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[SeanNoonan]

I took Jarekx's style from earlier in this thread and tried to make some scarf/cape ninja guy. I have never done any pixel art before... is it terrible? lol

Not bad at all for a first attempt I would say.
Surprisingly you seem to have the arms wrong rather than the legs - I personally fuck up the legs a lot in my sprites. Perhaps a have the arms pull back further to match the motion of the legs (use all of your frames)? And maybe try bobbing the character between steps? I hate to point out problems and not offer real solutions, but I'm kinda new to all this myself

Good start though!

Here's a pixel daily I did after work today (they're gonna be hard to work on every day now that I'm back working...).

 

[plagiarize]

Not bad at all for a first attempt I would say.
Surprisingly you seem to have the arms wrong rather than the legs - I personally fuck up the legs a lot in my sprites. Perhaps a have the arms pull back further to match the motion of the legs (use all of your frames)? And maybe try bobbing the character between steps? I hate to point out problems and not offer real solutions, but I'm kinda new to all this myself

Good start though!

Here's a pixel daily I did after work today (they're gonna be hard to work on every day now that I'm back working...).

You can do it! Just stay in the habit. I work full time and I think I've gotten something done on my project every day for the last three weeks solid. Before then it was more sporadic, but I remembered having great success when I was finishing up my last novel (self published, needs another proof read and an editor, if anyone was wondering) on just committing to get *something* done every day.

Not a specific amount, but to open up the project and do something every day. It's easy to commit to *something* and getting the project open and clearing my mind to work on it seems to open the doors for *something* turning into a decent chunk.

If you miss a day for whatever reason, just promise yourself not to miss the next day. But really there's little excuse for not getting at least a few pixels down, or in my case a few meshes and bsps thrown about.

Todays something:

First floor

Second floor

It's a two story maze section. The first floor is just a straight maze. Green marks on the floor (that are red behind you) lead you through to the elevator in the top right corner. Up on the second floor the purple things are traps (easily visible) that you have to time going past, that will push you into neighbouring holes if you screw up and you will fall back down into the ground floor of the maze. Laying out mazes so that they use every square is all kinds of satisfying to me for some reason. I wasn't sure I'd still be able to do it when I have to give up space for the push blocks and the holes down into the lower maze, but it wasn't too hard at all.

 

[Kalnos]

Not bad at all for a first attempt I would say.
Surprisingly you seem to have the arms wrong rather than the legs - I personally fuck up the legs a lot in my sprites. Perhaps a have the arms pull back further to match the motion of the legs (use all of your frames)? And maybe try bobbing the character between steps? I hate to point out problems and not offer real solutions, but I'm kinda new to all this myself

Good start though!

Here's a pixel daily I did after work today (they're gonna be hard to work on every day now that I'm back working...).

Thanks, I think you're right about the arms and lack of bobbing and I appreciate the advice.

I would give you advice but you always have awesome stuff.

 

[Xtra Mile]

That's the second SSD I've heard someone on GAF talk about dying recently, may I ask what brand/model?

Crucial M4. Two years and 8 months, so still under warranty. They're sending a newer model as a replacement. The controller on the drive failed and can't be fixed unfortunately, so I won't be getting the data back. Windows locked up, blue screen with an I/O error. A reboot and the drive no longer loaded.

 

[Blizzard]

Crucial M4. Two years and 8 months, so still under warranty. They're sending a newer model as a replacement. The controller on the drive failed and can't be fixed unfortunately, so I won't be getting the data back. Windows locked up, blue screen with an I/O error. A reboot and the drive no longer loaded.

Absinthe had an MX100:

Crucial MX100 256GB
Highly recommended by GAF but they are not without issue.



I will warranty it but some Googing has me seeing many similar issues from people I do use a few blacks and a few greens. Blacks are for my obvious Steam backlog and Greens are for my storage. Will go Red with a proper local at some point.

Black's have a longer warranty, too. Mine have been great so far so I'm sticking with what I know. At least its just for my OS and developer apps so I can be up and running in a day when my new drive comes

I suppose there's random failure rate with them all, and maybe Crucial is the most popular so that's what I hear about failing. SSD's are tempting but a little scary.

 

[Xtra Mile]

Absinthe had an MX100:



I suppose there's random failure rate with them all, and maybe Crucial is the most popular so that's what I hear about failing. SSD's are tempting but a little scary.

Ah, the MX100 is what they're sending me. I would recommend going with Samsung if you're getting in an SSD. The computer at work has been chugging along fine so far and people seem happy with them. Not over two years, but I guess time will tell.

On the positive side, it was during the warranty period, but I'd rather have the data back. Heh, now I have another three years for the new drive.

I'd recommend an SSD over a HDD any day. It's impossible for me to go back. The speed boost cannot be overstated. Just make sure to back up regularly.

 

[SquirrelWide]

There Came an Echo Launch Date Announcement Trailer!

WOOHOO!

February 24th, y'all.

Awesome!

 

[Jacksinthe]

Yep. MX100. That's the one that got me twice. Has to be a bad lot. Too many posts on Crucial's forum in a small timeframe.

 

[Kritz]

Does anyone know good podcasts for game development?

GAF devs should start a quarterly, TBH. I wouldn't mind recording.

google hangout would be great.

Oh, and I like the idea of GAF quarterly and would be happy to contribute if necessary.

As someone who reads these threads for fun but isn't actively developing something, I would love to listen to that.

shit sounds tops, y'all.

Or even just some sort of semi-regular google hangout community thing that isn't specifically for a poddy. (since the IRC is a ghost town!)

 

[BlazinAm]

Yep. MX100. That's the one that got me twice. Has to be a bad lot. Too many posts on Crucial's forum in a small timeframe.

The only thing I ever had with an MX100 was that it somehow disconnected and to do a cold boot to get it working again.

 

[Blizzard]

I finally started trying to do a little actual work again. I'd like opinions if anyone is so inclined. I may end up only needing one type of health/resource for units, but just in case I need two, I mocked up some layouts.

Bear in mind there may be many units and I want to make it easy for someone to glance at the screen and get a feel for the status of several units. I could also do something where if you held down a certain key, the health/resource/whatever numbers would appear as big overlays on all tiles, and vanish when you let go of the key.

Which layout(s) of these would you prefer, if you were playing this game? I've included both normal and zoomed images for clarity. You can vary the zoom level with the mouse wheel ingame.

The left images have numbers with dark backgrounds, and all units are the same. The right images have a different bar style for each unit -- each style is an option I'm asking for opinions on, or whether the numbers are preferable.

 

[timetokill]

Which layout(s) of these would you prefer, if you were playing this game? I've included both normal and zoomed images for clarity. You can vary the zoom level with the mouse wheel ingame.

Numbers, by far.

 

[WanderingWind]

Thanks to this thread, I'm going to give Fusion 2.5 a shot. I've been messing with RPG Maker and aesprite, but I get the nagging suspicion that RPG Maker is basically a skill set dead end. I just want to make a simple, FFVI style RPG and I've made some good headway with Maker, but support for it basically died 3 years ago.

Basically, I don't want to learn a ton of skills I'll never use, but I also don't want to only know RPG Maker systems in case the end product isn't going to be worth a damn.

 

[Kitbash]

Which layout(s) of these would you prefer, if you were playing this game?

I'd prefer the stacked bars, especially if you added some markings (or notches) to give a sense of how many units it represents.

 

[Sinsem]

Bear in mind there may be many units and I want to make it easy for someone to glance at the screen and get a feel for the status of several units

Are the absolute numbers important ? On what scale are they? Do you want to show the relative state (the unit health/resources compared to the max health/resources it can have) or the absolute number ? And are there big disparities between the max for each unit/resource ?

I personnaly like the Sc2 system :

Marines and zealots have a different max health : 45(+10) & 100 but the system show their relative health at everytime. On the second image for the zealot, the two bars have two differents values. The first one is 50, the second 100.

If there are many units on the screen at the same time, you should avoid numbers and go for bars anyway.

 

[Angryhead]

health/resource/whatever

Sinsem already explained it very well, I agree with bars being superior, especially with a lot of units.



Haven't done much gamedev (besides a project at work) since November so I'm trying to get back into the swing of things.
I've been playing a lot of Desert Golfing lately and trying to come up with something that's as simple, yet satisfying and perfect for a phone screen. It's amazing how well it works as a phone game: loads up in a second so you can make "progress" even when waiting for an elevator to come, for example.
It's certainly not an easy task.

Had a small idea last night though, and quickly made the basics of it in a few hours (that's an awesome feeling).

The thrilling experience of working at a production line! (.gif)

Swipe down to use the lever to bring down the press, up to get it up again and then left to get the next license plate for pressing.
Next up I'm thinking of making it so it'll show you the license plate (with randomized code and serial number) that you just pressed. Woah!

I think it could be a fun-dumb little thing with some sounds, non-programmer art and general juiciness.

 

[plagiarize]

I vote for bars too. Much easier to assess the wider picture at a glance as Sinsem explains. Of the bar options I find the top right easiest to understand quickly.

 

[Jarekx]

I took Jarekx's style from earlier in this thread and tried to make some scarf/cape ninja guy. I have never done any pixel art before... is it terrible? lol

A lot better than my first attempts! Animation is still very painful for me. As with all things, it gets easier with practice. I also recommend finding some good references for walking and running. They definitely help me.

I will make my game inspired by avatar and ancient Chinese mythology....one day

 

[Jacksinthe]

The only thing I ever had with an MX100 was that it somehow disconnected and to do a cold boot to get it working again.

That's extremely horrible. Data corruption and loss of data are just about guaranteed eventually if that keeps happening if it wasn't damaged already. I don't take chances with my data. I'd hate to lose even a few hours of work let alone longer.

 

[MrNyarlathotep]

Which layout(s) of these would you prefer, if you were playing this game?

whynotboth.jpg

If its as much work to set up one system as another, why not set up both and make it a user toggle?

 

[Blizzard]

Numbers, by far.

I'd prefer the stacked bars, especially if you added some markings (or notches) to give a sense of how many units it represents.

Are the absolute numbers important ? On what scale are they? Do you want to show the relative state (the unit health/resources compared to the max health/resources it can have) or the absolute number ? And are there big disparities between the max for each unit/resource ?

I personnaly like the Sc2 system : *snip*

Marines and zealots have a different max health : 45(+10) & 100 but the system show their relative health at everytime. On the second image for the zealot, the two bars have two differents values. The first one is 50, the second 100.

If there are many units on the screen at the same time, you should avoid numbers and go for bars anyway.

Sinsem already explained it very well, I agree with bars being superior, especially with a lot of units.

I vote for bars too. Much easier to assess the wider picture at a glance as Sinsem explains. Of the bar options I find the top right easiest to understand quickly.

whynotboth.jpg

If its as much work to set up one system as another, why not set up both and make it a user toggle?

Thanks to everyone for the super helpful opinions and analysis! I may have considered bars, but was not sure if it would be too confusing if there are different max values for health/whatever. I'll probably avoid the different colors like StarCraft since I want to at least preserve the possibility of a two-bar system until I do some gameplay testing and see how things feel.

I'm currently anticipating that units will have different max health, though like everything else that's in flux right now. I'm trying to get to the game test stage where I can finally see if my ideas are going to be any fun at all. It would be easy to have a user option and I like user options, so that's a good point too -- a number vs. bar toggle.

Absolute numbers COULD be important. Right now I have everything as 10 or less, but I could easily scale things up to 50 or something if I need math to work better. I'm trying doing without Advance Wars style randomness (even though I'm probably crazy to do so), so people might need to do quick calculations. Given that, keeping the scale lower and even providing a hotkey for switching numbers and bars seems like it could work. I'll try that today.

 

[cbox]

That's extremely horrible. Data corruption and loss of data are just about guaranteed eventually if that keeps happening if it wasn't damaged already. I don't take chances with my data. I'd hate to lose even a few hours of work let alone longer.

Save ALL my files on either dropbox or onedrive. My ISP doesn't count uploads towards my limit so booya! I've lost so many hard drives over the years I don't take any chances. Even with my WD Blacks.

 

[Jacksinthe]

Save ALL my files on either dropbox or onedrive. My ISP doesn't count uploads towards my limit so booya! I've lost so many hard drives over the years I don't take any chances. Even with my WD Blacks.

I've had recent issues with Bitbucket and Github only supports public repos for free so I do the same, but use Drive. Every session I zip, make 2 locals on 2 different drives then up my project to drive.

I really need to get Bitbucket working proper for me but every time I try to setup a new repo it fails. I've done it a million times so I honestly don't know why I can't even make an initial commit. At the very least I can comment my uploads in Drive but I hate not being able to compare changes or fork.

At least Infinite is already a release candidate and not undergoing major changes after I fixed my iOS issue so comparisons at this point are numbers tweaks to gameplay. Bitbucket worked fine for me until about a month ago. I've even tried making a new account and re-initializing my GIT with no luck.

 

[SquirrelWide]

I've had recent issues with Bitbucket and Github only supports public repos for free so I do the same, but use Drive. Every session I zip, make 2 locals on 2 different drives then up my project to drive.

I really need to get Bitbucket working proper for me but every time I try to setup a new repo it fails. I've done it a million times so I honestly don't know why I can't even make an initial commit. At the very least I can comment my uploads in Drive but I hate not being able to compare changes or fork.

At least Infinite is already a release candidate and not undergoing major changes after I fixed my iOS issue so comparisons at this point are numbers tweaks to gameplay. Bitbucket worked fine for me until about a month ago. I've even tried making a new account and re-initializing my GIT with no luck.

Just as a thought, try (from a new empty, uninitialized folder) git clone your-git-repo.git. We use git a lot at my (sadly non game dev) job, it can be tricky. I'll watch for your reply to see if I can help further.

 

[bumpkin]

ARGH!?

I have encountered the most irritating problem with some of my drawing and I can't for the life of me figure out what's going on. I have a snippet of code that is meant to draw a series of colored squares (GL_QUAD) and for some reason, it's not drawing any of 'em. Thinking maybe OpenGL was just barfing (throwing an error), I even tried spitting out the error message to my console to no avail.

Here is the code snippet:

                for (int col=0; col<collisionTiles.size(); ++col)
                {
                    for (int row=0; row<collisionTiles[col].size(); ++row)
                    {
                        CollisionTile_t tile = collisionTiles[col][row];
                        
                        Rect_t positionRect;
                        positionRect.top = (GLfloat)((GLfloat)row * (GLfloat)64.0f);
                        positionRect.bottom = positionRect.top + (GLfloat)64.0f;
                        positionRect.left = (GLfloat)((GLfloat)col * (GLfloat)64.0f);
                        positionRect.right = positionRect.left + (GLfloat)64.0f;
                        
                        // Define the array for our quad's coordinates
                        GLfloat quadCoords[4][3] = {
                            {positionRect.left, positionRect.top, 0.0f},
                            {positionRect.right, positionRect.top, 0.0f},
                            {positionRect.right, positionRect.bottom, 0.0f},
                            {positionRect.left, positionRect.bottom, 0.0f}
                        };
                        
                        // Set color of quad face(s)
                        if (tile == CollisionTile_Hard_Square)
                        {
                            glColor4f(1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f);
                        }
                        else
                        {
                            glColor4f(0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.2f);
                        }
                        
                        // Define our VBOs (Vertex Buffer Objects)
                        glVertexPointer(3, GL_FLOAT, 0, quadCoords);
                        
                        // Draw the quad using the VBOs
                        glDrawArrays(GL_QUADS, 0, 4);
                        
                        // Report error
                        GLenum glErr = glGetError();
                        if (glErr != GL_NO_ERROR)
                        {
                            printf("\tOpenGL Error: %s\n", gluErrorString(glErr));
                        }
                    }
                }

Anyone with OpenGL chops have any suggestions? I am totally and utterly stumped.

 

[Altima]

After I tried using Construct 2 I regret that I did not put more afford in game programming when I was in high school.

I thought that making game is impossible for an individual but I was wrong.

 

[Dead Prince]

After I tried using Construct 2 I regret that I did not put more afford in game programming when I was in high school.

I thought that making game is impossible for an individual but I was wrong.

make sure you keep it all organized. sloppy events would get confusing. lol. label everything.

 

[Popstar]

Anyone with OpenGL chops have any suggestions? I am totally and utterly stumped.

Do you have backface culling on? The default the winding order in OpenGL is counter-clockwise and your quad is clockwise.

 

[bumpkin]

Do you have backface culling on? The default the winding order in OpenGL is counter-clockwise and your quad is clockwise.

I'm not sure. FWIW, the other draw calls I do later on in the block (quads with textures) all render fine. Their positionRects are done in the same order.

 

[Veritigo_X]

What are some good articles or tutorials on creating pixel art? Long term (realllllly long term) I plan on hiring an artist to make things look pretty, but right now I'm sick of looking at blocks and stick figures. It's really hard to want to show off your game when most people can't even tell what they're looking at haha.

 

[Popstar]

I'm not sure. FWIW, the other draw calls I do later on in the block (quads with textures) all render fine. Their positionRects are done in the same order.

You also have the comment "Define our VBOs" but you're not using VBOs anywhere in that code.

Also missing (but maybe elsewhere?) is code to enable/disable (glEnableClientState) the appropriate arrays.

 

[bumpkin]

You also have the comment "Define our VBOs" but you're not using VBOs anywhere in that code.

Also missing (but maybe elsewhere?) is code to enable/disable (glEnableClientState) the appropriate arrays.

Yeah, the code has changed so much. I probably was thinking the multidimensional array of floats was a VBO. I do have the glEnableClientState method calls before the quoted code and other draws that work though. Only pasted what wasn't working.

 

[ChiefofCitadelSecurity]

What are some good articles or tutorials on creating pixel art? Long term (realllllly long term) I plan on hiring an artist to make things look pretty, but right now I'm sick of looking at blocks and stick figures. It's really hard to want to show off your game when most people can't even tell what they're looking at haha.

http://www.pixelprospector.com/the-big-list-of-pixel-art-tutorials/

I think this covers all the main ones and then some.

 

[Blizzard]

http://www.pixelprospector.com/the-big-list-of-pixel-art-tutorials/

I think this covers all the main ones and then some.

......I'm not sure I had ever heard of that site, and it has a billion resources on it. Thank you!

For anyone else who hasn't looked through the site, it also seems to have lists of graphics programs, audio stuff, etc. Lots to look through.

 

[Veritigo_X]

http://www.pixelprospector.com/the-big-list-of-pixel-art-tutorials/

I think this covers all the main ones and then some.

Wow this looks great! More than covers what I need to know. Hopefully my developer art will look much better. It can't get much worse...

 

[Jacksinthe]

Just as a thought, try (from a new empty, uninitialized folder) git clone your-git-repo.git. We use git a lot at my (sadly non game dev) job, it can be tricky. I'll watch for your reply to see if I can help further.

There we go. Created a new repo, reinitialized GIT in my project directory, copy pasta, commit. Cloned to test in a new project folder - worked. I didn't even think to just start blank. Thanks! That's rougkly several hundred times faster than command line ha!

Now I can get back to slacking with hard copies and just do them nightly

 

[ChiefofCitadelSecurity]

......I'm not sure I had ever heard of that site, and it has a billion resources on it. Thank you!

For anyone else who hasn't looked through the site, it also seems to have lists of graphics programs, audio stuff, etc. Lots to look through.

Wow this looks great! More than covers what I need to know. Hopefully my developer art will look much better. It can't get much worse...

Welcome

Trying to make my own game, just dropping what I've come across.

 

[Popstar]

Speaking of OpenGL, I was going through some old backup discs and I found the first OpenGL code I ever wrote.

It was for a programming contest. I won a free trip to E3 1998. I'd thought I'd lost that code forever. I'm pretty stoked to see it again.

 

[SquirrelWide]

There we go. Created a new repo, reinitialized GIT in my project directory, copy pasta, commit. Cloned to test in a new project folder - worked. I didn't even think to just start blank. Thanks! That's rougkly several hundred times faster than command line ha!

Now I can get back to slacking with hard copies and just do them nightly

Oh, I just do it from the command line. Glad I could help though. (If you are running Git GUI or something, you might want to reconsider as it runs a lot slower)

 

[Wreck-It Ralph]

So I made a game over the weekend. It's an idea I've had for a while. I though it would be kind of neat.

...But I'm not sure if it's actually any fun. In fact, I feel like it might actually not be any fun, and that makes me kinda sad.

I'm probably going to finish it and put it out there just so I can say I finally made a complete game, but I feel like people might hate it. :/

Or maybe this is just another case of me being overly critical of my work. I honestly can't tell.

 

[Blizzard]

So I made a game over the weekend. It's an idea I've had for a while. I though it would be kind of neat.

...But I'm not sure if it's actually any fun. In fact, I feel like it might actually not be any fun, and that makes me kinda sad.

I'm probably going to finish it and put it out there just so I can say I finally made a complete game, but I feel like people might hate it. :/

Or maybe this is just another case of me being overly critical of my work. I honestly can't tell.

At least you are using the proper approach -- making it over a weekend and finding out it's possibly not fun, and can possibly be changed to be more fun.

This is better than an approach like me, where I putter around with engines and ideas for like 3 years before I (still yet to happen) discover that the ideas were terrible and no fun. =P

 

[Jacksinthe]

Oh, I just do it from the command line. Glad I could help though. (If you are running Git GUI or something, you might want to reconsider as it runs a lot slower)

Oh I always used the command line but for some reason I was having issues. I just created a repo through BitBucket and clone it empty, then copied my project and committed it that way via command line. I do use SourceTree to mainline after the repo is setup but maybe my issues could have stemmed from there during production.

 

[Funky Functionality]

Subbing for the intense flow of creative juices, mmm.

 

[Feep]

My advice to everyone: do not make engines.

 

[Veritigo_X]

My advice to everyone: do not make engines.

I love the flexibility that comes with making your own engine, but I'm sorta regretting it right now. I find myself debugging more than creating actual content which can get really frustrating.

I've been thinking about attempting the move over to Unity, but I'm not really familiar with it and I'm afraid I'm in too deep to make the move worthwhile. It also feels like I'd be "giving up" if I went this route.

 

[plagiarize]

So I made a game over the weekend. It's an idea I've had for a while. I though it would be kind of neat.

...But I'm not sure if it's actually any fun. In fact, I feel like it might actually not be any fun, and that makes me kinda sad.

I'm probably going to finish it and put it out there just so I can say I finally made a complete game, but I feel like people might hate it. :/

Or maybe this is just another case of me being overly critical of my work. I honestly can't tell.

I know the feeling. But think of the worst game you've ever played and I bet there are people out there that love it. It's almost impossible to get a bead on whether or not your own work is good or bad. Michael J Fox thought he'd done an awful job in Back to the Future, for example.

I've only got experience with self publishing fiction and how utterly painful even one negative reaction can be, but do I regret writing those stories? Absolutely not.

I'll finish my game, and maybe it'll be the only one I ever make, but I'll know I actually went through with it instead of just day dreaming about it.

Right now I'm more worried that no one is going to play it when its finished, frankly. I'll deal with whether they like or it not second.

My chances are decent so long as I can get it out while VR games are still relatively thin on the ground, and I have a decent idea of where to go with it to get people to see it within the VR gaming community. That's my hook, but is it good or not? Is it a really a *game* to bumble around bumping against surfaces to see if they are or aren't solid?

Everyone goes through this. Nearly every creator, talented or not has these moments. Understanding that is a really helpful thing. One of my favorite writers is script writer Russell T Davies, and he has opened up about still often feeling like he's a talentless fraud and that the TV companies are going to finally come to their senses and fire him.

The point isn't that everyone who has doubts is really super talented, because of course not... but those doubts... they don't mean anything.

 

[Rubikant]

Any of you folks know much about web site creation and WordPress in particular?

Okay, so we now own multiple domains, one for our company and others for each game. Right now each domain just points to a different sub-domain of our main site, and each sub-domain points to a sub-folder in the actual file structure. Each of these sub-folders just contains a simple index.html and some images. So we have:

• http://www.crazyvikingstudios.com - main site
• http://www.volgarrtheviking.com - actually just pointing to http://volgarr.crazyvikingstudios.com which itself points to http://www.crazyvikingstudios.com/volgarr/
• http://www.eternalhelix.com - actually just pointing to http://eternalhelix.crazyvikingstudios.com which itself points to http://www.crazyvikingstudios.com/eternalhelix/

If you visit those links, you'll see they are just basic html with some images.

We'd like to upgrade our sites to be able to post more useful information such as our YouTube policy (people keep asking if they can post videos of the game), more info about our studio and occasionally post news and updates on our own site instead of facebook. So it makes sense to upgrade to WordPress.

What I thought would be a good idea is for each game site to have its own look and such, with posts that relate to that game, and somewhere a link back to the main company site for people that want to see what other games we are working on. The main company site would also have its unique look, would contain links to each game's individual site, and would also contain its own news and updates that relate to the company as a whole.

However, I also thought (given how small we are) it made sense for the main site to also include all the news and updates posted on the individual games' sites. This way, one visit to the main site would tell you everything that's going on with all of our games, and if you only care about one game in particular, you can go to that game's web site and not be bothered with news and updates about other games and the studio as a whole.

At first I thought a Wordpress MultiSite install may be the way to go, but I keep seeing articles suggesting that it is overkill (especially for a small studio like ours that will likely only end up with a handful of game sites) and since each site is essentially totally separate, doesn't include the ability for the main site to have posts from the sub-sites unless they are copied over via an extra plug-in or something.

I'm a total newbie when it comes to things like this, I've always made my sites using just html (my personal site is http://www.zauron.net if you want to see what I mean). The only other employee of our studio, Kris, says he would like to use something fancier like WP to pretty up our sites, but I want to figure out this arrangement of having multiple primary domains and how they might all be related before I set him loose on getting them to all look pretty.

I know this is pretty tangential to being an indie dev, but any advice on how I should set this up?

 

[Kalnos]

I love the flexibility that comes with making your own engine, but I'm sorta regretting it right now. I find myself debugging more than creating actual content which can get really frustrating.

I've been thinking about attempting the move over to Unity, but I'm not really familiar with it and I'm afraid I'm in too deep to make the move worthwhile. It also feels like I'd be "giving up" if I went this route.

You wouldn't be giving up. There would be an initial learning curve but you would be able to prototype so much more quickly and you would discover all sorts of things Unity/etc has that you never knew you wanted.

Reinventing the wheel is almost never worth it.

 

[bumpkin]

Speaking of OpenGL, I was going through some old backup discs and I found the first OpenGL code I ever wrote.

Always fun looking at old code! I've looked back at some DirectX stuff I did for college and was like "Um, wut?"

About my earlier issue, I found the solution to the problem! It was stupid simple, too. There was nothing wrong with my vertices or anything like that. The problem was I didn't disable GL_TEXTURE_2D before my colored quad draw calls; obviously all of the sprites rendered after the fact were fine 'cuz they were texture mapped quads.

I'm still very much a student of OpenGL, so every obstacle is a learning experience. I feel like a moron when I get stuck for longer than 10 or 15 minutes, but feel like I'm a genius when I finally figure it out!

 

[electroflame]

Any of you folks know much about web site creation and WordPress in particular?

I do some web design on the side and I always use Concrete5. WordPress is great for a blog, but I always found it lacking as a full website CMS.

As for the multiple domains, you could still do it like you have now (just redirect to other pages/subdomains). Alternatively, there are a couple of paid addons for Concrete5 that make that whole situation easier.

If you have your heart set on WordPress someone else might be better suited to helping you out. Otherwise, I can answer some questions about Concrete5 for you if you feel like branching out a bit.