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GAF Indie Game Development Thread 2: High Res Work for Low Res Pay
- Thread starter Jacksinthe
- Start date
- Status
superNESjoe
Member
Warning: Picture Heavy.
I'm porting GunWorld 2 over from Xbox One to PlayStation 4, and in doing so I decided to go back and improve both the art and the mechanics of the game, adding additional polish and both responding to feedback/reviews and adding additional content. The end product is Super GunWorld 2 (which will be a free update on Xbox One).
I could use some feedback on some of these comparison shots. These are just from two different interior stages of the game. Befores are first, followed by currents.
I'm porting GunWorld 2 over from Xbox One to PlayStation 4, and in doing so I decided to go back and improve both the art and the mechanics of the game, adding additional polish and both responding to feedback/reviews and adding additional content. The end product is Super GunWorld 2 (which will be a free update on Xbox One).
I could use some feedback on some of these comparison shots. These are just from two different interior stages of the game. Befores are first, followed by currents.
superNESjoe
Member
That's the constant struggle. I'm using the NES color palette, and it can be pretty tricky with how limited the color selection is. I try using black space where the background and foreground tiles meet to make them pop a bit more. It feels pretty effective in motion, but I know with busier backgrounds it can still make it tricky.
The current humble bundle really makes me want to jump from Adventure Game Studio over to Game Maker Studio but man... there's really no substancial framework in place for point and click games anywhere. So I'm weighing up the pros and cons and its killing me:
AGS pros:
I can make it do just about everything I want out of the kinds of games I make.
GMS pros:
I could play it in a browser.
AGS pros:
I can make it do just about everything I want out of the kinds of games I make.
GMS pros:
I could play it in a browser.
So I'm looking at the criticisms for the game and I'm adding regenerating health to the game to compensate for the difficulty of some of the levels.
It won't come as fast and easy as health jars will, but it'll allow you to stay put and regenerate health to get through levels easier.
It won't come as fast and easy as health jars will, but it'll allow you to stay put and regenerate health to get through levels easier.
superNESjoe
Member
I am struggling with this so hard. GunWorld was insanely difficult by design, but the majority of people hated that. So with GunWorld 2 I toned it down considerably, even adding unlockable perks and purchasable items that let you revive on the spot. I still got slammed for how difficult the game was. Alternatively, every time I update the game to make it easier, the people that liked the difficulty get upset. Rightfully so, there are so few games that legitimately challenge the audience that has a high level of skill.
Difficulty balancing is really hard. The new Super GunWorld 2 has taken even greater lengths at reducing it. The game is aimed at the same kind of people who would like Mega Man, Zelda 2, or (more modern) Shovel Knight, except I personally thought Shovel Knight was too easy and yet there seems to be a large audience that thinks that game was too hard.
I think it's just right, but it's way too hard. Playtesters think it's just right, but then I think it's boring. I can't win!
I think you have to balance with the largest common denominator in mind.
If you have mechanics that can balance against difficulty of enemies or levels (aka regenerating health) you can plan ahead for things.
Sure it'll make my fights easier for some, but for others it'll make them do-able. That's a win.
If you have mechanics that can balance against difficulty of enemies or levels (aka regenerating health) you can plan ahead for things.
Sure it'll make my fights easier for some, but for others it'll make them do-able. That's a win.
liliththepale
Banned
There's not a one-size-fits-all solution.
Adding different difficulty levels may be your best bet.
Adding different difficulty levels may be your best bet.
LordRaptor
Member
Dynamic difficulty scaling can be a good solution, but only if players never find out that that's what you're doing because they might well feel cheated or patronised.
e: it also inherently destroys any chance of having things like high score leaderboards or whatever too
e: it also inherently destroys any chance of having things like high score leaderboards or whatever too
Each solution must fit the game, imo.
Can you guys recommend me a good beginner tutorial for Unity? I'm already a software programmer and I know C#, but I have never done anything gaming related.
My goal at first is not to do an actual game but something related to a software that I'm working on, that will let the user view models like balconies and other glass stuff, based on certain parameters. The software today already generates a very simple 2D view of that, but I want to make it 3D and inside an actual level, and maybe even add VR support later on.
My goal at first is not to do an actual game but something related to a software that I'm working on, that will let the user view models like balconies and other glass stuff, based on certain parameters. The software today already generates a very simple 2D view of that, but I want to make it 3D and inside an actual level, and maybe even add VR support later on.
finally just found this sub forums..
me with my team just work on this classic shmups, & will available on steam this year..
you can check the demo here http://burstfighter.com
any suggestion much appretiated..
me with my team just work on this classic shmups, & will available on steam this year..
you can check the demo here http://burstfighter.com
any suggestion much appretiated..
liliththepale
Banned
Since a lot of people have been talking about it recently, Spine is a lot of fun if you know what you're doing. I spent a couple hours tonight practicing with IK joints so this isn't directly game related, but I thought my bicycle would be a fun subject!
Yeah, for sure, but that's not saying very much. It's probably clear that something like Uncharted benefits from explicit difficulty selection and that Super Meat Boy or Dark Souls would not, but where do you draw the line? What specifically about those kind of games makes them not a good fit, do you think?
Yeah, for sure, but that's not saying very much. It's probably clear that something like Uncharted benefits from explicit difficulty selection and that Super Meat Boy or Dark Souls would not, but where do you draw the line? What specifically about those kind of games makes them not a good fit, do you think?
I dont´t think regenerating health is a good solution to balance difficulty, TBH. You´ll just be allowing the player to get through challenges eating hits and not playing the way he´s supposed to. What I mean is that he won´t need to learn how to play the game, which at some point will make the game become boring. Now don´t get me wrong, regenerative health is a valid mechanic, but only if you design your gameplay around it, not if you stick it to the game after everything´s done to allow the player to survive longer.
As LordRaptor suggested, in this kind of problem I´d go with Dynamic difficulty. Give the player 3 tries to beat a challenge and if he fails, start tweaking the enemies´properties to make the game easier (lowering their speed, firing accuracy...). The key is subtetly, so the player doesn´t discover you´re progressively making the game easier for him.
But all of these are patches, if people complain your game is too difficult you should analyze where this is coming from. Maybe you´re not teaching the game mechanics properly? Or not giving the player some easy challenges to become accustomed to them before throwing harder stuff at him? Maybe you´re having offscreen enemies attacking and your sound cues can´t be heard over the background music or other SFX? Try to find the cause and act on that.
It´s legit to have a difficult game, but difficulty should come from ability (the player needs to be able to input the correct strings of commands in the required time) or from intelligence (the player can think of a solution to a problem). When a player fails it must be clear that it was his fault. The most important thing is to decide what audience you want to target and design everything around them. If you´re targetting both a hardcore and casual audience, make the necessary adjustments so both can enjoy the game (like extra collectibles through a harder path, or more powerful attacks that are at the same time more difficult to use).
Not quite. Well, I basically wanted to know how Unity and UDK handle metals and
what parameters there are to manipulate their appearance using the standard
implementation before rolling my own. It seems that there is no IOR parameters
resp. Fresnel reflection/equation to gain the special reflective appearance
of metals out of the box. It seems the IOR approach isn't so attractive for
artists, for, specifying the reflective properties using IOR data is
non-intuitive if one doesn't know about the physics behind. That's similar to
modelling the color appearance based on scattering and absorption of the
material. No artist will ever do that. So it seems that these engine have
lumped the parameters together to produce an intuitive one for the artist, yet
the reflective properties of a metal can't be modeled with just one real
parameter. Hence, some more work to do on my end to get the look needed.
LordRaptor
Member
I'm always going to recommend the official unity tutorials for getting familiar quickly with practical game related use of various different engine and IDE features
e
Ah, okay - yeah, every implementation of PBR I have seen implements "metal" as a boolean
Jacksinthe
Banned
Not a fan of passive regeneration.
Make it active. The more you can engage the player by allowing them to make decisions the better. Introduce consequence, give the player options to either spend something to gain health or perform other abilities or whatever fits.
Passive regeneration requires no thought or input from the player.
Make health Regen a part of a loop, energy management of some kind, part of the combat loop, etc. Create an ebb and flow with it.
If people feel forced to sit to regain health they will feel like they are wasting time standing still and not pressing forward through content. This can destroy pacing through the use of boredom.
Ex: everything in MF1 revolves around the player's ability to PLAY. It's always on the player. Energy management is key to chaining multiple weapons and attacks, you have to manage your spenders and generators throughout. You are rewarded for good play, you are rewarded for setting up encounters, attack and kill timings, reading enemy health to maximize energy refunds with certain abilities as they kill enemies - it all adds up. It moves the player from spamming stuff to being smart about what you press in chains. The better you perform inside these loops the greater the ability TO perform becomes. This is how I setup combat. Make getting health a mechanic and make it rewarding.
Just my .02
Welcome back, btw.
More or less, indeed.
I guess I will go the IOR-way and see what comes out of it.
superNESjoe
Member
Big Rant Incoming!
Difficulty kind of brings me to another thought. Excuse me, it may be a bit of a rant, but I think there's something worth discussing there.
GunWorld 2 wasn't a game that I felt benefited from difficulty levels. It's a lot like a Mega Man game, but it's also a lot like Zelda 2 with RPG and exploration elements. The difficulty of the game tends to come from using the right weapons at the right time, and being good at platforming. What do you do for difficulty sliders there? Do you redesign the levels to make the platforming easier? If you make all enemies weak to every gun then yeah it'll make loads of the game's sections "easier", but it'll also make collecting and using other guns useless.
I designed GunWorld 2 quite deliberately so that you could get through nearly every section and every boss (outside of specific "gate" puzzles to prevent progress) using whatever combination of weapon and gear you want. It's also designed so that one set of gear and weapon is going to make that section so easy it's a joke. It's ALSO designed so that the entire game can be beaten without ever getting hit just be learning enemy patterns. This didn't stop reviews from popping up saying the game was unfair and has sections where you're forced to take damage. (This will be another topic below. People really don't like admitting their skill is the reason they lost, or that they simply aren't good enough to conquer a challenge. Lots of people will find anything to "blame" but themselves).
Just like Mega Man, it's about experimentation, but you're never halted for doing it your own way. To me, the idea behind difficulty "selection" in the game was to have it be natural. Players can buy gear that gives them perks (like no knockback when damaged, extra health, or extra damage on your guns). These perks truly are difficulty modifiers, they're just available as a natural solution.
On top of this, at any time players can purchase a consumable called a Respawn Eagle. This lets you respawn right where you died. The idea was to respond to the complaints about a lack of checkpoints in GunWorld 1 without having to make the levels stupid easy by putting checkpoints everywhere and treating my player's like babys.
Again, natural difficulty. These gear and item options aren't portrayed to the player as a way to make the game easier, it's designed to simply be an option and reward for them for exploring and gathering gold. They aren't supposed to feel like the game got easier, they're supposed to feel like they got better.
What happened in execution? In playtesting it was perfect. People explored, experimented with different options, and most naturally found their way through the game going back for helpful items when need be. When the game went live though, a fair size of the player base didn't try. I would sit and ghost watch people on Twitch constantly, and I was faced with a lot of the same stuff. People didn't really look at the items, so they didn't know they were there. People would get lost or not really know what their objective is because they would skip all the dialogue. When presented with a non-linear world where they can do things out of order they would stumble into a much harder level than they should have and just slam their head into a wall and get mad instead of thinking "maybe I should come back with different items and level up a few times".
You see it on boards like GAF all the time. People want hardcore games, or at the very least they want games that treat them like they are adults and can figure things out without having their hand held. But in execution, it's only a small population that wants and likes that. The majority want their hand held, and I've found that they have a mentality that if they buy a game then they immediately deserve the right to see all of it and be able to beat it. There are different opinions on that, mine being that's ludicrous.
It might sound like I'm blaming the audience for having issues with the game. I'm not. I believe I can recognize flaws in how the audience approaches a game and how that will affect their time with it without "blaming" them for not enjoying it. The launch of GunWorld 2 taught me that I need to go even further, and find even better ways of introducing these options to players and "guiding" them without them feeling like they're being guided. When a player skips through dialogue that tells them "I'd recommend going North first" and then just runs off wherever and can't figure out what to do, then solving that "guidance" problem becomes very difficult. Maps need to be more intuitive in how they lead you. I figured it was good enough that the easiest level of the game is the ONLY thing on your screen right when you leave town, but that doesn't lure players to it like I thought it would.
This is a combination of frustration with the actual audience's habits clashing with what people say they want and the unfortunate reality that ego has a very real part in game playing. People do not like to lose, and they do not like admitting it was a lack of skill that caused them to lose. It's balance, it's a glitch, it's hacking, it's a bullshit game, etc. It's also a frustration at my failure to provide something that was as seamless and intuitive in helping the player as I'd hoped it would be.
This is just a collection of thoughts as a rant. I can't stress enough that it's not me blaming the player. It's just me looking at the situation for what it is.
So yeah, I'm having a really tough time re-balancing the game for Super GunWorld 2. I want everyone who buys and plays the game to enjoy it, but I also don't want to treat them like babies. I want them to learn, experiment, and discover on their own, but I don't want them feeling stuck. Making the game easier without the need for items would completely ruin what the game is, but illustrating that the items are a valuable option is hard. I need to find a better way to do it.
LordRaptor
Member
I mean, this is why I suggested dynamic difficulty - GAF fucking LOVE Resident Evil 4 which is constantly dialling the difficulty down if you're not doing very well, but it mostly does it secretly so players think they are pro for getting past that section that was hardcore fucking them the last three attempts. This is in stark contrast to something like God Of War where if you die a few times you start getting prompts on the restart screen that maybe you'd like to play on an easier difficulty level because you're not very good, or NSMB where you get free permanent invincibility powerups at the checkpoint if you die a few times in the same place.
Even older games like MegaMan have levers you can pull to adjust difficulty if you wanted - when enemies shoot or not to avoid bullshit unavoidable mid-air damage, frequency of health or weapon energy restore powerups... from the example you mention, if your checkpoint eagle powerup was a drop that persists across lives (I don't know if it is or not, sorry), increasing the likelihood of it dropping if they've died a few times would encourage people to use it and try it out and see how useful it is, and feel clever for being resourceful enough to manage their own resources, even though it was you in the background gently nudging them back on track.
e:
I mean, the very best kind of game design is one that's touch is so gentle that a player won't even notice it's there without looking really hard, it just seamlessly meshes with gameplay.
I think they may use an approximation of f0 like this, or something more sophisticated.
float f0 = lerp(0.04f, luminance(input.Albedo) * 0.25 + 0.75, input.Metalness);
I've wondered myself how they go about rendering PBR without IOR or F0 inputs.
Epic's own Brian Karis uploaded an overview of the components of cook-torrance, probably the most performant ones are selected for UE4.
http://graphicrants.blogspot.de/2013/08/specular-brdf-reference.html
For fresnel I guess it's Schlick or Schlick-Smith.
It should be noted that most engines do ignore / don't correctly show the fresnel effect for their environment map specular. Because these cubeMaps have to have mipMaps that are correct for certain roughnesses (at incidence angle I think) the mips are computed offline so engines don't have to sample countless points for each pixel, instead they just sample the appropriate mipmap level for the corresponding roughness.
This does mean though that the detail at large angles (fresnel effect) is ignored since the precomputed map does not account for these changing variables.
On unrelated news I'm still updating my renderer. I implemented a basic DepthOfField effect for screenshots and such.
I was playing a lot of Warhammer 40k Dawn of War yesterday and I liked it so much that I wanted to import a good model to my engine to see how it looks.
I've found this one: http://tf3dm.com/3d-model/sentinel-imperial-guard-warhammer-40k-78819.html
I then went ahead and created appropriate PBR textures in substance painter (to give it a "I've been walking through this goddamn desert for ages now!" look) and then rendered it in my engine
superNESjoe
Member
Resource drops are not a bad idea as a form of difficulty adjustment. I'd thought of it before, but I worry about making gold less useful. My whole concern is I want the player to feel they made smart choices in selecting items and gear, not that the right ones were dropped into their lap.
I also noticed a subset of players who won't use the respawn eagles because there's an achievement for not using them.
EDIT: Another option I've considered is adding a practice/cheat mode that lets you warp around to any section of the game with infinite items and practice a level if you're having a hard time with it, without having to waste all of your actual resources. This mode wouldn't allow real progress or achievement unlocking though. I'm not sure if that's a good idea yet.
LordRaptor
Member
I mean, I admittedly haven't played your game so I can't deep delve into any system with anything approaching a full understanding, but in general people really struggling with a game need more resources because they're spending more resources, and 'pro' players have so much spare cash they have fuck all to spend it on.
If that's the kind of economy situation you're finding is occurring, temporary consumable drops that are hard limit capped (so spend them or waste them makes it clear theres no real benefit hoarding) and offer a one time use equivalent-but-a-bit-worse to a regular purchase could be a solution; doesn't detract from the thing you want to sell, but can work as a clutch save, or a demo of why you want to buy the other thing.
Stupidly expensive stuff (with achievement for purchasing, naturally) with no real benefit at the other end for the high rollers who never spend anything too to give them savngs goals.
yeah, fuck those guys XD
That explanation kind of makes it sound like you might not have managed to do a good enough job at explaining the weapon and item systems. I haven't tried the game myself, but it seems like the game might be failing at properly explaining whether a gun is strong against a given enemy or not (perhaps through visual/audio feedback?), and there might also be the issue that not many people like swapping weapons back and forth among a large collection of them just to get the one that deals the most damage to a specific type of enemy, as it might take them out of the action while they do some inventory sifting, which could be bad for the pacing.
The thing about how players were obstinately trying to challenge areas too hard for them could always be fixed if the game just pointed you somewhat in the right direction after a couple deaths, or maybe you could have some other character or entity bring you back to an earlier area, or even just give the enemies some kind of visual cue to let the player know they're underleveled and not going to take them out barring some great skills, possibly along some kind of visual indicator, sound or even music change (perhaps a simple pitch/speed change?) upon entering overleveled areas. This could also result in the bonus "feature" of skilled players recording themselves crusing through overleveled enemies as a display of their superior skill or something, while also telling newbies that they shouldn't actually be there.
As for players not reading item descriptions and dialog, you could either tweak the tutorials covering vital stuff, or perhaps do something such as briefly stopping the action whenever the player picks up a new weapon, showing it with its description (and weapon stat differences?) and perhaps even giving them the chance to equip it right away. That, or maybe you could have some kind of backlog of newly acquired weapons that you can check out with a button press, where the button prompt lights up on-screen whenever you get new weapons (think smartphone notifications).
My suggestions come from baseless speculation about your game, but here's to hoping you find at least some of it useful.
superNESjoe
Member
I do, thank you a lot for the suggestions.
Glendemonium
Member
I'M BACK
The enthusiasm has returned
After working on psyscrolr and releasing it I needed a break, but I need to get this update out and then I can work on something new and fresh. I'm close with this level:
Welcome back! How did it do on the Wii U? Or is that a sorta NDA thing?
I'll admit I flaked out on the WiiU Dev thing myself.
I mean, you added the achievement, what do you expect? That's one of the classic 4 types of players. Some people like going for achievements.
They "do", given the formula you've posted. For, 0.04 is the Fresnel
reflection of "glass" (assuming IOR = 1.5) at normal incident. So they use
IOR of 1.5 and scale from there.
Nice overview of the DGF terms. :+
And to account for these "changing variables" is what's needed for making some
good metals.
Nice one!... "I've been walking through this goddamn desert for ages now!" ...
superNESjoe
Member
I mean, you added the achievement, what do you expect? That's one of the classic 4 types of players. Some people like going for achievements.
I naively expected that players who weren't good enough to earn certain achievements would avoid them and just play the game lol.
That achievement is there for the really good players to earn as a bragging right, but people that aren't good enough to beat the game without using items make the game more frustrating for themselves.
Yeah, what I mean is that they don't have a specific input channel for it, they just approximate it based on metallic/color.
At some point I've made approximations based on color, metallic and roughness to get the f0, but all of that is obviously just blindly trying stuff without real world reference, much like the formula posted above.
It's just easier/unintuitive for the artists i believe, so they chose to not have it be another input.
Basically all texturing programs allow for exporting either f0 or IOR, but in the end I think the approximations are okayish enough to not bother with another texture read.
If I recall correctly, the stereotypical types of players in MMOs are people who like destroying things, people who like being social, people who like achieving things, and people who like collecting things. (I'm not sure if "building things" was included.)
I feel that fans who enjoy achievements are unlikely to go "Oh, I guess I'll back off on this tough achievement" instead of seeing it as a challenge. I really appreciate when games make the achievements not-super-tough.
Think about it this way -- people who are really skilled gamers or really skilled at a game might get all the achievements. But, their focus and talent is on being really skilled. Do achievements really matter to them as a group? Some, but probably not all. On the other hand, take the people who really appreciate achievements. Are they likely to be incredibly skilled? Some, but probably not all. So you end up with a Venn diagram situation, and an incredibly tough achievement is likely to remembered as frustrating and unfair because it gets in the way of the group that cares most.
Just my opinion, of course.
Ah, I see.
Seems they didn't wanted to bother the artist with dielectrics and conductors.
As long as you don't have to satisfy any energy conservation laws, the world
is yours. xD
superNESjoe
Member
I totally get that, but my opinion is that life doesn't hand things to you lol. I grew up with games that kicked my ass, and I think knowing you aren't good enough and accepting when you're beat is important. I think games baby people too much these days, so I have stuff in my game (be it features, achievements, unlockables, etc) that require high skill to get. Yeah I know games are just entertainment, but I think achievements are 100% useless beyond bragging rights, and what's the bragging right of just playing a game? You have to earn mine.
The core route through the game is the part I want any player to be able to complete, but my game makes you earn your rewards. I get that bothers some achievement hunters, but not every game is for every person. The only thing that really gets to me is that I see these people genuinely enjoy the game, but they're mad because they can't get this one achievement and they go nuts about it.
Dlink16
Member
Since a lot of people have been talking about it recently, Spine is a lot of fun if you know what you're doing. I spent a couple hours tonight practicing with IK joints so this isn't directly game related, but I thought my bicycle would be a fun subject!
Yeah, for sure, but that's not saying very much. It's probably clear that something like Uncharted benefits from explicit difficulty selection and that Super Meat Boy or Dark Souls would not, but where do you draw the line? What specifically about those kind of games makes them not a good fit, do you think?
That looks really cool! Do you have any tips for workflow and how you structure/create your assets (such as making them overlap eachother so they don't break?) I'm very new to skeletal animation and trying to soak up as much as I can.
This sounds like a very rude thing to say to fans. Videogames in general may be "100% useless". People do them not because they have a use, but because they enjoy them. This feels almost like telling someone "the things you enjoy are bad and I'm fixing them." You basically acknowledge you're intentionally alienating certain people, but I think it's important to understand that intentionally doing that will cause a resulting backlash.
Perhaps if you became more empathetic about why it gets to them, they might sympathize with why it gets to you.
*edit* To be clear, I should say you're of course in your rights to make whatever kind of game you want. I'm just saying I think annoying players can result in the players annoying you, so you kind of have to accept both sides of the equation.
superNESjoe
Member
This sounds like a very rude thing to say to fans. Videogames in general may be "100% useless". People do them not because they have a use, but because they enjoy them. This feels almost like telling someone "the things you enjoy are bad and I'm fixing them." You basically acknowledge you're intentionally alienating certain people, but I think it's important to understand that intentionally doing that will cause a resulting backlash.
Perhaps if you became more empathetic about why it gets to them, they might sympathize with why it gets to you.
Every player and developer has different ideas and things they like about games. For me I think games are exciting when there are aspects to it that demand high skill. Of course I'm acknowledging that I'm intentionally alienating certain people, because no matter what I do I will be alienating certain people. There's no better way to address that then say with complete sincerity "not everything is for everybody".
I believe achievements are essentially collectibles/profile bragging rights. I believe some of those should exist to demand high skill from the player to truly earn. I don't believe the core game should be so difficult that most can't enjoy it, but I also don't believe that making the game accessible means making it so everybody wins everything all the time just for participating. I can recognize that doing this will bother achievement hunters without having to tailor make the game's rewards for the lowest skill level.
I think the "100% useless" threw you off or gave you the wrong tone. I don't think achievements are useless, I think they're fun. I said specifically, the whole quote, that I believe they are useless beyond being bragging rights. Is an achievement truly an achievement if every single person can get it just by putting in the time?
My last comment was more just a personal annoyance with the entire achievement/trophy system. When I see that someone really enjoys a game, but then something like an achievement (which isn't even truly in the game) ruins the entire experience for them, I just wonder what the hell they are doing. Why are they ruining their enjoyment and turning a game they were just loving into something they despise over that? I get that they think it's important, but I don't get why it means more to them then the game itself.
Any Billionaries in here who's feeling like buying me Earthworm Jim to make aweeomezzz gaems?
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1275100
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1275100
superNESjoe
Member
Man, I'd love to work on an Earthworm Jim game.
timetokill
Banned
Haha, me too, definitely. An Earthworm Jim game would be hilarious to work on.
liliththepale
Banned
Some of it is going to depend on your art style, if there are areas where details are more important to preserve and such. Using meshes is often more effective than cutting things apart. For this bit the torso, hair, earphone cords and purse strap were meshes instead of sprites so that they could be more flexible without any obvious seams.
Originally I was planning on making the legs one piece as well, which is my typical course of action, but with this design you can't see the seams anyway and there are a lot of extreme angles, so I chose for individual pieces. Sometimes, if you know the kinds of animation that are going to be needed, that can help you figure out where to break the pieces. You just have to keep in mind where each of them are going to be moving, and what parts of each piece are going to potentially be showing through.
Dlink16
Member
Great tips, thanks. I'm going for a more painterly style similarly to something like Dragon's Crown, so based on what you're saying with a style like mine with all those value changes, it might be better to keep pieces like the legs more as one piece?
I'm also looking at having 4 way movement (Up, Down, Left, Right). As I've seen mentioned before having something appear going further away(Up) and coming closer(Down) is quite challenging so far. Any tips you might have on that would also be much appreciated!
liliththepale
Banned
I mean you'll figure out the joints thing. There's not a strict formula, at least not one that I could describe. Once you get a feel for all the tools at your disposal you'll start to come up with ideal solutions on your own. But like a pant leg, or bare skin, that would probably be a single piece. But a suit of armor with articulated joints? That can be multiple pieces.
I'm on mobile right now so I can't do a great diagram of how to do up/down motion, but it is possible. You just have to use scaling and shearing cleverly, as well as have different graphics to swap to in certain cases. I'll try to show how when I have time later. (remind me if forget please!)
HellBlazer
Member
That's a bullshit way of doing things though. What if someone wants to play at maximum difficulty? Then the game stealthily forces them to play on an easier difficulty if they're not immediately great at it? Screw that.
LordRaptor
Member
You play on maximum difficulty by playing well.
It's not a ratchet, where once you go below a certain threshold it sticks - its a slider, and if you're doing well you get less ammo drops, more enemies spawn with more health, etc.
e:
I mean, if you want to tell me RE4 isn't widely considered to be one of the best games of all time....
Dlink16
Member
Makes sense. That would be great if you have something that helps. I've been playing around with scaling and shearing but so far things are looking rather rough lol. Thanks for the help!
It went great! Better than I hoped.
There's varying types of regen you can do, though. I'm planning to only allow you to regen up to half health. This way, the player has to be careful because several hits can end their life if they play reckless. However, they have a baseline they can return to and more health if they play cautiously. My levels right now are kind of long so losing progress due to reckless gameplay punishes the player.
liliththepale
Banned
This is obviously really rough and ugly. I just did it in ten minutes. But you get the basic idea. The main thing is you need a bit of foreshortening when it moves in and out of the distance in addition to just scaling the bits. So further parts taper down in size and closer ones taper up. Also legs have a joint in the middle, so you can't just scale the whole thing uniformly.
spine files:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-4XOw-XWt42bFk2VnFPNVVHa1k
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