Support NeoGAF

[Theanine3D]

can someone explain what itch.io is? Refinery seems like an interesting tool I'd like to try but I have no clue where itch.io sits in the overall gaming distribution ecosystem -- is it like Steam? do lots of people use it? do y'all buy and download games from there?

It's an online storefront just like Steam. Except it's geared towards indies first and foremost, and offers a lot more freedom to you as an indie developer and publisher. Unlike Steam, you can set the royalty rate that Itch.io receives from the sales of your games to anything, even 0%. There's no approval process like Greenlight for publishing your game there, either - you can have your game on there ready for sale in a few hours or less, not weeks or months like on Greenlight.

It's even got a client like Steam, the Itch app. Though the client is not actually required in order to download or buy games. A lot of indies publish simultaneously on Steam and Itch, on the latter usually offering a DRM-free version of the game.

The community is much smaller than Steam, obviously, but you can see some stats here. The post is a year old and the community has grown a lot since then.

 

[Feep]

Good job! Given the time invested, are you guys 'n gals going to use it for another game or was it sort of an "requirement" to be better in line with the PS4s requirements whatsover? Does the game run out of Unity on PS4?

Errrr...we just had to do it. Voice recognition was a requirement for my game, and my Windows libraries obviously wouldn't work on PS4.

It might be a supplementary feature in future games, since we already did all the heavy lifting, but I doubt we'll do a fully voice controlled title again.

 

[Makai]

Has anybody licensed music before? I want to include dozens of small label albums as collectibles.

 

[Pazu]

Has anybody licensed music before? I want to include dozens of small label albums as collectibles.

I've done it for film, it can get expensive. You'll often have to pay twice, once for publishing rights and once for the master (the sound recording). I worked with The Rights Workshop which will contact the rights owners for you. Alternatively, if they are very small labels you could try to contact them directly and negotiate a deal.

 

[Makai]

I've done it for film, it can get expensive. You'll often have to pay twice, once for publishing rights and once for the master (the sound recording). I worked with The Rights Workshop which will contact the rights owners for you. Alternatively, if they are very small labels you could try to contact them directly and negotiate a deal.

Yeah, I'm looking primarily at albums with like 10k views on Spotify and then contacting the artists directly.

 

[Lautaro]

Since yesterday that I feel in the zone so I uploaded two short videos showing some progress I made with my monster tamer tactical RPG:

https://youtu.be/o_skLZVOUcs

https://youtu.be/D9mzJJp4PVc


What do you think about the name "Beastmancer"?

 

[RelentlessRolento]

Looking forward to sharing my stuff once the Kickstarter goes up hopefully this coming Monday >_<

 

[DigiGee_]

Realized I lurk this thread a lot but I dont think I've ever actually posted my game here before!
worked on making some windows today~

 

[correojon]

ive been working in a simple shoot'em up game for 2 months now. the levels are basically finished and im working in the final graphics. i captured a gameplay video (i couldnt capture in 60fps/HD, which gave it a vintage look lol). the sfx/music are not mine... i want to compose when im done with the graphics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj_7akQcv2k

Looks really simple, but there´s something which I can´t pinpoint that makes it work. I liked a lot the smooth movement and how enemies and obstacles were gently introduced and slowly ramped the complexity of the setups as the level went on, good level design. I also liked the small details like the coins getting attracted to you when you move close enough. Great work!
Don´t know how it feels when you play it, but I got the impression that the effect when you charge the shot could be mistaken with enemy bullets sometimes.

Since yesterday that I feel in the zone so I uploaded two short videos showing some progress I made with my monster tamer tactical RPG:

https://youtu.be/o_skLZVOUcs

https://youtu.be/D9mzJJp4PVc


What do you think about the name "Beastmancer"?

Looks great, I like the name too.

Looking forward to sharing my stuff once the Kickstarter goes up hopefully this coming Monday >_<

Good luck! Keep us updated!

 

[missile]

Errrr...we just had to do it. Voice recognition was a requirement for my game, and my Windows libraries obviously wouldn't work on PS4.

It might be a supplementary feature in future games, since we already did all the heavy lifting, but I doubt we'll do a fully voice controlled title again.

I was somehow thinking you worked on a new voice recognition or something for
PS4. *must be my imagination* You're going to make 3d (Oculus) game next? Any
plans (if you don't mind me asking)?

 

[Feep]

I was somehow thinking you worked on a new voice recognition or something for
PS4. *must be my imagination* You're going to make 3d (Oculus) game next? Any
plans (if you don't mind me asking)?

We used the built-in PS4 voice API's.

But I cannot reveal future plans...yet.

 

[missile]

We used the built-in PS4 voice API's.

But I cannot reveal future plans...yet.

Ok. Let us know if there is new stuff coming! :+

Yeah you'd think so, but I guess it's like you said and they want to keep it a secret!

And wow, your knowledge of all this stuff blows my mind haha, I'm only new to the world of image processing and graphics so I don't really understand much of it. ...

Well, most of the things I'm talking about here (with respect to color
quantization) are pretty ancient. Most of this stuff was hot around the 80's
and earlier 90's (until true-color accelerators took over). There is basically
nothing new (while my highlighter can be considered new somehow, anyways).
Image processing/reproduction on limited colors palettes is a different story
than all these nice 24-bit Fourier etc. analysed images. Not because it is
more complicated from a theoretical point of view, no, but it's more
convoluted I would say, because in the earlier days you also had to respect
the limited hardware much more while doing graphics. Image reproduction is a
hot topic on limited hardware. Today you won't find it at that scale any
longer but image reproduction is still an important topic when for example
mapping color-spaces (gamuts) around, for example when mapping sRGB into a
printers gamut spanned by its inks. Such transformations are pretty delicate,
complex and are often patented or kept secret (like the ingredients of Chanel
No. 5).


--


missile vs. Photoshop -- upon image quantization. xD I've put my stuff
together to show the current state and whats good for. Some comparisions are
to follow for those who are interested.

24-bit original

Without Dithering

Photoshop, quantized (256 colors)

missile, quantized (256 colors)

After some minor modification, I think I am on-par with Photoshop in this
department, i.e. in finding the best colors. But Photoshop seem to just weigh
some stuff a lil differently. Their blue shades are a bit less compressed
while the blue-pink ones get a little bit more compress. It's the other way
around in my picture. Pretty hard to notice, anyways.

With Dithering

Photoshop, quantized (256 colors), dithering (pattern)

missile, quantized (256 colors), dithering (pattern)

Pretty good, what? However, I still lag behind a bit. But I know where the
issue is on my part. I just need to develop a different dithering strategy.
Unfortunately, I'm loosing a couple of shades with my current technique.
Fixing that will finally bring me on the same level, if not surpassing
Photoshop altogether. Well, can you see a difference at all?

But now lets see how Photoshop can deal with highlights!

By now I wrote two different algorithms to account for the highlights in an
image while quantizing. I will present the result of one which will reproduce
some very good highlights by retaining as much colors/shades as possible.

24-bit original

Photoshop, quantized (256 colors), dithering (pattern)

missile's highlighter, quantized (256 colors), dithering (pattern)

The highlights my algorithm is able to reproduce surpasses the ones of
Photoshop in orders of magnitude and resample the ones of the original
pretty closely. But these nice highlights won't come for free. Highlights
pretty much work against any quantiztion algorithm. Such an algorithm needs
another optimizing strategy if you also want to retain resp. control the
quality of the highlights. It's a trade-off in that you have to trade in some
shades for getting a few more shades for the highlights because there are
only so many entries in a color palette (256 in this case). As can be seen,
there are, for example, a few less blue shades in my highlighter compared to
the Photoshop version. But these are covered via dithering quite nicely.

Here is a close-up of one of the highlights from the two images above;

left: Photoshop, right: missile's highlighter


As I previously wrote, highlights weren't that much of an issue back then
because image quantiztion algorithms usually focused on quantizing natural
pictures (more or less) which are pretty much absent of any highlights or,
for that matter, colors very few in amount. Synthesized images were never
really used to demonstrate the performance of quantiztion algorithms. You will
find pictures of Lena, the Mandrill and friends the most regarding image
quantization. Upon the time where computer generated images became more and
more common, true-color palettes also became more common. And as such there
wasn't a real need to modify the classic algorithms (like median-cut etc.) to
focus on the highlights for such images, I think. So where does the need now
comes from if we are all fine with true-color palettes these days? Well, it's
a pure artistic affair. When I create some minimalistic color styles, effects
etc. while creating an images at full-color resolution (>= 24-bit) and
converting it down afterwards, then my well-crafted/placed highlights etc.
won't be reproduce to my liking. And this sux.

 

[diddykong13]

Well, can you see a difference at all?

After spending time looking at this all in detail I can actually see the subtle differences now (particularly in the blue) but yeah like you say, you are extremely close to matching Photoshop's result now! Nice work

left: Photoshop, right: missile's highlighter

Wow. That's a hell of an improvement over what Photoshop outputs, great job!

 

[KarasuEXE]

Realized I lurk this thread a lot but I dont think I've ever actually posted my game here before!
worked on making some windows today~

Amazing! This style (Chibi + Cel Shading) reminds of Pokémon 3DS games

 

[missile]

After spending time looking at this all in detail I can actually see the subtle differences now (particularly in the blue) but yeah like you say, you are extremely close to matching Photoshop's result now! Nice work ...

In the yellow-orange section of the first dithered image of mine, one can also
see some slight banding. That's where some of my shades go missing as well.

... Wow. That's a hell of an improvement over what Photoshop outputs, great job!

Thx for the flowers! Well yeah, Photoshop can be still improved. Would be
interesting to write an entire new plugin for quantizing true-color images
offering lots of additional features especially geared towards retro graphics.
So you could build effects and stuff in >= 24-bit and then bring them down
into the low-res regime. Is there something similar out there already? I think
I could add about 10^32 features here (roughly).

 

[2+2=5]

left: Photoshop, right: missile's highlighter

When i saw this image i immediately thought that your filter had more colors, so i made gimp counting the colors and i was right! I immediately thought that maybe something was wrong and your algorythm outputted more colors, then i made gimp count the second last image... and it has only 170 colors! WTH!?!?!?!?!?
I don't know how you do it but it's awesome!

 

[Makai]

I'm colorblind and can't see any difference in most of Missile's posts.

 

[missile]

When i saw this image i immediately thought that your filter had more colors, so i made gimp counting the colors and i was right! I immediately thought that maybe something was wrong and your algorythm outputted more colors, then i made gimp count the second last image... and it has only 170 colors! WTH!?!?!?!?!?
I don't know how you do it but it's awesome!

Yeah thx. You know what? I was running through something similar. I've sent
some images to a couple of friends of mine and they said "no way". For some of
the images I couldn't believe it either. Not even my own code. lol Well, I
have a method that pulls the final color out of a color palette <= 256 colors,
no matter what (dead safe), but for some reason I wanted to make sure. As such
I've put the (histogram) counter after this method to double check the amount
of unique colors generated, re-read the quantized image again letting it run
through the counter and also the quantizer again, saving the pictures while
checking whether there was any difference between the two, which shouldn't be
the case (quantized²(x) = quantized(x), sort of an projection), and there
wasn't. All fine.

About the 170 colors. See, I'm not laying. 86 colors to go. These are the
missing (dither) colors I was talking about. If I can pull these colors, I
think I will surpass Photoshop on all accounts (within this regard). It's just
the dither stuff which needs more work, the raw color quantizer is already on
par if not better given that it can account of the highlights.

I'm colorblind and can't see any difference in most of Missile's posts.

There was recently a thread about it on GAF, about being colorblind while
playing games etc. and how much support there is for colorblinds. Someone said
that some of the corrections being made for colorblinds are actually worse
than letting the game as it is. What's you take on that subject, Makai?

 

[Cute Dragon Here]

Is there a way to programmatically add an appropriately sized sprite-based shadow to all 2D sprites in the scene with the Unity engine? I'm noticing some contrast issues with some of the spritework I'm using and I do not feel like baking shadows for everything.

 

[missile]

Realized I lurk this thread a lot but I dont think I've ever actually posted my game here before!
worked on making some windows today~

Glad you didn't come here the last day throwing just ads on us! Thx! :+ So,
yeah, welcome! I like your work. This style has potential, I guess. What's
the game about, anyways?

 

[Makai]

There was recently a thread about it on GAF, about being colorblind while
playing games etc. and how much support there is for colorblinds. Someone said
that some of the corrections being made for colorblinds are actually worse
than letting the game as it is. What's you take on that subject, Makai?

Definitely. The problem is there are different versions of colorblindness, so it's hard for developers to find pallets that work for everybody. But I think blue and yellow are the greatest contrasting colors for most of us. Red/Blue/Yellow is good. I played a color matching game recently with a CYMK color pallete which was surprisingly easy and I got the high score!

Generally, we can figure it out as long as each color has different saturations. A lot of programmers (and scientists with graphs) like to just do 100% saturation for each color, which is the worst thing. If you're missing your red cone, 255, 255, 0 looks the same as 0, 255, 0. But 230, 150, 0 looks different from 30, 230, 0, etc.

Sometimes it's impossible to make accomodations. I needed to get help on The Witness, but Jon Blow couldn't really have helped that because the puzzles were based on trichromatic color theory.

 

[diddykong13]

Edit: You've already replied

I'm colorblind and can't see any difference in most of Missile's posts.

There was recently a thread about it on GAF, about being colorblind while
playing games etc. and how much support there is for colorblinds. Someone said
that some of the corrections being made for colorblinds are actually worse
than letting the game as it is. What's you take on that subject, Makai?

I would be really interested to hear about your take on this too. It's of particular interest to me as I am trying to develop colour blind accessibility options for my game COLOR - which inherently is going to be a difficult game to play with any form of colour blindness.

the puzzles were based on trichromatic color theory.

This is the kind of concept in my game with colour addition and subtraction.

As an example of the system I have at the moment:

The game will render letters over the colours to represent them:
R -> red
G -> green
B -> blue
C -> cyan
M -> magenta
Y -> yellow

I hope that this will help clear things up, but it's hard to tell without having input from someone. If you don't mind me asking, which type of colour blindness do you have Makai?

 

[Makai]

Red/Green. I think my red cone is weak. All of those colors are easy except the yellow and green are close. That's a good idea, but if you're going to all that trouble maybe just texture them? Fuzzy zone vs rocky zone, etc.

Edit: oh, if it's based on color theory then there's not much you can do about it.

 

[Makai]

If the text is an optional overlay, some sort of pattern would be a better aid. Easier to glance at a pattern then read the text. Diagonals, checkerboard, plaid, etc.

 

[diddykong13]

Red/Green. I think my red cone is weak. All of those colors are easy except the yellow and green are close. That's a good idea, but if you're going to all that trouble maybe just texture them? Fuzzy zone vs rocky zone, etc.

Edit: oh, if it's based on color theory then there's not much you can do about it.

Ah okay then, yeah thats the only issue with using the textures is that it's to do with colour theory, so it might seem a bit counter-intuitive to disassociate the colours and instead represent them by patterns. Although it may actually work.

If the text is an optional overlay, some sort of pattern would be a better aid. Easier to glance at a pattern then read the text. Diagonals, checkerboard, plaid, etc.

Yeah at the moment, the letters are simply applied as an option (just a shader that adds them on top of particular colours), so it can easily be tweaked and toggled on and off during gameplay.

I think I may have a play around with using patterns and see it that de-clutters the visuals a little to make it easier to glance at. Thanks for the feedback!

 

[DigiGee_]

Amazing! This style (Chibi + Cel Shading) reminds of Pokémon 3DS games

Wow thanks! I love the chibiness of a lot of 3ds games like X/Y and animal crossing

Glad you didn't come here the last day throwing just ads on us! Thx! :+ So,
yeah, welcome! I like your work. This style has potential, I guess. What's
the game about, anyways?

The idea right now is to make a reeeeaally small scale bloodborne/darksouls/castlevania clone.
I'm just working solo on this project right now so to cut down on scope I've been trying to design the levels like super mario 64
where I can have a bunch of objectives in a couple of levels instead of making a bunch of levels with a couple of objectives.

 

[timetokill]

Wow thanks! I love the chibiness of a lot of 3ds games like X/Y and animal crossing

The idea right now is to make a reeeeaally small scale bloodborne/darksouls/castlevania clone.
I'm just working solo on this project right now so to cut down on scope I've been trying to design the levels like super mario 64
where I can have a bunch of objectives in a couple of levels instead of making a bunch of levels with a couple of objectives.

So cute! Looks really lovely.

 

[correojon]

I made a statue to use as checkpoints, I like how it looks but I´m not sure if it fits the style of the graphics:

I also implemented circular grinders and added a trail for them and for the platforms, so the player can identify their movement easily:

Wow thanks! I love the chibiness of a lot of 3ds games like X/Y and animal crossing

The idea right now is to make a reeeeaally small scale bloodborne/darksouls/castlevania clone.
I'm just working solo on this project right now so to cut down on scope I've been trying to design the levels like super mario 64
where I can have a bunch of objectives in a couple of levels instead of making a bunch of levels with a couple of objectives.

It looks great! How are you going to do combat? I can´t imagine that cute girl fighting head-on the scary enemies

 

[Razlo]

Realized I lurk this thread a lot but I dont think I've ever actually posted my game here before!
worked on making some windows today~

Super cute character

 

[TheHollowNight]

Late last year my friend Sean released his first game (outside of AAA dev) for smartphones called The End of the World, in which I did the soundtrack for. I have finally found time out of my schedule to polish up the tracks and put them on Bandcamp!
https://axionmusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-end-of-the-world-ost

I kept the price cheap and cheerful, since it's only 4 tracks. But it's definitely worth grabbing the game as Sean recently made it free for both iOS & Android.

http://theendoftheworldgame.tumblr.com/

--------------------------------------------------------

In other news!
We'll be shortly sending out an early playtest build for Beacon if anyone here is interested in giving it a go and offering feedback!

 

[RelentlessRolento]

Wow thanks! I love the chibiness of a lot of 3ds games like X/Y and animal crossing

The idea right now is to make a reeeeaally small scale bloodborne/darksouls/castlevania clone.
I'm just working solo on this project right now so to cut down on scope I've been trying to design the levels like super mario 64
where I can have a bunch of objectives in a couple of levels instead of making a bunch of levels with a couple of objectives.

really like all I'm seeing here

 

[gingerbeardman]

Is anybody else taking part in the 2nd pico-8 game jam that's running this week (until 29th)?

 

[SeanNoonan]

Definitely starting to feel like I'm flogging a dead horse, but the game is almost done, so I should probably promote it a little...

Here's a new devlog video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHi96XJzSRg

Should start working on a trailer and release date soon...

 

[Theanine3D]

The Lolly Joe (closed) beta will be starting within the next two months. If any of the regulars here are interested in participating, send me a PM! (Note: the game is Windows/Linux only)

Can't believe how close to the finish line I already am. =D But there's still much work left to do. Haven't gotten around to adding achievements yet, for example, as I was saving the Steamworks stuff for last. The hardest parts of making the game are over though, which is a relief!

 

[Lautaro]

Looks great, I like the name too.

Thanks!


Now I'm working in the UI, personally I find a bit tedious to make code to control the GUI elements but I better start soon before I lose momentum:

 

[DigiGee_]

thanks for all the nice words guys ^o^
sorry for all the gifs hopefully the page dosent lag too bad for anybody

It looks great! How are you going to do combat? I can´t imagine that cute girl fighting head-on the scary enemies

I wanted to make the combat more like dark souls but I'm still playing with the animations n stuff for the basic moveset

 

[missile]

Definitely. The problem is there are different versions of colorblindness, so it's hard for developers to find pallets that work for everybody. But I think blue and yellow are the greatest contrasting colors for most of us. Red/Blue/Yellow is good. I played a color matching game recently with a CYMK color pallete which was surprisingly easy and I got the high score!

Generally, we can figure it out as long as each color has different saturations. A lot of programmers (and scientists with graphs) like to just do 100% saturation for each color, which is the worst thing. If you're missing your red cone, 255, 255, 0 looks the same as 0, 255, 0. But 230, 150, 0 looks different from 30, 230, 0, etc.

Sometimes it's impossible to make accomodations. I needed to get help on The Witness, but Jon Blow couldn't really have helped that because the puzzles were based on trichromatic color theory.

I will have a look myself into it if I'm close to releasing any game. There
should either be some existing color transformation around already for each
specific disability, or it should be possible to construct a proper one.

Wow thanks! I love the chibiness of a lot of 3ds games like X/Y and animal crossing

The idea right now is to make a reeeeaally small scale bloodborne/darksouls/castlevania clone.
I'm just working solo on this project right now so to cut down on scope I've been trying to design the levels like super mario 64
where I can have a bunch of objectives in a couple of levels instead of making a bunch of levels with a couple of objectives.

Sounds good. It's similar on my end. Next to the standard things needed for a
a game, I will also try to create some procedural generated stuff with
hopefully some emergend gameplay, i.e. gamplay coming along out of existing
gameplay + mechanigs, such that the player can chill in the game without
needing to follow a fixed plan/route all the time. Will see.

thanks for all the nice words guys ^o^
sorry for all the gifs hopefully the page dosent lag too bad for anybody

I wanted to make the combat more like dark souls but I'm still playing with the animations n stuff for the basic moveset

Nice. I somehow love the banded lighting. But I guess you won't have it like
that the final game.

 

[asa]

We just released the first content update for Power Hover Android.
Google play link
Version 1.50 has all new fourth chapter(6 new normal levels and a boss level) and punch of improvements.

Late last year my friend Sean released his first game (outside of AAA dev) for smartphones called The End of the World, in which I did the soundtrack for. I have finally found time out of my schedule to polish up the tracks and put them on Bandcamp!

This game popped on my radar a while back, looked amazing back then and still does. And it's free now?! totally getting it right away! Listening to your soundtrack as I type, moody stuff!

 

[Minamu]

Are there any actual teams in here or are most of you making entire games by yourselves? One of my team's programmers have a tendency to go rogue and add/remove/edit gameplay elements without asking for permission or even discussing if it's a good idea. It's driving me crazy :lol Not sure how to handle it, he has demanded to be named lead programmer in the credits even though there's just three of us, and he's always acting as if he's lead everything :/ Worst part is, the last time we worked together, we made a feature/bug list of things that need to be fixed before we can release a beta, and the first thing he does the next day is to redo an entire player class, which was complete and problem free, so obviously nowhere near said list! Last week I said in our chat that we must avoid feature creep at all costs if we're ever to finish the game, and his response was to make a chat poll asking people to raise their hands if they like feature creeps. Only he himself raised his hand obviously, but went on to creep anyway.

He works as a professional programmer making super serious billing software for companies by day...

 

[Bollocks]

lol sounds like an idiot if I may say so.
why would you be in favor of feature creep.

when I was a kid I read a book about game dev and one quote that stuck with me was: "KISS keep it simple, stupid" and once I worked profesionally I realized just how important this quote is.
idk what this guy is on about.

 

[Insolitus]

Wow thanks! I love the chibiness of a lot of 3ds games like X/Y and animal crossing

The idea right now is to make a reeeeaally small scale bloodborne/darksouls/castlevania clone.
I'm just working solo on this project right now so to cut down on scope I've been trying to design the levels like super mario 64
where I can have a bunch of objectives in a couple of levels instead of making a bunch of levels with a couple of objectives.

Looks cool. Can you jump in this game? The world needs more 3D platformers these days.

 

[crwilso]

Are there any actual teams in here or are most of you making entire games by yourselves? One of my team's programmers have a tendency to go rogue and add/remove/edit gameplay elements without asking for permission or even discussing if it's a good idea. It's driving me crazy :lol Not sure how to handle it, he has demanded to be named lead programmer in the credits even though there's just three of us, and he's always acting as if he's lead everything :/ Worst part is, the last time we worked together, we made a feature/bug list of things that need to be fixed before we can release a beta, and the first thing he does the next day is to redo an entire player class, which was complete and problem free, so obviously nowhere near said list! Last week I said in our chat that we must avoid feature creep at all costs if we're ever to finish the game, and his response was to make a chat poll asking people to raise their hands if they like feature creeps. Only he himself raised his hand obviously, but went on to creep anyway.

He works as a professional programmer making super serious billing software for companies by day...

We're a team here

Stuff like this can be tricky.We're fortunate that everyone is very much on the same page so we don't have to submit much discipline here.

Speaking as the designer, I'm more than happy for anyone from art, code etc to have a stab at anything in the game if they think they have a good idea. This is with the understanding that at the end of the day the responsibility falls on me to decide which is best. Sometimes it's my implementation, often it's not! Who has final say on each thing must be clear, even in tiny teams like this.

Some programmer specific stuff - you often find they are perfectionists, especially if they come from a 'serious' software background. Keep reminding them that your needs may change as the project goes on, so there's no point perfecting something you might throw away. Even worse, adding polish make make members of the team resist binning something just because they spent ages on it, not because it's what's best for the game.

I take it there's no money/formal contracts involved? It's always much harder if it's just being done for the love and you aren't all the same wavelength.. so good luck with that

 

[V_Arnold]

Are there any actual teams in here or are most of you making entire games by yourselves? One of my team's programmers have a tendency to go rogue and add/remove/edit gameplay elements without asking for permission or even discussing if it's a good idea. It's driving me crazy :lol Not sure how to handle it, he has demanded to be named lead programmer in the credits even though there's just three of us, and he's always acting as if he's lead everything :/ Worst part is, the last time we worked together, we made a feature/bug list of things that need to be fixed before we can release a beta, and the first thing he does the next day is to redo an entire player class, which was complete and problem free, so obviously nowhere near said list! Last week I said in our chat that we must avoid feature creep at all costs if we're ever to finish the game, and his response was to make a chat poll asking people to raise their hands if they like feature creeps. Only he himself raised his hand obviously, but went on to creep anyway.

He works as a professional programmer making super serious billing software for companies by day...

Jesus, that sounds so like myself. I must have been a pain to collaborate with one or two years ago.

Luckily, I realized that this cant work within indie structures (or anywhere, like,...ever). And instead of chasing the constant refactoring/redoing/own engine dream, I settled on Phaser. Happiest moment in my programming life (Beside solving some regexp problems at 1am.)

 

[Parham]

Late last year my friend Sean released his first game (outside of AAA dev) for smartphones called The End of the World, in which I did the soundtrack for. I have finally found time out of my schedule to polish up the tracks and put them on Bandcamp!
https://axionmusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-end-of-the-world-ost

I kept the price cheap and cheerful, since it's only 4 tracks. But it's definitely worth grabbing the game as Sean recently made it free for both iOS & Android.

http://theendoftheworldgame.tumblr.com/

--------------------------------------------------------

In other news!
We'll be shortly sending out an early playtest build for Beacon if anyone here is interested in giving it a go and offering feedback!

Looks neat! Just queued it up to download. Looking forward to trying it out later today.

 

[Minamu]

lol sounds like an idiot if I may say so.
why would you be in favor of feature creep.

when I was a kid I read a book about game dev and one quote that stuck with me was: "KISS keep it simple, stupid" and once I worked profesionally I realized just how important this quote is.
idk what this guy is on about.

I know, right? xD I hope he's not acting like this at work. I like KISS too, it's even more important now that we're in the final stretch and have a feature list to go after. I like the saying that the final 10% of development takes 90% of the development time.

We're a team here

Stuff like this can be tricky.We're fortunate that everyone is very much on the same page so we don't have to submit much discipline here.

Speaking as the designer, I'm more than happy for anyone from art, code etc to have a stab at anything in the game if they think they have a good idea. This is with the understanding that at the end of the day the responsibility falls on me to decide which is best. Sometimes it's my implementation, often it's not! Who has final say on each thing must be clear, even in tiny teams like this.

Some programmer specific stuff - you often find they are perfectionists, especially if they come from a 'serious' software background. Keep reminding them that your needs may change as the project goes on, so there's no point perfecting something you might throw away. Even worse, adding polish make make members of the team resist binning something just because they spent ages on it, not because it's what's best for the game.

I take it there's no money/formal contracts involved? It's always much harder if it's just being done for the love and you aren't all the same wavelength.. so good luck with that

Yeah there's no money or contracts involved like you say. We're just friends from game dev school who decided to make a game during the latest Global Game Jam back in January I think it was. We've been spending our time after work trying to finish it. I don't know about the other guys but I'm doing these jams for portfolio purposes, so it's pretty paramount to me that we have a finished product of some sort Yet another reason why feature creep is a bad idea, I want it out there and presentable for when I apply for work.

I'm a designer as well, with tiny bits of coding experience, and I'm all ears for new ideas and solutions like you, it is a collaboration after all. But while I understand that they are experts at their fields and I have very little to contribute when it comes to telling them how to code something, everyone thinks they're the greatest designers in the world xD I don't fight their coding standards or implementations, because they know best. But as soon as it comes to design, I generally gotta fight real hard to convince them/him that my suggestion is a good direction. Just about every major decision that is not related to C# directly turns into a debate, and it feels like, a power struggle. I don't get it :/

For example the other day, we got into a debate whether or not our third "faction" is lacking in gameplay. In short, phase one of the game has 4 players struggling to get the upper hand, so they get a powerful weapon in phase two. Anyone struck with this weapon gets turned into a tiny sheep, which could be seen as phase three. I'm of the opinion that playing as a sheep is not as fun as it could be (they jump higher than regular players, but they move the slowest of everyone so others can capture them, they are really bright and have no special abilities of their own, unlike everyone else). The point is to try and hide from the others and survive long enough to become a real player again. It works alright, but I don't want to settle for alright, you know? Considering how everyone else has unique power-ups or the game changing weapon, the sheep are gameplay-wise kinda left in the dust in my opinion. But no, this is completely false according to this guy, the point of the game is to end quickly so it's okay if the factions are unbalanced or boring, the game will be over soon anyway. I've never agreed to that this is supposed to be the point of the game. The point we all *have* agreed upon is that players should be able to hide in the dark, use methodical tactics to know when and where to use special abilities and play strategically, which goes against this fast-paced action game thing. I can't put up an intentionally boring or unbalanced game when I want to work full-time with balancing and level design

Like you say, it must be clear who has final say. This is bound to happen again, I'm sure, and I'll try to take the discussion next time. I'm a bit afraid what it'll do to the team spirit and/or friendship though, but I suppose it has to be done.

I'm all for new fresh ideas and everything, it doesn't matter who it comes from. But when it's done without input from the rest of the team (effectively deleting the previous systems), it only creates more work and problems than it solves. I'm having enough trouble finding a good balance between movement speeds and cooldown timers with four base classes, plus sheep and the special weapon, especially since this guy has an opinion on just about every number I pick. Adding more classes to the mix, as they have dicussed internally, and even implemented behind my back, makes my job so much more difficult.

/rant

Jesus, that sounds so like myself. I must have been a pain to collaborate with one or two years ago.

Luckily, I realized that this cant work within indie structures (or anywhere, like,...ever). And instead of chasing the constant refactoring/redoing/own engine dream, I settled on Phaser. Happiest moment in my programming life (Beside solving some regexp problems at 1am.)

Hehe yeah I suppose it happens, good thing you learned your lesson

 

[JeffG]

Are there any actual teams in here or are most of you making entire games by yourselves? One of my team's programmers have a tendency to go rogue and add/remove/edit gameplay elements without asking for permission or even discussing if it's a good idea. It's driving me crazy :lol Not sure how to handle it, he has demanded to be named lead programmer in the credits even though there's just three of us, and he's always acting as if he's lead everything :/ Worst part is, the last time we worked together, we made a feature/bug list of things that need to be fixed before we can release a beta, and the first thing he does the next day is to redo an entire player class, which was complete and problem free, so obviously nowhere near said list! Last week I said in our chat that we must avoid feature creep at all costs if we're ever to finish the game, and his response was to make a chat poll asking people to raise their hands if they like feature creeps. Only he himself raised his hand obviously, but went on to creep anyway.

He works as a professional programmer making super serious billing software for companies by day...

I am working by myself, but I have worked as a developer for business software for 25 yrs.

1st Question...Are his changes good?

i.e. Is he a good developer that has good idea's but is a lone wolf...or just a PITA

Scope creep is one the biggest reasons for software failure, so it needs to be taken seriously.

IMO indie games need to try to do a smaller set of features very well. If you try to be feature rich there is a good chance you will do everything half assed.

 

[Minamu]

I am working by myself, but I have worked as a developer for business software for 25 yrs.

1st Question...Are his changes good?

i.e. Is he a good developer that has good idea's but is a lone wolf...or just a PITA

Scope creep is one the biggest reasons for software failure, so it needs to be taken seriously.

IMO indie games need to try to do a smaller set of features very well. If you try to be feature rich there is a good chance you will do everything half assed.

As far as I can tell, his code structure and standards are up to snuff. He knows what he's talking about usually when it comes to how to implement something. He has 3+ years of formal education and maybe about the same number of years of work. I think he might be a better suited lead than his counterpart in the group, even though I don't see the point when there's just two people usually coding. I think it's a personality style of his, a pretty big ego that needs to be stroked. I wasn't aware they had come to this lead agreement back in January but I suspect it wasn't much of a discussion, more like demanding and commandeering, with no one daring to speak up. Because commandeering is what he's been trying, and succeeding occasionally, with the design as well as code.

As for the quality of his suggestions, I haven't tried the latest changes myself, they're not committed to the project yet, but they're usually fairly good ideas, sure. The latest one was a rebuild of a player class, a Warper, which used to do an instant teleport from A to B, but only in a straight line and with a fixed distance. The problem, but kinda interesting tactic, is being able to teleport outside the map, die, and respawn at a random position. We also decided we want to be able to teleport in the Y axis as well. What he decided on his own then was to remove the entire teleport system, and make the player shoot a (currently visible) projectile that the player rides on while invisible from A to B. It looks alright in the videos he's posted and the Y axis part is fixed as well. But why the change to begin with? As the projectile clips through walls, so does the camera as the player follows along the path, and I've already fought for months that we need a camera collision system to stop wall hack cheating, and recently coded my own such system to prove my point in an isolated scene. More problems than it solves Not to mention that moving forward really fast is precisely what one of the other classes is all about as well. So we're have two borderline identical classes.

He had plenty of ideas that we went with during the initial jam (against better judgment at times). The project is simply not in a very ideal spot right now for implementing additional features, we've had a feature stop for months, so adding new classes and funtionality, as good they might've been in January, is hurting us today. It's the working behind my back and undermining my role entirely that bugs me. It's his way or the highway a lot of the time. He's pretty young though, less than 25 I believe. I wouldn't be surprised if he just stopped coding completely if I went against him strongly enough, it wouldn't be very far fetched that his response to me putting the foot down and deciding something he doesn't agree with, would be something along the lines of "yeah, and who's going to code this thing, you?!" to try and force me to take his suggestion to heart. It's difficult to work with someone like that and enjoy it.

I wholeheartedly agree on the scope creep and indie attitude as well. It's great that the other programmer took the initiative to create a list for us to discuss on how to finish so we can move on. If only everyone could stick to it

Edit: I don't mean to sound whiny, but this behaviour is getting on my nerves, and I don't like the risk of the project falling apart or be a waste of time, since it's supposed to help my career move forward, not backward. I have a lot of personal stake in these projects for my future.

 

[Blizzard]

If you have a lot of stake in the project, I think the painful answer is that it sounds like a personality conflict. If you stay with this person, I suspect you will continue to be at their mercy, and that can cause more serious problems later on.

It's also one of the reasons that learning to create software as an indie developer is important -- it helps you understand where software developers are coming from, and it helps them avoid seeing you as someone who designs but doesn't do the programming work.

 

[Minamu]

If you have a lot of stake in the project, I think the painful answer is that it sounds like a personality conflict. If you stay with this person, I suspect you will continue to be at their mercy, and that can cause more serious problems later on.

It's also one of the reasons that learning to create software as an indie developer is important -- it helps you understand where software developers are coming from, and it helps them avoid seeing you as someone who designs but doesn't do the programming work.

Well, perceived stake at least, as I'm making games to be able to make games, if you get my point But yeah, we're not the perfect match outside of work, that is very true. I need to finish this project though, I do enjoy the process and I think the game is coming along nicely despite some group dynamic hiccups. As for any future projects together, that's a whole different story, indeed. Maybe if we have some real talk about areas of expertise and final say. I always enjoy watching experts do their craft, and this is no different.

I agree with you on learning to create. I assume you mean learning to code specifically. I have some courses in C++ and C#, and I can use visual scripting in other engines than Unity, but it doesn't compare to 3 years of full-time studies of course. I really do hope they appreciate me being there, putting in work. We wouldn't be doing this if it weren't for me, as I invited them to the jam and organized the whole thing (and continue to do so on a weekly basis). I do everything related to level design, lighting, effects creation, gameplay/movement speed balancing, the entire main menu with functional audio settings, implementing audio systems within gameplay, I will be doing marketing and putting the game on itch.io etc in the future, I deal with the music our third-party musician is doing in his spare time, I fine-tune the graphics layout of our lobby system, I report and resolve bugs in sourcetree/bitbucket regularly. I also conceptualized and structured the game itself at the jam, including all gameplay elements and how they relate to each other. Among other things Yet there's this common illness where people don't think game designers in general know what they're doing or serve a purpose.

 

[LordRaptor]

As a designer, a good idea is to write a brief synopsis of the overall design and get the team to agree with it; this gives you a binary 'checklist' to work against as a rule of thumb.

for example, if you have "fast paced gameplay" as a high level goal, then anything that works directly against that goal could be considered feature creep, and shelved or dropped - eg health pickups, regenerating health, timed respawns, cover systems, unlimited time goals, movement inhibiting mechanics, etc.

None of those mechanics are inherently 'bad', but they all work against a 'fast paced' high level goal, so shouldn't be worked on. If it turns out things are too fast paced, then you have a number of 'backburner' features you can draw from.