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GAF Indie Game Development Thread 2: High Res Work for Low Res Pay

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Minamu

Member
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" not 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.
I agree with this too, especially 1 and 3. I prefer to see as much of the *game* itself so the UI can preferably be tightened up some.
 
I've been working on the battle UI for Light Fairytale...

Any thoughts?

Not sure how much of this is placeholder, but there are a couple of elements that are making the UI feel a bit amateur-ish and disconnected with your beautifully rendered game.

1. Font selection. Not sure if this is just a placeholder, or what fonts you're limited to - but that super generic san-serif just doesn't seem to match the aesthetic of the actual game, or the elegance of the command windows. I'd experiment with some more interesting fonts. Of course, you want it to be readable first and foremost - but maybe a slightly bold serif font would work better.

2. Those blue and green colors you're using for the text on the right just look very off - like overly saturated and do not work well with the colors of the window. I know you're setting it up so they programatically change color depending on their value, but from this example, those lighter greens are hard to read against the whiter color of the container.

Maybe try just using the pointer arrow you have for the command window to indicate which player's turn it is - and if you want to highlight a character is at low health, pick a nice (not SUPER overly saturated) red color for the text that appears when their HP value is low. Not sure you need an entire hue shift from "bright green" to "dark red." It's going to greatly limit your window color options.

I agree with all of ASIS's comments, as well.

Just some friendly suggestions! I'm a graphic designer, so this stuff stands out to me, haha.
 

correojon

Member
Things got a bit out of control

CAnz7tK.gif

If the Legend of Zelda has taught me anything is that you shouldn´t attack the chicken :S

I love how everything in your game can be interacted with :)
 

neko.works

Member
Thanks guys for the feedback!

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.

Yep, all the windows have the same width. Even though I'm using Unity, this is a custom, code based UI I made. So, even simple things such as dynamic width needs to be implemented.

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?

The image effects don't affect the UI, so vignetting is not the problem. But yes, the font I was using was way too thin, I've switched to a slightly bold font now.

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

I agree with this too, especially 1 and 3. I prefer to see as much of the *game* itself so the UI can preferably be tightened up some.

I've tweaked a bit the status window, and I think it looks better with the "Name" header.

1. Font selection. Not sure if this is just a placeholder, or what fonts you're limited to - but that super generic san-serif just doesn't seem to match the aesthetic of the actual game, or the elegance of the command windows. I'd experiment with some more interesting fonts. Of course, you want it to be readable first and foremost - but maybe a slightly bold serif font would work better.

2. Those blue and green colors you're using for the text on the right just look very off - like overly saturated and do not work well with the colors of the window. I know you're setting it up so they programatically change color depending on their value, but from this example, those lighter greens are hard to read against the whiter color of the container.

I've switched to a slightly bold font, do you think it looks OK now?

Maybe try just using the pointer arrow you have for the command window to indicate which player's turn it is - and if you want to highlight a character is at low health, pick a nice (not SUPER overly saturated) red color for the text that appears when their HP value is low. Not sure you need an entire hue shift from "bright green" to "dark red." It's going to greatly limit your window color options.

Actually, I did try to indicate the current character with the same arrow as the command windows, but didn't like it as I thought it was confusing for the player, as he might think that he is controlling the status window arrow.

I'm the only one working on the UI currently, and technically, I'm just a programmer, so this is really programmer's art! The only things I don't do in this game are the characters 3D models, the characters illustrations, and the music!

My goal currently is to make a playable demo of the beginning of the game, and do a KickStarter a bit after. So, everything is really work in progress, and hopefully will improve when I'll have an actual budget and work with more professionals (script correction, environment art, UI art ect.).

Anyway, here's how the UI looks now with a bit of tweaking:

463.png
 

Minamu

Member
Since we're already talking about fonts a bit, is there any way in Unity to "fill in" a font with color somehow?

I downloaded a free font that looked nice on the web but in the game it was clear that the font was just a contour with the letters' insides being transparent. I'd preferred if the center was a solid color :/ Only hack I could think of was to put white planes behind the text to fake it :lol But I'd rather not.

Edit: I suppose it'd be possible to edit the tff file in photoshop or something? I've never made a font before.

Edit2: Found this:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/how-to-fill-in-a-hollow-font.235611/
 

JeffG

Member
Since we're already talking about fonts a bit, is there any way in Unity to "fill in" a font with color somehow?

I downloaded a free font that looked nice on the web but in the game it was clear that the font was just a contour with the letters' insides being transparent. I'd preferred if the center was a solid color :/ Only hack I could think of was to put white planes behind the text to fake it :lol But I'd rather not.

Edit: I suppose it'd be possible to edit the tff file in photoshop or something? I've never made a font before.

You could try adding an Outline with negative X distance and see if that does something. (But probably wouldn't...and outline is just the same text, just different color and slightly bigger size.
 

Lautaro

Member
Goddammit! I've been sending e-mails to the Humble Store for a week, asking them to remove the Early Access tag from my game and change the trailer but they just ignore me... they haven't answered a single time.

I gotta say, for me at least, it has been a complete waste of time putting my game in the Humble Store: low sales and no support.
 

Minamu

Member
You could try adding an Outline with negative X distance and see if that does something. (But probably wouldn't...and outline is just the same text, just different color and slightly bigger size.
I think my edit2 might solve it, or I'll look into other fonts :) I could try your trick but the font is very thin with a pretty huge hollowed center. Then again, I'm getting some kind of graphical glitch with the font in my build, but not in the editor, so I'll probably have to change it anyway!
 

octopiggy

Member
Back near the beginning of this thread I promised to show what I was working on before the next OT started. That time seems to be rapidly approaching so here it is.

Progress has basically been non-existent since I made that post but I wanted to show something.

ZGFIwqP.png


It's called PictoShift. It's a logic puzzle game, kind of Picross meets Mine Sweeper.

The picture is of course just a prototype puzzle - just a sprite that I'm familiar with to make sure the concept works. So far everything mechanically works so that it's a fully completable puzzle but, graphically, everything is a place holder.

My programming experience is pretty limited so I'm using Game Maker which seems to be good enough for what I'm planning. I'm still getting my head round what it's capable of so it takes me an age to perform even the simplest task.

Anyway, hopefully posting here about my very slow progress will give me the push to keep it up. Also, I might be able to pick the brains of the people here who actually know what they're doing!
 

JeffG

Member
I'm getting some kind of graphical glitch with the font in my build, but not in the editor, so I'll probably have to change it anyway!
Those kind of things drive me nuts.

I was fighting with dynamically setting camera options for a photo mode. Worked when running it through the editor.

Pile of crap after a build. The entire screen was black with odd ball sparkles. A tad different from the most generic ActionRPG that I am building lol
 

Minamu

Member
PictoShift.
That's really cool, I like it! :) I play Pixelogic on my phone literally every day, it's my only regular phone game :D

Those kind of things drive me nuts.

I was fighting with dynamically setting camera options for a photo mode. Worked when running it through the editor.

Pile of crap after a build. The entire screen was black with odd ball sparkles. A tad different from the most generic ActionRPG that I am building lol
I know, right? It hasn't happened to me before on this project but it's quite nonsensical. All I'm doing is fading in a text object, and it worked perfectly with the default Arial, but nooo not with a custom font.
 

octopiggy

Member
That's really cool, I like it! :) I play Pixelogic on my phone literally every day, it's my only regular phone game :D

Looks interesting,
I'm a Picross addict, so please, finish it!
I'm sure you will have fun working on it!

Thanks guys! That's really encouraging to hear. It's the kind of game that I would like to play and I guess that's probably the best way to approach development.

It's a long way from completion. Like I say, it takes me forever to do simple tasks but watch this space!
 

Minamu

Member
Thanks guys! That's really encouraging to hear. It's the kind of game that I would like to play and I guess that's probably the best way to approach development.

It's a long way from completion. Like I say, it takes me forever to do simple tasks but watch this space!
Lots of opinions on that actually. But it makes it easier to find the development enjoyable in my experience.

Hang in there, it looks sweet :)
 

senahorse

Member
Since we're already talking about fonts a bit, is there any way in Unity to "fill in" a font with color somehow?

I downloaded a free font that looked nice on the web but in the game it was clear that the font was just a contour with the letters' insides being transparent. I'd preferred if the center was a solid color :/ Only hack I could think of was to put white planes behind the text to fake it :lol But I'd rather not.

Edit: I suppose it'd be possible to edit the tff file in photoshop or something? I've never made a font before.

Edit2: Found this:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/how-to-fill-in-a-hollow-font.235611/

I have been messing around with an asset called Text Mesh Pro you might want to check out, really versatile and easy to use.

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/17662
 
waitwhat.png


So after finally throwing in animations for the player (and not NPC's), I find this little ditty during play mode.

It seems like the bones are only moving half of what their vertex group is assigned.
(I had a theory that my parenting was messed up and it might have been taking in the thigh.02 and shin.02 bone vertex groups but nope)
I went back into Blender and made sure everything was parented correctly, went through every Vertex group and made sure everything seemed legit and even made sure to assign the bones manually on import into Unity.

Anyone had experience with this from Blender to Unity? I'm not even sure what term to google to get a base to fix it


NEVER MIND. Fixed it! I had to clear the .02 vertex groups from everything to make sure.
Staring at the image here made me pick up on it.
The character still isn't "moving" per se (it seems that it plays the walk animation up to frame 10 instead of looping at the end of 60), I'm not sure if it's because I animated the character on the spot....hmmm....
 

Minamu

Member
Unrelated but someone absolutely NEEDS to make a horror game with characters like that xD And do that thing on purpose where animations freak out and extremities go flying everywhere :lol
 
Unrelated but someone absolutely NEEDS to make a horror game with characters like that xD And do that thing on purpose where animations freak out and extremities go flying everywhere :lol

I genuinely want to see a nightmare sequence with stranded faces stretching and flying EVERYWHERE haha

The game's a Surreal Horror so that totally counts :p

I may have saved that model out as a duplicate...er....just incase.
 
So finally my game is coming together. All art will be getting an overhaul, in same style but cleaned up and nicer (main character has quick animation tests for now and enemies are placeholder).

GhHLjTi.gif


first time in a while I'm happy with how it's turning out. It finally is feeling like a game :D


Glad to see chicken abuse is still randomly happening in this thread.
 
Apestorm - Full Bananas is now out on the iOS App Store and Google Play!

It's been a long and messy road from an exercise project to starting a company and finding a publisher, but finally we got a game out. Also, releasing a game is not good for your stress levels. I've been fixing and tweaking stuff for a few weeks and dealing with all the usual stuff you don't really think about before actually having to publish; now it's out, I bought it and played it and I still expect to run into some horrible game-breaking bug.

Hopefully I can fully concentrate on our next game after the dust settles down. Turns out that Tabletop Simulator is actually pretty good for prototyping some game mechanics with other team members online.

Here's a gameplay trailer.

 

correojon

Member
So finally my game is coming together. All art will be getting an overhaul, in same style but cleaned up and nicer (main character has quick animation tests for now and enemies are placeholder).

GhHLjTi.gif


first time in a while I'm happy with how it's turning out. It finally is feeling like a game :D


Glad to see chicken abuse is still randomly happening in this thread.
The animations look great, but somehow I feel like you´ve "redone" Cody´s silouhette from Final Fight, is that so? Specially with the attack combo, it´s the same Cody does without repeating the first punch. I think you should try to go for something more original, maybe a different combination of hits, put your seal on it. Or maybe it´s Kyo from KOF? I´m definitely getting the impresion I´ve seen those animations somewhere else before, could it be?

Apestorm - Full Bananas is now out on the iOS App Store and Google Play!

It's been a long and messy road from an exercise project to starting a company and finding a publisher, but finally we got a game out. Also, releasing a game is not good for your stress levels. I've been fixing and tweaking stuff for a few weeks and dealing with all the usual stuff you don't really think about before actually having to publish; now it's out, I bought it and played it and I still expect to run into some horrible game-breaking bug.

Hopefully I can fully concentrate on our next game after the dust settles down. Turns out that Tabletop Simulator is actually pretty good for prototyping some game mechanics with other team members online.

Here's a gameplay trailer.

Looks great, I´ll check it out :) Congrats on reaching the finish line!
 

shaowebb

Member
Found a neat piece of powerful free 3d software that folks here might find fun.

Meshlab

I wasn't really happy with the decimation options in Blender and went checking to see if someone had made a pretty robust plugin or something. Turns out there was this standalone software people kept bringing up that gives you a ton of options when decimating from a high poly mesh to a low poly mesh for things like setting up to bake normal maps.

This thing is pretty swank. Dozens and dozens of decimation options with completely simple options to mess with to help get better geometry on you decimated models.

Feel free to browse some tutorials to get an idea if its right for anything you've been doing
 
The animations look great, but somehow I feel like you´ve "redone" Cody´s silouhette from Final Fight, is that so? Specially with the attack combo, it´s the same Cody does without repeating the first punch. I think you should try to go for something more original, maybe a different combination of hits, put your seal on it. Or maybe it´s Kyo from KOF? I´m definitely getting the impresion I´ve seen those animations somewhere else before, could it be?

I'll be honest : I referenced their animations since my animations were coming out stiff but nothing is 1:1. The funny thing is that the repeating fist punch combo was not even referenced off Cody. I didn't even realize that was the same combo as Cody.

All the human silouettes will be getting changed to animal characters and more stylized but I think I may still need to change the animations up more :-/

I'm a bit frustrated because frame animation isn't my best skill, and it's the one thing really slowing me down developing this.
 

correojon

Member
I'll be honest : I referenced their animations since my animations were coming out stiff but nothing is 1:1. The funny thing is that the repeating fist punch combo was not even referenced off Cody. I didn't even realize that was the same combo as Cody.

All the human silouettes will be getting changed to animal characters and more stylized but I think I may still need to change the animations up more :-/

I'm a bit frustrated because frame animation isn't my best skill, and it's the one thing really slowing me down developing this.

Don´t get down, it looks good! I have a hard time with animations too, I strongly suggest you get The Animator´s Survival Kit, ever since I read it I´m finding it much easier to make animations and am even considering doing things I thought were way out of my league. Really, it´ll completely change your approach to animating and you´ll start seeing the results almost immediately.

Technical question for the pixel art masters in this thread: I´ve been studying some pixel art theory and have found that there are 2 approaches to making a color ramp:
  • Realistic: Colors vary in brightness, dark colors used for shadows have lower saturation and bright colors have higher saturation.
  • Cartoon: Dark colors (shadows) have more saturation.
My question is, in the cartoon approach, should I lower saturation for the brighter colors, or keep it high as well?
I´m learning a lot but man, is color theory hard :S
 
Don´t get down, it looks good! I have a hard time with animations too, I strongly suggest you get The Animator´s Survival Kit, ever since I read it I´m finding it much easier to make animations and am even considering doing things I thought were way out of my league. Really, it´ll completely change your approach to animating and you´ll start seeing the results almost immediately.

Thanks I'll check that out :).

I will probably stick with current animations (with less humans :p ) for the time being but make most of the game feel unique enough where it won't feel entirely the same. If I had much time to spare I'd restart on them but due to finances it's not really an option right now.

In a month it'll be launching into a Visual Novel + Beat em Up hybrid if that makes any sense.
 

neko.works

Member
Here's a quick battle GIF from Light Fairytale.

As you can see, the battles are fast (this whole battle is around 10 seconds), turn-based and occur directly in the field (without switching to an arena such as in most retro JRPGs).

Also, there's a blue window with text in it.
(reference to Sakagushi's definition of what Final Fantasy is)

Actually, I've made 3 themes for the UI so far: Light (default, and used in the promo / screenshots), dark and blue (which I suppose will be fan's favorite). I'll probably add even more!

Any thoughts?

UZpKHRa.gif
 

Minamu

Member
The way Kuroko pops in and out is a bit weird, and the red color on the attack numbers is a bit difficult to read. Other than that, the menus look great :)
 

neko.works

Member
The way Kuroko pops in and out is a bit weird...

Actually, this is the way characters in your current party pops in when needed.

For instance, here's how switching the lead character in the field looks like, using the left and right bumpers:

sqnx_projectlight_animation_leaderswitch.gif


There was a slightly similar system in Final Fantasy 7, where the characters appeared to come out from the leader when needed in an interaction or cutscene.
 
I've been playing my game on the couch for the past couple days and it feels really different compared to working at a PC. Makes everything feel more like a real game vs just an application. Plus it helps keep me focused on the player experience.

Should have been doing this a lot sooner!
 

Kalentan

Member
Hey guys, so since I complained so much about sprite works and such... I decided that maybe I should just practice.

I plan on doing a lot more, but this is what I've made thus far, following no theme.

7DOb.png
XDOb.png


Edit: Make a fake screenshot. I feel like my issue is (outside the poor fence), is that the colors on the characters blend too easily with their enviroments. Which sometimes makes me wonder if I should give a border to them all.

PEOb.png
 

Minamu

Member
Actually, this is the way characters in your current party pops in when needed.

For instance, here's how switching the lead character in the field looks like, using the left and right bumpers:

sqnx_projectlight_animation_leaderswitch.gif


There was a slightly similar system in Final Fantasy 7, where the characters appeared to come out from the leader when needed in an interaction or cutscene.
Ah, so that's what you're going for :) It looked more natural in that new gif than in the first for some reason.

As for my own project, finding an understandable tool for modifying fonts to add color to the letters was a project in its own right :O Turns out that it's impossible to add color to "whitespace" and the reason why you can change color of fonts in Unity is because fonts like Arial are solid blocks of black in the form of letters. The hole in A and O are just nothingness so it makes sense that you can't add color to it, I guess. And of course, that's the kind of font I found, where the artist had drawn contours of all letters, leaving massive whitespace in all letters, even letters like I or C.

http://www.dafont.com/alpha-clouds.font

Of course, filling in the white void with black makes the contours themselves disappear, because I'm an amateur :lol But no matter, I think it might look better as one solid borderless color.

Edit: VV That Last Remnant UI looks like someone barfed on the screen :/ What a mess.
 

Lautaro

Member
Here's a quick battle GIF from Light Fairytale.

As you can see, the battles are fast (this whole battle is around 10 seconds), turn-based and occur directly in the field (without switching to an arena such as in most retro JRPGs).

Also, there's a blue window with text in it.
(reference to Sakagushi's definition of what Final Fantasy is)

Actually, I've made 3 themes for the UI so far: Light (default, and used in the promo / screenshots), dark and blue (which I suppose will be fan's favorite). I'll probably add even more!

Any thoughts?

UZpKHRa.gif

Very nice, I think you have a lot of potential here. I would probably add the 2D portraits to the interface so its not just text.

Personally I prefer something more vibrant and full of icons like the Last Remnant UI but if you are going for a more retro look is up to you.

 
So...if anyone else has any problems going from Blender (Rigify) to Unity, here's a solution.

Don't use the official documentation

I've spent hours trying to figure out why I'm getting weird import issues and I found this fix.

The problem was the bone parenting that the Unity manual tells to do. Once I used this method, almost everything was instantly fixed.

So...uh...

giphy.gif
 

JP_

Banned
Back near the beginning of this thread I promised to show what I was working on before the next OT started. That time seems to be rapidly approaching so here it is.

Progress has basically been non-existent since I made that post but I wanted to show something.

ZGFIwqP.png


It's called PictoShift. It's a logic puzzle game, kind of Picross meets Mine Sweeper.

The picture is of course just a prototype puzzle - just a sprite that I'm familiar with to make sure the concept works. So far everything mechanically works so that it's a fully completable puzzle but, graphically, everything is a place holder.

My programming experience is pretty limited so I'm using Game Maker which seems to be good enough for what I'm planning. I'm still getting my head round what it's capable of so it takes me an age to perform even the simplest task.

Anyway, hopefully posting here about my very slow progress will give me the push to keep it up. Also, I might be able to pick the brains of the people here who actually know what they're doing!

Love picross. Not sure how I'm supposed to read that but looks neat :)
 

octopiggy

Member
Love picross. Not sure how I'm supposed to read that but looks neat :)

You mean the rules?

- All cells need to be coloured the correct colour to complete the puzzle.
- You can only 'shift' a colour to a blank cell from a neighbouring cell that's already coloured.
- Numbers indicate how many of the 4 surrounding cells are the same colour as that cell.

Hopefully that all makes sense. Obviously clues will start easy and get harder throughout the game.
The puzzle above has a bit of a mix of easy and harder clues but at this point I'm still figuring out what the puzzle is capable of and how hard clues can get.

I'm really glad that people are showing interest despite only seeing one rough looking, early screenshot!
 

ASIS

Member
Okay guys, first help request and this one is driving me insane! Bear in mind that I'm still very new at this so please use simple vocabulary, and don't be so harsh.
I'm using unity, C# and I'm trying to make the scenes fade in and out programmatically.

I'm pretty sure that what I'm about to say will bring many facepalms but I don't care, I am pretty damn sure that there are easier and more effeciant ways to make fading scenes but what I want to know is why my approach not working, rather than finding alternatives for the time being.

What I did was create a UI Panel that pans over the entire screen and wrote a script that makes the alpha of the panel change depending on the number of seconds. This works perfectly well. But the problem is that I can't click on any buttons as long as the canvas containing the panel is activated.

I decided to prefab the entire canvas and attach it to my Levelmanager empty gameobject. I wired it up and wrote two co routines for fading in and out, and referenced the fade in coroutine to the start and the fadeout one to my load level method. What I had in mind was deactivating the panel (or specifically, the canvas) as soon as the fadeout finishes and reactivates when the load next level method is called. First part worked amazingly well... Second part... Not so much.

I dug around and quickly found out that once you deactivate an object it's quite a hassle to reactivate it. I didn't care to use another empty gameobject and parent it to the canvas and do a foreach statement. So I thought about instantiating and destroying the canvas whenever I need it. Yet again, the first part worked wonderfully, but instantiating it again was more of a hassle since it was detached from the levelmanager as soon as it was destroyed.

I decided to enable and disable the panel instead but that did not work at all as I got a Null reference error and I still don't understand what I did wrong. I looked around but none of the links helped me so I decided to do my final solution.

I decided to move the two coroutines to the panel script and make the gameobject destroy itself, that way it will continue to stay attached to the level manager. I wrote two methods to call each coroutine and use these call these methods from the level manager script.


and I get this error:
NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
sLevelManager.Start () (at Assets/Scripts/sLevelManager.cs:20)

here's the script for the panel:

Code:
using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;
using UnityEngine.UI;

public class sFader : MonoBehaviour {
	public float fadeSpeed;
	public Image fadePanel;

	private float fadetime;
	private float alpha;
	private int fadeDir = -1;
	private Color color;

	void Start () {
		fadePanel = GetComponent<Image> ();
	}

	void Update() {
		alpha +=fadeDir * (Time.deltaTime/fadeSpeed);
		alpha = Mathf.Clamp01 (alpha);
		fadePanel.color = new Color (fadePanel.color.r, fadePanel.color.g, fadePanel.color.b, alpha);

	}
	public float FadeDirection (int direction){
		alpha = -direction;
		fadeDir = direction;
		return (fadeSpeed);

	}
	public void fadingin() {
		StartCoroutine ("fadein");
	}
	public void fadingout(){
			StartCoroutine("fadeout");
	}
 IEnumerator fadein () {
		fadetime = FadeDirection(-1);
		yield return new WaitForSeconds (fadetime);
		Destroy (transform.parent.gameObject);

}
 IEnumerator fadeout () {
			fadetime = FadeDirection (1);
			print (Time.deltaTime/fadetime);
			print ("line 3");
			yield return new WaitForSeconds (fadetime + 0.5f);
			print ("line 4");
			Application.LoadLevel (Application.loadedLevel + 1);
	}
}

and the level manager script:

Code:
using UnityEngine;
using UnityEngine.UI;
using System.Collections;

public class sLevelManager : MonoBehaviour {
	public float loadnextscene;

	//fading variables
	public GameObject Fading;
	private sFader fader;
	private float fadetime;

	void Awake () {

		Fading = Instantiate (Fading, transform.position, Quaternion.identity) as GameObject;
		fader = Fading.GetComponent<sFader> ();
	}

	void Start () {
		fader.fadingin ();

		if (loadnextscene== 0) {
			return;
		} else {
			Invoke ("LoadNextLevel", loadnextscene);
			print ("invoked");
		}
	}
	public void LoadNextLevel () {
		Fading = Instantiate (Fading, transform.position, Quaternion.identity) as GameObject;
		fader.fadingout ();
		Reset ();
	}

the level manager script is very messy I know, but it should still work no? what am I doing wrong?
 
I'm a crazy person because I decided to invent my own language for the game I'm working on. Incidentally, that's part of why I haven't posted a lot recently... because most of what I've been doing is not particularly visible or not very novel (like showing off the 100+ weapons I spent weeks illustrating).

The language is basically still an English cipher. My translation system right now is a simple regex that swaps out English words with words from the Inimnth language (using pairs in a JavaScript dictionary array). You can see in red/bold all the words it can't translate yet because I haven't described Inimnth equivalents for those words yet. Also the pronunciation is Latin-ish but I don't really care.

kfOcbe7.png


I don't think I want to invent a separate grammar system. That's more work than worth as far as I'm concerned. Originally I only intended to use the language in a limited extent, basically just proper names for certain locations and weapons in the game. But now I want to extend it quite a bit further. I know it looks like a lot of red in the picture above but actually I have 916 words defined in the language already. I know for Game of Thrones they made about 3000 Dothraki words, so I'll probably stop somewhere in that neighborhood.

Something that's been built into the game from the beginning is that you can brew potions at cauldrons (bonfires basically). The list of potions the player is capable of brewing herself would grow throughout the game, though I hadn't yet figured out how the list would grow. I thought maybe you can buy recipes at one of the stores in town. But now I think it'd also be neat to find ancient recipes from this alien race for additional potions, and then to have to go into town where the scholar is and get the recipes translated.

And if I can come up with other uses for things to find that need to be translated I will. Note that this will be relatively automatic... I'm not expecting most players to actually learn the language and translate texts themselves, though that of course is an option for any extremely devoted fan. I just like world-building and enriching the lore! :)
 

Minamu

Member
ASIS: I can't view all the code on my phone but my first thought when you wrote that you can't press any buttons was that it could be a layer issue or parent/child issue of where the panel is located. I think disabling raycast target might do something :) On Unity default buttons, you can't press them to see their animations and colors change if raycast target is disabled, but you can see them so it might be that the panel is physically blocking things beneath it.

And perhaps instead of disabling the panel, maybe just disable its renderer? You can work around it but when you disable an object, all scripts etc that rely on it gets disabled too, by default, I believe.
 

ASIS

Member
ASIS: I can't view all the code on my phone but my first thought when you wrote that you can't press any buttons was that it could be a layer issue or parent/child issue of where the panel is located. I think disabling raycast target might do something :) On Unity default buttons, you can't press them to see their animations and colors change if raycast target is disabled, but you can see them so it might be that the panel is physically blocking things beneath it.

And perhaps instead of disabling the panel, maybe just disable its renderer? You can work around it but when you disable an object, all scripts etc that rely on it gets disabled too, by default, I believe.

I'll look into raycast target, as I said I'm still relatively new at this so I don't know if this is the solution or not.

As for the renderer, I tried to disable the image component of the panel and it worked, but enabling it again will yield the same Nullreference error.

I'm on mobile as well right now, but I'll check your solutions, thank you very much :).
 

LordRaptor

Member
the level manager script is very messy I know, but it should still work no? what am I doing wrong?

Block raycast targets being the default UI option is probably the cause of your canvas blocking interactions with your scene; the way the UI works is it draws a raycast from your mouse position 'into' the scene, and anything tagged as part of the UI will catch those raycasts in case it thinks you're doing UI stuff, unless you explicitly tell it not to.

I would guess your missing object problems are because you do not have DontDestroyOnLoad as a property on your scripts; when you load a new level, it destroys anything that does not have this property, so even though you have a prefab in each level that is named the same and is ostensibly the 'same', it is actually an entirely new gameobject, so your cached references are no longer being found.

If you had DontDestroyOnLoad on that script, then you would be able to enable / disable the gameobject without problems as you cache the reference to it in your Awake - if you'd still rather instantiate / destroy rather than cache, its probably worth adding a System.GC.Collect() call in an OnLevelLoaded() (or whatever that method is called), as instantiate / destroy calls are pretty notorious for creating garbage, and there's probably not a more convenient time to do a garbage collection than a level load.

I'm a crazy person because I decided to invent my own language for the game I'm working on.

That's... a lot of extra work you're making for yourself :O
Have you considered any shortcuts like using common phoneme pairings instead of a word for word transcription?
eg instead of replacing walk, talk, walking, talking, walked, talked, replace -alk, -ing, -ed?
 

SeanNoonan

Member
I'm a crazy person because I decided to invent my own language for the game I'm working on.
Good luck! I'm liking that increasingly game productions are taking this kinda thing seriously. One of my previous projects (Far Cry Primal) created a primitive language with the help of some language experts.

It's a lot of work, but definitely worth it to make your world feel rich and alive. Also hearing the voice actor of Adam Jensen make caveman grunts was pretty great ;)
 
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