Author: FingerGunGames

Nintendo - Stone Shire - Unity

Ohayou! Beginner’s Japanese Completed, Stone Shire Patch 1.2, and Nintendo Switch

October 21, 2016 by 1 Comment

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It has been a grueling five months of work, but we have finally completed Ohayou! Beginner’s Japanese for the Wii U. The game took a lot less time to make than Stone Shire, that’s for sure. We’re excited to finally have it done and are now waiting on approval for it from Nintendo. After that, we’ll be able to say a release date for it. We may release a patch in a month or two that will add vocabulary, based on how long it takes to implement. But with the Nintendo Switch now a thing, we may just delay it until then. We’ll talk about Nintendo’s new system in a moment.

In the meantime, the 1.2 patch of Stone Shire has also been completed, which took only a weekend. To improve frame rate, the water flowing process has been removed, and lighting updating has been optimized. Players should see a large difference once the patch is deployed. Its release shall come as soon as it’s done being approved.

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Now, on to the big topic of the week: the Nintendo Switch! I’m happy they announced it, because it’s very significant for the future of Finger Gun Games’s development. Hearing that Unity will also be supporting the system, porting our current games to the new system is now possible. In addition, I’m very curious of the Switch’s specs. At the moment, Nintendo will not release any, but based on the hardware it’s based off, the Nvidia Shield, we can garner a clue to its construction. Based on a couple of studies, it could be that the system is using the Tegra X2 chip. To compare its performance, the hardware has been known to be able to play games at 1080 @ 30 to 60 fps, or 720 @ 45 to 60 fps. Apparently, it’s a 64-bit six-core chip, with two main cores that are considered the major haulers of performance. The Wii U had three based on tech studies, so the only thing we will have to see is if the version in the Nintendo Switch is as fast, if not faster.

I wasn’t disappointed by the GPU in the Wii U, so I’m sure it’ll be just as reasonable around this time. If anything, my only gripe about the Wii U was always the CPU, so it’s the one thing about the hardware I’m curious to see the full specs for as a programmer. I will say one thing: having a good GPU means having a large module with good cooling. The Switch looks a lot smaller and slimmer than the Wii U’s hardware. This has me skeptical of performance, mostly because we all know in the computing world, the more powerful a GPU is, the more heat it will generate, and thus the more cooling you will require. That’s why cellphones are like microwaves when you try to play app on your phone. You never felt any heat from the Wii U GamePad because it doesn’t harbor this kind of hardware, but this time around, the Nintendo Switch will. So the hardware is probably optimized to be as least disturbing as possible. I’m also curious if the docking mechanism actually has another GPU we aren’t aware of. If it’s meant to be a console hybrid, I’m assuming that having that component isn’t just to hook the tablet to a TV while charging it. I’m sure that thing holds a lot more inside it.

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As you can see above, there’s vents built into the top of the Switch handheld device, so Nintendo has prepared for that scenario where the thing is going to be running games that could cause quite the heat-up. If there’s anything to take from it, it’ll probably be no worse than the PS Vita. That handheld holds fine for playing good graphical games, so the Wii U probably won’t have too much of a problem. The size of the device seems to put it at bigger than a vita, so if anything, it’s probably better at its job, too. This is Nintendo, after all. I’m sure they already solved this problem.

So in summary, I am looking forward to the Switch. The only thing left is to see its specs and its touchscreen (which is rumored to be multi-touch), but it’s very likely Finger Gun Games will be continuing support for Nintendo’s next system.

-Cordero

Nintendo - Ohayou! Beginner's Japanese

Ohayou! Beginner’s Japanese

May 27, 2016 by 2 Comments

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Hello, everyone. We at Finger Gun Games will like to introduce our new project: Ohayou! Beginner’s Japanese. It is an educational game that will teach you the basics of Japanese Hiragana and Katakana. For the Nintendo Wii U, the instructors Asuka and Kenji will give you teachings on the TV screen. The player will use the Wii U GamePad to navigate menus and turn around digital flash cards to give them more details on a chosen Japanese character, such as its romaji relation and a vocal pronunciation of it, all with just a touch of the finger. When you think you’re ready to test your knowledge, you can then participate in the memory games where you will use your finger like a sword to “cut” across the correct cards that match up with an indicated romaji or vocal sound. Score high in the various levels of the matching games and you will become a Hiragana Samurai and a Katakana Ninja!

Available now on Steam PC and Nintendo Wii U!

Steam Page

Nintendo NA Game Page
Nintendo UK Game Page

Videos

Finger Gun Games Youtube Channel

Images

Nintendo - Stone Shire

Stone Shire – Post Development Thoughts & New Project

April 17, 2016 by 0 Comments

First of all, I will like to thank the players of the community for supporting Stone Shire. This game came out May 21st of last year, and was the first of its kind on this console. It was meant to bring a block-building experience similar to Minecraft to the Wii U. It was also meant to be transformed into something more like Elder Scrolls. Unfortunately, a lot of these features I was unable to include in the game, both due to the limitations of the system (and the Unity engine) and me simply being a one man team, which led to a slow development time. I apologize that I was not able to give you the full experience that you expected. The lag of the game is something I did not want to occur, and it seems introducing the lighting and water mechanics unfortunately brought a lot of bad performance.

Unity is a great engine to work in, but it’s also not optimized for procedural generation. Because the Unity APi is not allowed to be touched both in code and by multithreading, a lot of the optimization I did was mostly C# related, aka based on all the operations I did outside Unity. The way Unity works is that it has a main thread that it processes all its processes through. While beneath the hood it is multithreaded, unfortunately, I as a programmer cannot touch anything there. For instance, in Stone Shire, if I could make mesh construction, the rendering step done by the CPU, be broken up into smaller steps, I could have made the game a whole lot less laggy. It’s not a problem when it’s just one or three chunks of meshes being built up, but when there’s multiple ones constantly being updated due to light and water, unfortunately, there’s a freeze I cannot get pass due to the mesh construction process sharing the same thread as everything else. This had led me to unfortunately passing a lot of inputs into fixed update, which is not a good thing in practice but was necessary to have the game run smoother on the Wii U. Of course, I had the algorithms for light calculations and mesh vertices building done in a different thread, since it was all c# related, so the pre processing step was actually pretty fast. However, to build the mesh, you have to pass the data to the main thread to have the mesh actually applied, and that led to the slowdowns that the game constantly experienced.

In addition, I used the Greedy Meshing technique to reduce the amount of faces on the collision mesh of the chunks, as this was taking a good portion of the mesh building time when the mesh was applied. With this made, the mesh building time became a whole lot faster than it was during alpha builds on the Wii U. Unfortunately, if I did this with the rendering part (the mesh you actually can see that has textures), this would make me have to create a texture material for each type of block in the game, and that would have led to some devious overlord of the game. Therefore, in the worse case scenario where each block is a different object compared to its adjacent neighbor, this would actually be a worse scenario technical wise since now you have to deal with both maximum face count and an abundance of sub materials.

I will strive in the future to bring a better experience to this genre, hopefully on Nintendo’s next console. However, I am bringing a pause to the post development of Stone Shire for the moment as I work on a new smaller project, which I will give details to in the next coming weeks. I enjoy working on Stone Shire, but I must also continue to create more games to put out on the Wii U. I will work on smaller patches to bring the game to a more stable quality, but a lot of features like monsters, animals, and the weather system I wanted to implement would have to wait until a future iteration of the game.

Thank you for following along on my adventure and I hope you stay for the next chapter in Finger Gun Games life.

From,

Cordero

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Stone Shire – Patch Notes 1.1

February 22, 2016 by 0 Comments

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Today, I introduce you to the Patch Notes for the upcoming patch of the game 1.1. Its release date will be announced soon, which we’re looking for to be early March.

Dynamic Lighting & Torches

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There are now lit and dark areas. Light from the sky does not go into covered areas, creating shadows and thus dark covered areas, like underground. In order to light dark areas, the new Torch item has been added for creation. When walking around with a torch, a small area will be constantly lit around you. You can place the torch on a wall or the ground, and it will light up the surrounding terrain.

Water

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Water blocks have been added into the game. Water blocks function similar to how they do in Minecraft. You can pick them up in the new Bottle item, and then deposit them anywhere. They will flow out until a certain point. However, water that falls over cliffs will create waterfalls, increasing their lifetime. To remove it, just use the bottle to pick back up the water block that you placed. This only works on the origin water blocks, not flowing water. You can also create your own sources of water by having two adjacent origin blocks. The center of them will always be filled with a new origin block whenever you empty that single spot. So go out and create your own bodies of water!

For 1.0 save files: you can add water to your world by crafting a Bottle. Water will come automatically filled in it. This only applies to 1.0 save files. Normally, crafting a bottle gives you an empty bottle.

TV-Off Play/ Wii U™ GamePad Only Mode

stone-shire-off-tv-mode Want to be able to sit in your bed comfortably under the sheets while playing Stone Shire on your GamePad? Maybe some family member or friend is taking up the TV? You can now switch it so that the game plays only on the GamePad by going to the Option menu and switching Wii U GamePad View Mode on and off. The inventory screen will only be brought up now by hitting the Y button or tapping the graphic. Use the Y button to close it back.

Doors

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You can now craft Wooden, Iron, Gold, or Diamond doors. They can only be set on the ground. To open and close them, target them and click the L or R buttons. Make sure there is not a pickaxe equipped in the appropriate hand, or it’ll attempt to break it down. The materials of the doors behave the same, so a wooden pickaxe will not be able to break down Iron, Gold, or Diamond doors, for example.

New Map Generation

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All three maps have undergone a new generation revamp. Grasslands gets taller and more trees, with bodies of water possible of being spawned. The tundra has better landscape generation with more trees and also bodies of water. The desert has been given a complete revamp, creating taller and more interesting terrain. Guajillo desert trees have been added, along with the occasional dead tree. Although bodies of water do not spawn in the desert, small water springs can, though they are a lot more scarce than in the Grasslands and Tundra maps.

Pickaxe Visual Update

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The pickaxes have been given a visual update to make them more fitting for the general art style of the game.

Caves

Cave generation has been improved, leading to more interesting and narrow passageways.

Controls

Jumping has been fixed to be smoother and a lot more controllable. Should make jumping on ledges and specific platforms easier now. Moving speed has been slightly increased. You can now look straight up.

Custom Named Save Files

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You can now custom name your save files, up to 12 characters. When you create a new save file and choose a map, it will ask you for a name, which you will enter using the GamePad keyboard. This only applies to new save files created after Patch 1.1 is applied.

Wii U™ Pro Controller & Classic Controller

You are now able to use the Pro Controller or the Classic Controller in substitution of the GamePad. Simply plug them in (make sure they occupy the first player slot). The GamePad still must be used for inventory management. Sounds like a good use for the GamePad cradle!

Other Changes

– New music has been added. For some of the tracks, you can listen to them here: Felix Arifin SoundCloud
– View distance has been increased.
– Invert controls have been fixed for North America version. They are already fixed in the Europe release.
– The game will also be released in Germany and Australia during the Europe release.

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Progress Report 1.1: Updated Grassland and Minecraft on the Wii U! But no Inventory Management on GamePad?

December 10, 2015 by 1 Comment

Progress Report 1.1: The Grasslands map has been updated with grass and bigger trees to supply more wood for our lumberjacks out there.

As for when the update will come, I’m fast working to get it done by Christmas, which would mean its release date will hopefully be in January. Please wait a little bit longer.

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In recent news, Minecraft is coming to the Wii U next week. I’m well aware of what it can mean for the game, but in a surprising turn of events, the game only uses the GamePad for Off-TV play and not for inventory management? That was pretty shocking, considering the crafting system would be superb with use of the touch screen interface. That’s why we implemented it in Stone Shire first and foremost. It’s a shame to see that Minecraft didn’t put in such an important feature. I’m sure everyone, including me, are disappointed about it. I enjoy Minecraft, and am glad to see it coming to the system, nevertheless.

I suppose it’s okay on the missed feature. Just another thing to make us distinct from Minecraft.