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[MrHoot]

Making a new creature (a mini boss), fun times with a creepy"Forest giant" type

 

[Feep]

Why is that? Did you expect to fail because almost everyone does, or because you got tired of looking for issues yourself?

Almost everyone does. They did actually find a couple real bugs, which are totally on me, but there are a ton of things that you just sort of have to get used to with the submission process. For instance, in Spanish, my translation of "stick derecho" did not match the brand guideline of "joystick derecho". Or my spec.xml file did not have everything set up exactly as they need it. Or the music that plays when you hover over the game in the OS was two dB too loud.

I mean, it's possible, all these things were listed and everything, but it's a *ton* of stuff and it's all new and it's just really tough to catch everything the first go-around.

 

[SeanNoonan]

Very first thing I'd do is probably to tone down on the effects a lot. Does it run much better if you simplify/disable effects?

You know I was thinking, maybe I could make an iOS specific version that has a more basic aesthetic. Something I might look into if I manage to magic up some free time

 

[Noogy]

Almost everyone does. They did actually find a couple real bugs, which are totally on me, but there are a ton of things that you just sort of have to get used to with the submission process. For instance, in Spanish, my translation of "stick derecho" did not match the brand guideline of "joystick derecho". Or my spec.xml file did not have everything set up exactly as they need it. Or the music that plays when you hover over the game in the OS was two dB too loud.

I mean, it's possible, all these things were listed and everything, but it's a *ton* of stuff and it's all new and it's just really tough to catch everything the first go-around.

Yep, that sounds like console development. I've failed at least once on every console I've launched on.

 

[tamaster92]

So like..

It's pretty much impossible to do any real VR Dev without any actual headset of my own I presume?

Sorta sucks cos no way I can afford any

 

[Noogy]

So like..

It's pretty much impossible to do any real VR Dev without any actual headset of my own I presume?

Sorta sucks cos no way I can afford any

It'd be pretty difficult, and nearly impossible to do testing/cert. It'd be like trying to develop for a touch device without having one, I wouldn't recommend it.

That said, with some tools like Unity, you can do the bulk of development without ever seeing it in VR.

 

[tamaster92]

It'd be pretty difficult, and nearly impossible to do testing/cert. It'd be like trying to develop for a touch device without having one, I wouldn't recommend it.

That said, with some tools like Unity, you can do the bulk of development without ever seeing it in VR.

I suppose you could always build around knowing the camera will be free then convert the camera to VR after.

Still, not quite the same.

Time to start saving

 

[Cute Dragon Here]

You know I was thinking, maybe I could make an iOS specific version that has a more basic aesthetic. Something I might look into if I manage to magic up some free time

It could actually be part of the standard version for systems that somehow struggle to run it (Maybe an Atom-powered Windows tablet - similar GPU performance to the latest iOS devices, if not a bit more?)

I'll probably finish the title screen artwork today once I have my lunch.

 

[fengshuifever]

https://gfycat.com/OnlySoreCleanerwrasse

I finally wrassled this rig into submission and threw in a quick idle test animation.

I'm super super super happy that I can finally start doing proper animations now

There's still a mad list of to do's like cleaning up the vertex groups and fleshing out a proper idle state but right now I'm just super jazzed

 

[HidingMyThunder]

Anybody with recommendations on a navigation UI that fits within my current design aesthetic? I've tried several different options, but nothing seems to look appropriate...

The left/right arrows are used to change the difficulty selection:

The up/down arrows are used to change the level selection (within the selected difficulty):

 

[correojon]

Making a new creature (a mini boss), fun times with a creepy"Forest giant" type

That looks awesome!!

Anybody with recommendations on a navigation UI that fits within my current design aesthetic? I've tried several different options, but nothing seems to look appropriate...

The left/right arrows are used to change the difficulty selection:

The up/down arrows are used to change the level selection (within the selected difficulty):

I like a lot how it looks: simple and clean. However the controls you describe don´t match very nicely with the UI, I´d place little moving triangles to the left and right of the difficulty to hint the user about using left/right. The same but with above and below for the level.
Also, I´d make the level text pop up more and be bigger. Another option would be to use only LEFT/RIGHT & ENTER, so the player first selects the difficulty and when he presses ENTER, the difficulty text becomes smaller, the side triangles move to the Level text and the Level text becomes larger in the same color as the difficulty text. Again, with LEFT/RIGHT the player will select the level and with ENTER the level will start.
I mean, the level text gets a lost with so many other text, so it should be given more importance.

 

[Cute Dragon Here]

Anybody with recommendations on a navigation UI that fits within my current design aesthetic? I've tried several different options, but nothing seems to look appropriate...

The left/right arrows are used to change the difficulty selection:

The up/down arrows are used to change the level selection (within the selected difficulty):

Like the poster above said, I'd suggest putting in clear arrow indicators for adjusting difficulty and level. Level numbers need to be larger, too... much larger. Probably just somewhat smaller than difficulty

Or you could instead make up and down select the thing to be modified, and left and right increase/decrease. Your call. (Just make sure you have a key for "confirm".)

 

[HidingMyThunder]

That looks awesome!!



I like a lot how it looks: simple and clean. However the controls you describe don´t match very nicely with the UI, I´d place little moving triangles to the left and right of the difficulty to hint the user about using left/right. The same but with above and below for the level.
Also, I´d make the level text pop up more and be bigger. Another option would be to use only LEFT/RIGHT & ENTER, so the player first selects the difficulty and when he presses ENTER, the difficulty text becomes smaller, the side triangles move to the Level text and the Level text becomes larger in the same color as the difficulty text. Again, with LEFT/RIGHT the player will select the level and with ENTER the level will start.
I mean, the level text gets a lost with so many other text, so it should be given more importance.

Like the poster above said, I'd suggest putting in clear arrow indicators for adjusting difficulty and level. Level numbers need to be larger, too... much larger. Probably just somewhat smaller than difficulty

Or you could instead make up and down select the thing to be modified, and left and right increase/decrease. Your call. (Just make sure you have a key for "confirm".)

I like the idea of selection one option at a time - shifting focus to a singular option. Thanks for the comments!

I'll update the controls to see how this scheme works within the current design!

 

[Cute Dragon Here]

So I think I'm almost done with the characters for the title screen (might desaturate them into a nice brown, but the pixels are staying)

Even I feel like there's something not quite right with the eyes. They look a bit too... artificially big. Perhaps making them a bit smaller might work.

Also, something bothers me about the shading of Character 3 (starting from the left). Are you guys seeing what I'm seeing?

I guess I better work on the rest of the stuff, and then try to see if the title screen works properly.

Now loading... Don't close the game or turn off the power.

Now loading saved data. Don't close the game or turn off the power.

Loading saved data. Don't close the game or turn off the power.

Game loaded successfully.

Game loaded.

Loaded saved game.

(No message)

What would flow best when it comes to loading/loaded text?

 

[RelentlessRolento]

Dammit :-/ got a character drawn out last night n tried rigging it with bones in Flash 5.5 and man does it break easily.

I wish Spriter or that other program (I forget) had vector/flash animation output because I need the animations to retain being vectors for gamemaker

Looks like I might just not bone the animations and do good ole tweening

 

[Cute Dragon Here]

Dammit :-/ got a character drawn out last night n tried rigging it with bones in Flash 5.5 and man does it break easily.

I wish Spriter or that other program (I forget) had vector/flash animation output because I need the animations to retain being vectors for gamemaker

Looks like I might just not bone the animations and do good ole tweening

At least you are doing something... me, I'm going full on "sprites frames for everything".

This is harder than I've thought. And I think I managed to draw the background element for my title screen a bit too cute... then again, maybe that is the intention. (No show for now, since it's just pixel art outlines as of now)

Still need to decide on a few things before continuing things, but shouldn't take too long for me to blow the 64x64 up to 192x192 and start drawing the actual detail. Sometimes, for very large sprites, I tend to work at 64x64 and decide on the rest of the detail after blowing up. Feels nicer to get an "outline" first on sprites.

 

[JulianImp]

Making a new creature (a mini boss), fun times with a creepy"Forest giant" type

I really like it. Still, I can't look at it and not see a chozo.

 

[RelentlessRolento]

At least you are doing something... me, I'm going full on "sprites frames for everything".

This is harder than I've thought. And I think I managed to draw the background element for my title screen a bit too cute... then again, maybe that is the intention. (No show for now, since it's just pixel art outlines as of now)

Still need to decide on a few things before continuing things, but shouldn't take too long for me to blow the 64x64 up to 192x192 and start drawing the actual detail. Sometimes, for very large sprites, I tend to work at 64x64 and decide on the rest of the detail after blowing up. Feels nicer to get an "outline" first on sprites.

good luck with those animations.

I was thinking that I'd mostly be worrying about AI for my game, but after knocking out the basics of it, I'm a little more worried about animation now, though I'm sure I'll get it figured out once I knock some animations out.

 

[Cute Dragon Here]

good luck with those animations.

I was thinking that I'd mostly be worrying about AI for my game, but after knocking out the basics of it, I'm a little more worried about animation now, though I'm sure I'll get it figured out once I knock some animations out.

My animations are actually fairly simplistic all things considered, as there is a lot of reuse and flipping involved, in addition to a bit of generalization, where most sprite sets are multipurpose. Heck, enemies are probably not going to be animated at all.

The thing is, well, I try to avoid resorting to palette swaps, so when you factor in all NPCs and enemies, there is a lot of sprite work. Thankfully most enemies don't have overworld sprites, so I only have to do it once for each type. It's not going yo be a very long RPG, as this is kind of like a weekend project that ended up going overboard into something that might see the light of the day in a store.

I actually have a template of sorts for the average-sized NPC, so it should be easy to work off it. Just wondering if I'll ever make it to the end.

In the meantime, when I turned off my desktop tonight, I felt pretty happy with the re-outlining work with the large background element (still not spoiling it until it's complete) redoing it into a large 192x192 image from a 64x64 sketch. I think this thing is going to be shaded in greyscale or sepia in the end, no colour, for... Um, well, it'd look better that way!

In the meantime, I still have a nagging feeling about the other image in the title screen...

And now I'm also questioning me about the inclusion of a Voice Volume variable. With my budget, things would sound even more cheesy that the kind of thing you'd hear in a no-budget dub on a 16-bit era game...

 

[V_Arnold]

I was like "hey, lets see if unity changed since I last checked it out".

The example project fails to run with the WebGL Compile option. The scene appears, and then it throws an error, stops.

*continues working on his own engine. yes, it will be dumber than unity *

 

[LordRaptor]

I wish Spriter or that other program (I forget) had vector/flash animation output because I need the animations to retain being vectors for gamemaker

I think you're talking about Spine which I always believed had a very tight official integration with Gamemaker?

 

[Blizzard]

I was like "hey, lets see if unity changed since I last checked it out".

The example project fails to run with the WebGL Compile option. The scene appears, and then it throws an error, stops.

*continues working on his own engine. yes, it will be dumber than unity *

Ludum Dare is next weekend! I look forward to a bunch of people including WebGL Unity builds that have bizarre issues (while saying in the description that people should just download the random .exe from the internet instead, and you should just run in a virtual machine if you don't like that), and HTML5 games with performance problems and very specific browser requirements.

Meanwhile, people who include Unity browser plugin versions (if that's still possible) or make Flash games will, as always, have people criticize them for using such antiquated technology on a weekend game experiment. And the Unity plugin / Flash game will probably work perfectly.

OK I'm finished being cynical for now.

 

[TheKroge]

When the ships are in grids like that, does shooting through ships hurt the ones in the middle?

Yeah pretty much. The way it works is you set up your initial formation, lock the coordinates, then the grid disappears and hte ships fly at eachother in formation. Ally ships in front of you must be destroyed before you can get hit, so the formation protects you. Ships can aim between eachother to hit the enemies though.

 

[RelentlessRolento]

I think you're talking about Spine which I always believed had a very tight official integration with Gamemaker?

There you go.

It does have great integration but I hear there is no vector file type output as apposed to sprites >_<

I'm having such a hard time keeping things from breaking, and once I have something setup, something else breaks -_- it's very discouraging.

I'm now considering just going with Spriter (I have a license) or Spine (I gotta get a license) or do frame animations. I really wanted to avoid using sprites, but if I have because Flash isn't being nice, it might save me pain later.

Any suggestions?

 

[Jumplion]

Haven't smelled the smelly smell of a new Unity project in a long time...

 

[RelentlessRolento]

So I've re-evaluated and realized it may be best for me to go the frame by frame style of animation with a mix of tweening and etc. I'll still be using flash, but I think I'll be able to make a nicer looking game that plays better as well.

My reference point that helped me decide was this GDC talk about Skullgirls animation that I watched a few months back, and after rewatching I realize how much better everything can be emphasized, but that it may take longer to draw out since it's by hand.

 

[MrHoot]

One thing for sure is that after my current big project i'm not making a top-view game for a while, or i'm making a 3D model next time. Hand drawn multi directional animation are a fucking pain in the ass

 

[Raticus79]

I'm gonna leave here a really good reference about design patterns in videogame programming. I guess that most of us are way beyond that point, but from time to time is good to revisit the basics.

Yup, bookmarked for later reading, thanks. Some new material in there for me too.

 

[MrHoot]

Anyway fun continues with mr. Forest chozo here as i'm starting to do his attack patterns for the side direction, starting with a lunge

 

[Makai]

Ok I haven't tested it yet, but I have reason to believe that async works in Unity with F#. It doesn't work in Unity with C#, so there could be a big performance reason to use F# - multithreading.

 

[liliththepale]

Anyway fun continues with mr. Forest chozo here as i'm starting to do his attack patterns for the side direction, starting with a lunge

oh wow I really love the creature design! It's really haunting and beautiful.

If I could make a slight suggestion, I think the different bits and bobs should sway at slightly different undulations. Having the antler bits and the dangling strands sway in unison with their respective groups feels a little artificial to me.

 

[MrHoot]

oh wow I really love the creature design! It's really haunting and beautiful.

If I could make a slight suggestion, I think the different bits and bobs should sway at slightly different undulations. Having the antler bits and the dangling strands sway in unison with their respective groups feels a little artificial to me.

You're right and I actually forgot to do that for this export. Honestly tho I think I'll do the swaying when i'm done with all the core animations as he's being quite a piece of work

 

[liliththepale]

You're right and I actually forgot to do that for this export. Honestly tho I think I'll do the swaying when i'm done with all the core animations as he's being quite a piece of work

Oh, for sure! There's a reason it's called secondary animation. I always do capes/hair et cetera last when animating a motion.

 

[OricWindstar]

Anyway fun continues with mr. Forest chozo here as i'm starting to do his attack patterns for the side direction, starting with a lunge

That looks great! Love that design.

Stuff like this is a big inspiration as I've just started working on some animations myself as of today. Never animated before, but hoping that taking a trial by fire approach will help me learn quick.

 

[Exuro]

Been playing around with particles. Have never used them before so it's pretty interesting to mess around with them. One thing I'm trying to do is make my background less static/bland, but I'm having a hard time with particles making it look like the space is being moved around. Right now have a terrible background particle that kind of makes it look like I'm underwater. Not sure what types of motions to try out to not make it look like that. Also made a particle to indicate the exit block. I think it looks pretty neat, though also needs work. Any tips on particle movement for the background so it looks less static yet not like I'm moving around would be great.

 

[OricWindstar]

Been playing around with particles. Have never used them before so it's pretty interesting to mess around with them. One thing I'm trying to do is make my background less static/bland, but I'm having a hard time with particles making it look like the space is being moved around. Right now have a terrible background particle that kind of makes it look like I'm underwater. Not sure what types of motions to try out to not make it look like that. Also made a particle to indicate the exit block. I think it looks pretty neat, though also needs work. Any tips on particle movement for the background so it looks less static yet not like I'm moving around would be great.

I'm not sure if this is exactly what you're looking for, but what if you had the white "blocks" in the back fade in and out like stars rather than shooting around? If you could get the timing of the fading right it could make the background feel more alive while not adding any feeling of movement.

 

[correojon]

Finally after banging my head against a wall for almost 3 days I have a nice "undo" system for the level editor. I still have to test how it works in a full level where many instances will be present and the memory requirements will be bigger, but in the simple tests I´ve done it´s working flawlessly In the case it starts slowing down I have a solution that will speed it up by a lot, but it´ll take some tedious work to implement so I´m betting on the simple solution for now.

I'm not sure if this is exactly what you're looking for, but what if you had the white "blocks" in the back fade in and out like stars rather than shooting around? If you could get the timing of the fading right it could make the background feel more alive while not adding any feeling of movement.

I was going to suggest this very same thing. Make them twinkle slowly to create a nice relaxing effect and also use different sizes.

 

[HP_Wuvcraft]

Been hardcoding in all the flags for the DLC today. My head pounds and my eyes bleed. Tomorrow: the actual script.

Anyway fun continues with mr. Forest chozo here as i'm starting to do his attack patterns for the side direction, starting with a lunge

Fucking brilliant. I echo Lilith. Haunting and beautiful. It's such an elegant design. So fun to look at. I also love how the severity of the attack is dictated in the speed and animation of the swipe.

 

[correojon]

So I've re-evaluated and realized it may be best for me to go the frame by frame style of animation with a mix of tweening and etc. I'll still be using flash, but I think I'll be able to make a nicer looking game that plays better as well.

My reference point that helped me decide was this GDC talk about Skullgirls animation that I watched a few months back, and after rewatching I realize how much better everything can be emphasized, but that it may take longer to draw out since it's by hand.

Started watching this, even though I´m only halfway through it´s already given me a lot of ideas to make my animations much better. Great contribution, thank you!

PSA EDIT:
Just found this on Reddit, deadline is May 24th:
https://software.intel.com/sites/campaigns/levelup2016/

Prizes include 5000 USD, a marketing campaign of 12000$ and many more things. Game demos, even proof of concepts are allowed. Good luck to anyone who enters!

 

[TheKroge]

Started watching this, even though I´m only halfway through it´s already given me a lot of ideas to make my animations much better. Great contribution, thank you!

PSA EDIT:
Just found this on Reddit, deadline is May 24th:
https://software.intel.com/sites/campaigns/levelup2016/

Prizes include 5000 USD, a marketing campaign of 12000$ and many more things. Game demos, even proof of concepts are allowed. Good luck to anyone who enters!

Cool thanks for that link! My game is almost finished and is designed with tablets in mind, so it would fit the category of "touch screen compatible"

Whats funny though is that I think our sound track is much more likely to win than the game itself, since it stands so well on its own and is 25 minutes long!

 

[Exuro]

I'm not sure if this is exactly what you're looking for, but what if you had the white "blocks" in the back fade in and out like stars rather than shooting around? If you could get the timing of the fading right it could make the background feel more alive while not adding any feeling of movement.

I didn't think of making fade in/out transitions. I just tried it out and it looks a lot better. Thank you for the suggestion! Still needs some tweaking, but makes the background look less mundane. Also my exit particle effect looks a lot like smoke from a fire. I think I'll need to come up with a different one.

 

[HidingMyThunder]

I didn't think of making fade in/out transitions. I just tried it out and it looks a lot better. Thank you for the suggestion! Still needs some tweaking, but makes the background look less mundane. Also my exit particle effect looks a lot like smoke from a fire. I think I'll need to come up with a different one.

The twinkle seems a little out-of-place. You main perspective is tilted as shown via the level design and player movement, whereas the background is flat and shown in a frontal perspective...

 

[Cute Dragon Here]

*sort of tears hair out while trying to think about all possible UI lines to insert... don't want to end up suddenly having some texts out of place*

Still, with one swoop, at least I changed all instances of MP into TP. Gotta take into account non-magical users.

Also, I think I have a weird thing going on...

Attack Arts: Attack Magic
Defence Arts: Healing Magic
Transformations: Summon Magic
???: Status Magic

Now, I wonder what the "???" would be, thematically speaking...

 

[correojon]

Anyway fun continues with mr. Forest chozo here as i'm starting to do his attack patterns for the side direction, starting with a lunge

The character design and the animation are amazing, but the blue effect feels off: it describes a trayectory which has no relation to the movement of the arm, so instead of strengthening the animation it gives a weird effect. I think the arc should go from behind-above to the front-below, like the left arm´s movement. You could also hold the left leg bent in place in the air before making the arm go down, I think that pose before attacking could give it even more strength. It screws timing a bit as it is now, as the leg moving forward before the arm makes it seem like the Forest Chozo is falling down before launching the attack (I tried doing it myself and it felt really weird, like it broke the rythm of the motion ).

 

[Exuro]

The twinkle seems a little out-of-place. You main perspective is tilted as shown via the level design and player movement, whereas the background is flat and shown in a frontal perspective...

Yeah good point. I would like to make it more 3d but I'm not sure what approach I need to take to do that. I'm using an orthographic camera so it makes it tricky.

 

[dancrane212]

Anyone demoing their game at PAX East this month? Figure I lurk enough in this thread I should drop by and say hi in-person to folk showing off their stuff.

 

[HidingMyThunder]

Yeah good point. I would like to make it more 3d but I'm not sure what approach I need to take to do that. I'm using an orthographic camera so it makes it tricky.

Unfortunately, I don't have a good suggestion for you.

 

[OricWindstar]

I didn't think of making fade in/out transitions. I just tried it out and it looks a lot better. Thank you for the suggestion! Still needs some tweaking, but makes the background look less mundane. Also my exit particle effect looks a lot like smoke from a fire. I think I'll need to come up with a different one.

Definitely a step in the right direction! If there's a way to make them fade out slower, I think that would help, but I have no idea what's possible in the engine (is that the proper term?) you're using.

Also, thanks to the advice of this thread, I've started trying to get some basic animation under my belt. Tried my hand at a walk cycle and I think it doesn't look half bad:

Flame is a little rough, but if I was forced to use this as a final animation it wouldn't be the end of the world.

 

[MrHoot]

The character design and the animation are amazing, but the blue effect feels off: it describes a trayectory which has no relation to the movement of the arm, so instead of strengthening the animation it gives a weird effect. I think the arc should go from behind-above to the front-below, like the left arm´s movement. You could also hold the left leg bent in place in the air before making the arm go down, I think that pose before attacking could give it even more strength. It screws timing a bit as it is now, as the leg moving forward before the arm makes it seem like the Forest Chozo is falling down before launching the attack (I tried doing it myself and it felt really weird, like it broke the rythm of the motion ).

Thanks ! Yeah the effect is weird (I added something quickly, copy pasted an effect from another character I have :s ) but you are totally right. The swoosh effect was done a bit lazily and i'll have to redo it so it makes a more sensible arc

I will try the leg-arm movement, not sure I exactly see but there's still something slightly off anyway.

Anyway thanks for all the positive comments ! I work alone a lot (even though i'm in a team but they're all over the world) and haven't shown any of my stuff for a long time so i'm glad my work still has some positive effect

 

[Dark-Cloudz]

Hello everyone.

If possible, could you follow my brother and friend's two man development of RatScarer an indie game they've been developing (slowly!) for the best part of a year. I've contributed a few limited assets.

https://twitter.com/ratscarer

Here's some stuff. Sorry, I don't have access to the orginal GIFs, so twitter vids will have to do!

https://twitter.com/RatScarer/status/672816158458822656

https://twitter.com/RatScarer/status/672195634762350592

https://vine.co/v/iKW6nlqZnW5



Oh and if you feel like it, go to their website http://ratscarer.com/ and scroll right to meet them! haha!