Covid-19

Hi there! Wilabod here, sticking a few things down in writing that would otherwise be lost to the universe. Pretty important stuff then! Er... no. Not really... but maybe...?

As this is my first post I should probably explain what the deal is. It is this:

A few months ago, the UK went into lockdown because of this flippin' Covid-19 bugger. As I am a security technician working for my dad's business as the service engineer, and as alarm services were deemed "non-essential" work, I was furloughed (and paid the extra 20% by the business - my dad isn't that much of a monster). That meant I now had a bum load of time to do something that I'd always wanted to. That something was programming.

An hour of honestly extremely lax research later and I'd decided to use Unity and learn some coding in C# with the intention of making a game. I completed 3 Unity tutorials before discovering Brackeys on YouTube so started learning bits from there too. This took place over a couple of days, maybe 3. I then started my 4th unity project which I named "another one" because "new project", "test project" and "rpg test" were already taken. I think this should be a good indication as to how much confidence I had in my abilities at this point!

A few days passed, and it became apparent that I was actually attempting to take my ideas and plop them into an actual game. What's more, this ploppage was sticking somehow. Occasionally I'd spend 2 days on one problem, usually a dodgy bit of code that wasn't working how I'd thought, but the elation when said problem was solved was and still is on another level! Anyway, I'm trying to say that at some point I ended up making the decision to carry this game through to completion.

I am not an artist, but I needed assets. So I downloaded Adobe Illustrator and drew a cartoon wolf with simple arms and legs so animation would be easier. I then realised I couldn't be bothered learning how to animate the better way using bones etc. (honestly don't remember why I didn't, I really wish I had) so I drew the wolf in several positions and used the "old school" way. I then went on to tile way too many aspects of the scenery and spent a good 24 hours realising that I shouldn't have tiled 90% of what I had, so redrew a painful number of assets.

Many days of bug fixing and problem solving later, I decided that I would release the game to the Android Play Store. This led me down another rabbit hole of further bug fixing.

At some point I decided I'd be adding loads of levels, so started cleaning things up to make the process of adding new levels easier. Of course, this also meant more bug fixing.

Eventually I fancied adding sounds and music. So I refamiliarized myself with FL Studio and made some tunes, none of which worked with the aesthetic of the game. So I made more, this time on the mobile version of FL Studio because it was sunny outside and I felt like having a lovely day of  squint-induced migraines. That night, with my appreciation of darkness thoroughly renewed, I had 2 tunes which worked. So next came sound effects. I feel in hindsight that I may have been running out of creativity at this point. I dug out a microphone from the old YouTube gaming days, and got to work flapping my mouth and tongue about until the first sound effect was complete and the Goop Gun turret has a new, slightly disgusting life. I fine tuned it using Adobe Audition, and slapped it into the game.

More bug fixing happened. One bug related to the "audio manager" script I'd got from Brackeys, and caused quite a lot of anger in me, until I solved it... I think I solved it anyway...

I released to internal testing on Play Developer Console and my mate Dan started testing it. A big shout out to Dan has to go on it's own line:

SHOUT OUT TO DAN!

Because his testing was invaluable. If my game ever makes any money, I'll send him some! Or maybe a fruit basket... Are they still a thing? Anyway, he tested the bejesus out of my game and sent huge whatsapp messages with crash reports, suggestions etc. most of which went into the game.

I released to the public! To advertise, I decided to mainly use Google Ads as I've got a fair amount of experience with it, but I very quickly realised the Mexicans were using up the entire budget overnight. So I Adjusted a few things and started getting more varied downloads. Around this time I got a first review. It was not a good one. The second and third reviews however were decent so I started to nurture a flame of hope. Then the ratings started to fall. I'm pretty sure they were due to crashes but I think only one of the bad reviews actually included any information which was along the lines of "very bad game, doesn't even work". If I knew what didn't work, I could possibly fix it! Urgh... that's for another post...

I sent a load of emails to mobile game reviewers and mainly got replies from companies wanting to charge me for them to write articles and put it on their partner-sites. That doesn't seem right to me... anyway, I think that's another topic for another post. I did get one article written (without paying), which I must say, I am reeeeally chuffed about.

That brings us to now. I realised there is a hell of a lot that doesn't get shared during this process. I have no idea if it will be of any use to anyone, or if it's just the ramblings of a mad man (I suspect the latter) but I hope it will provide at least a smidge of entertainment at the very least. I plan to write about some of the topics I've touched on here in a lot more detail. Maybe have a bit more about me, the aforementioned mad man. Like for example, you know I'm a security engineer working for my dad's company, but you don't yet know I have a degree. A degree in what? Engineering perhaps? Maybe computing? Nope! I got me a degree in Wildlife Conservation & Zoo Biology! Why did I choose that? And also, why "Wilabod"? Well that's the whole point of the next posts! Too many !s at the end there... I'm off.

Oh the game I made? It's here: Secure This (Tower Defence) - Android Game

That article I mentioned? That's here: Pocketgamer.com review

Don't wanna play the game but wondering what I'm on about? Watch this:

Wilabod.