Another Website Update & Future Roadmap

I have yet again updated the website look & feel. It has been a while since I last use the website posts section to make announcements etc. but this will become the norm soon as I want to revive the website as a hub of knowledge for everything going on with Carter Games.

What’s changed?

So, you’re probably wonder what has changed. The main change with this website update is the structure of it all. Before there was a massive header menu with a load of items and it was all a little too cluttered. Now there are just three sections, “Home“, “Posts” & “Contact” to keep it super simple and easy to follow for any visitors.

The home page has been updated to have more content on it. Previously it was very bland and simple as the footer was an actual part of the page. Now the homepage contains a summary of every major active or release project to date as well as separate pages for users to read more about a particular project and a main link to the relevant store for the project if it is released. I’ve also added an about section at the top of the page and plan to add a slideshow in the future showing off some of the better-quality projects when I have some to show.

The news section has been setup for future content, including guides & development logs. Currently there are obvious gaps which I hope to start filling up in the coming months so keep your eyes peeling for more here soon.

Other updates

Outside of the website update I spent the time to revamp the brand graphics. If you follow me on the socials you will have already seen this, but I thought I’d mention it here to in case you missed it. Below is a before and after for the logo & banner graphics.

A before and after of the Carter Games logo & banner graphics

Roadmap

Going forward for the next 6 months or so I have been planning out what I want to release and when. These are obviously not set in stone, but itโ€™s a rough plan going forward with a more certain one coming around the new year.

Autumn 2022

Audio Manager 2.6.x

I spent the last long weekend 50/50 working on C.W.I.S & this. The idea is to clean up the asset a little and provide some minor improves to the inspectors as an end-of-life update. That is end of life for the 2.x.x version line, not the asset. The asset has a new 3.x.x line in the works which I have made decent progress on and teased on socials a while back. The new 3.x.x version is still quite a way from being production ready. So, this update acts as a mediator between the two versions, introducing the project settings window for the asset settings as well as some of the new standards all the assets will follow in updates when they are next released. Below are some screenshots of the new inspector looks:

The Audio Manager script 2.6.x inspector look
The Music Player script 2.6.x inspector look
The Audio Player script 2.6.x inspector look
The Audio manager 2.6.x settings provider window look

C.W.I.S Arcade Build

I’ve been spending a lot of time on this game project since I started a remake and progress is good. I’ve spent the last few weeks trying to get a good enough looking water shader working from a top-down perspective which is harder than it sounds. I have since settled on a look and continued to work on fixing the existing mechanics to work as intended.

A screenshot of the arcade scene in C.W.I.S

I’ve also spent the time to improve the realism of the missile launchers. Previously they would just spawn missiles from the centre regardless of the number of missiles shot. Now they have the tubes that open before the missile in the tube launches. Itโ€™s a subtle difference but a feature I really wanted to add. At the same time, I was able to fix up the missile objects, so the trail particle now correctly reset instead of using up all the particle returning to the launcher when a missile is called to fire again. I also fixed another issue where only 3-6 launchers were being used due to the same reset logic.

A screenshot of the Unity editor showing a open missile tube on the ship in C.W.I.S

Multi Scene 0.2.x

Some of you may be wondering what on earth is Multi-Scene. Yea I’ve kept this somewhat quite apart from a few teasers on socials. Multi scene is a experimental asset to help with making games that use Unity’s multi scene setup, this is where you load scenes additively instead of one at a time allowing for elements of your game projects to be split up into manageable chunks. If you’ve had a gander at the Carter Games GitHub, you’ll have seen this as a repository for quite a while.

Dark Mode

Link: https://github.com/CarterGames/MultiScene

The last major release was back in February of this year with update 0.1.3 where I added a ordering feature to the interface referencing setup. This 0.2.x update adds a load of new workflow improvements to make using the asset a lot easier. These include scene selection for the scene groups instead of a string field, a lot more control over how scenes load & how often the listeners run when a group is loaded + an editor window to load scene groups at the press of a button in the editor. On top of all that the asset manager is now static instead of instanced based for ease of use. There will be lots more on this when this update is released to go over how to use the asset and were using a multi scene setup can be handy.

A promotional image for the Multi Scene asset.

Winter 2022

Compared to autumn, winter will be quieter with some room to allow one of the above projects to fall behind if it happens.

Leaderboard Manager 2.1.x

The leaderboard manager had an update somewhat recently to fix one or two issues. Since using it in a personal project I noted a few features that could use improving along with a few suggestions or comments from users that could be handy for usability. These include:

  • Option to show equal scores as =3rd instead of 2nd & 3rd for example.
  • Option to change the save location of the leaderboard data
  • Option to not use the display pooling setup, instead having the leaderboard be pre-defined in the scene with the rows in the parent object.
  • Option to view and edit all leaderboards and entries in a editor window of some kind.
  • + All the new improvements I’ve made to my other assets in recent times.

Detective Notes 2.x.x

A bit of a supprise one, but for a while I’ve wanted to make an update to the detective notes app with some clearer art, animations & performance improvements.

Early 2023

The new year is a bit of a blank space for the time being, but I do have a few ideas of things to be doing that year which I’ll list below:

  • Audio Manager 3.x.x
  • Some other minor asset updates (possibly a new Save Manager if I get the time)
  • Anything that has overrun from the previous year.
  • Some new game project planning.

So that’s all for this update, keep your eyes peeled for more updates coming soon!


Website Update & Future Plans

Hey all, J here! So it’s been a while since I last posted on the site and I totally missed the March Monthly Update. This post will kind of count as both the March & April update as I’ve been sorting stuff out behind the scenes. The biggest of which you can see currently. The website has had a complete overhaul with a new theme, new plugins, new graphics & a new layout showcasing all the work I currently have public in a releasable state.

Changes To Carter Games

This nicely leads me on to a change to the meaning of the name Carter Games. Originally, I planned to turn it into its own studio. However, after giving it some though I’ve decided to instead turn it into an alias/publisher that I release my public works to. Given that all the work on here is currently my own anyways there its really any harm in doing so. So, I have been around and updated all the description of the brand where I used We or Studio and corrected them to follow this new narrative. This doesn’t really affect anything currently in the pipeline but leaves me free to make a studio under a different name in the future should I wish to do so.

Current Work

Some may have missed the news regarding Project Tilly which is the game I was working on since the start of the year. So here’s the update I posted everywhere else. Project Tilly is on hold until further notice, this is somewhat due to a little burnout on the project and partly due to a lack of personal ability to complete the project. I did over scope a little, even in the MVP, so I’ll be leaving the project on the backburner until I have the motivation to work on it again or some new ideas for it. Its sad news to those who were interested in it, but I really want to get a new game published this year so I’m focusing on an older project which is already halfway there. This being C.W.I.S, though I’ll likely rename the game for release. I had a working prototype around winter 2020 and I feel like it’s a title that I have some ideas for and could complete in 3-6 months with my current skills. That includes the art side as well.

The Future

Other than that, I have been working on a few GDD’s (Game Design Documents) for some possible future titles. None of these are set in stone yet as they still need fleshing out a lot before I decide which one to move forward on. So. there will be more in this in the coming months. In the meantime, I will be making further improvements to this site & publishing minor updates to existing products. I will be back with another update at the end of May if not sooner with more info on where I go in the future.

That is all for now

~ J

End of 2021 Plans

End of 2021 Plans

With the end of the year fast approaching, we feel it is a good time to announce our plans for the rest of the year. We achieved most of our plans from the summer roadmap, though it did take longer than we initially planned. Because of this we are behind on making a new game project which we will be postponing until the new year.

Spooky Logo

You may have also noticed a logo change recently, this is our yearly bit of fun where we make logo variations based on the time of year. With Halloween fast approaching, we felt we needed to make the logo a little spooky for the fun of it.

The Carter Games 2021 Halloween Banner

The Plan

Those of you who follow our social media will know that we have had a few new assets in the works for a while now. Well we plan to finish these up and release them before the year is up. Those who have looked at our Unity Asset Store page recently will note that the Leaderboard Manager is still out of date. So this is also on the plate for the end of year work. We held off on the Leaderboard Manager for a bit as the asset needed a total re-write, so the new version will be a 2.0.0 release as and when we release it.

So a breakdown of what each asset does and when to expect the update roughlty:

Leaderboard Manager | End of year

Leaderboard Manager is a scripting system that allows users to implement leaderboard into their games with reletive ease. The current asset works, but is rather basic and has some limitations that we would like to remove. Given the amount of work needed to make the Leaderboard Manager work as we want. We expect this asset to be the last one we release this year.

Drop Tables | November

This asset is one of the new ones. The idea is to provided users with a way of creating multiple loot tables with ease with a 1 in X style which are user friendly. So a change of 1 in 4 would be common while 1 in 5000 would be super rare for example. The asset also allows the user to define drops that always get rolled if needed. The asset is currently at the testing stage and we are working out the kinks with the backend to make it usable in projects of any kind of the gate. We expect this asset to be ready sometime in November.

Build Versions | End of October

This is a lightweight asset that is designed to just help the developer automate updating their game build numbers. Which will happen automatically each time the developer makes a build. We plan to have options to change when the build is incremented, options to edit the player settings x.x.x number and options to edit the โ€œtypeโ€ of build. All of data is available in a scriptable object which can be easily implemented into the developers project. This asset is the one we are currently focusing our efforts and we expect this asset to be out by the end of October at the latest.

Closing Notes

So that is the plan ๐Ÿ˜€ Whether or not we achieve it is another question entirely. But we hope that getting these assets out this year will clear our schedules a little so we can start some new projects going into the new year.

Summer 2021 Roadmap

Summer 2021 Roadmap

So we’ve been a little inactive recently but are hoping to change that over the next 6 months with updates and new projects on the way. This is the first post that are making on the refreshed website with plans to make detailed announcements directly onto the site as well as summariesed versions on our socials. below we’re going to be outlining our plans for the next few months and some ideas of what we will be working on for the rest of the year. We have already made progress on the June work so the completed steps are already crossed out:

June

  • Discord Server Updates
    • New role for new joiners to the server.
    • Reduced the amount of channels for an easier to follow layout.
  • Website Layout Updates
    • New simple layout.
    • News & Dev post setup.
  • Detective Notes App Update
    • Performance improvements.
    • Scaling issue fixes.
    • Improved visuals.

July

  • Unity Asset Store Asset Audit
    • Updates to store graphics and descriptions.
    • Updates to documentation.
  • Socials Update
    • Updates to all existing social platforms.
    • Cleaning up old posts and updates to meta data.

August & Onwards

  • New Unity Asset Store Asset
  • New Major Game(s) Project, TBC