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[2+2=5]

The difference between what you did and what you referenced, as far as I understand, is in the linework. This is not a simple outlining work: the linework needs to convey depth and volume through varying thickness, and there are also black masses to contrast the flat colors to have a minimal level of lighting information. Flat unicolor can work, but you need to work on the linework extensively for it to work - it'd need to work as a B&W picture, almost.
You could try adding some black to hint at general volume/object connections (ground to object) and light indication (for instance, on top of the tree trunks/below the foliage to show simple shadowing). Working on the linework will be harder if you're not using a drawing pad/tablet, but that's probably what you'll need to use for single flat colors.
If you go with two shades with more regular (dare I say digital) linework, that's the more usual treatment, and it'll be a technique closer to cel-shading, so maybe research more in that direction to get that effect?
In either case, the one thing you'll need to make clear is lighting, as that's the big part that'll show volume through limited color! In your example the lighting is a bit too plain (coming from the overall top, but not overly defined). I'd suggest going for an angled lighting to have larger and displaced casting shadows. That's what I do for Honey anyway, as I do two-shading only as well!

The problem is the linework (also if you are going to emulate that style, body shapes and faces are also important to be similar).
IMO it would be better to do it drwaing it instead of pixelart, I think it would look much better.
Also look at Kennedy's suit and and super man's shoulder and head type of linework shadowing. That needs to be present if you want to do that type of art, its a lot more difficult to reperesnt that type of shadowing with pixelart, as there are going to be lots of interior lines. Look like he uses base colors and uses the linework for shadowing. I already see in your trees and rocks too colors (1 for light, and one for shadow) that is not repredented in the image you showed.

EDIT just re read and saw you already knew that about the shadowing outlines not being ossible with pixels. As I said, if you can do it, it would be pretty cool that your game emulates exactly the comic style you want to go for. ANd depending of how you want to animate your game it can be easier or harder. Frr me, scenearios would be much easier doing it in that style than with big pixelart.

Thanks for the suggestions

Damn i was writing my answer when i realized that i sacrificed the art style for the sake of other things(for example for an easy shadow management i decided for that light and little shadows), but now i understand that i was stupid.

About the graphics style itself, i tried to use black to make shadows and volumes, but on a less than 128 pixel tall sprite of a human the result was not good because it loses too many details, that's why i decided for two shades for everything relegating black only to outline and details.

Now i'm undecided, for story screens i will use the comic book look for sure, for the game i don't know, for big elements like trees i can do it, but for small sprites...
I need to think about it.

Thanks, but someone from the Italian GAF thread had already translated the text. Sorry.

Everything is translated, thank you all for your help!

Wait there's an Italian gaf thread?!?!?! :O

 

[Delstius]

That looks fantastic, visually! Getting a Terraria vibe from it

Bah, I think it looks much more charming than Terraria! ♥

Very nice, I look forward to your updates (I'm using GameMaker too).

Glad you like it, I'll try to lurk less and update whenever I make some significant progress.

The crunch is almost over! So exhausted from the past week. We're just now polishing up Beacon for Thursday when we exhibit, but here's some shots from the most recent version of our demo!

I'm really pleased with how the game is looking at these early stages, we have a long road ahead in terms of making the gameplay tight and super fun, but it's been a rewarding experience for sure so far.

Added bonus, new illustration by Tay for one of our Occult enemies!

I love the clean artstyle of the environment, those red thorns crystal things are kind of mesmerizing.

 

[SpacePirate Ridley]

Thanks for the suggestions

Damn i was writing my answer when i realized that i sacrificed the art style for the sake of other things(for example for an easy shadow management i decided for that light and little shadows), but now i understand that i was stupid.

About the graphics style itself, i tried to use black to make shadows and volumes, but on a less than 128 pixel tall sprite of a human the result was not good because it loses too many details, that's why i decided for two shades for everything relegating black only to outline and details.

Now i'm undecided, for story screens i will use the comic book look for sure, for the game i don't know, for big elements like trees i can do it, but for small sprites...
I need to think about it.

Are you more comfortable using pixelart or drawing normally? If drawing normally is more your style and you are comfortable with it, maybe revamping the whole game art to be handrawn instead of pixel art would be the way to go. That way you wouldn't have any problem with the sizes of the sprites when you want to do shadowing details.

The crunch is almost over! So exhausted from the past week. We're just now polishing up Beacon for Thursday when we exhibit, but here's some shots from the most recent version of our demo!



I'm really pleased with how the game is looking at these early stages, we have a long road ahead in terms of making the gameplay tight and super fun, but it's been a rewarding experience for sure so far.

Added bonus, new illustration by Tay for one of our Occult enemies!

The art of this game looks out of this world, and the illustration is simply amazing.

 

[Mr. Virus]

Finally allowed to say that Monstrum will be at EGX Rezzed this week! Anyone else showing stuff there?

http://www.egx.net/rezzed

 

[Baron_Calamity]

Are there any tools for writing?

I am finding as my worlds get bigger, keeping track of characters, locations, and general world details, on individual word documents is getting very cumbersome. I haven't even really started on the dialog yet.

 

[Teknopathetic]

"Are there any tools for writing?

I am finding as my worlds get bigger, keeping track of characters, locations, and general world details, on individual word documents is getting very cumbersome. I haven't even really started on the dialog yet."


I believe Articy:draft is designed for this. Either that or using something like Visio.

 

[Vanguard]

Well, I did write a long-ish post on various problems I had and going on about how I was trying to fix them, then I remembered that I can turn static batching off in unity. Fixed!

Long story semi-short, I'm no artist and had an idea in my head for what I wanted the walls to look like , so they're generated via a script. Problem is static batching had a field day with them and bloated the level file size quite considerably, and that was just a small test level meaning anything made later would be huge (very high triple digit MB, if not GB per level). I did make them non-static but then that causes the GI stuff to not work as well. So yeah, pretty happy with the results now anyway in my little test area!



Hopefully I can get round to showing more of it at some point in the future, once it's fixed and the AI knows how to well, walk and shoot again. It's an action rpg / roguelite-y, thing btw...

 

[donut]

Sup. I'm making a stupid game about a cube destroying stuff

 

[Candescence]

Sadly, no screens right now, but I'm working on figuring out how to get RAIN working properly with mecanim, so I can get some basic test AI going to at least get a basic test enemy going to, well, test the combat mechanics, as I need something that the player can shoot at and also shoot back. While I will have to inevitably figure out how exactly the RAIN logic works, that shouldn't be too hard, since I just want an enemy that patrols, shoots at the player when they spot them, and then lose interest if they don't see them for a while.

Shame those Sentio characters don't really fit with my game (and I'm strapped for cash as it is), because they're quite impressive. Really, RAIN in general is a marvel, and for free, too, you can't get that kind of full-package AI solution for UE4.

 

[Dascu]

http://kotaku.com/malebolgia-combines-dark-souls-with-a-stylish-horror-fl-1690332686?

Super

 

[Jocchan]

http://kotaku.com/malebolgia-combines-dark-souls-with-a-stylish-horror-fl-1690332686?

Super

Hyper.

 

[Labadal]

http://kotaku.com/malebolgia-combines-dark-souls-with-a-stylish-horror-fl-1690332686?

Super

Just tell me when this is done so I can start playing.

 

[Jacksinthe]

http://kotaku.com/malebolgia-combines-dark-souls-with-a-stylish-horror-fl-1690332686?

Super

Lawd.

 

[jimmythepage]

Today we started implementing destructible props (and we may need to fix the weight of them)

And also updated our greenlight page with the art of two playable characters for our roguelike.

 

[timetokill]

http://kotaku.com/malebolgia-combines-dark-souls-with-a-stylish-horror-fl-1690332686?

Super

64

 

[Five]

I'm animating the first boss fight in my game right now. It's one of the more nuanced character designs I've made so far, so I'm pretty happy with how it's turning out already.

 

[Dynamite Shikoku]

Nice one

 

[Mr. Virus]

http://kotaku.com/malebolgia-combines-dark-souls-with-a-stylish-horror-fl-1690332686?

Super

Really nice write up there, nice one !

 

[fengshuifever]

Man, the new artist has been a dream so far and tomorrow I'll be getting final designs for my main characters tomorrow morning.

Now I just need to resume productive mode and figure out how the hell to store note charts. (._. )

 

[eot]

I just found out that Noogy made the animated intro to Jazz Jackrabbit 2.
What!? That is so weird and random.

 

[Ashodin]

Back to the grind, still trying to figure out how to make this button clickableeeee

 

[EDarkness]

Posting a new screenshot of Skullforge: The Hunt. Got a lot of stuff going on and we're finally settled in back in America. That means we can get back to work. Figured I'd throw in a new screenshot in case anyone was interested.

 

[KiraXD]

can anyone point me to a tutorial or write up on how i can make a character creator menu for a 2D sidescroller metroidvania.

Im looking for info on how to implement color sliders to change sprite colors/hairstyles/armor styles for things like hair, skin, armor, etc without having to just include 1 individual sprite for every color or armor style.

the only thing that comes to mind right now is Terrarias Character Creator

http://terraria.mmmos.com/?page=view&id=2

I want to be able to do this in something like UE4 (blueprint) or Stencyl/Construct 2

 

[Jacksinthe]

Back to the grind, still trying to figure out how to make this button clickableeeee

http://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/MonoBehaviour.OnMouseUp.html

 

[Ashodin]

http://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/MonoBehaviour.OnMouseUp.html

Ah nope, that's not going to work haha, Using NGUI

Edit: fixed it! WOOOO I'm SO SMART

 

[Pixels]

I'll try asking one more time.

My game name is one word. How can I make sure I'm not infringing on any other IP? Maybe one word is too risky...

 

[bkw]

Ah nope, that's not going to work haha, Using NGUI

Make sure mouse is enabled on UICamera, create some wort of widget (UISprite?) on the correct layer, add button script to a widget, add collider, hook up OnClick delegate. Might be some other settings. Never found NGUI to be that organized.

Edit: Glad you figured it out.

 

[Ashodin]

Make sure mouse is enabled on UICamera, create some wort of widget (UISprite?) on the correct layer, add button script to a widget, add collider, hook up OnClick delegate. Might be some other settings. Never found NGUI to be that organized.

Edit: Glad you figured it out.

Yeah I just had to add a 2D Box Collider instead of a regular one, as well as making sure the camera could see the button in the first place.

 

[liliththepale]

I'll try asking one more time.

My game name is one word. How can I make sure I'm not infringing on any other IP? Maybe one word is too risky...

Short of an exhaustive search on the net and USPTO, I think the only way to be sure is to misspell your name (a la Adr1ft). Even so, you still need to be careful because others can come in and swoop your name even if no one was using it before, as we saw with Absinthe and STRIFE.

 

[Jacksinthe]

Ah nope, that's not going to work haha, Using NGUI

Edit: fixed it! WOOOO I'm SO SMART

Ah gotcha.

 

[Lo_Fi]

Hey guys, I'm trying to make a quick multiplayer (4 player) prototype, but I can't figure out what to use between Game Maker and Unity. It's driving me up the wall.

Unity has a problem where the light on the xbox controller frequently doesn't actually match up with the player number. Normally not a huge deal, but it's actually crucial for the prototype I'm making.

Game maker, as far as I can tell, only natively has support for 2 controllers, and not any more than that. I can't find any good dll's that allow for up to 4 controllers (the link for sinazxinput is down), but I found Messhof's Input Dog plugin for game maker studio. It only costs $1, great! Except to buy it, you have to have a paid version of game maker studio, which is at least $99. Not looking to spend that kind of money to make a prototype that I'm not even sure will go anywhere.

Any ideas on either front?

 

[liliththepale]

Hey guys, I'm trying to make a quick multiplayer (4 player) prototype, but I can't figure out what to use between Game Maker and Unity. It's driving me up the wall.

Unity has a problem where the light on the xbox controller frequently doesn't actually match up with the player number. Normally not a huge deal, but it's actually crucial for the prototype I'm making.

Game maker, as far as I can tell, only natively has support for 2 controllers, and not any more than that. I can't find any good dll's that allow for up to 4 controllers (the link for sinazxinput is down), but I found Messhof's Input Dog plugin for game maker studio. It only costs $1, great! Except to buy it, you have to have a paid version of game maker studio, which is at least $99. Not looking to spend that kind of money to make a prototype that I'm not even sure will go anywhere.

Any ideas on either front?

Re GameMaker gamepad compatibility

•Windows is fully supported with up to a maximum of 4 connected devices permitted at once.

•Mac OSX is supported with up to a maximum of 4 connected devices permitted at once, and these devices can ONLY be of the type Playstation3 or Xbox 360.

•Ubuntu does also support GamePad input, but you may need to install additional libraries from the Ubuntu repository. You can do this easily by opening a command line terminal and typing the following:
sudo apt-get install jstest-gtk
sudo apt-get install joystick.
This will install GUI support for the joystick as well as the joystick itself.

•HTML5 games are only supported by Google Chrome (which should theoretically support any number of devices). At the moment no other browsers support game pads like this, but future updates should extend this functionality to full, cross-browser support.

•Gamepad support also extends to iOS with the iCade cabinet. The left axis maps to the stick controller (although the input is digital, not analogue), the four "face" buttons map to the cabinet front buttons, and the four shoulder buttons map to those at the back of the cabinet.

•Android export supports NYKO controllers and generic Bluetooth controllers (including the OUYA), but only when they are enabled, meaning that you will have to tick the iCade/Bluetooth option in the Android Tab of the Global Game Settings. They require API level 12 for them to work fully and it should be noted that GameMaker: Studio will register as connected any Bluetooth devices that your device is paired with, whether or not it’s actually connected. Therefore this should be taken into account when assigning and checking "slots"

 

[Lo_Fi]

Re GameMaker gamepad compatibility

•Windows is fully supported with up to a maximum of 4 connected devices permitted at once.

Are you sure about that? In the documentation it says that it only supports up to 2 controllers. I just tested something with 4 players and 4 controllers, and it only registers button presses for players 1 and 2. I tried this with both game maker 8.1 and game maker studio.

Is there somewhere that you've seen that it supports 4 controllers?

Edit:

http://docs.yoyogames.com/source/da...ols/joystick input/joystick_check_button.html

"This function will return true if the selected button on the joystick/gamepad with the given id is being pressed and false if it is not. The id can be either 1 or 2 as GameMaker: Studio only accepts input from a maximum of two joysticks/gamepads."

 

[liliththepale]

Are you sure about that? In the documentation it says that it only supports up to 2 controllers. I just tested something with 4 players and 4 controllers, and it only registers button presses for players 1 and 2. I tried this with both game maker 8.1 and game maker studio.

Is there somewhere that you've seen that it supports 4 controllers?

Edit:

http://docs.yoyogames.com/source/da...ols/joystick input/joystick_check_button.html

"This function will return true if the selected button on the joystick/gamepad with the given id is being pressed and false if it is not. The id can be either 1 or 2 as GameMaker: Studio only accepts input from a maximum of two joysticks/gamepads."

I just pulled that from the latest manual. I'm using early access right now, so maybe that's key. To be fair, I've never actually used a controller past the second one. You need to use the gamepad_ functions, not joystick_

edit: http://docs.yoyogames.com/source/da...d and other controls/gamepad input/index.html

edit2: it should be noted that the manual released with the software is slightly more up to date than the link I just posted.

 

[Pixels]

Short of an exhaustive search on the net and USPTO, I think the only way to be sure is to misspell your name (a la Adr1ft). Even so, you still need to be careful because others can come in and swoop your name even if no one was using it before, as we saw with Absinthe and STRIFE.

Good point...

Two words it is.

 

[Lo_Fi]

I just pulled that from the latest manual. I'm using early access right now, so maybe that's key. To be fair, I've never actually used a controller past the second one. You need to use the gamepad_ functions, not joystick_

edit: http://docs.yoyogames.com/source/da...d and other controls/gamepad input/index.html

edit2: it should be noted that the manual released with the software is slightly more up to date than the link I just posted.

Thank you, you're my hero! gamepad_ functions allow for up to 4 controllers. The only difference is that the controller labeling starts with 0 rather than 1.

 

[RanciscOS]

Hi everyone,
I'm not sure if this is the right thread to post this, so I'll try. I will embark on my first proper game project and my team and I plan to use OpenGL but we're not sure about which library to use. We are considering either using the glut library (we learned this at school) or the sdl one.

Thanks in advance

 

[Popstar]

Hi everyone,
I'm not sure if this is the right thread to post this, so I'll try. I will embark on my first proper game project and my team and I plan to use OpenGL but we're not sure about which library to use. We are considering either using the glut library (we learned this at school) or the sdl one.

Thanks in advance

GLUT is long abandoned. Although FreeGLUT is around I would recommend GLFW if you want something similar.

That said, you're going to need more than just OpenGL + window / input, so I'd say going with SDL or SFML would be the better option.

 

[Cptkrush]

I'm sure this has been asked a billion times, but what's the best free way to learn Blender? I'm kind of jumping into all this, and decided that Unity and Blender are my best bets as I am rubbish at drawing and have a little history with C# programming.
I'm also open to suggestions on how to learn to create 2d art if you guys think that it's a better place to start than 3d. Or if there's like a mega spreadsheet or single post with Blender or Unity Tutorials that you guys have going, that would be killer.

 

[Violet_0]

I'm sure this has been asked a billion times, but what's the best free way to learn Blender? I'm kind of jumping into all this, and decided that Unity and Blender are my best bets as I am rubbish at drawing and have a little history with C# programming.

www.blender.org/support/tutorials/
for absolute beginners, I've found this tutorial in particular very useful and easy to follow
http://gryllus.net/Blender/3D.html

 

[Noogy]

I just found out that Noogy made the animated intro to Jazz Jackrabbit 2.
What!? That is so weird and random.

Hehe feels like ages ago, I was like 18 I think. I even ended up leading a team for *ahem* a third game, but it didn't make it beyond a solid prototype. Oddly enough I left game development for about 15 years and completely regret not returning to it earlier.

 

[RanciscOS]

GLUT is long abandoned. Although FreeGLUT is around I would recommend GLFW if you want something similar.

That said, you're going to need more than just OpenGL + window / input, so I'd say going with SDL or SFML would be the better option.

Ok, thank you And yeah, even my teacher knew no one uses GLUT anymore.

 

[WanderingWind]

Posting a new screenshot of Skullforge: The Hunt. Got a lot of stuff going on and we're finally settled in back in America. That means we can get back to work. Figured I'd throw in a new screenshot in case anyone was interested.

This looks relevant to my interests. Care to share more info on your game?

 

[TheHollowNight]

I love the clean artstyle of the environment, those red thorns crystal things are kind of mesmerizing.

The art of this game looks out of this world, and the illustration is simply amazing.

Thank you both you're making me blush on behalf of the team.

Siiiick.

The game looks clean too but that illustration is fantastic. Are there more of those & any chance of DL link to original resolution? I'd want to print out one in A4 or better size to put on my cubicle or classroom.

BTW, in case you don't know, the Japanese katakana spells "Abadon" instead of "Abaddon". The exact "Abaddon" spelling involves using a half-size character to extend the next consonant, so maybe the misspelling is a deliberate choice by the artist to keep the text visually balanced.

But isn't "Abaddon" in English pronounced Abadon (i.e. the second D isn't really heard)? So the katakana is correct then, since it indicates pronounciation. Its romanization doesn't need to match the English spelling.

Well, at least, that's how I've always pronounce Abaddon...

Tay is very meticulous with his work and consulted with his Japanese friends about the correct translation. He's Thai himself, so he knows all too well how lazy video games attempt to translate or represent languages anywhere outside of the western speaking world, so he made sure he wasn't ignorantly google translating stuff We do care about those sorts of details, so I'm glad this was brought up!

Tay once mentioned to me that the nightclub name in FC3 translated to 'Distant Shout' or something similar lol. They made no effort to correctly translate 'Far Cry' into the written language.

Anyways, I bring some treats. We launched our website! Hooray!
http://beacon.monothetic.com/

You can download the illustrations in the 'media' section of the site

 

[bkw]

I'm sure this has been asked a billion times, but what's the best free way to learn Blender? I'm kind of jumping into all this, and decided that Unity and Blender are my best bets as I am rubbish at drawing and have a little history with C# programming.
I'm also open to suggestions on how to learn to create 2d art if you guys think that it's a better place to start than 3d. Or if there's like a mega spreadsheet or single post with Blender or Unity Tutorials that you guys have going, that would be killer.

I found the free stuff on http://cgcookie.com/blender/ pretty helpful. They also have Unity Cookie if you're looking for that as well.

 

[_machine]

So we've been trying out the UI stuff I showed last time and it's working OK though right now we have to fix quite a bit of stuff to get the game back to fully playable and featured. I do have some quick card concepts to show and as always some feedback would be appreciated

Just sent our application for the Dev Grant too, wasn't the easiest thing to write

 

[oxrock]

I'm sure this has been asked a billion times, but what's the best free way to learn Blender? I'm kind of jumping into all this, and decided that Unity and Blender are my best bets as I am rubbish at drawing and have a little history with C# programming.
I'm also open to suggestions on how to learn to create 2d art if you guys think that it's a better place to start than 3d. Or if there's like a mega spreadsheet or single post with Blender or Unity Tutorials that you guys have going, that would be killer.

What I did was just watch youtube tutorials of people building things and just followed along. Eventually I could use the methods learned to make my own creations. Then I flexed my feeble muscles building crappy weapons for the dota workshop that nobody in their right mind would upvote, good times.Thinking back though, something more structured might of been easier in the beginning.

 

[_machine]

Got our sound guy to do and polish some particles. It doesn't look that good in the cascade as it doesn't have the proper lighting or environment, but couldn't capture a proper gif ingame yet:

 

[Bit-Bit]

Spending all of this week looking at UE4 Blueprints tutorials. Trying to get a grasp of the basics and hope to have a prototype up and running by the end of the week. Wish me luck!

 

[BomberMouse]

Hi everyone,
I'm not sure if this is the right thread to post this, so I'll try. I will embark on my first proper game project and my team and I plan to use OpenGL but we're not sure about which library to use. We are considering either using the glut library (we learned this at school) or the sdl one.

Thanks in advance

None.

If you want to make a game use a framework. Making a game is difficult enough, no need to also make an engine besides making a game.