Support NeoGAF

[Blizzard]

You should briefly sit there, just so you could tell everyone you rubbed yourself against the spot that Jonathan Blow's buttocks would eventually touch. You'd be semi-famous!

 

[electroflame]

I've been playing Yooka-Laylee today (which is great!) but I thought it'd be interesting to take a quick peek at its Unity distribution. It's a pretty good example of a "well performing" Unity game (well, for me at least) so I thought I'd pop the hood a bit.

Not only is it a good example of a fairly well-optimized PC game, but it's also a good example of using the Asset Store in a smart way. Without decompiling too much, I can see that Yooka-Laylee uses:

• DOTween
• Probuilder
• Rewired
• NodeCanvas

Additionally, it uses some Unity-developed stuff like:

• Cinematic Image Effects
• Image Effects (the old ones)
• Standard Assets Water
• Unity UI (UGUI)

It also looks like it interfaces directly with Wwise, which is somewhat unusual. There's also some UnityScript stuff in there, which I thought was a bit odd. I didn't see it referenced anywhere else, so it might just be prototyping stuff or third-party asset scripts that weren't removed from the final build. As far as I can tell, the game uses C# for pretty much everything (as it should be).

I didn't go in too deep, but I thought what I found was kind of cool. It still feels kind of...wrong to take a peek at other people's compiled code (especially for a game that I'm actively playing and enjoying), but what I found serves as a neat example, I think. It shows that even "real" studios/developers make use of the Asset Store, although they're obviously more picky about what they use.

 

[aesinv]

These backgrounds look lovely. Watching those dash gifs had me confused until I realised the games for mobile and you control direction with a finger! If that feels good I can see the game being fun.

Thanks so much! Ha, yeah it's still very much a prototype so it's missing a lot of stuff that would make it a bit easier to figure out whats going on in footage. Planning on adding some sort of stylised line/arrow from the character to wherever your finger is to better visualise whats going on. I totally hear you on getting builds ready for people, getting my prototype build up and submitted to iTunes connect was sheer madness.

Got feedback from my coworkers and friends that I sent the build to, and I've definitely got some stuff that needs to be changed. Mostly the inputs; the dash is fun to use but as I suspected I need to come up with a much better way of initialising slow motion and dashing.Trying to move your finger from the jump button to the character to swipe is way too difficult at the moment, so I have a couple of ideas on how to solve that and am hoping to get them a second build late this week with all of that updated.

Was really cool seeing my coworkers play the game in person though, when the controls weren't acting up they were genuinely having a good time trying to complete the prototypes levels and it was kind of fun seeing each of them trying different ways to get through each level, so that was a good motivator!

 

[achromicia]

If you're using Construct2 and Windows 10, be warned - after the Windows 10 Creators Update, Construct2 stopped being able to load files, or make new projects, without crashing on my system. I had to roll back pre-Creators Update just to get it working again, as reinstalling didn't help.

I had several other programs also stop working after the Creators Update, so rolling back was necessary anyway.

I just tested Construct 2 because of your post, I'm not having any issues so far.

 

[StrangeADT]

Unfortunately not, but can schedule the time on my own.
Will get harder from August forward. Next-gen gamer is coming!

Boy does it ever. Congrats!

 

[floatstarpx]

]

]

]

We're still working on with Bomber Crew! It's come a long way since I've last posted on here- the campaign is falling in to place, there are upgrades & additions for the bomber, etc..etc..

I've also dabbled with some ArduBoy programming- I put together a maze thing:

 

[missile]

You should briefly sit there, just so you could tell everyone you rubbed yourself against the spot that Jonathan Blow's buttocks would eventually touch. You'd be semi-famous!

lol

Boy does it ever. Congrats!

Thx a lot. Going to be a tough time.

... To answer a question from earlier regarding how the game plays, here's some copy I have prepared for just such a thing.

Man, this reminds me of Battle Isle! Cool. Will play it when its out!

... I remember seeing this, in fact I seem to recall the whole idea that you posted of it being a programmable computer of sorts. Always thought that was a wild idea. Pretty interested in seeing how the game would look now with all the new rendering tech you've implemented now. ...

The animation is a bit dated. I'm still developing and experimenting with
stylized looks for the outer projection. Not done with it yet.

A programmable computer is, usually, not a good idea, because who will program
a computer in a game? Such a game needs to be rather enticing (like 0x10c) to
convince people to start developing software for a game's in-game computer. So
I'm pretty clear about this. But it's not my intention to force gamers to
become a programmer before being able to play the game. xD The routines to
control the craft will be already implemented in firmware acting like a BIOS
controlling all the default devices installed in the craft. The idea behind the
board computer is to have a way to extend and customize the craft by adding
new devices to it. Each new device will come with a default set of methods to
control it. But the player is free to develop his own methods to extend /
customize its behavior. This lends to the story of the gamer being a
test-pilot at a research facility. The craft is a research project with you
being able to manipulate it. But there is no need to program or anything. You
can just experience what's already there. But perhaps later on you may get more
interested on the things behind and want to do some research of your own
improving or pimping your craft and may as such start to look around for
software on the net or do your own one.

... Oh boy, not sure how I would feel playing a game like this but in gif form I'm certainly down. ...

Na, was just for demonstration purpose. The shutter is open way too long.

What I'm after is having a touch of motion blur towards the edges of the
screen. So if you race down a tunnel or something the pixels near the edges of
the screen will move faster and will as such receive more motion blur while
the center of the screen stays clear.

What I try with the pixelized motion blur to achieve is to have this effect
without doing multi-sampling. For, if the blur is on the outer edges of the
screen with you focusing on its center it would be a waste of time computing
a truly soft motion blur, for you won't see it that much anyways. From a
distance the pixelized motion blur of mine looks soft, too. And if you look
away from the blur the eye will add an additional blur over it. So why wasting
precious cycles to render an effect you can't (more or less) fully resolve
anyways?

With a multi-sampling blur (averaging) much of the expensive computed
information gets wasted. The blurred image has only minor (low-frequency)
detail for the eye to resolve. For such a low detailed image we spent a lot
of computational time, for you have to compute the high detail versions first
and average them later on, basically. That's odd, but needs to be done if you
want to have it really smooth. Usually we spent more rendering time to get
more (high-frequency) detail out of the image and not the other way around,
i.e. getting less detail for more rendering time. I know that the blur adds
detail on it own (depth and motion) but the rendering time is staggering for
something which comes out as a giant blur. lol

Having thought about this problem many month ago, I came to the conclusion
that such effects only need to be resolved until the eye can't tell the
difference, basically. As such I've spend a good amount of time with human
vision and spatial integration of the eye and came up with a new technique of
computing such a pixelized defocusing blur (haven't seen anything like it
before) which is also fully 3d. The goal was to make it look good at very low
resolution making it then look good on any higher resolution all by itself
(almost). So on a 4K screen sitting at normal viewing distance you won't
likely be able to tell the difference between a truly soft defocus and my
pixelized one because at that distance the pixels are integrated together by
the eye. But the cool thing about my version is that it's an order of
magnitude faster to compute. However, there is a difference. The resolution
within the fully computed blur will be somewhat higher, but goes unnoticed for
the pixelized version for the most part. The resolution drop is actually where
the performance increase comes from. Why compute a full res blur when a tenth
of it suffices? So I can have these effects but won't waste that much cycles
on them, cycles I'm in desperate need at other places.

... Reminds me of when a you move the camera around in Keyshot and don't let the render fully resolve. ...

Don't now about Keyshot but I had a look by now. Looks like a pretty cool tool
going by all the effects and features it offers. Not bad! But man, the way
they resolve the image is so ugly. It seems they start with a low resolution
and use a pattern with random samples in it producing artifacts all over the
place. The tools is so feature rich but the most important part, rendering the
image to give quick feedback, is lacking behind. It takes more than halve the
rendering time before the partially resolved image make any sense. It also
shutters a lot while rendering, i.e. when the resolution jumps up.

They should buy my current solution I'm working on for a while now, for I can
resolve the image in a very smooth fashion without any artifacts and with the
first couple of partially resolved images already usable for the artist to
interpret the scene such that you can move on quicker. This would also lead to
a better realtime previewer allowing to adapt the resolution with respect to
the current frame budget in a continuous fashion. Personally, I want to use it
to do some dynamic resolution scaling for my game (when the load suddenly
increases ) but don't know yet if it really pays off. Will see.

 

[Yoshi]

I've been playing Yooka-Laylee today (which is great!) but I thought it'd be interesting to take a quick peek at its Unity distribution. It's a pretty good example of a "well performing" Unity game (well, for me at least) so I thought I'd pop the hood a bit.

Not only is it a good example of a fairly well-optimized PC game, but it's also a good example of using the Asset Store in a smart way. Without decompiling too much, I can see that Yooka-Laylee uses:

• DOTween
• Probuilder
• Rewired
• NodeCanvas

Additionally, it uses some Unity-developed stuff like:

• Cinematic Image Effects
• Image Effects (the old ones)
• Standard Assets Water
• Unity UI (UGUI)

It also looks like it interfaces directly with Wwise, which is somewhat unusual. There's also some UnityScript stuff in there, which I thought was a bit odd. I didn't see it referenced anywhere else, so it might just be prototyping stuff or third-party asset scripts that weren't removed from the final build. As far as I can tell, the game uses C# for pretty much everything (as it should be).

I didn't go in too deep, but I thought what I found was kind of cool. It still feels kind of...wrong to take a peek at other people's compiled code (especially for a game that I'm actively playing and enjoying), but what I found serves as a neat example, I think. It shows that even "real" studios/developers make use of the Asset Store, although they're obviously more picky about what they use.

I think this is not too surprising, rebuuilding what has already been done before hardly seems economically clever, I'd guess even AAA studios will do this. I'm surprised that Unity games can be so easily decompiled to reveal such information.

 

[Dynamite Shikoku]

I've been playing Yooka-Laylee today (which is great!) but I thought it'd be interesting to take a quick peek at its Unity distribution. It's a pretty good example of a "well performing" Unity game (well, for me at least) so I thought I'd pop the hood a bit.

Not only is it a good example of a fairly well-optimized PC game, but it's also a good example of using the Asset Store in a smart way. Without decompiling too much, I can see that Yooka-Laylee uses:

• DOTween
• Probuilder
• Rewired
• NodeCanvas

Additionally, it uses some Unity-developed stuff like:

• Cinematic Image Effects
• Image Effects (the old ones)
• Standard Assets Water
• Unity UI (UGUI)

It also looks like it interfaces directly with Wwise, which is somewhat unusual. There's also some UnityScript stuff in there, which I thought was a bit odd. I didn't see it referenced anywhere else, so it might just be prototyping stuff or third-party asset scripts that weren't removed from the final build. As far as I can tell, the game uses C# for pretty much everything (as it should be).

I didn't go in too deep, but I thought what I found was kind of cool. It still feels kind of...wrong to take a peek at other people's compiled code (especially for a game that I'm actively playing and enjoying), but what I found serves as a neat example, I think. It shows that even "real" studios/developers make use of the Asset Store, although they're obviously more picky about what they use.

Interesting. Dotween is great

 

[missile]

We're still working on with Bomber Crew! It's come a long way since I've last posted on here- the campaign is falling in to place, there are upgrades & additions for the bomber, etc..etc..

I've also dabbled with some ArduBoy programming- I put together a maze thing:

+1

I think this is not too surprising, rebuuilding what has already been done before hardly seems economically clever, I'd guess even AAA studios will do this. I'm surprised that Unity games can be so easily decompiled to reveal such information.

What I'm wondering is how good the shaders can be ripped in Unity?

Interesting. Dotween is great

How are things, man?

 

[Blizzard]

What I'm wondering is how good the shaders can be ripped in Unity?

Is that even legal? I guess even decompiling in general may be illegal by some licenses, though.

 

[missile]

Is that even legal? I guess even decompiling in general may be illegal by some licenses, though.

I think the shaders aren't even compiled, gets compiled when used to optimize
for the given hardware, no? I'm wondering if it's possible to use shaders in
binary form with Unity?

 

[_Rob_]

On that note, do Playtonic credit the Asset creators? I mean I don't think you legally have to, right?

 

[Dynamite Shikoku]

+1


What I'm wondering is how good the shaders can be ripped in Unity?



How are things, man?

I'm good, mate. Got two little ones these days to deal with but working on something little by little in my free time. How's your work?

 

[DarthMasta]

I think this is not too surprising, rebuuilding what has already been done before hardly seems economically clever, I'd guess even AAA studios will do this. I'm surprised that Unity games can be so easily decompiled to reveal such information.

C# is "easy" to decompile, C is less so, but can still be done. There are tools to make it harder, but I don't think they make it impossible, just really hard on the person trying to make sense of it...

IMO, I don't think it matters, I think the industry needs more "copying" of the good stuff that's come before and less reinventing wheels...

 

[Yoshi]

Is that even legal? I guess even decompiling in general may be illegal by some licenses, though.

This largely depends on the individual law in your country. Even if it goes against the license text, it need not be illegal in your country and may not be a legally binding part of a license agreement. Of course, as soon as you use the source code for anything, this will quickly change.

 

[HelloMeow]

I think the shaders aren't even compiled, gets compiled when used to optimize
for the given hardware, no? I'm wondering if it's possible to use shaders in
binary form with Unity?

I think they are. They're compiled for the target platforms when the project is built.

 

[Minamu]

Thanks guys Now, I don't think it was meant as an actual *offer*, it's probably more of a "hey, if you're interested, we could do an interview about it". But it's a very positive response, my reference had given me a glowing review so I'm happy either way. If only I wasn't so unsure of myself and my very tiny programming experience. I wouldn't dream of actually applying for a full-time programming position anywhere :/

Regardless, it's career progress in the end though, that's how I view it

Alas, nothing came of it :/ I was honest about my programmig skill level and they lost interest immediately. Had applied to a level design position too but their top manager said no to that too (I assume, the enail didn't specify what they turned me down for). Oh well. I really need to get into Skyrim modding asap.

 

[_Rob_]

Then we're probably sol as well. Our game is called holy sheep and there are several mobile games and non-commercial student projects with the same name, although they're in wildly different genres and artstyles etc.

We've tried coming up with a name equal in "wit" but we've come up short so far :/

Riffing on the religion meets sheep aesthetic, have you considered:

Sheepus Christ
The Woolly Ghost
Holy Flock
The Holy Lamb

Also, if religion isn't important and you just need a pun title:

Ewe Gotta Be Kidding
Lambpoon
Seen And Not Herd
Thank Flock
Lamb Theft Auto

 

[Makai]

What the Flock

 

[shysaursoft]

I just tested Construct 2 because of your post, I'm not having any issues so far.

I'm glad you're not having issues. Unfortunately for me, several programs stopped working after the update, so I had to roll back.

Was probably not smart to update right before releasing a game anyway. Dev machines should be stable, derp.

 

[missile]

I'm good, mate. Got two little ones these days to deal with but working on something little by little in my free time. How's your work?

Good to hear you're alright!
Will join the club soon. Work is more than good (up until now ).

I think they are. They're compiled for the target platforms when the project is built.

Yet the graphics driver may compile them on their own to enhance for the
hardware installed, no? So is there an option in Unity to let the shaders
compile when the game loads up?

Alas, nothing came of it :/ I was honest about my programmig skill level and they lost interest immediately. Had applied to a level design position too but their top manager said no to that too (I assume, the enail didn't specify what they turned me down for). Oh well. I really need to get into Skyrim modding asap.

Chin up!
What's up with the Skyrim mods, to apply for a design position?

 

[Minamu]

Riffing on the religion meets sheep aesthetic, have you considered:

Also, if religion isn't important and you just need a pun title:

What the Flock

:lol You guys are killing me xD Those are excellent, hahaha.

Chin up!
What's up with the Skyrim mods, to apply for a design position?

Yeah it's alright, I'm getting used to it :') As for Skyrim, I might be very LTTP on that one, but I figure it would be a nice way to create some original content beyond white boxing levels. It's mainly for portfolio purposes of course. I'm getting closer and closer to actually landing a job, I'm getting more opportunities than before, buuut I'm not quite there apparently. More finished content in my portfolio might do it (and it sounds like fun).

Edit: Not that I think my portfolio is lacking, I only have finished projects to show, all of them team-based. But I'm somehow not experienced enough or "hireable".

 

[electroflame]

I think this is not too surprising, rebuuilding what has already been done before hardly seems economically clever, I'd guess even AAA studios will do this. I'm surprised that Unity games can be so easily decompiled to reveal such information.

You'd be surprised how many advocates there are for "never use third-party asset/plugins, always write your own code". I agree to a certain extent, but battle-tested things like DOTween, Probuilder or Rewired should absolutely be considered over writing your own solutions, especially in terms of time = money.

Interesting. Dotween is great

Indeed! DOTween is really handy. I'm also a huge fan of Rewired.

On that note, do Playtonic credit the Asset creators? I mean I don't think you legally have to, right?

I haven't gotten to the credits yet, but I doubt it. It's not required under the Asset Store EULA (basically, once you buy an asset you can do pretty much whatever you want with it, without credit). Some assets have their own terms, but that's very rare. The assets I listed earlier don't have any kind of special license like that, so Playtonic wasn't obligated to credit them.

 

[missile]

... Edit: Not that I think my portfolio is lacking, I only have finished projects to show, all of them team-based. But I'm somehow not experienced enough or "hireable".

Would you say that having a couple of projects fully done by yourself
would have made any difference?

What about moving abroad or something? I've heard that BigPoint from Germany
is, well, always looking for people. Their small games are spread all over the
place. Given the diversity of their games they may have interest in all kind
of people relating to gamedev. See; http://www.bigpoint.com/ (games)
and http://www.bigpoint.net/ (company).

 

[Hulohot]

So I've been making a small game in RPG maker just for fun.

For anyone who is British, it is inspired by the BBC 1990's sitcom Bottom, and is dedicated Rik Mayall who passed away in 2014, and still breaks my heart thinking about it.

Working title is The Drunk Odyssey.

A comedy, that takes the piss out of itself, its characters and myself as a developer. Is crass, vulgar and offensive set in a struggling, violent world that needs a hero, but is instead subjected to these two selfish b@stards.

The two characters are similar to Richie and Eddie from Bottom. I haven't decided names yet so for now The player character is Eddie who has locked himself away in his room for six weeks and has made an RPG game. One day Eddie emerges from his room, and decides to celebrate finishing the first area with an all night bender in Brighton with his friend Richie.

They both get so drunk that they somehow end up inside the RPG Eddie has created, a world suffering civil war and famine and alcohol ban and decide the only way to escape is to get so blind drunk again that they cycle back to being sober and escape.

Eddie, the playable character and developer of this RPG they are stuck in is sort of a narrator for myself as the developer. The game advances and changes as I myself learn what I'm doing.

Initially Richie is dressed ridiculously and feminine much to his displeasure, and cannot move from his spot because I don't know how to make a sprite move yet, allowing jokes at his expense where changing map area spawns him in unfortunate and ridiculous places.

Eventually I want to figure out combat so the two friends can battle each other after arguments, with some romancing with the gorgeous birds that inhabit the world.

The world will be serious in tone, allowing for the two leads to not-give-a-shit their way through in their quest for illegal booze and women, abusing each other along the way.

So far I have about 20 minutes of "gameplay" (the lack of gameplay being a running joke between the two leads) Which is mostly consistent of wandering a few maps and talking ,making dialog choices.

I have a few treasure chests with tease items like Greatsword of Manliness which cannot be picked up because I/Eddie doesn't know how to make that happen yet

It's a big learning curve for me, and I'm using that as a basis for the jokes and having the characters play off of that and I hope that the game can evolve to have just a bit more interactivity than just dialogue choices.

 

[MrHoot]

Been a while since I posted here ! Mostly been busy laying some groundwork ! And right now working on a lot of rooms, so here's a sneaky peak

 

[shysaursoft]

With Rex done and just needing the final bit of music, I thought I'd try and get the music to crossfade nicely.

Two hours later, things were spiraling out of control, sound and music were glitching, overplaying, popping/crackling - it was a mess. I got so anxious, I ended up just deleting the entire project and restoring it from yesterdays backup.

Had to remove in-game volume adjustment and muting anyway, since Construct2's audio engine seems very unreliable with regards to adjusting sound effect volumes on the fly. If you adjust the db vol of sound effects via their tags, they become weird, with popping/crackling.

 

[Minamu]

Would you say that having a couple of projects fully done by yourself
would have made any difference?

What about moving abroad or something? I've heard that BigPoint from Germany
is, well, always looking for people. Their small games are spread all over the
place. Given the diversity of their games they may have interest in all kind
of people relating to gamedev. See; http://www.bigpoint.com/ (games)
and http://www.bigpoint.net/ (company).

Maybe, I think so, yeah. When I say Skyrim modding, I of course mean original quests and locales, not creating over-powered special weapons and items A complete Skyrm quest of high quality could prove that I have what it takes to take a concept from idea to completion, and have something beyond white boxes to show for it. And it sounds like a lot of fun to create something like that as well (it better, it's the kind of stuff I want to have a career in :lol). Having a portfolio full with team-based stuff is all well, but it's hard to precisely point out what MY part in the team has been. What I mainly think is in Skyrim's (and other moddable games) is that you get a lot of free art assets to play around with without the need for an artist and you can script your own events to create something unique, with practically all areas of game development involved. I don't know for sure that the lack of fancy graphics is the problem with my portfolio, I have a fair balance of that sort of thing. But I figure it couldn't hurt, and it could more easily prove that I can follow through and make something more "shippable", you know?

I haven't heard of that German company, I'll check it out for sure. Moving abroad is not an issue at all, that would be excellent tbh.

 

[Izuna]

So, that mobile game I was making is almost finished (finally got the rest of the art) ~~

the music has been submitted to the main stores, so I'm on a timer to get this out of final test by next week

what's gaf etiquette for sharing our work?

 

[Professor Lich]

Been making more progress on the next dungeon track / theme for our game, and I'm feeling good about how things are turning out. Sadly, we've had to cut back on some areas, but I'm working hard to make sure what we've got is pretty diverse.

Sand Dunes Area

Mangroves Area

Very early WIP of a sea caves area

Still got quite a bit to get done before our next update that's coming out next week, oof.

what's gaf etiquette for sharing our work?

I think sharing anything within this thread is fine. I've talked about our games Early Access release and I've seen other posts mention theirs here as well.
When it comes to GAF proper, it's listed in the ToS;

E. Self-Promotion and Spam

Do not create new threads promoting a product or service you have any involvement in, or paste PR materials for promotional purposes, or attempt to embed referral links in your posts to generate revenue. If an existing discussion is taking place directly involving something you are associated with, you may participate in order to answer questions, clarify details, and otherwise engage with the community, but as a person, not an advertisement.

 

[Izuna]

Can't wait for this simple game to be done.

This music should be on iTunes/Spotify etc .in a week

 

[missile]

Maybe, I think so, yeah. When I say Skyrim modding, I of course mean original quests and locales, not creating over-powered special weapons and items A complete Skyrm quest of high quality could prove that I have what it takes to take a concept from idea to completion, and have something beyond white boxes to show for it. And it sounds like a lot of fun to create something like that as well (it better, it's the kind of stuff I want to have a career in :lol). Having a portfolio full with team-based stuff is all well, but it's hard to precisely point out what MY part in the team has been. What I mainly think is in Skyrim's (and other moddable games) is that you get a lot of free art assets to play around with without the need for an artist and you can script your own events to create something unique, with practically all areas of game development involved. I don't know for sure that the lack of fancy graphics is the problem with my portfolio, I have a fair balance of that sort of thing. But I figure it couldn't hurt, and it could more easily prove that I can follow through and make something more "shippable", you know? ...

I also think that it is a bit difficult to find out what's your work and
what's not from many of the team-based projects. That team-based stuff proves
that your are able to work in a collaborative environment, nice, but not so
much about your individual skills unless you can say for example that you did
all the art-work for all these projects or similar. Programming-wise it's not
any easier, because you can easily click stuff together these days and say you
have programmed it all the way down. I don't know. I'm a more of a fan of less
is more in the sense that you may have just a few projects but can say that
what's seen there is actually all your work for the most part. I argue that
this is easier for any employer to find out about you seeing whether you fit
the job or not, which also makes it easier for you to find one with respect to
your skills.

... I haven't heard of that German company, I'll check it out for sure. Moving abroad is not an issue at all, that would be excellent tbh.

They are rather big in Germany and do many different games on many different
platforms.

 

[DemonNite]

Maybe, I think so, yeah. When I say Skyrim modding, I of course mean original quests and locales, not creating over-powered special weapons and items A complete Skyrm quest of high quality could prove that I have what it takes to take a concept from idea to completion, and have something beyond white boxes to show for it. And it sounds like a lot of fun to create something like that as well (it better, it's the kind of stuff I want to have a career in :lol). Having a portfolio full with team-based stuff is all well, but it's hard to precisely point out what MY part in the team has been. What I mainly think is in Skyrim's (and other moddable games) is that you get a lot of free art assets to play around with without the need for an artist and you can script your own events to create something unique, with practically all areas of game development involved. I don't know for sure that the lack of fancy graphics is the problem with my portfolio, I have a fair balance of that sort of thing. But I figure it couldn't hurt, and it could more easily prove that I can follow through and make something more "shippable", you know?

Are you looking to be a game designer? if so, don't worry too much on the art (even programming) side of things as they will not be hiring you for that. Can you make primitives? use shapes, boxes, continue to white box it.

Specialise in a particular area of design e.g. UI/UX, Technical, Level Design, Gameplay, Narrative etc... Also, clear documentation is important as a designer.

Sure, it will not hurt to make Skyrim mods but don't let that stop you from doing "more" than that in other game making tools to show more flexibility.

 

[missile]

For some odd reason (I have no idea about at the moment) my pixelized defocus
won't work together with the implementation of my new pixelized motion blur.
There are these strange oscillations when the focus or the camera moves;

Damn! I hope I get that working, for I really don't want to have one while
ruling out the other. Seems to break the whole thing if true.

 

[mStudios]

Does anyone knows how to use this "technique" in softwares like maya/3ds max?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZaZt5BfW74

I dowloaded the app in the video, but its kinda janky.

 

[Pehesse]

I'd think of something fun to say but I think my enthusiasm was drained somewhere between frames 600 and 700 (I'm kidding, I have no idea where I am anymore)

At this point I'm basically holding off cleaning the combat moves, but I'll have to face them at some point

Somebody hold me

 

[Makai]

Does anyone knows how to use this "technique" in softwares like maya/3ds max?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZaZt5BfW74

I dowloaded the app in the video, but its kinda janky.

Probably the closest you'll get is make the model from similar-sized triangles and squares, then set the UVs

 

[Minamu]

I also think that it is a bit difficult to find out what's your work and
what's not from many of the team-based projects. That team-based stuff proves
that your are able to work in a collaborative environment, nice, but not so
much about your individual skills unless you can say for example that you did
all the art-work for all these projects or similar. Programming-wise it's not
any easier, because you can easily click stuff together these days and say you
have programmed it all the way down. I don't know. I'm a more of a fan of less
is more in the sense that you may have just a few projects but can say that
what's seen there is actually all your work for the most part. I argue that
this is easier for any employer to find out about you seeing whether you fit
the job or not, which also makes it easier for you to find one with respect to
your skills.

Yeah my portfolio site and its projects is pretty skewed towards team content (in fact, everything is team content), but I've taken steps to provide clear bullet points as to what my responsibilities have been. As a designer mainly, it's usually stuff like playtesting, balancing of gameplay functionality etc. Not super easy to show beyond someone actually playing the games I suppose. Seems like we're on the same page then. I want to add some stand-alone designer based projects to more easily show what *I* can do. And to prove that hiring me as a level designer primarily would pay off. I get the feeling that my skill level is too low/doesn't show through, based on the number of "lack of experience" rejections I get.

Are you looking to be a game designer? if so, don't worry too much on the art (even programming) side of things as they will not be hiring you for that. Can you make primitives? use shapes, boxes, continue to white box it.

Specialise in a particular area of design e.g. UI/UX, Technical, Level Design, Gameplay, Narrative etc... Also, clear documentation is important as a designer.

Sure, it will not hurt to make Skyrim mods but don't let that stop you from doing "more" than that in other game making tools to show more flexibility.

Yeah I've been focusing on the design aspects for sure. A game should be fun to play and be well-designed regardless of how it looks, yeah? What I enjoy as a designer is tinkering with damage values and other variables to make the game cohesive. Level design and world creation is the end-goal for me, as that's the most enjoyable part. Gameplay and UI/UX are also top priorities for me. I've been in charge of the UI/UX concepts in most projects, though others tend to implement it.

As for games modding, and Skyrim in particular, my reasoning is that it's basically a complete game product in a very condensed format, as you'd need to script events, create NPCs, items, dungeons, AI patterns, audio etc. I have about 10 team projects in my portfolio, ranging from 2 to 15 people (of which I've usually been the manager, among other hats), so something smaller on my own would be a nice change of pace Is something like that what you mean by doing "more" in other tools?

 

[DemonNite]

Yeah I've been focusing on the design aspects for sure. A game should be fun to play and be well-designed regardless of how it looks, yeah? What I enjoy as a designer is tinkering with damage values and other variables to make the game cohesive. Level design and world creation is the end-goal for me, as that's the most enjoyable part. Gameplay and UI/UX are also top priorities for me. I've been in charge of the UI/UX concepts in most projects, though others tend to implement it.

White/Gray boxing is good for that no art required.

As for games modding, and Skyrim in particular, my reasoning is that it's basically a complete game product in a very condensed format, as you'd need to script events, create NPCs, items, dungeons, AI patterns, audio etc. I have about 10 team projects in my portfolio, ranging from 2 to 15 people (of which I've usually been the manager, among other hats), so something smaller on my own would be a nice change of pace Is something like that what you mean by doing "more" in other tools?

Not exactly what I meant as what you will end up with from what you described above is still something inside Skyrim Ideally, your portfolio should show how flexible you are by the range of different genres you can design for. Also, showing companies out there that you have experience in at least one of the free to use Engines is highly sought after.

As I previously said, there is no harm in doing advanced mods in Skyrim. Just don't let go of all the other engines/options you have thinking that the lack of art is a problem. Its not

 

[CertifiedFP]

Well, finally finished the AI for REDFOXES. Maybe just need some minor adjustments here and there and improvements and polish to existing behavior in the future, but that is one major hurdle out of the way for me. Now I can finally go all in on creating the player's toolset.

Going to refrain from videos and GIFs for the time however until I'm ready for an 'official' reveal of REDFOXES. Think I'd rather make a big splash with something that'll grab people's attentions than going with a slow drip of showing off every little new thing I add to the current prototype. I should say I'm very impressed with the assets my artist has been producing - Her art should be quite the eye-catcher when I'm ready for a proper unveiling.

 

[Minamu]

White/Gray boxing is good for that no art required.

Not exactly what I meant as what you will end up with from what you described above is still something inside Skyrim Ideally, your portfolio should show how flexible you are by the range of different genres you can design for. Also, showing companies out there that you have experience in at least one of the free to use Engines is highly sought after.

As I previously said, there is no harm in doing advanced mods in Skyrim. Just don't let go of all the other engines/options you have thinking that the lack of art is a problem. Its not

Ah, then I follow you I have no intention of giving up on Unity and Unreal, though I might need a new pc for the latter. I do plenty of game jams as well when the opportunity arises. Last year's global game jam is still going strong for myself and my team. Iirc, Epic released the art assets for their mobile fantasy game a while back, I could probably do some cool stuff with that too I just hope that these projects count as experience some day, it doesn't seem like it so far

Spoiler

or my four year university education in game design would be a magnificent waste :lol

 

[LordKasual]

Can't remember if i asked here...but what do people feel about blood and gore?

I'm still torn on this, because I originally intended for the game to feature special kill animations (dismemberment) if an enemy is overkilled (think Megaman Zero series). But many of the enemies actually bleed, which sounds like an easy way to alienate an age group from the game. Anyone have experience on how indie games handle this when it comes to ratings? Or maybe i should just chicken out and only include the feature when the enemy is mechanical?

ANYWAY, i'm on a development high right now, which hasn't happened for a long time:

I've created a simple subset of these soldiers that can now cast supportive magic, and the enemies are finally starting to feel formidable to fight in groups. Their AI is identical to the regular ones, except for the few exceptions regarding when to use magic. (forgive the ugly recolor effect). They currently they have a high chance to retreat around 50% hp and heal themselves, but they'll automatically use it if they have enough distance between you. The leader units have a stronger AoE healing, meaning that if you aren't fighting them, they can heal the entire field. I intended for the regular ones to be able to heal themselves too, but they currently can't, and at this point i'm wondering if i should even allow them to in regular encounters. Maybe i'll give them low mana pools to compensate.

The leaders also exclusively have buff magic, that they will prioritize casting anytime they aren't under its effects and have enough distance between you. It's also AoE, and makes all the enemies hit much harder than usual, pretty much making them priority #1.

------

The reason i'm so happy right now is because I haven't even implemented a way for them to check the status of their comrades before using it, and already throwing one support-capable enemy into a group drastically increases the difficulty of an encounter. They only operate under self-preservation, but it makes all of them more difficult to fight. This is what I was aiming for (without the enemies feeling obnoxious or cheap) and it's feeling good.

Things are still a bit buggy, and a few mechanics are still half implemented, but i'm thinking of passing out a short test room with a few enemy groups to see how people gauge the mechanics/difficulty and see if they can clear it.

 

[Minamu]

As a gamer and dev, my stand so far has been that I play enough violent and bloody games in my spare time that I see no reason to create more of them personally. I got nothing against them though

 

[shysaursoft]

But many of the enemies actually bleed, which sounds like an easy way to alienate an age group from the game.

My stance is, you gotta make the game you want to play. There's no way to make a game for everyone, and if you try, you'll make a game for no-one. If you're honest with what you want to make, and personally enjoy it, then perhaps others will too, and they'll appreciate the game far more than someone who plays it because it homogenized itself for the sake of their approval. Perhaps it won't get that all-important 10 to 16 year old market, but who's aiming for demographics anyway?

But in all seriousness, if the blood or gore bothers you, then perhaps make a version without, or a toggle, and see how you feel playing one, then the other, after taking a bit of time in-between. Sometimes this kind of thing boils down to a last-minute decision, where you're just about to release and go 'eh, I prefer it this way'.

 

[LordKasual]

As a gamer and dev, my stand so far has been that I play enough violent and bloody games in my spare time that I see no reason to create more of them personally. I got nothing against them though

The thing is, i'm not actually aiming for "bloody" or "gory" at all. I just think it's appropriate to the story, but not solely because it's bloody. If that makes sense. The best example I can think of is...the lightsabers in Star Wars games. Older games used to be big on dismembering/bisecting enemies, but this was more about correctly conveying the feeling of using a lightsaber than anything. The newer games don't really do this, it's more about flashy combos than anything, so it barely feels like you're actually wielding what the game says you are.

For me it's just about conveying a sense of gravity to the magic and combat i guess

My stance is, you gotta make the game you want to play. There's no way to make a game for everyone, and if you try, you'll make a game for no-one. If you're honest with what you want to make, and personally enjoy it, then perhaps others will too, and they'll appreciate the game far more than someone who plays it because it homogenized itself for the sake of their approval. Perhaps it won't get that all-important 10 to 16 year old market, but who's aiming for demographics anyway?

But in all seriousness, if the blood or gore bothers you, then perhaps make a version without, or a toggle, and see how you feel playing one, then the other, after taking a bit of time in-between. Sometimes this kind of thing boils down to a last-minute decision, where you're just about to release and go 'eh, I prefer it this way'.

Yeah...I guess i'm starting to learn that. My development speed has picked up significantly after just letting some things go...like just accepting my habit of mixing pixel and gradient visual effects. Something i figure purists will take issue with. But my own artistic limits aside...it's just more my style, so i'll just keep at it and hope people enjoy it. I'm the kind of person who's against toggles, but you're right it'll probably end up being something I implement towards the end anyway.

Thanks for the input guys

 

[Popstar]

.

If anyone bought the Articy Draft 2 deal on Bundle Stars (and if you didn't it's $5 for the next 20 hours https://www.bundlestars.com/en/game/articy-draft-2-se) the commercial use upgrade is now available on Bundle Stars for $3 for the next two weeks. https://www.bundlestars.com/en/dlc/articy-draft-2-se-commercial-use-upgrade-dlc

 

[missile]

My stance is, you gotta make the game you want to play. There's no way to make a game for everyone, and if you try, you'll make a game for no-one. If you're honest with what you want to make, and personally enjoy it, then perhaps others will too, and they'll appreciate the game far more than someone who plays it because it homogenized itself for the sake of their approval. Perhaps it won't get that all-important 10 to 16 year old market, but who's aiming for demographics anyway? ...

Should be put in the OP.



Pretty close solving that oscillation problem from last time. I think I now
know where it comes from and how to counter it.

While working on that problem I optimized the pixelization patterns a lil
further leading to some overall finer shades;

old

new

Needs a lil more work, for it's a bit uneven. However, there is less
clustering in the new image making the shades look softer, no?

 

[Yoshi]

I would say yes, the new one also looks more pleasing.

 

[Fahzgoolin]

Been working my ass off recently. Glad to have a few beers tonight

Here's a couple of gifs to show this weeks work.

Edit: I should probably dial back on the trails in the next gif.

This looks genuinely amazing. I want to play this game.

You using Unity?