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

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Blizzard

Banned
What language do you script in UE4 outside of using blueprint? unrealscript was trashed right?
UE4 is just C++ or Blueprint as far as I know.

I don't think Unrealscript was too bad. It could be difficult to find and modify exactly what you wanted in the maze of source files, however. I suppose UE4 C++ source may be similar but I haven't looked at it.

It was also very annoying to restart the entire editor and game every time you modified and rebuilt an Unrealscript source file. I feel like some people used to defend that, but I think it's good that UE4 got rid of it.
 

Sölf

Member
Here's 200%

Gtnb.png


Also two other enlarged enemy groups.

Htnb.png


Itnb.png

Regarding these, 200% is imo pretty good. I am using the same sprites in a game of mine (which I actually should finish some time, it's nearly done), but in the standard battle system. 100% was too small for the enemy sprites, but 200% for every sprite is pretty good.
 

Korten

Banned
Sölf;151137617 said:
Regarding these, 200% is imo pretty good. I am using the same sprites in a game of mine (which I actually should finish some time, it's nearly done), but in the standard battle system. 100% was too small for the enemy sprites, but 200% for every sprite is pretty good.

For me personally, I will keep most enemies to 100% just because I like the difference between them. That being said, I can totally get why someone would like 200% as the default cause they still look great as 200%.

Also..

Tynb.png


This is what Variant 3 (last page) looks like when someone is talking.

Also in combat, which also shows off how the combat shows the characters sprite enlarged. Which before it had the characters pictures.
I would use character's faces, but I plan on using characters with full custom hair and such- thus no faces.

Uynb.png
Zynb.png
 

Sölf

Member
For me personally, I will keep most enemies to 100% just because I like the difference between them. That being said, I can totally get why someone would like 200% as the default cause they still look great as 200%.

Well, the ones you showed were already bigger ones. If you go to the smaller stuff, 100% is just too small, imo. Take a look at these:

HewDtYc.png


All enemies are 200%. Just image how insignificant they would look with 100%. xD

Of course, if you use them as pictures on actual maps, since you have to compare the size to the character sprites, 100% might be more then enough for certain sprites. As for the Dragon, as many have mentioned, 200% is more then enough.

PS:
If someone is interest in my game, it's a Dungeon Crawler reminiscent of the Ancient Cave from Lufia 2. So, 100 level deep dungeon with random rooms and loot. I added a few more twists (Bosses, stronger enemies, classes which teach you skills etc) and I've already finished level 1-90 (at least, it's doable - it's not balanced at all xD), but haven't touched the last 10 levels in months. xd
And the whole game is in german, but eh, maybe someone would still be interest to test it or so.
 

_machine

Member
Oh man, so much good stuff here for the past week while I've been away; congrats Jobbs on the Adult Swim deal and Absinthe with getting both XB1 and PS4. I also loved pretty all of the new stuff we've seen here. So much great looking stuff!

I just got back from Casual Connect Amsterdam, which was an amazing event this year as well with 116 Indie Developers in the Indie Prize Showcase (counting us as well). No prizes for us, but some other really good stuff will hopefully happen, though I can't speak of it just yet.

Here's my back with our setup from the Indie Prize:

And just as we were leaving for our final flight to Kajaani, we got an email from Valve...Ancestory had been Greenlit! I'm really, really happy and I want to thank everyone here for the support you've given us, keep on rocking, guys!
 
Thanks - and I completely agree! That's something I've not yet decided how to fix, as there are a couple options that could all work. I'll probably try speeding up the sliding itself first, so there's less of a wait when the scene starts, though I also need some wait time for entry sound effects, status bar hijinx and other stuff. I was chalking it up to "it's a prototype for now, I'll fix it later" but it's starting to annoy me as well, so it's getting higher and higher on the "to change soon" list :-D
Yeah I didnt know how feasible was to change it so I didnt want to say anything at first. Good to know you are trying to fix it even if its not that big of a problem. :)


Oh man, so much good stuff here for the past week while I've been away; congrats Jobbs on the Adult Swim deal and Absinthe with getting both XB1 and PS4. I also loved pretty all of the new stuff we've seen here. So much great looking stuff!

I just got back from Casual Connect Amsterdam, which was an amazing event this year as well with 116 Indie Developers in the Indie Prize Showcase (counting us as well). No prizes for us, but some other really good stuff will hopefully happen, though I can't speak of it just yet.

Here's my back with our setup from the Indie Prize:


And just as we were leaving for our final flight to Kajaani, we got an email from Valve...Ancestory had been Greenlit! I'm really, really happy and I want to thank everyone here for the support you've given us, keep on rocking, guys!

Congrats! And beautiful photo, love the banner!
 

Jarekx

Member

So, I'm messing with UI elements to try and figure out what I like. I'm kind of trying for an oldschool Final Fantasy/ Dragon Quest style battle menu but with icons for the skills the currently active battler has. What I'm most worried about is actually having a window for the skill text (so you know what it does exactly). I could probably put a small one above, but I don't think I could write proper descriptions if that window matches the size of the one currently displayed. I've also thought about a window displaying enemy HP..or at least have some way for you to gauge how effective an action was.
 

Blizzard

Banned
My latest tale of development: I thought I had figured out how to finally get my current animation and depth issues solved. I just needed to do it. So, I started out by adding some new methods / code to one of my classes.

Then, a few days later, I went to use the new stuff. It wasn't there! Searching the entire project, nothing! None of the new changes are there. I jumped to a command prompt and discovered that I had apparently reorganized my source tree at one point, and now had TWO copies of the files. I had made the changes to the wrong files -- some old ones.

Well that was silly, but I could at least copy the changes into the proper files, so no harm done. It turned out there were a few other files that I also had duplicate copies of in my source tree, again because of reorganizing in the past. No big deal, I'll just use a command-line wildcard pattern to delete the other old files that were NOT modified.

Oops, I used a pattern that was too generous, and deleted the newly modified files too. The ones that I wanted to copy code from. :(


......of course, since I'm paranoid and have a ton of different versions of my source tree backed up in different places, and had made a fresh copy before my latest time poking at the source tree, I was able to easily restore it. It was still a bit scary, though. Backups are important!
 
We've finally added (procedurally generated) blood splatters:



They look quite good in motion.

That looks great, make a gif for us!

Artist sent me the box art today, and hes sending me the second draft of our trailer now. About ready to start our greenlight page (still waiting to hear back from Desura.)

fNIewcu.jpg
 

legacyzero

Banned
God I wish I could use RPG Maker, because I actually know how to use it. But with the lack of hi res graphics, and it's strange and arbitrary limits that make no sense, I just cant. So now Im struggling to find something comparable to use.
 

Xtra Mile

Neo Member
My latest tale of development: I thought I had figured out how to finally get my current animation and depth issues solved. I just needed to do it. So, I started out by adding some new methods / code to one of my classes.

Then, a few days later, I went to use the new stuff. It wasn't there! Searching the entire project, nothing! None of the new changes are there. I jumped to a command prompt and discovered that I had apparently reorganized my source tree at one point, and now had TWO copies of the files. I had made the changes to the wrong files -- some old ones.

Well that was silly, but I could at least copy the changes into the proper files, so no harm done. It turned out there were a few other files that I also had duplicate copies of in my source tree, again because of reorganizing in the past. No big deal, I'll just use a command-line wildcard pattern to delete the other old files that were NOT modified.

Oops, I used a pattern that was too generous, and deleted the newly modified files too. The ones that I wanted to copy code from. :(


......of course, since I'm paranoid and have a ton of different versions of my source tree backed up in different places, and had made a fresh copy before my latest time poking at the source tree, I was able to easily restore it. It was still a bit scary, though. Backups are important!

Yep, I wish I could get back the data I lost from the last SSD crash, but I've learned my lesson. Good to see you've got a sound routine for backing up.
 

Blizzard

Banned
Yep, I wish I could get back the data I lost from the last SSD crash, but I've learned my lesson. Good to see you've got a sound routine for backing up.
I have a "routine" I guess, but I don't have an easy automatic backup system setup yet. That's on the list to add so it should be even more reliable.
 

Korten

Banned
So another opinion time... So I posted on my game blog about how the class system will work and I'm 99%
sure that's set in stone. However I do sort of have a problem, mainly in regards to unlocking skills. See,
currently in the game you unlock skills through gaining points (gained from killing enemies/leveling) and
spending them on various skills. Now why is this an issue? See, I was in talks with a scripter about using
their script which fixes a big issue with RPG maker, namely that when switching classes you lose the skills of the original class.

However this ran into another issue, it conflicts with the skill learning script as it doesn't look at those skills
as being part of the class- thus it doesn't work on them.

So I have a choice to make, do I want to keep using this script and merely remove skill's learned through
points or just go through a crude method of removing each and every skill that need's to be forgotten upon
changing to your advanced class.

Though I guess this also brings up some points, namely what do people think about skill learning through
points? I have no system of specalization in the game, so your character is more determined by class
than selecting stats. Thus I thought buying skills wouldn't be that annoying.

Personally guys, what is your preferred way of learning skills in an RPG?
 

Tapejara

Member
I've got a few questions for those of you who release freeware games and offer players the option of paying/donating:

  • I've read that you can't put a PayPal Donations Button on your site if you're not a non-profit. As such, if you are a individual, how would you go about adding a donations/support option?
  • If you add a donate/support option for your freeware games are you then considered to be running a business?
  • For tax purposes, would this (probably small) income be claimed as an individual or as a business? I'm from Canada, so if any of you have experience with I'd be interested in hearing your responses.

I don't have much experience with game development, so I'm toying around with Game Maker at the moment. My art and programming skills aren't quite up to par, so I'd prefer to release the project as freeware. If people want to donate/support me/the game, I'd like to give them the option. I just want to make sure I set everything up properly.

Hopefully I'll have some stuff to make show off in this thread soon!
 

borborygmus

Member
Choosing a colour scheme is really hard

Everything is really hard. I don't seem to have that natural confidence to just get things done in an orderly way and have it turn out right (from a game design perspective).

All of my best decisions come while I'm taking a break and doing something else.

I'm pretty happy with my project, but holy hell did it take me a ton of downtime to develop the vision in my mind.
 
Started screwing around with Unity again, just going through the roll-a-ball tutorial again to refresh my memory. I'm having a lot of fun so far!
 

MojoBones

Neo Member
Hi guys,

Just wanted to share our current project 'Impact Winter'.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=379015391

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBDGkW8-Z3g

We got Greenlit on Steam last week, in under 3 days - which was incredible! We're very humbled by the positive feedback and response.

Thought it would be good to post here in case any other indie devs are setting up for Steam Greenlight and need any advice (or questions answered). Feel free to create a separate thread if you don't think it fits here. We didn't want to create one because it looks like shameless self-promotion.

Also, feel free to ask any questions about dev (or the game in general).

Thanks guys and keep up the great work!
 
Hi guys,

Just wanted to share our current project 'Impact Winter'.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=379015391

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBDGkW8-Z3g

We got Greenlit on Steam last week, in under 3 days - which was incredible! We're very humbled by the positive feedback and response.

Thought it would be good to post here in case any other indie devs are setting up for Steam Greenlight and need any advice (or questions answered). Feel free to create a separate thread if you don't think it fits here. We didn't want to create one because it looks like shameless self-promotion.

Also, feel free to ask any questions about dev (or the game in general).

Thanks guys and keep up the great work!
Wow, interesting concept aside, I've got to say I'm a sucker for lighting. And that is some really nice lighting. Really incredible atmosphere.

And your Steam page's presentation is spot on, it doesn't surprise me that you got Greenlit in no time.
 

MojoBones

Neo Member
Wow, interesting concept aside, I've got to say I'm a sucker for lighting. And that is some really nice lighting. Really incredible atmosphere.

And your Steam page's presentation is spot on, it doesn't surprise me that you got Greenlit in no time.

Thanks Snowman! Means a lot.

Lighting and atmosphere were definitely top of our visual hit-list. So much can be achieved with effective lighting.

Our aim has always been to try and get players immersed in the game-world, as once they feel part of it, the game/experience becomes much more meaningful. Hopefully that comes across in the teaser.

We definitely recommend adding images to your Greenlight pitch and using an animated .gif for your profile pic: helps it stand out against others. Presentation is key - mainly because it's a crowded space and you need to do anything you can to stand out.
 
Hi guys,

Just wanted to share our current project 'Impact Winter'.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=379015391

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBDGkW8-Z3g

We got Greenlit on Steam last week, in under 3 days - which was incredible! We're very humbled by the positive feedback and response.

Thought it would be good to post here in case any other indie devs are setting up for Steam Greenlight and need any advice (or questions answered). Feel free to create a separate thread if you don't think it fits here. We didn't want to create one because it looks like shameless self-promotion.

Also, feel free to ask any questions about dev (or the game in general).

Thanks guys and keep up the great work!

3 days?! That's amazing, congrats! Project looks truly amazing though, i would definitely play this. Whats with the floating drone following the dude? Is this anything like Don't Starve?

We got our trailer done, about to start our Steam Greenlight campaign this week. As mentioned by MojoBones, going to make sure the icon is an animated gif.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZaDHYKd-Nw&feature=youtu.be
 

MojoBones

Neo Member
3 days?! That's amazing, congrats! Project looks truly amazing though, i would definitely play this. Whats with the floating drone following the dude? Is this anything like Don't Starve?

We got our trailer done, about to start our Steam Greenlight campaign this week. As mentioned by MojoBones, going to make sure the icon is an animated gif.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZaDHYKd-Nw&feature=youtu.be

Thanks, and congrats on your trailer. We're getting a 'Five Nights at Freddy's' vibe from it. Love the idea of controlling a surveillance droid - cool (and unique) concept.

Re: the drone in Impact Winter. That's Ako-Light - your robotic companion when exploring 'The Void'. You'll be able to use its features when adventuring and use your team's skills - back at the Church - to upgrade it.

akolight.png


Don't Starve is definitely one of our favs. Impact Winter's tone is very different, but we've undoubtedly been inspired by it (alongside Oregon Trail, Fallout and John Carpenter's 'The Thing').

If you need any more questions answered or help re: your Greenlight then drop a line to info@mojobones.co.uk and we'll try and help out (where we can).
 

Jarekx

Member
Hi guys,

Just wanted to share our current project 'Impact Winter'.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=379015391

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBDGkW8-Z3g

We got Greenlit on Steam last week, in under 3 days - which was incredible! We're very humbled by the positive feedback and response.

Thought it would be good to post here in case any other indie devs are setting up for Steam Greenlight and need any advice (or questions answered). Feel free to create a separate thread if you don't think it fits here. We didn't want to create one because it looks like shameless self-promotion.

Also, feel free to ask any questions about dev (or the game in general).

Thanks guys and keep up the great work!

Congrats! Game looks really cool.
 

_machine

Member
We've finally added (procedurally generated) blood splatters:
Can't have a dudebrogame without some blood splatter. Looks great, keep it up!

Never thought this day would come, but BOOYA!
That must feel great, congrats! We hope to join you in the coming months :)

Hi guys,

Just wanted to share our current project 'Impact Winter'.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=379015391

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBDGkW8-Z3g

We got Greenlit on Steam last week, in under 3 days - which was incredible! We're very humbled by the positive feedback and response.

Thought it would be good to post here in case any other indie devs are setting up for Steam Greenlight and need any advice (or questions answered). Feel free to create a separate thread if you don't think it fits here. We didn't want to create one because it looks like shameless self-promotion.

Also, feel free to ask any questions about dev (or the game in general).

Thanks guys and keep up the great work!
That has to be one of the best Greenlight pages I've seen, no wonder you got Greenlit in no time and off course congrats! I wish we had that as a reference point when doing our own, but I'll be sure to show it to the rest of our team in our GL postmortem :)

How are guys doing now since the Kickstarter didn't come together and do you have any solid reasons on why it didn't do so well, because I heard about your game (and I've sucked at following the news or anything lately) and you got some decent coverage and off course I think you pitched the game quite well.

We got our trailer done, about to start our Steam Greenlight campaign this week. As mentioned by MojoBones, going to make sure the icon is an animated gif.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZaDHYKd-Nw&feature=youtu.be
Looks like a really interesting concept and should really be something the Steam community is interested in. My recommendation would be release it during Tuesday or something, we got some numbers that launching on Thursday evening was not a good idea with Friday and Saturday being the most crucial days, but also the slowest days of the week so our initial surge wasn't so strong. Also I really recommend trying out the GIF live on the Concepts side, since for some reason Steam compressed our GIF to hell at first and it looked like crap and I had to rush to make some modifications to it.

Good luck and you have our votes!
 

MojoBones

Neo Member
Can't have a dudebrogame without some blood splatter. Looks great, keep it up!


That must feel great, congrats! We hope to join you in the coming months :)


That has to be one of the best Greenlight pages I've seen, no wonder you got Greenlit in no time and off course congrats! I wish we had that as a reference point when doing our own, but I'll be sure to show it to the rest of our team in our GL postmortem :)

How are guys doing now since the Kickstarter didn't come together and do you have any solid reasons on why it didn't do so well, because I heard about your game (and I've sucked at following the news or anything lately) and you got some decent coverage and off course I think you pitched the game quite well.


Looks like a really interesting concept and should really be something the Steam community is interested in. My recommendation would be release it during Tuesday or something, we got some numbers that launching on Thursday evening was not a good idea with Friday and Saturday being the most crucial days, but also the slowest days of the week so our initial surge wasn't so strong. Also I really recommend trying out the GIF live on the Concepts side, since for some reason Steam compressed our GIF to hell at first and it looked like crap and I had to rush to make some modifications to it.

Good luck and you have our votes!

Wow, high praise indeed. Thanks.

What project did you get Greenlit? Can you upload a link for us to check out?

As for KS: I think the biggest reason was bad timing. KS had been receiving some negative press about a month before we launched and we were excited to be putting up Impact Winter. Just so happened that 'The Flame and the Flood' and 'The Black Glove' had the same idea and launched days/hours before us :)

Being a smaller team, I think that affected our chances of mainstream coverage. On a plus note: the followers we did get are really passionate about the game which pushed us to continue.

I've also heard about people not liking the page being in GBP - which makes sense due to confusing conversion. Unfortunately, that's beyond our control.

KS definitely has a 'luck' element too. Right time; right idea and you're away! Some great stuff on there at the moment.
 

_machine

Member
What project did you get Greenlit? Can you upload a link for us to check out?
Ancestory, our website is under development and our Greenlight page is a bit old though:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=341125897

As for KS: I think the biggest reason was bad timing. KS had been receiving some negative press about a month before we launched and we were excited to be putting up Impact Winter. Just so happened that 'The Flame and the Flood' and 'The Black Glove' had the same idea and launched days/hours before us :)

Being a smaller team, I think that affected our chances of mainstream coverage. On a plus note: the followers we did get are really passionate about the game which pushed us to continue.

I've also heard about people not liking the page being in GBP - which makes sense due to confusing conversion. Unfortunately, that's beyond our control.

KS definitely has a 'luck' element too. Right time; right idea and you're away! Some great stuff on there at the moment.
Yeah, that explains a lot and sucks that you had so much bad luck. Are you perhaps going to try it again? I know that a few friends had some similar issues and will re-launch their campaigns in the coming months.


EDIT:For Greenlight as well, one tip I would is that if you have early content (like we did, as everything you see on the page had been developed in about 7 weeks and our plans are to continue development for 6 months past that) is make sure people realize that it's only a heavily wip content. I would recommend having some good concepts of how it's going to look in the end to make sure people see the potential as well.
 

MojoBones

Neo Member
Ancestory, our website is under development and our Greenlight page is a bit old though:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=341125897


Yeah, that explains a lot and sucks that you had so much bad luck. Are you perhaps going to try it again? I know that a few friends had some similar issues and will re-launch their campaigns in the coming months.


EDIT:For Greenlight as well, one tip I would is that if you have early content (like we did, as everything you see on the page had been developed in about 7 weeks and our plans are to continue development for 6 months past that) is make sure people realize that it's only a heavily wip content. I would recommend having some good concepts of how it's going to look in the end to make sure people see the potential as well.

Thanks. Looks cool - we'll def be following progress. Congrats!

Totally agree about labeling early footage. At the last minute we re-rendered the vid to add the disclaimer. Important that people know what they're watching.
 

MojoBones

Neo Member
Could you explain this a little more? The funding stats were all in GBP why? Because you're in Europe?

Sure thing.

I believe that it takes the currency from your home region. Payment system in Europe is different to the U.S. (Amazon) so you don't have the option to present in dollars. Not sure if you can work around that by fooling it into thinking you're in America?

We looked through the settings but didn't see any options for other currencies.
 
Looks like a really interesting concept and should really be something the Steam community is interested in. My recommendation would be release it during Tuesday or something, we got some numbers that launching on Thursday evening was not a good idea with Friday and Saturday being the most crucial days, but also the slowest days of the week so our initial surge wasn't so strong. Also I really recommend trying out the GIF live on the Concepts side, since for some reason Steam compressed our GIF to hell at first and it looked like crap and I had to rush to make some modifications to it.

Good luck and you have our votes!

Awesome, thank you for the advice! I was wondering as to which day of the week is best to launch a game. Good to know about the gif going to crap too, ill definitely look out for that.
 

shaowebb

Member
Haven't posted anything here in a longwhile, but I'm getting some work in. Thought I had something safe to actually post. Working on a fighting game. It'll be some time before I even finish assets enough for texturing, stages or for that part animation since I work a swing shift career in Power Plant Operations now. Plus side is I'm financially stable and able to do this for as long as it takes to make proper fighting game now.

That said here is a teaser image of low poly boots I just finished modeling and the beginnings of a design for thigh armor. I won't be revealing characters, or meta or systems or anything though...I'm saving all that for the buildup one year near launch because with fighters if you trickle information out for too long the game is stale before it comes out and launches dead from what I've seen.

That said. Here's an art and proof I'm still alive and working on this. Using Maya currently. Will flip things into Zbrush for cleanup work later.

dN94ciV.jpg
 

_machine

Member
Congrats on being Greenlit! Nice banner too! Can you give any details on where you had it made and how much it cost?
We used a local printing company and had the frame already so it cost 90€ for the printing and 25€ for switching the graphics for the frame. From the same company the thing with the frame would have been 160€.

However, internationally googling rollup screen should get you some choices. I would still recommend looking for local printing companies for an offer.

Sure thing.

I believe that it takes the currency from your home region. Payment system in Europe is different to the U.S. (Amazon) so you don't have the option to present in dollars. Not sure if you can work around that by fooling it into thinking you're in America?

We looked through the settings but didn't see any options for other currencies.
Yup, you probably can't change it as someone outside the US and I've definitely heard from a various sources that it apparently really puts off customers from the US, which can be bad. Not that it's an absolute; Elite: Dangerous did quite well, but generally most people would recommend the USD.
 
Sure thing.

I believe that it takes the currency from your home region. Payment system in Europe is different to the U.S. (Amazon) so you don't have the option to present in dollars. Not sure if you can work around that by fooling it into thinking you're in America?

We looked through the settings but didn't see any options for other currencies.
Ah, that is annoying. I'm EU too and I'd certainly want the Kickstarter currency to show as USD, or at least do a local conversion for everyone. Although I suppose that would get complicated on Kickstarter's end.

Getting a lot of good tips lately in this thread, I'm glad you guys are so open with your secrets to a successful game launch :p
 
i figure i post here too but corel is doing a promo for upgrade to Painter 2015 for $99.

For those that own Painter 7 and up.

boxed version pay only $99 unless you go digital and pay $14.99 for the backup disc.

http://www.painterartist.com/us/pro...E99&regionId=3&ym_mid=1563550&ym_rid=80236496

Licensees of Painter versions 7 through X3 are eligible to purchase Painter 2015 at the Upgrade price. Original serial number required. The Upgrade price is not available for Trial, Education, OEM and NFR versions.
 
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