.dx.command.dexer.Main.processClass(Main.java:685) at... Read on

Probably the biggest achievement this sprint was to show the latest build of the game at the Unity meet-up. I had to do a web-player build but the demo seemed to go ok… well, no-one laughed… so I’ll count that as a success. I got some good feedback regarding making the game more testing when only one NPC bubble is in play and some other helpful comments (including on the changes I’d made to improve... Read on

Some of the things I did this week: Added trails to NPC bubbles at higher colour streaks Signed up to AdMob Did a Web build of the game so I could show it at the Unity Meet-up tomorrow…. eek Finished reading Theory of Fun for Game Design (3/5) Read on

Some of the things I did this week: Finally created some integration tests for Bubblision. I’ve only done two so far but it’s a start. Went along to the monthly Unity meet-up – a talk on editor extensions. Great talk and an excellent night. Did a test upgrade of the Glossary to CakePHP 2.5.2 (from 2.5.1) Prepared test fixtures for the Identifier tool prior to attempting to upgrade it from the CakePHP 1.3.x branch to... Read on

Had a pretty busy week so only completed a couple of tasks this week: Went to the Unity meet-up and heard a good talk on Shaders Did a bit more research on business banking Created a logo for my company that I’m fairly pleased with… I’m going to review it in a week or so and see if I’m still pleased with it. Read on

Things I’ve done this week (it’s been a busy one): Went to the Bristol Games Hub Unity Meet-up – really interesting talks and demos. Looking forward to more regular meet-ups. Went to the Bristol Games Hub and Full Indie UK showcase evening – some great games on show. I enjoyed the evening but left feeling a bit demoralised as the games in the showcase were all a lot better than Bubblision. I’d like to be... Read on

In the last sprint I completed: Stop new bubbles overlapping Made re-instantiated bubbles faster Stopped the ‘slow down’ power-up being shown when only one bubble remains Cleared power-ups when the last bubble has burst (i.e. end of the game) Tweaked the text colour used in the ‘end game’ screen Read the Unity documentation on testing Play testing A few other things I did: Did some analysis on link profiles and thin content (SEO) for one... Read on

If you’re a regular reader then you might’ve noticed that I’ve been struggling to fix an annoying bug in Bubblision for a couple of sprints. Initially the bug manifested itself as a graphical glitch where the two particle systems that are used when the player bubble hits an NPC bubble were played at the same time. Collisions would occasionally produce particles of two different colours. Later on I realised that occasionally I’d also get collisions... Read on