BomberMouse
Member
I'm not a native english speaker either, but I can also see it. @missile Your grammar seems perfectly fine but your sentences are a little contrived. As you mention, maybe it's just all the technical lingo.
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GAF Indie Game Development Thread 2: High Res Work for Low Res Pay
- Thread starter Jacksinthe
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I'm not a native english speaker either, but I can also see it. @missile Your grammar seems perfectly fine but your sentences are a little contrived. As you mention, maybe it's just all the technical lingo.
I feel like once I implement actual animations/transitions between the positions (just some Lerping/Translate functions in Unity) it might help a bit in terms of responsiveness and feel, but I'm open to experimenting with the circular orbit idea. I've been working on this a bit sporadically lately, so I need to buckle down and hash out some of the other ideas I've had with this concept before I'm too busy with other stuff.
Thanks for testing it.
There's no rush.
Thanks, is good to know this version works.
Apparently I was just panicking for nothing (this is happening more and more every day, I need to find a way to chill), I guess the earlier version that didn't work was corrupted or I messed up the build configuration somehow.
I have access to Pro 2012, so I went with it. I don't know what the differences are between the two.
We dropped a new track for Into the Stars from Jack Wall today... our team is fortunate to have him on board creating such a compelling score!
Skorn Combat - Into the Stars
Skorn Combat - Into the Stars
Visual Studio Community 2013 is functionally the same as Visual Studio 2013 Professional.
The only difference is in licensing. As the community edition is not licensed for use by large enterprises (>250 people, $1 million revenue). https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/products/visual-studio-community-vs.aspx
It's well worth upgrading to use VS2013 instead. The text editor got a lot of improvements.
Dynamite Shikoku
Congratulations, you really deserve it!
As someone who works with a lot of people who are not native English speakers, your English is excellent.
Man, so many people complain when a game doesn't support modding, what do they think? that just because an indie game supports modding suddenly lots of modders will start making things for it?
Modders are a very limited resource and they are mostly busy with games that are popular or that they really like, why would a modder would work in some obscure indie game if he can be modding Skyrim and reaching a far greater audience?
I've seen small games like Zeno Clash and Strike Suit Zero waste resources in making their games moddable only for those tools to be ignored.
Sorry about the rant but I see it not only with my game but with other projects I'm following in IndieDB.
Modders are a very limited resource and they are mostly busy with games that are popular or that they really like, why would a modder would work in some obscure indie game if he can be modding Skyrim and reaching a far greater audience?
I've seen small games like Zeno Clash and Strike Suit Zero waste resources in making their games moddable only for those tools to be ignored.
Sorry about the rant but I see it not only with my game but with other projects I'm following in IndieDB.
BomberMouse
Member
Modding is overrated. Focus on making a game and the tools you need, not other people might eventually need.
I'm currently thinking about adding mod support to Roll Playing Game. I'm building the levels in Tiled before loading them into UE4 and generate the 3D level based on the tilemap, so it wouldn't be too much of an effort to add support for user levels (draw the tilemap in Tiled and put the json file in a certain folder to see and load it in game). Not sure anyone will bother to actually create levels for the game though. So it's something I'll definitely keep in mind but won't do until most of the game is finished.
But I'd never do it for a small indie game if I had to create an ingame map editor from scratch.
Edit: New screen btw:
liliththepale
Banned
Testing the skins feature in Spine because we want to add costumes with buffs/bonuses to the game. Legally, I think I have to say that these test skins won't make it into the game, but they were fun to work on. Also, on an unrelated note, easter eggs in games are great! 
SpacePirate Ridley
Member
Testing the skins feature in Spine because we want to add costumes with buffs/bonuses to the game. Legally, I think I have to say that these test skins won't make it into the game, but they were fun to work on. Also, on an unrelated note, easter eggs in games are great!
Just keep her hair in the original color of your character with the Link one (maybe change the master sword a little), and change some details in the second one and I really dont see any problem using them and unlockable skins.
liliththepale
Banned
Good call! That's probably what we'll do.
Jacksinthe
Banned
Working on our announcement timeline. Difficult picking out what to show with the teaser trailer before we show a gameplay trailer. Probably not much. Have a whole bunch of backstory documents to reveal as well as a contest at a later date.
Trying to get a strong timeline leading into crowd funding to keep momentum up. We have a metric ton of screens and concept art we will be throwing up eventually. I am just trying to work pacing into the news cycle. Its like a mini dev game, trying to find the right timings for continued interest.
Trying to get a strong timeline leading into crowd funding to keep momentum up. We have a metric ton of screens and concept art we will be throwing up eventually. I am just trying to work pacing into the news cycle. Its like a mini dev game, trying to find the right timings for continued interest.
Testing the skins feature in Spine because we want to add costumes with buffs/bonuses to the game. Legally, I think I have to say that these test skins won't make it into the game, but they were fun to work on. Also, on an unrelated note, easter eggs in games are great!
It looks really nice. I like the fluid movement of the character's hair.
You could totes use the outfits in the game. There's no law that says you can't have a green tunic on a character. I'm not sure what the second one is from.
edit: Oh, is it supposed to be like Harley Quinn? You can do it, though, I don't see any way to get in trouble. I say these are fine.
I know I've probably asked this before, but this is Game Maker, right? Was it easy using Spine and Game Maker together?
liliththepale
Banned
Thanks! I'm pretty unfamiliar with copyright law, though I've been trying to get more acquainted with it.
Yeah, the second costume is a version of the Suicide Squad/Margot Robbie Harley Quinn. The main theme of this game is dealing with psychoses, so I thought it'd be fun to have my favorite psychotic character in the game.
Spine and GameMaker work really well together. Basically, instead of importing a PNG or GIF as a sprite, I pull the JSON that Spine outputs. GM then grabs the atlas and texture Spine made (which is automated for you) and figures out everything on its own including animations, skins, root origin, et cetera. So I just assign the "sprite" to my character asset and call skeleton_animation_set
whenever I want to change the animation playing. I can tweak the playback speed and image scale just like any other sprite.There are a couple of minor drawbacks, though. First, any instance can only draw itself once per frame, otherwise the keyframe/interpolation calculations stack upon each other (so an arm that's supposed to move 5° moves 10°). That bug will probably get fixed, but it's been there for a while. Also, although you can multiply color-blend the animation, alpha blending is piecemeal which means you can see all of the overlapping regions that should be hidden. Basically, these two things mean I can't do an easy shadow call or a ghosting trail.
We're very happy otherwise. Spine saves us a lot of time and effort.
Thanks! I'm pretty unfamiliar with copyright law, though I've been trying to get more acquainted with it.
Yeah, the second costume is a version of the Suicide Squad/Margot Robbie Harley Quinn. The main theme of this game is dealing with psychoses, so I thought it'd be fun to have my favorite psychotic character in the game.
Spine and GameMaker work really well together. Basically, instead of importing a PNG or GIF as a sprite, I pull the JSON that Spine outputs. GM then grabs the atlas and texture Spine made (which is automated for you) and figures out everything on its own including animations, skins, root origin, et cetera. So I just assign the "sprite" to my character asset and call skeleton_animation_set
There are a couple of minor drawbacks, though. First, any instance can only draw itself once per frame, otherwise the keyframe/interpolation calculations stack upon each other (so an arm that's supposed to move 5° moves 10°). That bug will probably get fixed, but it's been there for a while. Also, although you can multiply color-blend the animation, alpha blending is piecemeal which means you can see all of the overlapping regions that should be hidden. Basically, these two things mean I can't do an easy shadow call or a ghosting trail.
We're very happy otherwise. Spine saves us a lot of time and effort.
Cool. I have Spine 2d and have tinkered around a little within it. I don't think I'll be using it in my current project for various reasons, but I'm quite aware of how useful it is and that in some ways it could be considered the most modern and intelligent way of doing 2D animation in a video game. I believe it can be used in a way that the characters still appear to be animating much the way they would in a traditional sprite animation, but with many advantages of 2d skeleton still intact. One example of excellent use of the concept would be Vanillaware's games, most especially Muramasa, which is their move beautiful game (IMO).
liliththepale
Banned
Right. I think the ease of use does encourage taking shortcuts in some places. e.g.: Why draw this limb from another perspective when the right rotation and squash/stretch look "good enough"? So you still have to be dilligent, but those are fringe cases more often than not.
I haven't in practice gone deep into it yet (I just don't have the spare time and mental space to focus on it) but I've done some thought experiments.
The idea would be I'd illustrate, traditionally, many of the important key poses -- Much the same way I might when I start animating a traditional sprite -- And then slice and rig up each of those key frames on their own, and use the 2d skeletal system to tween and animate between them.
liliththepale
Banned
Yeah, that would work, and is probably the best way to go about it. But in practice we've just been designing enemies that work with all of the translations/rotations on the same plane. So lots more vertical chopping and hammering than horizontal slicing. That might change eventually if we feel the game needs more variation, but so far it's a short cut we can afford.
HUGE DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer or tax expert, etc. This is just my experience, opinion, guess, understanding, etc.
That said, one thing I forgot to mention about partnerships/sole proprietorships/LLC's is that what may be more important than the type of organization, is how you opt to have it treated for tax purposes.
At least with an LLC in the U.S., you can submit Form 2553 to the IRS to opt into being treated as an S Corporation (http://www.bizfilings.com/toolkit/news/tax-info/llc-plus-scorp-equal-best-of-both.aspx). I think that lets you have a more traditional company setup where the company keeps some income (less tax?), as long as they pay "reasonable" salaries (which are taxed) to employees.
I didn't do that because I'm not making money until I release a game, and I figured the IRS might not be impressed with a "reasonable" salary of $0 at first. However, your tax advisor's advice may vary.
That said, one thing I forgot to mention about partnerships/sole proprietorships/LLC's is that what may be more important than the type of organization, is how you opt to have it treated for tax purposes.
At least with an LLC in the U.S., you can submit Form 2553 to the IRS to opt into being treated as an S Corporation (http://www.bizfilings.com/toolkit/news/tax-info/llc-plus-scorp-equal-best-of-both.aspx). I think that lets you have a more traditional company setup where the company keeps some income (less tax?), as long as they pay "reasonable" salaries (which are taxed) to employees.
I didn't do that because I'm not making money until I release a game, and I figured the IRS might not be impressed with a "reasonable" salary of $0 at first.
However, your tax advisor's advice may vary.TheLostBigBoss
Banned
edit
Testing the skins feature in Spine because we want to add costumes with buffs/bonuses to the game. Legally, I think I have to say that these test skins won't make it into the game, but they were fun to work on. Also, on an unrelated note, easter eggs in games are great!
Oh shit, I love this.
You said you using Gamemaker?
liliththepale
Banned
Thanks! ♥ Yeah, it's GameMaker Studio, with the art in Illustrator and Spine.
Candescence
Member
Spriter is pretty much the same kind of tool as Spine, but a lot cheaper, and I dunno if Spine has this particular feature, but Spriter has in-built reskinning right down to the individual sprite level, such as switching out weapons. It's pretty great, really.
SpacePirate Ridley
Member
Amazing really. Its looks really cool!
I guess that's the case. I think technical lingo doesn't lend itself to very
sound sentences. If you try to be clear about a point without (almost) any
ambiguity using written words (esp. while describing a technical thing), then
many of the sentences won't sound as pleasing as one is used to be (see many
of the calculus books; hard to read for the layman, easy to read for those who
know about the importance of "one" and "one, and only one". For me, for
example, it is important if someone refers to a specific object out of many,
or whether (s)he is just referring to one of those. Given this way of
thinking, one may not come up with those sounding sentences one is used to
read all day, which is perhaps what Jobbs is experiencing.
Something similar can be experienced if someone thinks in poetry all day and
writes poems one after another, I guess. His/her style of writing a standard
text will be strongly colored then. And I have to admit, I'm technically
colored to a large degree. Hey, if you could look on my desk there are
currently about ... let me count ... about 31 books (Jesus! I should bring
some of them back to the shelf) on my desk all dealing with some technical
stuff. So what to expect from me? Ha! xD
Thank you, Sir!
Cool stuff, bro!Testing the skins feature in Spine because we want to add costumes with buffs/bonuses to the game. Legally, I think I have to say that these test skins won't make it into the game, but they were fun to work on. Also, on an unrelated note, easter eggs in games are great!
Edit: Ehm ... 1/bro.
What is the reason for that btw?
^ Smells like a trick question.
Edit: The answer buried in my posts history.
Ahah it's a genuine one. I'm always curious when I read your posts.
But I see you are going to make me work for it then...
Skip it, it's not worth the effort. The simplest explanation is; it's an old
habit of mine. But there is more to it, yet I don't want to explain it today.
If I recall correctly, part of the reason is that missile formats posts in a text editor or other unusual system (Emacs? VIM? Tex?) before posting them, using a 78-character wordwrap, and prefers that even though it may be rough on widescreen monitors and mobile devices.
Please correct me if I'm wrong of course. It's been a long time since I asked and I forget if I found out for sure.
For everyone who wants to build an anti-gravity racer one day; in another
thread I wrote the following (see quote below) and I want to reiterate it here
such that some of you know that one of my longterm goals is building an
awesome new racer.
thread I wrote the following (see quote below) and I want to reiterate it here
such that some of you know that one of my longterm goals is building an
awesome new racer.
....
I don't want to say too much, but I've have spent some good thoughts on a new
algorithm for creating awesome tracks which automatically bend around
obstacles, can be dynamic in shape without cutting buildings/obstacles
etc., and can be procedurally generated and stored if needed. That means, for
example, that one can build an environment (a city, whatever) and then let the
algorithm compute the tracks along the obstacles automatically depending on
some parameters for controlling the layout of the track to a given degree,
if needed. The process is much more complicated than stated here, is very
mathematical, and also needs some good computational resources, but the
results should be stunning.
I currently don't have the time to work on this idea and to fully implement it
(for the time being), because there are other things I have to do first to get
me in position where I can try this idea out the way I want it. I actually did
some rough calculations with some very small scale models, and the results
look promising. I just have to start anew and adapt everything to make it
usable for a racer I have in mind (but perhaps not your standard AG racer,
but a mix of ground, air, and mid-air racing, don't know yet for sure). So
basically, I have to build the editor for the tracks first, and then I will
see how to map any racing aspects onto it.
So in the long run I'm looking for some skilled/math/graphics people who may
want to work with me on the track editor and on designing the racing aspects
of, hopefully, a very fast, thrilled racing game offering a superior racing
experience. Bold statement!
Tweaked my shader quite a lot. Color and lines are now mostly stable and the line thickness is bound to world. I could not get rid of distortion artifacts because I can't actually manipulate world position in a post processing shader, just pixel position but with the outlines set on those artifacts are very hard to see. I also added color blur as faked depth of field.
Still have to figure out the outlines more, they can blur to dirty dark when looked at from a certain angle.
I have already prototyped a few mechanics around painting and drawing, overall I'm leaning to a First Person Action Puzzle game. I also love the idea of going into all kinds off different paintings which could also offer varied fitting gameplay. In the case of crappy 4 year old painted painting you could have to escape from his crappy creepy drawn monsters.
Still have to figure out the outlines more, they can blur to dirty dark when looked at from a certain angle.
I have already prototyped a few mechanics around painting and drawing, overall I'm leaning to a First Person Action Puzzle game. I also love the idea of going into all kinds off different paintings which could also offer varied fitting gameplay. In the case of crappy 4 year old painted painting you could have to escape from his crappy creepy drawn monsters.
taku
Member
This looks fantastic. Very playful.Tweaked my shader quite a lot. Color and lines are now mostly stable and the line thickness is bound to world. I could not get rid of distortion artifacts because I can't actually manipulate world position in a post processing shader, just pixel position but with the outlines set on those artifacts are very hard to see. I also added color blur as faked depth of field.
Still have to figure out the outlines more, they can blur to dirty dark when looked at from a certain angle.
SpacePirate Ridley
Member
Tweaked my shader quite a lot. Color and lines are now mostly stable and the line thickness is bound to world. I could not get rid of distortion artifacts because I can't actually manipulate world position in a post processing shader, just pixel position but with the outlines set on those artifacts are very hard to see. I also added color blur as faked depth of field.
Still have to figure out the outlines more, they can blur to dirty dark when looked at from a certain angle.
Holy shit man, is the same game as those painting gifs you were doing? It abosolutely looks fantastic!
So good, it looks like real watercolors!
You continue to impress.Tweaked my shader quite a lot. Color and lines are now mostly stable and the line thickness is bound to world. I could not get rid of distortion artifacts because I can't actually manipulate world position in a post processing shader, just pixel position but with the outlines set on those artifacts are very hard to see. I also added color blur as faked depth of field.
Still have to figure out the outlines more, they can blur to dirty dark when looked at from a certain angle.
I have already prototyped a few mechanics around painting and drawing, overall I'm leaning to a First Person Action Puzzle game. I also love the idea of going into all kinds off different paintings which could also offer varied fitting gameplay. In the case of crappy 4 year old painted painting you could have to escape from his crappy creepy drawn monsters.
electroflame
Member
I find that this happens to me more frequently after the initial "exploration" phase of a project. By that, I mean once the framework is laid and you're kind of stuck within the confines you've created. After that point, it feels more like "work".
Some things that can help me:
- Take a look at my Trello board, and make a to-do note for something simple that I can accomplish quickly. Once I've made progress on something I find that it's much easier to keep going.
- Refactor some code that I know needs refactored. This kind of accomplishes the same purpose as above: just do anything. Getting started is the hardest part.
- Some music can help quite a bit, depending on the day and the severity of the "numbness".
- Sometimes you've just got to go and do something else and come back later.
Jacksinthe
Banned
Everything here. I will often go and just touch up something I did or simply go over some work, refactor, etc. I've had quite a bit of downtime waiting for art since I had a lot of mechanics built with simple shapes, getting back in the swing was difficult. The above helped a ton.
Music is an excellent point. When the creating was happening I was listening heavy to the Daft Punk soundtrack for Tron. Going back to that rekindles some excitement by busting out the feels.
I think the most importnat thing is to just force yourself to do some stuff until the ice is broken. I don't think there's any easy answer.
Messing around with this enemy again, which as initially in the project at the start, then cut and replaced with something else, and now I'm bringing him back: http://www.gfycat.com/ScholarlyMixedHarrier
Messing around with this enemy again, which as initially in the project at the start, then cut and replaced with something else, and now I'm bringing him back: http://www.gfycat.com/ScholarlyMixedHarrier
liliththepale
Banned
Thanks, everyone!
I find itemizing my workload helps a lot. I'm super visual, so seeing a few upcoming things and picking which I want to do, plus seeing what I've already gotten done in the day/week is a good motivation.
And I pretty much never work in silence. Always with music, podcast, or mindless TV playing on a second/third screen.
Don't forget that breaks are healthy. It's okay to say it's the weekend, you don't have to work on the weekend.
I find itemizing my workload helps a lot. I'm super visual, so seeing a few upcoming things and picking which I want to do, plus seeing what I've already gotten done in the day/week is a good motivation.
And I pretty much never work in silence. Always with music, podcast, or mindless TV playing on a second/third screen.
Don't forget that breaks are healthy. It's okay to say it's the weekend, you don't have to work on the weekend.
This one, of course, is the million dollar question. I get this stuff too, but I know not how to fight it. Sometimes you just realize how stupid the brain is to have so many obstacles in front of a good coding session, and start to work through anyway. Other times... writer's block, or whatever the coding equivalent is.
Comfort Jones
Banned
http://www.moddb.com/mods/abandon-the-town/downloads/abandon-demo
Demo was just approved and I'm feeling pretty good about it.
Demo was just approved and I'm feeling pretty good about it.
-COOLIO-
The Everyman
Tweaked my shader quite a lot. Color and lines are now mostly stable and the line thickness is bound to world. I could not get rid of distortion artifacts because I can't actually manipulate world position in a post processing shader, just pixel position but with the outlines set on those artifacts are very hard to see. I also added color blur as faked depth of field.
Still have to figure out the outlines more, they can blur to dirty dark when looked at from a certain angle.
i'm really impressed by this. it almost looks like real water colour painting. thoroughly unique from what ive seen too. well done, sir.
-COOLIO-
The Everyman
i come here or look at greenlight for a bit.
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