What resource(s) did you use for learning shaders? Are you using 3D-only graphics and shaders, or shader effects on 2D sprites?
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Indie Game Development Discussion Thread | Of Being Professionally Poor
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I'm learning them at my game design and programming school/college. They're Unity's .shader files, which use some strange, case-insensitive language (with no auto-complete, which is a bit of a pain).
I also learned some basic OpenGL as well, mostly stuff that was required to understand how to code shaders, such as building and using the MVP (that stands for model view projection, I think) matrix and how it affects vertex operations (ie: an awful lot, since matrix multiplication is not commutative), as well as how lighting is processed for both vertex and pixel lights.
So far, it seems that you could use some of the shaders I made for any kind of perspective, so I guess that means you could use them in a 2D game (using orthographic perspective). Actually, one shader we made only looked good in orthographic pespective, so we had to redo it using custom CG code (rather than built-in functions) to make it work on the regular perspective as well; it was an effect that worked like a mask, showing a plain texture with no perspective whatsoever, as if the material was working as a mask (for reference, we were trying to make the shader work like the unmoving plaid shirt of that one character in the Monkey Island games).
Getting round to working on the look of Chopper Mike.
Here's the paint shader:
And in game, (iPad3 screen):
It has ambient light, diffuse, specular, and fill. All from one actual directional light in the scene. All done in vert + frag shaders in a single pass. Need to see it moving for the full effect.
Glass is a copy of the paint shader, with added fresnel falloff.
Very happy with tonight's efforts!
Here's the paint shader:
And in game, (iPad3 screen):
It has ambient light, diffuse, specular, and fill. All from one actual directional light in the scene. All done in vert + frag shaders in a single pass. Need to see it moving for the full effect.
Glass is a copy of the paint shader, with added fresnel falloff.
Very happy with tonight's efforts!
Warm Machine
Member
That sounds pretty efficient!
The Friendly Monster
Member
My game Total Pool will be Amazon's free app of the day tomorrow, should be interesting. I'll be happy to share download numbers and sales impact for anyone interested.
The Cg Tutorial is pretty good and is free here:
http://http.developer.nvidia.com/CgTutorial/cg_tutorial_chapter01.html
That would be awesome! The more transparency devs have, the better for all of us. I plan to share my own sales in January.
Looks really good! Simple controls and mechanics, plus minimalistic design
Are you planning to release this on other platforms?
BTW, Chrome thinks that your "RGBuried.windows.zip" is a suspicious file....I would change it's name if i were you, just to make sure you don't lose any potential downloads.
Thanks! The only other platforms I could think of would be smartphones. I think it'd be a bit of a challenge to revamp the controls to be intuitive on those devices, though.
Thanks for the tip about being flagged a suspicious file. I'll dig around and see exactly what Chrome's criteria is for that.
Yeah. You don't need an actual light in a scene to light an object, (although mine does in this case). My game is mainly sky, so I played with various uses of a reflected view direction to blend on the sky colour. I first used max( 0, reflectedViewDirection.y ), but that just blew up the top of the chopper. Using the negative y gave a nice fill effect in the darker areas. You could use this for a ground based game to reflect the bounced light of the ground, just pass the current ground colour into the shader.
It was an entertaining evening of commenting in and out, switching between monodevelop and Unity every 10 seconds until I thought it looked rad enough
hey gaf,
it has been silent around my picross-game pixelAI for a few weeks now. sometimes life just gets in the way. Nonetheless although the game was running well, I decided to recode the underlying game-engine to support ARC (Objective-C). It may be a complex task now, but I am confident it will pay off in the long run. I will also take the time to restructure my entire game-logic. I have never really been that satisfied, as the whole project was enrooted as my first steps in Objective-C or iOS development in general. Sometimes it just better to bury the old and startover.
it has been silent around my picross-game pixelAI for a few weeks now. sometimes life just gets in the way. Nonetheless although the game was running well, I decided to recode the underlying game-engine to support ARC (Objective-C). It may be a complex task now, but I am confident it will pay off in the long run. I will also take the time to restructure my entire game-logic. I have never really been that satisfied, as the whole project was enrooted as my first steps in Objective-C or iOS development in general. Sometimes it just better to bury the old and startover.
Getting round to working on the look of Chopper Mike.
Here's the paint shader:
And in game, (iPad3 screen):
It has ambient light, diffuse, specular, and fill. All from one actual directional light in the scene. All done in vert + frag shaders in a single pass. Need to see it moving for the full effect.
Glass is a copy of the paint shader, with added fresnel falloff.
Very happy with tonight's efforts!
Are you thinking about adding a background? I think something is missing in the background. Some sky/clouds maybe?
I'm going to add a radial gradient for some interest, without sacrificing the simplicity. I think once all items are nicely shaded it'll all come together. I took a photo of an LCD screen playing the game, and the change in view angle from top to bottom gave lovely gradients that made it look awesome. Going to try and recreate that. It *should* look like a children's tv show set, with helicopters like toys and the environment like it's made out of coloured card. That's the aim anyway.
Prophet Steve
Member
Hi, I was wondering someone could help me. Messing around with particles in Unity and while it looks fine on my laptop the Inspector view on my PC seems to be different with the particle system, while they both use the same Unity (3.5.6).
This is what it normally should look like, and does look like on my laptop:
This it how it looks like on my PC:
I prefer the normal one much more, so anyone know how this is caused?
EDIT: To be clear, I'm also using the same particle system on both systems.
This is what it normally should look like, and does look like on my laptop:
This it how it looks like on my PC:
I prefer the normal one much more, so anyone know how this is caused?
EDIT: To be clear, I'm also using the same particle system on both systems.
Do you mean agents like you're an actor and your agent is getting you gigs, that kind of thing?
Environment shader. Had to abandon high res on iPad3. Turned on 4x AA though. Buttons are huge as they are scaled to screen res rather than render res at the moment.
I think it adds interest, without breaking the simplicity.
Sky next...
And the glass bubble could do with more verts...!
I think it adds interest, without breaking the simplicity.
Sky next...
And the glass bubble could do with more verts...!
Ihateyouchris
Member
Thought about it, but figured I didn't have a realistic shot at getting nominated so I saved the money. Next year...... shall be different.
Good luck with Clive though! How's the Greenlight going?
Games by Gaffers reviewed by Gaffers? Of course that would be some welcomed free publicity in a sense but would someone outside GAF trust such a thing?
Why would I post that in this thread?
Why would I post that in this thread?
Well you posted about an agent with no explanation for what you meant, so I thought I would ask for clarification. What sort of agent? I'm pretty sure you've done voice acting in the past, but that presumably wouldn't apply to indie game development, so I'm still pretty confused.
Several people seem to suggest GraphicsGale for sprite editing (I'm not sure if it supports sprite sheets though), but it's not free. Try Paint.NET if you haven't already. It's free and supports layers and stuff, but isn't really tailored for sprites either...might be a little simpler than the GIMP though.GAF, is there any good software for editing / making sprite sheets? I'm finding it rather difficult to do in gimp, as it's not really built for the task, thus making it more difficult than it should be.
Free software is also good as I'm poor
I submitted. Was disappointed last year (the submission process is not very 360 dev-kit friendly), so we'll see what happens this time.
I submitted. I don't expect anything to come of it. It's more of a symbolic gesture, that I view this as the start of my indie game development "career".
Why ARC? Were you having a lot of overretaining issues? Since ARC is just a precompilation step (rather than something in the Obj-C runtime), I feel like it might be even more of a burden to adopt. I've not personally used it, but from reading the docs, I'm not convinced of its usefulness.
Um...uh...
My game is getting Quick Look'd tomorrow.
http://www.giantbomb.com/
I am nervous, excited, scared, amazed, everything. They might hate it, who knows! Those are the best QLs, haha.
AHHHHHHHHHH!
My game is getting Quick Look'd tomorrow.
http://www.giantbomb.com/
I am nervous, excited, scared, amazed, everything. They might hate it, who knows! Those are the best QLs, haha.
AHHHHHHHHHH!
OccamsBlender
Member
Heya,
I'm trying to get help for a feature in UDK/Matinee, specifically using this function:
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/MatineeTrackReference.html#Movers Relative To Other Groups
"This means that a keyframe can point to a moving object and have the movement track interpolate to that position. An example usage case of this would be animating a projectile that always hits a character moving in a non-predictable fashion."
How do you get Matinee to look up a character that's moving in a non-predictable fashion? Could it be used to look up the player?
I thought Matinee would be a good way to set up some enemy and bullet patterns for a shooter.
Thanks!
I'm trying to get help for a feature in UDK/Matinee, specifically using this function:
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/MatineeTrackReference.html#Movers Relative To Other Groups
"This means that a keyframe can point to a moving object and have the movement track interpolate to that position. An example usage case of this would be animating a projectile that always hits a character moving in a non-predictable fashion."
How do you get Matinee to look up a character that's moving in a non-predictable fashion? Could it be used to look up the player?
I thought Matinee would be a good way to set up some enemy and bullet patterns for a shooter.
Thanks!
Congrats, that's awesome news
Will definitely check it out tomorrow when it's up on the site. Should be fun regardless of how they end up liking it.FormallyMegadrive
Member
If I'm reading the giantbomb page right it's premium only.
It sounds like you would put the player actor in a group, and then select that group with the Select Transform Lookup Group menu option. To test, I would first suggest making a moving box (just make a Matinee track move a box back and forth), and put that box in a group, and trying targeting your projectile at the box.
I wouldn't expect Matinee would have very good performance for gameplay, but I suppose it's worth a shot if you don't have UnrealScript experience. Also make sure to check out the MatineeLookupTest.ut3 test map that the webpage references, assuming it's part of the UDK.
Last but not least, if you don't get good answers from this thread, try asking in the dedicated UDK thread (http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=430197) since someone there might know much better than me!
OccamsBlender
Member
Thank you for the reply! ^-^v
I have a lot of experience with Matinee and Kismet while Unrealscript has me running screaming. I want to be able to control the splines things travel on and Matinee is so easy to use for that.
Putting already spawned AI or controllable actors into a track is...Hmm, I just have no clue how to do it. :x
I looked through my maps pack, but I haven't updated UDK in a while. Perhaps its time to update...
The GAF UDK thread seems pretty dead compared to this one, I hope no one minds me asking here.
I'd really like to move to Unity for personal development since if I make something, the UDK license fee is too much for me.
I'm curious about this add on especially:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/98465-The-Spaghetti-Machine-A-generic-graph-editor
ThatObviousUser
ὠαἴÏÏιÏÏÎ¿Ï Ïαá¿Ï εἶ
Yes the GAF UDK thread is pretty dead (no UDK updates in 2-3 months), but someone might have it subscribed and still respond, like Mik. I'm not sure if he reads this thread.
After I looked a little more, I think that unfortunately the example map it talks about is from an old official Unreal Engine 3 development system, and not the UDK at all. That map doesn't seem to be available anywhere, and it uses the .ut3 extension rather than .udk.
And hmm, I'm not sure if you can add a newly spawned player to a Matinee track. There might be something you can do with a director track, and/or using some invisible object that follows the player (floating inside their body, essentially)...and then other tracks could target THAT object's track.
Wok
Member
The main entries should go live in an hour or so, unless the organizers take some time after the deadline.
Warm Machine
Member
Yes, submitted Arcadecraft! Got the economy of the game working pretty well in the last couple days! Nothing like a deadline to force your hand.
Hi, I was wondering someone could help me. Messing around with particles in Unity and while it looks fine on my laptop the Inspector view on my PC seems to be different with the particle system, while they both use the same Unity (3.5.6).
This is what it normally should look like, and does look like on my laptop:
This it how it looks like on my PC:
I prefer the normal one much more, so anyone know how this is caused?
EDIT: To be clear, I'm also using the same particle system on both systems.
Your PC's Unity has it's inspector set to Debug mode. This is apparent from the tab that says "Debug" instead of "Inspector". So just right click the tab that says "Debug" and select "Normal" from the menu that pops up.
The Debug inspector is special that it shows private/protected members from the components in the object as well, and disregards any custom inspectors (which the particle system has).
Congrats, man! That's really awesome. They quicklooked my game, and it was one of the most surreal and fulfilling moments I can remember. And scary.
Posting about *my* agent would be related to my own acting career. And that isn't applicable here. = XWell you posted about an agent with no explanation for what you meant, so I thought I would ask for clarification. What sort of agent? I'm pretty sure you've done voice acting in the past, but that presumably wouldn't apply to indie game development, so I'm still pretty confused.
Prophet Steve
Member
Haha thank you, I even noticed it saying Debug but didn't remember what it would say normally.
Well, then why would you po-....nevermind.
I'm intending to submit my project for the student competition. Luckily, the deadline's 10/31, so I'll be able to do some tweaking to make it look better.
As soon as I get the menu system working, I'll go and try to get some work done in the level details, as in adding some scenery, making my own background image so I can finally throw the placeholder texture away, and making sure level borders weld better.
I think I should be able to make it in time for the submission deadline, and it's great that they allow patches and updates before the games are judged.
By the way, one of the requirements is having a proper installer/unistaller. Does anybody know some free program I could use? My game creates some files in the registry because it uses Unity's PlayerPrefs to save settings and game data, so I'll need to make an uninstaller that deletes those as well as the game files.
Castaway Paradise development is going great. Mohawk included!
We stripped out all the lighting from the game. All the planes are colored with one 16x16 texture. Each pixel is a different color. So we have one drawcall for most of the objects in the scene. Works amazingly well.
Castaway Paradise development is going great. Mohawk included!
Nice art style.
We decided not to, because the game is not completed yet. I think we made the mistake of sending an unfinished product to DB&P and in the end we payed the price. Not that we think that we have any chance in IGF. We know that IGF is another league, but if we are going to get the chance of getting some advertising, we better have the final version.
Indeed! I can't wait.Congrats, that's awesome news
Nah, it should be free for all.If I'm reading the giantbomb page right it's premium only.
It feels like that, weirdly enough. Thankfully it looks like they liked it! https://twitter.com/taswell/status/258856475882057728You've made it, dude.
Man, it already feels like that now. I can't wait.
Congrats on Dust also!
RelentlessRolento
Member
congrads man, that's awesome!
I kinda have gotten a bit bruned out working in Unity for the past few weeks so I'm jumping to GameMaker to make some quick and easy projects then head back to Unity to finish up
I kinda have gotten a bit bruned out working in Unity for the past few weeks so I'm jumping to GameMaker to make some quick and easy projects then head back to Unity to finish up
That's what one would think, but you posted about SOME agent, in this thread. Which means you apparently wanted us to know about it, and it relates to indie games? So, what kind of agent did you mean? =P Presumably it can't be something we're not supposed to know about since you posted publicly about it.
This was my reaction too, haha. I feel like I must just be stupid and missing something obvious, but maybe Feep will explain what he meant.
Teknopathetic
Member
I would assume Feep is talking about contacting agents for hiring VAs or something for a game he's currently working on.
Ooh, good guess. For some reason I didn't even think about that, even though he had voice acting for Sequence.
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