RelentlessRolento
Member
congrads!
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GAF Indie Game Development Thread 2: High Res Work for Low Res Pay
- Thread starter Jacksinthe
- Start date
- Status
congrads!
The AssetPostprocessor base class (http://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/AssetPostprocessor.html) shows there's a OnPreprocessAnimation event method so that you can set custom import values right before Unity does the importing.
Just remembered an animator is added to all objects with animations (I think, in the middle of a move so can't check) but thanks again.
JeffG
Member
They seem to add animators to everything lol
So I'd better use OnPreprocessAnimation then. Thanks.jhmtehgamr20xx
Banned
I haven't really started on anything yet as I'm still learning the ropes, but I'll probably settle on GIMP (I already use that for illustrations anyway), Python for coding, MuLab for music/sound effects, and Blender for 3D models and its game engine stuff. Other than MuLab (which is very affordable even compared to stuff like Cubase, and imho offers more than FL Studio), the others are free.
Probably still a good couple months out from really trying anything serious in terms of a playable demo or concept however.
Master Milk
Member
Congrats!
neko.works
Member
Thanks for the feedback!
I've been working on a new title logo for Light Fairytale in this sci-fi style, and would love early feedback. Any thoughts?
Had a bit of mixed week last week productivity-wise. It all started well - I tried to improve my cell highlight art which I think might still need some tweaking and then made a more zoomed in puzzle view for smaller puzzles at the start of the game. It took quite a bit of re-coding, which always takes me a while, but I'm glad I got it sorted.
Then I bought a new game and all productivity stopped. And then Fire Emblem comes out next week. I can see that being a real time drain (in a good way).
My love of games seems to simultaneously be my biggest driving factor and the biggest thing holding me back.
Then I bought a new game and all productivity stopped. And then Fire Emblem comes out next week. I can see that being a real time drain (in a good way).
My love of games seems to simultaneously be my biggest driving factor and the biggest thing holding me back.
I'm on my phone right now so I can't post any screenshots but I'm having some difficulty making a pleasant looking HUD with Unity's Canvas system. I'm basically just using text with special fonts and the default buttons because I have no artistic skills whatsoever xD I'm not sure what I can do, use something from the store? To make things looks a bit flashier or something. I'll get a screenshot for you tomorrow, I know it's hard to imagine what I'm referring to. Problem is, the elements are all working as intended but they look really bland, not stylish at all, and I'm having a hard time figuring out how to position relevant information correctly :/ I think part of the problem is the temp font and the standard saturated text colors.
Same game as the last few times, blocky blocks in a dark arena, last man standing wins. Competitive classbased multiplayer for 4 people. Called Holy Sheep.
Same game as the last few times, blocky blocks in a dark arena, last man standing wins. Competitive classbased multiplayer for 4 people. Called Holy Sheep.
JeffG
Member
Thanks for the feedback!
I've been working on a new title logo for Light Fairytale in this sci-fi style, and would love early feedback. Any thoughts?
That looks very good
LordRaptor
Member
Unitys UI system basically uses 9 slice images for all its buttons, so you can pretty much google for "photoshop button tutorial" and find a vast selection of styles of buttons - making buttons is a pretty easy job in photoshop even for a beginner, and should get you something a little more interesting than the default options unity ships with.
If you've made a button you like the style of, something like shoebox can be very helpful for tweaking and optimising for resizability
e: and if you need icons for buttons, something like font awesome works natively in Unity
liliththepale
Banned
I'm probably putting far more detail into these paintings than is necessary, but it's fun. And I don't have any deadlines or anything so I'm just going to work on whatever's fun at the moment.
4:1 zoom
1:1 zoom
So I am officially starting on two projects, one is a Vive game I am doing with a decent sized team; someone on GAF actually helped me test it as I do not have one to test with yet.
Here is a Video
[None of the assets are mine and it is super simple, but escape room stuff will mostly be triggers anyways]
The second project is one I have been dreaming about for awhile and is going to be my long term one, so far it is just me and my fiance working it but the basic idea is take Mega Man Battle Networks card system but put it with action game styled movement. Luckily she is an artist or I would be screwed lol
Here is what I got done in like an hour, hopefully I will have more to show soon. I want to get the card system done asap then I can focus on combat and AI. The story is mostly done as I have been planning this one for awhile.
Here is a Video
[None of the assets are mine and it is super simple, but escape room stuff will mostly be triggers anyways]
The second project is one I have been dreaming about for awhile and is going to be my long term one, so far it is just me and my fiance working it but the basic idea is take Mega Man Battle Networks card system but put it with action game styled movement. Luckily she is an artist or I would be screwed lol
Here is what I got done in like an hour, hopefully I will have more to show soon. I want to get the card system done asap then I can focus on combat and AI. The story is mostly done as I have been planning this one for awhile.
C'mon, we all have deadlines. xD Yeah, I dig all these details, really! But you
have to watch out to not show the player every minute detail, not because of
diminishing returns, which would be ok, no, but because with an ever increase in
detail you take the ability away from the player to draw up his own phantasie in
his head about your game. I'm pretty convinced that one needs to strike a
balance between too fuzzy and too detailed considering these kinds of art, if
one wants the player to resonant with the game a lot more.
Well, lil, you may going to tell me that's this is your style and you want the
player to experience the game as you've envision it, which is fully legit. No
question about it. But it is impossible to tell a player how (s)he should
perceive a game. And as such, as an artist, one should give the player some
room to enter to make up his own phantasie about the game.
The game of crwilso does exercise this quite well in my book;
It's not about the coloring or the figures, rocks etc., it's the blend between
fuzziness and detail that really makes this game so interesting. So who ever is
the artist of this game, (s)he knows to pull the player in. Good job!
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
AusRoachman
Member
Any tips on how to call mecanim animations via scripts . For example switching from an idle animation to a run animation.
From my understating I have to create an animation controller with all the different states and then have to use statewm code is that correct ?
From my understating I have to create an animation controller with all the different states and then have to use statewm code is that correct ?
liliththepale
Banned
This part of the game is one of the few completely safe areas, and it's an area that will be visited frequently, so I want to give some extra attention to it because I think the player will spend a good amount of time there.
I also want to invest in environmental storytelling. Some of the paintings are more meaningful than they might appear, and it's not immediately evident which paintings these are or what that meaning is. I think that goes back to what you were saying about leaving something for the player's imagination. There are more ways than one to leave things to the imagination.
On the other hand, I think I'm especially sensitive to noticing placeholder artwork in games, probably because I'm an artist myself. When I see generic or simple artwork that was made just to fill a space, not because the people who inhabited the space enjoy the artwork (or otherwise gain utility from it), that's jarring to me. It feels like I'm walking through a model home, not a place where people live and have history.
But I understand your point, and in general the art style of this game lends towards being conservative with details, which was on purpose.
Yeah make an animation controller and then either have it watch certain variables to make the changes or trigger the animation change with anim.Play("stateName")
For going from idle to a movement animation something like this, (which I think you got already)
Ignore most of the parameters on the left (this is a quick example), except Velocity. Make a parameter like that which is a float, then click the transition arrow for idle->run and in the inspector have something like:
So that when velocity is greater than 0.1, it will start blending into the running animation. (Click the little plus icon to add a condition)
If you don't have an arrow going back and forth, then right click a state, make transition, then click the one you want it to transition to.
Also uncheck the "Has Exit Time" box, there will be a delay (or should be) when blending the animations together if left checked and won't look great.
Do the same for run to idle, but male it less than 0.1
In script then, you will want a reference to the animator component and then something like:
Code:
_animator.SetFloat("Velocity", velocity);Which will keep the parameter updated in the controller whenever the velocity is updated. FIrst argument is the parameter name in the controller, second is the value.
That would be ideal for movement animation blending, for things like dying then you want to user trigger parameters etc. I'm still hit and miss with some stuff, but this should be ideal.
Hopefully this made sense/helped you, I woke up about ~10mins ago so
Thanks, I'll check it out
aw fuck so many ideas but so little time :/
3d experimental mp browser game or ue4 minigame to learn ue4 :/
I would go with the browser game but there are too many unknowns which makes it both awesome and scary.
but the ue4 game is a remake of a childhood game which I wanted to do for a long time.
on top of that I'm already working on a non game project, which I also like and could pour hours into it.
fuck.
3d experimental mp browser game or ue4 minigame to learn ue4 :/
I would go with the browser game but there are too many unknowns which makes it both awesome and scary.
but the ue4 game is a remake of a childhood game which I wanted to do for a long time.
on top of that I'm already working on a non game project, which I also like and could pour hours into it.
fuck.
LordRaptor
Member
I always feel like I'm doing something wasteful using mecanim, because you basically always end up with an update method thats literally duplicating a bunch of game variables just to transmit them.
I always felt it would be nicer if you could just... I dunno, add a listener to the animator FSM, or set certain variable as 'broadcast to animator' or something. I suppose there's an animation reason why they did it the way they did.
Fair enough.
Yeah that would be nice. I think it might be a limitation of the languages Unity use for scritps though without doing a lot of reflection, which is of course slow. Honestly not looked into it much, I think UE4 blueprints can do that though as I remember a UI tutorial that has a reference to a var inside a class somewhere for the health value, whereas in Unity I need to store the reference to the health component and keep querying it to see if the value has changed. But then UE4 blueprints could be doing a lot of what I write in Unity for me anyway, it's just easier/faster to set up.
There are some reasons for doing it that in way in Unity though, such as calculating the distance to destination and speed from the nav mesh agent and getting the correct velocity from it so that the animator can blend between walk and run animations nicely so it doesn't just stop with a running animation abruptly. It's a hassle that there's a lot of work you need to do that would be nice if it did it for you behind the scenes, but I've learnt to live with it now. Again it's probably a case of what UE4 is doing for you.
LordRaptor
Member
I forgot to ask this before, but I notice you're doing your art in Illustrator - are you just doing that for workflow reasons and exporting as sprites, or have you found / did I miss an update where you can use vectorial art in Unity?
It's just my real world brain sanity checking, because when I'm using two variables that both measure the same thing and have the same name I can't help but pause and go "waaaaaaait a minute, is that right?"
liliththepale
Banned
Workflow reasons. Also even though I'm doing vector art there's still a lot of high-density detail and poorly optimized paths, plus Spine doesn't support vector art, so I'm not sure that I'd attempt a realtime vector solution even if I could.
Sorry
Meanwhile;
I'm sill working on my wave-propagator in parts, currently more on some
high-quality non-realtime as well as realtiem color quantisation with some
special dithering techniques added to regain some of the lost shades.
Before starting to shade out of an indexed color space, I want to be in control
of everything which comes from a 24-bit color space while bringing it down into
the <= 8-bit regime. This is a daunting task, because you have to wakeup all
these old monsters from the past who were gone for sleep forever. If I could, I
would just start out with an indexed color palette for 3d graphics, but being in
control of the conversion process allows me to use higher-bit art in a
controlled fashion, because some art/effects can be created faster/better in
true color mode instead of drawing everything out of an indexed color palette.
Once I'm in full control I will start to shade more 3d graphics using these
quantizer to see how far one can go with this technique considering art/
coloring style before turning to an indexed color space which makes 3d shading
much more restricted but gains the huge advantage of being able to deal with a
manageable set of picked colors and shades in 3d.
I hope I'll have some graphics ready soon for those who share a similar
interest. I already have some experimental stuff running but which is a bit
stiff at the moment and needs some more tweaking, but one point already comes
across, and that's the one on how your brain works when seeing reduced
coloring, shades, resolution etc., i.e. it starts to "fill in" the gaps; while
starring at such reduced graphics for longer, your brain starts to draw up a
phantasie in your head which seems much richer as any top-notch graphics could
ever show you. Really, if I switch the rasterize back into full coloring/shading
mode, the phantasie breaks down immediately. The graphics then looks dull
despite it's much more advanced, more accurate etc. That's pretty interesting.
I'm sill working on my wave-propagator in parts, currently more on some
high-quality non-realtime as well as realtiem color quantisation with some
special dithering techniques added to regain some of the lost shades.
Before starting to shade out of an indexed color space, I want to be in control
of everything which comes from a 24-bit color space while bringing it down into
the <= 8-bit regime. This is a daunting task, because you have to wakeup all
these old monsters from the past who were gone for sleep forever. If I could, I
would just start out with an indexed color palette for 3d graphics, but being in
control of the conversion process allows me to use higher-bit art in a
controlled fashion, because some art/effects can be created faster/better in
true color mode instead of drawing everything out of an indexed color palette.
Once I'm in full control I will start to shade more 3d graphics using these
quantizer to see how far one can go with this technique considering art/
coloring style before turning to an indexed color space which makes 3d shading
much more restricted but gains the huge advantage of being able to deal with a
manageable set of picked colors and shades in 3d.
I hope I'll have some graphics ready soon for those who share a similar
interest. I already have some experimental stuff running but which is a bit
stiff at the moment and needs some more tweaking, but one point already comes
across, and that's the one on how your brain works when seeing reduced
coloring, shades, resolution etc., i.e. it starts to "fill in" the gaps; while
starring at such reduced graphics for longer, your brain starts to draw up a
phantasie in your head which seems much richer as any top-notch graphics could
ever show you. Really, if I switch the rasterize back into full coloring/shading
mode, the phantasie breaks down immediately. The graphics then looks dull
despite it's much more advanced, more accurate etc. That's pretty interesting.
jhmtehgamr20xx
Banned
C'mon, we all have deadlines. xD Yeah, I dig all these details, really! But you
have to watch out to not show the player every minute detail, not because of
diminishing returns, which would be ok, no, but because with an ever increase in
detail you take the ability away from the player to draw up his own phantasie in
his head about your game. I'm pretty convinced that one needs to strike a
balance between too fuzzy and too detailed considering these kinds of art, if
one wants the player to resonant with the game a lot more.
Well, lil, you may going to tell me that's this is your style and you want the
player to experience the game as you've envision it, which is fully legit. No
question about it. But it is impossible to tell a player how (s)he should
perceive a game. And as such, as an artist, one should give the player some
room to enter to make up his own phantasie about the game.
The game of crwilso does exercise this quite well in my book;
It's not about the coloring or the figures, rocks etc., it's the blend between
fuzziness and detail that really makes this game so interesting. So who ever is
the artist of this game, (s)he knows to pull the player in. Good job!
In traditional painting what you're referencing would be referred to as "relief areas"; places where the artist intentionally de-emphasizes detail (whether it be in amount of details, color saturation, use of cool colors instead of warm hues etc.) so that the entirety of the illustration isn't competing for the viewer's attention.
This way, they can give the viewer's eye a better since of natural direction to focus on what the important details are. All of this somewhat goes hand-in-hand with good composition of the painting.
Just wanted to mention that because as I've come to understand more, the more I realize how good level design is built off of this foundation from painting and illustration. The best types of levels in games tend to pull off this same sort of "natural direction" for the player, be it 2D or 3D. If you aren't resorting to using guide arrows to indicate which way to go, you're probably doing something right xD.
EDIT: Yeah I remember seeing your original graphic demo stuff around here a long time ago and it was pretty interesting. Good to hear there's been some progress; can't wait to see more!
Thx for the explanation! I was always lacking a name for it. And you bring some
very good ideas into my mind regarding guiding the player in a "natural
direction" using such techniques. :+ For one, since my graphics will be pretty
low-res 3d, it may perhaps make sense to up-rez/shade some selected objects to
a very fine degree (just noticeable difference) to silently guide the player
into a given direction, because he/she will naturally go where things look more
sound given the surrounding is a bit more fuzzy.
Btw; What sort of graphics/art are you into?
This is something that seems stupidly simple, but good UI is probably the biggest pain in the butt to get right (as you can actually see, I just now noticed there is not enough spacing between 2 of these sliders).
We completely redesigned the slider look, feel, and functionality game wide. Now with responsive hovering, a style that matches more closesly with the rest of the game, and no longer so jumpy touchy.
We completely redesigned the slider look, feel, and functionality game wide. Now with responsive hovering, a style that matches more closesly with the rest of the game, and no longer so jumpy touchy.
jhmtehgamr20xx
Banned
Yep, that's a very good idea. Something like a soft Gaussian blur effect that gradually lessens intensity to guide the user with progressive clarity. You could maybe combine aspects of a vignette and diorama effect in there as well and it could lead to some interesting things, depending on if it fits your visual style (it would depend on just how low-res the models are).
Particularly interested to see where your progress with it as at now given it's clearer what type of stuff can be done without polygons (Media Molecule's Dreams, for instance).
I'm doing more art these days and try posting more frequently now, but I should set up an Instagram or Pixiv at some point too, preferably when I have more illustrations up. Mostly digital but veering into a more loose/impressionistic style 'cuz I want to get better with colors, contrast, and finishing these quickly (fits my patience levels better xD), but trying to learn 3D modelling and animation (2D and 3D) as well.
Most interested in learning visual techniques from 5th gen type of games regarding 3D since that'd be very manageable with my (outdated) setup.
EDIT: Wow deviantART kinda sucks; terrible loading issues.
shaowebb
Member
Anyone here know how to change UV calculations in blender 2.77 from Angle to Conformal?
You used to be able to F9 to pull up a bunch of options that had it or access this from the tool shelf, but now the tool shelf only has Unwrap, Mark Seam and Clear Seam and the UV menu you access by clicking in the Tool Shelf or hitting U doesn't show it. Its unwrapping with a ton of overlapping on basic cylinder-like objects and such and I'm having to go through unwrapping in small chunks then stitching and tugging the damned things into shape by hand.
Its eating a lot of time doing that sorta work around and I'd like to change my UV calculation mode to see if it helps...I'm also open to other suggestions if folks have them.
( for the record it is having these poor unwraps using every unwrap method. Square, cylinder, circle, project from view, Project from view with bounds, Smart Unwrap, Unwrap, lightmap and even the active quads style of unwraps all produce these overlapped poor unwraps on this piece. No there is no hidden internal geometry)
You used to be able to F9 to pull up a bunch of options that had it or access this from the tool shelf, but now the tool shelf only has Unwrap, Mark Seam and Clear Seam and the UV menu you access by clicking in the Tool Shelf or hitting U doesn't show it. Its unwrapping with a ton of overlapping on basic cylinder-like objects and such and I'm having to go through unwrapping in small chunks then stitching and tugging the damned things into shape by hand.
Its eating a lot of time doing that sorta work around and I'd like to change my UV calculation mode to see if it helps...I'm also open to other suggestions if folks have them.
( for the record it is having these poor unwraps using every unwrap method. Square, cylinder, circle, project from view, Project from view with bounds, Smart Unwrap, Unwrap, lightmap and even the active quads style of unwraps all produce these overlapped poor unwraps on this piece. No there is no hidden internal geometry)
Theanine3D
Member
I still see the Conformal/Angle-based option in the toolshelf. Not sure why you don't see them I'm using the same version as you. Have you tried reinstalling the program?
I'm using the same version as you. Have you tried reinstalling the program?
LordRaptor
Member
In addition to what Valen said above, are you using ctrl+a to average island scale to stop overlap too?
This is something that seems stupidly simple, but good UI is probably the biggest pain in the butt to get right (as you can actually see, I just now noticed there is not enough spacing between 2 of these sliders).
We completely redesigned the slider look, feel, and functionality game wide. Now with responsive hovering, a style that matches more closesly with the rest of the game, and no longer so jumpy touchy.
If you need a hand planning out your page I'd love to offer some tips, I do this as my day job!
Maybe a bit of a dumb question, but as an indie, do you need to go through greenlight to put a free game up on Steam? I'm not sure where to take our current project when it's ready. Might consider putting it on sale for a dollar or whatever if a price is required, but that was never the intent for us. Maybe there are other sites? Getting people to notice it would be a pain regardless, I feel. I'm no good or educated in marketing :/
Of course you need to go through Greenlight. Also having a price is not obligatory to be on Steam, there's plenty of free games.
Just remember to mention that the game will be free on your Greenlgiht campaign, that should give you a lot of yes votes.
LordRaptor
Member
If you just want to put something up to get eyes on it, try gamejolt.com or itch.io if I were you
Theanine3D
Member
Consider putting up your game on itch.io. You can link to that from your Greenlight page so people can download it and test it out. Itch.io charges nothing to host your game and there's no approval process like Greenlight. It's a lot more open as a publishing platform than Steam in that regard.
People started noticing my game on itch.io even though all I have on there is a very, very early alpha demo. One person even donated after downloading the demo, even though the demo was free. There's a nice little dedicated community there that appreciates indie efforts probably more than anywhere else.
RelentlessRolento
Member
this deserves another congrads
http://steamed.kotaku.com/game-that...75766402#_ga=1.267101707.482323353.1459371058
was going to post progress gif but GIFcam keeps not wanting to do good
... if you can tell and look around the glitchyness I've gotten my first enemy fully animated ^_^was going to post progress gif but GIFcam keeps not wanting to do good
LSD mode's pretty killer. It also looks like one of the enemies decided to be a terrorist and walk offscreen to kill you by timeout, saltybet style.
Also, I believe your art style will probably prove an invaluable asset and selling point for the game, since it's really unique and quite flashy.
this deserves another congrads
http://steamed.kotaku.com/game-that...75766402#_ga=1.267101707.482323353.1459371058
was going to post progress gif but GIFcam keeps not wanting to do good
https://screentogif.codeplex.com/
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
this deserves another congrads
http://steamed.kotaku.com/game-that...75766402#_ga=1.267101707.482323353.1459371058
Didn't see a spike in sales. The DLC launch has been going well but it's nowhere near our base game launch sales.
shaowebb
Member
Haven't reinstalled yet. Its really weird that its missing. All I see are Unwrap, Mark Seam and Clear Seam in Edit mode under the UV section on the Tool Shelf. I also dont have that Insert Polygon option in your picture. You are just in edit mode and hitting T right? This isn't some special version of the toolshelf I've somehow been missing by any chance?I still see the Conformal/Angle-based option in the toolshelf. Not sure why you don't see them
On some pieces. Sometimes when I average islands it seperates chuncks and it requires a fair amount of stitch and tug anyways.
Theanine3D
Member
It's actually Inset Polygon, without the r. It appears to be from an addon in Blender's settings. I don't remember enabling it myself, but my memory might be failing me. I've enabled lots of addons in the past just to try them, and then forgotten that I did so. XD
Yeah, all I'm doing is pressing T in edit mode. Make sure the unwrap settings aren't collapsed. There's a little grey arrow that can hide them. I've collapsed them without realizing before and it confused me why I couldn't find the settings anymore.
The Conformal/Angle button and other UV settings appear BELOW the main toolshelf, btw - not inside the toolshelf itself. You shouldn't have to click one of those tabs (Tools, Create, Shading/UVs, etc) on the left side of the window to see them. The Conformal button appears below all of that, irrespective of whatever tab you have selected.
I think reinstalling should fix this for you, though it also might not, because of the weird way that Blender saves your UI modifications into each .blend file. If you accidentally removed that section of the UI somehow, it may have permanently been removed in that specific .blend file. Check if it's gone from the default startup file too (File-> Load Factory Settings)? If it is then it's a global Blender problem and a reinstall might help.
Oh and I'm actually using 2.77a, not 2.77. A minor difference, but a bunch of bugs were apparently fixed in 2.77a that were in present 2.77.
RelentlessRolento
Member
Yeah, that is a small bug I still need to go in and fix. It almost never happens but he decided to peace out during that capture
Thanks about the style
I'm a visual artist by trade (got my graduate degree in Art & Technology) and my coding isn't the greatest, but I have the experience to be able to output a full on game now. I'm trying to wrap up the prototype/alpha by the end of this week and begin work on prepping everything else necessary to launch a kickstarter with it.
Awesome! Thanks!
Here's hoping that changes in some form, but still cool you got mentioned. I was just scrolling down Kotaku and recognized the art. It's not nothin to be on a page like that
does anyone still have that link for that 16gb file full of free sounds? I lost the link
This?does anyone still have that link for that 16gb file full of free sounds? I lost the link
http://www.sonniss.com/blog/gdc-is-here-and-we-have-some-special-for-you-all
peaceiscloser
Member
RPG Maker MV (the newest version) is 30% off on Humble Bundle, bringing it to an all-time low of $55.99. With the Humble Monthly discount it's down to about $50. There's only about 12 hours left on it as of this post, so if you want to work with a simpler (but still fairly robust) engine, this is a good opportunity.
https://www.humblebundle.com/store/rpg-maker-mv
https://www.humblebundle.com/store/rpg-maker-mv
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