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Indie Game Development Discussion Thread | Of Being Professionally Poor

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F

Foshy

Member
Hey guys, I just released my first iOS game, gyroboost!

screen568x568.jpeg


screen568x568.jpeg


Its gameplay premise is pretty simple: You control an always-rotating ship which moves straight forward when touching the screen.

Features:

- 2 game modes:
- "collect": collect green orbs while the screen slowly gets filled by hazard
- "chase": flee from an enemy while simultaneously avoiding on-screen traps

- addictive and challenging gameplay for both casuals and core gamers
- Game Center support with Leaderboards
- progressively increasing difficulty
- neon-retro look with pixel-art graphics and pulsating lights
- chiptune soundtrack which increases in intensity when you manage to get a nice streak of orbs in "collect" or survive for a long time in "chase

Buy it here for 1 dollar/euro/swiss franc/whatever your currency is: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gyroboost/id711550731?mt=8

I made it in Stencyl and am trying to release an Android version of it as soon as possible.

There's also one annoying bug that makes the game unresponsive after checking the leaderboards, I'm still looking into how to fix that.

I'd love to hear some feedback from you guys!

Also, there's 3 promo codes hidden in e-mail tags at the top of the post :)
 
R

Raide

Member
Ashodin said:
Yep it's a working cursor alright

itsacursorpcshot2.gifibc7t.gif
Click to expand...

Sounds odd but the hammer strike is the attack right? Just wondering if it would be more obvious if it struck the enemy, or at least something to show the attack connected. Some indicated of the HP dropping as well would be handy. You could either strike the enemy or at least highlight and shake the HP (IN red maybe) to show the hit.
 
A

asa

Member
Foshy said:
Hey guys, I just released my first iOS game, gyroboost!
Click to expand...

Used the second code. Tried out the game quickly, seems to be crashing a lot in the menu, I got the "restart app to continue" message several times in a row. Once I got into the game it was stable.

Game seemed bit too simple for my taste, I tried both modes for few times, I scored 17 in the chase and managed to collect punch of green things in the collect mode. Solid enough product, but needs more meat on the bones to justify purchase.

tip of the day: Make a video of your game and share that video in the app store description, video is almost always the first thing I look for in the app descriptions for new apps I stumble upon. Description is always nice, but I doubt that many people(and impulse buyers even less) actually read the text.
 
F

Foshy

Member
asa said:
Used the second code. Tried out the game quickly, seems to be crashing a lot in the menu, I got the "restart app to continue" message several times in a row. Once I got into the game it was stable.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that happens when you open the leaderboards. The leaderboards themselves work, but after closing them, touch events are disabled. It's a Stencyl problem, and I've found no way to fix it yet so I put in that screen that advises you to restart the app. Use leaderboards only when you really want to check :/

And I'll make a video, thanks for the tip :)
 
M

missile

Member
Bollocks said:
Can a smart person please explain this gem:
Code: 
Vector3 dir = Quaternion.AngleAxis(90, cam.transform.right) * hit.normal;
I know this rotates the normal vector 90° around the right axis and it does what it should but I want to know what exactly is going on here.
Quaternion.AngleAxis(90, cam.transform.right) makes me go
214x700px-LL-1ecb6496_JackieChanMindblown.jpeg
Click to expand...
If time permits, am going to write a very insightful explanation later this
day, showing the connection between rotations and quaterions from a quite
different perspective you haven't ever read nor heart about it
 
C

cbox

Member
DAMN! It's been such a long time since I've posted something about our game. We hit a bit of a snag with some life events getting in the way, and both of us having full time jobs really puts a snag in progress. Nonetheless, we meet with our music guy next week and just last night I finished most of the SFX. It's all coming together!

Gif showing a new enemy type, tweaked "wolf like" enemy behavior, and me dying.

0N9OeV.gif
 
bumpkin

bumpkin

Member
Ugh, someday I'll finish the Android port of an iOS App I made so I can get back to stuff I actually want to work on. :(
 
A

Ashodin

Member
Raide said:
Sounds odd but the hammer strike is the attack right? Just wondering if it would be more obvious if it struck the enemy, or at least something to show the attack connected. Some indicated of the HP dropping as well would be handy. You could either strike the enemy or at least highlight and shake the HP (IN red maybe) to show the hit.
Click to expand...
Damage floaters are in the works, and I've wondered about striking the enemy.
 
R

razu

Member
missile said:
If time permits, am going to write a very insightful explanation later this
day, showing the connection between rotations and quaterions from a quite
different perspective you haven't ever read nor heart about it
Click to expand...

I'm looking forward to this! I've used quaternions loads, but bollocks if I know what they actually are :D A working knowledge can get you pretty far! :D
 
R

razu

Member
VAMflax is back!!

I am now going into production of my second, fully solo developed game! :D

It's another vehicular based game, and I intend to expand the playable vehicle list massively this time, with a load of varied races, missions and jobs to keep you occupied.

So far I just have the very core of a gate type mission, but the boat is feeling lovely already.

The video below goes into the techy bits, as there is no alpha blending in this scene, except for the GOAL text, but that's just placeholder, (as is everything, but anyway...)

​

I shall keep you up to date with my progress!! :D
 
B

Bollocks

Member
Doh, just spent 10 minutes figuring out why my raycast wasn't working as intended. No problem, just visualize it with Debug.DrawLine and see whats going on.
Well turns out Debug.DrawLine and Physics.Raycast have different parameters.
One needs the direction as second parameter and one the endpoint. Should pay more attention ._.

But on the bright side it's coming together nicely.
 
R

razu

Member
Bollocks said:
Doh, just spent 10 minutes figuring out why my raycast wasn't working as intended. No problem, just visualize it with Debug.DrawLine and see whats going on.
Well turns out Debug.DrawLine and Physics.Raycast have different parameters.
One needs the direction as second parameter and one the endpoint. Should pay more attention ._.

But on the bright side it's coming together nicely.
Click to expand...

I'm super impressed with the debug stuff you can have in the scene view while playing the game at the same time inside the Unity editor. Multi-monitor is great for this.

More dev screenshots please! Show us the funk you live in! :D
 
B

Bollocks

Member
razu said:
More dev screenshots please! Show us the funk you live in! :D
Click to expand...

Well, I might have something ready for #ScreenshotSaturday. Nothing fancy visually.
I'm working on my custom 1st person character controller. So far can walk in all directions including angled surfaces, gravity is working as are most of the collisions.
Pretty standard stuff but it's cool to implement it from scratch and come up with own working solutions to a problem.
 
D

daedalius

Member
Hey guys,
so I do a bunch of art for tabletop RPGs and wargaming, etc; but I want to do more work in games/indie stuff, but I just don't know where to begin.

My work is fantasy and sci-fi, I design characters, weapons/items, monsters, environments, icons, etc for Fantasy Flight Games(40k), Paizo(Pathfinder RPG), Privateer Press (Warmachine), Catalyst (Mechwarrior, Shadowrun), and a few others.

You can check out my portfolio here: http://www.galefire.com (it forwards to a behance portfolio), a bunch of my recent stuff for Paizo and FFG is still NDA'd so it isn't up there.

There isn't a con to go to and meet a bunch of art directors like Gencon for indie/videogame stuff, at least, I don't think E3 is the same. So I figured I'd ask in here! I have myself on a few other 'indie' sites/forums, but they get so little traffic posting in here that I am available for work is probably better.

Thanks in advance :)
 
S

Santini

Member
fengshuifever said:
I missed the call from Nintendo this morning because it was Private and it was 6am.
Also was in bed.
(._. )

I feel like I've made a huge mistake
Click to expand...

ActionRemix said:
Probably means you've already been approved. They just want to verify your information. Just call them back!
Click to expand...

Adding to the chorus: no worries! Everything should be good. I missed two calls from them (bad cellphone reception in my area), and just called them back the second time around. Had a quick chat and moved forward to the next step, which is where I'm at now.
 
B

Blizzard

Banned
For anyone who already received their devkit, how long did it take after the first shipping confirmation to get a second one? I just want to make sure I don't need to call again to confirm shipping details since the email was a little confusing.
 
R

razu

Member
Ashodin said:
Using "gents" like "guys" haphazardly
Click to expand...

:D


Bollocks said:
Well, I might have something ready for #ScreenshotSaturday. Nothing fancy visually.
I'm working on my custom 1st person character controller. So far can walk in all directions including angled surfaces, gravity is working as are most of the collisions.
Pretty standard stuff but it's cool to implement it from scratch and come up with own working solutions to a problem.
Click to expand...

Personally I'd be more interested in shots of dev builds with debug lines, and explanations of the problems people have solved this week.
 
J

Jobbs

Banned
Just spent way too much time trying to tweak this basic jump up/fall down animation. Suddenly it's 3am.

RIGHT_jump.gif


Among other things I was fussing with how to make the cape look at max extension when you're falling. If I make it point straight up, it may not look quite right if you are moving forward in your jump, and vise versa. This is sort of the compromise. I would do both versions but that'd be a lot of work considering all the aiming poses I have to do for every context.

Off in the future when this game is finished, I'm very interested in doing a cleaner, more traditional animated look in my next game -- Kind of a ghibli style presentation. Would be a nice change in pace.
 
P

pixelpai

Neo Member
fengshuifever said:
I missed the call from Nintendo this morning because it was Private and it was 6am.
Also was in bed.
(._. )


I feel like I've made a huge mistake
Click to expand...

my two cents: I have been approved as a WiiU developer last thursday but got called yesterday, so you really don't have to worry. The call was all about confirming my personal-infos and to talk about the perspectives as a WiiU-developer.

Currently I am thinking about my next steps: Html5 or Unity. On the one hand, I haven't worked with the latter yet, but do only hear good things. On the other hand I do have some skills and experience in JavaScript and it shouldn't be that hard to port my game from cocos2d to cocos2d-html...
 
M

Makai

Member
pixelpai said:
my two cents: I have been approved as a WiiU developer last thursday but got called yesterday, so you really don't have to worry. The call was all about confirming my personal-infos and to talk about the perspective as a WiiU-developer.

Currently I am thinking about my next steps: Html5 or Unity. On the one hand, I haven't worked with the latter yet, but do only hear good things. On the other hand I do have some skills and experience in JavaScript and it shouldn't be that hard to port my game from cocos2d to cocos2d-html...
Click to expand...
Unity has JavaScript support for scripting, but if you're going for a 2D game html5 is probably the way to go
 
M

missile

Member
razu said:
VAMflax is back!!

I am now going into production of my second, fully solo developed game! :D

It's another vehicular based game, and I intend to expand the playable vehicle list massively this time, with a load of varied races, missions and jobs to keep you occupied.

So far I just have the very core of a gate type mission, but the boat is feeling lovely already.

The video below goes into the techy bits, as there is no alpha blending in this scene, except for the GOAL text, but that's just placeholder, (as is everything, but anyway...)

​

I shall keep you up to date with my progress!! :D
Click to expand...

Good to have you back! Hope you stick around this time! xD I really like the
idea with the boat. A minor question; is it possible with Unity to have
non-convex objects floating, objects having holes or enclosed bubbles?

BurritoBushido said:
I look forward to this
Click to expand...

razu said:
I'm looking forward to this! I've used quaternions loads ...
Click to expand...

Me, too! :) I've started writing, yesterday, yet my girlfriend's laptop broke
yesterday as well and am in for repair. So hopefully I can finish the
little article today.
 
F

fengshuifever

Member
Thanks for the reassurances above!
Yeah, it's weird though. I haven't received an email yet confirming it yet and the guy didn't leave a contact number to call back.
Should I just wait or is there a number I can track down?
 
G

GulAtiCa

Member
fengshuifever said:
I missed the call from Nintendo this morning because it was Private and it was 6am.
Also was in bed.
(._. )


I feel like I've made a huge mistake
Click to expand...

You will get another call. It was marked as private? That's odd. If you actually have the number, call back. Else wait for them to call again.

Blizzard said:
For anyone who already received their devkit, how long did it take after the first shipping confirmation to get a second one? I just want to make sure I don't need to call again to confirm shipping details since the email was a little confusing.
Click to expand...
Few days. Yeah, it is confusing. Basically it goes like this:

NOA -> UPS ->->-> You
So NOa ships to UPS/etc and then UPS ships to you. So it is 2 buisness day shipping + the amount of time to ship to UPS (about 1 day). So in all, will be 4 days at least, week at most, just depending on the day of the week.

pixelpai said:
my two cents: I have been approved as a WiiU developer last thursday but got called yesterday, so you really don't have to worry. The call was all about confirming my personal-infos and to talk about the perspectives as a WiiU-developer.

Currently I am thinking about my next steps: Html5 or Unity. On the one hand, I haven't worked with the latter yet, but do only hear good things. On the other hand I do have some skills and experience in JavaScript and it shouldn't be that hard to port my game from cocos2d to cocos2d-html...
Click to expand...

Congrats. I'm currently doing HTML5 myself. I like having more control of everything, plus I also am new to Unity, so I know HTML5 a lot more. That and the dev kit I ordered is really only for Nintendo Web Framework coding (can be unity/etc too, but little harder, the other dev kit is meant for those) as I went the cheaper route (still free loaner of course, just i eventually have to buy it haha).

I've been doing gameplay testing all week. Going back and forth on changing things up to make sure game plays right and at correct difficulty. Nearly done with this round of it. By time I start graphics works, tomorrow, I would have put 90 hours into the game.
 
Mikado

Mikado

Member
More_Badass said:
Have any of you heard of this yet? Seems like it could be really helpful for the indie devs here
EzDw58W.jpg
Click to expand...

More like "Smaller Pie" amirite?

As the saying goes, the only ones who really made it big during the Gold Rush were the guys selling shovels and renting out mules.

Seems there's will always be some sort of "agent" company trying to insert themselves into an existing business relationship system while adding relatively little value in an effort to siphon from already miniscule margins.

Yes, I'm grouchy today, hah.

Ultimately, I'd recommend small developers think very carefully about the partnerships they make, and the value they expect to receive from it. Everyone will come to a different decision based on their own circumstances and capabilities.
 
B

Blizzard

Banned
GulAtiCa said:
Few days. Yeah, it is confusing. Basically it goes like this:

NOA -> UPS ->->-> You
So NOa ships to UPS/etc and then UPS ships to you. So it is 2 buisness day shipping + the amount of time to ship to UPS (about 1 day). So in all, will be 4 days at least, week at most, just depending on the day of the week.
Click to expand...
Thanks. I'm hoping I get the rest of my new hardware set up tomorrow, and maybe I'll get the email next week then.

One major thing I need to do is pull my old game stuff out of the dusty year-or-two old archives and start grinding again.

One of the hardest things for me to do was decide that I am going to scrap for now the thing I was trying to work on for months. I had decided that I wanted to teach myself post-process shader and the OpenGL stuff required to do it...but I had a huge struggle trying to learn that line by line without copying random sample code (which might not have a clear license on it, meaning I definitely wanted to avoid it). So I basically ended up stuck part way through the postprocess stuff, not wanting to ever continue until I learned the shader stuff and put it in my engine.

But instead, I think I am going to try to focus on getting back to implementing features more important to a game, with the goal of eventually getting to some sort of prototype where I can see if my game would actually be fun at all.
 
A

Ashodin

Member
Feep said:
Sometimes things happen

LOLBug.gif
Click to expand...

ahahahha hammer time

Jobbs, loving the amount of frames in the Jump animation!

so I was supposed to work on the character creation menu today, but I got sidetracked and worked on the world map.

I came up with this:

Yx9y6oR.png


I really wanted a silhouette of a castle for Litera City, and I think I did a pretty good job.
 
B

Blizzard

Banned
Are there badlands, or only worselands?

Side note, Ashodin, have you ever read the Phantom Tollbooth? It seems like it would be totally your style. :D
 
B

Blizzard

Banned
Ashodin said:
I'm sure there's badlands somewhere... and that book looks cool! No I've never read it.
Click to expand...
It's an old children's book, but with lots of literal language/math jokes. There's a Which, for instance, not a witch. And a watchdog who's an actual stopwatch. And when people jump to conclusions, they literally jump to a place called Conclusions and get stuck there.
 
R

razu

Member
missile said:
Good to have you back! Hope you stick around this time! xD I really like the
idea with the boat. A minor question; is it possible with Unity to have
non-convex objects floating, objects having holes or enclosed bubbles?
Click to expand...

Hey! When you actually get round to finishing your game.. you too may appreciate a break from it all!! :D

There's nothing in Unity making the boat float. I'm just applying a force to the rigidbody. It could be any shape at all.
 
B

Bollocks

Member
Need some little help:
In short I want the red vector:
6PzbTWB.png


I want my character to slide off if the angle of the surface he's standing on is too steep.

I thought I would just get the cross product of the normal and up vector, giving me the axis(green vector) to rotate the normal.
Then I just rotate the normal around this vector 90° and -90° and then compare their y value, whichever has the lowest y value is the vector facing downwards?

Is this the correct way to do it?

e: code might help:
Code: 
	//get the direction to which to slide the player if surface is too steep
	private Vector3 getSlideVector(Vector3 normal){
		Vector3 axis = Vector3.Cross(normal, Vector3.up);
		Vector3 a1 = Quaternion.AngleAxis(90, axis) * normal;
		Vector3 a2 = Quaternion.AngleAxis(-90, axis) * normal;
		
		return a1.y < a2.y ? a1 : a2;
	}
 
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