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GAF Indie Game Development Thread 2: High Res Work for Low Res Pay

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L

liliththepale

Banned
Jobbs said:
Surface areas are about preparation for the next expedition into the lake (to find the source of the EVIL!). So.. Surface is mostly gathering, npcs, crafting, whatever, and lake is danger time. You get deeper by going as deep as your equipment will allow and laying a beacon which gives you a shortcut for next time. Or something along those lines. So there's no shortcut to the bottom.

There will be dry areas under the lake, too, of course.
Click to expand...

That sounds really great! Better hurry up and finish Ghost Song then! :)
 
B

Blizzard

Banned
Off the top of my head, some things that annoy me as a PLAYER when I encounter water levels:

1. Slow movement, making things frustrating or boring.
2. Awkward movement, with extra inertia, making it difficult to turn or aim in the direction you want.
3. The above two items can be even worse if enemies are faster and more maneuverable than you.
4. Weird camera angles compared to the surface, making it harder to see.
5. Low visibility compared to the surface, also making it harder to see. Note that this may be realistic, but personally I'd rather have fun over realism if I have to choose in an underwater level.
 
D

DocSeuss

Member
Blizzard said:
Off the top of my head, some things that annoy me as a PLAYER when I encounter water levels:

1. Slow movement, making things frustrating or boring.
2. Awkward movement, with extra inertia, making it difficult to turn or aim in the direction you want.
3. The above two items can be even worse if enemies are faster and more maneuverable than you.
4. Weird camera angles compared to the surface, making it harder to see.
5. Low visibility compared to the surface, also making it harder to see. Note that this may be realistic, but personally I'd rather have fun over realism if I have to choose in an underwater level.
Click to expand...

Have you played Subnautica, which is underwater: the game?
 
L

liliththepale

Banned
Blizzard said:
Off the top of my head, some things that annoy me as a PLAYER when I encounter water levels:

1. Slow movement, making things frustrating or boring.
2. Awkward movement, with extra inertia, making it difficult to turn or aim in the direction you want.
3. The above two items can be even worse if enemies are faster and more maneuverable than you.
4. Weird camera angles compared to the surface, making it harder to see.
5. Low visibility compared to the surface, also making it harder to see. Note that this may be realistic, but personally I'd rather have fun over realism if I have to choose in an underwater level.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's a pretty good summation. None of those are in effect for the game I'm working on so far, nor do I think they will be. I think we'll only change the physics if we can think of something fun to do with them and make it still feel good.
 
J

Jobbs

Banned
Blizzard said:
Off the top of my head, some things that annoy me as a PLAYER when I encounter water levels:

1. Slow movement, making things frustrating or boring.
2. Awkward movement, with extra inertia, making it difficult to turn or aim in the direction you want.
3. The above two items can be even worse if enemies are faster and more maneuverable than you.
4. Weird camera angles compared to the surface, making it harder to see.
5. Low visibility compared to the surface, also making it harder to see. Note that this may be realistic, but personally I'd rather have fun over realism if I have to choose in an underwater level.
Click to expand...

I use reduced vision and frustrating reduced movement as part of the experience. It's meant to add anxiety -- As well as curiosity about how far this friggin underwater passage leads.

If the game was built around water, then that doesn't work, but for me the water is pretty rare.
 
B

Blizzard

Banned
Jobbs said:
I use reduced vision and frustrating reduced movement as part of the experience. It's meant to add anxiety -- As well as curiosity about how far this friggin underwater passage leads.

If the game was built around water, then that doesn't work, but for me the water is pretty rare.
Click to expand...
True, it can be designed to be annoying. I was just trying to self-analyze exactly why I find it annoying.
 
H

hobblygobbly

Member
Does anyone know the name of the website (I think it was a wiki) that was dedicated to accessibility issues regarding disabilities for video games? It was a wiki that aims to help game developers be aware of disabilities and how they can design and implement a game to be more accessible. It had information on the each disability and tips IIRC.

I can't find it and if my memory serves right the website theme was white and blue. Been Googling but can't find it.

EDIT: Of course a few minutes after posting I find it... for those interested: http://gameaccessibilityguidelines.com/
 
A

AusRoachman

Member
Started ironing out my workflow. Sprites -> Magicavoxel -> Unity

EAnGlGW.gif


My plan is to do a 3d turn based strategy game with paper Mario esque models.
 
H

Huw_Dawson

Member
Yay 3D art.

I am working on my Discworld Noir level right now. Things are really slow going because I had to step back and have a second crack at the first model I wanted to make - a desk. Once the level environment is done I can move on to scripting. :)

I used a lot more reference with the second attempt on the desk. The core mesh is about 650 polys now and lovely and clean, and I have a hi-poly model for baking AO and normals.

I'm wondering at the moment about the current best things to learn 3D wise. I am actually pretty good with Max, and ultimately I just need to work more in the program to speed up. But I am not sure about my workflow for the rest of the environment modelling tasks.

I'm anticipating working for a while with the high poly within Max to add more detail. Then I will be using UVLayout to unwrap the low poly model, then use XNormal to bake AO and a normal map. Then it's into Photoshop to make the diffuse and spec.

BUT I know there are many tools I could use and methods I could implement. My old diff/spec/norm model is very out of date when I natter to my friends and they are talking about all the fancy maps they plug into Marmoset. And there's ZBrush. And then all the fancy automation tools like dDo. :O
 
J

Jacksinthe

Banned
hobblygobbly said:
Does anyone know the name of the website (I think it was a wiki) that was dedicated to accessibility issues regarding disabilities for video games? It was a wiki that aims to help game developers be aware of disabilities and how they can design and implement a game to be more accessible. It had information on the each disability and tips IIRC.

I can't find it and if my memory serves right the website theme was white and blue. Been Googling but can't find it.

EDIT: Of course a few minutes after posting I find it... for those interested: http://gameaccessibilityguidelines.com/
Click to expand...
This is a good resource. Will add it to OP later today!

Edit:
Added
 
M

_machine

Member
It's raining for screenshotsaturday:
ssssscnub6.jpg
Click to expand...
Still have to do some work to get the materials better and we're facing some issues with the puddles due to some "custom" solutions with the skylight and ground, but hopefully we can polish them to shippable quality. Most of the menus are almost ready to be shipped now, just some work to do on the player progression and profile and the matchmaking, but hopefully it'll be in showable condition early next week.
 
J

Jacksinthe

Banned
_machine said:
It's raining for screenshotsaturday:

Still have to do some work to get the materials better and we're facing some issues with the puddles due to some "custom" solutions with the skylight and ground, but hopefully we can polish them to shippable quality. Most of the menus are almost ready to be shipped now, just some work to do on the player progression and profile and the matchmaking, but hopefully it'll be in showable condition early next week.
Click to expand...

This looks glorious as fuck! Love the color palette!
 
R

RhysD85

Member
_machine said:
It's raining for screenshotsaturday:

Still have to do some work to get the materials better and we're facing some issues with the puddles due to some "custom" solutions with the skylight and ground, but hopefully we can polish them to shippable quality. Most of the menus are almost ready to be shipped now, just some work to do on the player progression and profile and the matchmaking, but hopefully it'll be in showable condition early next week.
Click to expand...

looking good!
 
M

Makai

Member
AusRoachman said:
Started ironing out my workflow. Sprites -> Magicavoxel -> Unity

EAnGlGW.gif


My plan is to do a 3d turn based strategy game with paper Mario esque models.
Click to expand...
Pixel gore is always cool. You can do neat stuff like cutting the sprite in half with a sword and having the top half fall off.
 
E

ertopena

Neo Member
I'm making a 2D maze runner about dodging obstacles and replenishing gas before you run out. You can set your ball to move faster or slower, but the higher the gear, the faster you leak gas.

ldoryrU.png


mHvUoRT.png


b9eVOzl.png


So far I have put in a survival mode for 1-4 players (though the development build on itch.io only goes up to 2), but I am also going to need to add a "story" mode to convey the subtleties of gameplay, as well as a pointfest mode where there are pickups and timed events to keep things spicy.

Here is a video of single player, and here is one of multiplayer.

edit: these screenshots are huge, so I'm going to replace them in a sec.
edit2: replaced.
edit3: I guess I should have posted this on the Screenshot Saturday thread. Since I have never posted about this here I'll leave it up, but I'll crosspost it as well.
 
I

Ito

Member
liliththepale said:
We added something long-overdue to our game today: Water!
Click to expand...

That's amazing! The distortion shader you used for the water looks just perfect. The character moves a little bit too fast IMO but I understand the reasons behind that, design-wise.


Curiously enough, I spent an indecent ammount of hours during these past two weeks animating a small pond and making all the splash effects for it in Spirit Huntress.

If you pay attention, you can see how some of the water drops create expansive waves on the water surface, or leave a stain if they hit the ground instead.

Also, the character gets soaked and spawns tiny litlle drops all over :D

ShimmeringNippyIndianhare.gif


9xhlVc2.gif


The gifs are really slow tho. Sorry about that!
 
L

liliththepale

Banned
Ito said:
That's amazing! The distortion shader you used for the water looks just perfect. The character moves a little bit too fast IMO but I understand the reasons behind that, design-wise.


Curiously enough, I spent an indecent ammount of hours during these past two weeks animating a small pond and making all the splash effects for it in Spirit Huntress.

If you pay attention, you can see how some of the water drops create expansive waves on the water surface, or leave a stain if they hit the ground instead.

Also, the character gets soaked and spawns tiny litlle drops all over :D

http://giant.gfycat.com/ShimmeringNippyIndianhare.gif

http://i.imgur.com/9xhlVc2.gi

The gifs are really slow tho. Sorry about that!
Click to expand...

Oh, I love all the little droplets! So many games have fire-and-forget effects, so it's nice to see ones with secondary effects like that.


Funny enough, after playing around with some ideas, we decided slowing down the player might be okay after all. Here's the same pit as before, but with a modifier that makes the water level go up and down (which we lifted whole-cloth from the Tomb Wader levels in Crash 3). Some changes from yesterday you might notice are that the character slows down depending on how deep the water is (0.9x at ankle deep, and 0.6x when fully submerged), and recently submerged areas of the body drip wet for 1–2 seconds after surfacing. (also, I fixed a glitch in the distortion shader that was using junk alpha bytes instead of 1.0 for the redraw, which manifested in ghosting of the undistorted image). I know you're using GameMaker too, so let me know if you want to take a peak at the distortion tech we're using.

edit: grr, posted prematurely (your GIFs are making the page lag xD). I'll add the new vid in a moment.
edit 2: okay, here we are

http://gfycat.com/BronzeUnlinedFlee
http://fat.gfycat.com/BronzeUnlinedFlee.webm

Coming next: whirlpools, floating platforms, squid and electric eel!
 
J

Jintor

Member
this might be a bit dumb, but I'm having some gamemaker problems with some code.

I've implemented walljumps and double jumps, with their own counter to limit airjumps/walljumps before hitting the ground, upon which the counters reset.

The problem is my IF (walljump) { } statement also satisfies my IF (airjump) {} condition, which means that walljumping also drains the airjumpCounter in addition to the walljumpCounter.

Is there a way to prevent my IF (walljump) {} statement from modifying the airjump counter when triggered? I tried adding a thing to set the counter to 1 when walljumping (as I want), but I realised that lets walljumping reset the airjump counter, which I don't want. I just want it to not affect the counter at all.
 
L

liliththepale

Banned
Jintor said:
this might be a bit dumb, but I'm having some gamemaker problems with some code.

I've implemented walljumps and double jumps, with their own counter to limit airjumps/walljumps before hitting the ground, upon which the counters reset.

The problem is my IF (walljump) { } statement also satisfies my IF (airjump) {} condition, which means that walljumping also drains the airjumpCounter in addition to the walljumpCounter.

Is there a way to prevent my IF (walljump) {} statement from modifying the airjump counter when triggered? I tried adding a thing to set the counter to 1 when walljumping (as I want), but I realised that lets walljumping reset the airjump counter, which I don't want. I just want it to not affect the counter at all.
Click to expand...

It's hard to say for sure without taking a look at your code, but you probably want something along the lines of

Code: 
if (walljump) {
  // do wall jump
} else if (airjump) {
  // do air jump
}
 
J

Jintor

Member
hmmm, my current pseudocode would be something like

Code: 
if (jumpkey && jumpsCount > 0)
    { do jump ; jumpsCount -= 0}

if (jumpkey && (collideLeft || collideRight) && wallJumps > 0)
    { do walljump ; wallJumps -= 0}

and I reset the jumps if I detect ground beneath the player

The thing is my airjump code is technically just my jump code, so I don't want to have to seperate it out if possible just to keep the code neater. It'll probably work though... but is there are more elegant solution?
 
L

liliththepale

Banned
Jintor said:
hmmm, my current pseudocode would be something like

Code: 
if (jumpkey && jumpsCount > 0)
    { do jump ; jumpsCount -= 0}

if (jumpkey && (collideLeft || collideRight) && wallJumps > 0)
    { do walljump ; wallJumps -= 0}

and I reset the jumps if I detect ground beneath the player

The thing is my airjump code is technically just my jump code, so I don't want to have to seperate it out if possible just to keep the code neater. It'll probably work though... but is there are more elegant solution?
Click to expand...

Would it break it to do this?

Code: 
if (jumpkey) {
  if ((collideLeft || collideRight) && wallJumps > 0) {
    do walljump ;
    wallJumps -= 1;
  } else if (jumpsCount > 0) {
    do jump ;
    jumpsCount -= 1;
  }
}
 
J

Jams775

Member
Jintor said:
hmmm, my current pseudocode would be something like

Code: 
if (jumpkey && jumpsCount > 0)
    { do jump ; jumpsCount -= 0}

if (jumpkey && (collideLeft || collideRight) && wallJumps > 0)
    { do walljump ; wallJumps -= 0}

and I reset the jumps if I detect ground beneath the player

The thing is my airjump code is technically just my jump code, so I don't want to have to seperate it out if possible just to keep the code neater. It'll probably work though... but is there are more elegant solution?
Click to expand...

I'm not an expert but if I'm understanding you correctly you need an addition check for your jump code that makes sure you're grounded before you're allowed to jump. That is what would differentiate it from an air jump.

Code: 
if (jumpkey && jumpsCount > 0 && isGrounded == true)
    { do jump ; jumpsCount -= 0}

if (jumpkey && (collideLeft || collideRight) && wallJumps > 0 && isGrounded == false)
    { do walljump ; wallJumps -= 0}
edit: You'd also need some code to check if you're grounded. I don't know how that'd work in Game Maker but you could check if the bottom of the player's collider is touching something then make isGrounded equal to true.
have you tried something like that?
 
J

Jintor

Member
I've already got a grounded variable in play, the issue is at the moment my airjump is just my jump code again... maybe I'll just rewrite the whole thing. Thanks for the ideas, the if else statement is probably the way to go.

/edit worked beaut! Now to rebuild my variable jumping code and the custom code that changed the angle of walljumps depending on if you were jumping into the wall or away from it. Is there an easier way to avoid nested if() statements in situations with more than two if() conditions?
 
F

Feep

Banned
As are all my ideas for games, this one is wacky. I'm just nailing down some of the more...concrete details.

Like cream and sugar mixing mechanics.
 
E

electroflame

Member
Feep said:
Sipping coffee in Barnes and Noble, brainstorming away... :)
Click to expand...

How's the coffee? Every time I'm in my local Barnes and Noble the cafe area smells pretty good, but I always imagine the coffee tasting like ground dirt. There's never anyone sitting in the cafe area, either, which makes the whole area around it a super silent and awkward, yet pleasingly aromatic avoidance-zone.

Maybe there's a game in there. A B&N cafe simulator where it's your job to actually make the cafe inviting.
 
F

Feep

Banned
electroflame said:
How's the coffee? Every time I'm in my local Barnes and Noble the cafe area smells pretty good, but I always imagine the coffee tasting like ground dirt. There's never anyone sitting in the cafe area, either, which makes the whole area around it a super silent and awkward, yet pleasingly aromatic avoidance-zone.

Maybe there's a game in there. A B&N cafe simulator where it's your job to actually make the cafe inviting.
Click to expand...
You know, it's pretty good? Maybe not to someone from, say, Seattle, but I like it. They also have great turkey wraps with honey mustard I like, but I'm not hungry at the moment.

The twin smells of coffee and books are some of the best smells on the planet, IMO. I love working here.

liliththepale said:
Feep, I'm with everyone else on the edge of their seat to see what you've got next!
Click to expand...
^^
 
M

mStudios

Member
I've got a question to the 3D masters in this thread.


Take a look at this video


I want to know how exactly is the screen switch is actually happening. I know a few of the switch it's just a background swap. However at the minute 10:20, you can see how the screen rotates.

I know it's not 3D because those are pre-renders.
Are they using panoramic backgrounds?
 
M

mooooose

Member
mStudios said:
I've got a question to the 3D masters in this thread.


Take a look at this video


I want to know how exactly is the switch screen is actually hapenning. I know a few of the changes it's just changing the background. However at the minute 10:20, you can see how the screen rotates.

I know it's not 3D because those are pre-renders.
Are they using panoramic backgrounds?
Click to expand...
It looks like one big image and they just translate the viewport or camera or whatever it may be called.
 
-COOLIO-

-COOLIO-

The Everyman
A1pktHM.png


so, my game has melee and shield equips, and i need ideas for two more melee weapons and one more shield. They just have to be internety things. Anyone have any ideas?
 
K

ken_matthews

Member
Spent most of the day building out the component to our space station. I just setup a basic layout to make sure that I have all the pieces I need (wall/pipe bends and angles, etc). The last big thing to do is to design the shop entrances and at the moment I have no good ideas. And I not sure if I like the support beams and the bottom parts of the walls though, I think they look somewhat out of place. Any suggestions?

Y9zb.jpg
 
F

Feep

Banned
-COOLIO- said:
A1pktHM.png


so, my game has melee and shield equips, and i need ideas for two more melee weapons and one more shield. They just have to be internety things. Anyone have any ideas?
Click to expand...
Image Slicer, Blade of Resolution, Tin Foil, LAN Saber, Not My Shield, Hail Hydra (Shield), Firewall Shield?
 
-COOLIO-

-COOLIO-

The Everyman
Feep said:
Image Slicer, Blade of Resolution, Tin Foil, LAN Saber, Not My Shield, Hail Hydra (Shield), Firewall Shield?
Click to expand...

ooooh, i like tin foil as a shield!

im already using fireall as an item though, and i think some of the other references are going over my head (not my shield -> not my problem?). hmmm, blade of resolution sounds good too actually.

merci, good sir.
 
L

liliththepale

Banned
mStudios said:
Thanks.
How am I supposed to draw paranomic backgrounds!?

Damn, things getting harder and harder.
Click to expand...

You "just" have to add a lot of warp to your perspective lines. This should give you an idea:

VMK_MainStreet_HUB_Underdrawing-01b.jpg


For something like the example video you posted, it's probably only warped dramatically in the middle where it transitions, so that either end looks normal when you lock on.


-COOLIO- said:
A1pktHM.png


so, my game has melee and shield equips, and i need ideas for two more melee weapons and one more shield. They just have to be internety things. Anyone have any ideas?
Click to expand...

Pop-up blocker? Maybe too retro. Or maybe a banner ad that's a polearm (like this)?
 
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