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GAF Indie Game Development Thread 2: High Res Work for Low Res Pay
- Thread starter Jacksinthe
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It says Windows XP under system requirements. Is there any way you can get that to list the other, more recent versions of windows as well? When randomly glancing at the game, that makes it look like its a new steam release of an old game that may not run on windows 7 or 8.
I feel like a more accurate listing of the compatible operating systems may help.
Sorry to hear it didn't meet expectations -- If it makes you feel better, I bought it earlier this morning.
Jacksinthe
Banned
What the fuck!? Define bomb?
BomberMouse
Member
I'm sorry to hear that. Feels like indie dev is half building hype and visibility around a project nowadays.
It's still early, man. The game was only released yesterday and there's plenty of time for it to garner some support. Hopefully some good word of mouth and marketing will get people to jump in. Promote the game like crazy.
I didn't really have any expectations going into it because I know how Steam works and how the game has been managed throughout development. It's also the fact that no one knows it exists I think. And we all know publicity is the name of the game.
I'll definitely update the system requirements as that's something I didn't think too deep into regarding listing OSs.
It's all good though. Like you guys said, keep promoting and hope for the best. I'm happy it's finally out there.
I'll definitely update the system requirements as that's something I didn't think too deep into regarding listing OSs.
It's all good though. Like you guys said, keep promoting and hope for the best. I'm happy it's finally out there.
I know how that's goes. I'm sure I'll be in the same boat once my game comes out. Been trying to slowly build up a following and it seems to be working...but it's slow going. Promoting is such a long and tiring process. In any case, I do hope you guys do well over time. I'd honestly rather see people succeed than fail.
That does kind of remind me. Anyone here good at making trailers? I'd like to do another one for my game, but I suck at it. Perhaps someone can lend us a hand in getting one done.
That does kind of remind me. Anyone here good at making trailers? I'd like to do another one for my game, but I suck at it. Perhaps someone can lend us a hand in getting one done.
Ok so a small review after playing it for 20 min.
The controlls are hard to master and its not because of input lag or anything.
Making the fire attack with ↓ and Attack in the middle of the air while you trying to mentain momentum from jumping, is very difficult.
The sound and music feels spot on for a game like this, but so far the first 20 have made the game look like a speedrunner title rather then an adventure game, which the trailer made me thought it where.
The controlls are hard to master and its not because of input lag or anything.
Making the fire attack with ↓ and Attack in the middle of the air while you trying to mentain momentum from jumping, is very difficult.
The sound and music feels spot on for a game like this, but so far the first 20 have made the game look like a speedrunner title rather then an adventure game, which the trailer made me thought it where.
I'm in the same situation, press didn't cared about my project and that killed all momentum of sales. We just have to be strong, I suggest that you make patches (maybe some extra content) and use your visibility rounds.
The parallax effect looks crazy. I also noticed how you have some sort of 3d effect with those rocks in the foreground. It's subtle but adds a nice touch of extra depth.
Amazing work. Keep it up!
Wow man, I just love how colorful it looks when all the lights are turned on. Also, the new mechanic seems to be really interesting. I can wait to see what you do with it.
This made me really sad. I haven't played your game yet (had no idea it got released) but it looks really promising, I think you deserve better sales. I'm going to buy it and I'll tell you my impressions as soon as I have time to enjoy it.
SquirrelWide
Member
I backed and was waiting until the steam release to play. Thanks for reminding me. I just got past the first boss. Overall, I liked the design and I think most of my deaths were due to my beginners skill at the game (though I'm looking side eyed at a few bat to head encounters). Happy I backed. That said, here's some things that seem like glaring oversights to me. I hope you can take them on to your next project (because from what little I played, I hope there's a next project).
Egregious:
- I can't exit the game from full screen mode. I have to exit full screen mode then x out the window. That's turrrrrible.
- Pausing the game doesn't pause the rising tide. Unsure if that was a design decision to raise tension or something, but it only raised my annoyance levels.
Not egregious, but still a problem:
- First boss does nothing to indicate that he's getting close to death that I could see. No change in behavior, no palette changes. I would have likes something. I began to wonder if he was ever going down.
Possibly preference based:
- I would have preferred analog stick support. Even having grown up on the NES, the d pad felt a bit awkward. That may just go away as I log more time.
I just want to reiterate that I like the overall product. As for the marketing, I don't recall seeing your game ever popping up in <insert games news site>. I usually keep appraised of a few major sites, but wasn't keeping up the past two months. So take that with a grain of salt.
I skimmed through your past KS updates. I saw you went to PAX east, but I'm not sure you went to any other conventions. The postmortems I've read put a lot of emphasis on community building for indie teams. Maybe there was a gap there you can improve upon for future efforts?
Thanks for checking it out, I appreciate it.
Believe me I know it's ridiculous you can't pause and that you can't quit out of the game normally. Also analog controls and key bindings are also something I know should have gone into the game. I'll probably be writing a post mortem for the game because I really want to tell people about its development and how bad management can really sour something that had the potential to be something really special. I'm not saying the game isn't good, because I feel like it is, but there are definitely some incredibly odd design choices since day one that were out of my control.
Dynamite Shikoku
Congratulations, you really deserve it!
Sounds like it was a bumpy ride. Did you have a publisher?
It was one programmer/director and one artist originally, which in reality was one programmer and one artist/designer/level designer.
Then after the kickstarter it was me as a programmer, the original programer, and the artist/designer. Slowly our relationship with the director became less of a director role and more of a publisher relationship or something? The artist basically did everything from the art to the level design to the game design. There were certain things our director insisted on throughout development that we knew weren't good, but he insisted.
Then for a year I was the only one working on the game as I rewrote the entire thing basically because there were so many awful design choices. I couldn't live with it being released in the buggy and bonkers state it originally was in.
So yeah, Paleozoic won't be making another game as far as I'm concerned. But the artist (my brother) and I are planning on continuing to make games ourselves.
Dynamite Shikoku
Congratulations, you really deserve it!
Well, good on you for getting it done. You sound like you have a good head on your shoulders so I bet you and your brother will be able to make something special by yourselves.
This is why I should have tried to make something 4+ years ago instead. It's still a lifelong goal of mine to get a game on Steam, even if when I finally do it, I'm one of the last people on the planet to get there.
I drew some key frames for a new beastie on stream earlier, later gonna animate them together. In this image, the center frame was conceived as a key frame to make him bubble up and explode from (he's a gelatinous kamikaze frog man that'll bubble and explode) but now I'm thinking of making that the neutral idle pose because someone pointed out that it looks nice and creepy.
Been such a long while since I posted a talky gif here. I know, I know, it ain't new assets, but it's about the only thing I have to show these days!
The biggest missing point from these gifs is the music. Can't wait until I can properly showcase the soundtrack! I love it, and can't thank Morusque enough for it. It's about done, barring some unexpected developments.
New animations should be coming next month, if all goes according to plan. Hopefully they do. 'might've melted before then (seriously, thank whoever invented USB desk fans)
The biggest missing point from these gifs is the music. Can't wait until I can properly showcase the soundtrack! I love it, and can't thank Morusque enough for it. It's about done, barring some unexpected developments.
New animations should be coming next month, if all goes according to plan. Hopefully they do. 'might've melted before then (seriously, thank whoever invented USB desk fans)
Been such a long while since I posted a talky gif here. I know, I know, it ain't new assets, but it's about the only thing I have to show these days!
The biggest missing point from these gifs is the music. Can't wait until I can properly showcase the soundtrack! I love it, and can't thank Morusque enough for it. It's about done, barring some unexpected developments.
New animations should be coming next month, if all goes according to plan. Hopefully they do. 'might've melted before then (seriously, thank whoever invented USB desk fans)
I like music! Do you have a Sound Cloud account or something?
also
bitch pls
A new teaser of the desert map, still needs some work on the dynamic sand material, but really happy how it's turning out
We're also getting some live recorded music for it, which sounds really awesome. We're currently playing some Civ V at a one of our developers' cottage and I mistook the song for the Civ's soundtrack
Finally finished creating the 20-level campaign of the game as well as the level hub to access them and the highscore etc. I think I succeeded in making each level as unique as possible in terms of gameplay without rushing too fast through the gameplay elements. I found it to be really challenging to find the right balance between "introduce many unique gameplay elements for diversity" and "build upon existing elements so the player can master them and feel great". Too much of the latter and it might get boring after a while, but too much of the former could confuse the player and feel convoluted, plus "I really liked element X but it was only in level A and after that I've never seen it again". I think I'll need some extensive playtesting to see if it worked and adjust the levels accordingly where it didn't.
How do you approach this dilemma?
New gif: (I wish I could make them longer, but they always end up > 30mb even heavily compressed if over 10s). We can't embed from gfycat, right?
This is from a level where you have to look for hints in the environment (floor texts, suspicious trap patterns etc.) to find hidden pathways, memorize their pattern and use them to get to the next section. One wrong "step" and you fall down.
They are also used in several levels to access secret areas with extra-hard trap patterns. Mastering these rewards the player with clues on the location of the entrance to the game's bonus level, Ballhalla.
How do you approach this dilemma?
New gif: (I wish I could make them longer, but they always end up > 30mb even heavily compressed if over 10s). We can't embed from gfycat, right?
This is from a level where you have to look for hints in the environment (floor texts, suspicious trap patterns etc.) to find hidden pathways, memorize their pattern and use them to get to the next section. One wrong "step" and you fall down.
They are also used in several levels to access secret areas with extra-hard trap patterns. Mastering these rewards the player with clues on the location of the entrance to the game's bonus level, Ballhalla.
My waterfalls and rivers can now be painted:
You have to get them somewhere by painting and choosing the right branches. The distortion fx is pretty extreme there because of the low resolution.
I'm also currently experimenting with spline meshes that get actually generated at runtime. Problem is that spline mesh collision is currently bugged in UE4. Tried random generation and going towards the player here which turned out to be pretty scary:
This pipe got me high:
At this point it got slow:
You have to get them somewhere by painting and choosing the right branches. The distortion fx is pretty extreme there because of the low resolution.
I'm also currently experimenting with spline meshes that get actually generated at runtime. Problem is that spline mesh collision is currently bugged in UE4. Tried random generation and going towards the player here which turned out to be pretty scary:
This pipe got me high:
At this point it got slow:
(Experimenting with dynamic camera)
Hey, so, a day late, but delivering something like I said. I got the go ahead from the guys I'm working with to show off what we've got.
It's nothing too fancy, but it's a start of what we're going for. We're about a 5 man team working on this part time inbetween school, work, and other stuff. Right now it's mostly been me and the lead programmer hacking away at this whenever we can (as you can tell by the lovely boxes/programmer art). We're waiting on some visuals to get done so we can start nailing down the art style,
(download version has a static camera)
It's a Joust-like arena fighter, simple controls to jump and dash around. You can do a dive and if you hit the ground while diving, you'll dismount, so we're going for a risk/reward thing.
Download Link
Controls (Keyboard)
Double tap left/right to dash.
Player 1 - WASD to move left/right, jump, and dive. E to mount.
Player 2 - IJKL, U to mount.
You should be able to plug in a controller and play that way. Controls for that are A to jump, Left/Right trigger to dash left/right, B to mount.
Known issues:
- Make the mounting/dismounting of your ride more intuitive. Right now it's split into two buttons, need to fix that up.
- Also, you can remount your ride from anywhere when you fall off, need to fix that to.
- Respawn system is a bit jank, when player 2 dies it respawns a copy of player 1 so, yeah, got to fix that.
- Have to force quit it/alt-tab and exit the application, so set the options to windowed mode when the Unity laucher comes up.
Any feedback is greatly appreciated. We're mostly experimenting, seeing how this works as well as how we work together. It's been interesting so far, hopeing we can make something more substantial out of this by the end of the summer.
Glendemonium
Member
Feeling pretty ecstatic right now. I'm not much of a programmer, but I've learned much these past few weeks using Steam tools and finally have achievements to work on Baxter's Venture: Director's Cut.
The game should launch next week as planned, as long as I don't find anymore issues.
The game should launch next week as planned, as long as I don't find anymore issues.
tamaster92
Member
Feeling pretty ecstatic right now. I'm not much of a programmer, but I've learned much these past few weeks using Steam tools and finally have achievements to work on Baxter's Venture: Director's Cut.
The game should launch next week as planned, as long as I don't find anymore issues.
How easy is steams stuff to integrate? Hoping to add achievements and friends list stuff to my game eventually but worried it might be too difficult for me alone
liliththepale
Banned
Feeling pretty ecstatic right now. I'm not much of a programmer, but I've learned much these past few weeks using Steam tools and finally have achievements to work on Baxter's Venture: Director's Cut.
The game should launch next week as planned, as long as I don't find anymore issues.
This looks crazy! Any videos of it yet?
AcceptableGhost
Member
I meant to ask you, is this shader something that comes with UE4 or did you work it up yourself? There are a few equivalents on the Unity store but their quality pales in comparison. And what's the CPU/GPU cost?My waterfalls and rivers can now be painted:
You have to get them somewhere by painting and choosing the right branches. The distortion fx is pretty extreme there because of the low resolution.
Been such a long while since I posted a talky gif here. I know, I know, it ain't new assets, but it's about the only thing I have to show these days!
The biggest missing point from these gifs is the music. Can't wait until I can properly showcase the soundtrack! I love it, and can't thank Morusque enough for it. It's about done, barring some unexpected developments.
New animations should be coming next month, if all goes according to plan. Hopefully they do. 'might've melted before then (seriously, thank whoever invented USB desk fans)
Man I love animations, good work!
The text was going so fast that I couldn't read it
Here's a demo track called Situation from our game. It's not fully mixed and mastered, yet.
I've been fascinated by these gifs as well. Really tight looking shader.
Man I love animations, good work!
The text was going so fast that I couldn't read it
Here's a demo track called Situation from our game. It's not fully mixed and mastered, yet.
Oh, nice! Very 999-y, isn't it? Makes for a tense atmosphere :-D Going to be for ambiance, battle, puzzle solving?
As for the speed of text, sorry about that! I tried to keep a balance between display time and gif size, but obviously leaned too far on one side. Thankfully you can take your time to read the stuff in the actual game :-D
SpacePirate Ridley
Member
dancrane212
Member
Got another chance to put some time into my little project. It's only a couple nights of work so it's focused on the player systems/controls but I couldn't resist putting up my first GIF (short laser and all).
I did enjoy that the day after I started working on this was the 20th anniversary of MechWarrior 2. Hopefully I'll be able to keep plugging away at this at a good rate; it's certainly been interesting so far.
I did enjoy that the day after I started working on this was the 20th anniversary of MechWarrior 2. Hopefully I'll be able to keep plugging away at this at a good rate; it's certainly been interesting so far.
I was bored this morning and did a drawing that sort of embodies what sort of thing I'd like to do next.
Like it.
After watching you work, I have a renewed interest in getting one of my projects actually working. Chatted to one of my programmer friends and he is ok with trying something if I can contribute art/design wise.
Ordered a Intuos Tablet and will start to have a play.
Are you planning on doing any more streams?
Thank you
Glad to hear something I did inspired you. The intuos takes some getting used to if you haven't drawn like this before. If you're new to this, I recommend mapping some important things to the onboard buttons, especially UNDO! You want to be able to rapidly undo your last stroke.Re. Streams yes, there will be more. I do them semi regularly lately.
Thank you
Re. Streams yes, there will be more. I do them semi regularly lately.
Since I was young, I have always loved doodling using pen and paper, so this will be a bit of a jump to a tablet. Any particular tutorials etc you suggest to get accustomed to it? Brushing up on Photoshop seems to be something on my To Do list.
The suggestion on the quick-button Undo makes sense, since I guess it makes it faster to quickly adjust something as you draw it.
I enjoyed the stream, especially watching you evolve designs.
Since I was young, I have always loved doodling using pen and paper, so this will be a bit of a jump to a tablet. Any particular tutorials etc you suggest to get accustomed to it? Brushing up on Photoshop seems to be something on my To Do list.
The suggestion on the quick-button Undo makes sense, since I guess it makes it faster to quickly adjust something as you draw it.
I enjoyed the stream, especially watching you evolve designs.
I use photoshop in a very nuts and bolts manner, and I've developed what may be an unusual drawing style. I tend to just get something on the screen, and then chip away at it until it looks good. I use the eraser tool as much as the brush for drawing. The eraser is used to help me carve out the lines how I want and get things nice and neat.
I also recommend flipping the canvas horizontally from time to time as you work. This will let you spot problems much easier, since you'll be seeing the drawing you did in a fresh, more objective way. It works.
Flipping your drawing to see it from a new perspective is a very good advice. It helps a lot, specially if you're drawing human beigns or things that should have some symmetry.
Honestly, it might sound weird, but just try it. Try drawing a face, then reversing it. It'll look horrible.
Honestly, it might sound weird, but just try it. Try drawing a face, then reversing it. It'll look horrible.
Actually I can draw a face without it looking horrible when flipped, but that's after years of flip training.
That must be it. I still freak out when I flip what I'm drawing xD
Post your results
I did this quick sketch:
"It doesn't look that bad, maybe this time I've done it right..."
Well shit
^ that's pretty good, really, and the funny thing is since I have objectivity on it, both left and right look about the same to me. It's a liiiitle slanted but not bad.
I gave it a shot. Honestly I'm a bit nervous that it could be wrong, since I'm used to checking by flipping, but here's what I sketched.
liliththepale
Banned
Post your results
I did this quick sketch:
"It doesn't look that bad, maybe this time I've done it right..."
Well shit
Which one I prefer depends on whether I'm scrolling down the page (top one) or back up it (bottom one). Basically, they both look good enough, but the contrast highlights the differences between them and the new looks weird.
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