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[Feep]

Everything seems to work okay so far, but still tweaking the ai and pathfinding. Would love to cache known paths somehow, but can't seem to come up with a non-memory intensive method. For optimization right now I do a distance (squared) and raycast check to see if the target is in sight, and if so, just move towards that without doing any pathfinding.

Using A* isn't terribly expensive, assuming you don't have a nodemap of like ten jillion nodes.

Well the thing is, using Valve's platform can also make individual developers richer (just ask Feep and his famous Scrooge McDuck moneyvault) and have nice features for fans. So it's sort of a win all around. I think Valve has done things that are positive influences for the PC/Mac (Linux soon) platforms in general, and indie games in particular. Of course it also benefits Valve, but that doesn't mean there isn't benefit as a whole.

Yeah I totally have one of those.

 

[-COOLIO-]

I'm a A*ing like a boss with all 30 of my nodes.

 

[Guri]

Hey guys! Do any of you know a nice level editor for a 2D platformer? It's for a game developed for Android and iOS, using haXePunk. Our levels need to have different layers for objects, background and the platforms. it is also important that it exports to XML. I tried Scope2D (it has many limitations) and PhysicsEditor (but we had to create a PNG with all the level done, creating the collisions only on PE, and the game became too heavy on memory consumption).

I'd really like to do without tiles, to have more creative freedom on platform design. Every platform is already made without the tile format. I've been studying Scope2D more and it drives me mad how it's limited. Do you guys know any other that it's better and I can just drag & drop the platforms we've made and mount the level like a puzzle, exporting to XML?

Thanks!

 

[JulianImp]

I think you could use Ogmo Editor: http://www.ogmoeditor.com. I haven't used it, but I fondly remember Matt Thorson's Jumper games and heard about him developing that editor a while ago.

 

[Genji]

What about calculating the paths when the map is generated? Or, if you are finding paths dynamically, dropping nodes along the path, and storing the coordinates of the path nodes?

Using A* isn't terribly expensive, assuming you don't have a nodemap of like ten jillion nodes.

I was thinking about pre-generating every possible path, but that seems wasteful with a few thousand nodes. I do find each path dynamically right now. Feep is right though, I haven't run into any issues with A* so far, even when I throw a few dozen enemies onto the level. This is a case of unnecessary pre-optimization, something I have a bad habit of!

Good stuff, I didn't like generating levels before but level designing takes some good ass time and effort, I imagine with the implementations of today they shouldn't have to be below manual levels' standard

Yup, there's a ton of nice write ups out there on the various different ways you can randomly generate levels. Lots of fun to try and test out. In the end, I'll probably do a mix of hand crafted levels combined with randomly generated ones.

 

[Blizzard]

I was thinking about pre-generating every possible path, but that seems wasteful with a few thousand nodes. I do find each path dynamically right now. Feep is right though, I haven't run into any issues with A* so far, even when I throw a few dozen enemies onto the level. This is a case of unnecessary pre-optimization, something I have a bad habit of!

Premature optimization is the root of all evil! If in doubt, spawn like 50 enemies (or however many would be more than you would ever require in your game), run it on inferior hardware, and see how it does. If you have problems THEN worry about it.

Also, as for memory...how many bytes would a node take up? If you have X, Y coordinates, and say 10 random int variables for information about the node, maybe that adds up to 12 ints which is probably 48 bytes. Assume somehow there's a huge object overhead with that, for maybe 100 bytes! Now assume you have even more nodes than you just suggested, 10,000 nodes! Suddenly your application would be using 1MB of memory for node storage, oh nooooo!

Now if you were using 10MB or 100MB of memory, then maybe we could talk, but for 1MB I really don't think you need to worry.

 

[prodystopian]

Super Zojak

I've been working on this for a few months now. I still have a list of things to work on, but the majority of the levels and items are completed at this point.

This is the first game I've made. I wanted to get a better grasp of C# and Unity, and to those ends I'm pretty happy with the results. I had a blast making it, and my hope is that a few people play it and have fun!

You can use keyboard or 360 controller, and you can rebind the default controls in the in-game menu.

This looks like pixel work in 2D. Are you using anything along with Unity to handle to 2D stuff?

 

[Genji]

Premature optimization is the root of all evil! If in doubt, spawn like 50 enemies (or however many would be more than you would ever require in your game), run it on inferior hardware, and see how it does. If you have problems THEN worry about it.

Also, as for memory...how many bytes would a node take up? If you have X, Y coordinates, and say 10 random int variables for information about the node, maybe that adds up to 12 ints which is probably 48 bytes. Assume somehow there's a huge object overhead with that, for maybe 100 bytes! Now assume you have even more nodes than you just suggested, 10,000 nodes! Suddenly your application would be using 1MB of memory for node storage, oh nooooo!

Now if you were using 10MB or 100MB of memory, then maybe we could talk, but for 1MB I really don't think you need to worry.

Seriously, pre-optimization is such an easy trap to fall into for me, I have to catch myself constantly otherwise I end up concentrating too much on the engine and not enough on the game itself.

10k nodes is probably the maximum I'd have, but if I pre-calculated it all I'd be storing each and every source -> destination combination, so it'd be more like 10k * 10k nodes. I'll throw in a hundred enemies or something and see if there's any issue and then profile it if there are.

 

[KNT-Zero]

Hello guys! Just introducing myself, it's been a while since I noticed this thread and I wanted to be a part of it

I don't know if you guys know this, but I just found out about this Ludum Dare challenge, which consists in making a game, publish it and make (at least) $1.

I'm already thinking of ideas, since I'm gonna make something on Android with Cocos2Dx and publish it on Google play.

Is anyone else also taking part on this?

 

[Blizzard]

You could store a list (dynamically allocated pointer array if you're scrapped for space) of destinations in each node, especially if there are going to be few node links for each node. That means you'd only have 4 bytes per destination, per node...I don't see why that would need 10,000 * 10,000.

 

[Genji]

You could store a list (dynamically allocated pointer array if you're scrapped for space) of destinations in each node, especially if there are going to be few node links for each node. That means you'd only have 4 bytes per destination, per node...I don't see why that would need 10,000 * 10,000.

Ahh, I think we're talking about different things here. I already have the immediate destinations for each node stored, that's created when the map is generated. What I was interested in storing was the complete shortest path (calculated using A*) from one node to any other node, for each and every node. So if I wanted to get from 1,1 to 50,50, I wouldn't need to calculate the shortest path dynamically, I could just pull the pre-calculated path out and use that. Same thing for going from 5,5 to 25,25 etc.

That's probably not the best way to do it at all anyways and you're right in that there aren't any memory problems with the graph/node list itself.

 

[The Friendly Monster]

Ahh, I think we're talking about different things here. I already have the immediate destinations for each node stored, that's created when the map is generated. What I was interested in storing was the complete shortest path (calculated using A*) from one node to any other node, for each and every node. So if I wanted to get from 1,1 to 50,50, I wouldn't need to calculate the shortest path dynamically, I could just pull the pre-calculated path out and use that. Same thing for going from 5,5 to 25,25 etc.

That's probably not the best way to do it at all anyways and you're right in that there aren't any memory problems with the graph/node list itself.

Yes you are right, that would be an insane thing to do. A* is not particularly cpu intensive. If it were you'd never get started what with all the precalculation you'd be doing. That's not to mention the spiralling memory requirements you'd have.

 

[DemonNite]

didn't know where to post this but this thread seems like a good place...

Kickstarter in the UK

In July we tweeted that Kickstarter would open up to UK-based projects for the first time this autumn. Today we're very excited to announce that that day has finally arrived. Hooray!

Beginning October 31, people in the United Kingdom will be able to launch their projects on Kickstarter. Beginning today, people in the UK can get started building their projects by clicking on the "Start a new project" button on the Start page and selecting the UK as their country. When we're ready for projects to launch on October 31, we'll send an email letting them know that they can hit the launch button whenever they're ready.

Let's run through the basics on how things will work.

So UK creators can start building their Kickstarter projects as early as today, and launch them beginning October 31?

Yes. We thought the three-week gap would give everyone plenty of time to build and tweak their projects before launching. Beginning October 31, they can launch and share their projects with the world.

Will there be a UK-specific Kickstarter site?

Nope. UK-based projects will be listed alongside all the other Kickstarter projects.

Can people outside the UK pledge to UK projects?

Yes! Just like every other project on Kickstarter, backers can pledge to UK-based projects from all around the world.

What currency will UK projects be listed in?

All UK projects will be listed in pounds sterling. If you are pledging from outside the UK, you will see the approximate conversion rate to US dollars before you complete your pledge.

Will backing UK projects be similar to backing US projects?

The mechanics of Kickstarter (all-or-nothing funding, rewards, etc.) are identical for US and UK projects. When pledging, however, backers of UK projects will enter their payment information directly on Kickstarter rather than through Amazon Payments. All pledges will be processed securely through a third-party payments processor.

Are the fees for UK and US projects the same?

Like the US, Kickstarter will charge a 5% fee to successfully funded projects and no fee to unsuccessfully funded projects in the UK.

Payment processing fees for UK projects are similar to those for US projects. For UK projects, the processing fees are:

Pledges less than £10 are charged 5% + £0.05
Pledges of £10 or greater are charged 3% + £0.20

Any other changes to go along with this announcement?

Today we also launched a streamlined international shipping option for both US and UK projects.

Creators have been asking backers to add international shipping costs to their pledges for years, and it wasn’t uncommon for backers to miss the instructions. Today’s update makes it clearer when the creator has requested that international backers add an additional amount to their pledges.

We’ve also made it easier for creators to limit rewards to domestic backers only, as international shipping can be a difficult part of the process.

We felt it was important to get this change out with this international expansion. This feature is available to both UK and US projects that launch starting today.

Anything else?

We’re really excited! This is the product of months of work by our team, and we want to thank them for their hard work. Thanks as well to all the UK creators who have patiently waited for this day. We can’t wait to start backing your projects. Thanks so much!

 

[flkk]

Just in case anybody who's interested in participating hasn't heard, the NewGrounds game jam #8 is this weekend. I just found about it and although I've done lots of other jams, never one of these so I'm gonna give it a go.

 

[Anuxinamoon]

I just put Arcadecraft on Greenlight. You can check it out here...

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=101948773

Thanks guys!

Dang that actually looks cool!

Upvoted!

 

[FormallyMegadrive]

Hey guys! Do any of you know a nice level editor for a 2D platformer? It's for a game developed for Android and iOS, using haXePunk. Our levels need to have different layers for objects, background and the platforms. it is also important that it exports to XML. I tried Scope2D (it has many limitations) and PhysicsEditor (but we had to create a PNG with all the level done, creating the collisions only on PE, and the game became too heavy on memory consumption).

I'd really like to do without tiles, to have more creative freedom on platform design. Every platform is already made without the tile format. I've been studying Scope2D more and it drives me mad how it's limited. Do you guys know any other that it's better and I can just drag & drop the platforms we've made and mount the level like a puzzle, exporting to XML?

Thanks!

Ogmo and Tiled Map Editor are the two de-factor choices for me. Ogmo (imo) is easier to incorporate, and offers a few different options in terms of exporting. Ogmo is Windows-only, however and Tiled works on nearly anything that can use Qt (Windows, Linux, Mac, among others).

I use Ogmo.

 

[Margalis]

How to create/design them. I've figured out how to map them, I just can't get them to look good.

It's probably easiest if you post examples of things you've tried that don't look good. Creating good looking textures is a lot of different stuff, including:

1. Are you using UV space efficiently and in the right places to keep the density as high as possible?

2. Your lighting model

3. Your use of a variety of textures - not just the base/albedo texture but whatever else your engine uses like specularity, normal maps, etc.

4. Various technical things that could be getting in the way like problems with mip levels and such.

If I saw an example of a model with bad texturing I could probably point out specifically what the problems were, but it's hard to give general guidelines. Also depends a lot on your art style and what sort of thing you are trying to model.

Sorry for not being more helpful. Post a couple examples if you feel comfortable, or examples of work you can find that illustrate the problems you're having.

 

[Warm Machine]

Dang that actually looks cool!

Upvoted!

Thank you but it "...doesn't need to clutter up Steam."

 

[Ydahs]

Been exposed to DirectX (via sharpDX) through a Uni course and I'm absolutely loving it. Been messing around with lighting (diffuse and specular), normal mapping, alpha blending and even managed to create my own *.obj importer. Having a blast

Thinking of making a simple 3D game over Christmas with an engine developed from scratch. Might do it in OpenGL though so it's not only restricted to PCs and later port it to Unity once I get a good understanding of what 3D programming really involves.

 

[bumpkin]

Ogmo and Tiled Map Editor are the two de-factor choices for me. Ogmo (imo) is easier to incorporate, and offers a few different options in terms of exporting. Ogmo is Windows-only, however and Tiled works on nearly anything that can use Qt (Windows, Linux, Mac, among others).

I use Ogmo.

Nice! Now I know of a program (Tiled Qt) I can use to edit my maps. Not that by hand isn't fun or anything...

 

[chubigans]

Thank you but it "...doesn't need to clutter up Steam."

It INFURIATES me when I see comments like "we don't need games like these on Steam." I want to strangle people sometimes. Gah!

 

[Ranger X]

People don't have a clue what Greenlight is for. That's the thing.

 

[Ihateyouchris]

Hello guys! Just introducing myself, it's been a while since I noticed this thread and I wanted to be a part of it

I don't know if you guys know this, but I just found out about this Ludum Dare challenge, which consists in making a game, publish it and make (at least) $1.

I'm already thinking of ideas, since I'm gonna make something on Android with Cocos2Dx and publish it on Google play.

Is anyone else also taking part on this?

Good luck on the challenge!
I did it last year for my game Haunted Hallway, the deadline is a great motivator.
This year I'm trying out something a bit different, as my goal for the challenge is to launch a Kickstarter for Another Castle.

 

[Warm Machine]

It INFURIATES me when I see comments like "we don't need games like these on Steam." I want to strangle people sometimes. Gah!

I love when what will be 8 months of my time, effort, and life is undone in a single sentance

Especially when I make a game with a theme that you can't find anywhere else.

 

[Alts]

Alright Indie-GAF, I think I'm ready to release the game I've been working on.

RGBuried

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bx6lCftvqYY

It's a pretty simple arcade-style puzzle game. I've been working on it off-and-on for about a year now, and I'm pretty happy with how it's turned out. I figure now it's time to get people playing it.

The objective is to get a high score, climbing up the board by following the Red-Green-Blue color pattern. The game speeds up as you break blocks. I think the video and an in-game tutorial explain it far better than I can do it words.

Website:
http://games.evilrobotstuff.com/rgburied/

windows versions:
http://games.evilrobotstuff.com/rgburied/rgburied.windows.zip

mac versions:
http://games.evilrobotstuff.com/rgburied/rgburied.mac.tgz

Please try it out and let me know what you think.

 

[Fitz]

Really nice game Alts, trying it out now, I like the simplicity. Are you planning to port this onto phones or some such? Seems like the perfect kind of game for that environment.

 

[Warm Machine]

BTW. Looks like Synapse Gaming, makers of the XNA based Sunburn Engine that we use are expanding the supported devices. Looks like the new version is running on Metro.

http://www.synapsegaming.com/

 

[beril]

Any multilingual people here who could help me out with a tiny bit of localisation work for Gunman Clive 3DS? I need the games description for the eShop in EFIGS+Dutch. It's just a few sentences. Unfourtunately the game doesn't have a credits screen, or I would have offered a special thanks mention, but I'll be specially grateful nonetheless. I might be able to offer some small symbolic payment.

PM me if if you speak french, italian,german,spanish or dutch and you want to help out.

edit: Already had a bunch of volunteers. just need dutch now

 

[Dilli666]

PM me if if you speak french, italian, german, spanish or dutch and you want to help out.

pm'ed

 

[razu]

pm'ed

This, is what the internet was made for! High five international game makers!

 

[Platy]

I only speak brazilian portugues and

Spoiler

bad

english =(

 

[Alts]

Really nice game Alts, trying it out now, I like the simplicity. Are you planning to port this onto phones or some such? Seems like the perfect kind of game for that environment.

Thanks!

I've thought a bit about porting it to phones, but there are a couple things standing in the way:
First, I don't know how well the controls would translate. It would take a lot of experimentation to find something that worked.
Second, I don't know how that would fly with my employer, given that my employer makes iPhone games.

 

[Ranger X]

Any multilingual people here who could help me out with a tiny bit of localisation work for Gunman Clive 3DS? I need the games description for the eShop in EFIGS+Dutch. It's just a few sentences. Unfourtunately the game doesn't have a credits screen, or I would have offered a special thanks mention, but I'll be specially grateful nonetheless. I might be able to offer some small symbolic payment.

PM me if if you speak french, italian,german,spanish or dutch and you want to help out.

edit: Already had a bunch of volunteers. just need dutch now

hmm, too late. My native language is French and I would have liked to help you. Oh well, pm me if your french guy is having any prob.

 

[Nemo]

Any multilingual people here who could help me out with a tiny bit of localisation work for Gunman Clive 3DS? I need the games description for the eShop in EFIGS+Dutch. It's just a few sentences. Unfourtunately the game doesn't have a credits screen, or I would have offered a special thanks mention, but I'll be specially grateful nonetheless. I might be able to offer some small symbolic payment.

PM me if if you speak french, italian,german,spanish or dutch and you want to help out.

edit: Already had a bunch of volunteers. just need dutch now

I got dutch for you if you want

 

[Blizzard]

I finally got my engine and test program back to a compiling and building state again, after refactoring more GUI stuff. I think my designing and coding methodology for personal projects tends to involve two primary aspects.

For one thing, I write lots of comments. This helps me since I tend to have times in my life at which I will go for months without looking at a project. Having written out the API documentation myself in header files, and described what sections of code are doing in source files, should really help when I try to pick a project back up, I think. In addition, writing detailed API comments in the header means I can go through them as a sort of feature/test checklist, and make sure that I implemented each aspect of the methods or functions as described in the header.

For another thing, I feel I tend to "design by interface", though I do not know if that is even an accepted or good methodology. I tend to create header files for new classes first, create the API (commented as described above), with whatever member variables and methods I can see being needed. If needed, I can manipulate inheritance hierarchies at this point as well. Once the header file interface is created for some new functionality I am designing, I am free to implement it in the source file(s), potentially using similar code from other classes I have already implemented. I feel like this overall approach is beneficial since it can reveal interface problems before I get bogged down in actually implementing a class, and keeping everything consistent and clean in the interfaces tends to be simpler than going through a giant implemented source file to check for problems.


At any rate, my continuing GUI implementation is hopefully providing me with some useful education, since I find myself refactoring things and becoming slightly more similar to how other GUI systems (SFML, Java Swing, Microsoft Windows API) might handle inheritance, or events, etc. It is interesting to note things as I go along like, "Hmm, this works, but I need to add something extra to the region class. Well, that would be duplicating functionality from widgets. Well, I can make both regions and widgets 'GUI objects', allowing me to put location and dimension code in a single place!" I would like to think that I have also made GUI object and style creation/handling simpler, more centralized, and more consistent.

A change I will probably make soon is switching from function/method callbacks, though I might still support them as an option, to event generation. I already support input event handling (e.g. mouse, keyboard, in the future gamepad), but I should be able to use the same system to create GUI events for button presses. Looking forward, I think this may be a nicer option than the forced callback system I have now, once I try to save and load GUI designs in a GUI editor, and use them in actual game(s).

I don't have any new screenshots. Maybe I'll make another post once I finish testing the style stuff I implemented today.

 

[Warm Machine]

So Arcadecraft has seen more views on Greenlight in 5 days than Orbitron: Revolution has in over a month.

 

[Blizzard]

Does anyone have an authoritative answer for color theme/palette copyright and licensing information?

There's the Adobe Kuler site, for instance, but after repeated Google searches, I cannot find any clear answer as to whether there are any legal or copyright issues with using a palette of the site directly, without modifying the colors. Apparently it's possible (though rare?) for colors and/or palettes to be copyrighted and/or patented.

With fonts, for instance, there seems to be a huge legal mess since fonts that are freely available for royalty-free use are apparently very rare, let alone fonts of good quality and general use. And what if you use a paint/photoshop tool to bake text into an image? Do you still have to have the license to a font? What if you use a font that's available in your version of Windows to do that, but you don't have a license for a Times New Roman font per se? Wauuugh.

 

[abrack08]

So Arcadecraft has seen more views on Greenlight in 5 days than Orbitron: Revolution has in over a month.

Awesome, it looks really interesting! I upvoted it or whatever, though even if it's released I probably won't be able to play it on my crap computer (and don't have an Xbox).

 

[Blizzard]

Well, on the downside, with 40+ regions when I did a stress test, scrolling does not appear to be perfectly smooth. The edge of a rectangular background region appears to slightly stutter at certain scrolling speeds. This is worse at 500 fps or so, but still seems to happen with 60 fps vsync. I think I am going to not try to pursue that at the moment, however. For one thing, I may not have that many GUI regions or widgets on screen (though I may have that many or more sprites), so I will probably wait until I have a more realistic test. For another thing, it may be minor enough not to matter too much, though if it bugs me I may have to jump down the rabbit hole. For a third thing, that way lies madness and I want to keep making engine progress.

On the upside, I finished implementing region and label styles, along with defaults for each. I also made things more consistent and hopefully cleaner, as mentioned earlier. Button + label stress testing, event support (instead of callbacks) and the GUI editor are next. Example of style swapping on the fly for regions, labels, and buttons, bearing in mind that as always the GUI styles and colors are quick examples I have created and probably need lots of improvement:

 

[missile]

So Arcadecraft has seen more views on Greenlight in 5 days than Orbitron: Revolution has in over a month.

What's your conclusion?

@Blizz: Make the gui your game!

 

[beril]

Big thanks to Dilli666, Nemo, TheBera & RazorbackDB for the translations

This went a lot faster and easier than I had imagined

 

[udivision]

People wanting a "more complete" demo of the latest RPG Maker can now try:

RPG Maker VX Ace Lite

No trial time limit, but there are restrictions.

 

[Paz]

We decided to action some feedback on Antibody and adjust the difficulty ramping, add some extra visual polish as to differentiate your progress, and chucked in a new enemy to make the combat more interesting.

Let me know what you think, the new build is up at http://circleofjudgement.com/antibody/

We're at the interesting stage of this game now where we can just look at feedback and make minor adjustments if we feel they are really needed, it's fun to have something out there for people to play

 

[whitehawk]

Well I guess a few more of us can participate in this thread now that we revealed what we were up to with dudebro 2 http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=495748

 

[carnefrisca]

Hi GAFfer,

I've just released on Kongregate my videogame No, Birdie, No!
It's just a very simple action-fingered videogame.

Of course, any comment/feedback/rating/else will be appreciated





Screenshot:

 

[FormallyMegadrive]

Hi GAFfer,

I've just released on Kongregate my videogame No, Birdie, No!
It's just a very simple action-fingered videogame.

Of course, any comment/feedback/rating/else will be appreciated





Screenshot:

This is pretty fun!

 

[KNT-Zero]

Alright Indie-GAF, I think I'm ready to release the game I've been working on.

RGBuried

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bx6lCftvqYY

It's a pretty simple arcade-style puzzle game. I've been working on it off-and-on for about a year now, and I'm pretty happy with how it's turned out. I figure now it's time to get people playing it.

The objective is to get a high score, climbing up the board by following the Red-Green-Blue color pattern. The game speeds up as you break blocks. I think the video and an in-game tutorial explain it far better than I can do it words.

Website:
http://games.evilrobotstuff.com/rgburied/

windows versions:
http://games.evilrobotstuff.com/rgburied/rgburied.windows.zip

mac versions:
http://games.evilrobotstuff.com/rgburied/rgburied.mac.tgz

Please try it out and let me know what you think.

Looks really good! Simple controls and mechanics, plus minimalistic design
Are you planning to release this on other platforms?
BTW, Chrome thinks that your "RGBuried.windows.zip" is a suspicious file....I would change it's name if i were you, just to make sure you don't lose any potential downloads.

 

[Feep]

Fuck yeah this script revision is making it so much better

 

[Tankshell]

Anyone fancy help starting our own GAF run Indie Game review site?

I have a couple of my own Indie games releasing before the years end and am contemplating setting up something like this as a form of self publicity.

We have loads of Indie dev gaffers about it seems, anyone else think this could be useful?

*Edit* - come to think of it, do any existing GAFers run existing review sites?

 

[JulianImp]

Finally, I've managed to make some progress on the menu system!

Now nodes are enabled and disabled as you navigate them to avoid wasting processing on unncessesary graphics and events, and that combined with some linear fog is probably all I'll need to make menus look good.

I intend to submit the game to the IGF's student category, so I guess I'll have to polish it as much as possible in the two weeks I have left until the submission deadline. Here's to hoping the game will be good enough to show by then.

I'm also going to add some scenery to the levels using animated but non-skinned bone structures to create plant-like structures (mostly because it's a lot cheaper to render and animated than a skinned mesh, which is a huge optimization for mobile), using some unlit shader.

Learning how to code shaders has been a huge boon so far, and we're finally being taught proper CG code. Before that, we learned some basic operations that are built-in in all video cards, such as combine, zTest, rendering queue order, cubemaps and alpha blending; now we're actually controlling models on a per-vertex/pixel basis to create displacements, outlines and other neat effects.