My First Game: Start to Store

It all started two months ago…..

My ease for learning something new pushed me to start looking into Unity3D, one stop game engine with a motto of Develop once Deploy to any.

This part of my gaming life is called “WITH UNITY”.

Using Unity pro, I started learning the very basics. Each day, it made me think, innovate and learn new concepts of game development.

To understand how to use the tool… I came up with an idea (very important) of developing a free-zone soccer (football) game using the available free assets in the asset store and also assets from:

• tf3dm.com
• Turbosquid.com

Initially, I used a cube and attached some physics to it where on colliding, the ball object will move forward with some force. I used a Terrain (not advisable if you are planning to port the game on a phone) as a base for the game. I applied a C# script, which will move the cube and rotate based on keyboard arrow inputs.

On 29^th November, I attended Microsoft DevCamps where I showcased my game to the experts. Based on their opinion and my wife’s inputs, I started using free 3D Models and animations. The game started getting heavier.

This part of my gaming life is called “Memory Management”.

The game was loading much slower than before. I have added a goalpost, a soccer ball and above all, a terrain in the beginning. Lately, I realized that I was just adding the objects and was never destroying them. But Unity engine supports automatic memory management.

Read this article to know more on memory management.

On destroying the objects after moving out of each level, my game started loading fast.

This part of my gaming life is called “Journey with animation”

In place of cube i thought of adding an animated character which can walk,run and even kick the ball.

The search began…..

At last!!! After a day of rigorous exploring, I found an animated character with all the actions required.

Now the question is whether to use legacy animation system or a new one in the market… to know what I used, read the article below…

Journey with animation

Now the game is ready and all set to move to the Windows store….

This part of my gaming life is called “The Rejection”.

Before moving it to the store, I spoke to my friend at Microsoft. He suggested that I visit the app lab to have a quick review. After having a chat with him, I realized that my game is missing few touch-ups. I quickly applied them and pushed my game to the Windows store on 20^th Dec 2013. The next day, I got a reply from them saying “Failed” in our language “Rejected”. Reasons for rejection:

1. Your game doesn’t support touch/mouse. It only supports keyboard.
2. For few countries, they require a game rating certification which you didn’t submit.

Back to ground zero…Huh!!!

Then I pulled my spirits and started implementing the touch/mouse support through GUI.RepeatButtons and GUI.Buttons respectively.

By 22^nd December, I was able to complete the changes including the certificate. I again submitted it to the store.

Waiting……Waiting…..

24^th morning, I received a mail from the store quoting “Your app is in the wind “.

This holiday season play my First Game!!! BONGO SOCCER (http://bit.ly/1ct8s3j)

I developed it using very basic tools of game development and the design is now live on Windows store.

Install on your Win 8/8.1 PC/Tab and also spread the word…
Please provide your valuable rating and review on the store after installing….

Related Articles

• Unity: What and How (onestopdotnet.wordpress.com)
• Unity: Animate your character using Mecanim (onestopdotnet.wordpress.com)
• Touch-ups before publishing your Unity game to Windows store (onestopdotnet.wordpress.com)
• Unity and C# :Memory Management and Garbage Collection (onestopdotnet.wordpress.com)

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