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[Jacksinthe]

I mean, it is super simplistic (and therefore highly 'readable') to have pickups that fill bar be the same colour that the bar is - have you tried this with red pickups / green bar?

If you are already colour coding things elsewhere - eg red = danger - this is not helpful advice and I realise that.
Colour coding is a thing that is both surprisingly difficult and surprisingly contentious in my experience.

A majority of classic games use a red-ish hue for the health bar, pickups aside.

The main reason why we haven't nailed down the HUD colors is simply due to how colorful each level is. Until we get close to being finished, palettes are still being worked on. The HUD needs to be recognizable and readable at a glance without being too close to the colors of the levels, themselves and still fit the theme.

The lack of pixel real-estate makes it difficult as hell to come up with color schemes with such little detail that are readable. We've had to change colors and even designs for much of our geometry just to increase readability. That lessens with proper parallax but several indoor sections with back walls make it difficult to both look good and play well.

So for colors, for all I know it might be bright pink, purple, yellow, etc. I just used one of the most classic colors for a health bar as a placeholder. Nobody thinks a red health bar is bad because it's the HUD. Something red in a game, especially when a lot of our enemies are variants of red (for a reason), makes little sense to use red pickups since that won't immediately convey something useful.

Also the droplets have no design at the moment. They have a chance to spawn from enemies but every enemy gibs with pixel explosions that are permanent in-game. So there is a degree of confusion to work out with there seeing as how the health droplets and gibs are exactly the same design due to pixel real-estate.

So we have a lot more to do to making it look like something you want to pickup that makes sense for health. And seeing as how that is the only pickup you will ever see in-game - we have plenty of opportunity to get the design we need.

I was thinking of 3 swirling orbs that when activated all coalesce into a single orb as it travels to the HUD. Something that looks attractive enough to stand out without being an eye sore constantly seeing it in game.

 

[Deleted member 10571]

Heya, just visiting here since I got a link back in my silly "imma create a game" thread

I'm absolutely and definitively _not_ an indie dev yet, but I wanna see what you guys are up to now Don't mind me!

Does anyone have any experience with Visionaire? I'm looking into Point'n'click editors and that one so far seems to stand out to me in terms of beginner friendlyness and no scripting/programming knowledge required. Alternatively Adventure Game Studio seems to be alright, but requires basic scripting, which I don't know anything about.

 

[HP_Wuvcraft]

#ScreenshotSaturday

Which ones do you guys like? These are not even close to final.

 

[Popstar]

#ScreenshotSaturday

Which ones do you guys like? These are not even close to final.

Of those the first, mostly because it's the most legible.

I think they could all generally benefit from one less effect applied to the text.

 

[Jacksinthe]

Heya, just visiting here since I got a link back in my silly "imma create a game" thread

I'm absolutely and definitively _not_ an indie dev yet, but I wanna see what you guys are up to now Don't mind me!

GET OUT!

jk

Welcome! Don't concern yourself with titles. If you dev then you are a dev. Simple as that and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

 

[LordRaptor]

GET OUT!

jk

Welcome! Don't concern yourself with titles. If you dev then you are a dev. Simple as that and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

heh, someone posted this on Twitter the other day that made me laugh

 

[liliththepale]

Yeah Buf, if you are developing something (or working towards developing something) then you're a developer. You don't have to have a dozen finished games under your belt or have written blogs about it. That will come in time xD


I haven't seen anyone in this thread who uses Visionaire, so you might not get any help on that front.

 

[Deleted member 10571]

Yeah Buf, if you are developing something (or working towards developing something) then you're a developer. You don't have to have a dozen finished games under your belt or have written blogs about it. That will come in time xD


I haven't seen anyone in this thread who uses Visionaire, so you might not get any help on that front.

Fine, I'll just be the guinea pig then. Watching a bunch of tutorials now, since I don't have my tablet with me.

 

[HandsomeCharles]

On the topic of having games made, what's everyone's count on finished titles?

I'm currently on two with a third on the way in the next few months via my job, and zero on the solo-front.

 

[HP_Wuvcraft]

Yeah Buf, if you are developing something (or working towards developing something) then you're a developer.

.

 

[LordRaptor]

On the topic of having games made, what's everyone's count on finished titles?

I'm currently on two with a third on the way in the next few months via my job, and zero on the solo-front.

Professionally I've worked on 3 titles that were all cancelled, and personally Ive released one title on the Play Store to zero fanfare and marginally fewer more users.
Which I guess means I'm doing better solo than I was in my dedicated career ^_~

 

[liliththepale]

On the topic of having games made, what's everyone's count on finished titles?

I'm currently on two with a third on the way in the next few months via my job, and zero on the solo-front.

oh wow, I've been doing this since I was twelve and I used to focus on little experimental games that only take a few minutes to finish, so my count is probably over a hundred. For contemporary games, that number is only eight.

 

[Makai]

#4 Tentacles

1 Ludum Dare game

 

[HandsomeCharles]

Professionally I've worked on 3 titles that were all cancelled, and personally Ive released one title on the Play Store to zero fanfare and marginally fewer more users.
Which I guess means I'm doing better solo than I was in my dedicated career ^_~

Ah that's a shame. I've been lucky enough not to have a title cancelled on me just yet. Probably will happen at some point though, I'm (hopefully) still really early in my career. Just starting my 3rd year now! Going to try and get my own title done and dusted before I become old and jaded!

oh wow, I've been doing this since I was twelve and I used to focus on little experimental games that only take a few minutes to finish, so my count is probably over a hundred. For contemporary games, that number is only eight.

That's really cool! I always wondered if there would be any commercial appeal in some kind of "prototype collection". I like seeing experiments and WIPs and stuff.

 

[LordRaptor]

That's really cool! I always wondered if there would be any commercial appeal in some kind of "prototype collection". I like seeing experiments and WIPs and stuff.

Ed McMillen threw a bunch of his old Flash games up on Steam as a curio at a pretty cheap price

 

[liliththepale]

That's really cool! I always wondered if there would be any commercial appeal in some kind of "prototype collection". I like seeing experiments and WIPs and stuff.

Uh, probably if I was famous enough (like the Ed McMillen bundle linked above), but I don't have access to half those games at least, and I'd have to dig for some of the others. I've done an abysmal job archiving my work. Basically anything I've made that's over four years old is probably on a harddrive I wiped or threw away, and was never very organized in the first place.

 

[LordRaptor]

Uh, probably if I was famous enough (like the Ed McMillen bundle linked above), but I don't have access to half those games at least, and I'd have to dig for some of the others. I've done an abysmal job archiving my work. Basically anything I've made that's over four years old is probably on a harddrive I wiped or threw away, and was never very organized in the first place.

I think the modern climate for indie games is a lot better about this - things like itch.io will let you throw an experiment or a gamejam entry up and unless they go under you'll have an archive forever without having to worry about paying for web storage or whatever.
e: because previously you basically had to be doing Flash Dev to get that sort of opportunity via Newgrounds / Kongregate etc.
If Ed McMillen hadn't been doing his stuff in Flash, I think its probable he'd have lost most of the contents of The Basement Collection by now

 

[Pazu]

pretty nice VR design podcast, for your Saturday listenin'

 

[Jobbs]

I have, somewhere, a ton of prototypes and early projects as I was first learning how to make stuff.

I also have my current project archived in several ways from the very beginning (images, videos, gifs)

 

[Theanine3D]

On the topic of having games made, what's everyone's count on finished titles?

I'm currently on two with a third on the way in the next few months via my job, and zero on the solo-front.

Let's see:
-One small finished game for mobile I made myself that was a total failure
-Several unfinished games on PC I did contract work for, only one of which hasn't been cancelled yet
-One approaching-finished game for PC I've been making entirely on my own

By the end of the year I'll have 2 finished games to my name, 3 if we count contract work ones.

I also have lots of small finished demos and mods built up over the years but those don't count, and I've probably lost backups of most of them.

#ScreenshotSaturday

Which ones do you guys like? These are not even close to final.

The last one, though being honest, there is too much going on in all of these in terms of effects. I would unify the styles you've applied to the different components a bit. It looks odd to me that one word has Street Fighter-esque font then the other words have a retro font, then the number has something else entirely. It's way too all over the place.

 

[V_Arnold]

Working on a new effect for healing the player.

I have some bits that the player can grab up that will heal the player when they track back to the HUD.

They track to the nearest empty space on the HUD to fill it in. I kinda like it over my previous health pickup effect.

Effect:

Close up HUD:

Thoughts?

I just have to say, I like this style a lot. If I had to make a decision about that global blur, I would cut the duration to at least one quarter of what it currently lasts, maybe that will make it "acceptable". But it is cool anyway.
(Edit: lol, not blur, GLOW.)

 

[caffeware]

Dr. Falke
Third character for Rodass Cross.
Only on GBA.

New screen.

 

[Jacksinthe]

I just have to say, I like this style a lot. If I had to make a decision about that global blur, I would cut the duration to at least one quarter of what it currently lasts, maybe that will make it "acceptable". But it is cool anyway.
(Edit: lol, not blur, GLOW.)

Thanks.

The duration is actually a half second per droplet. Right now I am feeling a 1-3 droplet max for healing during gameplay. There's an internal cooldown on how often it can drop and the dice roll is pretty small. But I feel it's a fair amount for each level.

I can easily adjust the glow per subsequent droplets in succession on a curve to lessen the repeated bloom. It's not additive and I do clamp it to a maximum amount but the current amount and timing is still a holdover from our original health drop and was never intended to be used in succession.

I have a lot to play with to get it right, but I do like the look of them traveling to the HUD to fill empty slots.

 

[liliththepale]

I'm working on exteriors right now. It's fun drawing maps and plotting out where all the buildings in the town will be, what they'll look like, et cetera.

The "doth thou even lift?" and "bat child found in cave" posters will probably be updated to something mundane so I avoid the backlash Guacamelee garnered for its meme billboards.

Seven months in and I'm still figuring out my art style. You can see in the top-right what my color palette is for the game. Pretty much everything in the game is one of those colors, but I decided I'm going to break palette for some of the distant background art. I'm going to write a shader blending distant pixels with the color of the hills, depending on depth. I think that's the only way to make this look reasonable considering the dynamic time of day.

Compare the day and night versions of this scene (mockup) for an example. There's not going to be any dynamic lighting in the foreground. I'll probably just put up a lot of lanterns so nobody questions it.

 

[Jobbs]

The brick wall and its colors are on point.

Re. blending distant elements.. Sometimes I adjust these lazily by using simply varying transparency on stacked elements wokring in conjunction with various overlays (like fog overlays) but your way sounds better.

I want to have dynamic lighting in the next game. I'll have to find a way or find someone who can find a way.

 

[Jacksinthe]

You art GUD.

The sign should really read "DOTH YOU EVEN LIFT, BRETHREN?"

 

[liliththepale]

The brick wall and its colors are on point.

Re. blending distant elements.. Sometimes I adjust these lazily by using simply varying transparency on stacked elements wokring in conjunction with various overlays (like fog overlays) but your way sounds better.

I want to have dynamic lighting in the next game. I'll have to find a way or find someone who can find a way.

Oh, yeah. I have a lot of large art pieces, so I'm trying to avoid too much overdraw.

There are some really nifty dynamic lighting solutions out there available for 2D, but I'm not sure any of them would work well with my art style. Which is fine. Maybe next time.

For example, I'm still super impressed by the results of Sprite Lamp:

You art GUD.

The sign should really read "DOTH YOU EVEN LIFT, BRETHREN?"

haha, thanks. I thought about adding bro or brethren, but all the other words were four letters long so it didn't fit neatly at the end.

 

[Jobbs]

Yeah! I've known about sprite lamp for a while, and IIRC the guy making the star control 2 looking game (I think it's called Star Driver but I forget atm) uses a similar method on the ships. Makes them look 3D even though they're not.

It'd work very well with my current art style, though it may not with my next one. I plan to use cel shaded looking characters in the next game.

 

[liliththepale]

I wish friken would post more often. I hope he's doing okay, and Star Diver is coming along well.

Yeah, I was going to say I think it'd work well for Ghost Song, but obviously your game already looks great and adding that workload retroactively would be insane.

 

[Jobbs]

yeah that would be the death of me.

incidentally I have the rainbow gun working. This is what it looks like but I plan to revamp the graphics for it later to make it more spectacular somehow.

Also I just noticed there's a bug.. See if you can spot it

 

[liliththepale]

yeah that would be the death of me.

incidentally I have the rainbow gun working. This is what it looks like but I plan to revamp the graphics for it later to make it more spectacular somehow.

Also I just noticed there's a bug.. See if you can spot it

Hmm, I thought it would be brighter than that, more lightsaber-esque.

Is the bug the random particle colors coming from the gun that don't line up with the color of the blast?

 

[Jobbs]

Hmm, I thought it would be brighter than that, more lightsaber-esque.

Is the bug the random particle colors coming from the gun that don't line up with the color of the blast?

like i said, it looks weak right now, I'm going to do it up better a bit later.

The bug is that violet isn't showing ever. hahaha. it's going red red instead and I am currently not sure why.

 

[V_Arnold]

On other news, not #screenshotSaturday, but maybe next week.

I bought InterPhaser, the Phaser book. Well, it is AMAZING.

I also have to say this: i have spent around 3 years building up my knowledge and my own "engine" from scratch, rewriting it again and again and again...and again and again and again.

Finally, the form it took just this february, it was something that I considered for a very long time. I had a clear modular plan, good support for modules requesting each other without cluttering up namespace, etc, minimal interference between your game logic and the rendering/input/assetloading.

And then I found out that Phaser was just that. Exactly that. Its implementations followed the same conclusions that I had. But I blindly dismissed Phaser a few years ago because I did not understand its naming conventions and its "state/stage" model (back then, I was not even using Pixi, just ran with my own customized canvas renderer...).


So here I am. Finally able to quickly prototype, FOR REAL. Where prototyping does not mean "realize I have to fully implement x/y to even start trying out this genre", or where I do not have to rewrite everything every few months, because I am just finding out major flaws in my approach.

So good.

 

[HP_Wuvcraft]

Lilith - great, as always.

As for games for me? Completed one.

 

[Jumplion]

Things are coming along on my end. I have an artist helping me set the style for the game but it's in a bit of a roadblock, mostly from me not being clear/distinct enough in what I'm imagining. Any tips on how to communicate a style to an artist? I have an art bible, trying to go through style inspirations/examples, but I'm not sure it's anything more than "these things look cool".

I'm thinking of taking a stab at it myself as a first draft and then go through with her to see what I could do better with it. I'm probably being too apprehensive towards doing the artwork myself, it's a simple enough style but it's the detail work that I'm wanting to push through.

 

[liliththepale]

Things are coming along on my end. I have an artist helping me set the style for the game but it's in a bit of a roadblock, mostly from me not being clear/distinct enough in what I'm imagining. Any tips on how to communicate a style to an artist? I'm thinking of taking a stab at it myself as a first draft and then go through with her to see what I could do better with it. I'm probably being too apprehensive towards doing the artwork myself, it's a simple enough style but it's the detail work that I'm wanting to push through.

Visual communication is ideal. Can you show the artist visuals from games or paintings with a similar look to what you want?

edit: that art bible ought to be good enough. Is the artist having a problem with it?

 

[Jumplion]

Visual communication is ideal. Can you show the artist visuals from games or paintings with a similar look to what you want?

Just edited in an art bible that I've been constructing (editing after posting is always a habit of mine ), but I'm unsure if it's getting across the style I'm thinking or if they're just "these look cool" and taking bits and pieces from them, rather than constructing a whole.

EDIT: Now I know how it feels. I think it's mostly my communication of how I'd like it to look. I realized I was giving suggestions like "make it flat while also retaining depth" which makes no sense. I'll be meeting her tomorrow to reassess how it'll all go down, but it's definitely got me thinking.

 

[liliththepale]

She's a person, not a robot. You can talk it through with her and she'll probably have questions and suggestions to help get you both on the same track.

 

[Jumplion]

She's a person, not a robot. You can talk it through with her and she'll probably have questions and suggestions to help get you both on the same track.

Yeah, probably overthinking it, I've been focusing a lot on the details for a while. Forest for the trees and whatnot.

 

[chiimisu]

Thinking about my own project. Didn't decide on what will it be - game or web comic.
As for the game, I'd like to go for a long-lost Saturn/SFC/PC-FX 90s dating sim look. Made a blinking pixel animation in the vein of Sakura Taisen.

Spoiler

Am i game dev now?

 

[Deleted member 10571]

Figured I might just crosspost to see if you guys think I'm doing something incredibly wrong:

After an afternoon of research and watching first episodes of tutorials, I think I'll try to figure out Visionaire first. It's not free, but it's got a free demo you can use all you want until you actually want to sell/compile your game, which seems alright. Even then it's 50 bucks for the indie single license, so it's affordable as well. Also its portfolio of completed software is really impressive, and it requires no coding at all for beginners.

Since I won't have access to my tablet since way later today, I think I'll start with trying to just make up a super general storyboard to get somewhat of an overview of how many screens i'd need and maybe to see if some fun story/setting ideas pop up along the way.

Thinking along the lines of

(Room/Puzzle1) - (Room/Puzzle 2)
. |
(Room/Puzzle3)

but it'll probably get either way more complicated or scrapped after 30 minutes heh.

 

[missile]

Working on a new effect for healing the player.

I have some bits that the player can grab up that will heal the player when they track back to the HUD.

They track to the nearest empty space on the HUD to fill it in. I kinda like it over my previous health pickup effect.

Effect:

Close up HUD:

Thoughts?

I'm a bit at odds here.

The interaction of the HUD and in-game stuff doesn't fit on my end in this
case. It feels like the orbs are flying outside of the game. I mean, yeah,
it's cool to make things pop a lil more, but I would try to merge the
status/action using in-game elements, if possible.

Second. What I always find a bit annoying in your game is the mix of being of
low (simulated) spatial resolution while on the other hand being of high color
resolution (lots of shades). I know that more shades can make things look more
distinctive and effects more smooth, but given the amount of shades in the
game it begs the question in my head (not really); "why is the spatial
resolution so low while the color resolution so high?". One may argue; "why
not drop some of the color bits to increasing the spatial resolution?". Well,
what I wanna say is that the mix of hi-res shades coupled with the very low
spatial resolution aesthetic of the game looks a bit out of place on my end.
For example; the orbs are just find but their smooth trails and the overall
smooth glow put them out of the game on my end. I would try to build a
pixelized/stylized version of the effects also having their colors/shades
reduced to a given degree.

I think this simple and (in general) overused blurring/glow effect(s) won't
do the pixel art behind your game any justice. I would like to see more
pixelized/stylized effects which would fit the spatial resolution a lil better
than these giant blur/glow effects.

 

[Jacksinthe]

As I said earlier, statuses of what is happening to you are displayed in game. I'm not exactly sure if there is a tried and true "heal" effect in any game - maybe some cool looking effects around the player? I do like how the droplets track to the HUD. I find it a lot better than picking up a leg of meat from a wall and just seeing the health counter tick once with a sound effect while giving no visual cue.

For the color - that's part of the world. It should be colorful. If you don't like the look of this scene you definitely won't like our Tesseract level. People like color. I don't think everyone makes the connection with pixel resolution and screen real-estate. I'm curious now what you thought of the difference in the 16 bit era with Genesis and it's 512 color palette vs the SNES and it's 32k+ colors. I don't think either of those restraints diminished the games in any way.

I also don't feel pixelated effects constantly would be a benefit. I've tried breaking down some elements to fit the resolution and at best it winds up looking adolescent. Like I didn't know there were better ways or it would end up looking too jank for what it's supposed to be.

I'm definitely going to disagree with you when you suggest the screen resolution should dictate things like color and to an extent, full screen effects. It's difficult to make anything look good at this scale let alone animate it all with effects that look good.

The full screen bloom during a heal can be toned down a touch but I have alreadye mentioned earlier it was never meant to be fired in rapid succession like in that GIF.

I knew I probably should have just shown the HUD gif until I sorted the rest but I wanted input on the action of the droplets from everyone before committing to it and reworking the bloom.

Thanks, tho.

 

[missile]

^ Your conclusion about my sayings came a lil quick.
Regarding the colors, I'm not speaking about the amount of colors, for not
having a colorful world or something (with an 8-bit color palette one can
build a very colorful world - no question about it), but on the amount of
shades in a given effect.

 

[Deleted member 10571]

I already feel like an actual developer, despite not having developed anything lol

 

[Jobbs]

haha "documents" hah. "planning". hah. an indie dev knows not these things

 

[Mik2121]

I already feel like an actual developer, despite not having developed anything lol

This depends on how you make your games, so take this as just my personal preference.

Usually when I come up with prototypes for games (and I do this sometimes during part of my spare time), I make up the game flow first, but before getting too detailed, I try to get the player to control how I expect, get the feel for it, then try to do a "loop" (less than a full vertical slice because that shit involves too much). Basically a piece of map with a couple enemies, or a small area with some places to jump around, or whatever your game might involve. Give it a start and an end, and see how it feels.
For me, once I have that, some ideas come up and some leave, depending on how the game feels to me. If you create detailed flows for everything, you might be limiting yourself in some ways.

That's the good thing about working on a title by yourself, you can get some extra freedom that usually wouldn't fly on a large game company.

Again, this is just my personal preference, and if you can't start developing much right now, you might as well make detailed documents! Seeing how you haven't developed anything yet based on your comment, I thought you would want to get some opinions! Good luck with your stuff.

 

[Jacksinthe]

^ Your conclusion about my sayings came a lil quick.
Regarding the colors, I'm not speaking about the amount of colors, for not
having a colorful world or something (with an 8-bit color palette one can
build a very colorful world - no question about it), but on the amount of
shades in a given effect.

I am of the mind there is definitely a point at which over-thinking something can lead to worse results.

There's a time and a place to put in the effort and disseminate - to comb over every detail and other times you just have to pull back and say - hey, this looks cool and be done with it.

For colors - it's fine. I'm not going to overthink it because well, it just looks good. As for effects, particularly the full screen bloom - it looks like it's turned up to 11 for an extended time to blob the screen since it was never intended to be fired off multiple times in a row. It's an 0.5 second effect that is there and gone fast, but when fired off repeatedly - it is a bit too much.

There are no hard and fast rules to any game. You can follow some basics like pixel scaling - you don't want to use several different resolutions in a pixelated game by scaling objects, but when it comes to stuff like flashy effects like glow - it would be a pixelated mess at 108 vertical lines.

I've tried.

I've tried everything.

Literally.

There's a reason the game isn't finished and I spent a good year just testing about everything before settling on this final style and moving forward. This is the best mix for the project, hands down.

I can show you all the revisions with art, colors, effects and everything else since January of 15 and it ain't pretty.

There's a LOT of motion in the layer half of the game with sequences and set pieces, minibosses half the size of the screen, bosses that literally build themselves from and manipulate scene geometry.

None of that would have the same effect if I reduced colors, effects or anything based on the resolution of the game.

I'm going full on stupid with the bosses and later levels. I feel if I'm going to jump in I'd better see to it that I make one big ass splash because spending this much time on something that can very well fail makes me push a zillion times harder.

I'm not making a game to sell a few copies and barely fund development. I'm making a game to sell ALL the copies. All of them and then more all of them. There's no middle ground for me. None. I'm either all in or not. That's just me with everything.

So I'm not going to hold back my ideas by rules that don't exist. By over-thinking and overcomplicating solutions to problems that DON'T exist.

That would be an endless loop with no conditional break;

That is one of the reasons 99% of people who set out to make a game, never finish. Sometimes you just have to take a step back and let things be the way they are. If I didn't, I'd still be "testing" art styles, effects, controllers, etc.

It's fine. It is. I appreciate the criticism but I've gone down that road before and it leads to nowhere. Venturing outside the box requires you to not press right back up against the outside of it - too many people do.

 

[missile]

I ...

Man, no need to explain yourself. You can be rest assured that I've considered
all these things you've listed above while writing my text. I pretty much know
to what length people go to finally settle on something which seems to be the
best compromise. I'm going through something similar on a daily basis while
working towards my 3d low-res engine. That was never the question.

 

[Deleted member 10571]

First character idea sketch. I'm not much of an artist, but we'll see how this turns out I guess.