Starting a New Game with My Daughter
New game, new devlog — and I'm not doing this one alone. I'm kicking off a brand-new game and a brand-new devlog series to go with it. My daughter and I are building this one together, as a team, and we're going to ship it. We've each worked on projects that fizzled when people drifted away — this time we're doing it side by side.
Who's building it
I'm handling the dev side. I don't write C#, so I'm building the whole thing with Playmaker in Unity 6.5. My daughter — a senior computer-science student who happens to be a genuinely great artist — is taking the art. She could easily handle the code too, but she wanted the art side, so that's the split.
The concept
The working title is Dice of Ruin (subject to change). It's a 2D game built in 3D space — I'm using an orthographic camera so we can work with real 3D dice on the board while keeping a clean 2D feel.
You play as a god watching over a world where the population keeps growing on a grid. Your job is to keep it from overgrowing and wrecking itself — by rolling dice to unleash disasters that curb the population:
- A d8 picks the disaster — two faces per disaster, so four to start (an earthquake, for example). We may switch to a d6 later to fit more.
- A d10 sets the percentage of the population that disaster wipes out.
What we got done in week one
Honestly, not a ton yet — a big chunk of that first Friday was talking through the design and starting a game design doc (what the disasters are, how the population grows, all of it). On the dev side I set up the space where the dice roll, got both dice rolling — the d8 showing the disaster on top and the d10 for the percentage — and added a physics material so they bounce with a little life instead of landing like bricks. I'm still dialing in the dynamic friction (0.3 right now) so they settle instead of bouncing forever.
The plan
New devlogs every Friday. Follow along as Dice of Ruin comes together — the full episode is above, and there's the complete transcript below.
Full transcript
Well, I am starting a new game and also my YouTube videos as well. So in this particular video, this is a dev vlog and this is the very first dev vlog of the new game that I'm starting. But it's not just me. It's going to be both myself and my daughter. So we're doing this as a team to work on this together and we're going to ship this. We've both worked on a few games where they kind of died out because of people leaving or whatever.
But we have decided to work on a game together, so I'm going to be handling the dev side. And of course, I don't know C-sharp, so I'm going to be using playmaker, in unity. And I'm, we're using 6.5 and then she's going to be handling the art side. And of course my, my daughter is a senior, computer science student. So she can handle the C-sharp on this. No problem.
But she wanted to handle the art side because she is an amazing artist as well. So she can be doing this all herself. But we wanted to do a game together. So what is the game? The game is going to be the working title right now is Dice of Ruin. That's, subject to change.
But, we are going to be working on this every Friday. And hopefully dev logs will be coming out every Friday, to show you what we've accomplished. But in the first day, which was just this past Friday, today's Monday, we'll show you what we accomplished, which isn't very much. And this is 3D space. It's going to be actually, 2D game, but we're doing this in 3D space because we thought it'd be a little bit easier. So we can kind of manage what's happening on the board and kind of, 3D dice and everything else.
So we're going to come up with some kind of a grid system. The population is actually going to grow on the grid. And you, as a god, need to manage to make sure the population doesn't overgrow and kind of destroy the world. And so that's kind of the overarching idea, but so as a guide, you're going to be rolling dice to, roll disasters. They're going to curb back the population. So, again, it's, a 3D game or it's 2D, but in 3D space.
So we're, we're going to have this be, I'm using orthographic orthographic camera. So we're using an orthogonal graphic. They're a little bit dull. It's been a while since I've done this. We're using an orthographic camera. We're going to set up this grid system.
You will be able to, to roll dice. So I created a date. So that's just for disasters. And I want to do a d8 versus a, d4 because of, you know, d4, you have numbers on each side represents which face is going to be up. And I thought it'd be too complex. So I'm doing a date for, for disasters.
So there's two sides each. We might do a d6 so we can add more disasters. So on. So forth. And then we're also rolling a d10 for the percentage that it's going to destroy. And there's more complex things of how this is going to work.
And I'll show that once we kind of start getting that up. But what we accomplished yesterday wasn't very much but or the other day. So let me just give you a quick rundown of what that is. And let's see today. Okay. Let me just drop this physics material.
So currently right now for my dice, I've, I created a space where the dice is going to roll. Again. These are 3D dice and you hit dice. And now you can roll both the d8 and you can see this disaster on the top. And that's going to have some UI that pops up as well. And then on the D10 is going to be the percentage of how much that's going to affect the population.
And so, you know, that really didn't seem very fun and dynamic. And so what I wanted to do was to add a physics material. So I have a physics material. And we just add that back on here real quick. And then in this, physics material, let me just. Yeah.
Just hit play real quick and so we can kind of see what happens. We wanted them kind of bounce around just a little bit. And of course, you know, there's no dynamic friction on there, and these things can bounce around forever, which is way too much. So, instead of doing that, I just need to play with these numbers a little bit. And I think the dynamic friction I've set to 0.3 right now, but I want to play with that a little bit later just to get a better feel. But, this is kind of everything that we've accomplished so far this past Friday.
And some of that was us kind of really talking about what the game was going to be. Starting to build a game design doc, so we could kind of see what the disasters are, how the population was going to grow, all of that stuff. And these are still bouncing around a little bit too much. And yeah. So there we go. So this phase is an earthquake.
So we'd have an earthquake that's going to happen. But there's going to be more things, as well. So, but this is the beginning of a new game, and this is a new dev log. And welcome back to the Blizz studio, YouTube channel and my new website. Which Blizzard? Blizzard studio.
Go check it out, have all my YouTube videos on there. I'm going to have my dev log on there. And I also have some free tools on there too. So go check out my website, Blizzard Studio, so you can see there. I'm also going to be creating some courses, both playmaker courses and some general unity courses. And so if you interested in those come sign up.
But this is the very first dev log for the Dice of Ruin. Peace.