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Report on making 2D mobile games with Unity.

After several months spent on learning Unity on making 2D mobile games, here are my thoughts on the matter:

1) Don’t get me wrong, Unity is a great game engine, probably the best I’ve worked so far, but I think for 2D and especially the type of games that I’m intend to make, it’s bloated. I’ve accessed best 2D tools for it and even with those, you feel like that it’s not intended to do 2D with and it’s like you are always trying to make it work 2D for you while it was made for making 3D in mind. This makes you not only do not use some of it’s great tools, but you have to carefully make sure those tools do not get in you way of making 2D. I’ve seen several good 2D games made with Unity and if I may consider it again but I feel it’s not for the type of games I want to make.

2) Artist-wise: You have to teach your pipeline to your artist(s) in order for them to be able to import their art and each iteration is lengthier because it has to go through all that 3D pipeline that Unity has. I prefer a simple file replacement method for small games that I tend to make. I don’t feel good, and safe, to have all my game some texture on a plane.

3) License-wise: I have basic mobile license for Unity and even with paid license, I don’t get support for some basic stuff that I feel is not available to me to force me to go for “pro”. For example when I paid for a license, why can’t I remove Unity’s splash screen?! I have to pay $3000+ for such feature. Striping unused stuff is another thing. If you pay for a “pro” license, you get to decrease file size by removing components that you do not use! Why it’s a “pro” feature?!
It’s just plain annoying and bad PR, IMHO. And you have lots of things that you are paying for that you will not use.

4) Because it was made with 3D in mind, most of the common problems/solutions in other 2D engines are available to you in 3D. It “may” sound good to you if you are not experienced enough but an experienced developer knows it’s just more problems to you.

5) A lot of hidden costs for making 2D. As I mentioned before, if you want to go 2D with it, you have to either develop or buy several packages to shed some light on your nightmares and they either mean more money or more man-power.

Even though learning Unity was a joyful journey, and I’m truly happy that I’ve learned it, I’m thinking about 2D specific options here.

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My [future] kid.

I’m a die hard Tintin fan. Through the years I collected all the books in the series that they used to print officially in Iran with localized translations. And the reason I kept them is to deliver the same experience I had had reading them as a kid to my own. To let him learn many aspects of life, being from how to man a submarine to land on Moon, from the Chinese mafia to Pharaohs of Egypt. So I was watching Kramer Vs. Kramer  the other day and at some point the protagonist was reading Tintin to his kid (even the image quality is very bad, I recognized the book being Red Rackham’s Treasure) and instantly saw this idea that I had for my whole life just in front of me.

I can’t thank enough of Sir Hergé for his outstanding legacy.

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2nd IRGF days.

These days are full of love. It’s Iran’s 2nd game festival (IRGF) and it’s full of very useful workshops. I was honored to have one already which was titled “Indie and Casual: Differences” which I talked about what is independent game development and introduced some facts and reviewed some noteworthy and important games along with screening trailer of Rot Gut which I got very positive impressions.

I’ll do another conference on Saturday on Post Mortem of Rot Gut which I’ll try to talk about process of creating an indie game in Iran and use experiences I earned during the past 4 years of pursing this path.

I’ll recorded the talk and I’ll upload it whenever I find a good internet connection.

So until then.

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Rot Gut fan arts!

For someone like me who spends and spend his whole lifetime loving and working on video games, seeing someone loving his product so much that creates fan art for it just makes me well up. Check out these lovely art works by a dear Rot Gut fan, Mohammad:

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Carmack’s reply!

As I’m finishing up my game, Rot Gut, these days I was trying to remember all the people helped me during the process to at least thank them in the additional credits page. As I was remembering people, I remembered how at some of the hardest parts of last year that I mostly spend on learning flixel and developing Rot Gut with it, one of the most inspirational videos that I used to watch, as always, were Carmack’s talks on several occasions, from old press conference of ID Software at a tiny room that he is asked by journalists about whereabouts of DOOM to Visits to ID software videos up to E3 demos featuring RAGE on PC/PS3/XBOX360 running at the same time to his invaluable QuakeCons that gave me energy to see how people are doing such great stuff and thus how my problems perhaps have solutions.

If I want to talk about my deep love towards id Software I have to go on and on and this post will probably never end so as it’s 4am here let me cut to the point today out of the blue I thought to tweet him and ask if he would give me permission to state his name under “Lifetime Inspiration” and then the most amazing thing in a very long time happened, he replied with a very very very modest reply “I would be honored”.

My jaws were, and to be honest with you still is, dropped on the floor. He is co-founder of id Software with 54k followers on tweeter and just tweets once or twice every 2-3 days.

My words cannot express my feelings, so I think I better stop typing and just leave you with the screenshot I made from that tweet:

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مواظب سرمایه داری خبیث باشید

داشتم در مورد خرید آی پد، مطلب میخوندم که یه متن خیلی جالبی دیدم، قسمتیش رو براتون مینوسیم

مواظب سرمایه داری خبیث باشید

سرمایه داری موجود خبیثیه. بحث کمونیسم و عرفان و غیره نیست. بحث یک چپ انتقادیه. سرمایه داری خیلی ماهره توی اینکه به شما توضیح بده که اگر یک تبلت بخرین خوشبخت می شین. فکر می کنین اگر بتونین همه اش آنلاین باشین، دوست هاتون زیاد می شن (مراجعه کنید به تنهای ابدی)، بهتون می گه که دلیل کتاب نخوندنتون اینه که تبلت ندارین، بهتون می گه که فلان دوستتون که تبلت داره الان خیلی خوشبخته چون توی فلان سایت چک این کرده و شما جا موندین، بهتون می گه اگر عکس یک سیب درخشان روی دستگاهتون باشه جذابترین. همین الان بزنین یکی از شبکه های ماهواره ای، چند دقیقه بعد یک تبلیغ دیگه بهتون توضیح می ده که اگر این کالای خاص که تبلت گالاکسی باشه رو بخرین، شبیه یک آدم باحال می شین که از همزمان که از روی نقشه راه می ره، با دندون های سالمش لبخند به لب داره و اطرافش همه چیز درخشانه.

خلاصه حواستون به این سرمایه داری خبیث باشه. منهم تبلت دارم. نمی گم توی غار زندگی کنیم. نمی گم از جامعه مدرن خودمون رو جدا کنیم. ولی بشناسیمش. حداقل برای اینکه توی ذوقمون نخوره. از حالا بهتون بگم:

شادی درون آدم ها است نه در ابزارشون. نداشتن هیچ چیزی به نوبه خودش باعث غمگین بودن آدم ها نیست. اگر من فکر می کنم تبلت بخرم که کتاب بخونم باید ببینم در سال گذشته چند تا کتاب بوده که فقط چون تبلت نداشتم نتونستم بخونمشون. و به جاش چیکار کردم. اگر فکر می کنم یک ویلا باعث می شه دوستام رو بیشر ببینم، باید به این فکر کنم که چند بار با دوستام قرار گذاشتم و فقط چون یک ویلا نداشتم به هم خورده و غیره و غیره

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Reading out of the box.

While I was honored to work along with some of the best developers on Garshasp video game, which each of them was a monsters in his/her field, literally, I was privileged to meet our fearless leader, Mr. Fassihi. Today (which was actually 5am to the “normal” people) I was reading my feeds that I encountered a post by him that was an ad for a game programmer, probably for next installments of the great dragon slayer, Garshasp. Since I’m a night owl and at these times my mind is hitting pedal to the metal, I read something between the lines of his invaluable post.

He is basically listing perks and feats that he requires a game developer to have, and it is a very interesting list to me, as I worked side by side by him and the team and faced each of them being as vital as any game developer out of his bedroom, can think of.

Why I’m writing about it is that you can actually, if you have his #13 perk, read this post in reverse and look at it from another point of view that these are the skills that you will require (and believe me, you DO) to work in a game development environment, I don’t spoil them and leave them to you to read them for yourself but take a good look at the last paragraph, knowing C++ or so, as one would think is primary, is optional. Because if you have those perks, you can learn C++ or whatever that is needed, in a glance. Bad things happen when one has C++ and such knowledge but doesn’t have those perks, so his talent and experience would be NO good, no good at all, for the project or even the team.

As he mentions, they are a rare bread, they are.

Very wise.

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Waiting for someone or something to show me the way …

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

– First verse of “Time”, by Pink Floyd.

That sums up a big chunk of my life. All of these years that I remember having control over my actions, I was searching. Searching for a true master, a master in all things. Someone who I could get lessons from, a wise one. Through the years I was honored to meet a very few people who were fitting in my definition of “master” but I don’t know if they were not it or I was not a good student that finally it didn’t work out.

I don’t want to, and see no reason to, go through the list and names of the ones that I seek as one. I would like to think that I was not a good student and god/universe/karma/whatever already presented me with different masters and I was not ready/good enough for them.

And no one knows how I need a master … a true one … someone who got it all figured out …

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The way of the men.

I try to keep most of this blog in English, to reach wider audience but there are things that I can’t translate, can’t even localize, because of the deep meanings they have in my language and root they have withing matters that I don’t believe they exist in English.

این نوشته، کنار نوشت یک عکس بود از زمان جنگ، زمان مردانی که رفتند. عکس یک مسیر کوچک پاک سازی شده از یک میدان مین بود، دیوونه ام کرد

 

کنار راه دو نوار باریک سفید کشیده اند که راه را گم نکنی

تو یک نگاه هم به این نوار ها نمیکنی

صاف میدوی به جلو

راه همان است که تو میروی