Weekly Update 1: 2/26/12 - 3/3/12

These weekly updates are going to be a regular thing from now on, so hopefully you can look forward to some more regular updating from us!
Yes, the use of the word "us" is important: it is now officially two of us here at Syntactic Sugar Studio! Brenner Remund is the current business manager (who may also do some minor code, and participate in design). We're very excited about our new partnership, and to be at the head of something that will hopefully come to fruition.

The first big item of news is that we are currently working on incorporating. We want to be a true blue LLC, and that is Brenner's first big project. Turns out that even though there is quite a bit involved in creating a company, it can be done without legal counsel relatively easily. We hope to have finished the incorporation process by the end of March, at which point we'll have some sort of celebration to mark the event.

The second big news item is that Pongfinity, our first major production, is coming pretty close to completion. I've been re-working a lot of the code, and tweaking a lot of the balance. So far, Unity and Kongregate have been playing well together in a way that is extremely pleasing. We're beyond excited to see that finished product up on a public website where people that we didn't refer can play it, and it can then spread by word of mouth. In all, it's a very energetic time for us, and mostly because the labor we've put in is finally showing us some real results.

The last item of news is that we are looking for artists. We need some professional looking logo art, something that will help to set us apart from everyone else. If you know or are someone who might be interested in this, please let us know either here in the comments, or email us at the email provided in our about section. Just know that we are pretty poor at this point, so it won't pay well (if at all), but we'd love to credit you in game and spread around your work.

Thank you to everyone who reads this, and have a fantastic week!

A Sprint Day

I wanted to see what I could accomplish in a short period of time with Unity3D. So I did.
First, let me say that Unity is not my favorite way to program. However, it is absolutely fantastic for creating games. We've had a real love/hate relationship, but we're working things out. The more I practice with it, and the more I get used to its way of doing things, the more I like it. I'm especially ecstatic about the speed with which I can get things working, and how fast I can see results.
So today, I decided to make a pong clone. I've tried this before with Unity, but I went about it in such a way that made it very difficult. Now, especially with all the practice I got from the GGJ, I had a better idea of how to do it. The major problem I had before was with controlling the pong ball itself. I ended up settling on a kinematic rigidbody, and manipulating the ball movement using only vectors. For those of you interested, the formula for a reflection is: r = i - (2 * n * Dot(i, n)), where i is the incident vector, and n is the normal of the vector being reflected off of.
Without further ado, play the result here: http://www.kongregate.com/games/Bloodyaugust/pongfinity
Note: that this was posted on 2/16/12, so things may have changed by the time you read this. Heck, the link may not even work.
Happy gaming all! :D