Thought I'd give you folks a chance to see how I put together MLH Tic-Hac-Noe, my first Newgrounds submission where it was put in the Daily Top 5 for December 6, 2016.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/mlh-tic-hac-noe-how-put-together-gregory-desrosiers?trk=pulse_spock-articles​

Hi, everyone!

For my second full game being submitted to Newgrounds, it's going to be an Arkanoid clone, but with the ability to play it in 3D perspective mode, either with tilt or no tilt. This is my first time learning texture mapping, 3D animation and modelling, and particle systems, all done using Unity 5, Blender, and Inkscape.

The game will have 36 levels, 5 bonus levels, different enemies, a variety of powerups, and different styles of play. For instance, you have the option of having your ball go really slow if you’re a beginner, or if you want to fit the style of Arkanoid, which has a big range of speeds. You can also play it in orthographic projection, which simply resembles the classic 2D style the classic Arkanoid and Breakout arcades have.

The game will have music and sound effects that are licensed under the Creative Commons license, specifically those where commercialization is allowed. I don’t know yet exactly what the outcome will be, but there will be a link in the game for donations. Taking into some of the input I got with GPD Pong, I’m going to basically do the same procedure as I did in finding the music and sound effects: play what I find online, then listen and think if they are appropriate to use for the game. Like GPD Pong, there will be different music tracks based on difficulty. I think in addition to the difficulty you set at the start, it will also be based on what level you’re in, as some levels have a lot of bricks.

In the original Arkanoid, you can have as many as almost 200 bricks in one level. In this clone, a level can have almost twice as that. The arcade has a 13 by 14 grid with room at the top for enemies to come out. In this clone, the grid is 19 by 24, where you can have 456 bricks at most. The levels are designed after real-world objects and certain iconic figures, so some levels do not have as many bricks, while some have a lot. Don’t be fooled by how less bricks mean less time is needed, as some levels will be more tricky than others.

Here’s an example of one of the levels to be used in the game:

This is also going to be an opportunity for me to practice using two APIs: Newgrounds.io and Facebook for Unity API.

This has been kind of a slow project. But that's because I have been dealing with my co-op term, occasionally resting up, and encountering numerous obstacles such as how to have certain faces of a powerup token hold an image. It was then that I had to learn mapping.

I look forward to sharing my project and get some constructive criticism and some advice as I draft out another project, decide to work on another out of fun, or continuing with Unity tutorials and watching tutorial videos on YouTube.

Some of the influences into this game are Arkanoid, Blasterball 2 by WildTangent, Smashing by both Miniclip and Totebo, and this one mini-game in Coktel Vision’s Adiboo: Magical Playland, which seemed to be published to the United States by Sierra Entertainment.

What I originally thought on doing after this project is work on a new project that would take at least 6 months to complete: finally build a game for the Nintendo Wii U using the resources available from Nintendo’s Developer Program, as I’m a member there. From watching the preview of the Nintendo Switch, I wish that game would come out for that system as well. But considering on how game employers want to see me learning more about Unity and not take a second chance back, I’m going to incorporate smaller projects at the same time as this big one so that they can see I’m making progress on learning. After all, you can’t expect me to just build a game with Mesh Renderers, Box Colliders, Rigidbodies, and Scripts.

See you all then!