I see, okay
Thanks.Edit: I made a short video of our game's, Holy Sheep, intro, main menu, lobby and a piece of short gameplay! Check it out if you want: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o5XS3h8jn8
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GAF Indie Game Development Thread 2: High Res Work for Low Res Pay
- Thread starter Jacksinthe
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Thanks.Edit: I made a short video of our game's, Holy Sheep, intro, main menu, lobby and a piece of short gameplay! Check it out if you want: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o5XS3h8jn8
I see, okay
Edit: I made a short video of our game's, Holy Sheep, intro, main menu, lobby and a piece of short gameplay! Check it out if you want: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o5XS3h8jn8
video is private
Right, thought it would work if you had the url
Try now, it's just unlisted now.just accept that you can never get it 100% right, care to not care.
the sooner you realize this the better off you will be.
no one ever released something which he was 100% satisfied with
Working with a team helps, since you can't keep polishing stuff forever or else people will end up dropping out due to frustration, so the team has to find a middle ground between doing their ideal game and what they can do given their skills and available resources (mostly time and money).
I think learning when something is good enough is a vital skill that comes from experience, since most of the time what matters is what players experience. Maybe your AI system is so badly optimized that it can't handle more than five agents at once, but that doesn't matter at all if the game was never going to use more than that in the first place; in that case, every second you spend optimizing the AI beyond the "handle five agents at once" point is actually a waste of development time. Maybe the game designer might decide halfway through development that you absolutely need at least eight for some particular situation, but that's something you shouldn't be worrying about until the time comes (but always try not to do awful hacks in your code, though).
Other fields such as game, level, graphics or sound design might need more iterations, but even then you should draw a line to how many times you're going to iterate on something. Another good practice is to avoid endlessly iterating on anything simply because you don't like it. Reach out to your teammates or get some playtesting done to get feedback rather than overly relying on your own judgement, since the latter often leads to developing some sort of tunnel vision that results in wasting time in doing things that aren't even needed, and that's always bad for development.
Different aspects should take priority over others. For example, Getting player movement to feel 100% is more important than a bug that 1 in 1000 people will come across. That and you can follow the agile way and build and iterate in order to get it closer to 100% without dropping other parts of your game.
liliththepale
Banned
Sàmban;205084947 said:Looked a little bland so I added a few things!
wow, this is gorgeous! Great shapes and color usage.
If I could make a small note, you have the lighting on the trees coming from directly above, yet the shadow they cast is off to the down-left side slightly. If the light actually came from directly above as the highlights suggest, the shadow wouldn't be visible. Conversely, if the shadow is accurate, then the highlights should be up-right somewhat.
Whitebison
Member
Sàmban;205084947 said:Looked a little bland so I added a few things!
looking great man, the color palette reminds me of hyper light drifter.
This could also be a shadow-map depth precision issue.Hey, that's pretty cool
Edit: Does anyone know what this is about in Unity? I'm getting some sort of shadowing artifacts or something on my geometry:
http://i.imgur.com/iAw92Io.png
There's nothing wrong with the positioning of objects, I've made sure they fit right next to each other by holding down V when moving them. The material is a standard material I made, so it's not the default one. The artifacts comes and goes with distance and viewing angle I think. I think I've read about htis problem somewhere, a quality setting error maybe? I'm using default settings afaik.
Try to pull the light's near plane a little bit more away from the light source,
if that is possible in Unity at all (no idea). You can also pull-in the light's
far plane more towards its near plane. Doing so will usually increase shadow-map
precision in the given range leading to less artifacts upon rendering shadows.
Cool, I'll check it out tomorrow, pretty sure there's a plane slider on every light
SouSouRocket
Member
New improved opening + early gameplay video from Light Fairytale:
youtube.com/watch?v=EZCLuSSIYl0
Any thoughts?
Very cute! I'm not really sure about the AR display though--I feel like it would be more helpful if you changed it up a bit to make it more visually distinct--go beyond just some green and icons.
superNESjoe
Member
Honestly I didn't learn to manage that very well until I shipped my first game. I second guess myself all the time, and am always disappointed in myself with all the things could've been, should've been, if I had more time or help or budget or whatever.
GunWorld 2 was a big one for me, because the first was so disliked and I worked so hard and so long on making the sequel something worthwhile. For a large chunk of development I was really happy with how it was turning out, but then my son was born, and the last half of development stuck me with dramatically less work hours, a quickly depleting budget, and a pretty hefty delay in order to finish the game.
I knew what I was putting out wasn't as polished or complete as what I originally planned to do. I was devestated, but reception has actually been positive by a large majority. People are liking the game for the most part and I'm getting almost universal feedback about how crazy it is how much better it is than the first game.
Feedback helps ground you and realize that even if it isn't everything you wanted, it can still bring people joy.
I'm working in transitions between exploring and combat in my monster tamer RPG:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SVZM6Bn83w
But I'm undecided about how to deal with the encounters, one option is to have enemies roaming the map and start the combat when you collide with one of them (like in the video but more polished) and other would be to use the old invisible random encounters but with a slider to reduce or increase the rate of the encounters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SVZM6Bn83w
But I'm undecided about how to deal with the encounters, one option is to have enemies roaming the map and start the combat when you collide with one of them (like in the video but more polished) and other would be to use the old invisible random encounters but with a slider to reduce or increase the rate of the encounters.
Are you using Unity? If that's the case, then you could look at something such as this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnAoD7hgDxw. That guy also has several other videos analyzing VFX and shaders and replicating them in Unity, so it's great as a starting point.
And while I'm at it, here's another channel by a guy who does VFX for Riot that contains lots of really cool stuff: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEtMqF3rZuFz8mDMrh5geTw. I've checked some of them out and forwarded one that deals with making tiling textures to the game's artist, since making things tile properly will make things infinitely easier for us.
Some more resources:
https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/3hst9l/best_unity_assets_by_keijiro_takahashi_including/ (Unity only)
https://medium.com/@akb1ggs/structuring-your-unity-monobehaviours-df090b587110#.b2ni3v8uv (Unity only)
http://allenchou.net/2016/05/a-brain-dump-of-what-i-worked-on-for-uncharted-4/ (general programming stuff, including lots of math)
whoa that first video is incredibly useful. I've been thinking about I was going to do field to battle transitions in my game and I would have probably done the box method rather than shaders. I should probably take some time to do some more research on the subject.
Also that reddit link makes feel super inadequate in my programming knowledge. I can't even comprehend how some of that stuff is done.
Thanks, I remember seeing that video in /r/gamedev.
sorry for the late reply! :x
The original plan was to have the dash replace a jump function for platforming stuff but the one of the first things friends always ask when playtesting is "Where is the jump button?" so I've been kinda torn between giving the player an actual jump or not.
for now I'm putting in a terribly low jump that dosent really serve any function in the game other than to give people an answer when they ask what the jump button is haha
HandsomeCharles
Member
So Unity have just changed their pricing structures.
And by changed, I mean "FUBAR-ed". It looks seriously crappy. Crappy enough to price small developers out of using Unity for their projects all together.
Let's be honest here. Most of us would pay for pro just to get rid of the splash screen. Previously this would equate to a cost of $900 per year. Now its changing to $1500.
What are they doing?!
EDIT: They also removed perpetual licences...
EDIT 2: "Pay to own" licence info coming in June
And by changed, I mean "FUBAR-ed". It looks seriously crappy. Crappy enough to price small developers out of using Unity for their projects all together.
Let's be honest here. Most of us would pay for pro just to get rid of the splash screen. Previously this would equate to a cost of $900 per year. Now its changing to $1500.
What are they doing?!
EDIT: They also removed perpetual licences...
EDIT 2: "Pay to own" licence info coming in June
Wow this is really a bad move, especially when Unity Plus still has the "made with unity" splash screen, what a bad move. I'm sure this will get quite some ppl away from Unity. With Unreal / CryEngine for "free" there are other good choices on the market.
Yeah just read that part...
I'm using Unity now, I mean the splash screen didn't really bother me all that much and if I'm earning $100K a year then I guess $1500 a year wouldn't bother me much either, but I did like the idea of the perpetual licence. I liked the options I suppose.
Jacksinthe
Banned
I think it's more than fair to keep the splash up if you are using a fully featured engine for free and not paying a dime until you hit 100k.
Last I remembered UE4 had a 20/mo subs and revenue sharing.
I guess it depends on how well you think your game will sell - if it will do well, unity is still the cheaper option vs a profit share.
Last I remembered UE4 had a 20/mo subs and revenue sharing.
I guess it depends on how well you think your game will sell - if it will do well, unity is still the cheaper option vs a profit share.
HandsomeCharles
Member
Yea, if you're in that group then the price increase isn't too big of a deal, but in the case of smaller developers it's an extortionate cost. I know that personally I won't be able to afford it, and then that leaves me with the "kiss of death" that is the default Unity Splash. I was already going to have issues affording the current price and now it's just way out of my league.
I don't need all the other tat that comes with it. I just want rid of that god-damn splash.
No, that's not it. They've added a new Tier which is $35/m that doesn't remove the splash. Right now removing the splash costs $75/m, and its going up to $125. Ridiculous.
So time to go to ue4 or go back to bge for me I guess.
Looking great as always!
What an improvement! However I agree with Lilith, the lights and the shadows on the trees don´t match each other, I´d also toe done the highlights a bit.Sàmban;205084947 said:Looked a little bland so I added a few things!
How much time has it been since Unity became totally free? Less than a year? It looks like they did it just to fight back Unreal and now that they´ve got a big following (not that it was small before) they may not be getting as much money as they expected or something.
It looks really shitty tbh. Don't know what they're thinking.
UE4 is free. You only have revenue sharing, which is 5% for Epic after you've earned 3000$. Plus, you can also apply for Epic's funding.
HandsomeCharles
Member
Unity has always had a free version. It was only last year that they added things like the Profiler to it, and some other "Pro" features.
Yeah that´s what I meant, I remember last year news was the "Pro" version had become free. It was announced on the same or next day that UE4 went free.
HandsomeCharles
Member
Yeah I agree with that, and no way in hell can I afford anything really. I've survived on minimal bare essential purchases so far with Unity to be able to make it better, but no way can I afford a monthly cost such as that. There has been many a time where I thought about switching to UE4, but everytime I play about with it there's stuff I dislike that makes dev'ing with it a chore for me and I carry on with Unity. I like Unity, but I really dislike a lot of things they do with it.
I tried to make the splash a bit more bearable by having a scene after with the same colour and then fading to my boot up like loading screen thing, which kinda worked. 5.4 in beta at the moment though changed the splash again to some white screen though so it fked that up! xD
I can't find a pricing graph comparing the two (I remember seeing one), but I'd imagine UE4 is still more expensive right?
edit:
Hmm... $1 million *dr evil finger*
HandsomeCharles
Member
I tried to make the splash a bit more bearable by having a scene after with the same colour and then fading to my boot up like loading screen thing, which kinda worked. 5.4 in beta at the moment though changed the splash again to some white screen though so it fked that up! xD
I can't find a pricing graph comparing the two (I remember seeing one), but I'd imagine UE4 is still more expensive right?
edit:
Hmm... $1 million *dr evil finger*
That's a pretty cool idea, I may have to steal it
And yes, in a "successful" scenario UE4 is still going to be more expensive.I'm very interested to find the details of the "pay to own" option though. Since they are referring to it by a different name it suggests it could be different from the pre-existing perpetuals. Although I'd say it's incredibly likely that it will be very expensive, depending on what it actually entails it could be good value for money.
Jacksinthe
Banned
Hmmm. That is kinda meh. Free I can understand. I still feel it's the most palatable engine without profit sharing.
Ahhhh. Like I said, last I remembered. 30% is still a lot.
If you have a publisher: 30% AFTER the 1st party 30% (Sony, MS, Steam) then it's on you to cough up another 30% for the engine.
On a 10 dollar game you are looking at 3.43 profit for every copy sold. That's 65% off the top of your game.
You sell 500 copied and your Unity license is covered while the 501st and beyond you'd be losing money with UE if they take 30% - that's just nuts.
As we're on a Unity roll in here today, I just realized what the downside and caveat of using Unity Personal for multiplayer games is. It's called CCU and I had never heard of this until just now :/
Concurrent Users; Unity Personal allows a max number of active players at any time to be just 20. TWENTY :lol Granted, having 20 people around the world play my game at any one time would actually be a major success, but still. With 4 players per lobby, that's just 5 active games. Not much of a point in coding a server list and search function anymore I think.
Please correct me if I'm wrong but this is only a problem if we use Unity's own matchmaking servers, yes? It's not a problem for our LAN functionality obviously, but what about P2P connections if you know your friend's IP?
Concurrent Users; Unity Personal allows a max number of active players at any time to be just 20. TWENTY :lol Granted, having 20 people around the world play my game at any one time would actually be a major success, but still. With 4 players per lobby, that's just 5 active games. Not much of a point in coding a server list and search function anymore I think.
Please correct me if I'm wrong but this is only a problem if we use Unity's own matchmaking servers, yes? It's not a problem for our LAN functionality obviously, but what about P2P connections if you know your friend's IP?
LordRaptor
Member
Pretty disappointing, but I guess it falls in line with their "we want to be a big boy AAA engine like UE is" previous statements.
Also, how confusing is this from their FAQ?
Also LMAO that "dark skin" is still a thing they promote as a pay feature, and a bonus for getting Plus
e:
Valve only take 30% retail cut from sales via the steam Storefront, not a first party cut like console manufacturers do.
I found this in the comments in the blog post
Doesn't really give much though I guess, I dislike how they're being vague about it and waiting till June? You've announced all this, just announce it now? What with 5.4 relies on waiting till June to announce the new pay to own thing?
Jacksinthe
Banned
Right. Which is why I said "Steam". I was referencing 1st party storefronts, in general. I figure I didn't need to clarify that I was taking about storefronts.
Doesn't change the numbers.
Bottom line: Unity's pricing model may have changed for the worse - but it's still your best bet for pricing. You can always make your own engine but you would need to seriously consider the time investment and parse that against pricing. Even for 2D projects, the time needed to make a capable engine would be worth a lot more than a couple large, not to mention the portability to almost every platform under the sun.
I get that people want shit for free, especially if you are just starting out - but if you plan on releasing anything serious you should know there are costs associated.
Nothing stopping people from using the Free version to release a commercial product.
With all the tools needed to make your game the barrier to entry is pretty much just your skillset. If you wanted to achieve the same level of professionalism in something like sound design or music production - the costs associated with Unity are a pittance, relatively.
Sucks they are doing this but with their recent change in hiring devs and future revisions - the quality will improve greatly and that comes at a cost. Comparing it to other engines, in the long run Unity is peanuts and still the most viable option for startups (free).
I don't think there's much room to complain when the free version is plenty capable and you can release a commercial version with it. People should be more concerned with their game instead of a splash screen, paid or not.
Again, the new pricing sucks on its own, doesn't when compared to similar engines and worry about your product first. There's a free option for a reason. If they start limiting stuff like max GameObjects in a scene, scripts, etc - then worry. Until then - focus on the game and everything else will fall in place.
Jacksinthe
Banned
5% can add up if your game sells. What is the % prior?
I'd personally rather pay up front and have 0 profit sharing.
You could make the next Shovel Knight and be in the hole 50k from 1m profit. That's selling a lot LESS than SK.
LordRaptor
Member
Well you were talking about having a publisher, and for PC titles that are on Steam and sold as Steam keys, there are multiple viable distribution channels that do not include the Steam storefront and have variable costs ranging from 0% (via direct sales), 10% (via itch.io), 20% (via Humble) to 30% (via store.steampowered) versus a console flat rate.
e: This is an article a friend of mine wrote about indies with publishers - it is worth remembering that 30% is a cost floor on consoles and a cost ceiling on PC, and finding out distribution channels in advance
It's completely free, you only have to pay if your rev gets above 3k$ in a quarter. Of course, if your game does really well (in indie terms) and earns you more than 50k$ or whatever, you'll pay less with Unity. But if it doesn't (which is probably most of the time for first-time indies), you don't have to pay anything. If you're expecting a huge success you can also try to get a custom license and pay upfront.
Just posting this, as 30% would be a huge deal breaker.
HandsomeCharles
Member
I don't think anyone in here is wanting it all for free. What I'm personally upset about is that I don't need any of the features that pro provides with the exception of a custom Splash, but $125/m is an incredibly large amount of money for me. I could have afforded the previous price of $75/m, but $125 is going to be a real stretch.
It's incredibly frustrating because the price hike is due to the inclusion of both IOS and Android build options, rather than them being separate add-ons. I have zero intention of releasing games on those platforms, but I will still have to pay for them in order to get the Splash.
Why can't I pay for the splash separately?
Please excuse my rudeness, am I able to mention my IndieDevToolKit here (I say mine)
http://noaksey.com/indietoolkit/
And that I host #IndieDevHour
http://noaksey.com/indietoolkit/what-is-indiedevhour/
I am always trying to help Indies, but never sure where and what I can say
http://noaksey.com/indietoolkit/
And that I host #IndieDevHour
http://noaksey.com/indietoolkit/what-is-indiedevhour/
I am always trying to help Indies, but never sure where and what I can say
LordRaptor
Member
Yeah, I think most of the backlash isn't "I want free stuff where is my free stuff fuck you for taking my free stuff", its based on what for many is a poor value proposition.
Like...
Dark editor skin is a non-issue.
If you have some sort of medical condition that requires you to use a dark theme, maybe not, but for most people a UI skin is pretty trivial.
A couple of Asset store packs a quarter? Again, not a thing most indies care about.
Flexible seat management? If you're working in a studio, I guess...? If you're an individual, useless. Likewise with the other stuff like analytics and cloud builds. These are things that make sense for teams and studios (ie "pro" users) not individuals.
I don't necessarily think an engine logo at game start is a bad thing - in fact most AAA titles have a string of middleware splash screens at boot - but Unity has a perceptible bad reputation (I've made posts about this myself) so I can see why some people would want to remove that splash screen so that a customers initial reaction isn't "ugh, fuck you shitty developer" just because you're using Unity.
Alright dilemma time!
I am a bit of a one man show, I can create simple 3D games in Unity. My skills range from 3d modeling, texturing, skinning, animation, general Unity scene and project editing and amateur to intermediate C# scripting. I made a sort of temple run clone for mobile but that wasn't very satisfying to make. I'm more interested in making full 3D games with actual controller input for PC/Consoles. I have created a 3D platformer with a simple attack combo system and smooth ledge/wall mounting in the same style as Metal Gear Rising. I have also half way created a Magic Carpet clone, including the mana ball mechanics of absorbing nearby balls and growing larger. Even managed to get that all working over Unet!
But I seem to run out of steam when getting through these projects, probably because they are too much for a one man show to do. The reason I've learned all these skills myself because I'm too poor to hire anyone, hah.
I feel like I have all these skills going to waste that I've self taught myself for years in my spare time, but I really want to put them to use. Any suggestions or ideas on what I should do? I can post media of the games I've worked on when I get home from work.
I'm not a master of any of my skills, my best being animation and maybe scripting. Perhaps I should just focus on one skill and master it as best I can, if so which one?
I will take all the advice I can get hah!
I am a bit of a one man show, I can create simple 3D games in Unity. My skills range from 3d modeling, texturing, skinning, animation, general Unity scene and project editing and amateur to intermediate C# scripting. I made a sort of temple run clone for mobile but that wasn't very satisfying to make. I'm more interested in making full 3D games with actual controller input for PC/Consoles. I have created a 3D platformer with a simple attack combo system and smooth ledge/wall mounting in the same style as Metal Gear Rising. I have also half way created a Magic Carpet clone, including the mana ball mechanics of absorbing nearby balls and growing larger. Even managed to get that all working over Unet!
But I seem to run out of steam when getting through these projects, probably because they are too much for a one man show to do. The reason I've learned all these skills myself because I'm too poor to hire anyone, hah.
I feel like I have all these skills going to waste that I've self taught myself for years in my spare time, but I really want to put them to use. Any suggestions or ideas on what I should do? I can post media of the games I've worked on when I get home from work.
I'm not a master of any of my skills, my best being animation and maybe scripting. Perhaps I should just focus on one skill and master it as best I can, if so which one?
I will take all the advice I can get hah!
HandsomeCharles
Member
(Agree with the other stuff btw)
The preconceptions gained of the Unity splash is part of what throws me off, but also that it's just plain ugly. If it was a little sleeker then I'd probably be OK with it.
LordRaptor
Member
From a branding perspective, having an 'authorised logo' is fine with me - and completely consistent with branding guidelines from most other companies, where you are asked to use one of their 'authorised' example template images (which are usually provided in black bg / white bg / transparent bg templates).
If Unity did that and let you modify your own 'first run' scene that automatically includes a prefab but that you could control which template and where it is positioned on screen, I think most people would be fine with that (although I guess that would be open to abuse)
JustSomeone
Member
What was the pricing model before?
And is there even a reason to work with unity now,when UE4 gives you full access to all features for free( up to 100k$ revenue, just like unity)?
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