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[Loginius]

I am making a game damn it!

MoCap testing with Kinect; works fairly well but it still needs a lot of cleaning up in Maya. But you can get really good results.

How bad is the cleaning up?
I always wanted to try mocap but held of till now because it seemed to me that the cleanup necessary takes so long I could keyframe the animations by hand in the same time while having a easier time changing something later on.
Are u using motionbuilder or what programm is the first screen taken from?

Looks promising I really like the design of the second character.

 

[missile]

I've been working on a couple of things - Tiny Outrun, for Arduino with TinyScreen:

https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=GYmHtBGt6fU

...and this dynamic damage stuff (I'll post more details about the game soon):

Cool stuff! I like the slight rolling effect of the bomber.
Video doesn't play on me (not found).

 

[taku]

Thanks for the kind words, everyone!

MoCap testing with Kinect; works fairly well but it still needs a lot of cleaning up in Maya. But you can get really good results.

Haha, please keep that test movement as an in-game easter egg!

Cool stuff! I like the slight rolling effect of the bomber.
Video doesn't play on me (not found).

I cracked the code.

 

[missile]

^ Thx! :+

@floatstarpx: What are the framebuffer/screen specs of the TinyScreen?

 

[Mystic River]

wow, so much cool stuff! I need to polish mine before posting something new

Working on AI all the time and didn't have time to update any graphics

 

[Davision]

I am making a game damn it!

MoCap testing with Kinect; works fairly well but it still needs a lot of cleaning up in Maya. But you can get really good results.

Uppecut animation created with Kinect mocap, it came out fairly well (eventually)

Nice! No problems with hands and head? What plugin are you using and is it the new Kinect? I tried some Kinect mocap way back with Brekel around when it first came out but it had some problems, still it is always amazing when you can see your virtual character move sort of the same as you in realtime.

 

[floatstarpx]

Video doesn't play on me (not found).

Thanks!
Sorry - got the link wrong - have edited original post:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYmHtBGt6fU

oh, and the TinyScreen is 96x64, and can run in either 8-bit or 16-bit mode. There's no double buffering, and storing a buffer of 96x64 would be more memory than the 2K that an Arduino has, so you have to do some interesting 'scan-line' style rendering to render to it efficiently!

 

[missile]

Thanks!
Sorry - got the link wrong - have edited original post:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYmHtBGt6fU

oh, and the TinyScreen is 96x64, and can run in either 8-bit or 16-bit mode. There's no double buffering, and storing a buffer of 96x64 would be more memory than the 2K that an Arduino has, so you have to do some interesting 'scan-line' style rendering to render to it efficiently!

Good old scanline rendering ftw! :+ Are you into 3d as well?

 

[floatstarpx]

Good old scanline rendering ftw! :+ Are you into 3d as well?

I used to make little homebrew gameboy & gameboy advance games - writing that scanline renderer suddenly gave me a bit of insight in to why they worked the way they did!
I started writing a more generic scanline tile/sprite "library" for TinyScreen/Arduino, which I've put on github:
https://github.com/jonwingrove/tinyscreen-spritetile-lib

3d - I guess it depends what I'm working on and who with! I'm not much of an artist - programmery type only, really!
(edit: ps, just had a look at some of the stuff on your site - that 64x64 renderer for DCPU is very cool - maybe I should think about something like that, too...)

Thought about writing a Wolf3d style renderer for the TinyScreen - but my first worry was that I'd have to flip it sideways to get it fast enough with buffer copying only working as horizontal lines... although maybe there's a memory efficient way of storing the data I'd need in order to render it quickly line-by-line...

 

[Dewfreak83]

I really like this too! The only thing i'm not 100% a fan of is how the tile colors for the floor and walls sort of blend together.

 

[missile]

I used to make little homebrew gameboy & gameboy advance games - writing that scanline renderer suddenly gave me a bit of insight in to why they worked the way they did!
I started writing a more generic scanline tile/sprite "library" for TinyScreen/Arduino, which I've put on github:
https://github.com/jonwingrove/tinyscreen-spritetile-lib ...

Nice. That's how all the character roms work when blitting the characters to
the screen.

... 3d - I guess it depends what I'm working on and who with! I'm not much of an artist - programmery type only, really! ...

Programmer art can be quite cool.

... (edit: ps, just had a look at some of the stuff on your site - that 64x64 renderer for DCPU is very cool - maybe I should think about something like that, too...) ...

Ahh ... thx a lot. Well, I think *everyone* interested in programming 3d
graphics/engines should have written such a tiny 3d rendere on whatever tiny
hardware (

Spoiler

in assembler, no kidding

), because it really teaches one a lesson on
so many fronts.

If Notch wouldn't had canceled 0x10c, I would had programmed a little game for
the DCPU. I was actually a lil further than what is seen on the page. I
extended the "Procedural surface generation" stuff much further, switched to
quaternions for rotation which really played out in two ways, first; more
precision, and second, I could get rid of the drift of the rotation matrix
resulting in a shearing effect, which is way bad. Re-normalizing a rotation
matrix is a nogo (computationally very expensive, even using some rude tricks I
got from Brain Hook, using cross-product etc.). However, using quaternions
(representing the same rotation) you just re-normalize the quaternion and be
done with it. :+ So the "Procedural surface generation" on the page, a full 3d
tunnel in this case, deforms way smooth and steady by now. I even was on
the verge of making a little game prototype where you start to fly through a
tunnel making some hostile encounters. Here is a small gif;

but it doesn't show any of the improvements/bending stated above,
unfortunately. When you start flying into the tunnel it starts to bend into a
corkscrew while starting to rotate etc. Pretty cool. I hope I can work on this
project again somewhat further down the road.

Here is another demo showing me tinkering around with the board computer;

Yeah, the craft actually has a board computer! So you can rewrite the firmware
of the craft resp. update it ... on-the-fly! xD Amazing, isn't it?

... Thought about writing a Wolf3d style renderer for the TinyScreen - but my first worry was that I'd have to flip it sideways to get it fast enough with buffer copying only working as horizontal lines... although maybe there's a memory efficient way of storing the data I'd need in order to render it quickly line-by-line...

Yeah, Wolf prefers going vertical. Trying to reorder the data would be a
nice exercise, I guess.

 

[SpacePirate Ridley]

I've been working on a couple of things - Tiny Outrun, for Arduino with TinyScreen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYmHtBGt6fU

...and this dynamic damage stuff (I'll post more details about the game soon):

Love the mickey plane, and the destruction is impressive.

 

[missile]

Old-school lens incoming!

Looks a bit crappy, heh? The thickness varies linearly, which can't be any good.
I think I need to construct some proper quadrics or cubics. Anyone knows some
instant cool ones for 2d lenses?

 

[floatstarpx]

Ahh ... thx a lot. Well, I think *everyone* interested in programming 3d
graphics/engines should have written such a tiny 3d rendere on whatever tiny
hardware (

Spoiler

in assembler, no kidding

), because it really teaches one a lesson on
so many fronts.

Really cool stuff - even more impressive in assembler! It's been a long time since I've written any assembler - think it'll probably be a long time before I do!

 

[gooey]

Here is a small gif;

Coooool.

Making any real significant progress feels almost impossible at the moment.
I need to take some holiday time off soon...
Doing some writing for random dialogue exchanges with NPCs.
EDIT: Writing doesn't feel like real work. PERFECT.

 

[Yoshi]

Sorry for asking the same questions again, but I guess since more than 100 posts have passed since I asked them, maybe some people knowing answers to my questions would now overlook them:

I'm making good progress on the game logic of my game and am positive I will have finished this part of the game in the foreseeable future (which of course in an SRPG is only a small part of the overall game). However, I'm already thinking a bit about the visual representation which is a horrible looking hackjob right now. I have two questions that are of particular importance to me:
1. I'm using an old laptop (Intel Pentium P6200 @2,13 GHz, 4 GB RAM of which 2,93 GB are usable, the weakpoint in the Windows performance rating being graphics at 4,4) for development, if the game runs smoothly on that in the Unity API, can I expect it to do as well when compiled for Wii U or do I have to expect weaknesses the Wii U has over my laptop? I'm a bit concerned about the CPU which seems strong in my laptop in comparison, because the most taxing part of the game will probably be the path finding to compute reachable spots and attackable spots (maybe I can parallelize it a bit, but if it is not needed, I'd rather not add the additional complexity to the program), which should be CPU-bound.
2. What's cheaper in Unity, making a half-transparent cube visible over a spot or exchanging the texture of the spot with a texture that has the half transparent color-overlay "precomputed"? I need this for highlighting the reachable and attackable spots in the game and since this should be one of the most taxing graphical aspects of the game, I'd like to make it effecient.

EDIT: Another question came up: If I release the game on Wii U, I will need age ratings for my game I suppose (Nintendo hasn't answered yet to my application as Wii U developer), what is the cost I should plan with wrt age ratings for a release at least in Europe, what should I plan for wrt USA and Japan, should I try to release there, too?

And to add to this: How long does it usually take for Nintendo to reach back when you apply to their indie program, because it has been a while now (basically the moment I was sure I'd get a game going, which I guess should be about a month (?) ago).

 

[Conkersbadfurday]

So I'm trying to get the word out about my game's demo, and so far nothing. But oh well.

I did, however, get a reply from a site saying they'd write an article up for ten dollars. They actually have like 40k twitter followers, and I'm sad to say that the deal doesn't sound all that bad.

But it's slimy as fuck, holy damn. "Sure, pay us to do an article, you know, that thing our website thrives on."

I can't imagine they give EA and the like the same treatment when they send out press releases :\

 

[Yoshi]

So I'm trying to get the word out about my game's demo, and so far nothing. But oh well.

I did, however, get a reply from a site saying they'd write an article up for ten dollars. They actually have like 40k twitter followers, and I'm sad to say that the deal doesn't sound all that bad.

But it's slimy as fuck, holy damn. "Sure, pay us to do an article, you know, that thing our website thrives on."

I can't imagine they give EA and the like the same treatment when they send out press releases :\

Now this is disgusting, if any "real press" did this, they'd be in hell...

What's your game about?

 

[Jacksinthe]

Sorry for asking the same questions again, but I guess since more than 100 posts have passed since I asked them, maybe some people knowing answers to my questions would now overlook them:


And to add to this: How long does it usually take for Nintendo to reach back when you apply to their indie program, because it has been a while now (basically the moment I was sure I'd get a game going, which I guess should be about a month (?) ago).

1) The only way to be sure is to build for WiiU - I cannot see some simple pathfinding bringing the WiiU to its knees, pending the amount of objects doing the pathfinding (you haven't stated if it's one or two objects or thousands rolling at a time).

2) Alphas cost no matter what. Is your game 2D? 3D? I don't recall you saying. I can only guess 3D by your "cube" reference. In either case - what, exactly, needs to have an alpha? Will that alpha blend over other objects? Is it just used to highlight within the boundaries of an object? Is the object animated? While alphas cost, again, I can't see a few crippling the WiiU.

3) (Your edit question) Do you want to make more money? If yes, release everywhere you financially can. ESRB allows free ratings on digital items so if your game isn't boxed - it's free for NA or 800 USD for boxed. PEGI is around 1300 USD (here's the kicker) per game, PER platform - so if you release on say XO and WiiU - you will need to spend 2600 USD to release - this is also PER territory (last I checked has been a few months).

4) Depends. Some have taken months, others have taken mere weeks.

Protip - make sure your project is Unity 4.3.7 compatible. Quote this post to see why below:

 

[Yoshi]

First: Many thanks for you tip, I'll have to look over it and see if everything is compatible!
Also many thanks for your detailed answers.

1) The only way to be sure is to build for WiiU - I cannot see some simple pathfinding bringing the WiiU to its knees, pending the amount of objects doing the pathfinding (you haven't stated if it's one or two objects or thousands rolling at a time).

It's Dijkstra on a pretty huge graph and a lazy implementation of it (not using hashes) was problematic if applied to several game characters at once for a certain convenience feature (marking potentially dangerous spots). Now it's running fine on the laptop but I'm worried a bit due to the Wii U's CPU being known for being weak. Realistically, the number of characters doing the pathfinding shouldn't exceed 30.

2) Alphas cost no matter what. Is your game 2D? 3D? I don't recall you saying. I can only guess 3D by your "cube" reference. In either case - what, exactly, needs to have an alpha? Will that alpha blend over other objects? Is it just used to highlight within the boundaries of an object? Is the object animated? While alphas cost, again, I can't see a few crippling the WiiU.

The game is technically 3d but for now I just use a fixed topdown-view. This might change later on, but for now it's a 2D game modelled in 3D. The alpha would be needed for marking cubes for instance as "reachable" for a character, while still showing what the space the character would end up on looks like, similar to this:

However, if alpha is costly, I will just put a texture with the marker and one without it into the game, this way the alpha need not be computed "on the go" .

3) (Your edit question) Do you want to make more money? If yes, release everywhere you financially can. ESRB allows free ratings on digital items so if your game isn't boxed - it's free for NA or 800 USD for boxed. PEGI is around 1300 USD (here's the kicker) per game, PER platform - so if you release on say XO and WiiU - you will need to spend 2600 USD to release - this is also PER territory (last I checked has been a few months).

Uh, that's a lot. I don't want to make a lot of money with the game, but now I have a goal I need to aim at: 1300 USD (plus the cost involved with renting a dev unit for the final stretch) . If ESRB is free then of course I will release it in the US, too - as a European myself, I cannot not release in Europe though, I want to have my game on my Wii U, too...

4) Depends. Some have taken months, others have taken mere weeks.

Thank you, so probably no reason to worry yet .

 

[Conkersbadfurday]

Now this is disgusting, if any "real press" did this, they'd be in hell...

What's your game about?

They're marketing themselves as a "blog" and not press, despite their coverage of news. I sent the press release to their general "tips" email, since that's all they really have in the way of contact information.

I'm not really sure how to approach this, to be honest. i sent a followup email asking them exactly what my ten dollars would get, since they promised "front page" material.

The game itself is a mix of card game, action game, and RPG. We're billing it as a "real-time card game" since the card aspect is played in real time like...well, an action game No turn-based stuff here.

http://www.dualwieldsoftware.com/press for more info if you're in the mood.

 

[Jobbs]

Hey guys. I put up my first "Let's Mumble" gameplay video, where I play the game, and talk about it with mic levels that are too low.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePE7v2JCEGU

It's pretty long, if you just want to see the more eventful parts, check the battle at 13:20, and the section after about 18:30.

It's still WIP!

 

[Jacksinthe]

First: Many thanks for you tip, I'll have to look over it and see if everything is compatible!
Also many thanks for your detailed answers.

It's Dijkstra on a pretty huge graph and a lazy implementation of it (not using hashes) was problematic if applied to several game characters at once for a certain convenience feature (marking potentially dangerous spots). Now it's running fine on the laptop but I'm worried a bit due to the Wii U's CPU being known for being weak. Realistically, the number of characters doing the pathfinding shouldn't exceed 30.


The game is technically 3d but for now I just use a fixed topdown-view. This might change later on, but for now it's a 2D game modelled in 3D. The alpha would be needed for marking cubes for instance as "reachable" for a character, while still showing what the space the character would end up on looks like, similar to this:

However, if alpha is costly, I will just put a texture with the marker and one without it into the game, this way the alpha need not be computed "on the go" .

Uh, that's a lot. I don't want to make a lot of money with the game, but now I have a goal I need to aim at: 1300 USD (plus the cost involved with renting a dev unit for the final stretch) . If ESRB is free then of course I will release it in the US, too - as a European myself, I cannot not release in Europe though, I want to have my game on my Wii U, too...

Thank you, so probably no reason to worry yet .

Stick with alpha in-game. You will be fine.

Ever think about using A* for nav?

Also, this is important, DO NOT get a devkit for use in the final stretch, the last thing you want to do is make your game then find out it runs like garbage for some unforeseeable reason and need to scale back most all of your work and code. Build your game on the system.

Nintendo allows you to borrow a devkit to see if you like it before you buy it. You get PLENTY of time to throw it back to them. Get it early and throw everything you have at it and benchmark early. Then if it is absolutely impossible to keep the kit (they have financing) then you can give it back and continue based on your benchmarks.

Don't save it for the last stretch. It may be fine, but you never know. Some bad code or improper engineering can cripple the simplest of 2D games if you are inexperienced or careless but run fine on PC. Get it out of the way early, IMO.

 

[HP_Wuvcraft]

Guys.
So, uh, Steam wants me in them.
Rather, I've been greenlit.

What bank has the best deal for small business? That's honestly the last legal thing I need to do in order to put a cherry on this.

And by that, I mean at least be an official Steamworks dev. We won't be ready to launch for at least a week or so depending on "factors" like "reality".

 

[Jacksinthe]

Guys.
So, uh, Steam wants me in them.
Rather, I've been greenlit.

What bank has the best deal for small business? That's honestly the last legal thing I need to do in order to put a cherry on this.

And by that, I mean at least be an official Steamworks dev. We won't be ready to launch for at least a week or so depending on "factors" like "reality".

Harris Bank, for me. Lowest fees.

For Credit Card go Capital One, hands down. First time applying with them they gave me a 15k limit right off the bat.

 

[Hopeford]

So, I've learned an important lesson about gamemaking. Namely that I should have labeled my placeholder graphics/test scripts in such a way that I could easily delete them after I'm done with them.

I did not do that.

I deeply regret that now.

 

[cbox]

Artwork is now final, release date news coming soon

 

[HP_Wuvcraft]

Harris Bank, for me. Lowest fees.

For Credit Card go Capital One, hands down. First time applying with them they gave me a 15k limit right off the bat.

What are the fees like?

 

[Yoshi]

Stick with alpha in-game. You will be fine.

OK, thank you, it's definitely more convenient .

Ever think about using A* for nav?

I think A* will probably not help. Sure, in order to get the shortest path from one point to another it is a nice optimization, so for long-distance planning of the AI I still plan to implement A*, but for finding all reachable spots (basically: All shortest paths of a maximum length starting from a given point) the approximation function should not be of any help since I don't have a specified target - here Dijktra seems more natural to me (and I know I could just take A* and set the approximation function to a constant zero, but whenever I don't need the approximation function it's just unneeded overhead). Of course, if I overlook something here, I'd be grateful if you told me so .

Also, this is important, DO NOT get a devkit for use in the final stretch, the last thing you want to do is make your game then find out it runs like garbage for some unforeseeable reason and need to scale back most all of your work and code. Build your game on the system.

Nintendo allows you to borrow a devkit to see if you like it before you buy it. You get PLENTY of time to throw it back to them. Get it early and throw everything you have at it and benchmark early. Then if it is absolutely impossible to keep the kit (they have financing) then you can give it back and continue based on your benchmarks.

Don't save it for the last stretch. It may be fine, but you never know. Some bad code or improper engineering can cripple the simplest of 2D games if you are inexperienced or careless but run fine on PC. Get it out of the way early, IMO.

Performance optimization seems to be a tricky thing for Wii U. Since the one technical aspect that's really important to me is a flawless performance, I guess I'll just buy a devkit. The cost to expect is probably NDA'd right? I guess I'll need to find some buyers for the game in the end considering PEGI and dev kit cost, but I hope the price of the dev kit is not outrageous (i.e. not exceeding four digits), so that I won't have to use any financing.

It's really nice of you to give me so much advice, thank you!

 

[missile]

Really cool stuff - even more impressive in assembler! It's been a long time since I've written any assembler - think it'll probably be a long time before I do!

The assembler is actually the easiest part because you can get away with
about 6 basic opcodes (add, mul, div, mov, jmp, shl), and variants if needed,
plus one or two addressing modes -- on almost any platform. What is a bit
harder is tracking the precision around during all the computation if you just
have a few significant digits to deal with. Saving one or two bits could mean
the world at times. However, this is something one has to think about on any
platform esp. today where we deal with 3d, physics, image processing like
crazy.

Coooool. ...

It's actually two years old. An update would be nice. But not today, I guess.

 

[ken_matthews]

How bad is the cleaning up?
I always wanted to try mocap but held of till now because it seemed to me that the cleanup necessary takes so long I could keyframe the animations by hand in the same time while having a easier time changing something later on.
Are u using motionbuilder or what programm is the first screen taken from?

A lot of the joint rotations need to be fixed, curves need to be smoothed, and keys deleted. Plus I like to stylize the animation a bit more than what was originally captured. So from start to finish, a single sequence takes a couple of hours. Additionally, a lot of the cleanup work is filling in the gaps from the capture. Because it is a single camera system, the Kinect looses track of bones positions during overlaps, or if your body twists too much. Even though it is nowhere near as good as multi-camera marker systems, it is still really great because you can still get a lot of nuance in the animation; shifting of weight, slight twitches and re-balancing that is incredible difficult to key by hand.

And yes, that is Motionbuilder in the first screen, but most of the work is done in Maya.

Nice! No problems with hands and head? What plugin are you using and is it the new Kinect? I tried some Kinect mocap way back with Brekel around when it first came out but it had some problems, still it is always amazing when you can see your virtual character move sort of the same as you in realtime.

The head is not really a problem, but the hands and feet tend to go crazy when I import the mocap into my rig (has something to do with the way Epic's tool imports the animation), but its not too difficult to fix. I am using the Xbox One Kinect with Brekel Pro Body 2 + Motionbuilder + Epics Animation and Rigging Tool kit in Maya.

Here is another GIF, added two more punch animations for the character's melee combos.

 

[missile]

@ken_matthews: In your face style! Nice!

Got now a better lens. There was a little issue. For the lens to look good
I need to compute the coefficients of a function (which does the scaling)
depending on some given range values (minification/magnification along the
distance from the center), i.e. an interpolation condition. For a quadric the
coefficients are easy to compute. So to make really cool lenses, piecewise
interpolation (of varying degree) should do the trick for almost all cases,
I guess. That way you can have, for example, magnification at 3/4 of the outer
ring of the lens etc.. One could also make the scaling function depending on
an angle making the entire thing unisotropic. I think I will do some more
easy functions and then skip the lenses altogether.

 

[Jacksinthe]

What are the fees like?

8/month for a balance less than 1500 or free with a balance of 1500+ or if you use their business CC. I opted for the balance requirement instead of their CC since I found Capital One to be much better, for me.

OK, thank you, it's definitely more convenient .

I think A* will probably not help. Sure, in order to get the shortest path from one point to another it is a nice optimization, so for long-distance planning of the AI I still plan to implement A*, but for finding all reachable spots (basically: All shortest paths of a maximum length starting from a given point) the approximation function should not be of any help since I don't have a specified target - here Dijktra seems more natural to me (and I know I could just take A* and set the approximation function to a constant zero, but whenever I don't need the approximation function it's just unneeded overhead). Of course, if I overlook something here, I'd be grateful if you told me so .

Performance optimization seems to be a tricky thing for Wii U. Since the one technical aspect that's really important to me is a flawless performance, I guess I'll just buy a devkit. The cost to expect is probably NDA'd right? I guess I'll need to find some buyers for the game in the end considering PEGI and dev kit cost, but I hope the price of the dev kit is not outrageous (i.e. not exceeding four digits), so that I won't have to use any financing.

It's really nice of you to give me so much advice, thank you!

I can't see major hurdles for the WiiU but you never know. Worst case scenario if you stagger your unit movements by a few frames each for the calculation then move after they have their end positions that would be a workaround in case rolling everyone's nav in the same frame drops performance.

I tested a bunch of scenarios when I got my devkits in for XO so I had a baseline with empty scenes to go by when designing things. Everything from trying to instantiate hundreds of items in a single frame all with physics on top of one another to testing my limit for the amount of moving objects I can get away with. Playing with framerates, physics timings, enemy AI polling rates, etc.

Granted, I'm not testing on a PS4 kit yet but the performance is comparable enough where I leave myself some headroom just to be sure. I can still go bonkers and maintain over 200fps on XO so I don't think PS4 will be an issue.

 

[thomasmahler]

Added some more polish to my little Super Turbo Drifters Prototype:

http://www.warsoup.com/files/superTurboDrifters01.zip

Controls (Requires an Xbox Controller!):

A: Accelerate
X: Break
RB: Drift
B / Tap A: Boost (only works when the Drift Bar has been maxxed!)
LB: Use Powerup
ESC: Restart Race

Now has a raceStart (with fully functioning TurboStart!) and raceEnd sequence, also implemented the Mario Kart Powerup system yesterday just to see if it fits into the gameplay (haven't hooked up the powerups except for the green and red shell and since there's no other driver on the field, the red shell just plops down on the track)

 

[Dynamite Shikoku]

fuck you, ui layouts. you bore me.


^ I would pay good money for a good kart racer ala diddy kong racing

 

[Mr. Virus]

So, has anyone on here sold/distributed their game's soundtrack through Steam at all? Wondering if it's worth trying to sort out (even it it's a freebie) or just sticking it up on Bandcamp etc.

 

[Oppo]

Hey indie devs. I could use some advice.

Here is a mockup of the thing I'm working on.. it's a strategy game, similar vein to spaceship "management" games:

This is a mouse/touch driven interface. I am trying to suss out the best way to click on the various rooms and have the crew sprites pathfind to the right level. The sprites themselves are actually hooked up "sorta" bone-based, because I want to ragdoll them in certain situations (explosions, gravity off etc). So I've been looking at 3D platformer tutorials, as well as 2D pathfinding with A* plugins and whatnot. I've got it working on a single floor (big trigger volume buttons around each "room", click crew sprite then room, they walk to the target).

That main "shaft" towards the front of the ship was originally an elevator. I ditched that for "transport pads" (not shown) that will simply zip the crew sprites between floors. But I'm not sure how to do the logic to reach the appropriate floor first. Essentially it needs to be something like: if floor clicked is different than current crew floor, run to nearest elevator pad and execute that to correct floor, then run to target. I'm pretty sure there are systems for this already but because of my slightly odd combo of physics platformer and mouse-driven (indirect control) click-to-move, I keep running into a 3D solution, or super simple proscribed 2D techniques that I don't want to use.

Just curious how some of you would handle it. Bonus points for a Playmaker based solution (I love it!). Thanks!

 

[gooey]

Secretly coding game mechanics whilst at work...

Spoiler

int hp = 100;
Random r = new Random();
int i = r.Next(11, 21);
float f = i / 10f;
float threshold = hp / f;
Console.WriteLine("DMG THRESHOLD {0}", threshold);
bool fight = true;
while(fight){
int atkDmg = r.Next(6, 11);
string s = Console.ReadLine();

if(s == string.Empty){hp -= atkDmg; Console.WriteLine(hp);}

if (hp < threshold){Console.WriteLine("bleed"); fight = false;}
}

 

[missile]

fuck you, ui layouts. you bore me. ...

That's awaiting me too. I need to write a UI layouter to automatically arrange
the elements etc.. Yeah ... it's boring. Back to lenses...

Secretly coding game mechanics whilst at work...

Spoiler

int hp = 100;
Random r = new Random();
int i = r.Next(11, 21);
float f = i / 10f;
float threshold = hp / f;
Console.WriteLine("DMG THRESHOLD {0}", threshold);
bool fight = true;
while(fight){
int atkDmg = r.Next(6, 11);
string s = Console.ReadLine();

if(s == string.Empty){hp -= atkDmg; Console.WriteLine(hp);}

if (hp < threshold){Console.WriteLine("bleed"); fight = false;}
}

Sounds like world domination.

 

[gooey]

Sounds like world domination.

Muhahaha!

I recommend stealth game programming. You have to be quick before you are caught and EXPOSED, meaning you gotta write short, sweet, functional code. XD

Just got home. Feel motivated. Gonna put some music on and code.

 

[HP_Wuvcraft]

8/month for a balance less than 1500 or free with a balance of 1500+ or if you use their business CC. I opted for the balance requirement instead of their CC since I found Capital One to be much better, for me.

Whoa, that's nice.

 

[mStudios]

I think she looks fine now, right?

 

[JulianImp]

I think she looks fine now, right?

You'll have to watch out for long names, since it looks like the red area for the names is very short. While you could probably make the text auto-scale (down to a reasonable size that keeps it readable), I think you should give a bit more room to the name area just to be sure. The pictures also reminded me that I need to consider the possibility that users want to overlay the character names over the main text box rather than having a separate box, so I'll probably add that function to my VN Unity extension.

While I've been busy with my new job and college, I have been working sporadically on the system these last two months. Not as much as I'd have liked, but I guess I could do better if I just managed my free time better. So far, I've finished text branching (one-to-one and one-to-many, through either questions or variable comparisons), and just added script importing tools so that scriptwriters can just write naturally in their text editor of choice, and the people who need to implement script functions just load the text into Unity and begin applying effects (setting sprites and BGs, playing sounds, and so on).

It's been a long way, but I think the system's almost feature-complete and ready for beta-testing, so I'd really appreciate it if anyone interested in trying it out and giving some feedback would let me know.

 

[Jobbs]

Realizing watching a 22 minute video is a lot to ask for some people, here are the coolest parts:

difficult bug battle: https://youtu.be/ePE7v2JCEGU?t=812

cool scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePE7v2JCEGU&feature=youtu.be&t=1120

I'm really excited about the soundtrack.

 

[ken_matthews]

Realizing watching a 22 minute video is a lot to ask for some people, here are the coolest parts:

difficult bug battle: https://youtu.be/ePE7v2JCEGU?t=812

cool scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePE7v2JCEGU&feature=youtu.be&t=1120

I'm really excited about the soundtrack.

Wow, your game looks absolutely amazing, and I will definitely be buying when it's released. I love the sound design

 

[Hopeford]

Realizing watching a 22 minute video is a lot to ask for some people, here are the coolest parts:

difficult bug battle: https://youtu.be/ePE7v2JCEGU?t=812

cool scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePE7v2JCEGU&feature=youtu.be&t=1120

I'm really excited about the soundtrack.

That sound design really is outstanding, that's one hell of an atmosphere.

 

[MrNyarlathotep]

I feel like this is probably a really silly issue, but I can't seem to figure something out. Every time I try to instantiate something from a Start function on Unity the prefab seems to get generated twice. Calling the same code to instantiate a prefab only does it once if I do it anywhere but from the Start function. Is there anything I'm missing?

Is the code on the gameobject you're instantiating? Because the instantiated object will run it too.

EDIT:
I guess you figured it out?

 

[Hopeford]

Is the code on the gameobject you're instantiating? Because the instantiated object will run it too.

EDIT:
I guess you figured it out?

Yeah, sorry. Figured out as soon as I posted that haha.

Something far dumber: I was calling a different script than the one I was editing because I named them similarly. That's why I kept getting different results.

 

[Jacksinthe]

Yeah, sorry. Figured out as soon as I posted that haha.

Something far dumber: I was calling a different script than the one I was editing because I named them similarly. That's why I kept getting different results.

Said it before and saying it again: naming shit is the hardest part about programming.

 

[friken]

Artwork is now final, release date news coming soon

sweet pic! Best of luck w the release