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

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M

Mr. Luchador

Member
Davision said:
I added drawing shapes to my artsy game:
rJquVXL.gif
Click to expand...

It's been really interesting watching this idea develop from an accidental discovery!

---

Any recommendations for some magazines to sub/read? I've recently started to pick up Retro Gamer, not amazing for development, but the articles are inspiring and the artwork is nice to study.
 
P

Popstar

Member
Videospel said:
What's a good 16:9 resolution for a low res game? I've been looking at this list and was thinking of using 384x216. It's 16:9 and certainly low res, but are there any other factors to consider?
Click to expand...
Depends on target platform. You'll want something that divides evenly into 1920x1080 for sure so you can do pixel perfect scaling. But if targeting a console you may want to make sure you divide into 1280x720 evenly also since 720p TVs are still pretty common.

I'd pick 320x180 over 384x216.
 
V

Videospel

Member
Popstar said:
Depends on target platform. You'll want something that divides evenly into 1920x1080 for sure so you can do pixel perfect scaling. But if targeting a console you may want to make sure you divide into 1280x720 evenly also since 720p TVs are still pretty common.

I'd pick 320x180 over 384x216.
Click to expand...

Makes sense, thanks for the tip.
 
L

liliththepale

Banned
Popstar said:
Depends on target platform. You'll want something that divides evenly into 1920x1080 for sure so you can do pixel perfect scaling. But if targeting a console you may want to make sure you divide into 1280x720 evenly also since 720p TVs are still pretty common.

I'd pick 320x180 over 384x216.
Click to expand...

320x180 also scales perfectly for 1440p screens, which is becoming more common for PC users. So that's definitely the optimal choice unless you need just a little more on screen.
 
N

Nezzhil

Member
Hi, three friends and I are finishing our first comercial game and we need some tips and first-person experiences about the promotion, publish on steam/gog/desura/others, and anything outside the development of the game. Thanks!
The game is a small top-down arcade game like bomberman and battle-city with 3d retro graphics with local multiplayer and level editor. We hope to share with you some screenshots and videos about it soon!
 
B

Blizzard

Banned
Candescence said:
Well, I did say I'd get something to show, and I did.

Pretty much a quick preview of the test/tutorial level for the ground gameplay, along with the toon shading. I wanted to go for a bit subtle with the outlines, though, but they might be too subtle unless you're up close.
Click to expand...
This may be an odd thing to notice, but I'm digging the style and rendering of the character's hair. It works well, though the shirt feels a little awkward like it's slightly offset or something.
 
G

Glendemonium

Member
With the overwhelming appraise for Yooka/Laylee it lit a fire under me to work on this game more. Warning, gifs but low quality for those with slower connection speeds:

Some changes for Baxter's Adventure, I'm revamping Act 1 to resemble a casino/theme park than a carnival. I went with this change using the comments on the greenlight page that people see the carnival and shy away from looking at the game.

giffy1.gif



giffy3.gif

This is a level from act 4, and if you're curious about the lights, well the act is called "Funky Factory" it's a 70's themed disco factory, some levels even have discoballs in them!



giffy2.gif


I'm hoping to improve the game by the time it gets greenlit on Steam, it's been a few months since I've uploaded it there and still shy a few thousand votes but I'm lacking the right marketing push. I've reached out to both Youtubers with a free early demo and gaming press but not a bite from either. I'd like to see AVGN or JonTron take a crack at this offbeat title and see what they think but they play more console than PC games.
 
A

anteevy

Member
taku said:
Finally tried out that game of yours, it's very promising! I filled in one of those feedback forms for ya.
Click to expand...
Many thanks for the extensive feedback! Yonder is looking awesome by the way, I need more coop games asap. :)

A screenshot of the yellow-orange chapter 2, level 3 at daytime:
2-3s.jpg

It's called "Camera Craziness" in my levels excel sheet for a reason. More screens in the new blog post: http://roll-playing-game.com/blog/2015/05/new-screenshots-and-visual-improvements/
 
J

Jobbs

Banned
Was playing Ori and the Blind Forest again -- Because any time I need a gut punch and made to feel like I'm nothing, I play this -- and I noticed the game is available also on Xbox 360.

Now, doesn't Xbox 360 have a really miniscule amount of ram available for games? (512mb, I think, and doesn't some of that need to be reserved for OS? I've never developed for 360) How is a game like this, with such a huge world and no loading screens, managed on such a small budget? It must be a miracle of optimization.

Now, Noogy's game, Dust, playing on 360 with all of its assets and voiceover is impressive enough, but from what I can tell Ori has even more stuff going on and no loading barriers at all. I'm definitely curious how this was achieved.
 
F

Feep

Banned
Jobbs said:
Was playing Ori and the Blind Forest again -- Because any time I need a gut punch and made to feel like I'm nothing, I play this -- and I noticed the game is available also on Xbox 360.

Now, doesn't Xbox 360 have a really miniscule amount of ram available for games? (512mb, I think, and doesn't some of that need to be reserved for OS? I've never developed for 360) How is a game like this, with such a huge world and no loading screens, managed on such a small budget? It must be a miracle of optimization.

Now, Noogy's game, Dust, playing on 360 with all of its assets and voiceover is impressive enough, but from what I can tell Ori has even more stuff going on and no loading barriers at all. I'm definitely curious how this was achieved.
Click to expand...
I don't know specifics, but I remember reading that Ori worked directly with the Unity team to get some extremely refined streaming solutions to make it work.
 
C

Conkersbadfurday

Member
Ready to reach out to the press again now that I've got a demo and a Steam Greenlight under my belt.

First time I tried, I sent out an email that was just shy of 250 words. The quicker the better, is what I've been told; however, I've seen some people send out 600+ words and land success. Am I stressing about that too much?

Though to be honest, I'm kind of not sure how to structure this now. Before, we had an ongoing Kickstarter and Greenlight page. Right now, we just kinda want people to know we exist. We also want people to play our demo, which we finished last week.

But the demo was supposed to get us Greenlit, and then that randomly happened, so now it's just a demo. There's nothing to really advertise anymore :p Just a quick, "hey, look at us!"
 
C

Candescence

Member
Blizzard said:
This may be an odd thing to notice, but I'm digging the style and rendering of the character's hair. It works well, though the shirt feels a little awkward like it's slightly offset or something.
Click to expand...

Funnily enough, it's just a test character made in Maximo Fuse, so how it looks is mainly out of my hands, really, due to the free version's lack of options.
 
S

SpacePirate Ridley

Member
So yesterday I went with a friend (also working with me in the game we are making) that was presenting a game he did for adventure jam in a bar where they were doing an event called "beers and testing".
They were like 5 or 6 games there, and one of them was this magnificent puzzle action shooting game called Rise & Shine.
Didnt know it was developed by a studio in my hometown, and they are even being published by Adult Swim games (IIRC Jobb's Ghost Song was also being published by them).
Beat the first level (the demo) and it was hard as nails, but was pretty proud of beating it. Talked with them of how good was their game (the art is simply AMAZING) and how good it felt playing it.

Probably going to go again the next time they do the event and if possible bring our game. Was a pretty good place to test things with other indies, that know how to give feedback, although is also open to anyone to go.
 
G

gooey

Neo Member
Hey GAF devs! New to the site.
Been browsing this thread all week at work. I'm a programmer and like to mess about in unity in my spare time.

I'm in the very early stages of making an old school first-person dungeon crawler.
It's got: Grid-based movement, random stat generation, random encounters (although no battle system, atm).
Nothing but placeholder art to show. The stats and UI layout will be nothing like this also.
RkcOCiG.png


Working on art for when you pick the CLASS for each character.
Here is the PROGRAMMER sprite:
6fq6CmN.png

Going to work on the SECRETARY sprite later.
 
F

friken

Member
Jobbs said:
Was playing Ori and the Blind Forest again -- Because any time I need a gut punch and made to feel like I'm nothing, I play this -- and I noticed the game is available also on Xbox 360.

Now, doesn't Xbox 360 have a really miniscule amount of ram available for games? (512mb, I think, and doesn't some of that need to be reserved for OS? I've never developed for 360) How is a game like this, with such a huge world and no loading screens, managed on such a small budget? It must be a miracle of optimization.

Now, Noogy's game, Dust, playing on 360 with all of its assets and voiceover is impressive enough, but from what I can tell Ori has even more stuff going on and no loading barriers at all. I'm definitely curious how this was achieved.
Click to expand...

Yep, I was watching a friend stream ori. What an awesome looking game. I need to pick it up. Don't let it get you down though, your game is still great on it's own merits.
 
SeanNoonan

SeanNoonan

Member
Mystic River said:
haven't posted much lately, but game is still in progress, added farming in space ships.

FarmingTest.png


more info at http://mysticrivergames.blogspot.com/2015/05/farming.html
Click to expand...
There are a couple things that "bother" me about this screenshot - you can take this as feedback that can be embraced or ignored :D

  1. Inconsistencies abound!
    - Your pixel size/texture resolution is all over the place (I assume the environment art is placeholder, as some of those elements look incredibly stretched)​
    - The game logo and company logo don't gel well with each other and look really obnoxious plastered over the UI in the screenshot - my eyes just see noise​
  2. I quite like the lighting, it would be awesome if some of it could be coloured around the coloured lights :D
  3. The white text looks "off" and doesn't seem to suit the rest of the UI, especially the floating text like "manage crew in this map" and the timer
  4. I'm quite interested to see this in motion - the characters look really cool
  5. I dig the name of the game

Anyway, I assume you posted this here for feedback :D?
 
M

Mystic River

Member
SpacePirate Ridley said:
So yesterday I went with a friend (also working with me in the game we are making) that was presenting a game he did for adventure jam in a bar where they were doing an event called "beers and testing".
They were like 5 or 6 games there, and one of them was this magnificent puzzle action shooting game called Rise & Shine.
Didnt know it was developed by a studio in my hometown, and they are even being published by Adult Swim games (IIRC Jobb's Ghost Song was also being published by them).
Beat the first level (the demo) and it was hard as nails, but was pretty proud of beating it. Talked with them of how good was their game (the art is simply AMAZING) and how good it felt playing it.

Probably going to go again the next time they do the event and if possible bring our game. Was a pretty good place to test things with other indies, that know how to give feedback, although is also open to anyone to go.
Click to expand...

wow Rise & Shine looks very nice, just saw that in Steam!, I will wait for it , hope to remember the game after a year :)
 
M

Mystic River

Member
SeanNoonan said:
There are a couple things that "bother" me about this screenshot - you can take this as feedback that can be embraced or ignored :D

  1. Inconsistencies abound!
    - Your pixel size/texture resolution is all over the place (I assume the environment art is placeholder, as some of those elements look incredibly stretched)​
    - The game logo and company logo don't gel well with each other and look really obnoxious plastered over the UI in the screenshot - my eyes just see noise​
  2. I quite like the lighting, it would be awesome if some of it could be coloured around the coloured lights :D
  3. The white text looks "off" and doesn't seem to suit the rest of the UI, especially the floating text like "manage crew in this map" and the timer
  4. I'm quite interested to see this in motion - the characters look really cool
  5. I dig the name of the game

Anyway, I assume you posted this here for feedback :D?
Click to expand...

lot of the art is still work in progress , actually all the pixel art is at the same resolution but some of the art looks crappy at the moment since I did that almost a year ago and changed a little bit the art style on the go.

I will work on the company logo as soon as I find time for it , I need more time to do the art and at the same time programming, so I will work on a better way to separate the logos and reduce noise on those screenshots!

the white text is just a tool tip helper to let you know what you will push, you can disable those in game, but yes I still need to figure out how to show a better tool tip, initially I put the text there because I was doing it for XBOX mainly, but as soon as the game became bigger and bigger decided that XBOX doesn't have the power to handle my little baby, so I moved to PC, so many things still remain as part as the XBOX version.

And yes, I am not offended, always looking for feedback, the more the better!
 
P

Pehesse

Member
Jobbs said:
Holes in the ground just ain't fun unless they go a really long way.

webm: http://www.gfycat.com/GrimyJovialKarakul
Click to expand...

Falling in a hole like that is really the pits.
Hope we don't have to make it back up the same way!

I love the idea of falling down something and seeing the environment change as you go, incidentally. Portal 2 did that quite well!

webm: http://gfycat.com/FreshNaiveHornedtoad

Here's today's stuff on my end, I'm getting a "day transition" scene up and running - I love having some "rituals" part, rhythmic beats you come back to, that evolve as the game progresses (here, the dreams - yes, that is a horrible placeholder that will be replaced, not an actual dream :-D)
 
P

Polymath

Neo Member
Hello IndieGaf,

I am currently working on my own game engine/library called PXL and i thought i'd share it here.
PXL is my first attempt at making my own engine/library, so it's probably pretty bad.
The current state of PXL is still quite young, it suffers from lack of documentation and good error handling.
However i think having some early feedback is great! If you feel like having a look then be my guest.

The GitHub link can be found here

Edit: Maybe it should be noted that the goal of PXL is, is to make my own online coop game similar to Unepic or Hammerwatch.
 
C

challen

Member
Hello,

I'm creating a real time strategy game with single player and LAN multiplayer. It's called Reservwars. http://reservwars.com
Reservwars has different factions of wacky creatures fighting over water.
Different creatures have different stats (speed, attack, health, etc)
Water and energy are the resources at the moment.
We already have a multiplayer prototype, and I'd like to get it as fun to play as possible in the next few months.

I'd like to get feedback from everyone on
1. Do you even like strategy games? Why? Do you like real time strategy games?
2. What do you like about real time strategy games? Could an indie strategy game contain what gameplay you like?
3. What would you want in Reservwars? What multiplayer gametypes?
4. What do you think about LAN multiplayer? What do you think about single player campaigns?
5. How should we market this strategy game? What aspects of the game should we highlight?
6. Send me any thoughts you have on this game. I'm looking for constructive help!
I already posted this on tig, but I'd like to get feedback here too.

Cheers!
 
B

Blizzard

Banned
I have almost decided to start fiddling with on one of the classic impossible problems, a somewhat general AI -- at least within a certain problem domain.

Should my posts ever become strange and...inhuman...assume the worst has happened and plan accordingly.
 
C

Candescence

Member
Well, so I've now acquired a decent reliable income for the rest of the year, I want to put a bit of it to good use to get some help from an artist to at least establish what kind of art style I really want for Project Idyal - I have a few ideas on specifics, and certainly on how those will likely be conveyed in 3D, but actually figuring out where to get said help is another matter entirely. Yeah, I can be kinda hopeless about this sort of thing sometimes. :(
 
M

missile

Member
desk.gif


Some more work on the desktop side of things regarding my user interface. The
orange ones are the standard user desktops. On the red desktop one can see all
the user desktops next to each other, if needed. The white one won't be seen
in general, it just serves to set up some the coordinate frames, overall clip
regions etc..

Well, next to OS-independency I'm also now going for device-independency.
I will spend each UI element a proper model-to-view (a proper 2d viewing-)
transformation. Each UI element will have it's own coordinate space, window,
normalized viewport and sub-viewport, which will finally be transformed to
some given device-dependent render target and rastered according to the given
target. This requires a lot more work, but will come in handy in so many ways.

Don't bother about the mouse pointer in the image, it's off because I already
implemented some of said transformations etc. and the mouse pointer now needs
to be back transformed properly to match scales.
 
V

V_Arnold

Member
Blizzard said:
I have almost decided to start fiddling with on one of the classic impossible problems, a somewhat general AI -- at least within a certain problem domain.

Should my posts ever become strange and...inhuman...assume the worst has happened and plan accordingly.
Click to expand...

You shall know if you succeeded when the AI can parse LOL chat logs and generate an appropriate response 9 out of 10 cases. THAT is when the miracle engine should be started!
 
D

Dynamite Shikoku

Congratulations, you really deserve it!
Started to think about names for my new mobile game (I posted a picture a few pages back). The game is a falling block game like tetris or puyo puyo, but involves dividing numbers. I'm not saying the name has to be from this list, but do any of these sound alright?

A. Drop Division
B. Drop Divide
C. Vertical Divide
D. Div Dive
E. Dividive
 
Yoshi

Yoshi

Headmaster of Console Warrior Jugendstrafanstalt
I think Vertical Divide could have negative associations for people who do not like mathematics (and is not obscure enough to invoke positive associations in math-buffs) ;).
 
G

GYNGA

Member
Dynamite Shikoku said:
Started to think about names for my new mobile game (I posted a picture a few pages back). The game is a falling block game like tetris or puyo puyo, but involves dividing numbers. I'm not saying the name has to be from this list, but do any of these sound alright?

A. Drop Division
B. Drop Divide
C. Vertical Divide
D. Div Dive
E. Dividive
Click to expand...
The Division
:p
 
G

gooey

Neo Member
missile said:
@DS: Vertical Divide



Hi there!


Second one looks pretty interesting! :+
Click to expand...

Thanks. Was planning on going for an old-CRT-monitor kinda motif for the art style in general.
Think the character might look a little too cool to be a programmer though...

Going to try and tackle the combat system after work today. Not coded anything like that before. I'm sure it'll end in salty, salty tears.
 
M

Mystic River

Member
Dynamite Shikoku said:
Started to think about names for my new mobile game (I posted a picture a few pages back). The game is a falling block game like tetris or puyo puyo, but involves dividing numbers. I'm not saying the name has to be from this list, but do any of these sound alright?

A. Drop Division
B. Drop Divide
C. Vertical Divide
D. Div Dive
E. Dividive
Click to expand...

how about Divide and Conquer? :p
 
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