SeanNoonan
Member
Nope, moving back to the UK
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GAF Indie Game Development Thread 2: High Res Work for Low Res Pay
- Thread starter Jacksinthe
- Start date
- Status
liliththepale
Banned
I'll play it on stream for you guys if you like.
That'd be awesome! Your streams are great.
I'll play it on stream for you guys if you like.
I wouldn't mind that. I ripped out some of the functionality a couple weeks ago to make testing easier, so I'll have to make sure everything fits back together nicely when repackaged. There are also a whole lot of outstanding bugs and missing effects that would bug me to see on stream, but I'm sure you'd be conscious of what parts are still a work in progress.
That'd be awesome! Your streams are great.
Of course. Just let me know if you'd like some live testing, I'd be happy to oblige.
I can also supply missing sound effects live as needed.
liliththepale
Banned
lol, that's hilarious. It'd be fun to have a cheat code or something that changes all the sound effects to oral ones, with some kickass a capella music to boot.
i swear i've played a game like this before.
i also distinctly remember the spiderman PSOne game where a cheatcode changed all the dialogue and half the graphics into completely random nonsense
Dynamite Shikoku
Congratulations, you really deserve it!
I'm going to be finishing my little mobile game soon, and am starting to think about a new project. I really want to do something with crazy amounts of neon particles, like geometry wars.
liliththepale
Banned
That's amazing! Man, I miss cheat codes in games.
That's an interesting challenge. You want to keep adding spectacle, but eventually processing power and gameplay visibility become bottlenecks. My favorite game in this regard recently is probably Resogun.
Dynamite Shikoku
Congratulations, you really deserve it!
Yeah Resogun looks amazing. I've never played it though.
As far as I can tell, the only one that has issues is picodrive, Which seems to just run the game as fast as it can and does not actually wait for vsync to occur for some reason :/
ah gens also seems to skip frames for some reason :/
I've been testing on hardware mainly, Kega fusion seems to work ok as does Regen.
akachan ningen
Member
Why not try a game like splatoon where you go around painting everything? Except instead of paint, it's rapidly moving neon particles.
GregSequential
Neo Member
Quick question IndieGAF -- for producing something in a similar style to the TellTale games (Walking Dead/Wolf Among Us etc) or Life is Strange, what engine/tools would people recommend? Does anyone have any experience of making such games? Ideally I'd like to invest a bunch of time and effort into getting it to the point where I could produce graphics, writing, voice over, and etc for each episode but have the basic framework of the game in place early on. As my own skills in these areas are OK but not amazing, if I were to try and team up with some other people, what do you think the minimum team members/skills required for a Life is Strange/Telltale style project? Any help/advice much appreciated!
MrNyarlathotep
Banned
Does it need to be in 3D? I've played many Telltale games, but not Life Is Strange, but am assuming its also effectively a 3D world point and click...?
ClivePwned
Member
Unity and a thing called Aventure Creator from the Asset store sound like they will do the trick.
Milky Tea Studios
Neo Member
After 18 months of development our game Coffin Dodgers is released toady, any feedback comments or questions, feel free to ask.
http://coffindodgersgame.com/
http://coffindodgersgame.com/
I'd say it's about the best you could do if you have zero experience.
GregSequential
Neo Member
Thanks, much appreciated! I've already been playing around with Unity for a while but had not heard of Adventure Creator, looks perfect
BlazeHedgehog
Member
Upgrading to 4.8 and previous sudden problems with the Online Subsystem has probably set us back 3 days on UI and Gameplay front, but hopefully most of them are fixed now (there are still some text alignment issues, but right now getting back to actually playing the game is more important) and with tomorrow's build I should be able finally get some proper new gameplay shots.
We did try out some new particle effects in the meantime and the art side progressing quite nicely.
We did try out some new particle effects in the meantime and the art side progressing quite nicely.
Finally making some progress with my terrain:
This is all just made with terrain layers/textures. Took me ages to get that terrain material where it is now but that was also because terrain shader compiling can easily take 15 minutes in UE4 and it can even recompile when painting a layer that a terrain chunk has not used before.
That waterfall doesn't run, it is a painted waterfall like everything else.
Anyone else wondering why Epic is pushing their UE4 "Landscape" so hard when it is in reality just 15 old heightmap terrain based technique with lots of small fancy features on top? Basically you still have that same old blobby smooth terrain with smooth fadeing into another textures. I made a lot of blending trickery in my shader to work around that and the heavy distortion of the post processing makes the low res terrain mesh harder to see. Landscape spline meshes are pretty cool though, that is what I made the river and waterfalls with.
This is all just made with terrain layers/textures. Took me ages to get that terrain material where it is now but that was also because terrain shader compiling can easily take 15 minutes in UE4 and it can even recompile when painting a layer that a terrain chunk has not used before.
That waterfall doesn't run, it is a painted waterfall like everything else.
Anyone else wondering why Epic is pushing their UE4 "Landscape" so hard when it is in reality just 15 old heightmap terrain based technique with lots of small fancy features on top? Basically you still have that same old blobby smooth terrain with smooth fadeing into another textures. I made a lot of blending trickery in my shader to work around that and the heavy distortion of the post processing makes the low res terrain mesh harder to see. Landscape spline meshes are pretty cool though, that is what I made the river and waterfalls with.
Those are gorgeous. May I ask, do those terrain models look like a normal video game without the painterly shaders, or is the look part and parcel with the design?
Jacksinthe
Banned
Best to you, sir!Nope, moving back to the UK
Oh fuck yes! Anything that splodes in bits and is glowy is fucking great! Keep everyone updated.
And everyone made fun of me in my stream for using WinAmp XDThat's like recommending somebody try to make something in Shockwave nowadays
Need help play testing them bug fixes?
DDDDDDDDHOT FUCK and I have no clue but damn this is good lookingFinally making some progress with my terrain:
This is all just made with terrain layers/textures. Took me ages to get that terrain material where it is now but that was also because terrain shader compiling can easily take 15 minutes in UE4 and it can even recompile when painting a layer that a terrain chunk has not used before.
That waterfall doesn't run, it is a painted waterfall like everything else.
Anyone else wondering why Epic is pushing their UE4 "Landscape" so hard when it is in reality just 15 old heightmap terrain based technique with lots of small fancy features on top? Basically you still have that same old blobby smooth terrain with smooth fadeing into another textures. I made a lot of blending trickery in my shader to work around that and the heavy distortion of the post processing makes the low res terrain mesh harder to see. Landscape spline meshes are pretty cool though, that is what I made the river and waterfalls with.
superNESjoe
Member
Starting to polish up and add in tile and background art for some of the stages in GunWorld 2.
I'm looking for some people who might be willing to do some playtesting periodically, our first playtest build will be next week and will include 2 levels.
I'm looking for some people who might be willing to do some playtesting periodically, our first playtest build will be next week and will include 2 levels.
SeanNoonan
Member
With the move across the country I don't really have time for indie dev, however...
https://twitter.com/SeanNoonan/status/619018508744179712
https://twitter.com/SeanNoonan/status/619018508744179712
Doing late night streaming for the next hour or two. Was doing a bit of terrain art and decided to turn the stream on.
http://www.twitch.tv/ttpete
http://www.twitch.tv/ttpete
Mental Atrophy
Banned
I went ahead and palettized skin and hair. I didn't expect to do either initially, because I figured I'd have brown-skinned characters just by giving them a brown-skinned head, but I forgot that the body sprites have at least the skin on hands showing, so there was a mismatch. Since I had that module open, I went ahead and added hair coloration as well.
Amusingly, when I completely randomize the RGB values for the primary (part of the body sprite apparel), hair, and skin palettes--they pretty much all end up looking like hideous zombies.
So I should probably make a character previewer that lets me choose palettes for characters and see how they'll look. Or not, because it's easy enough to do in paint anyway.
Additionally, added a few more things like being able to easily add new combatants to a battle scene, including summoning type spells or scripted reinforcements.
Amusingly, when I completely randomize the RGB values for the primary (part of the body sprite apparel), hair, and skin palettes--they pretty much all end up looking like hideous zombies.
So I should probably make a character previewer that lets me choose palettes for characters and see how they'll look. Or not, because it's easy enough to do in paint anyway.
Additionally, added a few more things like being able to easily add new combatants to a battle scene, including summoning type spells or scripted reinforcements.
ClayStatue
Member
Not sure what the function of it is exactly, but the information in the bottom left seems a bit odd as % out of % because the implication is that the maximum is 100% and it won't go over that. Looking pretty good otherwise, I enjoy that you have put gaps in the forest.
Mental Atrophy
Banned
Ah. Well the the GUI stuff is really just thrown together to inform me of what's going on, and isn't even in some sort of prototypical phase yet so it's not weird at all for you to be confused what the "100%" means. So I'll explain: It's the terrain modifier for offense/defense respectively, and is displaying the value for the mouseover'd tile which is poorly identified by the white square below the rightmost knight.
bad guy
as bad as Danny Zuko in gym knickers
Hey sackninja!
I've heard good things about Stencyl, but I haven't tried it
I started out with Gamemaker and it's working very well for me (doing my 4th game now).
I also want to try out GDevelop, which is open-source and free.
Start with a very small and very simple game like asteroids/tetris/breakout clone (to get some experience) before you do the game you plan on.
I've heard good things about Stencyl, but I haven't tried it
I started out with Gamemaker and it's working very well for me (doing my 4th game now).
I also want to try out GDevelop, which is open-source and free.
Start with a very small and very simple game like asteroids/tetris/breakout clone (to get some experience) before you do the game you plan on.
Mental Atrophy
Banned
My new skill architecture has been working out pretty well so far--pretty easy to add new stuff. Setup a skill that teleports then knocks adjacent dudes back in no time at all. Granted, I don't have any proper animations for it yet, but it functions correctly:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/87770923/output4.webm
It's labeled "Command:" because this category of skills are used by summoned pets... I'm just giving everybody every skill while I test the waters. Also, I think I should probably anchor my damage indicators to their entity.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/87770923/output4.webm
It's labeled "Command:" because this category of skills are used by summoned pets... I'm just giving everybody every skill while I test the waters. Also, I think I should probably anchor my damage indicators to their entity.
SpacePirate Ridley
Member
Finally making some progress with my terrain:
This is all just made with terrain layers/textures. Took me ages to get that terrain material where it is now but that was also because terrain shader compiling can easily take 15 minutes in UE4 and it can even recompile when painting a layer that a terrain chunk has not used before.
That waterfall doesn't run, it is a painted waterfall like everything else.
Anyone else wondering why Epic is pushing their UE4 "Landscape" so hard when it is in reality just 15 old heightmap terrain based technique with lots of small fancy features on top? Basically you still have that same old blobby smooth terrain with smooth fadeing into another textures. I made a lot of blending trickery in my shader to work around that and the heavy distortion of the post processing makes the low res terrain mesh harder to see. Landscape spline meshes are pretty cool though, that is what I made the river and waterfalls with.
Holy shit, i thought it was freaking concpet art!
MrNyarlathotep
Banned
I think it's because UE is still mostly considered to be an engine designed for rooms + corridors with skyboxes rather than for large open terrains, so they're working particularly hard on addressing that.
I think IGN Italy intends to do a piece on my game. They emailed me asking for keys. I sent some!
I'd like to see this in motion please!
I'd like to see this in motion please!
Messofanego
Banned
Finally making some progress with my terrain:
This is all just made with terrain layers/textures. Took me ages to get that terrain material where it is now but that was also because terrain shader compiling can easily take 15 minutes in UE4 and it can even recompile when painting a layer that a terrain chunk has not used before.
That waterfall doesn't run, it is a painted waterfall like everything else.
Anyone else wondering why Epic is pushing their UE4 "Landscape" so hard when it is in reality just 15 old heightmap terrain based technique with lots of small fancy features on top? Basically you still have that same old blobby smooth terrain with smooth fadeing into another textures. I made a lot of blending trickery in my shader to work around that and the heavy distortion of the post processing makes the low res terrain mesh harder to see. Landscape spline meshes are pretty cool though, that is what I made the river and waterfalls with.
That is gorgeous. Also, adding terrain shader compiling and spline meshes to my vocabulary.
akachan ningen
Member
I'll do it. I love a platformer.
Most is done with realistic textures and regular models, first I played around with taking those textures and making them more painterly but it isn't really worth the effort since it looks almost the same at the end because the post processing effects are so heavy. There are some things that don't look good without the post processing shader like some blending of the textures and faked drop shadows where it blends and that water splash meshes are pretty simple bashed together.
For this particular painting/level I'm aiming for something semi realistic painterly to really try pushing it in that direction but I also like to make totally abstract simplistic paintings.
Yay, that was my highest goal for it!
Yea, the problem I have with it is that Epic would have the talent and manpower to reinvent how terrain works on its base level. Smooth heightmap terrain mesh and smooth textures transitions is so very old and doesn't really cut it anymore. If you think about it, minecraft terrain is even more advanced then that. Landmark shows where you can push that approach. There is also already tech like tesselation in UE4 which terrain could be made around to really get detail in it. You can't even use tesselation on top of the current terrain because it holds no proper vertex normal information.
Well, there is no motion at all but if you mean camera movement I will do that when I have it more fleshed out.
superNESjoe
Member
Excellent. PM me your email address.
My mail van handling packages:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/60380766/mailvan-action.webm
I might make this possible by extra action buttons instead of physics based. Even though there is a higher skill ceiling doing it this way. But there are a lot of issues that could arise.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/60380766/mailvan-action.webm
I might make this possible by extra action buttons instead of physics based. Even though there is a higher skill ceiling doing it this way. But there are a lot of issues that could arise.
Standard delivery practices. I don't see what's unusual about that.
Still not quite where we should be; the UI is missing stuff and polish (feedback is still very much appreciated), the online is bugging out at different places with shipping build and stand-alone editor, but here goes anyway:
EDIT: Do'h, actually forgot to have a minion selected to show the command card too...brb
EDIT2: Don't mind the end turn button, that's legacy stuff
Well here's another one, though we really need to take a pass at the visual cues like movement range, side indicator (that's toggleable at least), elder minion particles etc:
On the positive side, all the active minion skills and their respective art is just waiting for QA, most of the unlockables / player progression art is done, probably all of the launch spell card textures and effects are done and the desert level is shaping up really nicely.
Haha, actually once the online works we could use some EU - USA connection testing, but that is when the damn thing starts working again...Need help play testing them bug fixes?
EDIT: Do'h, actually forgot to have a minion selected to show the command card too...brb
EDIT2: Don't mind the end turn button, that's legacy stuff
Well here's another one, though we really need to take a pass at the visual cues like movement range, side indicator (that's toggleable at least), elder minion particles etc:
MrNyarlathotep
Banned
I mean, I always can't help but feel voxel has been misappropriated when talking about something like MineCraft which is effectively using 3D Tiles rather than 3D pixels - actual voxel based terrain tools could make something pretty special, but IIRC when John Carmack was playing with using Voxels for... I want to say the Quake 3 engine but that doesn't sound right... but basically GPU still don't support voxel style rendering, so it all has to be done in software which is obviously a luxury most games can't afford as their CPU is busy doing gameplay related things.
Maybe the rise of voxel based modelling tools like ZBrush from the art side and more widespread of tesselation deformations will spur some demand engine side for game related use instead of purely stuff like medical imaging use.
superNESjoe
Member
I went ahead and palettized skin and hair. I didn't expect to do either initially, because I figured I'd have brown-skinned characters just by giving them a brown-skinned head, but I forgot that the body sprites have at least the skin on hands showing, so there was a mismatch. Since I had that module open, I went ahead and added hair coloration as well.
Amusingly, when I completely randomize the RGB values for the primary (part of the body sprite apparel), hair, and skin palettes--they pretty much all end up looking like hideous zombies.
So I should probably make a character previewer that lets me choose palettes for characters and see how they'll look. Or not, because it's easy enough to do in paint anyway.
Additionally, added a few more things like being able to easily add new combatants to a battle scene, including summoning type spells or scripted reinforcements.
This really reminds me of Dragon Warrior on the NES, love the look. Is this like a Tactics-style game?
Candescence
Member
It's also a reason why the likes of VoxelFarm, as great as it is, is terribly inefficient, due to lack of native GPU support, though that's mainly due to the inherent problems with proprietary GPU drivers. But, really, I think the industry should start moving away from polygons and towards voxels for a whole bunch of reasons, but it won't because publishers don't want to sacrifice processing power that could be used for more cheap eye candy.
I'm still waiting for Euclideon to actually show their game projects (which were supposed to have been released in may), but they're certainly taking their time with it, though I think it's partly because they're apparently developing for some holographic tech that they've only shown at some conference that has nothing really to do with gaming. Those guys are weird and secretive, it's really rather irritating despite the kind of incredible tech they're sitting on.
Hi everyone!
I want to share with all of us the game that we (three friends and I) have been working on since 8 months ago at spare or full-time (depending if we had a job or not). It's called Tankr and is a top-down arcade game between the Wii's Tanks and Bomberman up to four players to PC (Windows, Linux and Mac).
Please, take a look to the trailer and tell us what do you think about it ^^
The game is now in closed beta, and have all the features that we have planned at the beginning: single and local co-op and deathmatch modes, map editor, different weapons, power-ups and enemy behaviors, gamepad and multi-language support. But without money, we can't invest much more time to add more content. So we are working on a kickstarter to meet people that like the game and want to help us to add more features to the game before the release, this year.
Lastly, we will release a public demo soon to try to receive more feedback. We hope you try it and have fun!
Debut trailer
If you like it, visit our site or IndieDB. Thanks for your time!
I want to share with all of us the game that we (three friends and I) have been working on since 8 months ago at spare or full-time (depending if we had a job or not). It's called Tankr and is a top-down arcade game between the Wii's Tanks and Bomberman up to four players to PC (Windows, Linux and Mac).
Please, take a look to the trailer and tell us what do you think about it ^^
The game is now in closed beta, and have all the features that we have planned at the beginning: single and local co-op and deathmatch modes, map editor, different weapons, power-ups and enemy behaviors, gamepad and multi-language support. But without money, we can't invest much more time to add more content. So we are working on a kickstarter to meet people that like the game and want to help us to add more features to the game before the release, this year.
Lastly, we will release a public demo soon to try to receive more feedback. We hope you try it and have fun!
Debut trailer
Screenshot of the Map Editor
If you like it, visit our site or IndieDB. Thanks for your time!
Excuse me for any misspelling or grammatical error.
The trailer looks good and has a cute ending. I think something that would help me get more of a handle on the experience of playing it would be shots of other screens, or maybe maps that are more different from each other. Or maybe different play modes. Basically put more of a sense of variation and it will be more compelling.
I'd definitely play the demo if you hit me up, or if y'all have a newsletter or something to know for sure when you release it.
nitekrawlwer
Member
Finally making some progress with my terrain:
Absolutely gorgeous. I think every time you post I go "ooh" and "aah" audibly in addition to my jaw hitting the floor.
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