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[Ito]

That sounded totally right, Absinthe #freethephallus

~~~~~~~~~

So, do you know when you find a funny-looking wall and you try hitting it with your trusty wakizashi

only to discover that it leads to a spoopy place

but dat HDR tho

(there's echo/reverb inside the cave, as well as spooky drips + howling sounds, as it should be! I'm so satisfied with the results that I feel tempted to record a small video)

 

[Rubikant]

EDIT: Nevermind, figured out Wii U essentially forces 16:9 even if you set 4:3 in the Settings menu via black bars. Basically the TV and GamePad are always the same aspect ratio on Wii U...convenient for sending the same output to the GamePad for off-screen play.

 

[liliththepale]

Regarding bombs, I already made a few changes -- I made teh explosions a bit more forceful/damaging, and I also made the fuses longer, and now they blow up if you shoot your regular cannon.

http://www.gfycat.com/ThatEveryIndochinesetiger

It's actually useful in combat now, especially where there are groups.

http://www.gfycat.com/PersonalMessyCaecilian

Oh, yeah, that works really well. Is there anything else that can set them off prematurely? That might be an interesting challenge, especially if the bombs can damage the player.

Would anyone be down for running through some greyboxing of any levels in the future? No enemies, just greybox. I want to get an idea of flow, size, time, scope, etc from others. Probably not for a few weeks but I am getting new stuff ready and old levels revamped and will be greyboxing most of them.

Sure!

So, do you know when you find a funny-looking wall and you try hitting it with your trusty wakizashi

Hmm, that wall doesn't look especially conspicuous to me. Maybe that's just because I'm lacking context. Inside the cave looks great.

 

[TheHollowNight]

Remember kids, fire safety is important!

 

[liliththepale]

Remember kids, fire safety is important!

This art style is so good! But I'm wondering if there's anything you can do about the billboard in the middle of the explosion. The way it clips with the floor really breaks the illusion for me.

 

[TheHollowNight]

This art style is so good! But I'm wondering if there's anything you can do about the billboard in the middle of the explosion. The way it clips with the floor really breaks the illusion for me.

I believe it's just the explosion particle being too low right now, so I'll move the origin a little higher to fix it!

 

[ken_matthews]

Hey that looks really good! A bit floaty but you can probably fix that by playing around with the frames.

Are you using Kinect 1 or 2? With which software?

I am using the XBOX One Kinect. Previously I was using Brekel Pro Body with Motion Builder (with only one kinect), but it was too much work to get quality animations. Plus Motion Builder is not cheap (was using the education license). I am about to pay out $3700 for Maya and cannot afford another 4k for software.

I since switched over to Ipisoft Mocap Studio (and added second kinect). It is on a subscription pay model, but it is worth it because it just works so much better than Brekel. Now I can dump the mocap files directly into Maya with little to no clean up.

I moved everything out of my living room and this is how I will be living for the foreseeable future :

 

[Turfster]

Am I the only one that really misses a separate debug window when trying to figure out why things aren't working in UE4?

I've been trying to debug a collision problem happening in a specific edge case, but the "dur, just eject from your pawn" option is totally useless, since there's no actual oversight, or way to set up a camera position in advance, or actually see what happens when you press a button because of course when you're ejected you no longer pass input to the character, etc.

 

[D4Danger]

I am using the XBOX One Kinect. Previously I was using Brekel Pro Body with Motion Builder (with only one kinect), but it was too much work to get quality animations. Plus Motion Builder is not cheap (was using the education license). I am about to pay out $3700 for Maya and cannot afford another 4k for software.

I since switched over to Ipisoft Mocap Studio (and added second kinect). It is on a subscription pay model, but it is worth it because it just works so much better than Brekel. Now I can dump the mocap files directly into Maya with little to no clean up.

I moved everything out of my living room and this is how I will be living for the foreseeable future :

http://i.picpar.com/EZ0b.jpg[img][/QUOTE]

that's really cool. Can you capture more than one person at a time?

 

[Paz]

This past week I attended BitSummit to show Cactus because Japan is relatively close/cheap for Australians and I thought it'd be great to see how their scene is growing, it turned out to be one of the most awesome experiences of my life.

Met and chatted with folks who inspired me by bringing the Japanese development culture to the west like James Mielke and somehow someway we won the award for best foreign game at the event, I always viewed our game as something that would be uninteresting to the Japanese because it's so heavily inspired by ground they've already covered extensively so to receive this kind of praise was so unexpected and fantastic.

Still don't know if this game will end up as a commercial success but after 2.5 years of full time development I couldn't be happier with what we've created, it's our three souls distilled in to a single piece of focused entertainment.

We also got picked for the PAX 10 and somehow need to finish everything between now and then so I better get to work!

 

[Dynamite Shikoku]

I am using the XBOX One Kinect. Previously I was using Brekel Pro Body with Motion Builder (with only one kinect), but it was too much work to get quality animations. Plus Motion Builder is not cheap (was using the education license). I am about to pay out $3700 for Maya and cannot afford another 4k for software.

I since switched over to Ipisoft Mocap Studio (and added second kinect). It is on a subscription pay model, but it is worth it because it just works so much better than Brekel. Now I can dump the mocap files directly into Maya with little to no clean up.

I moved everything out of my living room and this is how I will be living for the foreseeable future :

Is that a fleshlight on the counter?

I see Apple has updated iPod touches finally. They are always a good choice if you need an iDevice to test on and don't have an iPhone.

 

[Dynamite Shikoku]

This past week I attended BitSummit to show Cactus because Japan is relatively close/cheap for Australians and I thought it'd be great to see how their scene is growing, it turned out to be one of the most awesome experiences of my life.

Met and chatted with folks who inspired me by bringing the Japanese development culture to the west like James Mielke and somehow someway we won the award for best foreign game at the event, I always viewed our game as something that would be uninteresting to the Japanese because it's so heavily inspired by ground they've already covered extensively so to receive this kind of praise was so unexpected and fantastic.

Still don't know if this game will end up as a commercial success but after 2.5 years of full time development I couldn't be happier with what we've created, it's our three souls distilled in to a single piece of focused entertainment.

We also got picked for the PAX 10 and somehow need to finish everything between now and then so I better get to work!

Saw that you guys won on twitter. Congratulations.

 

[ken_matthews]

Is that a fleshlight on the counter?

I see Apple has updated iPod touches finally. They are always a good choice if you need an iDevice to test on and don't have an iPhone.

hahah, what?!?! What the hell are you looking at?

That is a FLASHLIGHT on the counter, and I do not know what you are talking about with the iPod touch...

that's really cool. Can you capture more than one person at a time?

Apparently you can, but I have not attempted yet.

 

[ken_matthews]

Just tested out a more complex animation and it's tracking extremely well:

 

[Jobbs]

Just tested out a more complex animation and it's tracking extremely well:

If you need someone to help you capture animations for sitting in a chair, leaning way back in a chair, or pacing around the room -- call me up, I can help.

 

[Dynamite Shikoku]

hahah, what?!?! What the hell are you looking at?

That is a FLASHLIGHT on the counter, and I do not know what you are talking about with the iPod touch...



Apparently you can, but I have not attempted yet.

Sorry, the iPod part was just a separate comment. Just joking about the fleshlight too.

 

[Jobbs]

That sounded totally right, Absinthe #freethephallus

~~~~~~~~~

So, do you know when you find a funny-looking wall and you try hitting it with your trusty wakizashi

only to discover that it leads to a spoopy place

but dat HDR tho

(there's echo/reverb inside the cave, as well as spooky drips + howling sounds, as it should be! I'm so satisfied with the results that I feel tempted to record a small video)

looks good. try adding a tiny bit of screen shake when you attack something really rigid like a wall.

 

[ken_matthews]

Sorry, the iPod part was just a separate comment. Just joking about the fleshlight too.

Oh no, no need to apologize, I got that you were joking.

 

[Cptkrush]

Does anyone have any good reading or video recommendations about level design? I am beginning to realize I don't know shit about creating compelling levels and maps.

 

[SeanNoonan]

Does anyone have any good reading or video recommendations about level design? I am beginning to realize I don't know shit about creating compelling levels and maps.

Don't watch youtube. Make things.

 

[ken_matthews]

That sounded totally right, Absinthe #freethephallus

~~~~~~~~~

So, do you know when you find a funny-looking wall and you try hitting it with your trusty wakizashi

only to discover that it leads to a spoopy place

but dat HDR tho

(there's echo/reverb inside the cave, as well as spooky drips + howling sounds, as it should be! I'm so satisfied with the results that I feel tempted to record a small video)

I don't know what it is, but there is something really pleasing about the way your game looks; I like it a lot.

If you need someone to help you capture animations for sitting in a chair, leaning way back in a chair, or pacing around the room -- call me up, I can help.

will do

 

[ZServ]

Does anyone have any good reading or video recommendations about level design? I am beginning to realize I don't know shit about creating compelling levels and maps.

Best way to do it:

Make it.

Break it down.

Make it again.

Break it down.

Make it again.

Do until satisfied.

 

[Jobbs]

will do

Are there any real drawbacks to doing mocap this way? I find it kind of mind blowing -- that this level of game development is potentially accessible on a tiny budget by indies. Real mocap is one of the game development things I always imagined available only to big budget titles.

 

[liliththepale]

Working on a new carnival stage, so here's the sword swallower and flame spitter enemies. There are going to be a dozen other carny variations besides these, which is interesting mostly because other stages generally feature ghouls and monsters for enemies, rather than people. The disembowelment is perhaps a bit much, so that may be pulled out or toggle-able in the future.

http://fat.gfycat.com/LikableSpryKoala.webm
http://fat.gfycat.com/MindlessWhiteBasil.webm

 

[Jobbs]

Working on a new carnival stage, so here's the sword swallower and flame spitter enemies. There are going to be a dozen other carny variations besides these, which is interesting mostly because other stages generally feature ghouls and monsters for enemies, rather than people. The disembowelment is perhaps a bit much, so that may be pulled out or toggle-able in the future.

http://fat.gfycat.com/LikableSpryKoala.webm
http://fat.gfycat.com/MindlessWhiteBasil.webm

My goodness those deaths are oddly gruesome

 

[_machine]

Am I the only one that really misses a separate debug window when trying to figure out why things aren't working in UE4?

I've been trying to debug a collision problem happening in a specific edge case, but the "dur, just eject from your pawn" option is totally useless, since there's no actual oversight, or way to set up a camera position in advance, or actually see what happens when you press a button because of course when you're ejected you no longer pass input to the character, etc.

Not really, I'll be sure to bump in your thread for support. If it's any help, you can get an additional log window in development builds with the launch command -Log. It definitely helped us debug the multiplayer issues, though we also have made a little custom solution to spit out some gameplay logs from shipping builds too, though it'll never give as much info as development builds.

 

[liliththepale]

My goodness those deaths are oddly gruesome

Yeah, everything in the game explodes or vanishes into a puff of smoke when it dies, so it felt inconsistent to do otherwise here. Plus it's easier than doing death animations.

 

[ken_matthews]

Are there any real drawbacks to doing mocap this way? I find it kind of mind blowing -- that this level of game development is potentially accessible on a tiny budget by indies. Real mocap is one of the game development things I always imagined available only to big budget titles.

Well, I don't know. This is the first time at it, but from my position, there really aren't any draw backs because I am absolutely terrible at key frame animation. It's certainly not perfect; no finger tracking, some slippage on the feet and occasional tracking lose (but all easily fixed). Maybe area coverage, I think you can't go past a 12×12 area, so things like running, rolling, etc may be tricky to do. Still, the Kinect is an amazing piece of hardware. I don't know why more Indies don't do it, it's relatively cheap and the software is easy to use (although building a character rig is a pain in the dick), and you can get really good results

 

[Jobbs]

Well, I don't know. This is the first time at it, but from my position, there really aren't any draw backs because I am absolutely terrible at key frame animation. It's certainly not perfect; no finger tracking, some slippage on the feet and occasional tracking lose (but all easily fixed). Maybe area coverage, I think you can't go past a 12×12 area, so things like running, rolling, etc may be tricky to do. Still, the Kinect is an amazing piece of hardware. I don't know why more Indies don't do it, it's relatively cheap and the software is easy to use (although building a character rig is a pain in the dick), and you can get really good results

3D animation remains a real mystery to me, it's something I've never tried, but I really want to learn it at some point. For now it's all just a big mysterious magic thing..

 

[Ito]

Working on a new carnival stage, so here's the sword swallower and flame spitter enemies. There are going to be a dozen other carny variations besides these, which is interesting mostly because other stages generally feature ghouls and monsters for enemies, rather than people. The disembowelment is perhaps a bit much, so that may be pulled out or toggle-able in the future.

http://fat.gfycat.com/LikableSpryKoala.webm
http://fat.gfycat.com/MindlessWhiteBasil.webm

The dismemberment is perfectly fine, I wouldn't call it gore, it's just fantasy violence. As long as there's no blood it looks like if they were robots/toys/puppets (perhaps that's what they are?)

 

[Bollocks]

Are you building the next Casting Couch?

 

[Jacksinthe]

Sure!

Sweet!

This past week I attended BitSummit to show Cactus because Japan is relatively close/cheap for Australians and I thought it'd be great to see how their scene is growing, it turned out to be one of the most awesome experiences of my life.

Met and chatted with folks who inspired me by bringing the Japanese development culture to the west like James Mielke and somehow someway we won the award for best foreign game at the event, I always viewed our game as something that would be uninteresting to the Japanese because it's so heavily inspired by ground they've already covered extensively so to receive this kind of praise was so unexpected and fantastic.

Still don't know if this game will end up as a commercial success but after 2.5 years of full time development I couldn't be happier with what we've created, it's our three souls distilled in to a single piece of focused entertainment.

We also got picked for the PAX 10 and somehow need to finish everything between now and then so I better get to work!

Grats dude!

Is that a fleshlight on the counter?

Was going to say the same thing. The theme of the thread has been big swinging rod as of late so its fitting that we see a flashlight materialize.

Does anyone have any good reading or video recommendations about level design? I am beginning to realize I don't know shit about creating compelling levels and maps.

Depends on the game. You need to know and play whatever the main character the end user will be controlling to see how he likes to be played, then you need to design some enemies (if it has those) that can challenge that moveset and develop a level in tandem with the enemies.

For me, our little blue dude feels great when you are jumping around, sticking to things and zipping in any direction so our flow includes a lot of verticality and geometry to make use of that agility.

So depending on what your subject material is, you will want to focus on designing a level that allows you to play a character as it feels best to be played and challenge that moveset, too. Not easy. Failure happens more often than success but keep building and testing.

Working on a new carnival stage, so here's the sword swallower and flame spitter enemies. There are going to be a dozen other carny variations besides these, which is interesting mostly because other stages generally feature ghouls and monsters for enemies, rather than people. The disembowelment is perhaps a bit much, so that may be pulled out or toggle-able in the future.

http://fat.gfycat.com/LikableSpryKoala.webm
http://fat.gfycat.com/MindlessWhiteBasil.webm

Welp. These look amazing. I love how smooth everything plays, the animations, timings, etc. Excellent shit.

 

[Jintor]

...goddamnit paz i was at bitsummit

 

[Feep]

Remember kids, fire safety is important!

Aesthetically, this is actually reasonably similar to There Came an Echo. Isometric 2-D/3-D blend all that. = D

If you're still getting that billboard clip with the ground, make sure you have soft particles enabled. If it's still happening, since you have an orthographic camera, a little hack would be to move the billboard a unit or two closer to the camera along its local rotation axis to ensure it doesn't clip.

 

[_machine]

Das-J, care to explain your approach to the emissive elements here?

I get that it can look a bit better than having just an emissive material, but it looks like a pain to manage and not a huge ROI.

 

[Unain]

Das-J, care to explain your approach to the emissive elements here?

I get that it can look a bit better than having just an emissive material, but it looks like a pain to manage and not a huge ROI.

Holy lightsource, Batman!

 

[Dynamite Shikoku]

I unintentionally broke so much shit tonight. Exhausted

 

[_machine]

Holy lightsource, Batman!

One of our artist made her own rendition:

 

[Unain]

One of our artist made her own rendition:

xD

Finally got my road textures in... I was spending more time learning Blender and UV/Lightmaps, but all that learning is time well spent. I can do a lot more with Blender now at least.

Time to get working on the targets that you need to hit with packages (aka windows). Fun gameplay stuff.

 

[_machine]

Tomorrow I shall tease the desert level and almost finalized UI, but for now enjoy a little rain and cold (fits our weather, there's no summer in Kajaani...):

 

[Jobbs]

There's a lot of aerial stuff you can do in the second half of the game. For the hell of it, here's a quick rundown.

Once you get the multijump, you're permitted 3 mid-air jumps. This is pretty straightforward.

However, it's possible to get a 4th by timing your button press properly after a dash ends. You know you got it because the FX trail is red instead of purple.

secret jump: http://www.gfycat.com/SpecificChubbyAmericanwirehair

You can combine this with multijump to get 4 jumps total in the air. However, it's possible to get, in effect, a 5th jump by aiming and releasing the charge blast downward.

5 jumps: http://www.gfycat.com/TenderSpottedGar

Finally, once you get the multidash skill, your dash refreshes every time you dash through an enemy, allowing you to chain through enemies and stay in the air. When combined with your other abilities and even more abilities (not shown yet) and flying enemies, you can skillfully reach great distances or great heights.

multidash demonstration: http://www.gfycat.com/WetArcticIndianringneckparakeet

 

[_machine]

multidash demonstration: http://www.gfycat.com/WetArcticIndianringneckparakeet

Love it!

It just feels a lot less static than any metroid game and I love that sort of skill mastery in games even if I usually suck too much to pull of any impressive moves.

 

[Yoshi]

For my game I'm currently building the level editor and because Nintendo still didn't feel the need to answer my request from april, I'm now running into the problem of not knowing what they will allow in reagrd to saving / loading data:
- Can I just use standard C# fille loading / saving operations for text files...
- Can I use standard C# serialization...
... if I want to build the game for Wii U? I'd like to not hard-code the levels into the game and I'm also still thinking about including the leveleditor for the players to use to their liking, so this seems to be the most convenient way to load / save the levels. Sorry I'm again asking trivial stuff about Wii U development .

 

[superNESjoe]

There's a lot of aerial stuff you can do in the second half of the game. For the hell of it, here's a quick rundown.

Once you get the multijump, you're permitted 3 mid-air jumps. This is pretty straightforward.

However, it's possible to get a 4th by timing your button press properly after a dash ends. You know you got it because the FX trail is red instead of purple.

secret jump: http://www.gfycat.com/SpecificChubbyAmericanwirehair

You can combine this with multijump to get 4 jumps total in the air. However, it's possible to get, in effect, a 5th jump by aiming and releasing the charge blast downward.

5 jumps: http://www.gfycat.com/TenderSpottedGar

Finally, once you get the multidash skill, your dash refreshes every time you dash through an enemy, allowing you to chain through enemies and stay in the air. When combined with your other abilities and even more abilities (not shown yet) and flying enemies, you can skillfully reach great distances or great heights.

multidash demonstration: http://www.gfycat.com/WetArcticIndianringneckparakeet

How far along are you on this project? Do you have a target launch in mind, and what platforms are you going to support? The visuals are awesome, love the idea behind some of these mechanics too.

 

[Das-J]

Das-J, care to explain your approach to the emissive elements here?

I get that it can look a bit better than having just an emissive material, but it looks like a pain to manage and not a huge ROI.

Ha well I think we'd argue that it's not that many light sources... I've certainly seen QUITE a few more in the AAA games I've worked on.

AFAIK, the emmisive elements are handled by the bloom and glow value in the post process, so they're not tied into the lights.

 

[_machine]

Ha well I think we'd argue that it's not that many light sources... I've certainly seen QUITE a few more in the AAA games I've worked on.

AFAIK, the emmisive elements are handled by the bloom and glow value in the post process, so they're not tied into the lights.

Yeah it's not much when using a deferred renderer and not casting shadows, even if they are all movable (why are they movable btw and not stationary?), but just looks like a joy to manage. And yeah the materials are obviously emissive as well, just that I would like to know how much the added lights from them play in the scene (though you can obviously see that they do make a difference for the floor lights for example, you wouldn't see such a blue light ring around them without the point lights)

Tried a little private streaming of Ancestory a moment ago, some dealbreaker bugs left, but it was a ton of fun despite my decks being complete shite and losing nearly every match

EDIT: How's lauch been for you guys so far, Das? I certainly noticed it without really keeping a keen eye on the game, which is always good

 

[Das-J]

You actually pilot the ship, so they can't be stationary as they're a part of the player pawn.

Our ship is essentially a giant level moving through space!

 

[_machine]

You actually pilot the ship, so they can't be stationary as they're a part of the player pawn.

Our ship is essentially a giant level moving through space!

Oh right...I oughta get some sleep, the brain is no longer function as intended. It does look really great fwiw, I still couldn't guess you weren't a huge team with massive resources

 

[cbox]

For unity users, I tasked myself with creating a menu system. Right now I just made a bunch of canvases for each menu, and will tie them together with onclick events and some C#. Is there a better way? I'm trying to figure out how to navigate back to a previous canvas, but my severe lack of skill is proving difficult.

 

[Jacksinthe]

So i revamped my current wind and particle system so they can work together. They were previously decoupled and only my rain was affected by wind velocity. Now the particles react to wind, as well.

So here's a quick section of our Memory Bus:
http://gfycat.com/WealthyShadyAvians

NOTE: I removed environment geometry and other effects from this This section is pretty bonkers and I'm saving it for the trailer so I removed much of the sprite work and removed some train-specific enemies as not to show it before the trailer.

So depending on the speed of the train - the wind velocity can change and alter how much the particles are affected. Here we are at the very beginning of the Memory Bus where we are moving but not super fast. I have lots in the way of explosive eye-candy and one-off stuff that looks great when it goes boom - so adding wind changes to my particle system seemed like the right thing to do - especially on a fast moving train. Looks way nicer with the rest of the sprites up and higher speeds

I can now use my wind system globally and set parameters as needed for changes, fluctuations, etc by using simple triggers. I don't know how much "wind" will be in the game other than for shit like eye-candy but I figure small details like this, if only noticed and appreciated by a small handful, are worth it.