Randomation Blog

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I’m passionate about games to a fault… …for better or for worse. I’m a game developer that has been using the Unity Engine since 2012 to develop a number of games and game assets. Most of them even have a source project available for download so you can see how they work. More About Me… Read more

This is a reminder that randomationmedia.com will be shutting down within a month and the domain will then redirect to justinvoke.com.

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Randomation Games is being rebranded as JustInvoke with a new website! See the video for more details about my plans moving forward.

Visit the new website

This means that randomationmedia.com will be shutting down in February 2019 and the domain will redirect to justinvoke.com. My email at the new site is [email protected], replacing [email protected].

The Randomation Vehicle Physics repository on GitHub has a new link and I am still working on updating my site links across other websites.

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Here is the first asset I’ve created to sell since RVP 2. Features:

- 3 paint jobs

- 4 levels of detail with baked PBR textures

- 8k textures for each paint job

- 3 submesh separation variants so you can apply a transparent material to the light covers and an emissive material to the light bulbs

- Prefabs for each combination of paint job and submesh variant with LOD groups configured

- Single-color and 2-color masked shaders for paint

- Regular and hard edge shader variants (the hard edge looks better in mip maps and low resolution masks)

- Three levels of detail for collision meshes plus variants where the chassis mesh is split into 3 parts for more accurate collisions

- Zipped folder with high poly source models and PSD textures

You can see the Sketchfab preview here and read the documentation here. Full disclosure: Anyone familiar with RVP will probably recognize the car is pretty much the same as the damageable muscle car, except this one does not have an interior or separate doors/hood. I started making this new car back in July and originally planned to release a pack of 5 or so cars together. However, just making this one took much longer than expected, mainly due to getting comfortable with baking various textures from the high poly model to the LODs. As such, I chose to release this car by itself and not make the other 4 cars I had planned. Part of the reasoning is that there are already hundreds of car models on sale or freely available on the asset store and it didn’t make sense to continue working on car models when this single car took 3 months to make (not full-time work). For perspective, the initial release of RVP 2 took 5 months to develop and that was a huge success in my book. The next asset will most likely be a kart racer kit, since programming-oriented assets are more valuable (I think) and are easier for me to create. Maybe it can be ready before summer next year.

EDIT 4/24/18: The kart racer kit is on hold, but I have another small asset partially completed that I want to release this summer.

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It's already been 10 years since I first created the Randomation Pictures YouTube channel. I feel the need to share this story because it’s cathartic for me.

I remember how excited I was at age 11 when I first began using Pivot Stickfigure Animator during 2006. Going from sketching stickmen in notebooks to making them come to life on the screen ignited a passion that would eventually carry me into game development. I wanted to be just like the “famous” animators on YouTube. I wanted to create the same kind of fluid and funny scenarios that would draw in hundreds of thousands of viewers and propel me into the spotlight of this rapidly growing platform for sharing videos.

As time went on, I managed to animate a number of videos of gradually increasing quality, but nothing spectacular. I also dabbled in game development with early versions of Game Maker, but didn't achieve much as I struggled to wrap my head around the process of designing software.

Eventually my passion for animation transformed into passion for game development. This was accompanied by decreasing motivation and an inability to finish any videos worth watching. During 2012 I started using the Unity engine for the first time, enthralled by the opportunity to create interactive 3D worlds of my own creation. Now the goal was to create a successful indie game published on a platform like Steam.

After learning the basics of Unity, I embarked on a journey to create an open world stunt-driving game not unlike Burnout Paradise (the game most responsible for inspiring me to develop). With my lack of foresight in how to build stable software that isn't drenched in technical debt and the degree of inexperience required to believe the idea was even feasible in the first place, it's easy to see how that turned out.

The project was dead in the water and I didn't know what I was going to do next, or if I even wanted to do anything. That was until someone showed interest in purchasing the vehicle physics of the project. Despite the code being objectively awful, the core driving physics were very satisfying to interact with and were robust in how they reacted to environmental geometry. Out of all of the things I can do, I feel that game physics has always been the skill I'm most adept with and is the only aspect of game development I still actually enjoy working with.

The situation of seeing value in my vehicle physics led me to strip down the project and sell it as Randomation Vehicle Physics on the Unity Asset Store. This was my first source of income ever, and having anywhere from $300 to almost $1000 coming in each month as an 18-year-old still living at home was incredible. My will to develop was in full force again, but now I chose to dial things back a bit in terms of ambition and create a 2D platformer that would become Waffles (And Then Some).

The game was originally going to be based on an unfinished Game Maker project of mine that was about running across trains and shooting. The characters in this new project were going to be small and square, and the movement mechanics felt unintentionally similar to Super Meat Boy. However, the levels and theme were still unique enough to differentiate it. That is, until the level design started to feel boring and I had to redirect it. For whatever reason I decided to make the main character a waffle and make the theme about breakfast (old YouTube videos and LittleBigPlanet levels have reflected a strange affinity for this theme). Now the game was about a square-shaped food character that could sprint and wall-jump through punishingly difficult levels. To my chagrin, the Steam Greenlight comments were exactly what I expected them to be.

I chose not to publish the game on Steam because I didn't think it was worth selling anymore by the time it was greenlit out of the blue some 7 months after I originally posted it there. I also managed to get somewhat burnt out again by the time I finished it despite its relative simplicity.

Shortly after Waffles (And Then Some) was finished I began working on a kart racer known as The Fastest Meal of the Day. Mario Kart 8 came out shortly before that and inspired me to make a kart racer with the same caliber of graphics, but with the mechanics of Crash Team Racing. That might have been too ambitious (spoiler: it was). The same kind of development process followed, with the same kind of results as before. Grandiose ideas and world-building that will never come to fruition with nothing but an undercooked project and some work-in-progress videos to show for it.

I released the unfinished build and called it a day while feeling burnt-out yet again. However, I still had work to do as Unity 5 was around the corner and I knew I would have to update my vehicle physics for it. The problem with this is that the new version of Unity broke the behavior of wheel colliders from Unity 4 projects, so my vehicle physics could not function correctly in it.

I wasn't sure what I was going to do about this, until I started experimenting with making rigidbodies levitate in a balanced way using only raycasts and pure additions of force. I figured out how to do this by adding not just a basic floating force (upward constant), but by limiting this force with dampening (subtracting current velocity of point where force is applied on rigidbody). With this I had a crude model for vehicle suspensions, and thus a stable floating rigidbody. With that I knew I could write my own wheel and suspension models without the use of Unity's wheel colliders.

Over the course of a few months I developed Randomation Vehicle Physics 2.0 and launched it just a week or two after Unity 5 launched. It was a relative hit and I was over the moon “raking in” anywhere from $1000 to $1700 a month and still living at home. This was the peak of my happiness, fulfillment, and confidence out of my whole body of work over the past decade. The feeling of having that much disposable income at my fingertips and having people praise and find value in my work was overwhelming in the best of ways. Queue overzealous amiibo collecting.

With my reborn zest (I was feeling very doubtful and anxious before releasing RVP 2) I started working on the kart racer project from scratch again. The old code was abysmal (the main kart script was 3 or 4 thousand lines long and handled everything from physics to particles and audio) and the physics were not too good, even though they looked great on video. I chose to take an approach where the rotation of the karts is completely controlled by scripting and not the physics engine, leading to much more consistent behavior along with suspension based on RVP 2. I continued to work on it while occasionally stumbling over the aesthetic direction of the project and taking a month-long break to make Stickman Catapult 3D.

The good feelings ended a few months later when someone let me know RVP 2 was being “shared.” My heart sank as I tried to have the project taken down, only to see it reuploaded to another torrent site. Today I understand piracy as a legitimate way to see if software actually does what it claims to do in a world rife with early-access shovelware and DRM'd pre-order day-one DLC hotfix-patch-that-makes-things-worse culture. I also understand piracy is not truly theft because nothing is being stolen, just copied, and people who pirate might never purchase the asset anyways. At the time, however, I took it very personally and saw it as disrespecting my terms. It didn't help reading forums of people thanking each other for sharing it rather than thanking me for creating it in the first place, but I digress. I should have been grateful that something I made was valuable enough for people to take the “risk” of pirating in the first place.

Rather quickly, the butthurt brought on by piracy led to depression. I have had periodic bouts of depression prior to this, but the subsequent one was bad. Combined with my complete lack of a social life thanks to not bothering to keep in touch with high school friends, my obsession with game development hinging my entire self worth on my projects, and family issues I don't need to talk about, I was the most depressed I have ever been. RVP 2 was grossing less as well, but I don't believe this was directly correlated with the piracy. Sooner or later it had to slow down regardless of sharing.

I continued to work on The Fastest Meal of the Day even though it felt like a death march. I still consider it to be the hardest thing I have ever done. Making the characters was one of the last things I did through a tedious process of model, texture, rig, and animate. Verne and Castper were already put together from other prototype projects, but I still had 6 characters to create from scratch. Each one only took a few days but at that point I was waist-deep in a many months-long habit of spending most of my time every day working on the game.

I knew I wasn't going to sell the game. I knew it was only going to have 8 characters, 1 track, 1 mode, and no multiplayer, but I was ridiculously attached to the idea of creating some kind of polished 3D game that I can confidently show the world. All I did when I was done was throw it up on IndieDB and call it a day. I had already let go of the idea of publishing a successful game by myself and getting to be on the level of someone like the developers of Undertale or Stardew Valley. Someone who made a game mostly by theirself and gets to see thousands (millions?) of fans take in the virtual world you crafted and fill up forums discussing the characters, story, and game mechanics.

I still feel a pang in my chest when I read about how a game similar to those two is being ported to a new platform to be experienced by a new audience. I have had to work through feelings of envy and annoyance in order to try and feel happy for them. I am not entitled to success just because I put in a lot of effort, especially when my efforts have been so misguided. Trying to learn modeling, rigging, animation, texturing, foley, music composition, and programming mean nothing if I still haven't been able to produce a game worth selling. It’s just not-invented-here syndrome turned up to 11.

After finishing The Fastest Meal of the Day, I figured I should at least apply for game developer jobs. Surely having a game like that in my portfolio and being able to point to everything but the font and say, “I made that,” would be enough to land me a job at a studio that uses Unity? Not if my resume has no job experience or degree to speak of and I have no industry connections.

Depressed, burnt-out, and living at home with no degree and with no visible way to break into the game industry despite my hard work, I started applying for the same kind of jobs most 21-year-olds are qualified for. I found myself working full-time in retail and feeling mostly okay about it, because at least I was interacting with people on a regular basis, getting paid, and not “having” to develop games every day. I was at a point where getting to sit at home developing games all day seemed like hell, even though just a few years earlier in high school that is all I could dream about.

For at least several months I had absolutely no desire to develop anything. I truly believed I had put the nail in the coffin on the career of software engineering in general, not just games. I was content working in retail for almost 2 months and realized I don't want to do it for very long. (Who'da thunk it?) I chose to go to college full-time in pursuit of a bachelor's degree in computer science because I was beginning to warm up to the idea of programming again, but not so much game development.

Even with my hesitance toward game development I decided to start working on a mobile game in my free time, a basic multiplayer game where you play as a penguin and try to bump other penguins off of an ice berg. The game is still unfinished to this day and has been in development for about a year. School is not the only thing getting in the way of developing it. The other factors are my motivation and planning what exactly my free time should go into. The game and the process of realizing it just don't entice me. I don't really want to model everything, record sound effects, and write the music. I don't want to collaborate with someone either because I have a very clear idea of how those things should be, and I can't afford to pay people who would be able to do the jobs well. I haven't looked at the code in a while which makes it harder to work on that aspect and there is no monetary incentive because I was planning on making it free.

School has been eating up my savings from RVP and I need to work on things that make money. I'm considering going back into the asset business, maybe developing a kart racer kit or something else. Developing assets is not so hard, because they are essentially unfinished games. I may even pursue contract work if I have to. Plus, if I'm going to go into a more traditional software engineering role, I need to learn frameworks and work on projects that don't depend on Unity.

The only way I would pursue a career in game development is if I could work in my preferred role as a gameplay programmer at a company that doesn't depend on unpaid crunch time, doesn't lay off employees after a game ships, and offers decent benefits. As far as I'm concerned, that job does not exist, or is the kind of job that's immediately filled internally by someone in the network of connections.

I just want to get paid to write software and have a healthy work-life balance. This is not a defeatist attitude, but a realistic one. The dream I sought after in the game industry is so difficult to obtain that I would not even enjoy it after putting in the work to get there. It was and is an unhealthy obsession that I still struggle with, where even today I feel uncomfortable if I don't have some vague game idea bouncing around in my head that I want to work on at an unspecified time in the future.

One thing that stuck out to me while reflecting is the fact Randomation Vehicle Physics is the most successful thing I've ever made, and that's because it provides real value to other people. It was a catalyst for other aspiring developers' dreams of making some kind of driving game, or maybe just a product that can enhance a professional team's workflow. Either way, it helped other people much more than my own “selfish” projects have, which only served to express my own ideas. Developing assets from here on out makes the most sense because it requires less work than developing full games, is more likely to earn money, and can help others develop the games they want to make.

I am now 22 and look forward to finishing school in a few years and have mostly overcome my depression. Closing myself off from the world in pursuit of an attachment to a grandiose fantasy is no way to live. I wonder where I'll be in 2027.

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I decided to practice drawing and shading a bit. I cheated somewhat by applying a color balance filter and some minor liquification on top of it. It turned out pretty good considering how long it’s been since I last drew anything and my general focus on 3D art.

I still have plans to continue the penguin mobile game, I just need to make time to work on it.

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Here’s a rendering of Verne sitting in a pile of coffee beans, made with Blender for fun.

4K version

On another note, I’m not sure I want to continue working on the penguin mobile game shown earlier. The game just isn’t feeling enticing and I’m not enjoying the mobile aspect too much. If I do decide to completely drop it I will probably give away the source at least.

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It's fairly simple compared to some of my other games, but it needs to be for the sake of what I'm learning. The game will support 4 players per match and will only be on Android devices.

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RVP is now open source on GitHub, come contribute if you feel up to it. The package is pretty much exactly as it was in version 2.09 on the asset store, except the JS scripts and prefabs have been removed. Focusing exclusively on C# will make it easier to maintain in the future.

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Support for RVP 2.0 has ended

I am working on sharing the source on GitHub. For now you can download the most recent version that was available on the asset store.

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Make sure to read the source notes on the game’s page.

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RVP 2.0 Has Been Discontinued

Support will cease at the end of 2016.

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The Future of RVP 2.0

RVP 2.0 will be taken down from the asset store by the end of the month and no more updates will be released afterwards. Support will cease at the end of 2016.

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RVP 2.09 Released

This includes a new damageable kart prefab. See the changelog for a list of all changes.

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Verne the waffle now exists tangibly with my foray into 3D printing!

See it on Shapeways.

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This is more like what the game was meant to be.  Even though there is only one track, 8 characters, and it’s just single player, I am far more proud of this version than the prototype.  You can download it on the game’s page here.

This video features the music and concept art.

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Make sure to read the source notes on the game’s page.

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RVP 2.08.1 Released

NOTE: The “legacy torque multiplier” variable of the Transmission script is obsolete and will be removed in a future update.  The PowNatural() function of the F script will also be removed.

Inverted spring target position on trunk of muscle car due to changes to hinge joints in Unity 5.3.

VehicleParent – Set inertia tensor of rigidbody to be equal to itself due to decoupling of center of mass and inertia tensor in Unity 5.3.

VehicleMenu – Fixed implicit downcast warnings.

Wheel – Feedback RPM is set to zero when wheel is jammed or detached.  Removed redundant IsChildOf() check from GetWheelContact().  Fixed bug where detached wheel's tire material was not set correctly if “deform amount” is set to zero.

VehicleDamage – Slight refactoring to avoid redundant mesh vertex assignments.

GlobalControl – Level restarting uses new SceneManager class in Unity 5.3.

PerformanceStats – Level restarting uses new SceneManager class in Unity 5.3.

Motor – Refactored setting of particle emission rates for Unity 5.3.

TireMarkCreate – Refactored setting of particle emission rates for Unity 5.3.