WuliRocks

Hi there!

So what is this post all about? Initially it is about showcasing something made with Unity, and I hope I won't strive too much away from that, but as a solo developer, you can't just develop, you can't just build as you have to take into account many other things like marketing, monetization, distribution, all of which revolve around the spine, which is the product itself. So, this is a 2D sandbox, when I build it, I though it would be a great opportunity to be creative regarding the monetization especially with that genre. Could I sell tiles/block packages? Could I sell storage? (if player needs more space to save multiple world maps), should I sell characters, if so that means the animation engine must be able to customize characters... So that is what I mean by the connection between the way the product is build and the way it can be monetized. In my case, I am still focusing on polishing few things but all the ideas above can be applied. It is currently being tested in here:

🎮  https://wulirocks.itch.io/wuli 🎮

Below is a private video of the first test, not really meant to be found through search engine, next video will be public...

Since the game is connected to the Microsoft Playfab  server https://playfab.com/, I can gather some info on how the game is being played and I am waiting for some small streamers live reaction videos which in my opinion is a really fun way to see how players handle it (If the streamer has a genuine personality, that goes without saying). I will probably post some of these videos here when they are available.

• Footage

Below is a screen capture of something I built as a final test before sharing to make sure all tiles work, that they look great, that the map saves and loads without issues.

Also, some editor tools were built so I can modify the drawings and the tile UVs at runtime without having to: first quite play mode, do the changes, save, then reload the newly modified tiles.  Modification at runtime are saved in a Json file which is then sent to Playfab through their REST API.

In a game like that, one has to realize that editor tools are as much work as the game itself, fortunately most editor tool here use methods that are used by the game at runtime as well, so it is like hitting two birds with one stone.

• 2D terrain Engine

It started off the unity asset store "2D Terrain Engine", to build this 2D sandbox https://www.gameassetdeals.com/asset/115381/terrain-engine-2d which is amazing but got deprecated and I never really understood why. After that I added and modified tons of stuff.

• From PC To WebGL

On PC, things where pretty ok in term of optimization, with a 16GB computer. But when the player wants to load a map previously saved, that's where some trouble arise: it loads 5 big chunks of data from Playfab and allocates 35MB of memory each, which freezes the game for few seconds for every chunks of data loaded and after that the game runs pretty well. But, it is quite annoying. I guess these pieces of data should be cut out in smaller pieces?

(Here, a small screen capture so you know blocks are sorted by categories, wall tiles being the one with colliders)
--> Flash news! switching from one category of tile to an other was just reported to be a bit slow... an other thing to fix ASAP!

• How to get blocks and start building
  

There is a Quest mode and a Creative mode with enemies and various task to complete, but Quest mode  has been disabled for now as I would like to focus only on one thing at the time in this testing phase.
Therefore, in this version, you can only test creative mode, which means you have access to a large amount of tiles/blocks right from the beginning, so you can focus on building right away. Just make sure to you save your map and to wait for the saving process to finish or you may end up with some corrupted data.



It is always fun to look at what people build even if it is a modest house because it is usually something I would not have though about building. There is currently about 200 block designs available... and more will be added as we move forward.

Here is a GIF that shows the steps, going in the crafting menu, adding tile in the main inventory, then equip the tile to use it...

• Eyedropper tool (use it to go faster)

By the way there is a trick to go even faster:  put your cursor on top of a tile in the environment (not the inventory) and press the key "i"  to auto-select that tile. It is a bit like an eyedropper tools. You will be able to use it right away.

• Playable Demo

Regarding my upload on Itch.io, among the players who run the web player, few actually had the patience to wait for the loading time (the build is 80MB, sure my texture could be optimized ), so I guess the loading time could be the first issue to be taken care of... . For those who actually tested and built few things already, they really enjoyed it, and finally, there is those players who just can't figure out how to play. It happens...

• Web3 Contest, for NFT or Fiat currency?

From what I read here an there, NFTs have a bad reputation in the gaming or traditional gaming world.

But I feel, for a game like that, where player may spend hours crafting cool stuff, the Web3 offers the perfect opportunity to reward them, and I really though it over. The first contest will probably be small, just to test things out and also the rewards may not involve NFT for various reasons but simply, some fiat currency for now. A service like Crew3 will be used.

1. You will have to create a house following some requirements.
2. Make a nice screen shot of that house, tweet that image, then submit that tweet to Crew3.
3. Then the winners will get their rewarded.

How much would be the rewards? I am glad you asked. Only those who join the Discord will know. Just kidding!

The amount is undecided at the moment, but it seems like the best way to determine this is base on the amount of participants. The more people join the contest the bigger will be the reward, and that will be updated on Discord.

So what I will probably post on Discord is multiple contest reward tiers level based the participant count.

Discord: 👉 https://discord.com/invite/TZszHsf92c

• Marketing got to be original!

With this approach, instead of having a marketing budget allocated to marketer/influencers, that budget get distributed among players directly thus removing the middle men and that is an other valued aspect brought by the Web3 technologies and/or services like Crew3 https://crew3.xyz/ .

• Characters

Below are not up to date characters but that should give you an idea. The game has it own animation engine and I did not want to use Unity animation tool because of one bug that never got fixed (that would be too long to explain). Character have 42 layers, and for customization, there is something like:

10 hairs, 10 pairs of eyes, 10 torsos and many other variations that I am just going to skip for now, the generator can spit more than

10K variations... but let's not get too hasty here, some of them are ugly or make no sense, so I coded quite a few restriction to forbid certain combinations to happen.

In the playable demo only one default character is available, for now and how to get these character would be a subject of its own, so I will leave it there...

• Conclusion

I hope they where few interesting things in this post, if it was too long or if I went off track talking too much about tiny details, let me know...(for next time) or if there is something cool I could have talked about but omitted to do so...  just let me know and feel free to share your thoughts or questions! 

Discord: 👉https://discord.com/invite/TZszHsf92c   because -->  Your input, is what really matters! 

Twitter: 👉https://twitter.com/wulirocks   because --> I post updates 5 times a week, you won't miss anything.

Playfab: 👉https://playfab.com/  because --> Self distribution gives developers more freedom and control.

Asset store that helped me out:
More Montains:👉 https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/templates/systems/corgi-engine-2d-2-5d-pla...
2DTerrainEngine:👉 https://www.gameassetdeals.com/asset/115381/terrain-engine-2d 
Rewired: 👉 https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/utilities/rewired-21676
ReIconed for Rewired:  👉https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/utilities/reiconed2-for-rewired-168383

See you around and thank you for reading through.  -Wulirocks  ❤️