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[Jobbs]

It looks a bit odd when the one crawler's beam phases right through the other crawler's body. Not sure if anything should be done about that, especially as friendly fire is a big design change, but it was something I noticed.

Otherwise, these look great, as usual.

Thanks. I was just thinking about that, actually. There is one instance of friendly fire in the game now -- these missile like things that chase you around, it's possible to lead them into enemies -- But I don't know where to draw the line or where it becomes "nonsensical" in terms of friendly fire, because I don't think across the board friendly fire is going to happen.

edit: actually.. maybe across the board friendly fire in terms of enemy bullets hitting eachother could happen. Hmm.

 

[Ito]

Another thread would feel redundant, IMO. There's no real need to do that as you guys said.

We could limit the list to game + website + thumbnail (no author name, no twitter, etc) to save some characters. Or we can do it as Absinthe says and leave this more detailed list idea for future threads.

If you're busy Absinthe I'm more than willing to help you, just tell me. Pehesse also said he/she (sorry I don't know your gender xD) would help too.

Just spent a bunch of time today working on my glow cave stuff. I added a faint glow to teh player's bullets so that they can be seen in the dark. Also more other stuff. Notice the enemies themselves can glow in the dark along with the other rocks.

http://www.gfycat.com/HarmoniousUnhappyHusky
http://www.gfycat.com/HeartyFewFish

warning that first one has a pretty big file size.

Very cool, that crawler of the second gif is a rat hidding in the darkness.

It's weird I have never noticed this, but are you planning to make the character's head tilt when he shoots upwards/diagonally? It looks weird when the arm is pointing to the ceiling and the character is still looking forwards.

 

[Jobbs]

Another thread would feel redundant, IMO. There's no real need to do that as you guys said.

We could limit the list to game + website + thumbnail (no author name, no twitter, etc) to save some characters. Or we can do it as Absinthe says and leave this more detailed list idea for future threads.

If you're busy Absinthe I'm more than willing to help you, just tell me. Pehesse also said he/she (sorry I don't know your gender xD) would help too.





Very cool, that crawler of the second gif is a rat hidding in the darkness.

It's weird I have never noticed this, but are you planning to make the character's head tilt when he shoots upwards/diagonally? It looks weird when the arm is pointing to the ceiling and the character is still looking forwards.

Thanks

Back when I was originally drawing the frames, I remember not feeling like it was going to be easy to do the "aim up" while also looking up, at least not without redrawing the whole thing a lot, so I opted for the Robocop inspired no-look.

 

[Ito]

Thanks

Back when I was originally drawing the frames, I remember not feeling like it was going to be easy to do the "aim up" while also looking up, at least not without redrawing the whole thing a lot, so I opted for the Robocop inspired no-look.

Oh, I see. That's kind of badass too. Keep it up!

 

[Oppo]

who's using iTween in Unity?

i've been using it for a lot of stuff, but a buddy unity programmer warned me away from it yesterday. Said the performance drops like a rock after you've got too many calls. recommended GoTween.

 

[bkw]

who's using iTween in Unity?

i've been using it for a lot of stuff, but a buddy unity programmer warned me away from it yesterday. Said the performance drops like a rock after you've got too many calls. recommended GoTween.

I use DOTween, but I don't use it that extensively. Haven't noticed any crazy performance issues related to it yet.

 

[Dynamite Shikoku]

I use DOTween too

 

[Oppo]

ya DOTween. typo. ok thanks

 

[electroflame]

For what it's worth, I use DOTween as well.

I don't use it a lot, but it's super handy. Performance on it seems really, really good too.

 

[Jobbs]

It looks a bit odd when the one crawler's beam phases right through the other crawler's body. Not sure if anything should be done about that, especially as friendly fire is a big design change, but it was something I noticed.

Otherwise, these look great, as usual.

http://www.gfycat.com/CreepyTestyBunny

Are you not satisfied?!

 

[Five]

http://www.gfycat.com/CreepyTestyBunny

Are you not satisfied?!

Oh, neat!

Friendly fire is an interesting game mechanic. Used sparingly, it can either make the player feel good about baiting it out or make them feel some reprieve from the current situation.

As an aside, that's a fantastic URL you got there, ha ha.

 

[Pehesse]

http://www.gfycat.com/CreepyTestyBunny

Are you not satisfied?!

I'm definitely in favor of that happening!

 

[Peltz]

http://www.gfycat.com/CreepyTestyBunny

Are you not satisfied?!

The friendly fire looks strangely sexual... had one baddie not exploded, I'd have thought they were reproducing.

Spoiler

So yes, it's quite satisfying ;-p

(I'll see myself out now).

 

[Jobbs]

The friendly fire looks strangely sexual... had one baddie not exploded, I'd have thought they were reproducing.

Spoiler

So yes, it's quite satisfying ;-p

(I'll see myself out now).

That's exactly how it was designed, actually. Laser sperms.

 

[anteevy]

It's alive!

Closed Beta Trailer on Youtube...

Looks cool and really polished, I like it!

---

Finally got around to sending some mails to the press (to around 20 contacts). I'm quite happy that it was featured on Destructoid ( http://www.destructoid.com/roll-playing-game-gets-the-ball-rolling-this-fall-296917.phtml ), with some awesome comments. No other articles found though, but it's a start I guess. I'm proud of my tagline: "a rhythm-driven puzzle platformer to marble at"

 

[Fine Ham Abounds]

Having trouble getting gifcam to work anymore. For some reason the gifs want to come out in fast motion. Not sure why.

Anyway. Spent probably way too much time (all day) scripting what should have been a simple enemy.



Click for big webm.

Did I read right that you went back to Stencyl for this project? I just bought a license off that Humble deal, just wondering

 

[mooooose]

Hey, I had a question for any Unity3D devs.

I have a shot for a shooter that I need to collide and interect with the environment, but it should act like a trigger when it touches the player. What's the best way to handle that?

 

[Jobbs]

Did I read right that you went back to Stencyl for this project? I just bought a license off that Humble deal, just wondering

yea, it's stencyl. I don't know that I'd recommend stencyl for a LARGE project, there's some design shortcomings and other things that become really annoying on a large project, but for a starter program or for small to medium projects, fine.

BTW, I added an impact effect to help make the "laser" look better.

http://www.gfycat.com/ExcellentRemorsefulChinesecrocodilelizard

edit: changed some more stuff

http://www.gfycat.com/LegitimateBadFanworms

 

[electroflame]

Hey, I had a question for any Unity3D devs.

I have a shot for a shooter that I need to collide and interect with the environment, but it should act like a trigger when it touches the player. What's the best way to handle that?

Triggers can still collide and interact with stuff. You would probably need some game-specific code in an OnTriggerEnter function, though.

Alternatively, you could have two colliders on the shot. One larger than the object, and one that fits the object. Depending on what intersects the larger collider, you can toggle whether the smaller collider is a trigger or not.

Honestly, the first solution would be the one to try first, as that's more what I would consider the "correct" solution. If you outline what you meant by "collide and interact with the environment" I, or somebody else, could probably get you started on keeping it as a Trigger for everything.

 

[Nakho]

Triggers can still collide and interact with stuff. You would probably need some game-specific code in an OnTriggerEnter function, though.

Alternatively, you could have two colliders on the shot. One larger than the object, and one that fits the object. Depending on what intersects the larger collider, you can toggle whether the smaller collider is a trigger or not.

Honestly, the first solution would be the one to try first, as that's more what I would consider the "correct" solution. If you outline what you meant by "collide and interact with the environment" I, or somebody else, could probably get you started on keeping it as a Trigger for everything.

The Survival Shooter tutorial on Unity does this solution with two colliders for the enemies, maybe check it out.

 

[Jacksinthe]

@Pehesse - I'll take you up on that - gimme until tomorrow night.

The Survival Shooter tutorial on Unity does this solution with two colliders for the enemies, maybe check it out.

Why two?

On collision with environment
//do stuff

On collision with player
//do stuff

We're also working with "need to collide and interect with the environment" so we don't know the extent of what is required of the projectile to make proper calls at the moment.

Ricochet? Act as a particle? Lose velocity? Bounce? Disappear?

Best guess for not using multiple colliders when needed is to simply keep it a trigger and flip it off when you collide with the environment and //do whatever you want to do or do nothing on collision with the player. Use continuous detection if using rigidbody and call it a day. No need to use multiple colliders when one will do and can serve both purposes, depending on what those purposes are, again, with such limited info as the above its hard to make the right call.

Just my .02

 

[Peltz]

BTW, I added an impact effect to help make the "laser" look better.

"Laser"

BTW, it looks really good like that.

 

[Nakho]

@Pehesse - I'll take you up on that - gimme until tomorrow night.



Why two?

On collision with environment
//do stuff

On collision with player
//do stuff

We're also working with "need to collide and interect with the environment" so we don't know the extent of what is required of the projectile to make proper calls at the moment.

Ricochet? Act as a particle? Lose velocity? Bounce? Disappear?

Best guess for not using multiple colliders when needed is to simply keep it a trigger and flip it off when you collide with the environment and //do whatever you want to do or do nothing on collision with the player. Use continuous detection if using rigidbody and call it a day. No need to use multiple colliders when one will do and can serve both purposes, depending on what those purposes are, again, with such limited info as the above its hard to make the right call.

Just my .02

The Unity tutorial does it so when there is a collision with the outer collider the player is within enemy's grasp, and the enemy attacks, while a collision with the inner collider means the bullet hit the enemy. So, it's a nice implementation for when you need two different ranges, which I don't know if it's the case for him.

 

[Jacksinthe]

The Unity tutorial does it so when there is a collision with the outer collider the player is within enemy's grasp, and the enemy attacks, while a collision with the inner collider means the bullet hit the enemy. So, it's a nice implementation for when you need two different ranges, which I don't know if it's the case for him.

Raycast: distance

You most certainly can use multiple colliders, I would just rather use a single ray to check distance between collisions, though. I just prefer less things to worry about on my objects, TBH.

Different strokes

 

[_machine]

Looks cool and really polished, I like it!

---

Finally got around to sending some mails to the press (to around 20 contacts). I'm quite happy that it was featured on Destructoid ( http://www.destructoid.com/roll-playing-game-gets-the-ball-rolling-this-fall-296917.phtml ), with some awesome comments. No other articles found though, but it's a start I guess. I'm proud of my tagline: "a rhythm-driven puzzle platformer to marble at"

Thanks, and that's really awesome and I love your tagline, works super well and I'd open a mail titled like that

Just posted our latest update up on IndieDB too. So far the reception's been pretty good, though nothing big has happened, but we've gotten some good feedback on the actual game too even though there's no tutorial anything guiding the players in the beta. I'll have to send some more mails today and keep working on raising some possible extra interest

 

[Jobbs]

"Laser"

BTW, it looks really good like that.

finally someone understands

 

[Disheveled_Zen]

Looking to get some info from some of the people here. Myself and group of individuals that I have worked with before are looking to start working on our own game. We have a very solid grasp on the art and technical sides, but not so much the business end.

If anyone is up for answering some questions on how your team handled things like marketing, financials, funding, and so on, shoot me an IM. I'd appreciate getting some first hand tips and tricks about what to do/not do from those who have done it before.

 

[Jintor]

anybody working on beat-em-ups?

 

[mStudios]

anybody working on beat-em-ups?

Space Pirate Ridley

 

[Ito]

I remade Hibari's battle stance animation, the previous one felt outdated and since it's a very important animation I don't mind revising it every once in a while.

It's still a WIP, there are things that I don't like, but I'll be moving on to other things by now.

 

[Jobbs]

^ it looks good but I constantly worry about your ability to maintain the detailed motions and sub-motions throughout the animation set. I completely relate to your methodology and analness, since I've animated in a similar way, but you have even more details than I usually do. The cel shaded style I plan to do in my next game is in some ways a direct response to my experience in this one.

---

I put in my floating bloblords (another thing I drew on stream recently).

http://www.gfycat.com/ElasticPlayfulGopher (this is a big big file size even for a webm, sorry)

They roam about gently, never going more than a certain distance from their starting point (this turned out to be trickier to script (correctly, at least) than I'd imagined, fortunately I had a stencyl jedi help me).

They don't attack, and if you kill them, you take damage (the sound and visual FX make it seem like some kind of EMP wave emits ouit of them on death). Their primary purpose is to serve as an ideal multidash target. Once you have the multidash abuility, your dash is refreshed upon dashing through an enemy (as well as another air jump added to your airjump count).

 

[electroflame]

I remade Hibari's battle stance animation, the previous one felt outdated and since it's a very important animation I don't mind revising it every once in a while.

It's still a WIP, there are things that I don't like, but I'll be moving on to other things by now.

One thing you might want to look at is that it looks like (to me at least) that her right knee (as you look at her) is dislocating as it animates.

Otherwise, the animation looks really good!

 

[Jintor]

I dunno - I'm a newbie at animation, but it seems maybe a mite too active to me for an idle animation. Think about the energy you'd need to constantly be rotating your torso like that! But hey, it's not final

 

[senahorse]

Have an issue with Unity I am hoping someone might be able to help with.

Sometimes when I open my unity project the physics seem to be slightly broken.

I have a scene where I have some blocks stacked, when I hit play the transform coordinates start drifting on their own until the blocks all fall over, to fix this, I restart Unity and hit play and there is no drift. This seems to happen intermittently. I have triple checked the position values for all transforms involved but they are all spot on.

edit: on closer inspection it seems on play, all objects (stacked cubes) move the y coordinate in the positive direction by .000014 and the x coordinates by .000038

Any ideas?

 

[Nakho]

Raycast: distance

You most certainly can use multiple colliders, I would just rather use a single ray to check distance between collisions, though. I just prefer less things to worry about on my objects, TBH.

Different strokes

That is a cool solution too. Thanks for the tip

 

[TronLight]

Question for all 3d modelers out there: How would you go and UV unwrap something like this?

I had two ideas... But I don't know.

The first was basically to divide the model in section (say 8, via UV seams) and individually unwrap those. Works in theory (thanks to pelt and relax in 3DS Max it's really easy). But I get this:

As you see, it's not aligned. I don't know if that's a big problem, or a problem at all. I see lots of other uv maps with separated pieces for a single continuous object. I assume that if you're drawing your texture you can work around the misalignement, but I wanted to use a material (metal in this case), and I don't know if it would look good.Should I try and "puzzle" them back togheter and align them again?

Another way I was thinking about was divide the ring not in 8 pieces but in 2: the lower part which is basically just a ring and should unwrap easily into a straight line, and the upper part. But the upper part has those extruded pieces which might give some troubles...

Also, should I straigthen the shape out or leave it circular?

 

[Elitist1945]

Even though I don't know how to program as of yet, I'm toying around with several ideas for a game. Sadly nothing really seems unique anymore and I guess its just all down to execution.

 

[Jobbs]

Even though I don't know how to program as of yet, I'm toying around with several ideas for a game. Sadly nothing really seems unique anymore and I guess its just all down to execution.

bingo

well, that, and mixing together existing ideas in cool ways. for example, Dark Souls felt completely fresh and novel when it came out, but no individual concept or gameplay mechanic was anything new.

 

[Five]

Even though I don't know how to program as of yet, I'm toying around with several ideas for a game. Sadly nothing really seems unique anymore and I guess its just all down to execution.

If it's any consolation, that problem isn't unique to games. It's something every other creative industry has been undergoing for decades now.

 

[mStudios]

I remade Hibari's battle stance animation, the previous one felt outdated and since it's a very important animation I don't mind revising it every once in a while.

It's still a WIP, there are things that I don't like, but I'll be moving on to other things by now.

Do you do animations frame per frame or using distortion?

More gifs:

 

[FullMetaltech]

Question for all 3d modelers out there: How would you go and UV unwrap something like this?



I had two ideas... But I don't know.

The first was basically to divide the model in section (say 8, via UV seams) and individually unwrap those. Works in theory (thanks to pelt and relax in 3DS Max it's really easy). But I get this:



As you see, it's not aligned. I don't know if that's a big problem, or a problem at all. I see lots of other uv maps with separated pieces for a single continuous object. I assume that if you're drawing your texture you can work around the misalignement, but I wanted to use a material (metal in this case), and I don't know if it would look good.Should I try and "puzzle" them back togheter and align them again?

Another way I was thinking about was divide the ring not in 8 pieces but in 2: the lower part which is basically just a ring and should unwrap easily into a straight line, and the upper part. But the upper part has those extruded pieces which might give some troubles...

Also, should I straigthen the shape out or leave it circular?

Looks good. Id make a seam around the tube then another goind around the middle in the inside. You can make a good uv map that way and use photoshop to clean up where the the texture meets the other end. Thats how id do it. But im sure there are other ways too.

 

[TronLight]

Looks good. Id make a seam around the tube then another goind around the middle in the inside. You can make a good uv map that way and use photoshop to clean up where the the texture meets the other end. Thats how id do it. But im sure there are other ways too.

I tried a mix of those two ideas, I basically split the model in four quarters and then halfway.

For the upper part (with those details) I ended up with four quarters of a circle. The result it's decent, but you can see some seams:

How could I fix this? Should I join the four UV islands (right now they are placed a bit randomly, I'm pretty tired lol) or, since they're curved, straighten them out? Honestly the second option sounds like way to much work and there must be a better way, also at my current skill level I can't see a way to avoid texture warping. The first one sounds more reasonable.

Also there are some small errors which I'm pretty sure are caused by turbosmothing the mesh after unwrapping the UVs.

 

[Jintor]

mStudio, think she should cast a shadow in her room poses or not? Looks good regardless, but

 

[ken_matthews]

I tried a mix of those two ideas, I basically split the model in four quarters and then halfway.

For the upper part (with those details) I ended up with four quarters of a circle. The result it's decent, but you can see some seams:



How could I fix this? Should I join the four UV islands (right now they are placed a bit randomly, I'm pretty tired lol) or, since they're curved, straighten them out? Honestly the second option sounds like way to much work and there must be a better way, also at my current skill level I can't see a way to avoid texture warping. The first one sounds more reasonable.

Also there are some small errors which I'm pretty sure are caused by turbosmothing the mesh after unwrapping the UVs.

What does your UV map layout look like?

EDIT:

Pick an edge that won't be seen easily. I chose an edge (thicker blue line) on the back side of the object.

I am using Maya, so I used the UV unwrap function from the Bonus Tools. I am sure Max has something similar. But if you unwrap it on the single edge you should get a single UV shell like this:

No visible seams

EDIT 2:

I agree with Disheveled_Zen. I think you may have an easier time with a cleaner mesh topology, and baking the normals from a High Poly version will probably work well. How are you smoothing the object? It looks like your smoothing method introduced a lot of unnecessary faces. What did it look like prior to smoothing?

EDIT 3:

You can also try switching the texture projection mode from UV to Tri-Planar. Tri-Planar projection works rather well for tileable textures (typically kills all the seams), but you may get some distortion and artifices because of the shape of your mesh:

 

[Disheveled_Zen]

Question for all 3d modelers out there: How would you go and UV unwrap something like this?



I had two ideas... But I don't know.

The first was basically to divide the model in section (say 8, via UV seams) and individually unwrap those. Works in theory (thanks to pelt and relax in 3DS Max it's really easy). But I get this:



As you see, it's not aligned. I don't know if that's a big problem, or a problem at all. I see lots of other uv maps with separated pieces for a single continuous object. I assume that if you're drawing your texture you can work around the misalignement, but I wanted to use a material (metal in this case), and I don't know if it would look good.Should I try and "puzzle" them back togheter and align them again?

Another way I was thinking about was divide the ring not in 8 pieces but in 2: the lower part which is basically just a ring and should unwrap easily into a straight line, and the upper part. But the upper part has those extruded pieces which might give some troubles...

Also, should I straigthen the shape out or leave it circular?

For me personally, I would planar project the top, cut a seam along the top of the side, then cylinder unwrap that with 1 seam cut somewhere to lay it out flat on the UV's. You will almost always have seams on a model, the trick is hiding them the best you can. 90 degree angles are a great place to do that, because the sharpness of it does well at hiding the fact the texture is actually cut there.

Let me see your UV's and a slightly clearer image of the model and I can probably help more. Also I can't tell if those indents are modeled in or baked. You could get away with much simpler UV's if you based those indents down to a lowpoly, especially if this is some sort of floor object or something the players face wont get right in to.

 

[rje]

I started in on a major refactor of our map generation code this week - a lot of it was still from the very first builds/prototypes and it was getting to the point where adding new features was buggy and a hassle.

Before I dug in I took a picture of the map types we have so far, since I won't get to actually run around in the game for a bit while I sort this out. It shows the 3 map generator types we have in game so far, plus the airship that acts as our hubworld:

A bit hard to see detail so I posted the massive one for download if anyone is curious: http://monstersandmonocles.com/misc/maps.png

I'm really excited to get the new code in place, it should really let us add more level detail and variation which is definitely lacking in our current solution.

 

[Jobbs]

Colorful caves http://www.gfycat.com/VagueCheapDeermouse

 

[Mystic River]

I remade Hibari's battle stance animation, the previous one felt outdated and since it's a very important animation I don't mind revising it every once in a while.

It's still a WIP, there are things that I don't like, but I'll be moving on to other things by now.

movement is too in sync, chest should have a little bit a lag so you can feel mass, same for the skirt

 

[Ito]

Do you do animations frame per frame or using distortion?

A bit of both techniques

movement is too in sync, chest should have a little bit a lag so you can feel mass, same for the skirt

I dunno - I'm a newbie at animation, but it seems maybe a mite too active to me for an idle animation. Think about the energy you'd need to constantly be rotating your torso like that! But hey, it's not final

One thing you might want to look at is that it looks like (to me at least) that her right knee (as you look at her) is dislocating as it animates.

Otherwise, the animation looks really good!

I'll be revising those details, thanks for the help!

^ it looks good but I constantly worry about your ability to maintain the detailed motions and sub-motions throughout the animation set. I completely relate to your methodology and analness, since I've animated in a similar way, but you have even more details than I usually do. The cel shaded style I plan to do in my next game is in some ways a direct response to my experience in this one.

lol analness

Well it's indeed a lot of detail, but that's because it's the main character. None of the other sprites will have that many frames and detail, save some exceptions.

I kinda regret having chosen such a detailed art style, things would be much easier had I chosen a cel-shaded look as you mention, or even if I had gone pixel art -eww.

But honestly, that didn't motivate me at all. I wanted to do a full HD game with a lot of detail, and I still haven't changed my mind despite all the time and effort I have to put in it.

I like what I'm achieving, I'm going really slow, but the game is looking good for me, and something I think it's also important: I don't find many similar looking games. I've seen better and worse looking artstyles, of course, but not alike.

 

[Jintor]

Any other recommended animation books? I read Animator's Survival Kit and it's fantastic, but if there's any other reads more game-related (specifically fighting or beat-em-up if possible) that'd be something to look at.