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[Violet_0]

well, Minecraft was quite successful

I'd say the gameplay side of things needs to be rather impressive to compensate for a bad presentation, but that certainly also depends on the genre. You'd probably lure in a much wider audience if you had some nice visuals to accompany your game. Think of all those abandoned Kickstarter RPGs that collected many thousands of dollars with only some fancy artwork and fake screenshots

 

[bearbytes]

nice. I like the style of your pixel art characters. it's at once unique and memorable, which is hard to do with pixel art since everything's nearly been done

Thanks a lot! Yeah, it's not always easy to come up with something with such a limited color palette and small number of pixels to work with.

 

[DNAbro]

For Greenlight and sales in general, how important are the graphics for indie games? A lot of games in this thread look gorgeous, whereas my own tend to be cube-based due to a lack of artists available. As a designer, this doesn't bother me, I do what I can with the tools I have, and the gameplay is of course number 1 regardless of art style. But I wonder if these games are viable to put on sale at all :/

I feel like visual consistency is more important than how great the graphics are. And considering games like Thomas was Alone and Undertale can do well, I'd say any art style is viable as long as what is behind it is good.

 

[HandsomeCharles]

I feel like visual consistency is more important than how great the graphics are. And considering games like Thomas was Alone and Undertale can do well, I'd say any art style is viable as long as what is behind it is good.

I think that's a good way to put it, but one thing that should be kept in mind is that if your game doesn't look "Objectively pretty" you are going to have to make sure there is one hell of a hook to draw people in!

 

[crwilso]

Yay, my neogaf account was finally approved! Hello everyone! Loads of inspiring stuff in here and I've been really looking forward to contributing myself.

I'm a designer for our game 'The Siege And The Sandfox' which we've been working on in UE4 since the start of the year. Here's a quick snapshot of how far we've got:

Should be able to keep a steady stream of new things coming in soon

 

[Alienous]

Damn, that's a pretty looking game, crwilso.

 

[Labadal]

Yay, my neogaf account was finally approved! Hello everyone! Loads of inspiring stuff in here and I've been really looking forward to contributing myself.

I'm a designer for our game 'The Siege And The Sandfox' which we've been working on in UE4 since the start of the year. Here's a quick snapshot of how far we've got:

Should be able to keep a steady stream of new things coming in soon

I'm in love. Can you tell us a little about the game?

 

[crwilso]

Sure thing

Firstly, I completely forgot we did a little promo video for GDC which should help give you some idea what we're aiming for:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tV-NxBPf5U

The game is what we're calling a 'StealthVania' - classic metroid style world combined with stealth more akin to something like Thief or Dishonored. We're still feeling out exactly what that means, but it's starting to come together nicely.

There's more on our website (http://siegeandsandfox.com/) and our twitter (https://twitter.com/siegeandsandfox) if you're interested.

I also forgot a lovely bit of key art the artists made for us:

 

[Labadal]

Sure thing

Firstly, I completely forgot we did a little promo video for GDC which should help give you some idea what we're aiming for:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tV-NxBPf5U

The game is what we're calling a 'StealthVania' - classic metroid style world combined with stealth more akin to something like Thief or Dishonored. We're still feeling out exactly what that means, but it's starting to come together nicely.

There's more on our website (http://siegeandsandfox.com/) and our twitter (https://twitter.com/siegeandsandfox) if you're interested.

I also forgot a lovely bit of key art the artists made for us:

Cool. Following on twitter now.

From the trailer though, the jumping looked a bit floaty? I don't know. I love the look and vibe of the game. I also love the idea of a "stealthvania".

 

[Ranger X]

Sure thing

Firstly, I completely forgot we did a little promo video for GDC which should help give you some idea what we're aiming for:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tV-NxBPf5U

Looks fantastic. I love it. I will want to play that.
Tell us if you guys get to Greenlight so I can send a vote.

 

[Sàmban]

Made some progress on Asideus today! Quick screen before I head to work. Your thoughts on the CA levels? I hope it isn't to intrusive.

 

[HandsomeCharles]

Made some progress on Asideus today! Quick screen before I head to work. Your thoughts on the CA levels? I hope it isn't to intrusive.

I don't think its intrusive that that screenshot, but I know there are some people out there who are very vocally against it in any form

Unrelated, I made some more progress with my game this weekend. Got keybinds saving/loading from Jsons and set up a rudimentary menu screen. Also started work on some "starter levels" for a little proof-of-concept demo that I should have finished in a couple of weeks.
Here's a replay of my attempts at one of them!

Also, anyone know if there's any support for embedding webm on gaf? Or are .gifs our only option for animated content?

 

[Blizzard]

Made some progress on Asideus today! Quick screen before I head to work. Your thoughts on the CA levels? I hope it isn't to intrusive.

I don't notice it much, basically only on the text. I'm not personally sure it adds a lot to the text though -- it makes me feel like my monitor is slightly out of calibration or the text is harder to read.

 

[HellBlazer]

Sure thing

Firstly, I completely forgot we did a little promo video for GDC which should help give you some idea what we're aiming for:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tV-NxBPf5U

The game is what we're calling a 'StealthVania' - classic metroid style world combined with stealth more akin to something like Thief or Dishonored. We're still feeling out exactly what that means, but it's starting to come together nicely.

There's more on our website (http://siegeandsandfox.com/) and our twitter (https://twitter.com/siegeandsandfox) if you're interested.

I also forgot a lovely bit of key art the artists made for us:

Dude, that looks fucking amazing. Would you say it's a bit like an open-world (in the Metroid-like sense) Mark of the Ninja?

 

[superNESjoe]

Sure thing

Firstly, I completely forgot we did a little promo video for GDC which should help give you some idea what we're aiming for:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tV-NxBPf5U

The game is what we're calling a 'StealthVania' - classic metroid style world combined with stealth more akin to something like Thief or Dishonored. We're still feeling out exactly what that means, but it's starting to come together nicely.

There's more on our website (http://siegeandsandfox.com/) and our twitter (https://twitter.com/siegeandsandfox) if you're interested.

I also forgot a lovely bit of key art the artists made for us:

Followed on Twitter, absolutely love the art.

 

[Odrion]

So that Cosmi-Cave game I submitted to the 64 x 64 game jam ended up ranking better than I thought. Ranked 30th out of 383 reviewed submissions.

Ranked 9th in overall enjoyment.

https://itch.io/jam/lowrezjam2016/results?page=3

Way better than I thought. This is like, the first real game thing I've done myself. And much of it was done in a two day crunch. So to see it go over this well...

Well, I guess this'll be the game I work on for the next two years. Hah!

 

[ThePhotoshop]

Here's a cross section of a house for Wildfire. It's almost a pity that the game is about burning things.

 

[HidingMyThunder]

So that Cosmi-Cave game I submitted to the 64 x 64 game jam ended up ranking better than I thought. Ranked 30th out of 383 reviewed submissions.

Ranked 9th in overall enjoyment.

https://itch.io/jam/lowrezjam2016/results?page=3

Way better than I thought. This is like, the first real game thing I've done myself. And much of it was done in a two day crunch. So to see it go over this well...

Well, I guess this'll be the game I work on for the next two years. Hah!

Congrats and well done!!

 

[Noogy]

Man, some beautiful new stuff here... keep creating!

 

[superNESjoe]

How do you folks approach supporting and developing additional content for your games? Do you start planning that kind of stuff as development is ending, or do you just wait and see how the game sells? Do you have solid plans that you hope sales support, or do you develop your plans based on how much profit the game is making?

What arguments do you guys and gals consider when debating between paid dlc and free content support?

I ask because GunWorld 2 is launching next month on Xbox One, and I plan to support the game (at least in the short term) with free additional content. New modes, characters, guns, etc. I have a lot of things I'd like to add to a game that I already feel offers lots of content for the asking price, so that I can support my fans and add more value to the title over time. However, internally there's always anxiety over whether or not you should be spending additional weeks/months working on something you won't be able to pin a profit to. Free content might encourage more sales, but there's not many dependable ways to prove that on a large scale.

Any thoughts on this sort of stuff? Or are you a "one and done" release the game as is and don't add more?

 

[SplitYourInfinities]

Amazing stuff

OMG, this looks really good!

 

[correojon]

What awesome last entries, games are looking great! Keep up the hard work!

 

[missile]

Which of the image hosts won't mess with uploaded pictures?

 

[justsomeguy]

I'm a designer for our game 'The Siege And The Sandfox' which we've been working on in UE4 since the start of the year. Here's a quick snapshot of how far we've got:

beauuuuuuuuuuutiful!

 

[LordRaptor]

Which of the image hosts won't mess with uploaded pictures?

I believe abload.de is generally recommended for image hosting where quality matters

 

[Thom Yorke's Wobbly Eye]

I'm a designer for our game 'The Siege And The Sandfox' which we've been working on in UE4 since the start of the year. Here's a quick snapshot of how far we've got:

Hey I know you! You're that guy I'm friends with!

Also yes yes, Sandfox looks bloody lovely as I've already told you many time!

 

[Thom Yorke's Wobbly Eye]

It's been a while since I posted about Stage Presence in here and the reasons is because:

Stage Presence got signed by tinyBuild!

We showed it at PAX East over the weekend and got a great response! Here's the launch trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oItaXa4a_4Y

and here's the tinyBuild page for the game (which also shows some of the cool Twitch integration stuff I've been working on) http://tinybuild.com/stagepresence

 

[Minamu]

well, Minecraft was quite successful

I'd say the gameplay side of things needs to be rather impressive to compensate for a bad presentation, but that certainly also depends on the genre. You'd probably lure in a much wider audience if you had some nice visuals to accompany your game. Think of all those abandoned Kickstarter RPGs that collected many thousands of dollars with only some fancy artwork and fake screenshots

That's true :lol Indeed, as I'm a designer first and foremost, my aim is of course to always have some kind of impressive gameplay system, otherwise what's the point of my portfolio at all? And since graphical artists are hard to come by, and it's hard even though I live in one of Sweden's top areas for game development students (!), I gotta make gameplay systems that don't rely on graphics, for better or worse. I think my games are great for portfolio purposes, they show my strengths and what I've learned (and none of them would exist if I hadn't taken the initiative to get people together in the first place), but some of them are based on Unity's standard cubes and nothing else (except some Shuriken particles) so it's questionable how big of a hit they would be on Greenlight. Maybe it would be, I just don't know

I feel like visual consistency is more important than how great the graphics are. And considering games like Thomas was Alone and Undertale can do well, I'd say any art style is viable as long as what is behind it is good.

Yeah, I loved Thomas Was Alone, with such graphics, I think the gameplay systems can shine more, or at least htey have to to make up for the "poor presentation".

I think that's a good way to put it, but one thing that should be kept in mind is that if your game doesn't look "Objectively pretty" you are going to have to make sure there is one hell of a hook to draw people in!

This is probably true as well. Again, my games are mainly aimed at creating a portfolio so I could prove I can do a great job at a company, but I wonder if they'd be interesting to sell as well, for funsies.

This is what my current project is looking like. I've shown it before but the menu is coming together fairly well I think. I'm gonna change the look of the buttons later, possibly to some nicer font and I want to remove the standard Unity button look.

 

[exmachina64]

Here's a cross section of a house for Wildfire. It's almost a pity that the game is about burning things.

Nice.

 

[superNESjoe]

It's been a while since I posted about Stage Presence in here and the reasons is because:

Stage Presence got signed by tinyBuild!

We showed it at PAX East over the weekend and got a great response! Here's the launch trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oItaXa4a_4Y

and here's the tinyBuild page for the game (which also shows some of the cool Twitch integration stuff I've been working on) http://tinybuild.com/stagepresence

Congratulations!

 

[Pazu]

Sure thing

Firstly, I completely forgot we did a little promo video for GDC which should help give you some idea what we're aiming for:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tV-NxBPf5U

The game is what we're calling a 'StealthVania' - classic metroid style world combined with stealth more akin to something like Thief or Dishonored. We're still feeling out exactly what that means, but it's starting to come together nicely.

There's more on our website (http://siegeandsandfox.com/) and our twitter (https://twitter.com/siegeandsandfox) if you're interested.

I also forgot a lovely bit of key art the artists made for us:

The Siege and the Sandfox is a great title.

 

[anteevy]

It's been a while since I posted about Stage Presence in here and the reasons is because:

Stage Presence got signed by tinyBuild!

We showed it at PAX East over the weekend and got a great response! Here's the launch trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oItaXa4a_4Y

and here's the tinyBuild page for the game (which also shows some of the cool Twitch integration stuff I've been working on) http://tinybuild.com/stagepresence

Congrats! What a surprise.

...

 

[neko.works]

I personnaly like the first one, as it looks pretty cool with the high contrast dynamic lights. But I guess the second one is more readable, depends on your gameplay.

Not a fan of the flat rendering of the ground though, are you going for a low poly style?

Yay, my neogaf account was finally approved! Hello everyone! Loads of inspiring stuff in here and I've been really looking forward to contributing myself.

I'm a designer for our game 'The Siege And The Sandfox' which we've been working on in UE4 since the start of the year. Here's a quick snapshot of how far we've got:

Welcome I'm in love with both your game's art and concept!

I've been working on the battle UI for Light Fairytale. Added a light transparency to the command windows, and a character status window in the lower right part of the screen.

The HP and MP colors fade from green to red depending on the current and max values.

The current playable character is highlighted (in blue in this light theme, there are 2 other themes, and I'll probably add even more).

Any thoughts?

 

[KOCMOHABT]

I personnaly like the first one, as it looks pretty cool with the high contrast dynamic lights. But I guess the second one is more readable, depends on your gameplay.

Not a fan of the flat rendering of the ground though, are you going for a low poly style?

Not sure about that yet. I am not sure whether to use normal (almost white sand) or this stylized orange one.
Looks like this at night with non stylized sand:

I've been working on the battle UI for Light Fairytale. Added a light transparency to the command windows, and a character status window in the lower right part of the screen.

The HP and MP colors fade from green to red depending on the current and max values.

The current playable character is highlighted (in blue in this light theme, there are 2 other themes, and I'll probably add even more).

Any thoughts?

The blue is not very pleasing on the eye, looks like the default 0 0 255 blue. Maybe make it a tad different?
Plus the visibility of the numbers under MP is a problem for me, if i sit at medium distance to my monitor, there is really little contrast to the background. Image compression probably doesn't help.

How do you transition from green to red? Via RGB Lerp? Care for ugly browns in between if you don't have good transitions!

 

[neko.works]

Looks like this at night with non stylized sand:

I personally prefer it this way, even though it feels a bit empty. But I think it's OK, as the camera is constantly moving following the vehicles, so you'll never have the time to concentrate on the ground.

The blue is not very pleasing on the eye, looks like the default 0 0 255 blue. Maybe make it a tad different?
Plus the visibility of the numbers under MP is a problem for me, if i sit at medium distance to my monitor, there is really little contrast to the background. Image compression probably doesn't help.

Yep, I was using pure blue. I'll tweak it a bit.

I think the font I was using was way too thin. I'll switch to a slightly bold font.

How do you transition from green to red? Via RGB Lerp? Care for ugly browns in between if you don't have good transitions!

Currently I'm doing a simple linear interpolation on the green / red components, clamped to the 0.125f -> 0.875f range. And yes, I do get ugly colors in between! I guess using the RGB Lerp will have the same results? Are you suggesting to use manual colors per ranges?

 

[KOCMOHABT]

I Are you suggesting to use manual colors per ranges?

Well, you can either look into changing into HSL or HSV (hue-based) transitions (there is tons of recources on that) or make an RGB lerp from red to yellow and then from yellow to green.

 

[missile]

I believe abload.de is generally recommended for image hosting where quality matters

Thx. Will check it out.

 

[SpookyFries]

I have a question that I might as well toss out here.

Somebody wants me to fix a model to work in UE4. The problem is that the model has multiple "root" bones. I am not familiar at all with 3dsmax but that is the format the model is in. Is there an easy way to just assign all of the bones to a root bone without fucking up the animations? I find this software to be such a fucking hassle.

I'm using the 2009 version

 

[neko.works]

Well, you can either look into changing into HSL or HSV (hue-based) transitions (there is tons of recources on that) or make an RGB lerp from red to yellow and then from yellow to green.

I see. I'll check this out!

 

[Thom Yorke's Wobbly Eye]

In all the fuss about announcing the tinyBuild publishing deal I forgot to post the screenshots! Here's some shiny pictures of the latest progress on Stage Presence!

 

[bearbytes]

Polishing up some of the enemies for Magnetta, I'm having a lot of fun with it so far

 

[HandsomeCharles]

This is probably true as well. Again, my games are mainly aimed at creating a portfolio so I could prove I can do a great job at a company, but I wonder if they'd be interesting to sell as well, for funsies.

Ah, I wouldn't worry too much in that case. Those in a recruiting position are much more accepting of "programmer art" than the general public.

 

[Minamu]

Ah, I wouldn't worry too much in that case. Those in a recruiting position are much more accepting of "programmer art" than the general public.

That's my assumption too, it forces me to let the gameplay shine, as it should. This time, we started this project as a game jam and now we have more time on our hands so we have added some effects to smooth it all out.

Would be kinda cool to get on Greenlight anyway though

 

[Ranger X]

Polishing up some of the enemies for Magnetta, I'm having a lot of fun with it so far

New is definitely better.

 

[missile]

In all the fuss about announcing the tinyBuild publishing deal I forgot to post the screenshots! Here's some shiny pictures of the latest progress on Stage Presence!

Stage diving, anyone? xD

 

[wwm0nkey]

I would like to point out to anyone who is wanting to develop for the Vive, there is a very nice toolkit out there right now for Unity

I am currently working on an escape the room style game, using the toolkit I can hopefully get a bulk done before I actually get my Vive in June.

 

[More_Badass]

Keep up the awesome work, guys! Always a pleasure to see what you're crafting here or in the crowdfunding thread or #screenshotsaturday

I'm familiar with Bounty Road from TIGSource and Siege/Sandfox looks gorgeous, welcome to GAF crwilso! Does Sàmban have a Twitter page? Love the look of Asideus

 

[ThePhotoshop]

Things got a bit out of control

 

[ASIS]

I've been working on the battle UI for Light Fairytale. Added a light transparency to the command windows, and a character status window in the lower right part of the screen.

The HP and MP colors fade from green to red depending on the current and max values.

The current playable character is highlighted (in blue in this light theme, there are 2 other themes, and I'll probably add even more).

Any thoughts?

This looks great! I'm in love.

But I do have a couple of points I'd like to bring up. Bear in mind that I am not exactly a graphical designer by any means nor am I an artist, but these points may help you regardless:

1. It seems to me that all the boxes on the bottom left have the same width, is that correct? If so then perhaps you could scale it down a bit relative to the text inside the box. As it is now, the 'main' menu (the box with attack, orb, guard, escape, etc.) seems a little bit empty and I think properly scaling the width would do wonders.

2. Although transparency added a nice feel to the UI. it also made some of the text difficult to read, such as Slum spider 1. I think you need to re-consider the colors of the UI text in general since they are now meshing with changing background colors. The MP numbers for instance are not as clear as the HP (I think you are using vignetting, is that correct? if so then I think you will run into this particular issue frequently). Maybe a bit of outlining the text is all you really need?

3. You do not need "Name" on the upper left corner of the character's box. I think it would look better without it.

Other than that I love the look of it.

 

[Jobbs]

I got a writeup on Destructoid:

Ghost Song blew away my expectations, made me die a lot

I didn't know he was skeptical, but I'm glad to see he likes it now.