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Indie Game Development Discussion Thread | Of Being Professionally Poor

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Daouzin

Member
Wow, the work here is really awesome. So I thought I would share with you guys what I’m working on.

Passage is a Digital Tactical Card Game. I know the Digital Card Game space is beginning to fill up, but we plan to be a Living Card Game more than a traditional Trading Card Game. Our plan is to release Card Expansions for a reasonable rate that will just add 30-40 cards to people’s card library and Deck editor rather than asking people to pay for Booster packs.

The card game combines elements from Tactical Role Playing games with Elements from major card games.

Midaeum-Impv2-220x300.png


Anyway, I’ll let the trailer speak for itself. The game is very early in development.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfjUz2LjbDU
 

DSix

Banned
So I'm trying to learn 3D programming. Using the framework libgdx, I decided to build a camera that translates and rotates along its own axes instead of the world axes, which is non-intuitive and not user friendly. (I basically wanted an FPS or flight sim camera.)

I feel really stupid because, well, I figured out that to move forward/back, you can just translate the camera along the direction vector, and that to move left/right, you can translate along the direction vector rotated 90 degrees around the up vector. But then I couldn't figure out how to translate up/down. I tried doing all sorts of multiplication with the up and direction vectors, and I even left it alone for a few hours to try and figure it out.

When I got back, it hit me - to translate up/down, translate along the Up vector. Duh! How silly...

Of course, I understand that really doing 3D work would involve using matrices in a very hands-on way, and I'm going to get to that at some point...

Honestly, if you're more interested in making actual games and not tinkering an unfinished engine for years, I suggest you use an already established game engine (unity and such).
 

bumpkin

Member
You gotta love when you spend a half hour to 45 minutes trying to track down the cause of a memory access error, only to finally realize that you were getting and casting the wrong data member of a class instance. Well of course I can't add an instance to my vector; it's the wrong freakin' container for it!

*facepalm*

This is what happens when I sit down and do more coding after working on code all day at work.
 
What a nice suprise!

Indie Statik was nice enough to make a short preview article about Katakomb.

Check it out:
http://indiestatik.com/2013/09/03/horrors-lurk-underground-in-katakomb/

Indiestatik is pretty awesome, they were the first to do an article about our game, they found info about it in tumblr and decided to do it without saying us nothing, it was a really good surprise, and it was really well written and with a lot of love. We were really happy when we saw it.

BTW Your game looks really creepy from the trailer, the part where he is running in the corridor seems to be heart pumping :O
 

MrOddbird

Neo Member
Indiestatik is pretty awesome, they were the first to do an article about our game, they found info about it in tumblr and decided to do it without saying us nothing, it was a really good surprise, and it was really well written and with a lot of love. We were really happy when we saw it.

Yes, exactly! It came from nowhere and seeing that the game has barely got any attention, this was a really nice thing to do. Certainly gave me a big boost in motivation.

BTW Your game looks really creepy from the trailer, the part where he is running in the corridor seems to be heart pumping :O

Thank you! There's a lot of stuff I didn't show, but it's still nice to know that people liked the trailer. It was pretty hard to show the game and at the same time, trying to keep some of the stuff unspoiled.
 

snarge

Member
Wow, the work here is really awesome. So I thought I would share with you guys what I’m working on.

Passage is a Digital Tactical Card Game. I know the Digital Card Game space is beginning to fill up, but we plan to be a Living Card Game more than a traditional Trading Card Game. Our plan is to release Card Expansions for a reasonable rate that will just add 30-40 cards to people’s card library and Deck editor rather than asking people to pay for Booster packs.

The card game combines elements from Tactical Role Playing games with Elements from major card games.

Midaeum-Impv2-220x300.png


Anyway, I’ll let the trailer speak for itself. The game is very early in development.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfjUz2LjbDU

Looks great. I like the card art and the game looks unique enough to stand out of the crowd. Can't wait to see more!
 

cbox

Member
Indiestatik is pretty awesome, they were the first to do an article about our game, they found info about it in tumblr and decided to do it without saying us nothing, it was a really good surprise, and it was really well written and with a lot of love. We were really happy when we saw it.

BTW Your game looks really creepy from the trailer, the part where he is running in the corridor seems to be heart pumping :O

Same for us, it was awesome of them! Few other sites did one as well, feels good.
 

JulianImp

Member
Okay, I think I might have the message broadcast system ready. I'm using a GameObject-Delegate dictionary to register and unregister listeners, and the delegate just takes an object as a parameter so I can pass whatever I want, making sure the listeners do proper typecasting to make sure the messages thery're getting are what they were expecting before trying to do anything with them.

I've decided to use GameObjects as the dictionary's keys to make broadcasting easier, since it's returned by all of Unity's collision events and such.

The code might not be optimal since I'm still not too well versed in that kind of stuff, but here it is:
Code:
using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;

public class BroadcastManager {

	static private BroadcastManager instance = new BroadcastManager();
	
	public delegate void BroadcastDelegate(Object message);
	static private Dictionary<GameObject,BroadcastDelegate> listeningObjects;
	
	private BroadcastManager() {
		listeningObjects = new Dictionary<GameObject, BroadcastDelegate>();
	}
	
	/// <summary>
	/// Adds a listener to the broadcast list.
	/// </summary>
	/// <returns>
	/// Whether the listener was added successfully or not.
	/// </returns>
	/// <param name='listenerGameObject'>
	/// The game object that messages will be broadcasted to.
	/// </param>
	/// <param name='listenerDelegate'>
	/// A delegate method to be called whenever a message should be broadcast to the listener.
	/// </param>
	static public bool AddListener(GameObject listenerGameObject, BroadcastDelegate listenerDelegate) {
		if (listeningObjects.ContainsKey(listenerGameObject)) return false;
		
		listeningObjects.Add(listenerGameObject, listenerDelegate);
		return true;
	}
	
	/// <summary>
	/// Removes a listener so it no longer receives broadcasts.
	/// </summary>
	/// <returns>
	/// Whether the listener was removed successfully or not.
	/// </returns>
	/// <param name='listenerGameObject'>
	/// The game object to remove from the broadcast list.
	/// </param>
	static public bool RemoveListener(GameObject listenerGameObject) {
		if (!listeningObjects.ContainsKey(listenerGameObject)) return false;
		
		listeningObjects.Remove(listenerGameObject);
		return true;
	}
	
	/// <summary>
	/// Broadcasts a message to a single listening object.
	/// </summary>
	/// <returns>
	/// Whether the message was sent successfully or not.
	/// </returns>
	/// <param name='targetGameObject'>
	/// The message's addressee.
	/// </param>
	/// <param name='message'>
	/// An object containing the message boxed within it. Listeners are responsible of properly handling the received message.
	/// </param>
	static public bool BroadcastMessageToTarget(GameObject targetGameObject, Object message) {
		if (!listeningObjects.ContainsKey(targetGameObject)) return false;
		
		listeningObjects[targetGameObject](message);
		return true;
	}
	
	/// <summary>
	/// Broadcasts a message to all listening objects (including the source, if it's listening).
	/// </summary>
	/// <param name='message'>
	/// An object containing the message boxed within it. Listeners are responsible of properly handling the received message.
	/// </param>
	static public void BroadcastGlobalMessage(Object message) {
		foreach(KeyValuePair<GameObject,BroadcastDelegate> listenerObject in listeningObjects) {
			listenerObject.Value(message);
		}
	}
}

Comments and suggestions will be appreciated.
 

Daouzin

Member
Looks great. I like the card art and the game looks unique enough to stand out of the crowd. Can't wait to see more!

Cool, thanks! Appreciate it. We hope so. We think the unique systems and not doing the typical 'booster pack' method will help expand our reach and will let a larger percentage of people play the game competitively.

We have instructions on our facebook page if you're curious.
Instructions
 

Anustart

Member
Ok so I may finally have an idea I am going to push into serious development and was wondering if there's any tools you guys would recommend for properly planning?

And any other things you guys might suggest to really get this thing off the ground. Any tools you use would help!
 

samueeL

Banned
I've been interested for a while of idea of making music for indie games. Tried to search for better topic but I guess this will do? I'd love to start with "8-bit" kind of music and then evolve naturally into different kind of stuff.

I've only made couple song soundtrack to my own demo game, sadly I've lost the music files but I still have .rar file of the small game. (if you want to give it a listen) So if you'd be interested in getting someone to make music for your game and you're actually planning on getting the game out at some point, I'd be really interested to start out. Obviously for very small fee or even free if you insist for now, just trying to find my grounds and make connections.

Anyone here know better place where to find indie developers looking for composers?
 

JulianImp

Member

It seems to me like this can only register a single listener per event (since it's a Dictionary<string,Delegate>), so that'd probably not work; it could be Dictionary<string,List<Delegate>>, but that'd be likely to add too much overhead.

Using generic parameters as delegates sounds interesting, though, since that'd let me send typed objects rather than being forced to box and unbox them all the time. Also, using a string identifier for events seems like a waste, mostly due to the type's inherent lack of speed during comparisons; I guess I'd use an enum rather than a string for that kind of thing if I were doing it, but using a nested list inside a dictionary seems kind of bad.
 

Cedric

Member
Hey everyone, I'd like to design art (characters, tiles, objects...) for my 2D platformer using a pen, paper and a scanner. Are there any tools or techniques I should be aware of? I'm not an artist, I've never studied art but I figured it would be a fun way of designing a game... How do I make sure what I draw will look proportionate in the game, make it fit on a tile sheet etc...?
 
The new information about Multimedia Fusion 2.5 and the new Fusion 3 sound really good, as someone who has been using their tools for as long as I have used a computer i'm excited, the runtime for fusion 3 sounds like a huge performance improvement and will fix the issues of the PC, iOS and Android runtimes all being separate and prone to unique glitches on each device.

So I am going to be delaying my game by a few months to benefit from Fusion 3 when it's out this winter, but it should be a LOT better in the long run.

Also my game is performing terrible on iphone 4's right now so I kind of need this improved runtime, it will also allow me to do a direct port to android, the current android exporter is terrible for anything which is not pong.

*edit* saying that I just read that fusion 3 might be next year, i'm kind of in a stick with performance issues with my game without gimping it to fuck.
 

Five

Banned
Hey everyone, I'd like to design art (characters, tiles, objects...) for my 2D platformer using a pen, paper and a scanner. Are there any tools or techniques I should be aware of? I'm not an artist, I've never studied art but I figured it would be a fun way of designing a game... How do I make sure what I draw will look proportionate in the game, make it fit on a tile sheet etc...?

Have you considered using a drawing tablet, such as those on offer from Wacom? That's what I use when going for the hand-drawn look. I can import or make a grid in PhotoShop easily enough, and then I use the pen and tablet to draw on top of that.
 

Cedric

Member
Have you considered using a drawing tablet, such as those on offer from Wacom? That's what I use when going for the hand-drawn look. I can import or make a grid in PhotoShop easily enough, and then I use the pen and tablet to draw on top of that.

Hmmm no I haven't, but to be honest I don't think I'm interested in investing in one for the moment. I'd rather keep it small and use resources I have at my disposal and create a simple game with them. Once I feel like I'm ready for bigger things, then I'll move on to using better material. Thanks for the input though, it's definitely something to think about in the future!
 

Feep

Banned
So I have an animation that rotates a character out from behind cover by, like...I dunno...135 degrees...and then the animation reverses after he fires, right back another 135 degrees to his original position.

Oddly enough, though, it doesn't quite work out that way...every time the loop happens, the character gets offset by 3 or 4 degrees. I think it has to do with the fact that each animation is being blended by a different animation before it, which affects the root motion.

Is there any good solution for this? I can't use IK; I'm not using humanoid rigs. I tried to just "snap" it to the correct orientation upon finishing the animation, but it's pretty noticeable. And I don't know the exact offset (it depends on what frames of the previous animation are being blended) that I can gradually apply it over the course of the animation. = P
 

Five

Banned
Hmmm no I haven't, but to be honest I don't think I'm interested in investing in one for the moment. I'd rather keep it small and use resources I have at my disposal and create a simple game with them. Once I feel like I'm ready for bigger things, then I'll move on to using better material. Thanks for the input though, it's definitely something to think about in the future!

Well, then the best I can recommend is to do some scale and proportion sketches on graphing paper, then do the final art on plain, unruled paper. Like, maybe a tile is a 4x4 grid on the graphing paper, and when you do the final art you'll know about the size it should be and such.
 

jrDev

Member
So I have an animation that rotates a character out from behind cover by, like...I dunno...135 degrees...and then the animation reverses after he fires, right back another 135 degrees to his original position.

Oddly enough, though, it doesn't quite work out that way...every time the loop happens, the character gets offset by 3 or 4 degrees. I think it has to do with the fact that each animation is being blended by a different animation before it, which affects the root motion.

Is there any good solution for this? I can't use IK; I'm not using humanoid rigs. I tried to just "snap" it to the correct orientation upon finishing the animation, but it's pretty noticeable. And I don't know the exact offset (it depends on what frames of the previous animation are being blended) that I can gradually apply it over the course of the animation. = P
Are you cross fading the animation? animation.Crossfade? Try just animation.Play without any blending...
 
The new information about Multimedia Fusion 2.5 and the new Fusion 3 sound really good, as someone who has been using their tools for as long as I have used a computer i'm excited, the runtime for fusion 3 sounds like a huge performance improvement and will fix the issues of the PC, iOS and Android runtimes all being separate and prone to unique glitches on each device.

So I am going to be delaying my game by a few months to benefit from Fusion 3 when it's out this winter, but it should be a LOT better in the long run.

Also my game is performing terrible on iphone 4's right now so I kind of need this improved runtime, it will also allow me to do a direct port to android, the current android exporter is terrible for anything which is not pong.

*edit* saying that I just read that fusion 3 might be next year, i'm kind of in a stick with performance issues with my game without gimping it to fuck.

Hope your project migration goes smoothly!
 

Dascu

Member
So I have an animation that rotates a character out from behind cover by, like...I dunno...135 degrees...and then the animation reverses after he fires, right back another 135 degrees to his original position.

Oddly enough, though, it doesn't quite work out that way...every time the loop happens, the character gets offset by 3 or 4 degrees. I think it has to do with the fact that each animation is being blended by a different animation before it, which affects the root motion.

Is there any good solution for this? I can't use IK; I'm not using humanoid rigs. I tried to just "snap" it to the correct orientation upon finishing the animation, but it's pretty noticeable. And I don't know the exact offset (it depends on what frames of the previous animation are being blended) that I can gradually apply it over the course of the animation. = P

For smooth turning (and movement), with a set timeframe, the Lerp function works pretty well. http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/ScriptReference/Mathf.Lerp.html

Have the rotation (Euler Angle y component perhaps?) turn from the current one to the angle you want, and arrange the time somehow so it does it over the course of the animation.
 

Feep

Banned
For smooth turning (and movement), with a set timeframe, the Lerp function works pretty well. http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/ScriptReference/Mathf.Lerp.html

Have the rotation (Euler Angle y component perhaps?) turn from the current one to the angle you want, and arrange the time somehow so it does it over the course of the animation.
This sort of negates the point of using root motion, which is to have the character's movement over that 135 degrees natural and non-linear. I could use Unity's built-in animation curves, but they're complex (and still might be subject to blending issues). The best solution is to simply let the animator work his magic and let that drive the motion, but it isn't *quite* correct, and I don't know the exact amount it needs to be offset. = (

Eh, I'll figure something out...
 

Feep

Banned
Can you save the angle that it's supposed to be and snap to it after the animation's done?
That's my current "solution", but the resulting three or four degree snap is easily visible. I guess smoothing that over a couple frames would look a little better, but it's still not ideal...
 

Five

Banned
What if you guessed the degrees difference, and added that much divided by the number of frames in the animation, then snapped at the end in case your guess was off.

Assuming a 3-4 degree difference, and a 60-frame animation, add 3/60 degree each frame. At the end, you'll have 0-1 degree off, so the snap is much smaller.

Feels like a tremendous hack, but might net better-looking results.
 

bumpkin

Member
Hey everyone, I'd like to design art (characters, tiles, objects...) for my 2D platformer using a pen, paper and a scanner. Are there any tools or techniques I should be aware of? I'm not an artist, I've never studied art but I figured it would be a fun way of designing a game... How do I make sure what I draw will look proportionate in the game, make it fit on a tile sheet etc...?
I'm actually in the same boat; that is, thinking about starting to design some art for a game I'm working on. I've found a ton of tutorials online about how to best convert hand-drawn art into sprites.

http://noogy.com/main.html (by the guy who made Dust: An Elysian Tale)

http://kesaquee.com/?p=98

http://mossmouth.tumblr.com/post/42652506486/pixel-art-tutorial

What I've actually been thinking about doing is getting a lit drawing table, and using that so I can be sure that I'm keeping proportions and placement relatively consistent (like for animations). This is the one I've been pricing and trying to track down at a store locally (I'd like to see it in person first)...

http://www.amazon.com/Artograph-LightPad-Lightbox-6-Inch-surface/dp/B003N4ARIA/ref=sr_1_4?s=arts-crafts&ie=UTF8&qid=1378381667&sr=1-4&keywords=artograph+light+pad
 

Hazaro

relies on auto-aim
It is my humble opinion that my eyes hurt looking at that. It's not the colors, maybe the text is just too jarring on top of it?
 
It is my humble opinion that my eyes hurt looking at that. It's not the colors, maybe the text is just too jarring on top of it?

Haha! yeah... the textures right now are just standard uv test grids that blender generates. After I make the textures it should be far less... jarring.
 

Anustart

Member
Ok so I may finally have an idea I am going to push into serious development and was wondering if there's any tools you guys would recommend for properly planning?

And any other things you guys might suggest to really get this thing off the ground. Any tools you use would help!

Anyone? :(
 

Niahak

Member
Ok so I may finally have an idea I am going to push into serious development and was wondering if there's any tools you guys would recommend for properly planning?

And any other things you guys might suggest to really get this thing off the ground. Any tools you use would help!

A lot of this stuff is learned rather than taught and I don't know much myself, but some concepts I used to build a framework for planning:

  • Plan out different phases (e.g. earliest playable, recruiting demo, publicity demo)
  • Order out sub-steps for each, if possible. Art design, stage design

For a small project, I would really recommend something like Trello (www.trello.com) -- it's basically like having a wall of sticky notes that you can reorganize, edit, etc. It's been very valuable for my writer and I to coordinate things, report bugs, etc.

We also found Google docs / drive useful to do some framing of the world and plot.
 

Anustart

Member
A lot of this stuff is learned rather than taught and I don't know much myself, but some concepts I used to build a framework for planning:

  • Plan out different phases (e.g. earliest playable, recruiting demo, publicity demo)
  • Order out sub-steps for each, if possible. Art design, stage design

For a small project, I would really recommend something like Trello (www.trello.com) -- it's basically like having a wall of sticky notes that you can reorganize, edit, etc. It's been very valuable for my writer and I to coordinate things, report bugs, etc.

We also found Google docs / drive useful to do some framing of the world and plot.

Thanks!
 

bumpkin

Member
For a small project, I would really recommend something like Trello (www.trello.com) -- it's basically like having a wall of sticky notes that you can reorganize, edit, etc. It's been very valuable for my writer and I to coordinate things, report bugs, etc.
I checked out Trello back when another poster linked/recommended it earlier in the thread, but had completely forgotten about it. At the time, I was just having trouble visualizing what I needed to do and how it had to come together, so I signed up and then sort of forgot about it. Thanks for reminding me about it! I logged in and started to fill in my board. :)

As the original poster said, it can be motivating to see things getting "done" and to have a nice, organized list of what has to be done.
 

Interfectum

Member
A lot of this stuff is learned rather than taught and I don't know much myself, but some concepts I used to build a framework for planning:

  • Plan out different phases (e.g. earliest playable, recruiting demo, publicity demo)
  • Order out sub-steps for each, if possible. Art design, stage design

For a small project, I would really recommend something like Trello (www.trello.com) -- it's basically like having a wall of sticky notes that you can reorganize, edit, etc. It's been very valuable for my writer and I to coordinate things, report bugs, etc.

We also found Google docs / drive useful to do some framing of the world and plot.

I'm using trello and it's been a lifesaver. Such a good site to use.
 

Popstar

Member
This sort of negates the point of using root motion, which is to have the character's movement over that 135 degrees natural and non-linear. I could use Unity's built-in animation curves, but they're complex (and still might be subject to blending issues). The best solution is to simply let the animator work his magic and let that drive the motion, but it isn't *quite* correct, and I don't know the exact amount it needs to be offset. = (

Eh, I'll figure something out...
Does Unity allow you to specify blending only on a subtree of the skeleton? I'd do this by either specifying the blend on the root node to be additive, or by specifying the blending takes place on everything but the root node.
 

Feep

Banned
Does Unity allow you to specify blending only on a subtree of the skeleton? I'd do this by either specifying the blend on the root node to be additive, or by specifying the blending takes place on everything but the root node.
Not directly, but maybe it's possible with the "OnAnimatorMove" function? Not a bad idea...
 

razu

Member
I've just about finished modeling and UV mapping the cave background. UV mapping has proved to be especially tedious as I have to make sure the pixels stay mostly square and somewhat lined up. Behold the colors!

I know it's placeholder, but I like the colours man! Next game right there!! :D
 

GulAtiCa

Member
I'm now a licensed Nintendo Wii U developer as of today. :)

I'm really quite excited actually. Once I order my dev kit, I plan to port over my HTML5 prototype Tower Defense game ( http://games.gregthegamer.com/towerdefense/ ). I already have a theme for it's look/style that I've been working on a little. (think a retro looking, in terms of simple pixel themes, space tower defense game)

I don't think development, code-wise, will take me too long to port it into the Nintendo Web Framework. I estimate 1 to 2 months in my off-time to make it a complete game (outside of music/sounds, so just looks and functionality). Just depends on how much time I put into it. Really, the main game itself is essentially done. I really only have to skin it and add menus/leaderboards/etc. I plan to recode it as well, not that there is much to recode of course.

My only really unsure-ness comes from getting music/sounds. I've bookedmarked different artists that have posted in here or have made threads that make sound effects/music, so I'll prob look into them or ask for help here if anyone has any ideas. But that will be at least a month before I consider that.

Anyways, I really look forward to all this. Got a lot of reading to do to read up on this library and practices with the Wii U. Should be fun!
 

bumpkin

Member
I'm now a licensed Nintendo Wii U developer as of today. :)
Not gonna lie, I'm genuinely jealous. It's pretty much my dream to someday be able to develop something on any of my beloved consoles. It'd be a perk for it to be something current/recent. I've developed a couple of iOS Apps in recent years (and tinkered with Android), but being able to do something on a game console would be godly. Touch screens are great and all that, but the fact is, there's nothing like actual buttons.

On an unrelated note, I am surprised at how tricky it is trying to build an Entity-Component system based game engine. I keep having to remind myself of the tenets -- like Components should only be data -- and I'm constantly finding little bugs here and there as stuff comes together. It's been nice having something to keep my coding tasks organized with (using Trello.com). That's at least controlling the chaos a little; adding checklists to tasks is keeping things clear and giving me good pseudo-code.

I just wish I had used it from project conception. It would have been nice to be able to look at the entire thing when I'm done in terms of to-do items and so on.
 

Ashodin

Member
BAM son

vykefDr.png


The UI has been tweaked to my liking - you can see the words, readability is high, excitement is high, WOOOOOOOOO

sheeeit I love my artist!

090513-001.jpg
 
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