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...
top of page
ZWOLYA
Search
Zak Olyarnik
Jan 26, 20192 min read
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,...
9 views0 comments
Zak Olyarnik
Jan 20, 20192 min read
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...
4 views0 comments
Zak Olyarnik
Jan 15, 20191 min read
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...
9 views0 comments
Zak Olyarnik
Jan 10, 20193 min read
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...
3 views0 comments
Zak Olyarnik
Jan 2, 20193 min read
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...
7 views0 comments
Zak Olyarnik
Dec 23, 20184 min read
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,...
55 views0 comments
Zak Olyarnik
Dec 14, 20181 min read
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...
5 views1 comment
Zak Olyarnik
Dec 8, 20181 min read
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...
3 views0 comments
Zak Olyarnik
Nov 29, 20183 min read
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...
8 views0 comments
Zak Olyarnik
Nov 23, 20182 min read
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...
13 views0 comments
Zak Olyarnik
Nov 15, 20184 min read
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...
5 views0 comments
Zak Olyarnik
Nov 13, 20184 min read
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. ...
8 views0 comments
Zak Olyarnik
Nov 10, 20183 min read
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...
4 views0 comments
Zak Olyarnik
Nov 7, 20184 min read
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...
3 views0 comments
Zak Olyarnik
Nov 1, 20184 min read
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...
4 views0 comments
Zak Olyarnik
Oct 24, 20184 min read
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...
6 views0 comments
Zak Olyarnik
Oct 21, 20183 min read
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...
6 views0 comments
Zak Olyarnik
Oct 18, 20183 min read
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...
13 views0 comments
Zak Olyarnik
Oct 14, 20183 min read
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...
6 views0 comments
bottom of page