gelatinous wall walking thing I was working on on-stream.
That's is great...and also gross.
How did you animate that after building it? Do you chop it into sections and then animate the frames?
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
GAF Indie Game Development Thread 2: High Res Work for Low Res Pay
- Thread starter Jacksinthe
- Start date
- Status
That's is great...and also gross.
How did you animate that after building it? Do you chop it into sections and then animate the frames?
^ thanks 
and yes, that's pretty much it. sometimes I animate things more traditionally, but when it comes to many things it's all manipulation. This game has established a detailed painter look for sprites, so in order to maintain that detail it's hard to do it unless there's a lot of manipulation and nonsense. Next game will be cel shaded, I'm thinking.
and yes, that's pretty much it. sometimes I animate things more traditionally, but when it comes to many things it's all manipulation. This game has established a detailed painter look for sprites, so in order to maintain that detail it's hard to do it unless there's a lot of manipulation and nonsense. Next game will be cel shaded, I'm thinking.It's still #attentiongrabmonday for a few minutes over here, so here's the latest development in the Chronicles of the Daughter of the Sun, which is about as far as I should take this for now, or else I'll start working on it for good.
We'll be back to our regular Honey programming next, with some new animation soon
!
If anybody has other color ideas, I'm listening
We'll be back to our regular Honey programming next, with some new animation soon
ish
These are super clean looking and the designs are good. Is this representative of the type of in game sprite you'd like to have, or would that be a bit simpler?
TheHollowNight
Member
I'm liking the look of this!
Mystic River
Member
I love Picross and thus I love your Game! Was this made with Unity?
Edit
Wow I see you are a fellow Münsterländer, nice
I love Picross and thus I love your Game! Was this made with Unity?
Edit
Wow I see you are a fellow Münsterländer, nice
A Münsterländer with some interest in game-development.. rarely we meet
PixelBoom! is made with Cocos2d (Obj-C). The choice was made many years ago; Unity wasn't as big as it is now. (PixelBoom's development last almost three years, but to my defense: I predominantly worked on the game on Tuesdays)
Your Unity-stuff looks really impressiv. I still have not looked into Unity and decided to go with impactJS for my new game, but sometimes I have a feeling, I may regret that decision sometime in the future.
Go for it! Though I hope you won't regret that decision later on, when you try to fit all these animations in memory as you're animating your nth unique stuff, and wail to the stars "whyyyyy" :-D How many backgrounds are there in the game, and how many unique animations do you expect there to be per background?
(Ultimately I believe these kind of unique elements make all the difference, so I'd say the pain will be worth it!)
looks pretty nice to me
Thanks
Yeah, it's pretty representative. Maybe there'd be slightly less line detail depending on the actual size of the sprite on screen, but overall that'd be the direction. This kind of cel-shading+gradient makes for a pretty (relatively) time efficient animating pipeline, too, so it's a kind of production-driven design :-D
Haha I must say Münsterland is not really (digital)technology friendly, at least when it comes to games.A Münsterländer with some interest in game-development.. rarely we meet
Nah I don't think you will regret it, at least as long you stay in the 2D world and can port your game without hassle to the WiiU. But if you ever think about moving to Unity, I am more then happy to help you out and drink a beer =)
SpacePirate Ridley
Member
I agree with your opinions here. The whole "find the blue upgrade that allows you to break the blue blocks" thing is getting stale.
I'm leaning more and more towards some sort of open world where limitations are presented as very difficult challenges instead of invisible walls.
For example, this guy:
You can find him very early in the game. He's strong, he has 1800 HP (with your initial stats you'll deal him 5-10 damage points each time you hit it), and he uses his only arm to block most of your attacks. Also he deals around 35-40 damage, so 3 hits and you're done for.
The small platform over him, which leads to an upgrade, can be accessed if you jump on his head.
However, you're not able to jump that high at the moment, so if you want to get that upgrade so badly, you'll have to spend 5 intense minutes fighting him.
Since he's trapped inside the wall, he won't chase you if you decide to leave after engaging him. He was designed with this disadvantage in mind, making the player think "meh I can do this better, it'll be easier".
Love the lighting in this one. The enemy is really creepy. And I think the idea of not really being and invisible wall but just a really big challenge, is really interesting.
Absolutely love the room and Alice's poses.
So I wanted to wait a little longer, get a trailer ready, and introduce everything gradually, but I suddenly found out I won the PAX Australia Indie Showcase so my hand is forced I guess
My current game is called Lupinball. I really enjoy simple fast-paced couch multiplayer titles so I'm making my own. The characters are all wolves (they were chibi knights but I couldn't resist the pun in the title) and the aim is to knock all your opponents out using power shots (basically hadoukens that ricochet everywhere)
Screenies:
I'm excited but at the same time woefully unprepared. I don't think I have enough visual sexiness yet to make a good-length trailer, and I haven't got a good marketing or PR strategy in place yet. I'll at least try to use Twitter more: @MikeVentnor
Why is this stuff so hard guys.
My current game is called Lupinball. I really enjoy simple fast-paced couch multiplayer titles so I'm making my own. The characters are all wolves (they were chibi knights but I couldn't resist the pun in the title) and the aim is to knock all your opponents out using power shots (basically hadoukens that ricochet everywhere)
Screenies:
I'm excited but at the same time woefully unprepared. I don't think I have enough visual sexiness yet to make a good-length trailer, and I haven't got a good marketing or PR strategy in place yet. I'll at least try to use Twitter more: @MikeVentnor
Why is this stuff so hard guys.
So I wanted to wait a little longer, get a trailer ready, and introduce everything gradually, but I suddenly found out I won the PAX Australia Indie Showcase so my hand is forced I guess
My current game is called Lupinball. I really enjoy simple fast-paced couch multiplayer titles so I'm making my own. The characters are all wolves (they were chibi knights but I couldn't resist the pun in the title) and the aim is to knock all your opponents out using power shots (basically hadoukens that ricochet everywhere)
Screenies:
I'm excited but at the same time woefully unprepared. I don't think I have enough visual sexiness yet to make a good-length trailer, and I haven't got a good marketing or PR strategy in place yet. I'll at least try to use Twitter more: @MikeVentnor
Why is this stuff so hard guys.
Cool concept. Any exposure is good exposure. Congrats on your win!
P.S. Just keep winning awards. I think that'd be a great marketing strategy
Thanks!
Ufff. I'm expecting more than 100+ Backgrounds (around 50 per world). About the animations... I'm going for a "Manga" Style type of animations:
I'm not crazy enough to do full animations haha.
Thanks!
Thanks!
Ufff. I'm expecting more than 100+ Backgrounds (around 50 per world). About the animations... I'm going for a "Manga" Style type of animations:
I'm not crazy enough to do full animations haha.
Thanks!
Wow, that sounds like a LOT. I've got 30 BG's for Honey, with about 10 being variations and already I thought I went a bit overboard and maybe could've cut that by about a third.
Don't most VN's usually average around the 20-30 unique BG's mark?
As for animations, I'm not sure I understand: do you mean static pose with a vibrant line effect as in Hotel Dusk, so static poses with two frame animation? Or do you mean longer frame by frame animation to obtain a vibrant line effect? In both cases, that already spells hundreds of drawings, since even if you're going for the two-frame kind, that doubles your basic workload! That's quite a big time and energy commitment already to me. If you're ready for it, though, then I got nothing to say, go for it :-D
In other news and to encourage more posting of sketchy thing and wild ideas:
I said I wouldn't be working any more on that idea, so of course I did. Here's another "just one more sketch, call it research" thing, yet even more classic and derivative, but... it's fun, I guess :-D
Design's getting more detailed, too. I've even started some mockup animations... I'll just use those to transition back into my Honey work pipeline and pretend it's all going according to plan. Yup.
(Seriously, it is. Script is coming along just fine. Nothing to worry about. Honest.)
Remember, most room has around 3 background:
This top room is missing its left and right side view of the room (Still sketching), while the bottom one it's only one screen/background.
So this highly increase the number of backgrounds in the game.
Plus, there are two worlds (Which are totally different).
As for the poses, most of them are statics with two frames. But some of them such as event animations (when you kill a boss and animated scene appears on screen), are fully animated.
Yeah, I'm going ham. haha
Mechanical Snowman
Member
shaowebb
Member
Advice time for me.
I'm doin some experimenting with some mel scripts that'll generate me some cityscapes procedurally. This'll save me a ton of time on background asset production for the fighting game. I'm also looking at using paint effects brushes to make plants grow and such along timelines in scenes for nice pretty backgrounds when plants are required.
Here's where I need advice. I have an idea to take a 2d planar background and then to take a batch render of animations from a 3d background in maya. The idea is to try and apply the video of a much more polygon intensive background to the 2d one akin to how layered 2d backgrounds were used in the old SNK fighting games and such. Reason is to alleviate as much runtime rendering on the players as possible to free up processing power during matches online. No real models. No extra polygons to render.
If I do this will the lighting engine in a 3d environment create glare across the 2d planes making it look like a tv screen playing videos instead of like a 3d background illusion? Could use some lighting advice here in Unity on what sort of features I need to check into to try and work around this worry.
I'm doin some experimenting with some mel scripts that'll generate me some cityscapes procedurally. This'll save me a ton of time on background asset production for the fighting game. I'm also looking at using paint effects brushes to make plants grow and such along timelines in scenes for nice pretty backgrounds when plants are required.
Here's where I need advice. I have an idea to take a 2d planar background and then to take a batch render of animations from a 3d background in maya. The idea is to try and apply the video of a much more polygon intensive background to the 2d one akin to how layered 2d backgrounds were used in the old SNK fighting games and such. Reason is to alleviate as much runtime rendering on the players as possible to free up processing power during matches online. No real models. No extra polygons to render.
If I do this will the lighting engine in a 3d environment create glare across the 2d planes making it look like a tv screen playing videos instead of like a 3d background illusion? Could use some lighting advice here in Unity on what sort of features I need to check into to try and work around this worry.
Dude your backgrounds are gorgeous. I'm jelly.
Mechanical Snowman
Member
I don't know what style you're aiming for so this is very non-specific advice, but it may help -
You can make your shader completely flat in Unity so it doesn't take any lighting from the game (glare / specularity), no problem. If you're going to do this though, it might be an issue if you're using moving lighting in Unity, as whatever you render out of Maya would need to fake whatever lighting you have in Unity.
If you render a normal map with your 2D planes in Maya you could make it look a little more integrated into the game's lighting.
That looks good. The background is gorgeous, of course, but the flickering animation helps it feel slightly alive, keeping away the boredom that can creep in when staring at a static picture.
Benjamin_MFF
Member
I've been intrigued by this thread, and interested in learning how to make a game. I know that I want to create a 2D point and click adventure game. I've been researching Apple's Swift 2 and Adobe's Gaming SDK. I use to program with visual basic, but it has been over 12 years since I last looked at code. I am familiar with Adobe Premiere and have a slight familiarity with Photoshop. Where would a good place for me to start?
There are lots of good places to start. GameMaker, Unity, Construct, Stencyl and more. Long term, I think Unity is the better bet. More immediately, I'm biased to GameMaker. But you can't really go wrong here.
Hey, I'm new here but I just can't help but share:
I've finally got around to work on my game(a top down, fast paced, obstacle avoidance). A friend of mine was acquainted with C# so he's been coding the game on Unity, I'm on the design and art end. I told him about the game's concept and divided the work into modules, he sent me a build with rough parameters, I played around with the values and got it work just the way I want. Still play test every now and then and ask him to add more stuff. This is so much fun, played my game more than any game on my phone at one point even though there was just simple navigation, no enemies either. It's on android currently, I initially thought about PC but the game feels a lot better on Android.
I've also learned the basics of Unity and started looking into scripting tutorials to study the code so I don't have to rely on him entirely for code. The art isn't finalized because I want to make sure at least one level of the game is complete before I proceed to that so I don't want to share a screenshot just yet. There's a lot of details about design that I haven't decided on, I showed it to my colleague(who's also a game designer) and told him about the objective but he suggested that it was too simple so I've decided to change it.
I've finally got around to work on my game(a top down, fast paced, obstacle avoidance). A friend of mine was acquainted with C# so he's been coding the game on Unity, I'm on the design and art end. I told him about the game's concept and divided the work into modules, he sent me a build with rough parameters, I played around with the values and got it work just the way I want. Still play test every now and then and ask him to add more stuff. This is so much fun, played my game more than any game on my phone at one point even though there was just simple navigation, no enemies either. It's on android currently, I initially thought about PC but the game feels a lot better on Android.
I've also learned the basics of Unity and started looking into scripting tutorials to study the code so I don't have to rely on him entirely for code. The art isn't finalized because I want to make sure at least one level of the game is complete before I proceed to that so I don't want to share a screenshot just yet. There's a lot of details about design that I haven't decided on, I showed it to my colleague(who's also a game designer) and told him about the objective but he suggested that it was too simple so I've decided to change it.
So I wanted to wait a little longer, get a trailer ready, and introduce everything gradually, but I suddenly found out I won the PAX Australia Indie Showcase so my hand is forced I guess
You poor thing
This is so beautiful. Not sure what type of gameplay you are aiming for, storytelling seems to be a huge part of it?
SpacePirate Ridley
Member
Oh my! thats gorgeous!
Jacksinthe
Banned
Working on a new trailer that's to be launched very, very soon. Anyone wanna give some quickfeed? Just PM and I'll link it to you.
Really excited that I'll be leaving for GDCEU/Gamescom on early Sunday and that two of our programmers will be at coxcon presenting the game. Hopefully we'll get some great feedback for the push towards release.
Really excited that I'll be leaving for GDCEU/Gamescom on early Sunday and that two of our programmers will be at coxcon presenting the game. Hopefully we'll get some great feedback for the push towards release.
WanderingWind
Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
Fo sho.
Another AI Test, I've added avoidance to the front and T-split behavior:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYdGTHSNc9U
Still some problems as you can see. When 2 cars turn at the same time they tend to stick next to each other. Already got some solutions how to fix that (hopefully).
I've also changed it so that cars use the waypoints to determine their speed, instead of checking if the waypoint is a corner/t-split/etc which makes the behavior tree a mess.
Happy with the way the cars always seem to "fix" themselves if they get stuck or bumped out of the route.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYdGTHSNc9U
Still some problems as you can see. When 2 cars turn at the same time they tend to stick next to each other. Already got some solutions how to fix that (hopefully).
I've also changed it so that cars use the waypoints to determine their speed, instead of checking if the waypoint is a corner/t-split/etc which makes the behavior tree a mess.
Happy with the way the cars always seem to "fix" themselves if they get stuck or bumped out of the route.
For what it's worth, I haven't programmed anything in over 7 years, and it is all coming back to me fairly quickly with Unity and C#. Unity may be overkill for a simple point and click adventure game, but you can probably learn enough about the code and the interface to make the skeleton of a point and click game in about a week (going from not knowing any code at all to having everything made other than story and assets for your game).
The best thing about Unity and C# is that there is a ton of documentation out there to help you come to grips with how everything works.
Jacksinthe
Banned
Wish me luck today, all. The past week or so I've been playing President Business (havent engaged much) trying to move a few last pieces into position and I send my pitch in today to company A. Hope as fuck they say yes. Will be beyond huge and I'm sweating it.
Sounds super exciting, here's to good luck!
JeffG
Member
Good luck man!
Thanks!
It's a Visual Novel with Point & Click elements.
Not sure what your issue is. Looks like any city driving I have seen in real life.
Human-like behavior sorted xD.
I think Lilith was banned for arguing against the metric system?
No, she made some naive remarks about texting and driving. Her ban is up in a couple weeks.
Is the troll face copyrighted? I thought it was in the public domain. If it's not, no, that's too similar.
I think Lilith was banned for arguing against the metric system?
I didn't realize the metric system was that unfuckwithable. Mind your p's and q's people.
-COOLIO-
The Everyman
nope, the artist is actually pretty litigious, lol.
thanks for the advice, ill change it up more.
That's interesting. I've seen it on a lot of seemingly unofficial stuff. Good that you're trying to be on the up-and-up, though.
Jacksinthe
Banned
OH FUCK SENT!
Thanks guys for the good words. Now I sit and wait. There's a bit of leverage I can use with this particular situation in the form of a competitor and I don't want to go that route but hell if I'm not going spheres to the wall with this!
Thanks guys for the good words. Now I sit and wait. There's a bit of leverage I can use with this particular situation in the form of a competitor and I don't want to go that route but hell if I'm not going spheres to the wall with this!
- Status