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A* and the Space Cows: AI (Part I)
I cleverly avoided doing anything AI-related on my senior project, and before that, the most complex thing I had tackled was the...
Zak Olyarnik
Feb 5, 20194 min read
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Map-Making
One of the things I'm most proud of in ACF is my map generation algorithm. At its most basic, each planet map is a square tile grid,...
Zak Olyarnik
Jan 26, 20192 min read
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Filler Content
I've been taking it a little easy in the wake of Alpha; just one more game mode and some playtest-feedback-driven bug fixes over the...
Zak Olyarnik
Jan 20, 20192 min read
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Alpha Build is Live!
...And I promise it was done yesterday, but I had some unexpected problems with the build and distribution, so I left this announcement...
Zak Olyarnik
Jan 15, 20191 min read
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Alpha Build Announcement and The Importance of Knowing Everything
I've spent the entirety of the last two days hunting down the nastiest bug I've had to face on this project (edging out the second...
Zak Olyarnik
Jan 10, 20193 min read
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New Year's Update
There's no such thing as a holiday for a computer scientist. I've been a tenacious little monkey here at the end of 2018, and I just...
Zak Olyarnik
Jan 2, 20193 min read
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Optimization Tricks
Pre-Alpha launched last week, but I spent all of this one trying to solve lingering performance issues. When I first made the web build,...
Zak Olyarnik
Dec 23, 20184 min read
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Blasting Off!
Alien Cow Farm is now live! I'd recommend doing the download for the best performance, and please don't forget to fill out the gameplay...
Zak Olyarnik
Dec 14, 20181 min read
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Pre-Alpha Coming 12/14/18
That's right, ladies and gents, the first public release of Alien Cow Farm is dropping in just one week! ...Which means that I'll be...
Zak Olyarnik
Dec 8, 20181 min read
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The Road to Pre-Alpha
After the art issues which I'm coping with, the next biggest obstacle for me as a single-person studio was always going to be the actual...
Zak Olyarnik
Nov 29, 20183 min read
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Purple Planet Art Gallery
Today I wanted to share some of the models I've been busy creating for the game's first map, Purple Planet (working name). Level design...
Zak Olyarnik
Nov 23, 20182 min read
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Button Animation: Menu UI (Part IV)
When you set a button's transition method to "Animation", Unity automatically creates an animator with all of the default states and all...
Zak Olyarnik
Nov 15, 20184 min read
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Open Sesame: Menu UI (Part III)
The Unity animator is probably the most confusing thing I've delved into so far, so I'm going to try and go slow while I explain it. ...
Zak Olyarnik
Nov 13, 20184 min read
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Player Select: Menu UI (Part II)
Alien Cow Farm is a game for 1-4 players, which has already presented some challenges when it comes to gameplay. But it also meant...
Zak Olyarnik
Nov 10, 20183 min read
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Pressing Buttons: Menu UI (Part I)
I had two very specific ideas for the menus in my game. First, I wanted everything to be set up like the player was looking at a...
Zak Olyarnik
Nov 7, 20184 min read
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And Another Thing: Modeling and Materials (Part III)
I'm still collecting my thoughts about menu UI and animations (topics which have occupied so much of my time recently that I've been...
Zak Olyarnik
Nov 1, 20184 min read
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Splitscreen
I knew from the start that I wanted Alien Cow Farm to be a couch-co-op multiplayer game, which meant it needed splitscreen. Unity makes...
Zak Olyarnik
Oct 24, 20184 min read
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Designing UI For Any Aspect Ratio
I have long struggled with Unity's UI system. It's been designed to make it easy to support multiple resolutions simultaneously, through...
Zak Olyarnik
Oct 21, 20183 min read
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How to Skin a Cow: Modeling and Materials (Part II)
As I mentioned last time, the second big problem with creating a game entirely out of Unity's default primitive assets is one of...
Zak Olyarnik
Oct 18, 20183 min read
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Bumping Into Things: Modeling and Materials (Part I)
I am not an artist; you should just trust me on that. Since Alien Cow Farm is still a solo project (for now), the original plan for all...
Zak Olyarnik
Oct 14, 20183 min read
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