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[Blizzard]

https://soundcloud.com/normanlegies
A really cool german composer who also worked on Dream.

Cool stuff!


I finally made a little more progress on my game systems.

These interactions are simple, but I think there was still a fair bit of redesign and consideration to get this sort of stuff working robustly. With that done, I'm hoping it will go more smoothly with my updated animation and state logic as I add more movements and animations in the future.

 

[VisceralBowl]

Mmmm, MMMM..
So, I am not the only one who wants to make a GUNZ/Mirror Edge inspired shooter, well, my idea's a little different since it involves split/remixable weapons, although you are making such a nice progress there, while I am stuck at point 0.1 of its development

More Titanfall / Halo 5 mix for the movement than ME and GUNZ, but all are inspiration.

 

[The Quadsphere]

Hey everyone,

I just posted my upcoming shmup Icarus-X: Tides of Fire on Greenlight: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=389773945

Your votes and feedback are much appreciated.

 

[SquirrelWide]

Hey everyone,

I just posted my upcoming shmup Icarus-X: Tides of Fire on Greenlight: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=389773945

Your votes and feedback are much appreciated.

Game looks good! Ignore the naysayers on greenlight about not using part of the screen. The original ikaruga made it work, this can too.

 

[OldmanAndroid]

Hey everyone,

I just posted my upcoming shmup Icarus-X: Tides of Fire on Greenlight: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=389773945

Your votes and feedback are much appreciated.

Looks great, voted. It sounds like having an animated gif as your branding image is really helpful. I'm working on my steam page now actually, and having a lot of trouble making a animated gif, 512x512, with a steady framerate. Gyfcat seems to make things really choppy. Also been experimenting with gifcam and instagiffer, but then its difficult to keep the file size under 1mb.

Any tips on getting a 512x512 gif under a 1mb and like 30fps?

 

[The Quadsphere]

Game looks good! Ignore the naysayers on greenlight about not using part of the screen. The original ikaruga made it work, this can too.

Thanks I like my shmups vertical, bought a vertical monitor last year and wouldn't play it any other way now. Ikaruga does have the forced horizontal mode (which is an heresy if you ask me ) but I certainly could add that option.

Looks great, voted. It sounds like having an animated gif as your branding image is really helpful. I'm working on my steam page now actually, and having a lot of trouble making a animated gif, 512x512, with a steady framerate. Gyfcat seems to make things really choppy. Also been experimenting with gifcam and instagiffer, but then its difficult to keep the file size under 1mb.

Any tips on getting a 512x512 gif under a 1mb and like 30fps?

Thanks for the vote. I'm not a fan of the gif previews (feels like 90's internet) but must admit it looks good for shmups... I might have to give it a try. No idea about the best tools to meet the 1MB req though.

 

[Dascu]

Hey everyone,

I just posted my upcoming shmup Icarus-X: Tides of Fire on Greenlight: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=389773945

Your votes and feedback are much appreciated.

Middle screenshot is giving me massive Stage 5 Ikaruga vibes. Looks neat.

 

[Lautaro]

IndieDB ranking is so fickle, you can jump from the 2000th place to the 33 in a night.

Do anyone have any experience with IndieDB? it has atracted business and talent to your project? I keep getting music composer's offers but I don't feel financially stable enough to hire one.

 

[OldmanAndroid]

IndieDB ranking is so fickle, you can jump from the 2000th place to the 33 in a night.

Do anyone have any experience with IndieDB? it has atracted business and talent to your project? I keep getting music composer's offers but I don't feel financially stable enough to hire one.

I've been using indiedb a lot these last few months, it's probably been the best exposure I've had compared to twitter, TIGforums, and this thread. Have about 27 followers now, and had about 175 people download my game. A lot of positive feedback, and few "lets play" videos came out of it.

*Edit* Attracted business? no, just a ton of music composers, as you said.

 

[plagiarize]

Thanks I like my shmups vertical, bought a vertical monitor last year and wouldn't play it any other way now. Ikaruga does have the forced horizontal mode (which is an heresy if you ask me ) but I certainly could add that option.

You have my full support on the game being in portrait mode.

 

[Croatoan]

Thought I would drop by and join this little community!

My name is Brad, and I am a Programmer (C# mostly), 3d modeler and President of a brand new small indie studio (of which is still going through the process of activation in Texas). I am working with 2 other great, talented, guys and we are preparing to release our first game on android and iOS within the next month.

We are also readying some great unity packages to sell on the unity asset store (third person weapon switching system, complete 3rd person shooter controller(contains both gta and gears of war style controllers)) so I will have more to share in the future!

Anyways, I am awed by some of the awesome work you guys have shown off in this thread and hope to contribute some of our own in the near future.

If anyone has any programming, 3d modeling or unity3d engine questions please feel free to PM me.

 

[Jarekx]

So, I think I'm set on this style of batte hud/menu. Each character gets 4 commands and a swap ability ( which allows you to swap anyone around). I'm probably going to have to limit the swap ability in some way, probably just a resource you build up over the course of a battle.

Although, I'm not currently sure how I'll display status effects that only affect a certain part of the line with this hud. Maybe just an animation in the area that's being afflicted.

And I'm sure this would be hard to answer without seeing the actual implementation and messing with the combat system, but how would you feel about incapacitated party members staying in the line and rotating to the front, effectively causing you or the enemy to lose a turn?

 

[Lautaro]

I've been using indiedb a lot these last few months, it's probably been the best exposure I've had compared to twitter, TIGforums, and this thread. Have about 27 followers now, and had about 175 people download my game. A lot of positive feedback, and few "lets play" videos came out of it.

*Edit* Attracted business? no, just a ton of music composers, as you said.

Yeah, it definitely seems to give better exposure. Is also nice to see the stats and watch how new updates increase the visits to your page and the origin of many of these visitors.

 

[Ranger X]

Math question time!

Honestly, I can't wrap my head around it. I don't remember a way to calculate that. Its stupid, its easy, I feel bad. In my game I make a background of the screen. My game is small and is resized for display. Right now, for my background to display right (its a pause menu background), I need to scale my screenshot appropriately.

Example:

Game draw on screen is scaled x2 ---> makes a background from a screenshot 2 times too large so. I scale my background ----> 0.5 times.

How do I find the scale for my background if my game is draw 1.5 scaled, 2.5 and 3 times?


GameScale 1.5 ---> ?? ---> Right sized background
GameScale 2 ------>0.5 ---> Right sized background
GameScale 2.5 ---> ?? ---> Right sized background
GameScale 3 -----> ?? ----> Right sized background

I failed my math class I guess and gosh is this hard to explain in a forum post, I hope someone can read the equation I need.

 

[Popstar]

Math question time!

Game draw on screen is scaled x2 ---> makes a background from a screenshot 2 times too large so. I scale my background ----> 0.5 times.

How do I find the scale for my background if my game is draw 1.5 scaled, 2.5 and 3 times?

Invert the fraction.

So 2 becomes 1/2 (0.5), therefor 1.5 becomes 1/1.5 = 0.6666 and 2.5 becomes 1/2.5 = 0.4 etc.

 

[Ranger X]

Invert the fraction.

So 2 becomes 1/2 (0.5), therefor 1.5 becomes 1/1.5 = 0.6666 and 2.5 becomes 1/2.5 = 0.4 etc.

Oh am really thankfull.

Credits:

-Popstar, for a maths question!

 

[Vark]

Hold on, what's your project man? This looks awesome and right up my alley.

It's a Pirate themed mobile (and possibly WiiU) action RPG? I haven't quite figured out how to describe it lol. Essentially you work with a group of resource starved pirates to fight back the Inquisition.

The core loop is divided into two phases. Phase one it's a Panzer Dragoon style finger shooter where you collect resources (Birds, fish, coins, cannonballs, etc), then you use what you've collected in battles against other ships. You level up, get more stuff, buy upgrades etc.

Along the way there are mini story inflection points that add some flair and randomized some of the later story elements.

 

[OldmanAndroid]

Getting my greenlight page ready, what do you guys think of this as the icon?

Also have a non-animated back up version:

 

[Mechanical Snowman]

Getting my greenlight page ready, what do you guys think of this as the icon?

Totally subjective, but I'm not a fan of reverse looped gifs. I think it would look a lot cooler if it would loop seamlessly, especially the curtains which would look great just blowing "forever". The kind of gifs that you can watch for 2-3 loops before realizing it's looped IMO are the best.

 

[FoxSpirit]

Am brewing some cool pixels together! I'm after some old-school CRT TV stuff
to experiment with. And today I was really, really lucky. I got all of the
following:

- an old RCA TV tube tester (upper left corner),
- two video signal generators (upper right corner),
- an antenna impedance matcher (down),
- and 3 cases full of vacuum tubes

for only 150 bucks!

Pretty proud of the RCA TV tube tester (it's like a new one, no scratches
whatsoever) and of all the vacuum tubes of which there are about 200(!) new
and 100 used ones.

And this very piece of craftsmanship I got the other day

for only 40 bucks!

It's a signal generator from 1954 entirely operating with vacuum tubes (vacuum
tube powered Colpitts oscillator etc.).


Seems all a bit distant to video games, but to the contrary! I want my CRT
simulator to incorporate the operational characteristics of vacuum tubes
esp. if you overrun them producing higher harmonics. It's cool if you can
deal with it in the real world as well gaining experience. :+

You have my full attention. Could you elaborate?

 

[TheHollowNight]

Ahhhhhhh, I can break the news finally! We're showing off a first playable build of Beacon at EGX Rezzed next month!
So excited and insanely nervous.

 

[SquirrelWide]

Ahhhhhhh, I can break the news finally! We're showing off a first playable build of Beacon at EGX Rezzed next month!
So excited and insanely nervous.

If the game plays as well as that font choice? Mmmm mmm good.

 

[Keby]

Wow I missed the other thread I guess. It's been awhile, but for anyone that remembers the game Due Process. We finally put up a big blog post detailing what we've been up to for awhile now.

Due Process

Also here's the reddit if want to follow updates there as well.

Sub Reddit

 

[plagiarize]

So I just read some of those severance stories on Kotaku. Uh, yeah. Wow. Scary stuff. No wonder more and more people have been moving to smaller indie teams. At least then you can see that shit coming I guess.

 

[Sölf]

No idea where to post this, it doesn't really fit in here, I think, but eh.

Anyway, I made a small game with the RPG-Maker VX Ace ~2 years ago when I bought it, just to see how the basic engine (so no ruby) differs from the older engines. The final game has a length of maybe 1-2 hours playtime and since it is so short I thought about translating the game into english, currently it's only available in german. But wirting dialogue for a game is a bitt harder then just writing english posts on a forum.

So, I would like if someone would help me to translate it (if he/she understands german) or to proof read or even fix my translation. I am pretty sure the game will be perfectly understandable, but there will most definitely be mistakes and and some things will just sound wrong for native speakers.

So, would anyone want to help me? The game is free to play and has the epic title of "Rivalry", the german version can be found in this thread I made.

 

[electroflame]

So, this may be a bit off-topic, but holy cow: I've discovered two amazing things for Unity.

1. ConstantsGeneratorKit/Code generation in general. Essentially it's an editor class that will create static classes containing the string names of Tags, Layers, Scenes, and Resource files. After a bit of tinkering, I've also set it up to create a static class containing my object pool indexes, so I never have to use a naked string to access my object pools.

2. Auto-instantiating Prefab Singletons/Managers. A bit of a mouthful, but absolutely worth checking out. Essentially it lets you use the Singleton pattern (i.e. having unique, static classes that can be used from anywhere in your code -- think game managers or audio managers) but it also lets you store each manager as a prefab that can be edited in the editor. The first time you try to access the static class, it'll automatically instantiate an instance of the prefab in your scene. No more "scene zero"/additively loading a scene with your objects in it -- everything is handled automatically.

I didn't intend to go down this rabbit hole, but this stuff has really sped up my workflow. If anyone has some questions feel free to ask -- I've been using/customizing the classes from these articles for the past couple of days, so I've got a pretty good handle on them. They're absolutely worth looking into if you use Unity.

 

[Blizzard]

No one had any opinion on my GIF from earlier in the page? Kind of scary. I guess I should have included a disclaimer that criticism is certainly welcome, otherwise I may not know if it's producing negative reactions.

I do have one quick question if anyone has opinions. I plan to look at an Advance Wars game or two to remind myself what they did, and I'm not sure of the Fire Emblem etc. controls. If you can move a unit somewhere, and then choose whether or not to attack before that unit is finished for the current turn, what would a good term be?

Currently I have a button that says "Stop", but that might confuse some people. I figured eventually I would make graphical buttons with icons (like crosshairs for attack, stop sign for stop, etc.) instead.

I could use "Wait" I suppose. I don't want to use "Done" because that might be a little confusing with ending one's turn. I would just like it to be clear that once you move a unit and click the "WHATEVER" button, that unit is inactive until your next turn.

 

[HellBlazer]

No one had any opinion on my GIF from earlier in the page? Kind of scary. I guess I should have included a disclaimer that criticism is certainly welcome, otherwise I may not know if it's producing negative reactions.

I do have one quick question if anyone has opinions. I plan to look at an Advance Wars game or two to remind myself what they did, and I'm not sure of the Fire Emblem etc. controls. If you can move a unit somewhere, and then choose whether or not to attack before that unit is finished for the current turn, what would a good term be?

Currently I have a button that says "Stop", but that might confuse some people. I figured eventually I would make graphical buttons with icons (like crosshairs for attack, stop sign for stop, etc.) instead.

I could use "Wait" I suppose. I don't want to use "Done" because that might be a little confusing with ending one's turn. I would just like it to be clear that once you move a unit and click the "WHATEVER" button, that unit is inactive until your next turn.

"Wait" is pretty common for this type of game. That's what both Advance Wars and Fire Emblem use. I think what it means would be clear to the player.

I think the gif looks pretty good, you seem to be making nice progress. I like the laser attack damaging everything in a line.

 

[MaritalWheat]

It's a Pirate themed mobile (and possibly WiiU) action RPG? I haven't quite figured out how to describe it lol. Essentially you work with a group of resource starved pirates to fight back the Inquisition.

The core loop is divided into two phases. Phase one it's a Panzer Dragoon style finger shooter where you collect resources (Birds, fish, coins, cannonballs, etc), then you use what you've collected in battles against other ships. You level up, get more stuff, buy upgrades etc.

Along the way there are mini story inflection points that add some flair and randomized some of the later story elements.

Awesome, this sounds so much like something I've wanted to make or play (and loving what I see of the art style). Do you have a site, or at least a few more screenshots you can share?

 

[Burt]

No one had any opinion on my GIF from earlier in the page? Kind of scary. I guess I should have included a disclaimer that criticism is certainly welcome, otherwise I may not know if it's producing negative reactions.

I do have one quick question if anyone has opinions. I plan to look at an Advance Wars game or two to remind myself what they did, and I'm not sure of the Fire Emblem etc. controls. If you can move a unit somewhere, and then choose whether or not to attack before that unit is finished for the current turn, what would a good term be?

Currently I have a button that says "Stop", but that might confuse some people. I figured eventually I would make graphical buttons with icons (like crosshairs for attack, stop sign for stop, etc.) instead.

I could use "Wait" I suppose. I don't want to use "Done" because that might be a little confusing with ending one's turn. I would just like it to be clear that once you move a unit and click the "WHATEVER" button, that unit is inactive until your next turn.

The gif looks good, and the UI elements fit in a while lot better than I thought they would. Doesn't look cluttered or confusing at all. My only question is are there 4 "teams" there or is it just blue (/the player) vs. everyone else?

And yeah, 'wait' is definitely the term that I'm partial to.

Oh and looking closer, I really like the way you get rid of health blocks when a unit takes damage. I think it could be a smidge slower or last a bit longer though.

 

[bkw]

I'm trying to spawn an object at a specific location, but if I place it exactly at the position, it might be overlap a wall. I want to somehow "push" the spawn position away from the wall(s) so there is no overlap. How should I approach this?

I'm using Unity. I could first check a bounding box to see if there'll be overlap, and if there is, I could 1.) raycast a whole bunch to somehow find a good offset, or 2.) in a loop, randomly shift the bounding box a small bit and check for collision until I find an open space (and hopefully I'll find one...). Are there any other approaches?

For further curiosity, what if I wasn't using Unity and didn't have a Physics system to rely on? With Unity I seem to use raycasting and checking collision volumes a lot, but it doesn't feel right for some reason. Like I'm a blind, and I'm just waving my hands in the world, hoping I hit something.

 

[Vark]

Awesome, this sounds so much like something I've wanted to make or play (and loving what I see of the art style). Do you have a site, or at least a few more screenshots you can share?

Thank you, you have no idea how appreciated that is lol.

I'm in the middle of redoing a lot of the assets so that's the current bleeding edge of new and pretty, I'll have a lot more to share in the next couple of weeks since I'm aiming to be feature complete on the first group of levels.

In the meantime, these assets haven't been given the full treatment but here are some ship / character designs I'm working with (I think I've posted some of it before in the old thread but oh well):

 

[Vark]

I'm trying to spawn an object at a specific location, but if I place it exactly at the position, it might be overlap a wall. I want to somehow "push" the spawn position away from the wall(s) so there is no overlap. How should I approach this?

I'm using Unity. I could first check a bounding box to see if there'll be overlap, and if there is, I could 1.) raycast a whole bunch to somehow find a good offset, or 2.) in a loop, randomly shift the bounding box a small bit and check for collision until I find an open space (and hopefully I'll find one...). Are there any other approaches?

For further curiosity, what if I wasn't using Unity and didn't have a Physics system to rely on? With Unity I seem to use raycasting and checking collision volumes a lot, but it doesn't feel right for some reason. Like I'm a blind, and I'm just waving my hands in the world, hoping I hit something.

Are your spawn points random? You either want to bake the margin of error into the spawning algorithm or if they're manually placed, fix as many as you can before you ship. It's usually unnecessarily expensive to run through the level on start up and shift everything around every time.

On past giant AAA projects we usually had a physics sim in the editor itself so we could place things, run the physics sim, let it do it's expensive "shimmy objects around until they're no longer penetrating" in the editor, then when everything had settled we'd hit save and record all the objects at their new non intersecting positions.

 

[bkw]

Are your spawn points random? You either want to bake the margin of error into the spawning algorithm or if they're manually placed, fix as many as you can before you ship. It's usually unnecessarily expensive to run through the level on start up and shift everything around every time.

On past giant AAA projects we usually had a physics sim in the editor itself so we could place things, run the physics sim, let it do it's expensive "shimmy objects around until they're no longer penetrating" in the editor, then when everything had settled we'd hit save and record all the objects at their new non intersecting positions.

It's essentially random. The problem I'm having to solve now is to essentially spawn a projectile in front of the player when they push a button. If they face a wall, then the "front" will be inside the wall and I want to back that out.

Nice solution on that AAA project. I love it when the solution is making cool tools. =)

Very nice artwork on your game by the way. Great character designs. So clean. They're vector drawings right?

 

[V_Arnold]

Anyone here has some experience with WebGL? I keep postponing learning it, seeing as my camera functions work well with 2d Canvas, but if there is a potential of making the game run faster on low range pc's and weaker, but WebGl-supporting tablets, I'd jump in a heartbeat.

What I need to know if there is a way to "translate" canvas calls to the equivalent of WebGL calls.

A call function now supplies an image (either a canvas or a PNG), and parameters. 4 parameters specify the position I am using as a texture and the other 4 parameters specify the position on the canvas that I want to draw. I have some secondary tools (like opacity change, text display, etc), but even fonts are pre-drawn on buffer canvases at this point, because mobiles suck at quick canvas font rendering, so.... those would work with WebGl too, if my suspicions are right.

If I could just pass the initial, canvas-intended drawing function with that data and instead convert it to a webGl draw call, then all I would need to do is create the initialization code to setup the pixel/vertex shaders and then I would not have to rewrite the draw functions in the game....would be so awesome

 

[Vark]

It's essentially random. The problem I'm having to solve now is to essentially spawn a projectile in front of the player when they push a button. If they face a wall, then the "front" will be inside the wall and I want to back that out.

Nice solution on that AAA project. I love it when the solution is making cool tools. =)

Very nice artwork on your game by the way. Great character designs. So clean. They're vector drawings right?

Yea at that point I guess do a ray cast, get the intersect, subtract back towards the player based on the length of the object's origin and length + padding and spawn there. If the problem is the characters bounding volume touching the wall means the ray test is already outside / past the wall then move the origin of the test to the center of the character but then there's tons of variables and it all depends on your particular implementation.

Thank you! And yep, that's all vector in Illustrator.

 

[Blizzard]

The gif looks good, and the UI elements fit in a while lot better than I thought they would. Doesn't look cluttered or confusing at all. My only question is are there 4 "teams" there or is it just blue (/the player) vs. everyone else?

And yeah, 'wait' is definitely the term that I'm partial to.

Oh and looking closer, I really like the way you get rid of health blocks when a unit takes damage. I think it could be a smidge slower or last a bit longer though.

Thanks for the input! Yes, I'm currently planning a maximum of 4 "teams". Individual battles might be players vs. AI (1v1, 1v2, 2v2, etc.), or players vs. players (same possible matchups) so the number of colors on the field will vary. Right now I am testing with all of the colors to make sure things look okay.

I changed the button to "Wait" as suggested. I also made the laser slightly wider because I thought it looked clearer over units, and made the damage fade a tiny bit slower.

With symbolic interface mode:

With numeric interface mode:

 

[akami]

Hello guys, just wanted to share that our kickstarter went live
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/336548754/arco?ref=category_location
This is the Hd trailer link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmrBZcd7XJI the kickstarter video resolution is not that good. It would be great if you have some time to check it!
Also here they are some of the characters of the game.

[*]

[*]

 

[Morrigan Stark]

Ehhhh putting the female playable character behind a backer reward? May I ask why you would do this? I'd understand that as a stretch goal (since it might require additional assets) but otherwise this is in rather poor taste, IMO. If you're going to make the assets anyway, just make her available... :\

I wonder if there's a way for you to show the prices in USD. I imagine international supporters might get a better grasp of the pledges, goals, etc. if it weren't in such a specific currency.

No idea where to post this, it doesn't really fit in here, I think, but eh.

Anyway, I made a small game with the RPG-Maker VX Ace ~2 years ago when I bought it, just to see how the basic engine (so no ruby) differs from the older engines. The final game has a length of maybe 1-2 hours playtime and since it is so short I thought about translating the game into english, currently it's only available in german. But wirting dialogue for a game is a bitt harder then just writing english posts on a forum.

So, I would like if someone would help me to translate it (if he/she understands german) or to proof read or even fix my translation. I am pretty sure the game will be perfectly understandable, but there will most definitely be mistakes and and some things will just sound wrong for native speakers.

So, would anyone want to help me? The game is free to play and has the epic title of "Rivalry", the german version can be found in this thread I made.

I cannot help with translation, but I can help with proofreading, depending on the amount of text. For such a short game it shouldn't be a problem. Feel free to send me a PM if you like.

 

[Sölf]

I cannot help with translation, but I can help with proofreading, depending on the amount of text. For such a short game it shouldn't be a problem. Feel free to send me a PM if you like.

Ah, thanks. Yeah, the game doesn't have that much text. I'll PM you when the game is translated (which, depending on how much time I have, might be somewhere in the next few days or maybe weeks).

 

[Jacksinthe]

OK guys. Wall jumps from a wall stick. Are you old school where you press direction+jump off a wall or do you just like pressing jump and having it done for you?

Got a lot more feedback and this is a dead heat between the two.

 

[Blizzard]

OK guys. Wall jumps from a wall stick. Are you old school where you press direction+jump off a wall or do you just like pressing jump and having it done for you?

Got a lot more feedback and this is a dead heat between the two.

Is there ever a situation where pressing the direction away from the wall does something different from direction being held before/while pressing jump?

If not, then I would think jump and "direction away"+jump would work exactly the same if you're touching the wall.

 

[Pehesse]

OK guys. Wall jumps from a wall stick. Are you old school where you press direction+jump off a wall or do you just like pressing jump and having it done for you?

Got a lot more feedback and this is a dead heat between the two.

I'm not sure how much "having it done for you" means, but the closest equivalent I'm reminded of is the wall jumping from Megaman X vs. the one from Megaman Xtreme - in Megaman X, if I recall correctly, pressing jump does detach you off the wall with a small jump, but you need to steer your air trajectory and have quite a lot of air control, whereas in Xtreme, pressing jump dashes you off as if you did a dashing controlled jump all the time. And in that case, I definitely say I prefer the X control better, as you lose a LOT of freedom of movement, case in point being in the Wheel Gator stage/its counterpart in Xtreme.

So I'd say, direction+jump for me for jump arc/air control, though pressing jump while on the wall still detaches/causes to fall, not sticking on the wall.

Hello guys, just wanted to share that our kickstarter went live
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/336548754/arco?ref=category_location
This is the Hd trailer link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmrBZcd7XJI the kickstarter video resolution is not that good. It would be great if you have some time to check it!
Also here they are some of the characters of the game.

[*]

[*]

Gotta agree with the above poster, I really dislike the idea of putting the female character behind a backer paywall. Complete ideological turn off for me, even though I like everything else you've shown so far. Since you imply you're making her anyway, not even a stretch goal sounds like a good idea at this point, even though it'd be a more standard (though still poor, imho) presentation.
Also, how are you planning to integrate this character in the overall game? Is is just a skin swap, or is it cosmetic (dialog/art) changes, mechanic/move changes, etc? In both cases I'd really rather have the choice offered by default, but especially if it's the second one, as it'd seem an even more integral part to the game.

Thanks for the input! Yes, I'm currently planning a maximum of 4 "teams". Individual battles might be players vs. AI (1v1, 1v2, 2v2, etc.), or players vs. players (same possible matchups) so the number of colors on the field will vary. Right now I am testing with all of the colors to make sure things look okay.

I changed the button to "Wait" as suggested. I also made the laser slightly wider because I thought it looked clearer over units, and made the damage fade a tiny bit slower.

With symbolic interface mode:

With numeric interface mode:

Got nothing much to add, except that I like how it looks :-D I like the health cubes more than the numerical values, myself, but I couldn't say which of the two would be more efficient after really practicing/knowing your game and GUI, for playing fast and taking information clearly instantly.
I like the line attack laser, too! Are you planning on more units with similar MAP attacks? Does this unit have a soul/err, I mean, does this unit have any other attack apart from this one? This is already making my AW-planning-brain-corner reeling from the possibilities.

 

[Violet_0]

I assume that for the Kickstarter page you have to use the currency of your country? I have the feeling that people would be quicker to jump on this if the tiers were in US$ (even though you display the dollar price under each tier)
Anyway, slick art and presentation, it looks like it would be a great fit for mobile platforms (App Store, Android). Oh, and maybe you could ask someone to make a thread for the kickstarter/game

 

[Mystic River]

I don't know where the time goes, but when I develop time runs faster than my fingers and my mind, by the time I finish something and I see a calendar I see a few weeks passed, can't believe it, I am not sure if I am too slow or I got into something bigger than the thing that I was thinking, not sure if this happens to everyone around here

Anyway, just a random comment, and I spent the last 3 weeks working on a planetary model and terrain, finally made it to work nicely and now trying to add weather, here is a screenshot of a desert biome.

and more info at http://mysticrivergames.blogspot.com/2015/02/planetary-landing-continues.html

To RelentlessRolento:
I have family and normal work besides being indie , so making time is really hard but I can work at nights a few hours, usually I work like 2-4 hours a day on my game and spend as much time as possible during the weekends, and just to not burn out I play some games and watch stuff at least a few days a month, but once I start developing something I do not stop. Wondering how people get more time... If I could work on this 10 hours a day I would have finished but I can only do in my spare time.

 

[Jacksinthe]

Is there ever a situation where pressing the direction away from the wall does something different from direction being held before/while pressing jump?

If not, then I would think jump and "direction away"+jump would work exactly the same if you're touching the wall.

Currently the mechanic works by needing to press against a wall to stick. After sticking you can press away+jump to bound or down+jump to release.

Feedback has been 50/50 with some devs saying it feels right and others saying it feels wrong and just hitting jump should bound you from a wall. Personally I like away+jump bit its hard to argue with devs who sell millions of copies of their games :O

I'm not sure how much "having it done for you" means, but the closest equivalent I'm reminded of is the wall jumping from Megaman X vs. the one from Megaman Xtreme - in Megaman X, if I recall correctly, pressing jump does detach you off the wall with a small jump, but you need to steer your air trajectory and have quite a lot of air control, whereas in Xtreme, pressing jump dashes you off as if you did a dashing controlled jump all the time. And in that case, I definitely say I prefer the X control better, as you lose a LOT of freedom of movement, case in point being in the Wheel Gator stage/its counterpart in Xtreme.

So I'd say, direction+jump for me for jump arc/air control, though pressing jump while on the wall still detaches/causes to fall, not sticking on the wall.

Aye. This is how I like it, too. Its old school. I'm trying to gauge if old school should stay old school or adapt to more current-day input where less direct control is needed to do things. I prefer control, personally. It adds another layer of skill to nail down traversal but some don't like those kinds of skill curves, no matter how fluid it can be when practiced.

 

[Pehesse]

Currently the mechanic works by needing to press against a wall to stick. After sticking you can press away+jump to bound or down+jump to release.

Feedback has been 50/50 with some devs saying it feels right and others saying it feels wrong and just hitting jump should bound you from a wall. Personally I like away+jump bit its hard to argue with devs who sell millions of copies of their games :O


Aye. This is how I like it, too. Its old school. I'm trying to gauge if old school should stay old school or adapt to more current-day input where less direct control is needed to do things. I prefer control, personally. It adds another layer of skill to nail down traversal but some don't like those kinds of skill curves, no matter how fluid it can be when practiced.

I'd say it boils down to wether or not the level design justifies that level of control - in the example of Xtreme, the lack of air control clearly hurts the player in certain occurrences compared to the exact same layout in X. If you don't have overly complex levels or challenges however, I could understand having the thing mostly automated so it'd be more a traversal tool and less of a skill to acquire... But from what I've seen and understand, you're aiming more at complex LD (which I'm all for), not simply "old school control" for the sake of it, so I'd say air control all the way!

 

[Jacksinthe]

I'd say it boils down to wether or not the level design justifies that level of control - in the example of Xtreme, the lack of air control clearly hurts the player in certain occurrences compared to the exact same layout in X. If you don't have overly complex levels or challenges however, I could understand having the thing mostly automated so it'd be more a traversal tool and less of a skill to acquire... But from what I've seen and understand, you're aiming more at complex LD (which I'm all for), not simply "old school control" for the sake of it, so I'd say air control all the way!

This is the perfect answer. Its hard to judge the intent with such a small alpha I let loose.

To give a small example, one of our levels will be changing constantly procedurally. The level geometry will be moving, coming in and out of existence, etc. Heavy verticality and wall jumping is needed to traverse this level so direct control can be a huge plus.

Bounding between two walls is the simplest use of this mechanic and I can see a simplified version working here but during complex sections it would be difficult

 

[Pehesse]

This is the perfect answer. Its hard to judge the intent with such a small alpha I let loose.

To give a small example, one of our levels will be changing constantly procedurally. The level geometry will be moving, coming in and out of existence, etc. Heavy verticality and wall jumping is needed to traverse this level so direct control can be a huge plus.

Bounding between two walls is the simplest use of this mechanic and I can see a simplified version working here but during complex sections it would be difficult

Well then, just from the description: air control, and lots of it :-D At least for me!

 

[Candescence]

So, this may be a bit off-topic, but holy cow: I've discovered two amazing things for Unity.

1. ConstantsGeneratorKit/Code generation in general. Essentially it's an editor class that will create static classes containing the string names of Tags, Layers, Scenes, and Resource files. After a bit of tinkering, I've also set it up to create a static class containing my object pool indexes, so I never have to use a naked string to access my object pools.

2. Auto-instantiating Prefab Singletons/Managers. A bit of a mouthful, but absolutely worth checking out. Essentially it lets you use the Singleton pattern (i.e. having unique, static classes that can be used from anywhere in your code -- think game managers or audio managers) but it also lets you store each manager as a prefab that can be edited in the editor. The first time you try to access the static class, it'll automatically instantiate an instance of the prefab in your scene. No more "scene zero"/additively loading a scene with your objects in it -- everything is handled automatically.

I didn't intend to go down this rabbit hole, but this stuff has really sped up my workflow. If anyone has some questions feel free to ask -- I've been using/customizing the classes from these articles for the past couple of days, so I've got a pretty good handle on them. They're absolutely worth looking into if you use Unity.

Oh, very nice, that's definitely something to keep in mind.

Also, speaking of object pools, how do you handle that, exactly - bundle every relevant pool together in larger collections or just keep the various pools separate? The Unity vid on object pooling did it as a single generic static script meant to be called by multiple objects, but I really don't see the point when you can give each object pool its own list (since the pools already achieve their objective anyway, I don't see how bundling things helps memory much), I myself intend to keep multiple projectile lists for each projectile with different properties within the weapon script, but then again, I'm also a programmer who routinely disregards the notion of keeping different functions within different scripts, since I don't really see much need for that at the moment.

Though... Hmm. My project's weapons use three projectile types, but two of those change their stats depending on how they're firing (it's a Kid Icarus: Uprising setup, basically), and I'm wondering whether I should have seperate pools with different projectile instances with their stats already prepared in advance, or save their script info in separate lists instead and modify them at runtime instead, since assigning stats at runtime would be damn cheap anyway and just two lists saves memory. Hmm. Now I'm wondering if Uprising's one-weapon-equipped-per-mission restriction was partly due to memory. Especially in multiplayer with everyone using weapons with up to a dozen mods, sheesh. Or maybe I'm just heavily overstating the memory footprint of such things.

Well then, just from the description: air control, and lots of it :-D At least for me!

Considering I'm doing parkour mechanics with wall-jumping as well for Project Idyal, it's an interesting conundrum figuring out exactly how much air control the player has, what the player should be capable of doing and how much trouble that would be for level design. Give them too much, and they might figure out all sorts of naughty ways to try and get out of the map, and I don't want to have to shove invisible walls or artificial obstacles in the way to keep them in the map, though considering I'm planning on having at least some levels have some openness ala Serious Sam, that might be necessary anyway. The parkour is very much Cloudbuilt-like, with the ability to hang on the wall for a bit to aim your wall-jumps, and a boost mechanic with an overheat meter that only cools down while on the ground. Currently, the player can't wall-run on a wall they just jumped off (though I haven't figured out how to actually make the player's velocity push away from the wall), though I might change that to only applying if the player hasn't double-jumped, which in itself can easily overheat the boosters if they're not careful.