Dynamite Shikoku
Congratulations, you really deserve it!
I have no idea
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GAF Indie Game Development Thread 2: High Res Work for Low Res Pay
- Thread starter Jacksinthe
- Start date
- Status
I have no idea
taku
Member
Yes, let us be blunt then.
Is this not a forum where people read about and/or discuss games? Is this the worst of threads for MagicD to show his/her game in and actually ask for some feedback as well?
Why shouldn't we support this endeavour? Should I be supporting others more based on their regular posting habits?
For the record, I know a lot of GAF members who have mentioned their games in several different threads and on multiple occasions.
Dynamite Shikoku
Congratulations, you really deserve it!
Its pretty difficult to determine who should be able to post about their game release based on how much they contributed to the thread. I think the mods should either just allow it or not. I think if it is allowed and you post about it, it would be nice to at least give out some codes to your fellow gafters, but that doesn't work for f2p games.
I haven't been posting about my game because I haven't been DOING anything with my game in a long time. I have finally started back work this week instead of just thinking and designing. I've managed to do a tiny bit of work each day but one, recently, so hopefully it becomes a haibt again.
Jacksinthe
Banned
I've tried a bunch of different ways and ultimately settled with this approach for the eye candy of the explosions and quickly letting it lose its shine to not divert too much focus when playing. Its fun to look at but I don't want to create effects that battle for attention and get in the way. A split second of "cool" then back to the action. Moving things back and forward in the mix, like music. At least that's my approach.
Well hello Mr Fancy Pants!From what I've seen, the flocking motion looks a bit artificial to me. Doesn't
fit so to speak. It looks like the particles are on a frictionless surface
during flocking. It might perhaps be better to do less particles but doing
more with them, which would also fit the minimalistic style of the game
better, I guess. For example; what would be cool is if the dat pixeldude would
blast the crap away, as he does, but while running across those gibs would
interact with them, pilling up in front of him a bit while moving, and with
him kicking some of them away. Or the particle may swirl a bit when he moves
along (similar like dust). Edit: The rational behind is; if you spent
"independent physics per object", you better do more with them.
And, I'm not a fan of the "smoking" trail either. It looks like he is burning
from inside. xD What about some "CA" here, i.e. pulling out a ghosting effect
(about half to one pixels in width (or more, whatever) trailing behind
depending on his velocity? For low speeds you may use blue, green for mid
speeds, and red for the highest speed (or whatever colors), but with each
color-ghost being at an offset depending on his velocity. So when moving the
fastest, you would see all three ghost next to each other with blue the
furthest away, then green, and red. All within the size of one or two pixels.
When slowing down, red would disappear first, then green, then blue. From a
distance the R-, G-, B-ghosts would merge into a mixed color or a gray level
depending on the intensity of each ghost. Just an idea.
Attention to detail or die trying! :+
I wanted more structure after the initial blast. The theme throughout the game has this kind of artificial structured look, similar to how I approached rain - even the slightest curve to a drop made it look less structured, so I opted for pin straight lines, but each drop still has its own velocity, mass, etc.
It looks far less organic, which is fine, its all just bits of data.
The shadow thing isn't a final effect. Its a holdover from our old power up system, infinite energy. I haven't done much with it but never "felt" it. Looks OK but not fitting what we are working with.
As per doing more - at one point the particles were doing more but became too distracting. I'm of the mind that people (film, music, games, etc) spend so much time creating something that they feel the need to spend so much time focusing on it. There's more to enemy deaths than just this and more going on in the feedback loop, so I don't want to spend too much time on any one thing. I have more things to implement in that loop and will paint a better picture of how I need to balance.
Dynamite Shikoku
Congratulations, you really deserve it!
Decided to go and look at the reviews for my first game on iOS, which I haven't done for ages. It has 9 5 star ratings and 9 1 star ratings. How divisive is that. Here was a funny review:
All the parts have varying width, I may have to refine it further it it is not that visible.
Thanks again for the advice BTW
Your effort into Honey is amazing, how long does it take you to do an animation cycle on average? Time estimates tend to be very wrong in general. It's easy to get lost in many smaller parts that eat up a lot of time...
You made me curious, got a link? And do you only do IOS games?
Dynamite Shikoku
Congratulations, you really deserve it!
All the parts have varying width, I may have to refine it further it it is not that visible.
Thanks again for the advice BTW
Your effort into Honey is amazing, how long does it take you to do an animation cycle on average? Time estimates tend to be very wrong in general. It's easy to get lost in many smaller parts that eat up a lot of time...
You made me curious, got a link? And do you only do IOS games?
It's appstore.com/gleamer
I've just released one game on iOS so far.
I just realised that the last time I updated it I uploaded the wrong (older) version of the icon. How embarrassing.
It's not that I pulled my sayings out of thin air. I've followed ad posts in
here for awhile (since OT1) to see if they may contribute or even start a
discussion. The result is; almost all of those ad posts (99.9%, really) got
no comments nor have lead to any discussion started by its creator. And the
phrases I used in my previous post is just the pattern behind. Such posts add
nothing to the discussion in here, which is the main point. And it is really
not about the game or the people behind, it's just the wrong place. At gaf we
have threads where you can put/advertise your finished game (while you slowly
creeping out from under the rock). One of those threads is "Indie Games 2015
[June] Lets talk about anything Indie" maintained by gaffer Toma who puts quite
some good effort into it to give such games a place to show and advertise
themselves. Another option would be to convince people on gaf to make a new
thread about ones game because the game is considered worth to be discussed
and to be followed for awhile. But there are forum rules, as Popstar has said,
i.e. you can't just ad your game in the main thread. There is a reason for
doing so. Even if it doesn't seem to hurt anyone at first instance, but it will
ultimately spoil any discussion if game developers could make new threads
advertising their games. There needs to be a reason for creating a new thread,
and that reason is not to advertise ones game. Going by the same token, I
would be pleased if we could follow this rule for this thread (of indie game
development) as well and guide those who have a need for advertising their
games on gaf to a thread where such things are welcome, or let them do a new
thread if they think the game is worth a discussion on gaf. If we won't do so,
am pretty sure we will see much more ad posts in here over time. And I don't
want to get spoiled like the USENET has become. That's the reason am at gaf to
begin with, because it has strict rules keeping those away who have no
interest in and for the community.
"them".
here for awhile (since OT1) to see if they may contribute or even start a
discussion. The result is; almost all of those ad posts (99.9%, really) got
no comments nor have lead to any discussion started by its creator. And the
phrases I used in my previous post is just the pattern behind. Such posts add
nothing to the discussion in here, which is the main point. And it is really
not about the game or the people behind, it's just the wrong place. At gaf we
have threads where you can put/advertise your finished game (while you slowly
creeping out from under the rock). One of those threads is "Indie Games 2015
[June] Lets talk about anything Indie" maintained by gaffer Toma who puts quite
some good effort into it to give such games a place to show and advertise
themselves. Another option would be to convince people on gaf to make a new
thread about ones game because the game is considered worth to be discussed
and to be followed for awhile. But there are forum rules, as Popstar has said,
i.e. you can't just ad your game in the main thread. There is a reason for
doing so. Even if it doesn't seem to hurt anyone at first instance, but it will
ultimately spoil any discussion if game developers could make new threads
advertising their games. There needs to be a reason for creating a new thread,
and that reason is not to advertise ones game. Going by the same token, I
would be pleased if we could follow this rule for this thread (of indie game
development) as well and guide those who have a need for advertising their
games on gaf to a thread where such things are welcome, or let them do a new
thread if they think the game is worth a discussion on gaf. If we won't do so,
am pretty sure we will see much more ad posts in here over time. And I don't
want to get spoiled like the USENET has become. That's the reason am at gaf to
begin with, because it has strict rules keeping those away who have no
interest in and for the community.
Tried. But not for today.
Here is where you go wrong. It's "ads" versus "discussion" and not "us" versus
"them".
Hey Arnold, we will always up-vote your game, even if....You know wbat? I am always afraid that this is exactly the reaction my game updates would get out of folks here
New day new progress:
New Character:
Celia, The Bounty Hunter:
New Character:
Celia, The Bounty Hunter:
Concept Art:
Agile and Smart. Has wandered in the city of Llyia since a pretty young age. Founder Of Rebellion and Alternate(C.Punk) Alice's best friend. Uses a crossbow as a weapon, forged by herself. Her metal pieces allows her to move faster and jump higher. Lack of physical strength.
Click for gameplay:
As usual, text is place holder. I was trying out clicking on items/background and it works fine. Nothing to fancy. Since I haven't implemented Live2D yet, portraits are still not animated.
Understood.
I somewhat agree with that but I can say that, in my case, since I haven't had much time for my current project I just don't think it's worth it to post every time I do some minimal thing.
Alt ought I do try to give feedback on other people's stuff.
In my case I'm waiting until I have a slightly better prototype ready so I can post it here and get some feedback myself.
MrNyarlathotep
Banned
I feel weird about contributing to the thread (and I'm pretty prolific in this and OT1) because I don't think I've ever actually shown any game stuff I've worked on
Boah, Jesus, love that one! :+New day new progress:
New Character:
Celia, The Bounty Hunter:
Out of curiosity, can you do such stuff in 3d as well?
Mr. Luchador
Member
I'm probably way off the mark with my feelings towards Kickstarter, but I've always felt like if you need to use KS than perhaps the game you're attempting to make is beyond your scope to actually design, developer & deliver. I'd personally never use Kickstarter due to this feeling.
jimmythepage
Member
Since w'ere having some bad performance reports from youtubers, we're adjusting the polygonal amount of the dungeons.
Building everything in voxels and converting them in meshes is quite fast and easy but comes at a cost
So that's the result after some testing:
Frankly it doesn't look THAT different in game, and the game now could use some dynamic lightning, but we're thinking of also giving the option to switch between the two styles.
Building everything in voxels and converting them in meshes is quite fast and easy but comes at a cost
So that's the result after some testing:
Frankly it doesn't look THAT different in game, and the game now could use some dynamic lightning, but we're thinking of also giving the option to switch between the two styles.
Dynamite Shikoku
Congratulations, you really deserve it!
Since w'ere having some bad performance reports from youtubers, we're adjusting the polygonal amount of the dungeons.
Building everything in voxels and converting them in meshes is quite fast and easy but comes at a cost
So that's the result after some testing:
Frankly it doesn't look THAT different in game, and the game now could use some dynamic lightning, but we're thinking of also giving the option to switch between the two styles.
Can't you just bake the extruding bricks to normal maps?
Yeah, we got pretty much the same mail apparently, but to be honest we haven't actually worked out anything together yet apart from promising them a couple of steam keys and see what would be possible. It was really hard to do any due diligence since like you said they haven't had that many visible partners. Mentioning us as project could be interpreted as a bit disingenuous though. since they haven't really worked on anything yet.
I also agree that in both our cases there isn't necessarily a concrete need for a publishing partner, especially for us the biggest problem we have is that a really low amount of money would go a long way for us to invest into things/people that could really pay off, but Black Shell isn't investing into projects.
So yeah, we are still really early in talks and we'll have to see what happens, but I'll make sure to let you know what we've learned.
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Is anyone here coming to GDC Europe or Gamescom? I just got a nice surprise in my mail today and might be attending both of them this year. I would definitely love to meetup with some of you guys if you are in the hoods.
MrNyarlathotep
Banned
Building everything in voxels and converting them in meshes is quite fast and easy but comes at a cost
Are you literally importing the voxel mesh then resaving, or are you doing an optimisation pass (deleting hidden faces, joining overlapping vertices and edges)?
If you're not doing an optimising pass, it might be worth seeing what polycount saving you can make before redoing your assets from scratch?
From the picture you've shown, you could definitely use some baked AO and normal maps to bring out the detail of the individual brick tiles on what could otherwise be basically a solid face.
Jacksinthe
Banned
THE ORBS ARE JUST TOO DAMN HIGH! Yep. Reviews like these leave little to no legitimate content for you to glean information from. Sucks.
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I, too, dislike the drive by. I don't say anything, though. I have a bad habit IRL of barking at people who don't say THANK YOU when I do something innocuous like hold the door for them. Would be much easier for me to lose my shit online at those obviously just lookin for free Advert.
At the same time, do anyone other than devs come here to talk at any significant rate? It would seem that the drive-by's aren't getting as much attention as they would like. Futile attempt, at best, IMO.
Jacksinthe
Banned
Holy shit :O
Mr. Luchador
Member
I've seen Black Shell attached to various Greenlight projects when I've been voting recently. I don't think they have a specific genre or interest, other than getting as many 'clients' as possible. A part of me thinks they're just after Steam Keys.
SpacePirate Ridley
Member
Mystic River
Member
haha! yup, that's true but anyway, any Indie dev have a big challenge to get the game known since mostly we do not use publishers, so I can understand
In any case, keep up boys and girls!, we can do it! or die trying
with no corporate ties we can move in the unknown land! and maybe do something that gives more joy and fun to a lot of people with our ideas, there is nothing better than having something revolutionary on the hands of the fewSo we quickly cut up a little gameplay teaser video and I could use your help deciding whether to go live with the video or not: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-r7NmHtBoqs
We really haven't shown much video content in ages and would love to finally show some of the stuff we've done on twitter etc., but at the same time I really get the feeling that the video could use some more work even though we don't really have time for it right now.
We also submitted an update to the dev grant application, really hoping for the best since it's a kind of our lifeline for getting to coxcon to show the game. Speaking of which, anyone from here going there to demo your games? It feels like a huge opportunity, but for us the costs of the booth and getting there from Finland are a bit high since we've already been on a 2 even trips this year and I've got some more coming later on this year.
We really haven't shown much video content in ages and would love to finally show some of the stuff we've done on twitter etc., but at the same time I really get the feeling that the video could use some more work even though we don't really have time for it right now.
We also submitted an update to the dev grant application, really hoping for the best since it's a kind of our lifeline for getting to coxcon to show the game. Speaking of which, anyone from here going there to demo your games? It feels like a huge opportunity, but for us the costs of the booth and getting there from Finland are a bit high since we've already been on a 2 even trips this year and I've got some more coming later on this year.
Thanks, your story with them should be interesting to hear! I do hope some good will come of it for you.
In parallel, on my TIGSource devlog I've heard about the same feedback than here about Black Shell, and there's been an interesting discussion about the overall worth and difference between an indie publisher and a distributor. I'll link it here if some of you are interested (I fear I wouldn't do justice to all side's arguments by transcribing): http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=42222.msg1145977#msg1145977
Pretty sweet
Your ingame art seems stylistically different than this concept art, do you have different artists working on concepts and ingame assets? (mainly thinking about the general face proportions here).
I find something interesting going on with the black shading on the arms contrasting with the more classic painterly concept art style. It's quite small here and not something I've really noticed in your assets before, so I don't know if it's something you actively pursue, but as far as I'm concerned, that could be a striking/defining visual characteristic if you push it further.
As for the ingame assets, there's something that seems off to me about the eye placement, but maybe it's just a stylistic thing. I think it was also mentioned earlier that the black from Right Alice's overcoat blends in with her chest, making for a strange optical illusion. I see a small color difference when in full screen, but in medium/small size, it seems to be basically the same color.
I agree about the previous comments with the two sided Alice - a clear dividing line would work better in my eyes, with some clear elements that are cut (haircut is one, a more proeminent frontal implant could be another). As it stands, I had to do a few double takes before understanding it was two different halves!
All the parts have varying width, I may have to refine it further it it is not that visible.
Thanks again for the advice BTW
Your effort into Honey is amazing, how long does it take you to do an animation cycle on average? Time estimates tend to be very wrong in general. It's easy to get lost in many smaller parts that eat up a lot of time...
Just glad you thought the advice could help! Yeah, I didn't really see varying width on the rest of the character, so sorry if I missed it :-D
Right now, animation wise, I'm at about 20 to 40 lined frames a day (on good days :-D), and a bit less/more than that in color depending on the amount of layers a character has. Honey has three main layers, that's about average (one for skin, one for main clothing tones, one for details). So for, say, a simple 10 to 12 frame move, that'll only take a day, a more complex 20 to 30 frame grapple move, I'll need two. Etc, etc!
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On the topic of regulating the thread, I understand the position against "spam", but at the same time, I feel access to this community already implies some rules from the start (since registering on this site isn't the simplest affair).
I feel regulating the thread on top of that might choke discussion a bit, as it seems to me shyness, time constraints and a whole lot of other factors can contribute to not posting for a while before deciding to take the plunge (and even after that). And as mentioned, some contributors here don't necessarily show games - doesn't mean they don't have advice of value to give.
I'd rather have the occasionnal ad post and still have unbridled discussion, rather than people thinking they don't have the right to participate because they're "unproven", or some such.
If we start qualifying some posts as spam, where do we draw the line? I'll agree some cases are more clear-cut than others, but it's for the sake of the overall discussion that I believe we should let all speak freely in here, and let the flow of conversation determine what stays and what disappears quickly.
At least, that's what I find most interesting and engaging about being here in the first place, and what got me jumping in the first place! IndieGAF, I love you, don't fight, don't change <3
I have a one star review from a women whose download history is mostly yarn based apps. Since our app is about a cat throwing yarn I guess she just downloaded and it wasn't exactly what she was looking for ahah.
Thanks, that should help with a decision. To be honest though, we really aren't sure a publisher would be a good fit for us unless it brings us direct money for getting us to promote to game at places like CoxCon. We already got a chance to talk with 2 rather big European publishers that could've been interested in the game, but both agreed that we should do quite fine by ourselves, though having someone more experience do some PR would be helpful (which we hopefully will have).
I also forgot to mention that we met with a couple of really great guys from GOG and hopefully might get an opportunity to try out the Galaxy SDK. UE4's Online Subsystem doesn't support it natively just yet, but it definitely seemed like a system that could rival Steamworks and make it easy for us to port the game to GOG too even though we are currently relying on Steamworks quite heavily.
jimmythepage
Member
We tried but the result was pretty bad, we used Crazybump but it didn't work out, I guess there are methods to make it work.
I may be telling something stupid but I think the issue is that the texture of those assets is small, basically pixelart (it's generated by Qubicle itself wich match 1 voxel x 1pixel) and I don't think normals can be done effectively on that resolution.
We delete all the hidden faces, and when possible join/merge, but the polycount is still too high for certain PCs when you spawn in a big dungeon, the game as it is now hits 60 fps on a 800$ laptop but we got enough complaints that we need to think about a solution.
Perhaps I should elaborate more on how we built this game.
We import the single tile meshes (floor, floor+wall, etc) in Unreal.
And then build the dungeon room using those meshes as tiles, while for some parts we do put the tiles one by one we also have a blueprint that automatically fills designated areas.
Once done we convert them into a mesh of itself inside Unreal itself and then turn it into a blueprint.
Our procedural script then arrange those blueprints/rooms that cointain themselves other blueprints (monster/props/entrance/exit/etc) when it creates a dungeon.
So, it's been ages since I posted here last time.
Our new game is ready and available in iOS. It's called Heads Will Roll. It's a puzzle game that mixes bowling and gravity and it's made for people (like me) who like super quick and immediate mobile games that allow you to do something even if you have only 15 seconds at a time. It's also free (Ad-supported, no IAP).
It's not the best game ever, but I'm so proud of having made that. It's the first project where I did all game design, all graphics and a good half of the programming, and when I started I was an almost absolute beginner at all three of these things - actually I still feel like an absolute beginner, but oh well.
It was supposed to be done in six months, but it took three years of working nights and weekend, with months-long pauses, countless changes in design, constant reworking of old assets, ferocious debates about level design and doubts. In the meantime, me and the other developer changed jobs, had children, got health problems, overcame health problems, changed jobs again...
It's such a relief to be done with*. Next project is gonna be tiny.
* unless it gets any success. In that case we'll update it with more levels.
Our new game is ready and available in iOS. It's called Heads Will Roll. It's a puzzle game that mixes bowling and gravity and it's made for people (like me) who like super quick and immediate mobile games that allow you to do something even if you have only 15 seconds at a time. It's also free (Ad-supported, no IAP).
It's not the best game ever, but I'm so proud of having made that. It's the first project where I did all game design, all graphics and a good half of the programming, and when I started I was an almost absolute beginner at all three of these things - actually I still feel like an absolute beginner, but oh well.
It was supposed to be done in six months, but it took three years of working nights and weekend, with months-long pauses, countless changes in design, constant reworking of old assets, ferocious debates about level design and doubts. In the meantime, me and the other developer changed jobs, had children, got health problems, overcame health problems, changed jobs again...
It's such a relief to be done with*. Next project is gonna be tiny.
* unless it gets any success. In that case we'll update it with more levels.
Have you tried looking at the profiler what's eating up most of the performance? Afaik UE4 should be quite good at high polycounts, but shader complexity and per-pixel operations can eat up a lot of performance quickly.
That does look like a very interesting way of creating level and I really like the look of it. I'm a sucker for the style
jimmythepage
Member
Have you tried looking at the profiler what's eating up most of the performance? Afaik UE4 should be quite good at high polycounts, but shader complexity and per-pixel operations can eat up a lot of performance quickly.
That does look like a very interesting way of creating level and I really like the look of it. I'm a sucker for the style
Yes, we've been profiling and the major bottlenecks are lighting pass and shadows, but since shadows rendering gets more complex as the scene has more polys our only choice would be to avoid dynamic shadows as much as possible. (We also can't use baked lighting because our levels are procedural). We do plan to write a post on the UE4 forums as well since there might be something unusual going on that we haven't taken into account during the lighting pass though.
And thanks a lot!
Ah yes, not being able to bake shadows is most likely it. It's what we've pretty much done too even though level logic is generated from a txt. My only tip would be to ensure that every object that can be is static, and minimize the amount of movable lights. Other than that, it looks like it's just the lack of baked shadows, but I'm sure posting on the official forums (and/or answerhub) would be more than wise, it's certainly not my area of expertise.
EDIT:
Reposting this, since I'm really on the edge whether to go live with it or not: Ancestory Teaser Video. It's been such a long time since we've actually shown game footage so I'd really like to get something out, but at the same time I'm not totally sure if it's quite good enough.
I have a question for you more experience game devs. As a hobbyist who's only been programming on and off for years without really making any programs -- I find myself never figuring out how to organize folders and code. For instance I'm making a simple game in Unity and I'm finding myself wondering if I'm making scripts for the right things. Here's an example pic of my folders and scripts, etc. Does this look okay? Are there any recommendations as how to know when to make a new script/class or just write the code into a previous one? When to know when to attach a script ect? They usually leave this kind of thing out of the books and videos. Any guidelines would be appreciated thanks.
I'm not the one to go commenting on scripting conventions, but for asset names and folder conventions we are going with Unreal Assets Naming Concention.
Any guidelines would be appreciated thanks.
Just from the screenshot, it seems you have every single thing in your game inside the Resources folder, which is actually a special folder in Unity. While the program can supposedly ommit assets you aren't using in your scenes or code, placing the assets inside the resources folder will make sure they're in the game no matter what. Besides, the Resources folder is there especially so you can use the Resources.Load method.
Other special folder names I know are "Plugins" and "StreamingAssets", so you'd do well not to create folders which use those names without actually intending to use the folder's contents that way.
I still haven't experimented enough with the difference between loading stuff with Resource.Load and simply placing stuff in the Assets folder and, though, so I can't tell you the differences in performance or memory usage between both methods.
GroundCombo
Member
That looks better organized than our project at the moment, honestly. I'd move most of the stuff out of the Resources folder, though; it's mostly for assets that are dynamically loaded or not included in any particular object/scene.
There are a zillion books about software architecture and it's hard to give any general guidelines (yes, that's a copout for "umm, I can't think of anything right now"), but my advice would be to refactor early and often. Do you find yourself copying and pasting the same code to multiple scripts? Time to make another class or component. Do you have several components that kind of do the same thing but not quite? Think about interfaces or subclasses. Number of arguments in a method getting out of hand? Make a helper struct or class for the information you're passing. Climb out of the hole before it gets too deep.
This is probably just my preference but I feel like your particles need a bit more horizontal velocity to them to feel like the result of a satisfying impact, particularly the first death where you shoot the creature it seems to explode in all directions.
Though there are tons of games that do it both ways so maybe it's just me
Jacksinthe
Banned
Roger that. Its all randomized at the moment but I was thinking about taking into account the direction of impact on the final hit point. Easy to test. I have a lot right where I want it for structure but much may need tweaking which will probably be happening until the game slips from my fingersThis is probably just my preference but I feel like your particles need a bit more horizontal velocity to them to feel like the result of a satisfying impact, particularly the first death where you shoot the creature it seems to explode in all directions.
Though there are tons of games that do it both ways so maybe it's just me
I have a question for you more experience game devs. As a hobbyist who's only been programming on and off for years without really making any programs -- I find myself never figuring out how to organize folders and code. For instance I'm making a simple game in Unity and I'm finding myself wondering if I'm making scripts for the right things. Here's an example pic of my folders and scripts, etc. Does this look okay? Are there any recommendations as how to know when to make a new script/class or just write the code into a previous one? When to know when to attach a script ect? They usually leave this kind of thing out of the books and videos. Any guidelines would be appreciated thanks.
Aside from everything on the resources folder (like another user pointed out) it seems well organised.
Certainly better than what I have now ahah My game is currently very light scripting wise but the naming conventions are organisation are a mess. I should probably work on that sometime soon.
Hey thanks for the interest! Yes, Android is definitely in the works. We're a tiny 2 man shop (with me being the only programmer) so it's hard to give exact dates but I can promise you that we want to get it out ASAP!
Thanks everyone. I went through a tutorial a while ago that wanted some sprite icons in the resources folder to load them in an inventory script. So I was like 😯 well I should just put everything in there then!
Well I sure stirred up quite the hornets nest in here didn't I! That was not my intention, and I apologize.
As a member of NeoGaf since it was just "The Gaming Age Forum" I'd just to give you some background about why I might not be able to post as often as I like these days.
-I quit my job 2 years ago to start this company and have made very little money over that period of time.
-I have a family and a small son who likes to see Daddy once in a while
-With my wife, I negotiated 1 year off from work to do this full time. It's been 2 years...
-While I haven't contributed directly to this thread lately, I am very willing to contribute my time talking about game development. I've spoken at numerous High Schools, College Clubs, Career Days, etc. I love making games, and I want others to join in on the fun.
-After pouring resources (time, money) into discussions with various publishers about Riff the Robot, we ultimately decided that we wanted to control our own destiny....
-...Which leads to "holy crap getting noticed is HARD!" Even with what other people say is a "great game" it's way harder than I expected.
-I still come back to read this thread even if I don't have anything interesting to add to the discussion. Reading about others' work is inspiring.
-Now that my game is shipped, I look forward to contributing more.
Anyway, back to the regularly scheduled awesome discussion about dev.
Yoshi
Headmaster of Console Warrior Jugendstrafanstalt
Should discussion of newly released projects in this thread be banned by that time, I'd appreciate a PM, because I know she will absolutely want to play that game (she won't pay for any IAP though, so have your advertisments ready
).I have a question for you more experience game devs. As a hobbyist who's only been programming on and off for years without really making any programs -- I find myself never figuring out how to organize folders and code. For instance I'm making a simple game in Unity and I'm finding myself wondering if I'm making scripts for the right things. Here's an example pic of my folders and scripts, etc. Does this look okay? Are there any recommendations as how to know when to make a new script/class or just write the code into a previous one? When to know when to attach a script ect? They usually leave this kind of thing out of the books and videos. Any guidelines would be appreciated thanks.
As someone who has been making games for over a decade, I can tell you that naming things, and elegant code layout are about the hardest things to do well. And both have very long tails of pain if you get them wrong. The previous advice about "Refactor Often" usually pays off very well in small teams, but can be far more difficult when the number of contributors goes up. If it's just you, then refactor ALL the time. You'll be much happier in the end.
A good rule of thumb for classes and files is only put one class per file. I personally make exceptions to this if there is a helper class that is only needed in the main class (and I'm behind schedule)...but if that helper class eventually needs to get used in other places, I refactor it out.
Your layout actually looks very clean. Naming is most to least significant (EnemySpawner & EnemyController are much better than SpawnerEnemy & ControllerEnemy living in the same folder)
Should discussion of newly released projects in this thread be banned by that time, I'd appreciate a PM, because I know she will absolutely want to play that game (she won't pay for any IAP though, so have your advertisments ready
Hah, sure thing! No worries about the IAP. The entire game is completely playable without spending a cent.
I also spend a large amount of time lurking this thread and some times post stuff that feels very much in my self interest, definitely feeling some of those points too, so I won't be one to judge what value you do or don't bring to this discussion. We should be focused on supporting each other because energy spent tearing down people for just 'advertising' is energy wasted really.
Good luck with your game
Looks incredible, really loving the style. However one thing irks me, cannot even properly name it. For some reason I think the proportions are slightly off? (this might just be me though, I am not an artist).
Uh, I read the previous discussion and I feel I need to explain myself. I've found this topic to be a great resource through the years, and a place where I can relate to the struggle of a lot of people who try to make games while having families, jobs etc.
It's a place that sometimes I visit multiple times a day and sometimes I don't check for months. But I think it's a great community and the source of some of the most interesting people I follow on Twitter. To be honest, the reason I lurked a lot and haven't posted that much is because I feel a little intimidated by the talent here. I just feel that what I do is not really worth sharing. As for the "promotional" post before, it's only because I do feel proud we finally shipped the game we've been working on for three years. I don't think it's a groundbreaking game, but for once I actually feel proud enough to show it.
But, on the other hand, I kind of also understand people who complain about these posts...
It's a place that sometimes I visit multiple times a day and sometimes I don't check for months. But I think it's a great community and the source of some of the most interesting people I follow on Twitter. To be honest, the reason I lurked a lot and haven't posted that much is because I feel a little intimidated by the talent here. I just feel that what I do is not really worth sharing. As for the "promotional" post before, it's only because I do feel proud we finally shipped the game we've been working on for three years. I don't think it's a groundbreaking game, but for once I actually feel proud enough to show it.
But, on the other hand, I kind of also understand people who complain about these posts...
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