Create a simple game for my son
I want to start making simple games for my son Nate to share things with him. He’s 2.5 so he doesn’t get proper games yet. He’s happier tapping to find things. This will build on the play I have done with the Unity3D game engine giving me something real and fun to use it for.
He likes
- Sounds
- Pictures
- Videos
- Tapping
This gives me some ideas for simple games
- keepy uppy. Just a football or tennis ball. Just tap the ball to keep it up. He plays then I play. Who does it for longest.
- click picture to find things: Each picture has a different theme. Animals, vehicles, favourites shows or family. Add sounds for each.
Push to ipad. Make in Unity.
Planes
The first will be based on Disneys Planes. Nate loves to point out his favourite planes. I found a few images. The game will be involve clicking on parts of an image to bring up a pic of the character and play a sound
Can just be one scene to start with. Go with a blank project at first. Import my previous work as needed. The polish just comes from the pictures and sounds used.
[unity src=”214″]
Challenges
- Download and install unity DONE
- Create project DONE
- popup resets after time period DONE
- Install wordpress unity and youtube plugins DONE
- Publish to blog DONE
- Find planes video for sounds DONE
- support ipad touch gestures DONE
- Get sounds from video for each character DONE
- Add more sounds for each character DONE
- Fix sound volume. It’s too low DONE
- Add new levels DONE
- Add multiple images per character DONE
Diary
I have got the first version up to the blog. The rest needs my macbook and an ipad.
To get the sounds I recorded audio from the youtube videos using audacity. Created individual audio clips. Then dragged into unity.
July 9th 2014
I installed an older version of the project on my macbook yesterday. It works but is missing key things like the audio. I looked at publishing to my ipad. I’ve published a unity app to an ipad before at work and that required a bit of setup. It seems I’ll have to do the same at home.
Apparently I should be able to publish straight to my personal ipad when it is connected to the mac via usb. I think that means I need to ensure I have xcode up and running properly because I think it’s xcode that deals with publishing to ipad and not unity itself. That’s what I remember from my experience at work publishing to ipad.
July 18th 2014
I’ve published the final version of the game so far. It’s got 3 levels focusing on different characters. Tap each character to see different images and hear them speak. Not all characters have sound.
It’s minimalist. No instructions, just tapping images but my little on is just 2 and a half and it makes him happy. I published it to my android phone for free but you need to pay to publish to ipad. So that will come later. I uploaded the final version to this article too.
Resources
Here are some of the resources I used to make the game. It’s so helpful to have so many high quality assets available.
Videos
General intro for Planes with dusty and a fighter
Fighters and Dusty racing
Armed Forces Featurette
El Chupacabra
Pictures
http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=101979
http://www.disney.co.uk/movies/planes/planes-2013
http://screenrant.com/disney-planes-movie-characters-guide-2013/
Audio
Audacity and recording from youtube with audacity on windows 7. Lame audio plugin set audio settings to windows WASAP
Games
I found some games from Disney so I couldn’t help including them for reference. I prefer the propwash pursuit to fire responder relay.
Disney Planes games
http://www.disney.co.uk/movies/planes/games/
Propwash Pursuit
http://www.disney.co.uk/movies/planes/games/prop-wash-pursuit
Fire responder relay
http://www.disney.co.uk/movies/planes/games/first-responder-relay
