Support NeoGAF

[Water]

Shoryuken.com, David Sirlin's various websites, and specialist wikis (Guilty Gear, Smash, Shoryuken and the Skullgirls wikis are very in-depth)

Seconded. Sirlin's site is great. Note that his current site doesn't link all of his old blog posts and articles, but you can still find some of them by googling. For instance:
http://sirlingames.squarespace.com/blog/2009/2/22/a-few-things-about-street-fighter-4.html
http://sirlingames.squarespace.com/...mpetitive-game-design-a-detailed-example.html

On Shoryuken, this ebook might be the place to start.
http://shoryuken.com/2014/07/07/lea...ng-games-with-our-free-beginners-guide-ebook/

 

[Peltz]

Hi! I'm dropping in to say that I'm available to help out with programming for anyone interested.

I mainly specialize in C++ (been working with that language for ten years). I am also familiar with x86 ASM, C#, and Python. I can get accustomed to most C-family languages within a reasonable amount of time however. I have access to Unity, but only the 4.6 free version.

I'm doing this free of charge on my free time. This means that I'm not suited for tasks that require full-time commitment. I retain no rights over the code I'm writing for a specific project of course. All I ask in return is acknowledgement on the credit roll.

PM me if interested.

Why wouldn't you have access to Unity 5? It's also free.

 

[tamaster92]

Does anyone else find themselves taking breaks to work on other stuff if a project is large and complicated?

I got frustrated at a part of my main game so instead for the past day or two i've been working on a twin stick shooter (geometry wars style) instead.


Its so much easier but fun to make and I got playable results very fast. Sort of reinvigorates me.

 

[Jintor]

Been playing a lot of skullgirls what with evo on the brain... Jaw on the floor with these animations. Not "some" of these animations. All of them. It's this and darkstalkers 3 for best animations ever to.

Meanwhile my crappy efforts should be burned and shot into the sun. Sigh

 

[Jobbs]

Does anyone else find themselves taking breaks to work on other stuff if a project is large and complicated?

No

 

[soultron]

Been playing a lot of skullgirls what with evo on the brain... Jaw on the floor with these animations. Not "some" of these animations. All of them. It's this and darkstalkers 3 for best animations ever to.

Meanwhile my crappy efforts should be burned and shot into the sun. Sigh

Keep working, you'll get there. Art takes practise, after all.

 

[Jintor]

well yeah, and i know a team of art animators worked on skullgirls for years and so on, but... when your idle animation skeleton boxes looks like shit and then the open source software you use crashes and takes your scribbles down with it anyway you just want to throw everything into the sun, ya dig?

 

[Water]

BTW guys, anyone got hints or recommendations specifically for tackling a 2D 1v1 fighting game in Unity - like about engine structure, dev workflow, freely available libraries/tools?
This is for a medium size student team building a prototype for about 1.5 months. $60 per seat plugins like UFE are out of the question.

 

[JNT]

Why wouldn't you have access to Unity 5? It's also free.

I would have to forego platforms that I want to support, and develop on, by upgrading to Unity 5. I could work around that limitation if there is a way to install Unity versions side-by-side.

 

[Jumplion]

well yeah, and i know a team of art animators worked on skullgirls for years and so on, but... when your idle animation skeleton boxes looks like shit and then the open source software you use crashes and takes your scribbles down with it anyway you just want to throw everything into the sun, ya dig?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Hkn-LSh7es

----

Just got a Blue Yeti microphone, been interested in voice acting and stuff for a while so I'm planning to experiment a bit with it. Right now I'm just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks, the past couple of days/weeks have been exhausting with summer classes so I'm in the mood to shake things up for myself.

I'll set a deadline for myself to give you guys something by Friday, 6:00pm. Having something/someone to be held accountable to helps me kick my ass into gear. I'm 21 as of today, feeling sentimental n' all, simultaneously pumped and deflated with what I'm doing. Thanks for being a place for me to just type stuff, even if I'm not the most "game dev-y" poster here.

 

[Jacksinthe]

I would have to forego platforms that I want to support, and develop on, by upgrading to Unity 5. I could work around that limitation if there is a way to install Unity versions side-by-side.

I have several Unity versions installed. Just use different install folders. Mine are named by version number. You will be fine.

 

[JNT]

I have several Unity versions installed. Just use different install folders. Mine are named by version number. You will be fine.

Okay. That's good to know. Still an issue of support for my development platforms though.

 

[Peltz]

Okay. That's good to know. Still an issue of support for my development platforms though.

At the risk of making everyone roll their eyes, what's a "development platform"?

 

[_machine]

Working on a production document for the final push towards the release, really happy to have 2 really experienced producers visit us this week, so hopefully the plan will be solid as a rock. In the meantime I thought it'd be time to present some of our characters to you, starting with the tribe's old blacksmith, Matti:

He's a fairly weak character, having died of old age and has no interest in battling after visting the underworld (all the minions are summoned to the battlefield from the underworld), but cheap cost and his charge skill makes him very useful at the start of a battle and in making quick, unexpected moves, though without any buffs his range is very limited.

Next up is the elder version, I'll try to snatch a GIF of his active skill tomorrow if I have a chance.

EDIT: Don't mind the version number, unfortunately it requires manual updating and the "programmers" haven't done so apparently

 

[electroflame]

Quick heads-up to my fellow Visual Studio users.

Visual Studio 2015 has been released today (finally out of the Release Candidate phase!). Unfortunately, most of the popular extensions (like the Color Theme Editor, Productivity Power Tools and VSCommands, to name a few) are not compatible.

The download page has been updated. Personally, I'm going to wait a bit (even though I'm dying to get rid of VS 2013) since I use some of the aforementioned extensions. Hopefully things get updated soon, as 2015 looks pretty nice.

 

[nitekrawlwer]

BTW guys, anyone got hints or recommendations specifically for tackling a 2D 1v1 fighting game in Unity - like about engine structure, dev workflow, freely available libraries/tools?
This is for a medium size student team building a prototype for about 1.5 months. $60 per seat plugins like UFE are out of the question.

This should work pretty well for you without much modification. I can also show you how to fake some of the stuff that UFE is doing but not quite as elegantly.

Even though I'm working in 3d I found a way to modify the process for any other people in unity looking at a good fighting game style collision but want 3d models. Beware cause it's kind of obtuse:

If you do go the 3d route and your animations are imported into Unity you'll also need this script(find in page "MultipleCurvesTransferer" for the working script) You need this script because Unity can't use the animation event system on imported animations. Which blows because said placement along the animation is what makes this method so intuitive. To right this read below cause it's kind of obtuse:

1. Place the MultipleCurvesTransferer script in your Assets/Editor folder.

2. Select the animation that you want to use the Animation Event System.(Sometimes the animation is a the child of a model. To select only the animation click the play button on the right side of the icon and find the piece of the hierarchy that looks like a larger play icon).

3.Navigate to Assets tab at the very top of the screen. In the dropdown you should now see Transfer Multiple Clips Curves to Copy at the very bottom if you added the script in step 1 in the correct folder. You'll see a confirmation message of success or failure in the debug log once you've selected the option. If it was successful you'll have a new folder at Assets/Animation and inside it you'll find an animation clip called XXXEdit and an animator.

4 You will need to take the Edit animation and place it into an empty game object in the scene. Once you've done that you should be able to open the animation window and see a frame by frame chart of your animation as well as also being able to add animation events to it just like in the 2d tutorial above.

5. Lastly if you are working with the legacy animation system like I am you have one more step which you can find here. Otherwise you can't add the clip to your gameobject's animation component.

I'm just using Unity's built in sphere and cube colliders and can instantiate and destroy each one on the frames I choose. This workflow and the visualization of pins on the chart just really accelerated my pace for hitbox creation and collision.

 

[JNT]

At the risk of making everyone roll their eyes, what's a "development platform"?

It's the system on which you develop your games. For me, that's OSX 10.6 (and old OS, dropped support) and Ubuntu (no official support but I can get 4.6 to work via Wine).

 

[_machine]

Heads up for people visiting Gamescom: Epic Gamescom Mixer - Wed 5th 5PM to 7PM. I can heartily recommend checking it out if you're in the neighbourhood.

 

[Peltz]

It's the system on which you develop your games. For me, that's OSX 10.6 (and old OS, dropped support) and Ubuntu (no official support but I can get 4.6 to work via Wine).

Ah, okay thanks for clearing that up.

 

[Popstar]

Quick heads-up to my fellow Visual Studio users.

Visual Studio 2015 has been released today (finally out of the Release Candidate phase!). Unfortunately, most of the popular extensions (like the Color Theme Editor, Productivity Power Tools and VSCommands, to name a few) are not compatible.

The download page has been updated. Personally, I'm going to wait a bit (even though I'm dying to get rid of VS 2013) since I use some of the aforementioned extensions. Hopefully things get updated soon, as 2015 looks pretty nice.

I should really wait since I'm too used to the Productivity Power Tools stuff to work well without it.

But I don't know if I can hold off on finally having proper C++11 support. I needs it.

EDIT: the Visual Studio Tools for Unity 2.0 are also out today which will be of interest to many.

 

[Feep]

This should work pretty well for you without much modification. I can also show you how to fake some of the stuff that UFE is doing but not quite as elegantly.

Even though I'm working in 3d I found a way to modify the process for any other people in unity looking at a good fighting game style collision but want 3d models. Beware cause it's kind of obtuse:

If you do go the 3d route and your animations are imported into Unity you'll also need this script(find in page "MultipleCurvesTransferer" for the working script) You need this script because Unity can't use the animation event system on imported animations. Which blows because said placement along the animation is what makes this method so intuitive. To right this read below cause it's kind of obtuse:

1. Place the MultipleCurvesTransferer script in your Assets/Editor folder.

2. Select the animation that you want to use the Animation Event System.(Sometimes the animation is a the child of a model. To select only the animation click the play button on the right side of the icon and find the piece of the hierarchy that looks like a larger play icon).

3.Navigate to Assets tab at the very top of the screen. In the dropdown you should now see Transfer Multiple Clips Curves to Copy at the very bottom if you added the script in step 1 in the correct folder. You'll see a confirmation message of success or failure in the debug log once you've selected the option. If it was successful you'll have a new folder at Assets/Animation and inside it you'll find an animation clip called XXXEdit and an animator.

4 You will need to take the Edit animation and place it into an empty game object in the scene. Once you've done that you should be able to open the animation window and see a frame by frame chart of your animation as well as also being able to add animation events to it just like in the 2d tutorial above.

5. Lastly if you are working with the legacy animation system like I am you have one more step which you can find here. Otherwise you can't add the clip to your gameobject's animation component.

I'm just using Unity's built in sphere and cube colliders and can instantiate and destroy each one on the frames I choose. This workflow and the visualization of pins on the chart just really accelerated my pace for hitbox creation and collision.

Am I missing something? I use animation events on all my animations, which are standard baked FBX...

 

[Hopeford]

Hmmm, I'm getting to a point where I'm like like, "I can do that, but SHOULD I?" which is kind of funny. At first I used to just toss in anything I could into the game because, hey, that's great! Now I'm not so sure.

I can put some slight animation to one of the "detective discovered the body" screens, but I'm honestly not sure if the end result is worth it or if it just makes it look worse.

Animation: http://gfycat.com/CommonShallowChipmunk
Normal: http://i.imgur.com/ukrjtgP.png

EDIT: the Visual Studio Tools for Unity 2.0 are also out today which will be of interest to many.

Whoa, thanks for mentioning that I'd totally have missed that otherwise.

 

[nitekrawlwer]

Am I missing something? I use animation events on all my animations, which are standard baked FBX...

That's interesting. When I try to place an animation event on an fbx file imported from 3ds max it just greys out all the options and displays (read only) after the animation name.

Appears that as of April 16th that they have fixed said issue. I simply haven't updated Unity since March. A few things broke moving from 4.xx to 5 so I've been staying put.

 

[Peltz]

Hmmm, I'm getting to a point where I'm like like, "I can do that, but SHOULD I?" which is kind of funny. At first I used to just toss in anything I could into the game because, hey, that's great! Now I'm not so sure.

I can put some slight animation to one of the "detective discovered the body" screens, but I'm honestly not sure if the end result is worth it or if it just makes it look worse.

Animation: http://gfycat.com/CommonShallowChipmunk
Normal: http://i.imgur.com/ukrjtgP.png



Whoa, thanks for mentioning that I'd totally have missed that otherwise.

That animation looks a bit off to be honest.

 

[Five]

Hmmm, I'm getting to a point where I'm like like, "I can do that, but SHOULD I?" which is kind of funny. At first I used to just toss in anything I could into the game because, hey, that's great! Now I'm not so sure.

I can put some slight animation to one of the "detective discovered the body" screens, but I'm honestly not sure if the end result is worth it or if it just makes it look worse.

Animation: http://gfycat.com/CommonShallowChipmunk
Normal: http://i.imgur.com/ukrjtgP.png

I can't tell if this is also true in the animation due to the gfy compression, but the room looks really flat. The near and far plane have the same level of focus, with some especially granular details on the back wall.

 

[Jintor]

Animation: http://gfycat.com/CommonShallowChipmunk
Normal: http://i.imgur.com/ukrjtgP.png

looks like the rope is inexplicably gaining length as the body kind of rotates sideways

 

[Hopeford]

Thanks guys! Yeah, that animation looked off to me too, just wanted to make sure it wasn't just me. Tried fixing it a bit...http://gfycat.com/GentleDimwittedFennecfox buuut I think it seriously doesn't work. I'll probably just settle for the still picture. Or just get a new picture for that entirely, not too happy with the current stuff. Ehhhhh, ah well., live and learn.

 

[Jintor]

i think the main problem is the ropes don't look like they're separate from the body, or to put it another way, the body doesn't look like it's suspended by the ropes so much as the ropes are, like, part of its limbs or something

 

[Jacksinthe]

It's the system on which you develop your games. For me, that's OSX 10.6 (and old OS, dropped support) and Ubuntu (no official support but I can get 4.6 to work via Wine).

Does 5 not work with OSX 10.6? I don't have a Mac.

Also I would nix running Unity in Linux. No. Seriously. You will run into issues somewhere. Its not worth the effort as I've known too many people that spent far too much time fixing Unity issues via Wine than just booting into Windows. Just build for Linux if you want to test a game for Linux. You can do that from PC of Mac just fine. I use Mint and Arch as my main platforms and wouldn't even think about trying to get Unity to run proper without causing issues. Not worth the risk for any project, IMO. I just boot to Windows.

Just my .02

 

[TheHollowNight]

*waves*

Saw you guys demoing with us at Manchester Day! I was a little bit frazzled after chatting to so many folks all day regarding Beacon and remember being TERRIBLE at your game when I came over to check it out and say hello. Was great to play it with some classic SNES controllers though!

 

[mStudios]

WE JUST SAVED OUR ASSES
MY BROTHER PLAYED A 5 DOLLAR BINGO
AND WON
1,500USD

I let my emotion take over me for a bit, but hell, this is amazing.

 

[electroflame]

Quick heads-up to my fellow Visual Studio users.

Visual Studio 2015 has been released today (finally out of the Release Candidate phase!). Unfortunately, most of the popular extensions (like the Color Theme Editor, Productivity Power Tools and VSCommands, to name a few) are not compatible.

The download page has been updated. Personally, I'm going to wait a bit (even though I'm dying to get rid of VS 2013) since I use some of the aforementioned extensions. Hopefully things get updated soon, as 2015 looks pretty nice.

I should really wait since I'm too used to the Productivity Power Tools stuff to work well without it.

But I don't know if I can hold off on finally having proper C++11 support. I needs it.

EDIT: the Visual Studio Tools for Unity 2.0 are also out today which will be of interest to many.

Just a quick update on this, Productivity Power Tools now has a version for Visual Studio 2015. It also looks like you can also force the Color Theme Editor extension from 2013 to work with 2015.

I think that this is probably enough for me to install 2015 and give it a shot. It probably won't completely replace 2013 until all of the extensions that I use are updated, but two of the most-important ones seem to work.

 

[Popstar]

Awesome. I already installed it just to check it out but this means I don't have to dither over whether or not to switch to it fully.

WE JUST SAVED OUR ASSES
MY BROTHER PLAYED A 5 DOLLAR BINGO
AND WON
1,500USD

Also Awesome!

 

[Nudull]

I've been thinking of doing some simple game concepts for my first few projects (thanks to some advice from a friend, you know who you are ), get a feel of development in general (and keeping myself in check, so I don't get too ambitious). Dunno if I should try tinkering with Stencyl or RPG Maker VX first.

I made a small sprite of Celia.
I might as well finish the whole thing and make a 30 minutes-long MetroidVaina

WE JUST SAVED OUR ASSES
MY BROTHER PLAYED A 5 DOLLAR BINGO
AND WON
1,500USD

I let my emotion take over me for a bit, but hell, this is amazing.

Very excellent on both accounts! So happy for you.

Trailer for our upcoming 4 player coop steampunk vehicle action game "Goggles" (-: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kjj__72EcI

We're currently on Greenlight, mendicant for "Yes" votes: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=479033306

Engine is Unity 5 (was Unity 4 before) with additional tech like SpeedTree, PhotonNetwork, Relief Terrain etc. Shaders are custom. The game is content complete and is currently in bugfixing/balancing/optimizing phase.

Wow "Stempunk" and "Vehicle Combat" are a pretty unique combo, and you seemed to pull it off well. Kudos!

Voted on Greenlight, too.

 

[Feep]

That's interesting. When I try to place an animation event on an fbx file imported from 3ds max it just greys out all the options and displays (read only) after the animation name.

Appears that as of April 16th that they have fixed said issue. I simply haven't updated Unity since March. A few things broke moving from 4.xx to 5 so I've been staying put.

Oh, I think you're using legacy events? This comment from the article is how I do it:

"It doesn't appear to be documented, but at some point, Events were added at the FBX container on the Animations tab. So, you can add animation events there for your read-only, imported animations.

You still can't do it at the Animations window for imported animation files. I guess because that's an attempt to change the read-only file, rather than the import metadata.

Removing my vote, since this works for me."

You go into the animation tab of the imported .fbx, expand events, hit the little + button, and place the event. You give it a name. You then need to have a separate script (I just call mine AnimationEventReceiver.cs) that has a method public void NAMEOFEVENT(), which gets called when the animation hits that point.

If you were at 5.0 you can also add scripts to animation states in Mecanim, but it's a little wonky still. I like events.

 

[Kitbash]

You go into the animation tab of the imported .fbx, expand events, hit the little + button, and place the event. You give it a name. You then need to have a separate script (I just call mine AnimationEventReceiver.cs) that has a method public void NAMEOFEVENT(), which gets called when the animation hits that point.

I wish they'd make it a bit easier to find these events after they've been added, such as an extra column in the Clips list or a different colour for the clip's icon. Events is collapsed by default, and even when it's expanded you only see a 3-pixel marker for an event. I'm always worried I'm going to come back after a few months and not know where these events are coming from...

 

[Feep]

I wish they'd make it a bit easier to find these events after they've been added, such as an extra column in the Clips list or a different colour for the clip's icon. Events is collapsed by default, and even when it's expanded you only see a 3-pixel marker for an event. I'm always worried I'm going to come back after a few months and not know where these events are coming from...

Definitely. For what feels to me like a very vital functionality, it sure is buried and deemphasized. I would have made it bright and pretty!

 

[LightningXCE]

What am I doing with my life

 

[TheHollowNight]

I love making dumb stuff like this

 

[nitekrawlwer]

Oh, I think you're using legacy events? This comment from the article is how I do it:

"It doesn't appear to be documented, but at some point, Events were added at the FBX container on the Animations tab. So, you can add animation events there for your read-only, imported animations.

You still can't do it at the Animations window for imported animation files. I guess because that's an attempt to change the read-only file, rather than the import metadata.

Removing my vote, since this works for me."

You go into the animation tab of the imported .fbx, expand events, hit the little + button, and place the event. You give it a name. You then need to have a separate script (I just call mine AnimationEventReceiver.cs) that has a method public void NAMEOFEVENT(), which gets called when the animation hits that point.

If you were at 5.0 you can also add scripts to animation states in Mecanim, but it's a little wonky still. I like events.

Even with Kitbash's screen cap I can't find out how to place events there. I think i recognize that as the animation tab but seeing no such thing on my screen. Either way this method is a little wonky but it does get let me place the animation events in the animation window.

I stuck with legacy because for some time Mecanim couldn't transition to back into the state it was already in so that I could get cancelling behavior. AbsintheGames helped me out there a few months ago with a coroutine solution. I remember reading that they updated and added that feature to mecanim in a change log a few weeks back.

I'm kinda interested in trying out more of the new updates and features. I'm very pleased that it seems they are working on improving the issues people experience. This is twice now they've gotten to issues that I've had specifically. I just want to keep my workflow for this project locked down so that I can get her done.

 

[Feep]

Even with Kitbash's screen cap I can't find out how to place events there. I think i recognize that as the animation tab but seeing no such thing on my screen. Either way this method is a little wonky but it does get let me place the animation events in the animation window.

I stuck with legacy because for some time Mecanim couldn't transition to back into the state it was already in so that I could get cancelling behavior. AbsintheGames helped me out there a few months ago with a coroutine solution. I remember reading that they updated and added that feature to mecanim in a change log a few weeks back.

I'm kinda interested in trying out more of the new updates and features. I'm very pleased that it seems they are working on improving the issues people experience. This is twice now they've gotten to issues that I've had specifically. I just want to keep my workflow for this project locked down so that I can get her done.

Mecanim was nearly unusable when it was first released, and only now have they really added enough features to avoid having to do a bunch of hacky crap to get it working. The way transitions and blending are handled is still awkward, but it's finally decent, at least.

Not sure why that isn't showing up...it's definitely the animations tab of the imported file for sure. :/

 

[Hopeford]

i think the main problem is the ropes don't look like they're separate from the body, or to put it another way, the body doesn't look like it's suspended by the ropes so much as the ropes are, like, part of its limbs or something

Hmm, you might be right. Looking at it again that really does seem like the part that stands out the most. Think it's worth a shot to try to change that. Being perfectly honest, I had a really lazy setup for this so far. Basically just had the body mapped onto a plane. It was a really hacky way of doing it but I figured it would work fine. Since that uh, didn't, I'm gonna model the actual body then do some blender rigidbody stuff to make at least the ropes seem more natural. Guess I should at least give it my best shot before I give up on that attempt!

And after I fail miserably at that, then I'll give up!

WE JUST SAVED OUR ASSES
MY BROTHER PLAYED A 5 DOLLAR BINGO
AND WON
1,500USD

I let my emotion take over me for a bit, but hell, this is amazing.

That's fantastic! Congrats, that sounds like the best kind of surprise!

 

[Kitbash]

Even with Kitbash's screen cap I can't find out how to place events there. I think i recognize that as the animation tab but seeing no such thing on my screen.

Here's the official reference for how to go about it, in case that helps.

 

[nitekrawlwer]

Here's the official reference for how to go about it, in case that helps.

Yeah that's where I'm looking... It's just not on my screen.

I notice you have a black background is it a pro vs personal difference?

 

[_machine]

I love making dumb stuff like this

I love looking at dumb stuff like that. What kind of lighting setup are you using by the way, is most of it baked or are all the small point lights dynamic?

 

[Jobbs]

I was talking about this earlier. There's something oddly paradoxical about certain aspects of level design, especially when creating a somewhat "hardcore" metroidvania.

There are often various ways for the player to go, but in many cases, as the designer, you want to subtly influence their decision or otherwise direct their attention to something that may be useful to them. I do this throughout the game using flowers, lights, glowy things, moving things, or just whatever -- A shiny object to direct the player's attention. It makes sense to me, but it's not necessarily just that simple.

An example:

The player approaches from the bottom, and if they look around the room they'll spot two paths to take. The path to the right leads to a save room, and the path to the left leads to hell. To encourage the player to go to the save room first, I placed glow in the dark flowers around that path, and shrouded the left path in shadows.

I posted this image on twitter and invited discussion. Some people pointed out that the left path is more appealing because it looks secret.

And this exposes one of the complexities of level design, especially when you're designing for maniacs who play hardcore games: Gamers, especially hardcore gamers, are subversive people. They're quite likely to identify where they think the game wants them to go and go the other way first.

How do you manage that, as a designer?

The answer is.. I'm not sure. But it must be folded into the process, there must be some consciousness of it, and hopefully this leads somewhere productive.

 

[liliththepale]

Jobbs, can you remind me what the save room looks like? Can you have a central plant in it with unique (to save rooms) flowers extending on vines, and have the vines/flowers wrap the entrance to the save room? So basically the same thing as you're already doing, but with clearer causality without being an artificial construction?

 

[Dynamite Shikoku]

I was talking about this earlier. There's something oddly paradoxical about certain aspects of level design, especially when creating a somewhat "hardcore" metroidvania.

There are often various ways for the player to go, but in many cases, as the designer, you want to subtly influence their decision or otherwise direct their attention to something that may be useful to them. I do this throughout the game using flowers, lights, glowy things, moving things, or just whatever -- A shiny object to direct the player's attention. It makes sense to me, but it's not necessarily just that simple.

An example:

The player approaches from the bottom, and if they look around the room they'll spot two paths to take. The path to the right leads to a save room, and the path to the left leads to hell. To encourage the player to go to the save room first, I placed glow in the dark flowers around that path, and shrouded the left path in shadows.

I posted this image on twitter and invited discussion. Some people pointed out that the left path is more appealing because it looks secret.

And this exposes one of the complexities of level design, especially when you're designing for maniacs who play hardcore games: Gamers, especially hardcore gamers, are subversive people. They're quite likely to identify where they think the game wants them to go and go the other way first.

How do you manage that, as a designer?

The answer is.. I'm not sure. But it must be folded into the process, there must be some consciousness of it, and hopefully this leads somewhere productive.

Can't you have a certain coloured light emitting from save areas or something that people will recognise?

 

[Jobbs]

Jobbs, can you remind me what the save room looks like? Can you have a central plant in it with unique (to save rooms) flowers extending on vines, and have the vines/flowers wrap the entrance to the save room? So basically the same thing as you're already doing, but with clearer causality without being an artificial construction?

Sure. You save at big animated save plants (they also make noise when you get near).

http://www.gfycat.com/AccomplishedKindCrocodile

As you can see in the gif, I typically I place smaller versions of them that lead up to them, sometimes from as far away as an adjacent room. (This really obvious style of clue, broadcasting with that level of specificity a save from a room away is more often done early in the game and done less later on.)

Can't you have a certain coloured light emitting from save areas or something that people will recognise?

You're missing the point. I'm not here to remove all question of where a save room is. I could also just put a sign that says "save room that way". That's not the point. The example of a save room was only an example. There are other times I would like to nudge the player one direction or another that don't pertain to saving.

It's less a "problem that needs a solution" and more just an interesting observation about the way people play games that it may help to be aware of during the design process.

 

[liliththepale]

Sure. You save at big animated save plants (they also make noise when you get near).

http://www.gfycat.com/AccomplishedKindCrocodile

As you can see in the gif, I typically I place smaller versions of them that lead up to them, sometimes from as far away as an adjacent room. (This really obvious style of clue, broadcasting with that level of specificity a save from a room away is more often done early in the game and done less later on.)

Why are you using the orange V flower instead of the green hook ones in the other scene? If you're still signposting, why not keep it consistent?