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[missile]

Missile, do you examine the pixel color behind mouse position when determining whether it is for the button or not?

I guess you can imagine all by yourself that this would be a very restrictive
approach (such an idea stems from the earlier sprite engines seen in many
ancient gaming consoles). The method I'm brewing up here will be much more
general and will have no restrictions on colors whatsoever. It's work in
progress. I still have to foolproof the concept for including it in the main
trunk, since I currently don't know where the method breaks resp. whether if
it will work for many useful/interesting circumstances an artist or UI
designer might be interested in. Too early to say for sure. The things I told
in a previous post are just my wishes so to speak. There a still some many
technical cases to consider to make the method work without much intervention.
Another problem is considering use-cases. A simple example; since now you can
have holes, how to treat them? Should UI elements underneath be selectable or
not? Perhaps a designer using this user interface may want do have both
options in having some holes covered (no selection of UI elements below) while
others not, all at the some time + changing over time. The great flexibility
indicated brings also some drawbacks since you may now have too many
parameters to play with. To make it useful I have to narrow down the
parameters to make it easy to use while still having something left on the
table. So it's all experimental. If it doesn't work, I have to screw it. But
that's why I post the pictures in here at this earlier stage of development to
see if someone has some imagination where this could all go resp. may turn up
some flaws etc.. I'm interested in about what artists would use it for esp.
considering when the buttons could be animated. I have some ideas of my own.
For example, if it works out, you can have floating UI elements if you will,
which will bend, break-up, dissolve, or simply be transported around. Oh dear,
yeah I'm burning to bring some fluid dynamics to the stage, but I am somewhat
limited on resources over here. The UI is just one quest out of ... arrgh!

 

[superNESjoe]

This is a likely random and hopeless question, but I'm really out of my league here.

I'm using Game Maker: Studio, and for the first time I've had to use a manifest file. The file is configured correctly but it runs into an error when I try to compile a build in GM:S. A bug report on an unnamed private developer network I'm a member of came back saying that this manifest error issue is fixed with SVN 36937.

There's certain things I just don't know, and what the heck SVN is, or how to use subversion control, or how to update it or whatever, is one of them.

Probably a bad place to ask this, but figured I'd try since the unnamed private developer network bug report turnaround can be 2 weeks before getting help.

Any Game Maker Studio users ever have to set up their own Subversion Control? There are 2 defaults with the option to use a custom, but I don't understand it. What is SVN 36937, where do I get it and how to I use it?

 

[Yoshi]

SVN is a version management system that allows multiple people to work on the same project, in this case probably the Game Maker. The number could be a revision number, because SVN stores all versions you make, so you can download different versions of the software. I don't know if Game Maker has a specific way of acquiring versions, but for SVN purposes I use SmatSVN (Windows here), it's easy enough to use that even I can use it, so from my perspective a nice program.

 

[SystemBug]

one of my friends made the soundtrack to the game I'm working on.

you guys can give it a listen here - https://rusetski.bandcamp.com/album/cuze

 

[superNESjoe]

SVN is a version management system that allows multiple people to work on the same project, in this case probably the Game Maker. The number could be a revision number, because SVN stores all versions you make, so you can download different versions of the software. I don't know if Game Maker has a specific way of acquiring versions, but for SVN purposes I use SmatSVN (Windows here), it's easy enough to use that even I can use it, so from my perspective a nice program.

So when I Googled SVN 36937 I find this SourceForge site. Not sure if that's what I'm looking for.

Anyway, GameMaker has an option to use a custom SVN version outside of the two it has pre-installed, you just need to direct GM to the Executable and SCM Config File locations. So I'm assuming if I can find and install this SVN 36937 then I should be able to direct GM to it.

I downloaded the folder from the SourceForge site I listed, but couldn't find the two files in there and didn't understand what it was really. Any tips on how specifically to setup this version and where in the directory those two files are?

 

[Yoshi]

Uhm, usually, when you use SVN (at least as I know it), you connect to a server where the project is located and checkout the project to your harddrive. The revisions contain information about the changes compared to the last revision and, as far as I know, are not self contained, but are a set of modification rules for an SVN program to construct the project. What I would try is to locate the server address for the svn and log-in credentials and enter them into my SVN program. I'm quite the dummy wrt software use, so I hope someone else will be able to help you better, sorry .

EDIT: Looking at it, I would checkout this: svn://svn.code.sf.net/p/vxl/svn/trunk vxl-svn with an SVN program like SmartSVN and I would think then you should get what you want.

 

[superNESjoe]

Uhm, usually, when you use SVN (at least as I know it), you connect to a server where the project is located and checkout the project to your harddrive. The revisions contain information about the changes compared to the last revision and, as far as I know, are not self contained, but are a set of modification rules for an SVN program to construct the project. What I would try is to locate the server address for the svn and log-in credentials and enter them into my SVN program. I'm quite the dummy wrt software use, so I hope someone else will be able to help you better, sorry .

EDIT: Looking at it, I would checkout this: svn://svn.code.sf.net/p/vxl/svn/trunk vxl-svn with an SVN program like SmartSVN and I would think then you should get what you want.

I'm unzipping the vxl-svn-36937 right now. I'll download SmartSVN and let you know how it works out. Do I just open the vxl-svn folder in SmartSVN? I know I specifically need to find the executable and config files.

EDIT: I'm not sure what I'm not understanding about it. Making a repository is simple enough, and it appears as if I've done so with this revision correctly, but I can't find the two files Game Maker wants to utilize it. It's very confusing. I really don't want to wait an eon for the bug report to get a response but it looks like I have to.

 

[Yoshi]

The SVN program would just need the URL and download everything itself. You'd install the SVN Client and, if you are using SmartSVN, on start-up, click on Project -> Check Out and then check out from this URL above.

 

[HellBlazer]

I'm unzipping the vxl-svn-36937 right now. I'll download SmartSVN and let you know how it works out. Do I just open the vxl-svn folder in SmartSVN? I know I specifically need to find the executable and config files.

Stop stop stop. That VXL thing has nothing to do with Gamemaker. SVN is a system to version and share source code, it's used by... I don't know, hundreds of thousands? Millions? of projects around the world. The 36937 number identifies a specific revision of a project's source code, but it doesn't specify anything about which project it is. So... you just downloaded the source code of a completely unrelated random project (something about computer vision apparently).

Now, could you paste the post that talked about SVN 36937 in relation to Gamemaker? Because... I could certainly be wrong (I never used GM), but I was under the impression that they didn't offer source access...?

 

[missile]

Whoomp There It Is ...


PolyButtons!

Works too good to be true, jesus! xD The circular confinement is not a
restriction whatsoever, just done on purpose.

 

[superNESjoe]

Stop stop stop. That VXL thing has nothing to do with Gamemaker. SVN is a system to version and share source code, it's used by... I don't know, hundreds of thousands? Millions? of projects around the world. The 36937 number identifies a specific revision of a project's source code, but it doesn't specify anything about which project it is. So... you just downloaded the source code of a completely unrelated random project (something about computer vision apparently).

Now, could you paste the post that talked about SVN 36937 in relation to Gamemaker? Because... I could certainly be wrong (I never used GM), but I was under the impression that they didn't offer source access...?

I did stop, I had no idea what any of this stuff was and didn't want to mess with anything I didn't understand =).

I can't link to the post because it was in a private bug tracking forum for console development for Game Maker Studio, but here is the important information from it. The hard part is there are things about console development I am contractually obligated to not talk about, so I want to be very careful about how I word things.

Basically there is a manifest file that needs to be configured and then included in your project in Game Maker. This manifest file allows you to access a bunch of "stuff". However, myself and another developer ran across an issue where you could no longer compile your game once the manifest file was added. In the last bug report to ask for assistance, the Game Maker staff simply replied with "this is fixed in SVN 36937".

No explanation about what SVN is for the uninformed, no link or details on where to get it. Nothing. Scouring my documentation I find nothing that directs me to where or what the SVN is, which led me to Google and just blindly trying to find out what I'm supposed to be finding.

Anyway, in the current version of Game Maker Studio you can go into preferences, go to Source Control, and then either select one of two SVN versions prebuilt in or assign a custom one. I'm assuming I need to upgrade to some custom one but I have no idea. I didn't know what SVN was, but your post kind of cleared it up.

TL;DR? Game Maker Studio is really frustrating for console development. The small amount of documentation is incomplete and vague. Response time to getting problems solved is very slow. I'm not sure I can go into any further detail.

 

[HellBlazer]

I did stop, I had no idea what any of this stuff was and didn't want to mess with anything I didn't understand =).

I can't link to the post because it was in a private bug tracking forum for console development for Game Maker Studio, but here is the important information from it. The hard part is there are things about console development I am contractually obligated to not talk about, so I want to be very careful about how I word things.

Basically there is a manifest file that needs to be configured and then included in your project in Game Maker. This manifest file allows you to access a bunch of "stuff". However, myself and another developer ran across an issue where you could no longer compile your game once the manifest file was added. In the last bug report to ask for assistance, the Game Maker staff simply replied with "this is fixed in SVN 36937".

No explanation about what SVN is for the uninformed, no link or details on where to get it. Nothing. Scouring my documentation I find nothing that directs me to where or what the SVN is, which led me to Google and just blindly trying to find out what I'm supposed to be finding.

Anyway, in the current version of Game Maker Studio you can go into preferences, go to Source Control, and then either select one of two SVN versions prebuilt in or assign a custom one. I'm assuming I need to upgrade to some custom one but I have no idea. I didn't know what SVN was, but your post kind of cleared it up.

TL;DR? Game Maker Studio is really frustrating for console development. The small amount of documentation is incomplete and vague. Response time to getting problems solved is very slow. I'm not sure I can go into any further detail.

Hmm... well, the source control preferences (this stuff right?) inside Game Maker itself are for managing your game's source code, not Game Maker's. So that won't allow you to update Game Maker.

Googling around, I can't find any reference to Game Maker offering access to its own source code publicly... So if that's the case, I would guess one of two things: either the guy who said "this is fixed in SVN 36937" just meant it as "we fixed it in our development version and it will be available in the next public release" (in which case giving you the revision number is indeed useless and confusing, but I guess some people do that); or maybe you, as a person with access to some private console development stuff, also have access to the GM development build... in which case, well, I can't really give you specific instructions since this is not public stuff I can see, but they would probably give you a URL for their source repository somewhere...?

Anyone who's actually used Game Maker, feel free to chime in; I'm flying blind here.

 

[missile]

Here is the behavior if you want to be able to select through holes or along
cuts. This behavior can simply be altered such that no selection will be
possible. The magenta button (with magenta its hover color) is underneath the
poly one, which can only be selected and pressed if the poly button doesn't
cover it.

 

[superNESjoe]

Hmm... well, the source control preferences (this stuff right?) inside Game Maker itself are for managing your game's source code, not Game Maker's. So that won't allow you to update Game Maker.

Googling around, I can't find any reference to Game Maker offering access to its own source code publicly... So if that's the case, I would guess one of two things: either the guy who said "this is fixed in SVN 36937" just meant it as "we fixed it in our development version and it will be available in the next public release" (in which case giving you the revision number is indeed useless and confusing, but I guess some people do that); or maybe you, as a person with access to some private console development stuff, also have access to the GM development build... in which case, well, I can't really give you specific instructions since this is not public stuff I can see, but they would probably give you a URL for their source repository somewhere...?

Anyone who's actually used Game Maker, feel free to chime in; I'm flying blind here.

This actually makes a lot more sense, and it's a conclusion I would have come to on my own had I known what SVN meant before this issue popped up. There doesn't seem to be very many people who use Game Maker Studio for console development, so solving problems can be pretty frustrating.

Thanks for at least helping me understand!

 

[Blizzard]

I guess you can imagine all by yourself that this would be a very restrictive
approach (such an idea stems from the earlier sprite engines seen in many
ancient gaming consoles). The method I'm brewing up here will be much more
general and will have no restrictions on colors whatsoever. It's work in
progress. I still have to foolproof the concept for including it in the main
trunk, since I currently don't know where the method breaks resp. whether if
it will work for many useful/interesting circumstances an artist or UI
designer might be interested in. Too early to say for sure. The things I told
in a previous post are just my wishes so to speak. There a still some many
technical cases to consider to make the method work without much intervention.
Another problem is considering use-cases. A simple example; since now you can
have holes, how to treat them? Should UI elements underneath be selectable or
not? Perhaps a designer using this user interface may want do have both
options in having some holes covered (no selection of UI elements below) while
others not, all at the some time + changing over time. The great flexibility
indicated brings also some drawbacks since you may now have too many
parameters to play with. To make it useful I have to narrow down the
parameters to make it easy to use while still having something left on the
table. So it's all experimental. If it doesn't work, I have to screw it. But
that's why I post the pictures in here at this earlier stage of development to
see if someone has some imagination where this could all go resp. may turn up
some flaws etc.. I'm interested in about what artists would use it for esp.
considering when the buttons could be animated. I have some ideas of my own.
For example, if it works out, you can have floating UI elements if you will,
which will bend, break-up, dissolve, or simply be transported around. Oh dear,
yeah I'm burning to bring some fluid dynamics to the stage, but I am somewhat
limited on resources over here. The UI is just one quest out of ... arrgh!

As you're no doubt aware, making an operating system is a pretty big task just to make a game, so I can only assume that you're okay doing experiments just for the love of arcane tasks.

If you want buttons with transparent areas, one simple way would be to allow each button to have a black and white stencil image. For any mouse click, check the stencil. The actual button colors can be anything you want, partially transparent, fully transparent, etc., but the stencil would filter. Even if you wanted some unusual system where some parts could handle clicks, some parts could pass through clicks, and some parts could ignore clicks, allowing a 3-color stencil image would make that work.

Although looking at your later posts, you might have already done that!

 

[Dewfreak83]

So excited to get someone to write about my company and game!

The blogger is Stuart Lloyd, who is a gamebook author and avidly involved in the small niche community. I had always expected to reach out to him when the game got closer to completion - but to my excitement and surprise he contacted me first!

April A to Z – U is for Underbyte studios

 

[Jobbs]

Months ago when I was making my trailer I was going to include this shot, which depicts a notable area and NPC, but ended up doing it a bit differently because I didn't like Gili's spritework and knew it wasn't final.

Came across it today randomly and thought I'd share for the hell of it.

Click for big.


Linky

 

[Xtra Mile]

Months ago when I was making my trailer I was going to include this shot, which depicts a notable area and NPC, but ended up doing it a bit differently because I didn't like Gili's spritework and knew it wasn't final.

Came across it today randomly and thought I'd share for the hell of it.

linky: http://www.gfycat.com/JoyfulJubilantIzuthrush

Nice one! Cool to see an NPC following in this type of game.

 

[PaulExcellent]

Oh my gosh! I didn't know GAF had an indie game thread~
I've been working on a game for a month or so and was looking for a place to discuss it, but was too nervous to show up to a random forum or something to talk about it. >.>

 

[superNESjoe]

Oh my gosh! I didn't know GAF had an indie game thread~
I've been working on a game for a month or so and was looking for a place to discuss it, but was too nervous to show up to a random forum or something to talk about it. >.>

I felt the same way when I first joined GAF. Don't be nervous, everyone is really supportive in this thread.

 

[Unain]

Long time lurker here. Had to wait a bit for my account to be accepted.
Love all the work posted here.

It's been about a year since I placed my first game on the Google Play Market.
Link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jvds.MirrorThatLaser
Made in Unity with some free and self-made sprites.

It's really hard to make levels in a puzzle game that are challenging, but not impossible.
I've learned a lot from the development process which is a win on its own. But I'm more happy that I stuck through and finally finished a game.
Most of my games are experiments and I get burned out after some of the hard stuff is done.

Lately I've been experimenting with Unreal Engine 4. Working on importing voxel based models with MagicaVoxel (great program btw). Got it working properly now:

 

[Jacksinthe]

Ok here is my problem.

Let me break it down, please bear with me.

Basically there are 4 switches - Switch 1, Switch 2, Switch 3, Switch 4.
2 Gates - Gate 1 and Gate 2
1 Platform
1 Cage

This is the way the logic is supposed to work and the order.

- You press Switch 1 with Character 1, and Platform 1 on character 2's side, starts moving, but a cage locks Character 1 in. So you switch to Character 2. Character 2 can't get to switch 3 until platform 1 starts moving.

- Character 2 presses switch 3 which opens gate 1. Character 1 is still locked in.

- After switch 3 is pressed, Character 2 goes to switch 4 which opens the cage.

- Then character 2 presses switch 2 which opens gate 2 for character two.

This is the order:

- Switch 1, moves platform
- Switch 3 opens gate 1
- Switch 4 opens cage
- Switch 2 opens gate 2

public bool SwitchOne;
    public bool SwitchTwo;
    public bool SwitchThree;
    public bool SwitchFour;
    public bool SidePlatformOne;
    public bool SidePlatformTwo;
    public bool UpDownOne;
    public    GameObject platform;
    public    GameObject gate;
    public    GameObject cage;
    public bool CageOne;
    private Animator anim;
    private Animator animone;
    private Animator animtwo;
    public bool gateone;
    public bool gatetwo;
   
    // Use this for initialization
    void Start () {
       
        anim = platform.GetComponent<Animator>();
        animone = gate.GetComponent<Animator>();
        animtwo = cage.GetComponent<Animator>();    
       
    }
   
    // Update is called once per frame
    void Update () {
       
    }
   
    void OnTriggerEnter (Collider other)
    {
       
        if (gameObject.tag == "SwitchOne")
        {          
            SwitchOne = true;
            SidePlatformTwo = true;
            anim.SetTrigger ("SidePlatformTwo");
           
            if((SwitchOne == true) && (SidePlatformTwo == true))
            {
                CageOne = true;
                animtwo.SetTrigger ("GateBlockOne");    //Block's Tarro In and activates  her platform    
               
            }
        }
       
       
        if(gameObject.tag == "SwitchTwo")
        {
            SwitchTwo = true;
        }
            if((SwitchTwo == true) && (gateone == true) && (SwitchThree == true))
            {
                gatetwo = true;
                animone.SetTrigger ("GateTwoLevelTwo");
            }
 
       
        if(gameObject.tag == "SwitchThree")
        {
            SwitchThree = true;
        }
            if((SwitchThree == true) && (CageOne == true))
            {
                gateone = true;
                animone.SetTrigger ("GateOneLevelTwo");
            }
 
       
        if(gameObject.tag == "SwitchFour")
        {
            SwitchFour = true;
        }
            if((SwitchFour == true) && (SwitchThree == true))
            {
                CageOne = false;
            }
 
       
       
       
       
    }
   
}

I've checked everything, added debug log. The code that executes the gate open logic doesn't work. The gate is supposed to open as soon as switch 1 and switch 3 are pressed. But it doesn't work.

I have no idea what to do anymore.

I'm a major noob as i just started 3 months ago and would really realy appreciate the help. Thanks

void OnTriggerEnter (Collider other)
{
if (other.gameObject.CompareTag("TAG"))
//do
}

You are calling a collider to be checked and calling it "other" but you forget to make sure to check against "other" in your if. You used:

"gameObject.tag" where you should use:
"other.gameObject.tag"

Also, I highly recommend not using:

tag == "TAG"

Instead use CompareTag("TAG")

other.gameObject.CompareTag("TAG")

CompareTag uses a single call whereas checking a tag with "tag ==" uses a call to get the collided tag, stores it, then compares it with CompareTag whereas CompareTag just uses the CompareTag function to check.

It's extremely minimal, but good form, IMO.

 

[HellBlazer]

void OnTriggerEnter (Collider other)
{
if (other.gameObject.CompareTag("TAG"))
//do
}

You are calling a collider to be checked and calling it "other" but you forget to make sure to check against "other" in your if. You used:

"gameObject.tag" where you should use:
"other.gameObject.tag"

No. He said he has that script on all four of his switches, that's why he's testing for the current object's tag, to know which switch was actually hit. It's also already been said that that's not a very elegant way to go about it.

 

[EDarkness]

Updating the game more and someone asked about moving grass. I decided to go back and re-evaluate what I had worked on and came up with a decent scheme for grass that doesn't hit the framerate too bad. Here's a .gif to show off how it turned out.

I have the wind and bending turned down so that it's more subtle, but I think the effect works quite well for this scene.

 

[Remote]

Updating the game more and someone asked about moving grass. I decided to go back and re-evaluate what I had worked on and came up with a decent scheme for grass that doesn't hit the framerate too bad. Here's a .gif to show off how it turned out.

I have the wind and bending turned down so that it's more subtle, but I think the effect works quite well for this scene.

Looks amazing

 

[ZServ]

Alright, IndieGAF. Here we go.

Last year, Dusk Golem held an RPG Maker contest. What I've been working on was originally for that contest, but I decided I wasn't happy with the quality of it and have been tweaking and revising ever since. So, with that said, I present to you my first ever game, the currently un-named Project Babel.

I'd love to think that the screenshots don't do it justice, but the truth is that I truly dislike RPG Maker's assets, and plan on eventually replacing them. However, I feel that it does look much better in motion. There are some known issues, but this is still an early revision of the first third of the game. I would love your feedback, should you have any, both positive and negative.

Borderless fullscreen can be achieved by pressing f5 and restarting the game, by the by. The game supports mouse/keyboard controls, as well as Xbox One, Xbox 360, and Dualshock 4 controllers. Prepare for some truly awful dialogue, as I am not a writer.

Alpha revision here.

Regardless, thank you for all the inspiration, IndieGAF. I can only hope to make something half as good as what you guys put out into the world every single post.

 

[NipplesAndToes23]

Does anyone need any help with writing and video editing? I have years of experience with both.

 

[Jacksinthe]

No. He said he has that script on all four of his switches, that's why he's testing for the current object's tag, to know which switch was actually hit. It's also already been said that that's not a very elegant way to go about it.

I skimmed a bit too much initially without reading further responses

 

[Jobbs]

Nice one! Cool to see an NPC following in this type of game.

Well, sorta. She sorta appears in certain areas and goes through scripted behavior, she doesn't actually follow you around even if it looks like that in that one isolated clip.

 

[mStudios]

Visual Novel that I working on:
Click for animated:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16714252/clocable.webm

edit: the background is not final. It was made by the artist we hired (Dinie)

 

[superNESjoe]

Wouldn't happen to be any other devs in here who use Game Maker Studio and have developed for Xbox One, would there?

 

[EDarkness]

Does anyone need any help with writing and video editing? I have years of experience with both.

I could always use someone to do both, but the pays sucks. If you're still interested, let me know.

Visual Novel that I working on:
Click for animated:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16714252/clocable.webm

Looks awesome. Will be watching this one.

 

[Kyuur]

Visual Novel that I working on:
Click for animated:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16714252/clocable.webm

edit: the background is not final. It was made by the artist we hired (Dinie)

Loving the character art style!

Hey everyone, been a while since I popped in. I'm downloading UE4 to test out some 3D game ideas I've been building up... but I'm no 3D artist. I'd have a rough time hacking up any sort of model, unlike 2D where I can make 'serviceable' programmer assets.

Does anyone know some good places to find a decent range of 3D assets (characters, environmental props, terrain textures, etc) for non-commercial use? The UE4 store is unfortunately limited compared to Unity's, especially looking for more toony kind of stuff. I'm okay with paying a bit for some higher quality assets too.

Edit: I guess it should be possible to export files from Unity bought off their store if I wanted?

 

[MrNyarlathotep]

Does anyone know some good places to find a decent range of 3D assets (characters, environmental props, terrain textures, etc) for non-commercial use?

As you say, if this is for entirely non-commercial use there shouldn't be a problem with using assets from the Unity Store (which are almost certainly just FBX files) anywhere that supports .FBX, but there is almost certainly licencing terms regarding putting things onto the Unity store in the first place to prevent cross-pollinating into other engines.

Other resources you might want to look at:
Textures; CGTextures, Gametextures, Genetica (requires manual conversion)

Models; Turbosquid (varies widely in usage terms / price / export format / level of completion (you'll find everything from unoptimised meshes to game optmised rigged textured and animated with varying LODs included))

Mixamo is best known for selling animations, but also has a few free fully rigged / textured character models for download and a free basic set of compatible movement animations (walk / run / jump / idle)

 

[Popstar]

Does anyone know some good places to find a decent range of 3D assets (characters, environmental props, terrain textures, etc) for non-commercial use? The UE4 store is unfortunately limited compared to Unity's, especially looking for more toony kind of stuff. I'm okay with paying a bit for some higher quality assets too.

http://graphics.cs.williams.edu/data/meshes.xml
http://www.pbrt.org/scenes.php

As you say, if this is for entirely non-commercial use there shouldn't be a problem with using assets from the Unity Store (which are almost certainly just FBX files) anywhere that supports .FBX, but there is almost certainly licencing terms regarding putting things onto the Unity store in the first place to prevent cross-pollinating into other engines.

I checked this awhile back and there was nothing in the Unity store license requiring the assets be used with Unity.

Unreal has different terms, and if you use any assets from their store their royalty fee applies to the resulting product even if you're not using the Unreal Engine. Specific assets are also tied to use with Unreal only.

 

[BLACK AMERICAN PSYCHO]

How does Stencyl compare to Game Maker nowadays?

 

[superNESjoe]

How does Stencyl compare to Game Maker nowadays?

Couldn't tell ya, but I can say GM:S is a freaking awesome piece of software if you ignore drag and drop and code everything in GML. Performs awesome on consoles.

 

[rhophiehalul78]

Couldn't tell ya, but I can say GM:S is a freaking awesome piece of software if you ignore drag and drop and code everything in GML. Performs awesome on consoles.

I have some problems with GameMaker though regarding it outputting a never ending system related errors sometimes which forces me to end it via task manager. Have you encountered this? Sometimes it's slow responding too.

 

[superNESjoe]

I have some problems with GameMaker though regarding it outputting a never ending system related errors sometimes which forces me to end it via task manager. Have you encountered this? Sometimes it's slow responding too.

I haven't had issues like that, no. My only issue is that compiling a build takes a really long time now and my game isn't really all that big.

 

[HelloMeow]

Is anyone else participating in the Mobile VR Jam 2015?

For the last few weeks I've been busy working on a game based on an old prototype. In short, It's a twin stick shooter where the game lets you pick any song and then stuff happens to the beat.

This will probably be the first game that I actually finish. Lot's of stuff to do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1WJDi7AaP0

 

[liliththepale]

I haven't had issues like that, no. My only issue is that compiling a build takes a really long time now and my game isn't really all that big.

Most of the compile time is building the texture atlas, in my experience. Splitting up the sprites into separate texture groups alleviates this to a large degree. I'm pretty sure the atlas build time is n^2, so obviously (n^2)*3 is better than (3n)^2 (for an example with three equal texture groups).

It's stupid about when it builds atlases, though. Change the origin on a sprite and the atlas has to rebuild. Hell, just opening and closing a sprite triggers the rebuild. So, if you just need to take a look at a sprite without changing it, always X out instead of OKing out.

 

[Blizzard]

I'm playing more Ludum Dare games, seeing if I can get to 50 ratings on my own game again.

One thing I'm seeing a lot of, which is probably common in Ludum Dare games in general, is frustrating difficulty and/or anti-player measures. It's hard to imagine how the people who quickly play/rate 200+ games do it, given how long it takes to play and leave a short comment on even simple games.

Perhaps I'm in the minority on this, but even if a developer loves crazy frustrating gameplay, surely they realize that people are trying to play like 50 games in the judging, and they aren't going to want to dedicate even half an hour trying to master one, or wait for the right random elements to favor them? Thinking about it the other way around -- what if someone makes a game too easy? Well, the people rating it get to experience the entire thing, instead of just a fraction. They're less frustrated when they rate it (potentially rating it higher). And it can always be made more difficult if someone wants to make a full game out of a competition entry!

If anything you might expect games to be on the easier side so that testing does not take as long for the developer themselves in the 48 hour period. Oh well.

 

[Conkersbadfurday]

Finally released the demo of my game today. Haven't sought out the press yet; will do that later in the week when I've got the drive to. But if ya'll are curious, you can download it here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4cu9l0OOXeQYlFYUWlTWldmMjA/view?usp=sharing

or here:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/ssal5b4jykewv5l/The_Regret_of_Vitrerran_Demo.zip

Real time card game, stain glass artstyle, etc. Alpha trailer can be found here for those curious https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcbmihTaYyw

 

[rhophiehalul78]

I haven't had issues like that, no. My only issue is that compiling a build takes a really long time now and my game isn't really all that big.

Do you use big backgrounds or any other big images?

 

[Poetic.Injustice]

How would one go about making cel shaded terrian in unity 5?

 

[Water]

How would one go about making cel shaded terrian in unity 5?

Craft some terrain with the built-in terrain tools, replace terrain material with a custom cel shader? There are surely a bunch of cel shaders on the Asset Store. Unity reference suggests that materials used for terrain rendering should support some special things that normal shaders don't necessarily support, but if you can't find an existing cel shader designed for terrain, you could try a regular one and see if it still works. Also, Unity suggests looking at their default terrain shader code as reference when writing a custom terrain shader. You should probably have experience in graphics programming if you set out to mess with the code yourself though.

 

[missile]

As you're no doubt aware, making an operating system is a pretty big task just to make a game, so I can only assume that you're okay doing experiments just for the love of arcane tasks. ...

Would be cool, but takes away way too much time. Wrapping the OS with ones
own virtual one (despite being cool) would make porting the game a bit of a
hassle. It made a lot more sense in the earlier days (see Quake's source code
for example), but these days you better provide a service than a whole system
which makes porting a lot easier if the service can runs on its own without
talking to the host that much. No, am just tinker around.

 

[superNESjoe]

Do you use big backgrounds or any other big images?

My backgrounds are generally cut up to make it easier, but I have a few large ones that it just made it too complicated to get rid of.

My game performs fine (there's one level that takes about a minute to load due to some amateur implementation), it's just the compiling that takes a very long time.

 

[Poetic.Injustice]

Craft some terrain with the built-in terrain tools, replace terrain material with a custom cel shader? There are surely a bunch of cel shaders on the Asset Store. Unity reference suggests that materials used for terrain rendering should support some special things that normal shaders don't necessarily support, but if you can't find an existing cel shader designed for terrain, you could try a regular one and see if it still works. Also, Unity suggests looking at their default terrain shader code as reference when writing a custom terrain shader. You should probably have experience in graphics programming if you set out to mess with the code yourself though.

Ok thanks, I'll look into the first option.

 

[friken]

Updating the game more and someone asked about moving grass. I decided to go back and re-evaluate what I had worked on and came up with a decent scheme for grass that doesn't hit the framerate too bad. Here's a .gif to show off how it turned out.

I have the wind and bending turned down so that it's more subtle, but I think the effect works quite well for this scene.

Looks sweet to me. When you say it didn't hit framerate too bad, what was the hit?