Chromaticity – Razer Chroma Unity Plugin

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I’ve been working lately on putting together an easy to use Unity package for working with the Razer Chroma APIs. So far I have the mouse fully working, but don’t have a Chroma keyboard or headset. Hopefully some other awesome person who has the other hardware will help with testing those soon. 😛

In order for this to work you MUST install the “Razer_Chroma_SDK_Core_v0.2.4” executable that’s provided, and exit Synapse if it is running in the system tray. If you would rather, this can be downloaded from the Razer developer portal. It installs essential libraries.

Here is a sample executable that should manipulate all lighting on any Chroma mouse in Windows (x86/64). If you give it a try and see any issues, please let me know!

Chromaticity Test Build

If you run into any issues when using the application, please share the details in this Google Drive doc. Chromaticity Issues. (Currently only Chroma mice should work.)

When running the application you will be presented with the following screen. I’ll explain each option in more detail below.

This option changes the LED location. The options are

  • ScrollWheel
  • Logo
  • Backlight

LED_Type

This option sets the desired effect.

  • Blinking
  • Breathing
  • Static
  • Spectrum Cycling

Effect_Type

This area can be used to set the desired color. Using the sliders provided, the red/green/blue channels can each be set individually to modify the color.

Color_Selection

Click apply to send the changes to your mouse and see them in action!

Apply

 

 

Easy Defines (Global Defines in Unity)

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I’ve added a new Unity editor extension to reduce overhead from maintaining defines. With this extension new global defines can be added and toggled for the editor, C#, and Unityscript.

This tool is entirely open source (Apache 2.0). I welcome bug reports and pull requests! Please enjoy and contribute.

Download Unity Package : EasyDefines.unitypackage

Source : Easy Defines on Github

Prototypes!!

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Trying to relaunch this website the last few months has been a real challenge. Apparently time is more difficult to come by than I originally thought, at least the time required by the ol’ website. Anyways, here are a couple simple prototypes that I’ve been working on.

The first prototype is something that was created for mobile devices, but is currently using mouse/keyboard input for the sake of the web player. This prototype was worked on by myself and an artist by the name of Pedro Rodriguez. It was used to as an experiment in simplistic fun. Use the mouse to look around, WASD for movement, and hold space bar to pick up boxes with the tractor beam.

Alien Prototype

The next prototype is something that I’m actively working on every chance I get and will end up being an action/adventure title for mobile, without using any virtual buttons. All movements and actions will be performed contextually by touches and gestures. I’m very excited but this is a very rough/early prototype focusing on the player movement, camera movement, and enemy pathing. Click to walk, scroll middle mouse to zoom, click and drag to rotate camera.

Adventure Prototype <— super early/rough, be nice

RunAndJumpAndStuff, yeah that’s right

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So I guess it’s been about a year since I started working on what became my first released solo project. This project started out as an attempt to make a slightly more user friendly mobile game that focused on contextual single touch input. At the time I was carrying a Windows Phone 7 and decided that XNA would be my weapon of choice for this particular solo quest. I quickly whipped up some tools to help with my productivity and it was time to test some theories in mobile gameplay.

So I see an opportunity to take the oh-so-popular running genre and put my own little spin on it. The genre, while it is definitely overused in it’s most basic form, has the potential to drive a great user experience. It has simple input that doesn’t need virtual buttons, and for mobile gaming that is a huge plus. The areas that I wanted to improve on is the interactivity, pick-up-and-playability, and add a sense of completion.

Trying to add interactivity in an action game with a single button is where the difficulty comes in. I wanted the game to be simple to play, to the point that literally anyone can pick it up and not need a tutorial. Which is why I just made jumping and level traversal the main focus of the experience. Jumping is contextual in the fact that you jump while running or while performing a wall slide. Jumping off of a wall also changes the direction that you are facing, allowing the player to change directions and traverse the level different ways.

To add another dynamic to the gameplay I introduced parts of the level that were tied to events. When the player would pass these “triggers” it would cause parts of the level to shift around, which would open new paths, sometimes even secret paths. The levels each had three keys scattered about, often on different traversal paths to add some replay value. Each new level requires the player to have a certain number of keys to unlock it, I thought it was only fitting.

Keep in mind that this little post is heavily condensed and I’d love to discuss game design theories and practices with anyone who will listen. This game was meant as a PROTOTYPE, it has bugs and isn’t as polished as it could be. I’m currently working, with one other person who is a very talented artist, on a more full-featured version of the game with updated gameplay and artistic flare. Please take the time to play this game and give me your thoughts.

Download the Windows Installer Here!