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Indie Game Development Discussion Thread | Of Being Professionally Poor
- Thread starter chubigans
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I didn't say having your own engine has more advantages, I just said one of the advantages. You also seem to imply that third-party engines and tools aren't bug-ridden (granted, most may be very reliable of course). You seem a little defensive for some reason.
In general using a premade engine is by far the easiest and probably best way to make a game. I tend to lean towards weird experiments that don't necessarily fit into engines, but I wouldn't recommend custom engines to people who just want to make games, especially if they their idea works well with a standard engine (UDK for FPS, or Unity for 3D sidescroller, or GameMaker for 2D, or what-have-you).
RelentlessRolento
Member
nice work guys
happy to say I am back to developing my thesis game... had to finish my workshop and clear university crap but back on a roll... big worktime this weekend. in fact I'm in my studio now working on drawing out the other characters for my game.
happy to say I am back to developing my thesis game... had to finish my workshop and clear university crap but back on a roll... big worktime this weekend. in fact I'm in my studio now working on drawing out the other characters for my game.
Some suggestions/advice when it comes to playtesting:
- Ask the players to think their thoughts while playing. Definitely take down notes, and, if the testers are OK with it, record over-the-shoulder footage so you can analyze their playthrough in more detail later.
- Try not to speak when they're actually playing the game - don't give them tips or anything unless it's something they should know that's missing from the build (ex: "we didn't add it in yet, but blahblah is going to blahblah here"). Depending how far along the game is, you want to try to replicate the experience they would have normally... with you not there.
- Questionnaires are good too, especially for getting not-in-person feedback... so it might not be something for you to do in this case. After they're done playing you can start asking questions, such as their thoughts on different aspects of the game (Presentation - Menu/HUD, Controls, various Game Mechanics, Level Design, Sound, etc.) and/or get their thoughts on potential features. You could even ask them to rank potential features from most important to least important to see what they would care about most. If I was in your place I'd print out a bunch of copies of a list of the topics I want to discuss and just jot down notes the whole time.
AcceptableGhost
Member
how about people just do what they want to do
Dynamite Shikoku
Congratulations, you really deserve it!
The game runs at 60fps and the GIF is 30 fps. It animates much better than that.
Love the look of this one
RelentlessRolento
Member
Screenshot saturday? well it's 2am here so...
As always colors are not final, but I'm putting together a number of characters the player will come across. This guy is a walrus that works dockside. I also have an ostrich car mechanic made but need to clean him up
I'm trying to speed up my process a bit since I need to be ready to present a build next week for critique.
As always colors are not final, but I'm putting together a number of characters the player will come across. This guy is a walrus that works dockside. I also have an ostrich car mechanic made but need to clean him up
I'm trying to speed up my process a bit since I need to be ready to present a build next week for critique.
BurritoBushido
Member
Wooh! Just got my call this week from Nintendo, I'm in! Pretty exciting stuff. It's still a bit early for me to look into acquiring a dev kit, but the options are definitely exciting.
Heart of Black
Member
I'm in talks about future stuff on Sony. Nintendo doesn't have a market for me right now as far as I'm concerned (though I did meet with a bunch of them at Indiecade).
I think I heard Sony was giving away devkits "like candy", but no one ever linked me to some super simple signup like Nintendo has.
I just checked the Sony site and they do seem to have a few more restrictions:
Forming a corporate entity and EID is probably pretty easy and something I should do, but it does at least SOUND kind of scary to someone who's new to such things.
Honestly it's like
1) Find local listing of lawyers who set up LLCs
2) Pay them some money ($300-$800)
3) You now have an LLC
The only thing to really be aware of is the flat $800/year tax to maintain their existence.
EDIT: This is in California. Not sure about other states.
So you're saying it's $300-1100 compared to Nintendo? That might be a reason people are trying the cheaper route.
For people just starting out, $300 may not be super trivial, but it doesn't sound bad for serious people who are confident they can succeed on Sony platform(s).Diablohead
Member
If you support 4S, then you have to support the 4. I suggest you concentrate on the 4. (It's really shit). It would be good if Apple let you pick the devices you wanted to support. But they don't. They only let you pick features.
I would also suggest the number of full screen filters you want to use on the iPhone 4, and perhaps even the 4S, is zero. It really is a different world to PC.
Let us know how you get on though, and good luck!
I made a mistake with my post last night, I meant 5g touch over 4g, I decided that my game is just too big for those devices now and after two years and something like 5 engine builds that unless the game plays like super mario bros I have to drop 4g and iPhone 4 support.
By the time my game is done I am sure a lot of people will at least have a 4S and above, not much I can do about it now.
The multimedia Fusion which I use has some nasty exporters which do not work well and all have separate debug/engine problems while iOS and Windows work in harmony, but once Fusion 3 is out next year I plan to cover more systems if my game takes off.
Or at least for it's sequel or another game.
prodystopian
Member
This looks awesome.
dragonelite
Member
Hey indie dev gaf i think this is the right place to ask this question.
I need to implement Lua script support in a minor project.
Can you guys tell me what are some key areas to keep in mind when designing the software sub systems?
I need to implement Lua script support in a minor project.
Can you guys tell me what are some key areas to keep in mind when designing the software sub systems?
So I am really getting frustrated here with Blender and UDK export.
Everytime I try to rig my character and export, I get greeted by the vertex groups do not match message. And usually the groups are like 65 groups and 63 do not match. I have no idea why they do not match as I've tried exporting straight after skinning with automatic weights. (note that I've just learned really how to use Blender or any 3D application as far as rigging goes)
Any ideas of why this is happening?
Everytime I try to rig my character and export, I get greeted by the vertex groups do not match message. And usually the groups are like 65 groups and 63 do not match. I have no idea why they do not match as I've tried exporting straight after skinning with automatic weights. (note that I've just learned really how to use Blender or any 3D application as far as rigging goes)
Any ideas of why this is happening?
@MrOddbird: As always looks very cool, is there a demo?
Yep it works.
Haha good point, because I thought about that too
But if I were to implement that I would just check the angle and play a tumble animation, so no heavy math, sorry
Have the basic movements down, now I'm trying to export my 1st person animations from blender to unity, but so far it's a pain in the ass. Either it doesn't play at all or it plays but camera remains static or the animation gets reset to world 0 0 0 ._.
Does your character now slides down the slope? Sliding formula implemented?
Well, wouldn't it also be cool if your character turns over if the plane gets
far too steep for your character to remain stable on the slope? I don't want
to exert any pressure, just saying.Keep pushing!
Yep it works.
Haha good point, because I thought about that too
But if I were to implement that I would just check the angle and play a tumble animation, so no heavy math, sorry
Have the basic movements down, now I'm trying to export my 1st person animations from blender to unity, but so far it's a pain in the ass. Either it doesn't play at all or it plays but camera remains static or the animation gets reset to world 0 0 0 ._.
Is the error in UDK or Blender? If UDK, there's a UDK thread around that hasn't had posts in a long time, but someone might be able to help there (or the UDK forums).
If Blender, there is or was a very helpful IRC channel.
I did some very simple rigging and exporting, but I don't remember having to do anything special with vertex groups.
Thanks, I'll have a look. It is in Blender. I have tried .fbx but that doesn't import to UDK as it fails. (I would guess the vertex groups are the problem with it as well)
I think we are pretty close to switching to Unity at this point though, since we can actually get animations working there.
Mikado
Member
#screenshotsaturday : I Hope You Like GIFS Edition
Combat animation month continues! So much combat, so many animations!
"420 chop dinosaurs erryday."
"What is your problem, lady?!"
"I can see my house from heeeerre......"
Animating makes my head hurt. One more week of this, then I can switch to vfx programming.
Combat animation month continues! So much combat, so many animations!
"420 chop dinosaurs erryday."
"What is your problem, lady?!"
"I can see my house from heeeerre......"
Animating makes my head hurt. One more week of this, then I can switch to vfx programming.
Mikado
Member
Exquisite.
Love the hit effects.
Wait, are those two ninjas murdering each other in someone's back yard?
I updated my blog again. Hopefully you guys will find it interesting. I plan to have some screens probably the middle of November. The first city zone is almost in a presentable state.
http://Skullforge.omc-games.com
http://Skullforge.omc-games.com
Have you disabled the "Apply Root Motion" option?
What are your import options (under Rig)?
Raonak
Banned
#screenshot saturday
Super Pokemon Eevee Edition [Beta 0.73]
So I've just released the latest version of my Pokemon game. If you're a fan of Pokemon (especially the early generations) or Final Fantasy- or both, then you should really try the game It's in beta, currently 4-8 hours long.
Imgur Album
PokemonEevee.com
Super Pokemon Eevee Edition [Beta 0.73]
So I've just released the latest version of my Pokemon game. If you're a fan of Pokemon (especially the early generations) or Final Fantasy- or both, then you should really try the game
It's in beta, currently 4-8 hours long.Imgur Album
- A retro styled Pokemon game, where all the graphics are from the second generation.
- Your starter Pokemon is an Eevee which has the ability to switch between evolutions at will.
- A classic Final Fantasy style battle system, which includes having 4 pokemon in a team, with all 4 being out in battle at the same time.
- A bizarre storyline featuring godlike entities called hypervisors who want to reboot the world to the third generation.
- Sidequests, Corrupted Pokemon, Achievements, Crafting and much, much, more!
PokemonEevee.com
Idk, tried a myriad of setups, no dice.
Should I disable it?
Whenever I import a model it sets the Animation Type to Generic.
With Generic it never works (even if I set up the Animation Controller)
Setting the Animation Type to Legacy works better as in, I can play my animation but as I said it sets the origin to 0.0.0 global.
I got it to work once I parented the model to a GameObject, now the animation plays locally but I find it odd that you need to do that.
Also I thought you could import animations from different files as long as the filename follows the "modelname@animation" pattern, doesn't work either.
I also can't add event's to my imported animations.
Unity why you doing this to me ._.
Ok, I've been continuin my game lately and this weekend I worked on a new tileset for mountain side country village zone (sort of). I thought I'd come around here and collect what you guys think about that.
Its work in progress, its composed screenshots for testing the tileset and not a real location. Background is 5 mins mouse thing in order to have one. Anyhow, I feel I am getting there...
Its work in progress, its composed screenshots for testing the tileset and not a real location. Background is 5 mins mouse thing in order to have one. Anyhow, I feel I am getting there...
Yes thanks for the advice. I agree with that. Actually that background is place holder.
I intend to cheat a little with the hud though. When you collect items (they place themselves on the left) I have a little name under them for clarity. That name isn't the same pixel size. That will be pretty much it in matter of pixel size cheating in the final game
I was grumpy about this too, until I saw this again recently.
I thought this was illegal.
RelentlessRolento
Member
I am selling my xbox 360 soon and I think the money I get from that will go twards getting android support for my gamemaker sinc eI want to run some things on my ouya for art shows and etc.
I was grumpy about this too, until I saw this again recently.
I thought this was illegal.
That's totally illegal. That jerk has 14 pokemon!
On a Nintendo note, it's funny seeing physical mail addressed to a screen name instead of a real name. I like to think the mail carriers are very confused.
On a development note, I have finally joined the world of two monitors. It is weird. The new one is 1080p instead of 1680x1050, and of course the colors are different since they are different models even though I have adjusted some stuff. I feel like text is more comfortably readable on the old one. I'm also not sure how to set up two widescreen monitors on a desk where it doesn't give me horrible posture or a crick in my neck turning sideways one way or the other when the keyboard is right in front of me.
I was grumpy about this too, until I saw this again recently.
I thought this was illegal.
The difference here is that the smaller pixels are the base size, with the characters being scaled up because a sprite that large would be harder to fit into memory (more important since the same scaling applies to all the hundreds of pokemon too). Compare that to Ranger X's images, which don't seem to have a base pixel size. A better example would be something like Rogue Legacy, which has different pixel sizes for environments, different characters and the HUD, and most people don't seem to mind. Some of the puritans might be more anal about it, but that doesn't ultimately matter.
Yep, in most other states the renewal fee is like $50 or so. For my new company I used legalzoom.com and paid like $150.
Also, you don't technically have to signup as a LLC in your own state. At least that is what my dad has told me, who has plenty of experience with running business and dealing with stuff like this over past 30+ years. I'm in GA, work here, live here, etc. But I signed up in Kentucky for lower fee. Even though I've never been there. lol. Though I really should have chosen a state with no income tax. Oh well. I'm officially set up as an LLC in Kentucky.
I actually have another LLC here in GA from years ago, that one is $50 a year to renew. I've been meaning to try to get rid of it. But kinda been lazy about doing that for a few years now and just paid the annual fee. I'll try again much sooner after the new year. hopefully.
Yeah, my dev kit came mailed to:
Bloodix
Address 1
I found that kinda funny. lol (Bloodix is one of my alt usernames on the internet. I'm using GulAtiCa here as Bloodix was sadly already taken
)I also think that Nintendo giving free loaner kits to anyone, no matter the person/company, is helping their interest a bit. They just need to advertise that more. I got my loaner kit delivered weeks before my LLC was even official. I never registered as a company with Nintendo yet. So that LLC/etc fee alone can easily pushed back until you are ready to publish your game as not required to even get a dev kit.
I'm also unsure if Sony would provide someone like me, who has never made a game before, a free loaner Vita/PS4 dev kit or not.
I've been using 3 for years now
Thank you!
No, there won't be any demo as it will be a free title. I really want to avoid spoiling the experience, so I have to be very careful what media I release.
I've only playtested the thing with a few of my friends.
I'm making progress, but university is slowing things down.
A problem I'm facing now is that I've not desinged the game in a very good manner. It is a very messy production, but I'm going to make a big TO-DO list after a short break, when I plan to truly solve all problems.
Should've desinged it all from the beginning, but then again it's an iterative process and things change. I just have fun making all the little details as I go on.
Unity's animation process is very messy for me too and it is very hard to tune it right...
I have plans to try UDK later and was wondering if anyone has experience at UDK's animation pipeline?
mrlovepump
Neo Member
Anybody have any news on the unity 4.3 release date?
I started a project in construct 2 but really want to hold out and produce it in Unity using the new 2d workflow. Its a pretty simple but potentially big idea so Unity is an obvious choice to have platform flexibility later on.
I started a project in construct 2 but really want to hold out and produce it in Unity using the new 2d workflow. Its a pretty simple but potentially big idea so Unity is an obvious choice to have platform flexibility later on.
You want Apply Root Motion disabled. Otherwise it will use the translation of your animation's root node (which is probably (0, 0, 0)), not the position of you game object.
You may need to tell Unity which node in your rig is the root - it might be picking the wrong root node.
My game has really simple animations, so I'm no expert on the system. I have gotten my stuff to work fine with both Generic and later switched to Legacy (because I didn't need or want animation controllers). The apply root motion always bites me when I import a new object.
So one of you can't get animations working in Unity and wants to switch, and one can't get animations working in UDK and wants to switch. Maybe you two should talk and trade tips.
Diablohead
Member
oh wow, I was going over a load of old GBA carts which I gave to my brother along with my launch DS phat and found a magic card, which is one of the first flash gba rom carts with only something like 8megabit storage, really shitty but anyway I stuck it in and turned the DS on.
Some of you who know me might remember this back from when some software called SV4 was being made.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oBykUfHOHg
It's one of my older attempts in making a gba game of Nakiti Generations! I forgot about this as I thought that I lost it all on my old computer, you can run around and aim your gun but nothing else, there was a version which allowed you to adventure around a stage, shoot bullets megaman style and find a hidden room with brand logos in it, lol, it was used in a job interview before I moved away from home to go to university.
Some of you who know me might remember this back from when some software called SV4 was being made.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oBykUfHOHg
It's one of my older attempts in making a gba game of Nakiti Generations! I forgot about this as I thought that I lost it all on my old computer, you can run around and aim your gun but nothing else, there was a version which allowed you to adventure around a stage, shoot bullets megaman style and find a hidden room with brand logos in it, lol, it was used in a job interview before I moved away from home to go to university.
New image of my game: ZaciSa's Last Stand
Hyperspace map. I need to find a way to take video of my game in motion. As the background is actually moving right to left. With the middle part and top/bottom parts moving at different speeds. With the top/bottom parts moving must faster.
Hyperspace map. I need to find a way to take video of my game in motion. As the background is actually moving right to left. With the middle part and top/bottom parts moving at different speeds. With the top/bottom parts moving must faster.
Heard Derty from Sequence BGM on the D2L stream alongside 6,000 peeps on twitch.
I have mine setup with my primary almost directly in front of me and the other at a natural head turned angle. My chair rotates so I don't twist anything.
How did you live before.
I have mine setup with my primary almost directly in front of me and the other at a natural head turned angle. My chair rotates so I don't twist anything.
To be fair, Derty is just a licensed tune. Jenkees' stuff is pretty popular.
What's D2L?
Is that for "Generic"?
I would rather set it up with Legacy as I too don't need the Animation Controller but there's no config to set the root, all I get is this:
If I don't select Store in Root (New) it won't load the animations as it's deprecated ._.
And the Animation panel has no root setting either.
The model is just a simple box that moves between 2 keyframes, real simple, the animations works fine but it plays at global 0,0,0.
At this point I think it's a problem with Blender.
I mean it can't be that hard to get it working.
e: ok that's weird
If there is a second object in the blend file (animated or static) it works
It looks like last week's game conference's sponsor has finally uploaded one of the speeches, Tim Schafer's. You can all watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-FhHSyZEno
Anyway, I'm also trying to capture some game footage so I can upload it to YouTube, but I'm not sure what would be the right program and encoding options for the job...
I think I might end up using OpenBroadcastSoftware, but it's a bit of a pain to play around with bitrate and all that. I'll probably scale the image down from 1080p to make sure it doesn't take ages to upload with my paltry 36 kbps upload bandwidth.
If anyone has any tips, I'd like to know which file sizes and bitrates I should aim for to make the video look good at either 720 or 480p. The default 1000 kbps video bandwidth filled the video with compression artifacts, but on the other hand 5000 made my computer choke every now and then, dropping a few frames in the process.
Anyway, I'm also trying to capture some game footage so I can upload it to YouTube, but I'm not sure what would be the right program and encoding options for the job...
I think I might end up using OpenBroadcastSoftware, but it's a bit of a pain to play around with bitrate and all that. I'll probably scale the image down from 1080p to make sure it doesn't take ages to upload with my paltry 36 kbps upload bandwidth.
If anyone has any tips, I'd like to know which file sizes and bitrates I should aim for to make the video look good at either 720 or 480p. The default 1000 kbps video bandwidth filled the video with compression artifacts, but on the other hand 5000 made my computer choke every now and then, dropping a few frames in the process.
I'll be the in a month or so. Looking forward to seeing how my game runs on it.
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