An Indie Reinvents Their Life To Become A Game Developer…

Adam, developer of Mr. Green: Mess Machine, talks about self-reinvention to become a game developer…

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/mrgreen-podcast.mp3

Or listen to it here…

[wp_youtube]PdH5k78BKpw[/wp_youtube]

Free Game Development/Virtual Reality Mentorship…

Hey folks,

I’m going to offer another Game Dev mentorship that would last for 2 weeks. This is open to any individual or team…from high school student to senior citizen…working on a game or virtual reality experience.

During the mentorship, we would meet over Skype or e-mail daily to discuss the details, challenges, and ideas needed to get your game/virtual reality experience done.

If you or your team is interested, e-mail me at support at indiegamepod dot com…this offer is open until May 22nd, 2016

Feel free to post questions about the mentorship below 🙂

Using Machine Learning to Improve Gameplay…

Jason and Delia discuss using machine learning to improve gameplay…and the potential of machine learning for new game designs…

You can check out their demo here…

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/unlit-podcast.mp3

Or listen to it here…

E-Sports and Indie Game Development…

Hey folks,

Today we will try another podcast format…mainly, me discussing trends and ideas in the industry. Let me know how you like the new format and if you have suggestions based on some of the other stuff I discussed on the show.

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/esports-indie-podcast.mp3

Or listen to it here…

[wp_youtube]Uj96KW7cXKw[/wp_youtube]

Using Unity To Develop A Unique Mobile Voxel Endless Driving Game…

Eugene, developer of Out of Brakes, talks about developing an indie game in Unity … including the design, development, technical challenges, and unique art style…

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/out-of-brakes-podcast.mp3

Or listen to it here…

[wp_youtube]MFFxx7cOR18[/wp_youtube]

Making an Indie Virtual Reality Game…Ghost Theory

Stefan, from Dreadlocks, talks about developing Virtual Reality games…like their new VR game called Ghost Theory…we also discuss play in general and gamification…

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/ghost-vr-project-podcast.mp3

Or listen to it here…

[wp_youtube]aFg1-sBiFSA[/wp_youtube]

Free Game Dev Mentorship…

Hey folks,

Part of the show involves giving away free stuff to indie developers. One of the more popular freebies was a free mobile game design book released a couple years ago.

This year, we’re going to try something different…I’m going to offer free game dev mentorship for 2 weeks to any indie game dev/team that is working on a casual game.

This mentorship would involve giving you feedback on technical, marketing, and business issues…every day via e-mail or Skype.

Once your game gets done, I’m also happy to do an interview about the game to post on the show.

The goal of this mentorship experiment is to see if this show should offer this new type of freebie to the mix of stuff we give out on the show.

If you or your team is interested, e-mail me at support at indiegamepod dot com … this offer is open until February 7th, 2016.

Feel free to post questions about the mentorship below 🙂

The Development of Cross Code Action RPG Game, Part 2…

Stefan and Felix, developers of Cross Code, discuss the journey to developing an Action RPG game…

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/cross-code-part-2-podcast.mp3

Or listen to it here…

[wp_youtube]Lyf5yazfitg[/wp_youtube]

Using Corona To Make an Android Mobile App in 15 Minutes…

Hey folks,

We’re going to do some app tutorials to help encourage more app experiments within the community…

The first tutorial is doing a simple monkey tricks app. The goal here is to make a simple app that has a monkey that does tricks when you tap it on your phone 🙂

Let’s get started…first we’re going to use Corona…it’s a cross-platform mobile tool that allows for development for both Android and iPhone. It uses Lua as the primary language.

You can download it here…
http://anscamobile.com/corona

First we need a monkey…let’s add that first 🙂

Now we also need a background…a place for the monkey to have fun 🙂

Let’s do that next…
The cool thing about Corona is that there are already pre-made modules to help make simple apps. One of them is the “Director” class…you can download it here…
http://developer.anscamobile.com/code/director-class-10

The director class abstracts things so that each “screen” in the app is a new file. Very simple and an easy way to conceptualizing things.

In our case, we’ll only have one screen…and that will be the Monkey doing tricks against the background.

Corona has some transition effects we can use to easily rotate and move items. They are like a Tweening class.

You can read more about the transitions here…
http://developer.anscamobile.com/reference/index/transitionto

Now, let’s initialize the code in screen1.lua that allows us to add things…here’s a cutout of the code…
the “–” denotes comments in Lua 🙂

local localGroup = display.newGroup()

— Background…this is the background from above
— Corona allows us to do this easily with display.newImage
local background = display.newImage(“zoobg.png”, 0, 0, true)
localGroup:insert(background)

— Title for the screen, for now, we’ll keep things empty
local title = display.newText(“”, 0, 0, native.systemFontBold, 24)
title:setTextColor( 0,0,255)
title.x = 160
title.y = 20
localGroup:insert(title)

— Here is the main part…we create a monkey image
monkeyBtn = display.newImage(“pet-monkey.png”)
— We create a function that will do a monkey trick when the player touches the monkey
local function monkeyBtnt ( event )
if event.phase == “ended” then
— Get a random number
local moveID = math.random(0, 3)
— We do a monkey trick based on the random number
if(moveID == 0) then
transition.to(event.target, {time=250, x = math.random(0, 310), y=math.random(0, 440), rotation=360 })

elseif(moveID == 1) then
transition.to(event.target, {time=150, x = math.random(0, 310), rotation=180 })

elseif(moveID == 2) then

transition.to(event.target, {time=250, x = math.random(0, 310), y=math.random(0, 440), rotation=360 })

elseif(moveID == 3) then
transition.to(event.target, {time=250, x = math.random(0, 310), y=math.random(0, 440), rotation=360 })

end

end
end
— Now we say that when someone touches the monkey, we call the monkeBtnt function made above
monkeyBtn:addEventListener(“touch”, monkeyBtnt)
monkeyBtn.x = 100
monkeyBtn.y = 320
monkeyBtn.isVisible = true
localGroup:insert(monkeyBtn)

— We’ll also add a close button that allows the player to close the app
local exitScene = 0
local closeBtn = display.newImage(“close.png”)
local function closeBtnt ( event )
if event.phase == “ended” then
if(exitScene == 0) then
exitScene = 1
os.exit()
end
end
end
— We have a “touch” event listener that gets called when someone taps the close button
closeBtn:addEventListener(“touch”,closeBtnt)
closeBtn.x = 300
closeBtn.y = 20
closeBtn.isVisible = true
localGroup:insert(closeBtn)

— Runtime:addEventListener(“enterFrame”, showTimer)

— MUST return a display.newGroup()
return localGroup

That’s it! We’re done…very simple. Once again, this is because of Corona and the director class that allows us to abstract things.

Now that we’re done, we can generate the .apk easily and put it on Android.

It’s now on the Android market…it got a one-star rating…because someone felt it was too simple. But still…not bad for 15 minutes of work.

Here’s a screenshot…

You can download the source and code here…
pet-monkey
Enjoy 🙂

Vanessa and Her Nightmare, Best Game Design Winner at IndiePub Contest

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/gdco-bad-pilcrow.mp3

Or listen to it here…

[wp_youtube]twOBUIhi55k[/wp_youtube]

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