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Indie Game Development Discussion Thread | Of Being Professionally Poor

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D

Duderino

Member
Streaming tonight again for Air Dash Online, this time I'm passing the torch to one of our animators, Nick!

GaPapRO.png


(Click Here to Watch)
 
J

Jobbs

Banned
BomberMouse said:
That's great and sucks at the same time. You seem to have an almost finished product, I thought it would have been better to release that first then the refreshed version.
Click to expand...

The basic mechanics and controls of the game are rather honed and polished, but there's a lot of unfinished content.

Blizzard said:
I'm curious to see what the art will be like redone, since a large part of the appeal may be the great sprite art. If it's changed, and/or if it switches to a 2.5D Unity approach I would expect it might look different. Jobbs, are you planning to use a 2D toolkit or similar for Unity?
Click to expand...

The art will be redone to be high res and to take advantage of the fact that I won't have limits anymore on filesize type stuff. But the basic essence of it will remain the same, and the main character will remain similar/the same, just better and in higher res.

I don't think it'd be fair to the backers to make sweeping changes to the very essence of the game or its presentation, such as making it 2.5d. The difference will be how I described it in the listing -- Higher res graphics so it looks good on a big screen, and more graphics/detail because I can. The battle mechanics will also be tweaked a bit to be a bit deeper, again, as described in the listing/faq. The flash game, in some areas, is a bit sparse on detail and this is largely due to it being a flash game.

I take my obligation to the backers to deliver something in line with what the listing promises rather seriously, so, even though there'll be some tweaks/additions/improvements, the game in the listing, on a basic general level, will be representative of the final game.

And re. 2D toolkit -- I'd have to double check with Roger but I'm pretty sure that's what he uses.
 
S

SpacePirate Ridley

Member
Duderino said:
Breakthrough day!

When I started working on Air Dash Online, I set a few technical goals for myself. Those included the following:

1. Create shaders that follow physically accurate rendering principles in Unity3d. ✔
2. Develop custom Spherical Harmonics ambient lighting suited for dynamic environments ✔
3. Approximate that ambient light based on the sky and sun direction. ✔
4. Create a unique motion effect that would enhance the sense of speed in the game.

I was able to work my way through the first 3, but #4 provided to be quite the challenge. Making matters more difficult I lack Unity Pro, so no screen effects or buffer access. I wasn't planning on using Unity's poor motion blur anyways, so it wasn't too bad of a loss.

My first attempt was to use the newly added BakedMesh (at the time) to gather vertex position data on my animated meshes. Using that I could calculate the velocity and deform the trailing vertices. It gave some pretty good results, only problem was the speed. After multi-threading what I could, it was adequate for maybe 2 characters on a fast machine. Decided to shelve it and come back to it later.


Finally this week I had the time to revisit it with the idea of using motion trails. Similar idea to this paper, only based on pre-defined joints instead of finding the actual mesh silhouette. After that was in place, I wrote a gradient shader with the intent of gathering pixels on screen to drive it the trails' colors. Thought getting a single pixel on the screen would be simple command in Unity, but unfortunately it turned into a pretty convoluted process. Here is the final result:

test8eb1n.gif


Playing the game with the effect on has made a pretty big difference. Aside from being visually interesting to look at, It serves the practical purpose of giving feedback for attack arcs. Anyways, I'm excited I was able to figure this all out. Really wanted to break away from the stiffness often found with 3D fighters compared to 2D animated sprites.

Also before I forget:

Congrats Jobbs on reaching your Kickstarter goal! Keep up the hard work!
Click to expand...

Let me tell you that all the work you have put makes the game look more than amazing, the blur looks perfect and gives it a really unique style. Would love to see a fight between two characters using that technique when you have it ready.

EDIT:
Ahh, it seems I didn't arrive in time
Duderino said:
Streaming tonight again for Air Dash Online, this time I'm passing the torch to one of our animators, Nick!

GaPapRO.png


(Click Here to Watch)
Click to expand...
 
J

Jobbs

Banned
Just retouched some old environment -- Because it looked a bit dull to me and I'm going to be in this area in the next video.

gtarea-02.jpg


gtarea-03.jpg


enemy that I'm not sure you've all seen:

lurkers3.gif
 
D

Dynamite Shikoku

Congratulations, you really deserve it!
If I can get some good AI going in the game im working on now, it is going to be a blast. I'm already having fun just playing around with the basic mechanics.
 
M

Mystic River

Member
Not sure if this happens to many people working for many months on the same game and sometimes you get tired of it, it just happened to me for the second time, but this time I am taking a small break, and what is more refreshing for a indie developer than doing games?

Well besides going out and forget about your game for a few weeks, I found one more way to refresh myself for a short period of time, by just making another game but only work on it for 2 weeks, this is my Summer Challenge and see how much I can do by reusing my old code and minimize as much as I can the effort to make a playable game in just 2 weeks. So this is a screenshot from my first week of work, it is a space game in which you control a ship, design it and add junk parts taken from the enemies you kill, you can upgrade your modules and weapons and every module can be destroyed so anything can happen, physics play a major role since navigation is affected by the mass distribution of your modules and thrusters locations, so getting something destroyed will really affect how you move. There are more things to come, and I only have one more week to work on it so here is the first screenshot of Junkcraft Armada game.

JunkcraftArmada-1_zps45001ebe.jpg


After next week hope to return back refreshed to my puzzle game, which is also pretty close to get completed.
 
J

Jobbs

Banned
Servbot24 said:
I feel like there should be some kind of ground animation there to show that it's burrowing (?), such as little rocks bouncing up.
Click to expand...

more effects are always nice, that said, in this (old) version of the game/enemies these guys don't burrow, they just jump down then jump back up. burrowing is actually a good idea, though. I'd like to the enemies as multi dimensional as possible.
 
M

missile

Member
I've just reworked some forces leading to a better tumbling motion.

Very natural tumbling motion will be a core feature of my physics engine. And
perhaps the best you have ever seen when it's done. I'm digging very deep on
this one, since it will influence many aspects of motion the objects in my
games will undergo. The goal is to have (1) very natural tumbling motion at
(2) high angular velocities - which usually don't go together from a numerical
point of view.

Here is just a taste;

rockets2013-08-1417-0pbanx.gif


Just beautiful to see how the rockets do tumble...
 
D

Duderino

Member
SpacePirate Ridley said:
Let me tell you that all the work you have put makes the game look more than amazing, the blur looks perfect and gives it a really unique style. Would love to see a fight between two characters using that technique when you have it ready.

EDIT:
Ahh, it seems I didn't arrive in time
Click to expand...

Thanks for the compliments! Actually that previous stream was purely animation work. I'll probably be doing one a little later this week that will demonstrate the effect in action.

In the meantime, here's another Gif I put together to show our custom dynamic sky/ambient ligthing and physically based shaders I built earlier in development:

newcjzc1.gif
 
A

Ashodin

Member
I had to let my artist go, as she got too busy for the kind of workload I was looking at. So I'm back in the market for a new artist. In other news, I'm almost done fixing the damn column bugs. Man this thing has given me so much hell.

Anyway, this is what the game looks like currently:

apexiconboardenuuw.png
 
M

motorsep

Neo Member
Ashodin said:
I had to let my artist go, as she got too busy for the kind of workload I was looking at. So I'm back in the market for a new artist. In other news, I'm almost done fixing the damn column bugs. Man this thing has given me so much hell.

Anyway, this is what the game looks like currently:

apexiconboardenuuw.png
Click to expand...

Cute art. I like it!
 
B

Blizzard

Banned
Feep, you should add difficult-to-pronounce names, or names that could go either way. And then you'll be yelling "Retreat Александрова, RETREEEEEEAT" and then they die because you were not good enough at pronouncing.
 
F

Feep

Banned
Blizzard said:
Feep, you should add difficult-to-pronounce names, or names that could go either way. And then you'll be yelling "Retreat Александрова, RETREEEEEEAT" and then they die because you were not good enough at pronouncing.
Click to expand...
You can always alias them in.
 
F

Foshy

Member
Hey guys! I've been messing around with Stencyl for a while and now I'm happy to present my first game, gyroboost :)

gyrospace.gif


gyroboost is a fast-paced mobile game designed to be played in short bursts. Its gameplay premise is pretty simple: You control an always-rotating ship which moves straight forward when touching the screen.

There will be 2 game modes: The first one, more suited to casual players, is “collect”, in which you have to collect green orbs while the screen slowly gets filled by hazards. The second, more challenging one, is “chase”, where you have to flee of an enemy while simultaneously avoiding on-screen traps.

Visually, the game adopts a neon-retro look with pixel-art styled actors and pulsating lights. This is supported by the chiptune music, which increases in intensity when you manage to get a nice streak of orbs in “collect” or survive for a long time in “chase”, while the game gets progressively harder.

It's being developed for iOS using Stencyl, but I'll also try to get out an Android port as soon as possible.

My blog: http://maurozocco.wordpress.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/the_fosh
 
M

missile

Member
Duderino said:
... In the meantime, here's another Gif I put together to show our custom dynamic sky/ambient ligthing and physically based shaders I built earlier in development:

newcjzc1.gif
Click to expand...
Well done!


Ashodin said:
I had to let my artist go, as she got too busy for the kind of workload I was looking at. So I'm back in the market for a new artist. In other news, I'm almost done fixing the damn column bugs. Man this thing has given me so much hell.

Anyway, this is what the game looks like currently:

apexiconboardenuuw.png
Click to expand...
I don't like all the 3d-ish buttons. They do clutter the screen somehow, and it
looks kinda overpaced to me. I would more prefer sort of a flat style for
this game. On another note; did you had to remove the art from your former
artist?


motorsep said:
Back with some more progress of Steel Storm 2 / Storm Engine v2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPEJM6SHOo4
Click to expand...
Pretty hard to tell what progress you did. Mind elaborating about some
perhaps technical detail, specials etc. your are doing, have done lately,
will do in the future? Otherwise its just another video for me. Sorry.


Feep said:
Max zoomed-out view.

z6BucPF.jpg
Click to expand...
Fuck jpeg-compression! My eyes! Give me a new one! Please!


Dynamite Shikoku said:
... Edit: I thought this was cool. Someone playing my game connected up to a TV.

oHk4F5P.jpg
Click to expand...
Indeed, it is!



Tonight I found out that quaternions are actually not always that cool. Don't
worry! Everything is just fine within all your standard quaternion
orientation/interpolation stuff. Well, the weaker attitude parameters like
Euler angles, Gibbs-vectors, Rodrigues parameters etc., which do all have
a singularity and produce a non-linarity while using them in a the kinematic
equation, contrary to the quaternions, seem to have an advantage when using
them for attitude tracking of an object. That's quite interesting. Attitude
representation is best done with quaternions, but if you want to track an
attitude, meaning to orient/rotate a physical object into a predefined
position using torques, it seems that by using the weaker attitude parameters
the requested attitude can be reached faster and in a perhaps more stable way.

Well yes, am interested to reorient physical objects with respect to some
given coordinate system using control-torques. Sounds difficult, but will
look cool on screen!
 
C

cbox

Member
Feep, are those your final textures? Because I love em! I've hardly seen any games that utilize the concept art technique for textures. I'd love to do something like that in the future.
 
F

Feep

Banned
ConvenientBox said:
Feep, are those your final textures? Because I love em! I've hardly seen any games that utilize the concept art technique for textures. I'd love to do something like that in the future.
Click to expand...
Yeah, but it's worth noting that they aren't really "textures" in the traditional sense...those buildings are simply 2-D illustrations. I did tell my artist to keep that hand-painted feel, though. = D
 
M

MaritalWheat

Member
Feep said:
Yeah, but it's worth noting that they aren't really "textures" in the traditional sense...those buildings are simply 2-D illustrations. I did tell my artist to keep that hand-painted feel, though. = D
Click to expand...
It reminds me a ton of Shadowrun Returns, which is absolutely beautiful.
 
F

Feep

Banned
Messed with lighting today and it makes a WORLD of difference. (This is supposed to be a night shot, after all.)

Capture.PNG
 
L

LSauchelli

Member
Really impressive looking Feep. It shows that you and your team are pros. If I hadn't seen this and somebody showed it to me I wouldn't have guessed it was indie.

I'm now messing around with Blender to build a character model. Much more complicated than expected, but still fun.

Unity on the other hand is really easy to use, especially taking into account all the free and amazing tutorials.
 
F

Feep

Banned
LSauchelli said:
Really impressive looking Feep. It shows that you and your team are pros. If I hadn't seen this and somebody showed it to me I wouldn't have guessed it was indie.

I'm now messing around with Blender to build a character model. Much more complicated than expected, but still fun.

Unity on the other hand is really easy to use, especially taking into account all the free and amazing tutorials.
Click to expand...
You are the NICEST PERSON

<3
 
A

Ashodin

Member
With the help of a UI artist, I present your new board (still not finished):

FlHwVVt.png


The letter tiles will disappear when used, giving a scrabble like effect.
 
C

Crispy75

Member
I've been reading this thread since the beginning, way before my membership activated and it's been a true inspiration :) Together with a friend , I'm working on a game. It's a top-down exploration and puzzle game, inspired by the dungeons of Zelda LTTP, especially levels with vertical elements between levels like The Tower of Hera (holes in floor to level below) and Hyrule Castle (all those ladders and the deep one-point perspective effect).

The player gains vertical traversal powers (eg. surviving long falls, climbing ladders, rappelling) as the game progresses, opening up new areas and encouraging exploration of old ones. Sometimes you're exploring "out" of the screen, and your past accomplishments are laid out below you as you climb. Sometimes you're exploring "into" the screen and you get tempted by things you can see far below but cannot reach. I reckon I've got a handle on the backstory and setting too, but let's not go there just now. Code name is "Bottom Up" which is a clever pun, but maybe not the best name for a game...

He's a C# coder for a living and I'm an architect. We're using Unity (of course) and we have level building and basic movement sorted out. I'm also very pleased with the way the camera works to maintain that strong one point perspective as the player moves around. Here's a screenshot with beautiful placeholder "art" and zero lighting or actual gameplay elements. I hope to quote this post in the future and laugh at it.

ABt.png
 
C

Crispy75

Member
V_Arnold said:
Crispy75: Great idea and concept, good luck with the development!
Click to expand...

Cheers :) We're going to thrash out a prototype with a handful of puzzles and a powerup or two and find out if it's actually any *fun* before going full steam into making a proper game. If there was a Greek letter that came before Alpha, we'd use it!
 
Interfectum

Interfectum

Member
So I just found out about this company recently: http://kamcord.com/

What it does is you can record your gameplay session and after the level is finished (or whenever you choose I guess) a video is constructed and you can share it on social networks. They have a Unity and Cocos2D plugin. It's iOS only. But I was messing with it last night and it seriously takes like 5 minutes to implement (in Unity). Performance on iPhone 5 was perfect but it did take a hit on older hardware.

Not affiliated with that company at all but thought a few here might be interested in it. Seems like a cool idea.
 
A

AusRoachman

Member
Interfectum said:
So I just found out about this company recently: http://kamcord.com/

What it does is you can record your gameplay session and after the level is finished (or whenever you choose I guess) a video is constructed and you can share it on social networks. They have a Unity and Cocos2D plugin. It's iOS only. But I was messing with it last night and it seriously takes like 5 minutes to implement (in Unity). Performance on iPhone 5 was perfect but it did take a hit on older hardware.

Not affiliated with that company at all but thought a few here might be interested in it. Seems like a cool idea.
Click to expand...


Have used them before in cocos and it really is such an easy Api to integrate, highly recommend them.
 
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