Newfound City

yeah, does sound quite long.
The game looks pretty awesome so far, keep going, will it be futuristic or just modern? (I'm willing to help make music)

 

Looks pretty interesting! I really hope this works out for you. I'm debating doing the same thing for fun this summer.
I can do some Simple stuff with computer artwork (buttons and menus and such) and I'm always up for beta testing, so if ya need any help pm me. I'd be glad to help.

 

Good luck bronson! Remember to take your time on it. Nothings worse than a bad fps

 

just a tip: even if you have to make the map(s) smaller, make the 3D objects rounder and such stuff.

If you need an artist I might be able to help you...

 

hmmm...so, i see that it's Unity. But i wouldn't call that a game, not even a beta test. Alpha maybe? Neither ^_^

IMHO you are young, and after downloading unity you jumped with an head start into developing. That's good, and the "learn along the way" approach will surely carry great improvements over time.
But if you don't know what you're doing, you might crash into a wall sooner than you expect.






Some common errors i've seen in devcut 1&2 (note that i turned the audio off, so i don't know if you understood you were having some trouble there ^_^)

1) the iphone hardware is not very performant. What runs on your MAC will NOT probably run on the iphone. I see this is early, early developing, but you should at least take a few tests on the hardware you're developing for to get the grasps on its stats, what it can do, what it can't, and so on

2) you now seem to have a pretty basic scene. You'd say "well, this will run smoothly on my iDevice!". I'm sorry to disappoint you, but it won't. And things will be worse once you start adding stuff.
To help you out a bit:

...you're using dinamic lighting (lights INSIDE unity). That is not good, lights shouldn't be used on the iDevice; or better: they should be only used on the character model. NOT on the landscape. The latter should, in fact, use baked lightmaps. Think of lightmaps as if you manually drew all shadows and lights.
When you generate a lightmap (generally in an external program, like 3dsMax or Maya) the software will basically paint onto the texture every light and shadow; therefore allowing for that texture to be loaded into the realtime engine (in this case unity). Of course you cannot move the light, or the baked object whitout losing the illusion, but doing this on every static item will cut out rendering times a lot.
So, rule one is:You don't need to use real lights on static items; as they can be baked


...polygon count is another important things. the Idevice can normally handle about7000 polygons (=7000 faces, or triangles; NOT quads, and it is a rule of thumb, not a dogma) at a time with decent framerate.
I see that in devcut 2 you created a plane that had lots of polygons. This is not a good thing: why using 100 polygons where you can use just 2? Optimizing on the iphone is hard, and you'll find yourself struggling against every single face. And wasting all those faces on a plain simple 3d plane is just pointless
rule 2 is therefore: "use few polygons. The fewer, the merrier!"


...lastly we have draw calls. This is a complex thing (the count increase for every texture, light, for the GUI, and so on), but to put it easily: each separate textured mesh (object) on screen will get a draw call. After your draw call count exceeds 25-30 your iphone starts choking. If you have 2 meshes (= separately selectable items) with no lights and a texture each, it's 2 draw calls. If you get 2 meshes with 2 textures each, it's 4 draw calls. If you have 2 meshes with 2 textures each and 3 lights, the draw call count will be 2*2*3=12 draw calls.
So you MUST optimize the DC count by combining all static meshes into a single one (either in the external 3d software or in unity), by NOT using lights (point 1) and limiting the use of textures on the objects. And remember that textures for the iphone can be max 1024*1024, so for a big game area you'll probably need to use multiple textures.
Rule three is: Each material on each mesh causes one draw-call per frame, per light that affects it and per camera that sees it.. Get over 25, and it's game over.








So, as you see, what you're doing there is not viable for the iphone, not yet at least. My suggestions? Drop the project.

Start with some simple game (i.e. why don't you try following the penelope tut? here: penelope tut) to understand the basic.

Then, learn the use of an external 3d packet (cheetah 3d is an entry level one, but if you want my advice, you should learn either Maya or 3ds Max; they're offering a free PLE (free unlimited demo with watermark and no exporting) and they're simply the best. Expensive of course (on the 1000$ multiples) but everybody started with a cracked copy i think!)

Once you understand how to handle non-primitive objects, draw, draw and draw. You can't put things in 3d if you cannot picture them in 2d.

When you're good (or at least decent) at those things, start with a small project, and get support on the dev forum of unity to understand if you're getting it right.

And never, NEVER think that your mistakes will be forgiven because you're young. Being young is good, but the machine standing in front of you won't use specials criterias just because you're a newbie: let's be realistic, iphone developing is a hard path, and cannot be accomplished in a couple days.
As i told you, draw, use other programs apart from unity (maya, photoshop, maybe flash if you want to animate 2d). Follow your passion, think everyday how you can put the real world into a small screen, and never get discouraged




YOU HAVE TALENT, but this would be too much for everyone. Start again, and this time, one step at a time

Fede

 

im willing to do some free 3D modeling/art/2D...

 

I agree with Fede. If you're only a child with no experience even with coding you're out of your depth. A nice 2d game, even if it sucks, is a start. Good luck anyhow.

 

yep. don't fill the AppStore with crap like sooo many other devs!

 

ehehe i can help with PM and consultant work, as well as artwork, and testing, if you need it

 

Except kijib

 

I don't know any coding as of now. Next semester I'm taking a class where they're teaching some very basic coding, but I know how to use a lot of adobe software. Haha I'm a huge noob to programing. I want to learn about it though. But I know how to use fireworks and dreamweaver (well, kinda know how to use dreamweaver... Kinda complicated), so I can make some pretty good stuff in there. I don't know if stuff in adobe would be able to go into the app, but I could help a little with a site. I know navigation stuff.

 

please no speeding up! unless you got a good team together don't speed up! take your time with it. make sure it's good.

 

Although the poster is a valued member of TouchArcade doesn't mean the game will be good. Many developers with far more experience, ie EA do 'bad' games to you lot, so with someone with such a small budget and no experience...well, I'm not saying the game will be bad, just you're putting way too much expectancy on him and when he's starting with a 3D (!) game, just see what happens, buy it, give support...just don't put too much pressure.

Now at Bronson. If you can't code you're not really developing the game yourself. I'd set up a team, make a group and get positions set up. You could be the creative manager for example while you can have artists, programmers etc.