Dimension Drive needs a little help to make its Kickstarter budget.
Back their Kickstarter here and read more about the game in the forum post here.
Forum highlights
Another Unity tutorial, but this time one that focuses on the new 2D features in Unity 4.
This tutorial is written by French indie developers Pixelnest.
http://pixelnest.io/tutorials/2d-game-unity/
The tutorial is available in English and Chinese, and there’s even a video version. Discuss this tutorial in the forums here.
Valkyrius is a new shmup from Iridescent Games which features multiple weapons and an interesting warping mechanic that lets you teleport short distances.
It’s available to buy now direct from Iridescent Games, and will be on Desura and Green Man Gaming soon.
Get Valkyrius here.
Vote for it on Steam Greenlight.
Discuss Valkyrius on the forums here.
Wondersonic’s Unity 3D shmup framework is looking very polished now. Take a look at this video demonstration of using the framework within the Unity editor.
I recently gave a lecture on shmup development with Unity as part of a course at RMIT University.
You can download the lecture slides and example project.
Lecture slides [PDF]
Unity shmup template [ZIP – Unity 3.5.3 project]
The example project is a template for Unity shmup development – it contains just a player, an enemy and a scrolling background, however it implements many of the optimizations needed to get a shmup to run properly, such as:
- Bullet pooling
- Collision optimization
- Precise controls
- Transform caching
It’s written in Javascript, and is thoroughly documented with inline comments. The code is intended to be understandable to novice programmers.
Wingbreaker, an iOS shmup is now available for free on the App Store.
It’s a vertically scrolling shmup with tilt controls, dual weapons and lots of customization options.
There’s already a thread for Wingbreaker on the forum.
Rhythm Destruction is a new game from Curious Panda which plays like a traditional shmup, where you control your ship as you traverse through a stage, dodging enemy movement paths, bullets, and environmental hazards. The twist however, is that enemies and objects are destroyed with timed key presses to the beat of the music.
If you’re a programmer developing a shmup it can be hard to find high-quality graphics for your game at a reasonable price. This forum thread lists many of the websites that offer free or cheap 3D models for use in games.
3D models for your shmup
If you’re interested in developing a shmup but don’t know where to start then this should help you. Here are 3 threads in the forum providing shmup-templates, which are frameworks with the basic controls and systems in place to quickly create a shmup.
Game Maker Open-Source Shmup Engine. And Warbird – a barebones game developed with this engine.
Simply choose the engine you want to work with, download the template and start making your shmup! Please post any questions in the forum. The Unity 3D framework is currently in-design and feedback is requested.
Spline movement is very important for shmups, whether it’s moving your camera through the scene, or making enemies follow precise paths. iTween is a plugin for Unity that makes spline editing and scripting easier.
iTween for Unity
Visit the iTween website for more information.
Discussion about camera scrolling techniques in the forum.
