be all end all for a semi beginner. Did some Basic/C way back in the day, but I was a tiny person. And I'm bad at math
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GAF Indie Game Development Thread 2: High Res Work for Low Res Pay
- Thread starter Jacksinthe
- Start date
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be all end all for a semi beginner. Did some Basic/C way back in the day, but I was a tiny person. And I'm bad at math
Okay, so, a couple of you already know this, but I'm working on a new game right now. It's called Hag Magnate. That doesn't mean Nether Mind is dead. Abe's still chipping away at that periodically, but I was getting pretty tired of working on it and I feel at liberty to expand my horizons somewhat.
There have been a lot of simplifications that were made in Nether Mind that came at a cumulative high cost. And while that didn't bother me at first, it's been building up inside me the more I worked on that game. I don't want to hate the thing I'm working on, especially as this is mostly a hobby for me, so I felt like it was time to move on. At least for now.
So, Hag Magnate is only a super early prototype. Mostly, I've only worked on the behavior of the player character and some ancillary elements, but it's started out pretty great. I don't have the full narrative fleshed out yet, but I'm trying to find a happy medium between medieval and Victorian fantasy, all with Lovecraftian undertones. It's a little bit outside of time, and also there are monsters from another dimension that will both fit fantasy tropes and also leave room for the more absurd. Whether I can pull it all together or not remains to be seen, but I have high hopes!
The first big thing that was bothering me (re: Nether Mind) was that enemies didn't have health bars, and nor did the player. This design choice was made with good intentions, but the consequences were dire. Basically, the thought was that health bars are abstract things and don't make sense. Why does that huge boss die after you attack its toe a hundred times? Why do creatures behave identically at 100hp and 1hp? So the idea was to make distinct states instead of outright HP. Probably the best example of that is the ax tree enemy (below). But different damage states take a lot of effort to create and animate, and the permutations get crazy if you have all sorts of attackable regions on larger enemies, so what this tended to mean was enemies only take one hit to die. This in turn meant that the only design directive for enemies could be "make it hard to approach", rather than "make it hard to sustain an approach" or similar. Even worse, we weren't even consistent in that regard—each of the game's bosses actually do have a healthbar, unlike normal enemies.
http://fat.gfycat.com/DearestAngryCleanerwrasse.webm
It also meant that things can't be too difficult. (Well, it should have meant that. Anyone who's played one of the demos can probably tell you it's still too difficult). Taking damage is bad, but dying in a single hit is worse, and it's hard to balance a game when there's no shades of gray. So one of the first orders of business was adding healthbars back into the game.
http://zippy.gfycat.com/PersonalDistortedGuineapig.webm
You can also see an energy meter (stamina/mana) on the HUD. I think stamina management is a really great idea in games where it makes sense. But it didn't really make sense for Nether Mind. Partly because it was too punishing for the platforming sections of the game (thanks to bad balancing), and partly because none of the combat would otherwise benefit from spamming the attack button, which is the primary phenomenon that stamina management attempts to stymie.
The other problem when you lose health bars is that all hits count for the same amount of damage. So you can't have weapon A does X damage and weapon B does Y damage. This, combined with a limited (at the time) understanding of Spine and item attachments, lead to the design decision of only one weapon being in the game. It felt fine at the time, but it's been bothering me more and more as I play other games where you have a multitude of play styles and weapon opportunities; and also as I realized the model games which I was thinking of where you don't have a bevy of weapons (Donkey Kong Country, Crash Bandicoot) also don't have particularly deep combat to begin with.
http://fat.gfycat.com/InsecurePleasedDeinonychus.webm
The other big thing is uneven terrain. Assuming that every walkable surface will be flat is so much easier in terms of design and animation. So that's what we did! No ramps, no slopes, no real rotating platforms, no arced bridges, no swaying or seesawing precipices, just all flat all day. One of the major hurdles with angled surfaces is getting the feet to line up with the floor. It's pretty immersion breaking to see feet floating off of or sunk a good distance into any given surface, so the easy solution is to nip that in the bud and not do it at all. But it turns out there's a good solution (for modeled animations) in inverse kinematics, or IK.
You can already see it on the platform above, with Gisele's feet keeping in place on the platform as it swivels back and forth. The base animations each are made as if the ground is level, but instead of positioning each articulation of the bones I have the legs each target a separate foot bone, and then the proper angles are computed in runtime. What this means is that my code can find the feet bones in the model and dynamically adjust them to match the tangent angle of the floor (which gets saved during collision checks). It even works well when the player is in motion, running up or down slopes.
http://zippy.gfycat.com/NearMiserableAmericanbittern.webm
And it's not that I never knew IK existed. Hell, Ocarina of Time was doing it for Link back on the N64, and basically every AAA game from the previous and current console generation uses it. I just didn't know how to use it in this manner until recently.
That's it for now. Hopefully I'll have more consistent (if smaller) updates going forward.
This all sounds super interesting, and I like the color palette, too! Quote for the new page!
About the naming debate, I don't have much to add except that "hag" automatically makes me think of this:
(which is a good thing in my book - comes from Hot Fuzz, for those who don't know the reference).
I actually like the sound of "Hag Magnate", but maybe that's not because I'm not a native speaker, so most basic words still have some magical quality when written/heard. Searching for it on google leads to nothing but references to something "Hag Magnet", which might be an interesting sound play to make as well? :v
Also, the whole point you raise about slopes, and feet, and connecting the two, is quite interesting as well. Since I'm going for a 2D action platformer for my next project, I'll admit it's one of the finer points I had not yet considered, and since I probably won't be using vectorial animation (ie: no IK), I'll have to consider what this all means.
I'm not particularly shocked by having characters sliding along ramps and slopes, as you said, but I'd be interested to know if that's actually become a graphical sticking point for other people, nowadays?
Hi guys 'n gals! Am still alive and hard working on my masterpiece. Well,
actually, I'm quite into some math again working mostly on paper for the time
being. Nothing to show pixelwise. The only thing I can show is a sketch of
what I'm working on from a technical perspective;
Currently I'm designing band-pass filter curves with special bumps etc., all
derived from real analog circuits. My goal is to retain all the analog
components making up an analog filter while transforming them into the
discreet domain resulting in an digital filter mimicking the analog one (driven
by the circuit components) as close as possible. This will have some nice
implications for the video part of your video game.
actually, I'm quite into some math again working mostly on paper for the time
being. Nothing to show pixelwise. The only thing I can show is a sketch of
what I'm working on from a technical perspective;
Currently I'm designing band-pass filter curves with special bumps etc., all
derived from real analog circuits. My goal is to retain all the analog
components making up an analog filter while transforming them into the
discreet domain resulting in an digital filter mimicking the analog one (driven
by the circuit components) as close as possible. This will have some nice
implications for the video part of your video game.
GroundCombo
Member
This is a tempting idea to experiment with. I'm still not happy with C# and it would be really nice to have some other language available (I mean, getting rid of GC would be a good step already). It's just that it would take a lot of time and effort to get a grasp on such a different language and when it is best used; seems like it could be nice to use something like F# for internal logic and data manipulation, and leave the traditional Unity stuff to C#.
The other option is to use Unreal and C++, but I'm not a fan of C++ either; it was a fine language back in the day but now has too much archaic baggage and syntactic garbage. I need something more modern.
liliththepale
Banned
This all sounds super interesting, and I like the color palette, too! Quote for the new page!
About the naming debate, I don't have much to add except that "hag" automatically makes me think of this:
(which is a good thing in my book - comes from Hot Fuzz, for those who don't know the reference).
I actually like the sound of "Hag Magnate", but maybe that's not because I'm not a native speaker, so most basic words still have some magical quality when written/heard. Searching for it on google leads to nothing but references to something "Hag Magnet", which might be an interesting sound play to make as well? :v
Also, the whole point you raise about slopes, and feet, and connecting the two, is quite interesting as well. Since I'm going for a 2D action platformer for my next project, I'll admit it's one of the finer points I had not yet considered, and since I probably won't be using vectorial animation (ie: no IK), I'll have to consider what this all means.
I'm not particularly shocked by having characters sliding along ramps and slopes, as you said, but I'd be interested to know if that's actually become a graphical sticking point for other people, nowadays?
Hey, thanks! ♥
Yeah, magnate has the same pronunciation as magnet, which might come to serve as an appropriate double entendre if I decide the titular hag draws other hags to herself.
Some of the problems with feet and slopes can be solved without IK, but there are compromises. For example, if you give the character a very narrow stance then there's not much room for the feet to veer off the ground in either direction. Or you can limit the slopes to a small subset of angles and animate specific animations for each angle. And you can animate the run/walk cycles so that the feet only hit the ground for a frame or two at the center of the sprite (so the feet loop in a full ellipse rather than a sort of sideways D like you normally would).
I don't know if it's a sticking point for most people. It bothers me in AAA games, and I at least notice it (but generally excuse it) in indie games. After having studied art and games for so long, it's hard to tell how much of what I notice is thanks to my studies and how much would also be obvious to the average player.
CrazyArcadia
Member
I've been reading this thread on and off for quite a while, I'm happy seeing other cool and interesting projects grow from concepts to screens to animated gifs to finished games. Been holding off to show a project I'm part of since last year. A friend of mine introduced me to Geraldo Nascimento, programmer and game designer, who had been looking for a pixel artist to bring a game world to life.
I was introduced to the world of Gunkatana, which was described to me as a top down multiplayer action game in a cyberpunk world. I liked the heavy emphasis on tight gameplay mechanics, a mix of both sword fighting and gun duels with reflecting lasers. Everything is quick, highspeed, also thanks to another feature, electronic rails to grind on in lightning speed. And it is local multiplayer heavy - something I love. The game got me interested, Geraldo had a strong game concept and sense of gameplay going on with that early prototype.
After some graphic mockups and getting to know each other, it was clear that we could share a vision in regards to gameplay and design. So the collaboration started. Since then, we've worked hard to create a look, make the controls feel even better, add more variety to the battle systems and we're still in the phase to get the gameplay and look right while adding new stages, characters and gameplay modes to the game.
Of course, there's been times when it went slower and other times when development did huge steps forward. Currently, we're in a more intensive work phase, preparing a new version for an upcoming event next week (GameCity). Obviously, I could go into much more detail about the development up until now. But I'd rather want to start giving more current impressions in form of a series of posts showing our stage of progress, getting critique/feedback and giving a bit of a behind-the-scenes from time to time about our workflow and creation. The team is growing currently (additional artists, musician, story writer, website and trailer specialists) and I'd love to give descriptions/show you their work here as well!
One interesting detail... Geraldo and me haven't actually met in real life, yet. We've skyped from time to time and chat almost daily. We try out new builds of the game with local friends but are still waiting to play the game with each other
Geraldo lives in the UK while I hang out in Germany - it is quite interesting (read: frustrating) to see the immense difference between a semi-rural German town and a big UK city in regards to indie networking and events. So German indie devs, unite! Speaking of which, since this IS of interest in the thread, we're working with Unity 5, I'm currently starting to learn rudimentary basics myself with Geraldos tutorials.
Currently, I'm finetuning the animation for both our first character - Sin Viper -, as well as the new addition to the crew, a cyborg called Clarke. This gif shows two of the possible sword moves. I will talk more about the characters in later posts
...
There's an 'early reveal' gameplay trailer, too, so take a look at the game in motion with actual gameplay footage from indie meetups and similiar events:
https://youtu.be/4F2avVTbuAY
(since that trailer was produced a few months back, it still uses our old logotype and, sorry, no Clarke yet)
_________________________________________________________________________
For those of you who are more into technical aspects, Geraldo started up a blog sharing experiences with issues and hints about the gamemaking workflow with Unity. His current post discusses automatic asset processing scripts, which might be helpful to others working on pixelart games in Unity!
http://geraldonascimento.ghost.io/asset-processing-tutorial/
SpacePirate Ridley
Member
Okay, so, a couple of you already know this, but I'm working on a new game right now. It's called Hag Magnate. That doesn't mean Nether Mind is dead. Abe's still chipping away at that periodically, but I was getting pretty tired of working on it and I feel at liberty to expand my horizons somewhat.
There have been a lot of simplifications that were made in Nether Mind that came at a cumulative high cost. And while that didn't bother me at first, it's been building up inside me the more I worked on that game. I don't want to hate the thing I'm working on, especially as this is mostly a hobby for me, so I felt like it was time to move on. At least for now.
So, Hag Magnate is only a super early prototype. Mostly, I've only worked on the behavior of the player character and some ancillary elements, but it's started out pretty great. I don't have the full narrative fleshed out yet, but I'm trying to find a happy medium between medieval and Victorian fantasy, all with Lovecraftian undertones. It's a little bit outside of time, and also there are monsters from another dimension that will both fit fantasy tropes and also leave room for the more absurd. Whether I can pull it all together or not remains to be seen, but I have high hopes!
The first big thing that was bothering me (re: Nether Mind) was that enemies didn't have health bars, and nor did the player. This design choice was made with good intentions, but the consequences were dire. Basically, the thought was that health bars are abstract things and don't make sense. Why does that huge boss die after you attack its toe a hundred times? Why do creatures behave identically at 100hp and 1hp? So the idea was to make distinct states instead of outright HP. Probably the best example of that is the ax tree enemy (below). But different damage states take a lot of effort to create and animate, and the permutations get crazy if you have all sorts of attackable regions on larger enemies, so what this tended to mean was enemies only take one hit to die. This in turn meant that the only design directive for enemies could be "make it hard to approach", rather than "make it hard to sustain an approach" or similar. Even worse, we weren't even consistent in that regardeach of the game's bosses actually do have a healthbar, unlike normal enemies.
http://fat.gfycat.com/DearestAngryCleanerwrasse.webm
It also meant that things can't be too difficult. (Well, it should have meant that. Anyone who's played one of the demos can probably tell you it's still too difficult). Taking damage is bad, but dying in a single hit is worse, and it's hard to balance a game when there's no shades of gray. So one of the first orders of business was adding healthbars back into the game.
http://zippy.gfycat.com/PersonalDistortedGuineapig.webm
You can also see an energy meter (stamina/mana) on the HUD. I think stamina management is a really great idea in games where it makes sense. But it didn't really make sense for Nether Mind. Partly because it was too punishing for the platforming sections of the game (thanks to bad balancing), and partly because none of the combat would otherwise benefit from spamming the attack button, which is the primary phenomenon that stamina management attempts to stymie.
The other problem when you lose health bars is that all hits count for the same amount of damage. So you can't have weapon A does X damage and weapon B does Y damage. This, combined with a limited (at the time) understanding of Spine and item attachments, lead to the design decision of only one weapon being in the game. It felt fine at the time, but it's been bothering me more and more as I play other games where you have a multitude of play styles and weapon opportunities; and also as I realized the model games which I was thinking of where you don't have a bevy of weapons (Donkey Kong Country, Crash Bandicoot) also don't have particularly deep combat to begin with.
http://fat.gfycat.com/InsecurePleasedDeinonychus.webm
The other big thing is uneven terrain. Assuming that every walkable surface will be flat is so much easier in terms of design and animation. So that's what we did! No ramps, no slopes, no real rotating platforms, no arced bridges, no swaying or seesawing precipices, just all flat all day. One of the major hurdles with angled surfaces is getting the feet to line up with the floor. It's pretty immersion breaking to see feet floating off of or sunk a good distance into any given surface, so the easy solution is to nip that in the bud and not do it at all. But it turns out there's a good solution (for modeled animations) in inverse kinematics, or IK.
You can already see it on the platform above, with Gisele's feet keeping in place on the platform as it swivels back and forth. The base animations each are made as if the ground is level, but instead of positioning each articulation of the bones I have the legs each target a separate foot bone, and then the proper angles are computed in runtime. What this means is that my code can find the feet bones in the model and dynamically adjust them to match the tangent angle of the floor (which gets saved during collision checks). It even works well when the player is in motion, running up or down slopes.
http://zippy.gfycat.com/NearMiserableAmericanbittern.webm
And it's not that I never knew IK existed. Hell, Ocarina of Time was doing it for Link back on the N64, and basically every AAA game from the previous and current console generation uses it. I just didn't know how to use it in this manner until recently.
That's it for now. Hopefully I'll have more consistent (if smaller) updates going forward.
Im really liking what im seeing here lilith. It already feels beautiful and you have just started. Love the character design also. About the changes from Nether Mind, the game looks similar but at the same time it looks more expansive and complex in ideas (really liking the stamina bar, and the slopes body animation looks perfect) . I really hope though you can finish both and make them as great as they look, becuase I was also fond of Nether Mind.
The name thing, as pehesse said Hag also reminded me from Hot Fuzz lol Magnate in Spain is Tycoon, so what im thinking about the game riht now is Old Ugly Woman Tycoon lol
Looks really good, like a hotline miami multiplayer game.
Loved the title screen with the buildings in the background.
One thing I was curious about with IK in a sidescroller -- It seems as though if you have a wide stance, the point at which you fall off the side of a cliff comes into question as the foot facing the edge stops contacting solid ground.
This is the reason I generally try to design narrow stances to begin with, to avoid the visual awkwardness, but I suppose it could be solved with an alternate stance for standing next to edges. With IK, though, I am curious if it presents new challenges.
After taking a break to get through my 5th mid-life crisis at 21 (three less than I had at 20!), I'm doing a little Game Jam at my university with some buds. I'll show off what we end up with once it's over. Still trying to work on that little mobile game, don't post much of it because, well, it's not much of a screenshotter or a "dev log" type of game. The stickfigure thing I still want to work on further down the line, hopefully as a sort of capstone here at the university so I can get one or two other people to help me out on that.
I see all you people's stuff and it's pretty awesome! Keep up the good work everyone.
I see all you people's stuff and it's pretty awesome! Keep up the good work everyone.
liliththepale
Banned
Tycoon isn't too far off! They both share the same Latin root word for high ranking person.
And thanks! I'm hoping I'll feel better about going back and finishing Nether Mind after I've spent a little more time away from it.
Great question! The collision shape is a little narrower than the base idle stance, but there are a lot of elements at play to improve the process. First there's a bit of edge magnetism. If you're not pressing forward or sliding above the threshold speed, and the center of the player is past the corner, then it lerps the player's position back so that her center is square on the corner. I'm not sure how many other games do this, except I know at least Super Smash Bros. does.
Then I take the IK target of the forward foot and bring it back so it's not dangling over the edge. This system works in tandem with the one accommodating for the angle of the ground. Finally, I don't disable jumping right away when falling off an edge, and instead wait about five frames after a collision has been registered. Technically this means you can jump in thin air for five frames, but in practice it means no more cases of "BS, I pressed the jump button in time!"
edit: Here's a webm to show what I mean:
http://zippy.gfycat.com/FatalDefinitiveGoa.webm
I've been reading this thread on and off for quite a while, I'm happy seeing other cool and interesting projects grow from concepts to screens to animated gifs to finished games. Been holding off to show a project I'm part of since last year. A friend of mine introduced me to Geraldo Nascimento, programmer and game designer, who had been looking for a pixel artist to bring a game world to life.
I was introduced to the world of Gunkatana, which was described to me as a top down multiplayer action game in a cyberpunk world. I liked the heavy emphasis on tight gameplay mechanics, a mix of both sword fighting and gun duels with reflecting lasers. Everything is quick, highspeed, also thanks to another feature, electronic rails to grind on in lightning speed. And it is local multiplayer heavy - something I love. The game got me interested, Geraldo had a strong game concept and sense of gameplay going on with that early prototype.
Welcome to the thread! Your game looks great.
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
This was our base title screen 2 years ago:
vs. now:
I think finding the right title style will take up until we submit final copy (which was supposed to be September 30th, but Real Life Bullshit....), which is now slated for Early November. I like the general design, I think I'm going to darken the edges.
vs. now:
I think finding the right title style will take up until we submit final copy (which was supposed to be September 30th, but Real Life Bullshit....), which is now slated for Early November. I like the general design, I think I'm going to darken the edges.
The bottom image is very difficult for me to read. If you want feedback, adding a tiny bit of space between the lines, and/or a tiny bit of space between the words, might help a lot in my opinion.
Although not strictly necessary IK definitely adds extra polish to a game. Really like the one with the rotating platform since it is super obvious there.
I see that the stance widens when the platform is more level, how does this behave when standing at the edge of that rotating platform?
As for the jumping part, besides the 'fall off ledge' jump, I also register a jump slightly before a player hits the ground (so the moment he lands you jump again). This also adds to the responsiveness of the controls.
The title graphic looks nice, but the title is very hard to read. If I hadn't seen the old shot first I probably would not have been able to read the full title.
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
Yeah, thanks, my try before this was even more mushed together.
liliththepale
Banned
Good question. It doesn't IK properly at the very edge of the swivel platform thanks to my implementation. It's a design problem, not a programming one, and I don't have a conclusion yet. But this is what it looks like:
http://zippy.gfycat.com/TestyKnobbyBedlingtonterrier.webm
Regarding jump buffering, that's a great idea! I keep track of how long each of the buttons have been held rather than just storing whether they're pressed or not, so the program checks if the jump button has been pressed for fewer than eight frames. What this means is that although you press the jump button shortly before landing, you have to still have the button held when you land or the jump won't trigger.
I think the problem is made worse by the unfamiliar word Cthulhu. When you see something you're not expecting, it's harder to parse than it normally would be.
Perhaps even consider another complete rehaul of the font and layout. The later BG art looks nice, but the UI elements seem to push away the viewer rather than pull in.
edit:
A couple things in case they're of interest:
For me personally, from north-west England, 'Magnate' would be pronounced with a notable difference to 'magnet'. I definitely put a very delicate a-as-in-bay on that second a. Also, growing up where I did, 'hag magnet' as a phrase has an unfortunate usage to describe 'the one bloke (in a group cruising the nightclubs) who attracts only ugly women'. It's gross, and hardly widespread, but it is a thing and associations exist for a percentage of your potential audience.
For what it's worth, I think Hag Magnate is an immediately evocative title. I certainly don't claim to be representative of where the majority of Steam cash is though. Purely as an exercise in words, a few alternatives might be Hag On The Hill, The Witch's Whim, Ducess Wyrd.
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
So no Contour?
I've been given opportunities, but a lot of you guys routinely make me feel woefully inadequate and contribute to my mire of self doubt. Someone's gonna find me out!
liliththepale
Banned
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
Not there, but progress?
Definitely progress from a first glance legibility POV. Obvs your call, but question whether you really need the subheading hanging off the main title's underline like that. Speaking personally, I think it hinders the initial impact. The sentence itself is evocative enough to warrant its own space I would argue.
I think one of the biggest things that throws me off is the line attached to the bottom letters. Underlined letters are common, but "overlined" seems weird to me.Not there, but progress?
I fired up paint.NET and mouse-drew you an amazingly professional concept to give you an alternative idea:
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
I think one of the biggest things that throws me off is the line attached to the bottom letters. Underlined letters are common, but "overlined" seems weird to me.
I fired up paint.NET and mouse-drew you an amazingly professional concept to give you an alternative idea:
Jesus Fuck, now I just want to use that.
Everyone would kill me, though.
Try doing that with your "vs. now" font, putting back the outline effect. And of course make the lower line smaller -- I'm just bad at freehand. I feel like the outline is interesting, but spacing and legibility will help.
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
So I think I have the design, I just need to stylize it like the others.
And of course how could I resist:
And of course how could I resist:
Jacksinthe
Banned
Edit: nevermind. Unable to this evening.
If you're wanting 3D graphics, Unity or Unreal Engine 4 are common choices. Unreal Engine 4 has Blueprint, a graphical programming system that helps prototype without much coding. I'd suggest looking into some UE4 Blueprint tutorials -- download the engine, work through a few tutorial videos, and see if it feels right for you.
Theanine3D
Member
A bit bummed that I won't be able to launch my game on Mac at the same time as Win/Linux. Don't own a Mac at the moment and couldn't afford one right now, and no one here uses Macs so I can't borrow one to compile the game with. Hopefully the Win/Lin versions of my game do well enough to fund a Mac purchase before too long.
Also, currently I'm working on a Greenlight trailer, but my PC is chugging while recording at 1080p / 60fps. Had to lower it down to 720p and 24fps to produce a video that isn't choppy. :/ Not sure if it's my recording program (FFsplit) or maybe I just reeeeeally need new hardware. Would've been nice to show off footage of the game at a smooth 60 fps on YouTube, but oh well.
Also, currently I'm working on a Greenlight trailer, but my PC is chugging while recording at 1080p / 60fps. Had to lower it down to 720p and 24fps to produce a video that isn't choppy. :/ Not sure if it's my recording program (FFsplit) or maybe I just reeeeeally need new hardware. Would've been nice to show off footage of the game at a smooth 60 fps on YouTube, but oh well.
Dreamwriter
Member
Whichever one your programmer has experience in
Seriously though, either Unity or Unreal - Unreal has its blueprint system, Unity has Playmaker (though you have to buy Playmaker separately).
Jacksinthe
Banned
TheHollowNight
Member
Some progress on the caverns tileset! got some lovely water implemented with flow-mapped currents that detect the terrain edges
http://www.gfycat.com/UnrulyBetterAzurevasesponge#
http://www.gfycat.com/UnrulyBetterAzurevasesponge#
liliththepale
Banned
Yo, edge detection is a detail devs forget or leave out far too often in games, big and small. It really goes a long way in making the water look better.
That looks great! ♥
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
Awesome. I really like how it fills nicely. I want you to know that my interior monologue has been Chad Radwell from Scream Queens all day, so imagine me saying good job and awesome in the best and most exaggerated way possible.
But now I have the damned song from Empire in my head.
Alright. My green marker died, so this is the last try for tonight:
I don't know how a green marker can die unless you're physically drawing and then scanning in. I figured you were using an image editor.Alright. My green marker died, so this is the last try for tonight:
I'm not sure what other people think, but I think that looks better than anything you've posted before. Nice improvement!
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
I don't know how a green marker can die unless you're physically drawing and then scanning in. I figured you were using an image editor.
I'm not sure what other people think, but I think that looks better than anything you've posted before. Nice improvement!
I'm scanning it in and then doing a bit of shading.
I want to give the 'A' bit more meat. I'll start again tomorrow.
EDIT: oh crap. wtf. i have falled at life.
Ouch, sounds like a painful process. Good luck!
I just noticed you missed a 'U' in CTHULHU. The ancient one will not be pleased. Also, some people might be bugged by 3 lower-case letters randomly mixing with the all-caps ('a', 'i', 'i').
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
liliththepale
Banned
Awesome. I really like how it fills nicely. I want you to know that my interior monologue has been Chad Radwell from Scream Queens all day, so imagine me saying good job and awesome in the best and most exaggerated way possible.
But now I have the damned song from Empire in my head.
Alright. My green marker died, so this is the last try for tonight:
I like it a lot, but I feel like the R in Army doesn't read well enough. It's much close to a P than an R, and that early in the title there's not enough context to suggest otherwise.
Also, yeah, there should be another U in Cthulhu.
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
There's a sort of wild card character in the game that starts with an 'R'. I possibly subconsciously wanted the 'R' to look like a person (or in this case, Shoggoth). It also conforms well with the 'M', but yeah. I understand. I need to show a bit more separation of the legs.
That's me! Hidden behind the blinds...
[scanlines]
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
"Someone is making the same game I am....."
In case you haven't seen the movie, that's from A Beautiful Mind. It's a very depressing movie, but the main character (in the image) is a crazy mathematical genius. I think in that scene he is looking out the window and seeing patterns that he will form into theorems.
Also, with your talk of bringing analog effects into the digital world, you should delve into the world of audio some day, and make some awesome digital amplifiers that still have analog tube sound!
Looks great, and a lot of fun. I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this.
Very, very nice! I've been looking into flow map textures recently. Really cool!
Interesting share, but the more complex your mechanism, the more visible such corner cases look.
As for jump buffering, I might give that a try. I just wonder if it will be ever visible to the user as you have to press & release the button within a few frames before landing on the ground.
Jacksinthe
Banned
Edit:
Stream is up: live.absinthegames.com
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Will be doing another quick enemy for Mainframe One called "PROXY" - which is a proximity mine of sorts.
I've been handling a lot of the basic enemies on screen since, well, they're basic. I may or may not do some more advanced enemies so early on with streams but will be tackling at least one or two bosses in streams in the coming months so peeps can see that end of development.
Also now that I've got a really nice technique for grayboxing, grid and tracing level elements I might stream some level geometry creation as well as try to make a complete time-lapse of the entire process from rigging in Unity to tracing and creating the level artwork in chop.
Stream is up: live.absinthegames.com
-
Will be doing another quick enemy for Mainframe One called "PROXY" - which is a proximity mine of sorts.
I've been handling a lot of the basic enemies on screen since, well, they're basic. I may or may not do some more advanced enemies so early on with streams but will be tackling at least one or two bosses in streams in the coming months so peeps can see that end of development.
Also now that I've got a really nice technique for grayboxing, grid and tracing level elements I might stream some level geometry creation as well as try to make a complete time-lapse of the entire process from rigging in Unity to tracing and creating the level artwork in chop.
liliththepale
Banned
The reason it happens is that there's only ledge magnetism on the AABB collision, so not any of the slopes or angled collisions. I designed it that way in case I have any sequential slopes that the player can run across, I didn't want it to feel like there are places where the collision gets caught on a little snag or something. But I think I'll just set a flag on the collision so that a few places like this will still have that.
My implementation of the jump buffering thing probably isn't noticeable to the player. I know I've played some games in the past where it felt like I jumped from input buffering when I hadn't meant to, but maybe I was mistaken about the timing when I experienced it. In any case, this is mostly an artifact of the input storage system I'm using. Buttons log the number of frames they've been held for rather than merely whether they're pressed or not, so I just have to check if the jump button is pressed but has been pressed for less than X frames, rather than storing a separate isBuffered flag.
AlphaProspector
Member
Well, good sunday everyone! An update after several weeks of silence! Been too busy with my day job, trying not to get fired and all (it's a complicated moment for the country, with elections and a very somber future with another devaluing of the currency coming next year... "No matters who wins, we lose") so I focused on editing and writing.
The artist has finished coloring and detailing the first of hopefully many event CGs. A second one is coming (perhaps sooner than later) and from there on I'll focus on getting the main cast colored and finished. The BG artist has finally resurfaced and should have sketches for new backgrounds and I'm trying to save up for more music but it won't be easy... (Hence why focusing on keeping the day job since it's paying the bills.)
The artist has finished coloring and detailing the first of hopefully many event CGs. A second one is coming (perhaps sooner than later) and from there on I'll focus on getting the main cast colored and finished. The BG artist has finally resurfaced and should have sketches for new backgrounds and I'm trying to save up for more music but it won't be easy... (Hence why focusing on keeping the day job since it's paying the bills.)
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