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

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Pehesse

Member
CTF also has a "crop all" frames ^^ so I got huge gains. The only thing it doesn't do very well is "mirroring" as i had to do a bit of math for the hotspot point to stay still when mirrored to the left. But I gained so much by doing this optimization that it feels all worth it. But I do the same as you basically...well rather I export in spine with all at the same size so it's super easy to set up an origin point for everything, then mass crop ^^

Only thing I have left is reduce the FPS of some anims. First because I like the "choppy" feeling. Second because having 40 frames for a single idle animations is fairly ridiculous :U

EDIT: Oh unrelated but did also some work on another game i'm collaborating on (called Splash Blast Panic, a jetpack+waterpistol arena party brawler =p). Making some new characters at the moment and it's pretty damn fun to just completely switch styles and be goofy

92aade9e97.gif

Haha, it looks very different, indeed :-D Cute, though!

But yeah, from what you say, CTF and C2 work much more similarly than I assumed! That's pretty nice, and I hope you'll manage to work off enough memory wiggle room to do what you want, I still remember the cold sweat when I thought I had to drastically cut stuff from Honey :-D

(on the note of having worked on other projects: the game I worked on as background illustrator before Honey will actually come out later this year, I think... I'm not sure I'm allowed to share stuff about it yet (not that I have much in the first place), but if any of you are interested, I'll make a mention of it here when it releases, though I'll be pretty much discovering it as any other player would, I'm afraid:-D)
 
I guess one benefit of using Spine and Unity (?) is low ram usage. Currently I have 24 different animations (average 30 frames/anim) for the character and ram usage is like 150mb. Still it's pain in the ass to work on new animation though.
 

Timeaisis

Member
Definitely going to need to be clever, I'll be having tight room to manoeuver :-D It's in C2, and it's really the only engine I'm able to work with, so I have to find ways to make it happen, no matter what! In my experience, it can handle pretty much anything I tried to throw at it so far, but it starts whining when I reach upwards of 1Gb estimated RAM use, even though the game still plays just fine (or at least, Honey did). If I could just somehow remove that warning message that pops up when above the 1gb threshold, I really wouldn't worry, but it's my biggest unknown so far.

As far as memory use, I'm pretty sure C2 frontloads everything in memory, which makes for super long initial load times, but a smooth experience afterwards. I'm planning to go overboard on the main character and have a moderate amount of detail in the backgrounds, basically using layers/pieces as collages to cover a more unified colored backdrop, so I don't have any single "big" BG piece (compared to Honey). The enemies should have WAY fewer animation frames (and moves), even bosses, so I think I'll be fine on that front. The other unknown will be music/sound, since that was another memory hog in Honey, so I'll try to be a lot more conservative there!

Very cool. The frontloading thing is probably for the best with the amount and detail (and amount of frames) for your main character animations. Also should make it a little easier to optimize as you'll know what your minimum memory usage is once you get all your character anims in. I don't know C2, but I wonder if you can change like your "minspec target" so that the RAM warning goes away? 1 GB is lots, but I feel like most machines have a minimum of 1gb of ram nowadays? Seems like a random upper limit. Dunno.

Animations look awesome, though!
 

MrHoot

Member
I guess one benefit of using Spine and Unity (?) is low ram usage. Currently I have 24 different animations (average 30 frames/anim) for the character and ram usage is like 150mb. Still it's pain in the ass to work on new animation though.

It is indeed. Construct2 does have a spine plugin. Sadly CTF doesn't but i do prefer my frame-by-frame look better anyway. But yeah you gain an enormous amount of memory if you use the full spine runtime (as it'll only load all the assets once and then the json and atlas takes care of moving them around)
 

Pehesse

Member
Very cool. The frontloading thing is probably for the best with the amount and detail (and amount of frames) for your main character animations. Also should make it a little easier to optimize as you'll know what your minimum memory usage is once you get all your character anims in. I don't know C2, but I wonder if you can change like your "minspec target" so that the RAM warning goes away? 1 GB is lots, but I feel like most machines have a minimum of 1gb of ram nowadays? Seems like a random upper limit. Dunno.

Animations look awesome, though!

You're right about the frontloading and it allowing me to better manage memory use, and that's why I'm starting by "blocking out" the main character space, before moving on to anything else, since it's going to be the most important!

I don't know if it's possible to remove the 1gb warning, but I believe it's there because of the primary design of the engine, which is web games/mobile games, so the limit would make sense in that context - it's just too bad it hampers desktop games, when the engine looks to be more than capable of handling them (and higher RAM usage) as well!

And thanks :-D
 

MrHoot

Member
I dunno exactly the rules of screenshot saturday if we're allowed to put in concepts or sketches. But blah, I pushed them anyway

Anyway, for funsies, here are the first three early sketches of some of the divinities you can summon. All based on celtic deities (Cernunnos, Belenos and Belisama)7

PS: Better viewing experience if you listen to this at the same time

d0cc50622f.jpg

6f6efe0211.jpg

14fd2702ff.jpg
 

Gin-Shiio

Member
Today I stumbled on a Japanese RPG with the same name I have been using for mine, but that comes with an additional suffix. The series has seen two entries from what I could gather. Strangely enough, I only was able to find proof of the existence of these games on one particular website, and it seems they are free-to-downloadable games created in RPGMaker 2003. No videos, no pictures, nothing to be seen on there or anywhere else, although knowing Japanese would maybe show more insight.

I use the new RPGMaker MV engine for my project and am planning for a commercial release down the line, but now am not sure what to do. Can I kiss the name of my game goodbye?
 

Jumplion

Member
Slow but steady progress.


Getting myself familiarized with Tiled and I'm finding it really useful and relatively easy to integrate with what I need.

Next up I need to focus on making more obstacle types and a basic timer system so I can better pace/refine the levels. Still going to have to resort to various rainbow-colored blocks for the time being, but hey, it gets the job done.

I definitely need to be better about setting aside dedicated times over the week to work on the project. I do a weekly "report card" every Sunday for myself, and going over them makes me feel like I'm not doing enough substantial progress/tasks. Need to keep that momentum going. Fortunately this week has been pretty decent, Tiled is a pretty fun program to work with Unity despite some quirks.
 

Bizukah

Neo Member
Last week was quite productive. We're currently working hard on the 0.85 Update for CrossCode and still plan to release it this year. If everything works out as planned we might have the update ready between mid november and the beginning of December. However, let's get back to last week.

We started working on the interiors of Basin Keep (a town introduced in the last update)
interiors-first.gif


Working even harder on the next dungeon...
mapping-start.gif


which is called So’najiz Temple and...

mapping-progress.gif


... it's an underwater dungeon this time.
mapping-progress2.gif

WOW this game looks amazingly good
 

Lautaro

Member
Made a 1st draft for the Greenlight trailer of Beastmancer, could use some feedback before starting the campaign:

https://youtu.be/LHIc5nn4LEU

Now, I'm not really worried because is not my first Greenlight experience and many people will jump directly to the screenshots and won't see the trailer (also let's be honest, the bar is pretty low) but it would be nice to see if there's something too annoying in the trailer that I could be missing.
 
Made a 1st draft for the Greenlight trailer of Beastmancer, could use some feedback before starting the campaign:

https://youtu.be/LHIc5nn4LEU

Now, I'm not really worried because is not my first Greenlight experience and many people will jump directly to the screenshots and won't see the trailer (also let's be honest, the bar is pretty low) but it would be nice to see if there's something too annoying in the trailer that I could be missing.
Some quick feedback:
- It spends way too much time with the player character running through environments and not performing any interesting actions. "Explore the magical lands of..." isn't interesting enough a pull to be on-screen that long. I would say something like "Capture and train powerful monsters in the magical land of..." and then cut to big monsters hitting each other as soon as possible! Intercut that with exploration footage.

On the monster battling footage, the way it's cut makes it look really slow and awkward and frankly, dull. The camera holds for far too long after an attack animation is performed, and the camera coming to a rest shouldn't be in the shot. You want constant camera movement with quicker cuts, with one attack hitting after the other. Build up some rhythm with it.

The trailer also says "use tactics" but I can't see from the trailer what those tactics actually are. What makes this game tactical? What makes it interesting? Include at least a couple of shots or a blurb of a kind of tactic that can be employed. Otherwise it just looks like monsters standing in squares trading attacks.

You have a cool concept here, it's just not being shown as well as it could!
 

Kieli

Member
Is there a repository of free art/sound assets? Like swords clanging, or sprites of spooky skeletons.

I'd like to make a small, simple game as a fun exercise.
 

kiguel182

Member
I'm redoing my game from scratch!

I've been building this game in a really weird way and I decided to finally get the courage to make the game tile based like it should've been from the start. This involves re-implementing every level done so far but not only will the game play better it also will make much better to make new levels and readjust the levels as I play test them.

This will take some time but look, better late than never right? I was tired of building the levels on Photoshop then Unity with hit-boxes and this wasn't going to get better. Mostly of the programming should hold up so it isn't all that bad.

Also, I really need to finish this game.
 

Jumplion

Member
I'm redoing my game from scratch!

I've been building this game in a really weird way and I decided to finally get the courage to make the game tile based like it should've been from the start. This involves re-implementing every level done so far but not only will the game play better it also will make much better to make new levels and readjust the levels as I play test them.


This will take some time but look, better late than never right? I was tired of building the levels on Photoshop then Unity with hit-boxes and this wasn't going to get better. Mostly of the programming should hold up so it isn't all that bad.

Also, I really need to finish this game.

If you need a better workflow for tile-based levels, Tiled might be good for you, though an in-Unity solution would probably be faster at adjusting the smaller things for your purposes (some Tile systems on the asset store might be good for you). Still, I've just started using it for my project and I'm liking how fairly easy it's been to integrate into Unity. It's free and the Tiled2Unity plugin is really useful.

Also, you and me both...
 
If you need a better workflow for tile-based levels, Tiled might be good for you, though an in-Unity solution would probably be faster at adjusting the smaller things for your purposes (some Tile systems on the asset store might be good for you). Still, I've just started using it for my project and I'm liking how fairly easy it's been to integrate into Unity. It's free and the Tiled2Unity plugin is really useful.

Also, you and me both...

Beta access to Unity's new 2D tools, including tilemap editor, has been out for a while... https://blogs.unity3d.com/2015/04/24/early-access-to-new-2d-tools/
 

aesinv

Neo Member
If you need a better workflow for tile-based levels, Tiled might be good for you, though an in-Unity solution would probably be faster at adjusting the smaller things for your purposes (some Tile systems on the asset store might be good for you). Still, I've just started using it for my project and I'm liking how fairly easy it's been to integrate into Unity. It's free and the Tiled2Unity plugin is really useful.

Also, you and me both...

I used Tiled + Tiled2Unity on my last release and while Tiled is super great I will say that in my experience it was a total chore whenever I had to update my maps. I had an issue where every time I would import a new version using Tiled2Unity it would force all of my other prefabs to lose their materials, that may have been down to bad config from me or something. Because of that I'm going to be building my own in-Unity tile map editor for my current project.

That said, it is a great and super valuable tool, especially the entire collision box editor.
 
For anyone that's worked in VR, are there plugins for Unity that can get you started at a base level? I want to do a Vive game, but my main concerns are just getting a room-scale and controller movement system in place to begin with.
 

Exuro

Member
For anyone that's worked in VR, are there plugins for Unity that can get you started at a base level? I want to do a Vive game, but my main concerns are just getting a room-scale and controller movement system in place to begin with.
SteamVR plugin. Just need to put in a single prefab and you're good to go. I'd also recommend trying out vrtk which is a librarytoolkit that does basic stuff like grabbingpicking up objects.
 

kiguel182

Member
If you need a better workflow for tile-based levels, Tiled might be good for you, though an in-Unity solution would probably be faster at adjusting the smaller things for your purposes (some Tile systems on the asset store might be good for you). Still, I've just started using it for my project and I'm liking how fairly easy it's been to integrate into Unity. It's free and the Tiled2Unity plugin is really useful.

Also, you and me both...

Beta access to Unity's new 2D tools, including tilemap editor, has been out for a while... https://blogs.unity3d.com/2015/04/24/early-access-to-new-2d-tools/

I used Tiled + Tiled2Unity on my last release and while Tiled is super great I will say that in my experience it was a total chore whenever I had to update my maps. I had an issue where every time I would import a new version using Tiled2Unity it would force all of my other prefabs to lose their materials, that may have been down to bad config from me or something. Because of that I'm going to be building my own in-Unity tile map editor for my current project.

That said, it is a great and super valuable tool, especially the entire collision box editor.

I'm going to read on it! My workflow is already miles better than it was (I was being really dumb) but a better workflow is always better.

Also, I published a weekly dev log today if anyone is interested:

https://fatbread.tumblr.com/post/152555136708/weekly-dev-log-31-october-2016
 

SeanNoonan

Member
I really like the look of this. Maybe 15 pages are too much? Have you tried to do an in-game tutorial?

I want to play this! :D

Oh, it's just a little manual you can open at any time from the map screen - it's never forced on the player. Just for those that are curious :)
 
For anyone that's worked in VR, are there plugins for Unity that can get you started at a base level? I want to do a Vive game, but my main concerns are just getting a room-scale and controller movement system in place to begin with.

I really recommend the Virtual Reality Toolkit. Pretty sure it's got more to offer than NewtonVR(and the physics feel better, last I checked), and it's pretty customizable. I've been using it in a side project of mine and it's been great.

I'd also recommend the Lab Renderer as well. Results in really, really nice image and shadow quality, both with great performance too.
 

wwm0nkey

Member
Its been a long time since I posted in here, but my project at work finally finished so I could start working on my personal MegaMan Battle Network inspired project.

It's nothing major, but I finally got my shuffle system to work how I wanted it to and learned how to use the Resources.Load properly so I am getting somewhere with the base of what I need. After this semester I will hopefully have more to show and actual original assets and a battle system in place.

aaf62dc9aefa447b494bc2b29fb1e460.gif
 

Kieli

Member
Freesound.org is excellent; just check the creative commons status when searching.

Awesome. Thanks!

I'm currently following a tutorial that uses the Slick2D and Java lightweight game library (jlwgl). It seems great in providing a lot of the framework so we don't have to worry about implementing functions that deal with framerate, user-input, and so on.

I'm wondering if there's any other similar game libraries that exist?
 
So here's the game I spent all of Halloween making. I've set it at "Name your own price" but you can (and are encouraged to) enter $0 and still download the game just fine

https://hotdoglaser.itch.io/overbite

CvycGto.png

yM73gce.png


You play as a disgruntled Dracula. There's four levels. I wanted a minimum of five, but four is all I could manage in the last 24 hours (literally the entire month was spent on game mechanics and graphics).

Unfortunately the version I submitted to Clickteam for the Halloween Contest has a couple of huge bugs I forgot to fix so I'm probably fucked on winning the grand prize. The version I submitted to Clickteam doesn't properly stop the level music so it ends up overlapping itself, among the grading system during the score tally being totally broken. They were quick fixes but it was past midnight (the deadline) and it looks like you can't modify your entry after submission anyway

Oh well

At least I finished a game for once in my life. Technically, anyway

Also: If you're using a wired 360 controller on your PC, a Windows update broke compatibility with that recently and there's nothing I can do to fix it. It was working fine just a week or two ago, but now Clickteam Fusion can't see a wired 360 controller at all in any capacity. If you're using a wireless 360 controller or DS4Windows you're covered, though.
 

DemonNite

Member
So here's the game I spent all of Halloween making. I've set it at "Name your own price" but you can (and are encouraged to) enter $0 and still download the game just fine

https://hotdoglaser.itch.io/overbite

CvycGto.png

yM73gce.png


You play as a disgruntled Dracula. There's four levels. I wanted a minimum of five, but four is all I could manage in the last 24 hours (literally the entire month was spent on game mechanics and graphics).

Unfortunately the version I submitted to Clickteam for the Halloween Contest has a couple of huge bugs I forgot to fix so I'm probably fucked on winning the grand prize. The version I submitted to Clickteam doesn't properly stop the level music so it ends up overlapping itself, among the grading system during the score tally being totally broken. They were quick fixes but it was past midnight (the deadline) and it looks like you can't modify your entry after submission anyway

Oh well

At least I finished a game for once in my life. Technically, anyway

Also: If you're using a wired 360 controller on your PC, a Windows update broke compatibility with that recently and there's nothing I can do to fix it. It was working fine just a week or two ago, but now Clickteam Fusion can't see a wired 360 controller at all in any capacity. If you're using a wireless 360 controller or DS4Windows you're covered, though.

Great job getting it all done :) I'll try and get a moment to give it a whirl!

Don't worry about the bugs, its taking part that is the fun. And since I've never taken part in anything like this, well done on sticking with it.
 

Pehesse

Member
So here's the game I spent all of Halloween making. I've set it at "Name your own price" but you can (and are encouraged to) enter $0 and still download the game just fine

https://hotdoglaser.itch.io/overbite

CvycGto.png

yM73gce.png


You play as a disgruntled Dracula. There's four levels. I wanted a minimum of five, but four is all I could manage in the last 24 hours (literally the entire month was spent on game mechanics and graphics).

Unfortunately the version I submitted to Clickteam for the Halloween Contest has a couple of huge bugs I forgot to fix so I'm probably fucked on winning the grand prize. The version I submitted to Clickteam doesn't properly stop the level music so it ends up overlapping itself, among the grading system during the score tally being totally broken. They were quick fixes but it was past midnight (the deadline) and it looks like you can't modify your entry after submission anyway

Oh well

At least I finished a game for once in my life. Technically, anyway

Also: If you're using a wired 360 controller on your PC, a Windows update broke compatibility with that recently and there's nothing I can do to fix it. It was working fine just a week or two ago, but now Clickteam Fusion can't see a wired 360 controller at all in any capacity. If you're using a wireless 360 controller or DS4Windows you're covered, though.

I'll try it ASAP, but no matter what, congrats for making it to the other side!!

On my end: tried building a very rough test level to record the "flow" of play, or rather "flows":

https://youtu.be/v6j1XrOF4-8

Ideally, the game will be accessible to many different skill levels, with the different speeds of play allowing access to different paths. Still super early and lots of stuff to fix, of course, but I hope this gets the idea across somewhat already!
 

DemonNite

Member
I'll try it ASAP, but no matter what, congrats for making it to the other side!!

On my end: tried building a very rough test level to record the "flow" of play, or rather "flows":

https://youtu.be/v6j1XrOF4-8

Ideally, the game will be accessible to many different skill levels, with the different speeds of play allowing access to different paths. Still super early and lots of stuff to fix, of course, but I hope this gets the idea across somewhat already!

That looks fantastic! great job so far
 

MrHoot

Member
I'll try it ASAP, but no matter what, congrats for making it to the other side!!

On my end: tried building a very rough test level to record the "flow" of play, or rather "flows":

https://youtu.be/v6j1XrOF4-8

Ideally, the game will be accessible to many different skill levels, with the different speeds of play allowing access to different paths. Still super early and lots of stuff to fix, of course, but I hope this gets the idea across somewhat already!

Man that is just thoroughly impressive. The transition between each animations is just really damn good !

Also @Blaze, really eager to try it out ! IT looks really damn fun. By the way, if it's not indiscrete, but are you the same Blaze who also organizes the SAGE expo ?
 

Pehesse

Member
That looks fantastic! great job so far

Man that is just thoroughly impressive. The transition between each animations is just really damn good !

Also @Blaze, really eager to try it out ! IT looks really damn fun. By the way, if it's not indiscrete, but are you the same Blaze who also organizes the SAGE expo ?

Many thanks :)

Since I'm not going to be able to showcase these in the prototype for a little while (no health system yet, no damaging stuff, no collision checks to see if damaged... going to be a while!), so have the current tentative standard defeat/respawn anims:

FewPiercingBlackpanther.gif
DependableCreativeGoldfinch.gif


I'll retime them in-engine to play faster and accentuate the rhythm, but the overall intent is to have a very fast transition between dying and starting playing again. No "YOU DIED, RETRY?" screen: you'll be offed, and be ready to go a second or two later as the sun rises again in the background. As with most anims, you'll be able to cancel out of the "respawn" one early if you're eager to start running around!

It's been finished since May, when it was released as a Humble Monthly exclusive, but my NES-tinged action-platformer Gunmetal Arcadia Zero is out now.

I'm making it pay-what-you-want on itch.io this week only, so you can check it out risk-free. https://piratehearts.itch.io/gunmetal-arcadia-zero




Congrats! And pay-what-you-want? I'd be interested to hear how that works out for you. Full disclosure: it didn't for me, but that's most likely due to the game itself!
 

PirateHearts

Neo Member
Congrats! And pay-what-you-want? I'd be interested to hear how that works out for you. Full disclosure: it didn't for me, but that's most likely due to the game itself!

Thanks! It's an experiment for sure, but this game is turning out to be an oddball in a number of ways. It's a prequel to an upcoming action roguelike I'm still working on, and while I don't want to devalue it completely by giving it away for free everywhere, I'm hoping that I can get it into as many hands as possible in order to build awareness. I'm already on the hook for delivering Steam keys to May Humble Monthly Bundle owners, so I'm starting to think my best strategy is to push lots of cheap copies out into the wild and then make the roguelike a more "premium" sort of release when that one launches. So we'll see how that goes. At worst, it's a chance to try some different strategies that I might not otherwise have the opportunity to.
 

wwm0nkey

Member
Do most of you work solo or with a team? If with a team how many people? On the project I'm starting I think it's probably going to end up just being me(programming) and my fiancée(art).

I finally got over the "valley of despair" and starting to put serious thought into my project but I know going solo is going to slow things down a bit lol
 

Blizzard

Banned
I'll retime them in-engine to play faster and accentuate the rhythm, but the overall intent is to have a very fast transition between dying and starting playing again. No "YOU DIED, RETRY?" screen: you'll be offed, and be ready to go a second or two later as the sun rises again in the background. As with most anims, you'll be able to cancel out of the "respawn" one early if you're eager to start running around!
If you've never played Guacamelee, I highly recommend it. The stylized art and animations are nice, but in particular I seem to recall you can cancel out of a lot of different things so it feels very responsive.
 
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