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GAF Indie Game Development Thread 2: High Res Work for Low Res Pay
- Thread starter Jacksinthe
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HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
I have a four-hour UE4 workshop on Friday morning. I hope I understand any of it.
Wow, huge upgrade. I think I can do characters and animations pretty well, but backgrounds are another story...hope I can improve as much as you did, the comparison is almost night and day.Thanks! For reference, here was my first (maybe even later than that) attempt at all that fire in the trailer, really not all that long ago:
So if you like my sprite work, what I'm trying to say is that it wouldn't take that long for anyone starting at the same rock bottom to catch up and do better.
OK, I now have an idea more or less where to go for it, thanks!
Great, it seems that as long as I´m upfront and honest about it there´ll be no problem. Besides, adding rewards and milestones makes it look better, Children of Zodiarcs did it pretty well, I´ll try to follow their example.
I was taking as example what some people here did, launching both at the same time or launching the KS slightly earlier to generate more buzz and help get through Greenlight, but I think you´re right. When the time comes I´ll focus on that first.
I haven´t seen any KS games with open betas/alphas, why is that? One of the things I want to do is releasing many demos through development so lots of people can play and test the game and give me feedback, but all KS projects I´ve seen are putting these demos behind contribution rewards.
fengshuifever
Member
Quick question to any Maya users out there for rigging!
Any reason why parenting one joint to another would send said joint skyrocketing into the sunset and flattening the bone?
Basically I'm parenting two joints together and it sends the joint into the horizon in the viewport while completely flattening the bone horizontally
Any reason why parenting one joint to another would send said joint skyrocketing into the sunset and flattening the bone?
Basically I'm parenting two joints together and it sends the joint into the horizon in the viewport while completely flattening the bone horizontally
Jacksinthe
Banned
Looks ace bruv.As a designer you're a slave to the code - more than any other middleware I've used. Flowgraph really isn't very flexible - you're not going to be building games in it like you could in say- Blueprint. But rather you'll be modifying whatever game you're working with (likely an FPS).
Community/support is also quite awful/non existent. It's a little like stepping back to UDK (was never a fan of that either), it's definitely an engine that gels better with larger teams, and a focus on code.
That said, they've said that C# is supported now, so that could help things a little...
Aaaaaaanyway. Reckon it's okay to have "Stats" as a sub section of a "Settings" screen?
As you can see, I'm running out of space
floatstarpx
Member
Thanks- I think so too!
The game actually started off completely 2D (side on), but the gameplay didn't really hold in 2D...so we're trying to find a happy middle ground with the 3D look- not too realistic, but not too limiting either. We've been through quite a lot of iterations- it's definitely improving, though!
AusRoachman
Member
SeanNoonan
Member
Thanks! As I approach the finish line I've been losing confidence - feel like the game isn't varied enough, pixel art is rough, what if there are bugs I've not found, etc. I guess its just last minute nerves?
I'm somewhat terrified of how the Steam community will respond to it on Greenlight. I know games that have mobile origins can get slammed pretty bad.
I think I'm just looking for excuses not to release it and just work on it forever.
It looks great (really, really great!), you shouldn´t worry even for a second about that. So get to work and release it already!Thanks! As I approach the finish line I've been losing confidence - feel like the game isn't varied enough, pixel art is rough, what if there are bugs I've not found, etc. I guess its just last minute nerves?
I'm somewhat terrified of how the Steam community will respond to it on Greenlight. I know games that have mobile origins can get slammed pretty bad.
I think I'm just looking for excuses not to release it and just work on it forever.
HandsomeCharles
Member
So long as none of your screenshots/video have any obviously mobile UI showing then you'll probably be fine. From my experience, when it comes to quality mobile ports (i.e Not a slot machine game or a generic match-3) people on greenlight can be quite open to the idea.
Plus, it's important to note that Valve has the final say anyway. Even if you get a load of "No" votes chances are you'll still be accepted so long as the game seems up to scratch (And your does btw.)
LordRaptor
Member
Hah, I know that feeling
Was hoping to have a demo for this weekend, but then rememebered relatives are coming, easter an' all, so going to aim for next week instead.
Have a screenshot of me messing about trying improve my image quality instead in a small room I made. Pretty happy with it!
Loving the smoke!
Have a screenshot of me messing about trying improve my image quality instead in a small room I made. Pretty happy with it!
Geometric smoke with some basic diffuse shading is cheap enough for my uses
Loving the smoke!
NinjaBoyLao
Member
Early mockup screen(no environment atm).
I wish I can work full time on this.
EDIT: "working title" because I'm bored.
and also, the first boss' walk loop.
I wish I can work full time on this.
EDIT: "working title" because I'm bored.
RelentlessRolento
Member
Today is my first day off from quiting work. Resting up but trying to get my work station going. I need to sort my priorities, but my head is mostly a blur from alot of things....
EDIT: "working title" because I'm bored.
The crystal boss looks nice! I like how the animation makes it obvious that the enemy's really heavy and powerful.
Regarding the title, All I can read is "red" in the kanji, which makes me think the title isn't just "Exploder - exploder" but rather "red something - exploder", something that few people would get. I'd probably recommend that you use kanji and katakana and write the romanized title below, so that everyone can read it while still conserving Japanese in the title if that's what you want.
NinjaBoyLao
Member
Good idea. It was actually "akai bakudan/red bomb". I'll definitely add the romanized words. I always ask my programmer friend to proofread but wasn't able to this time since he's already asleep(he's in Japan). Thanks.
Ah, yeah. I'd probably say that you should launch your Greenlight stuff before the Kickstarter because getting that extra visibility for initial Kickstarter momentum is super important, and once that's going it should be pretty easy to get people who are so into your project that they're pledging money to make the two clicks it takes for them to get to your Greenlight page and upvote.
People tend to be extremely judgmental with that sort of stuff. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but you often see them straight up disregard the 'WIP' disclaimer and lock their impression of the game in relative to exactly what it is at that moment rather than what it's working towards.
It's just a risky thing to do in a completely open environment where a post or two from one dissatisfied person can create the impression that your game is a steaming pile, even if it's only because they're the one person in the world to hit a super obscure glitch. If you put playtesting behind a certain pledge barrier, the people providing feedback are more likely to be invested in the game and providing constructive criticism rather than shitposting their dissatisfaction and steering the entire conversation in that direction.
Diablohead
Member
Geometric smoke with some basic diffuse shading is cheap enough for my uses
Good 3D smoke and particles are always things I love seeing in games.
http://gfycat.com/BestAmusedIberianchiffchaff
http://gfycat.com/LittleWeakIrishwolfhound
Still trying to change up the visuals. Tried slightly different types, one with a white background with some bloom, one with a gray background with no bloom. Mostly trying to make sure everything is properly visible while making it not too boring to look at, I dunno. Kind of like the grayed background version.
http://gfycat.com/LittleWeakIrishwolfhound
Still trying to change up the visuals. Tried slightly different types, one with a white background with some bloom, one with a gray background with no bloom. Mostly trying to make sure everything is properly visible while making it not too boring to look at, I dunno. Kind of like the grayed background version.
https://gfycat.com/DistinctLeanKob
Working on combat feel today. Massive improvement over the previous builds. Open to feedback.
Working on combat feel today. Massive improvement over the previous builds. Open to feedback.
el_Nikolinho
Neo Member
Geometric smoke with some basic diffuse shading is cheap enough for my uses
this looks great
tamaster92
Member
Been replaying dark souls recently and it triggered my interest in that kind of game.
I always loved the idea of a dark souls styled shooter but I cannot wrap my head around how that would ever would. The slow combat in souls games is what makes it work, bullets don't really lend themselves to dodging or parrying :/
It seems like a impossible game
I always loved the idea of a dark souls styled shooter but I cannot wrap my head around how that would ever would. The slow combat in souls games is what makes it work, bullets don't really lend themselves to dodging or parrying :/
It seems like a impossible game
This is one of those things I always dreamed to put in my game back when I worked with Rpg Maker: heat/wave distortion effect for the sword trail and similar stuff.
I captured a slow motion version as well:
That and the cloth physics, is some level of detail I thought I'd never be able to put in anything I could make all by myself.
Also, well, all the giant sprites and backgrounds. I really wish I could show 16 years old Ito what I can do now...
This is one of those things I always dreamed to put in my game back when I worked with Rpg Maker: heat/wave distortion effect for the sword trail and similar stuff.
I captured a slow motion version as well:
That and the cloth physics, is some level of detail I thought I'd never be able to put in anything I could make all by myself.
Also, well, all the giant sprites and backgrounds. I really wish I could show 16 years old Ito what I can do now...
It'd be cool if sometimes the game slows down like that 2nd gif on last hit to kill an enemy.
This is one of those things I always dreamed to put in my game back when I worked with Rpg Maker: heat/wave distortion effect for the sword trail and similar stuff.
I captured a slow motion version as well:
That and the cloth physics, is some level of detail I thought I'd never be able to put in anything I could make all by myself.
Also, well, all the giant sprites and backgrounds. I really wish I could show 16 years old Ito what I can do now...
Probably a stupid question, but does anyone know how to get good sized gifs of games? I've been using fraps and cropping/resizing in virtualdub, but my file sizes are still huge. I've been trying to find ways to compress the gifs further since I know fraps file sizes are huge, but I can't find a way to fix it.
It's probably something staring right in front of my face and I can't see it.
Like, your gifs are hella giffy, and it's only 1mb! My game's just a bunch of circles with a max of 3 colors on the screen and it's often 20+mb if I'm lucky. Obviously doing something wrong here.
(also, cloth physics are delicious)
liliththepale
Banned
gifcam
GameMaker doesn't use delta timing so that would be kind of difficult. I agree it'd be neat. It's one of the things that makes me glad I'm trying to migrate to Unity.
AusRoachman
Member
Always been a big fan of voxels and been going back and forth on art styles for my game, so i thought i would see what it might look like ingame
The game is turn based, and most of this is just placeholder, but i am contemplating making a heroes vs villians style game, with lots of blocky explosions e.t.c to fill it in .
Curious does anyone know how copyrights might fall ? naturally im not going to use exact images of ironman or its name, but i am hoping that people could see a slight connection.
The game is turn based, and most of this is just placeholder, but i am contemplating making a heroes vs villians style game, with lots of blocky explosions e.t.c to fill it in .
Curious does anyone know how copyrights might fall ? naturally im not going to use exact images of ironman or its name, but i am hoping that people could see a slight connection.
Huh, probably was that simple.
I was using GIFcam before, but it was giving me these weird green artifacting like this;
Maybe it'll decide to behave now, I'll try it again.
liliththepale
Banned
Oh, yeah, I've gotten those in the past but it's supposed to be fixed.
HALLELUJAH
I think I found out the problem, it might be because while gifcam was processing the gif I would minimize the program and do something else real quick while waiting for it to finish, probably doing some gobledygook to it.
A harsh way to learn of the virtues of patience I suppose.
AusRoachman
Member
Another mockup
I´m usign a similar effect to replicate the effect in Mario games when you get hit (everything freezes in place and Mario plays a little animation while loosing his powerUp) and in fact it´s turned out to be easier and simpler than I expected. Instead of using the step event for the objects that need it, use a User Defined event. Then have a GameplayController object which runs the Step event and does something like this:
Using parenting you can simplify the process a lot. You could even do something like this:
Objects without a User Event 0 will just ignore the call.
Another thing you have to take into account is sprite animation, but it can easily be solved by just using a self made image_speed variable and updating image_index in the User event (or even through the GameplayController object):
GM will automatically loop image_index when it goes over image_number-1.
The last thing I can think of is particles, but fortunately you can just set the automatic_update of each particle system to false and just call part_system_update().
I started using this system to have more control over moving platforms, so they would move before the player did to have a consistent collision system and to make the "Mario-hit" freezing effect, but having control over time opens up a lot of posibilities. It may be harder to port to an already developed system, but as I developed the game from the start with this in mind the implementation has been easier than I expected. Oh, it also allows for a cool and very useful feature for debugging as you can essentially make the game freeze after every step without having to run in debug mode:
liliththepale
Banned
Yeah, I'm glad you figured out a way to do it. You'll notice I didn't say impossible, just kinda hard.
Also, event_user(0) evaluates to the same thing as event_perform(ev_other, ev_user0), so you might be interested in giving that a try!
Sweet, thanks for pointing that out. It´s been almost 10 years since I used GM seriously and am still a bit rusty. I´m discovering bit by bit the "new" (ie: everything in the last 10 years) functions and some of them are really awesome. I like a lot how GM handles memory now, before all resources were loaded into memory by default and the only way to avoid it was to make all resource files external and develop a method to load and unload them as needed, which was slow as f*ck, but now texture pages and audio groups handle all this stuff for you. Every new thing I discover is a little nice surprise for me
All I do is setting the room_speed to whatever value I want. The game will slow down (that's how I captured my gif). Just call a custom function that lets you set speed and duration of the slow-motion effect. I use that a lot for debuggin purposes.
It's someting I would like to test. Luckily enough, my animations don't look too bad at that speed. I was also planning to do that single-frame-freeze thing that Zelda games do whenever you hit an enemy (at least since The Wind Waker). It's quite spectacular IMO and should look great on my game.
Gifcam rules. If your gifs are still too big (say you wanna post in Tumblr) you can try recording at a smaller framerate (15 fps instead of 33).
Also use http://ezgif.com/optimize to reduce quality, increase speed, skip frames, crop your gif, etc.
Little update to Power Hover Android.
Last week we got featuring from Google and the game is getting lots of users through Google play.
Lots of downloads hasn't turned into lots of sales though, we are trying to monetize the game with free to try model, ie. the first part of the game is free and then there is a pay wall for the rest of the chapters.
We knew that Free to Try model is really far from ideal in terms of conversion from free to paying players, but thought that at least it's fair: players can test the game and compatibility before purchase, they will surely understand where we are coming from...
Not so much, besides sales being pretty bad, we are also getting beaten on ratings. A lot of people are complaining because either they want everything to be free or somehow miss all the signs that the game is going to ask them money to continue at some point.
We guessed this would affect ratings a bit, but not at this scale, we are down to >4.1 from 4.6 that we had before featuring.
Then again there's over 3000 5/5 votes, so vast majority really seems to like the game, have to try remember that every time someone hits us with 1/5
We are about to release a new patch that hopefully remedies some of the issues, but yeah, monetization is hard.
In hindsight, we should have just released the game as premium on Android as well, but we were afraid of compatibility issues and piracy. In the future (if we can make another game) it's most likely going to be paid game on both bigger mobile platforms.
Last week we got featuring from Google and the game is getting lots of users through Google play.
Lots of downloads hasn't turned into lots of sales though, we are trying to monetize the game with free to try model, ie. the first part of the game is free and then there is a pay wall for the rest of the chapters.
We knew that Free to Try model is really far from ideal in terms of conversion from free to paying players, but thought that at least it's fair: players can test the game and compatibility before purchase, they will surely understand where we are coming from...
Not so much, besides sales being pretty bad, we are also getting beaten on ratings. A lot of people are complaining because either they want everything to be free or somehow miss all the signs that the game is going to ask them money to continue at some point.
We guessed this would affect ratings a bit, but not at this scale, we are down to >4.1 from 4.6 that we had before featuring.
Then again there's over 3000 5/5 votes, so vast majority really seems to like the game, have to try remember that every time someone hits us with 1/5
We are about to release a new patch that hopefully remedies some of the issues, but yeah, monetization is hard.
In hindsight, we should have just released the game as premium on Android as well, but we were afraid of compatibility issues and piracy. In the future (if we can make another game) it's most likely going to be paid game on both bigger mobile platforms.
It's one of my many eternal struggles at the moment, the more I play test the combat in my game, the more it slowly goes towards a dark souls esque slow style than a manic diablo fest due to difficulty (in an already difficult game). It's kind of sitting inbetween right now though. Tested multiple ways of shooting, raycasts are ok but it's instant, so it needs to heavily rely on an accuracy stat to balance it out. I did have a physical projectile system similar to Diablo's where they're semi fast ish but still dodgable because of the travel time and more, skill based I guess rather than stat based. Both have mertis I think, it's just hard to pick between the two. (Luckily it's not hard for me to switch between them atm to test!)
Speaking of difficult decisions, still can't decide on camera view... anyone here have an oppinion? Gameplay wise as stated above, it's an action rpg with guns if that makes a difference. A has a more traditional look and easier to manage with the camera, B being the opposite, the perspective is nice, but can also obscure enemies more. Out of the people I've asked so far, B is edging it just though. I can work with most of the problems that they both have, so this is more of a "what do people prefer" aesthetic question.
edit: Oh and I don't have any real plans to make the camera rotate, would like to keep it fixed.
A
B
LordRaptor
Member
If it makes any difference to your decision, the classic fixed orthogonal camera is very performant and will let manage a consistent framerate a lot easier, and let you cheat a lot more to maintain performance - for example, those pillars don't need to be cubes, they can just be the three faces that the camera sees with baked shadows (or even billboarded sprites)
True although A is a pseudo orthographic camera, it's really perspective. Ortho causes a lot of issues in Unity for me :\
Also would be ok with baked if mixed ligthing (so characters/dynamic objects have shadows) worked. Think it's nearly/over a year now it hasn't worked for? 5.4 was meant to fix it, but it's still very hit and miss and still doesn't work in places.
Diablohead
Member
They will
That room is just for testing, the assets are not finished yet. So, in that gif, the flowers and plants are just static tiles.In the final game they'll be objects and react to wind, the player movement, and maybe some of them can even be cut.
LordRaptor
Member
How are you faking ortho, out of interest? Really low FOV on a perspective camera?
The main problem with ortho view is you get weird obviously unrealistic perspective (because there literally is no perspective) but from a design point of view it lets a player parse things like if an enemy is small or if it far away much more easily than perspective can - or do you mean other issues?
For baked lighting I'm not sure if I can offer any help on the issues you're having, stuff I've done is either all in fully baked with blob shadows, or fully realtime :s
Geometric smoke with some basic diffuse shading is cheap enough for my uses
Cheap, efficient, and stylish ! Looking good !
We've started working on some new environments for the incoming mobile version of Tanoo Jump, so here is a quick drawing of our designer ! Candy islands !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FphP5PttATM&feature=youtu.be
Pretty much that yeah, in that screeny the FoV is 10 and the angles are x:45, y:45, also for the reasons you stated. Wanted a little perspective in there. Seemed to be a nice balance at those values imo.
The problems I had is that in full perspective, the camera clipping through things etc. Though I probably wouldn't put stuff as close as I did in that shot (the pillars being right next to the camera)
For lighting I just went realtime, not as good quality as baked but I can get everything I want, plus have a few dynamic lights here and there, which leans towards having it as deferred, ortho being forward only.
Poetic.Injustice
Member
What do you guys think of this tree based off of the concept image?
neko.works
Member
Most of my assets have normal maps and sometimes specular maps, so they looks pretty good with Unity's standard shader.
Thanks!
Geometric smoke with some basic diffuse shading is cheap enough for my uses
Looks pretty good! Did you try to activate shadows on the particles? Though I don't know if it is technically possible / still as smooth.
Working on the first boss battle for the upcoming playable demo. Here's a shot bellow.
By the way, did any of you guys got retweeted by @Unity3D on a #madewithunity Friday? I think I've tried at least 10 times, the best I got was a like -.-
hobblygobbly
Member
I've always disliked doing UI related stuff (especially interfacing it with getting information from the game, been starting to employ a MVC approach for that which works out pretty well). Tried giving it UI a proper go to brush up my skills with design/layout, it uses basic shapes (which I prefer when it comes to UI usability, and I'm no artist).
(Separate unrelated windows. When you would click appoint it brings up another window that is not shown in these examples)
(Separate unrelated windows. When you would click appoint it brings up another window that is not shown in these examples)
I guess I could try, however I have to make a new shadow render shader for that since the geometry is transformed via vertex transformation on the GPU itself.
Not a biggie though, I'll write that on my graphics idea list, thanks. I'll try to focus on gameplay programming now, even though that's boring af in comparison. But a good prototype is priority no1 now.
EDIT: Btw what does it take to become a non-junior able-to-post-new-threads type of member?
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