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Indie Game Development Discussion Thread | Of Being Professionally Poor

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RawNuts

Member
Finally designed a character for a game I'm working on that I haven't shown yet. Did up a quick render of a smoothed version:
character_concept.jpg
The top of the head is pointier on the game model.

I can't believe how long it can take and how many concepts you can go through before arriving at such a simple design. Eventually I'll have to rig this and paint weights so it deforms nicely, which is my weakest area.
 

Mr. RPG

Member
The lack of RPGs in this thread saddens me but that's okay because I'm developing an RPG in the vein of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest as a tribute to those series for Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android.

Hopefully sometime I can share something with you all.
 

cbox

Member
Finally designed a character for a game I'm working on that I haven't shown yet. Did up a quick render of a smoothed version:

The top of the head is pointier on the game model.

I can't believe how long it can take and how many concepts you can go through before arriving at such a simple design. Eventually I'll have to rig this and paint weights so it deforms nicely, which is my weakest area.

Very cool, do you have any concept art of what you'd like it to look like?
 

RawNuts

Member
Very cool, do you have any concept art of what you'd like it to look like?
Just some stuff I scribbled down in photoshop and didn't save. I'm not too skilled as a traditional artist, so I often only draw to record visual ideas for later. My desk is littered with post-it notes and napkins with scribbles on them.

I have some mostly-finished environment assets that I'll post soon as well. I'm quite excited about this project because it's the first game that I have complete design control over from concept to finished product (usually we share the game design burden).
 

OnPoint

Member
Anyone have an experience with Greenlight and getting attention? We just posted our game on there today, and I'd like to keep momentum going.
 

Jobbs

Banned
Anyone have an experience with Greenlight and getting attention? We just posted our game on there today, and I'd like to keep momentum going.

Linking it would be a reasonable start. I have no idea what your game is.

Finally designed a character for a game I'm working on that I haven't shown yet. Did up a quick render of a smoothed version:

The top of the head is pointier on the game model.

I can't believe how long it can take and how many concepts you can go through before arriving at such a simple design. Eventually I'll have to rig this and paint weights so it deforms nicely, which is my weakest area.

interesting, why don't I know more about this?

modeling is a long process when you're a newb and a non-artist. :(

aOK8qVa.png

You're very good at doing one boob, now let's see if you can do the other. :) Seriously though, you seem to already know much more about 3D modeling than I do, which I regret, because I really want to learn but never get the chance to devote myself.

Just curious, are there any other black game devs here?

Roger's black (programmer/music/sound/all around technical stuff guy on Ghost Song).
 

RawNuts

Member
interesting, why don't I know more about this?
I shared some shots of an environment concept with you a while ago, you probably don't remember. I've been working on it on and off for the past year between other stuff but now I'm working full force on it.

modeling is a long process when you're a newb and a non-artist. :(
aOK8qVa.png
Didn't see this before. You're doing quite well considering you're new to it (and working with wacky Blender), taking on a character from the start is certainly no easy task; hell, I still dread doing characters.

If I could offer a bit of advice, make sure you put some edges in to help deform areas that will bend a lot like elbows and knees. This extra bit of geometry will help you to not lose the shape of the arm and such when they bend.

Bending.jpg
 

Bollocks

Member
How do you make your Unity games frame rate independent?
Docs say to use Time.deltaTime but in my case it jumps all over the place(in the Update function)
I thought Unity games per default are limited to 60fps? Sure enough mine jumps to 270fps?!

I have a fixed duration that I want the animation to last, so the first thing I do when I start is look at deltaTime to calc how many frames I need to run the animation to get the desired duration.

If it happens to start at a slow frame my whole animation will be played in slowmo.
So if I recalculate it every frame the animation is all over the place cause one frame it needs to run for 60frames, next frame it needs to run for 140 frames.

Seems like I'm doing something wrong in my implementation as that's totally not framerate independent.
Maybe I shouldn't check how many frames I need but actually how much time has passed.
The only reason why I implemented it based on frames was that I only have to deal with integers and they are less resource heavy than floats(Time.deltaTime)

The only place where it works is FixedUpdate as that gives me a steady 0,02s
 

charsace

Member
Linking it would be a reasonable start. I have no idea what your game is.



interesting, why don't I know more about this?



You're very good at doing one boob, now let's see if you can do the other. :) Seriously though, you seem to already know much more about 3D modeling than I do, which I regret, because I really want to learn but never get the chance to devote myself.



Roger's black (programmer/music/sound/all around technical stuff guy on Ghost Song).
you're a good artist and i'm not. i would think after a day you would be better than me.

I shared some shots of an environment concept with you a while ago, you probably don't remember. I've been working on it on and off for the past year between other stuff but now I'm working full force on it.


Didn't see this before. You're doing quite well considering you're new to it (and working with wacky Blender), taking on a character from the start is certainly no easy task; hell, I still dread doing characters.

If I could offer a bit of advice, make sure you put some edges in to help deform areas that will bend a lot like elbows and knees. This extra bit of geometry will help you to not lose the shape of the arm and such when they bend.

Bending.jpg
thanks for the tip. think i will go even lower poly.


bollocks you have to multipy by delta time any number you want frame independent. look at the 2d example.
 
Getting back into my turn based game, in the past I was going the space route , but I've decided the world needs more dinosaurs with lasers .

So I'm looking into dinosaur models , hoping to have an ingame shot shortly, researching has been fun as it brings up one of my fav tv shows from my childhood - Dinoriders

dino_riders.jpg
 

amanset

Member
So, I'm a software dev for a small company and mostly develop software that's needed inhouse but this year I want to get a bit into game development. I've dabbled a bit in xna and unity a couple years back but I stopped for whatever reason. When I was using unity I bought some 2D toolkit from the asset store but now that unity has native 2D support I'm looking to try my hands on it again. Are there any good tutorials for unity's 2D stuff?

I've looked at a few and, frankly, this was the best I found:
http://pixelnest.io/tutorials/2d-game-unity/table-of-contents/

As to what I'm working on, it is a bit too early to show. But I am loving Unity and the 2D.
 
In other news, here's some more progress gifs for Another Castle, first up is a new lightning golem:

EFxgBU7.gif


And here's a suicidal fireball:
2YF6TL6.gif

Those backgrounds are freaking great. Awesome colors and some nice depth :D I'm also digging the "Paper Mario" vibe I'm getting from some of the enemies.
 

_machine

Member
Anyone have an experience with Greenlight and getting attention? We just posted our game on there today, and I'd like to keep momentum going.
Friends of mine recently got their game greenlit and they wrote a little blog post about it shortly after posting the greenlight campaign page. I met one of them today, but I didn't ask them about where they'd gotten most of their votes from, but being publicized in RPS and IGN Finland gave huge boosts and I reckon it was one of the reasons they rose to number #5 within a month.
 

charsace

Member
I haven't ever really noticed any input lag, but it's honestly something I've never looked into deeply. When working I tend to just adjust to what feels good, and haven't had any problems.

In other news, here's some more progress gifs for Another Castle, first up is a new lightning golem:

EFxgBU7.gif


And here's a suicidal fireball:
2YF6TL6.gif

Awesome backgrounds. How do you go about making them?

Last of Us character sculpts if anyone is interested in studying them:
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?1027594&p=1027594&viewfull=1#post1027594
 

razu

Member
How do you make your Unity games frame rate independent?
Docs say to use Time.deltaTime but in my case it jumps all over the place(in the Update function)
I thought Unity games per default are limited to 60fps? Sure enough mine jumps to 270fps?!

I have a fixed duration that I want the animation to last, so the first thing I do when I start is look at deltaTime to calc how many frames I need to run the animation to get the desired duration.

If it happens to start at a slow frame my whole animation will be played in slowmo.
So if I recalculate it every frame the animation is all over the place cause one frame it needs to run for 60frames, next frame it needs to run for 140 frames.

Seems like I'm doing something wrong in my implementation as that's totally not framerate independent.
Maybe I shouldn't check how many frames I need but actually how much time has passed.
The only reason why I implemented it based on frames was that I only have to deal with integers and they are less resource heavy than floats(Time.deltaTime)

The only place where it works is FixedUpdate as that gives me a steady 0,02s

You need to read and understand this: http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/Manual/ExecutionOrder.html

I'm writing an article right now about this subject, (not just for Unity, as games at Codemasters and Sega that I have worked on worked this way).

The basic model is that you update the physics simulation in fixed time steps until you have caught up to real time, plus one update. You then work out how far you are between the last two frames and interpolate positions for display. The display can then run at a different speed to the simulation.

If you turn vsync on and set the target frame rate to 60 in Unity, then it will wait. If you turn vsync off, (or maybe run in a window, or the editor), then the display will run as fast as it can. The Update function will be called every display frame, FixedUpdate will be called between zero and many times per second.

Unity animations *should* just play, using the time delta to update.

Hope that helps?
 

razu

Member
I think I see what you're trying to do now. Re-read.

You want to scale an animation to a fixed duration? Just make a timer, (a float), and update that with deltaTime. Divide the timer by the desired duration. Then multiply that by the original animation's duration, and set the animation's 'time' to that number.

This will re-map real time to your scaled animation time.

You keep talking about frames too. For it to be like Street Fighter 'frames', you need to enable vsync, set the target frame rate, and probably run fullscreen. And make sure you don't draw too much and drop frames.
 
Hello all, Chad from StudioMDHR here.

We are currently working on Cuphead and I want to reach out to everyone to hopefully answer a Unity question: Has anybody experienced input lag (keyboard/gamepad) or any other responsive limitations with a 2D game in Unity? Currently we are using the XNA framework but have been making some early port tests to Unity. We are very crazy about response/reaction time being perfect (Street Fighter 3rd Strike perfect) - so before we really get into it I was hoping for a little feedback. Thanks in advance!

CupheadUnity.jpg

Just want to say those 3 seconds of teaser footage were like a dream come true. Beautiful motion, style, and color. I love vintage cartoons and to see a game animated like Cuphead is glorious. The shortest yet most intriguing teaser I've seen in a long time. Please show us more soon!
 

Nilaul

Member
Getting back into my turn based game, in the past I was going the space route , but I've decided the world needs more dinosaurs with lasers .

So I'm looking into dinosaur models , hoping to have an ingame shot shortly, researching has been fun as it brings up one of my fav tv shows from my childhood - Dinoriders

dino_riders.jpg

Dinosaurs had feathers.
 

Bollocks

Member
I think I see what you're trying to do now. Re-read.

You want to scale an animation to a fixed duration? Just make a timer, (a float), and update that with deltaTime. Divide the timer by the desired duration. Then multiply that by the original animation's duration, and set the animation's 'time' to that number.

This will re-map real time to your scaled animation time.

You keep talking about frames too. For it to be like Street Fighter 'frames', you need to enable vsync, set the target frame rate, and probably run fullscreen. And make sure you don't draw too much and drop frames.

thx
to be more precise I don't actually mean Unity animations but a simple jump animation in code.
I use y(t) = Û * sin(wt), that I run from 0<t<T/2
But I don't actually use time on the x axis but frames.
Of course this only works with a fixed framerate.
I'll rewrite so that it uses time instead now, so it is truly framerate independent and should work in Update and FixedUpdate alike.

e: yep framerate independent now
 

razu

Member
thx
to be more precise I don't actually mean Unity animations but a simple jump animation in code.
I use y(t) = Û * sin(wt), that I run from 0<t<T/2
But I don't actually use time on the x axis but frames.
Of course this only works with a fixed framerate.
I'll rewrite so that it uses time instead now, so it is truly framerate independent and should work in Update and FixedUpdate alike.

e: yep framerate independent now

Cool :D
 

Veloth

Neo Member
One of my employees is black and lurks this thread, but rarely posts. Mike, SHOW YOURSELF

I have appeared!!! If you have any questions I'll answer them. There is also a group called Blacks in Gaming, they have a FB group and rock an awesome party at GDC.
 
looking for a talented pixel artist/animator to work with on a new game. it's roughly super crate box meets minecraft meets orcs must die (in 2d). i want to build in unity and port to steam, ps4, xbone, and wii u. i already have been approved with nintendo as a developer. i will handle all coding and sound responsibilities and have examples of my work. pm me if interested and serious!
 

OnPoint

Member
Friends of mine recently got their game greenlit and they wrote a little blog post about it shortly after posting the greenlight campaign page. I met one of them today, but I didn't ask them about where they'd gotten most of their votes from, but being publicized in RPS and IGN Finland gave huge boosts and I reckon it was one of the reasons they rose to number #5 within a month.

Thanks man checking it out now.
 

GulAtiCa

Member
My game, ZaciSa's Last Stand for Wii U, is finally complete!

Woo. A sigh of relief and calm is now surrounding me.

Going to submit the game to Nintendo tomorrow. Hopefully no bugs/issues and the game is out soon. Won't quite be done yet of course, for the 1st patch I want to add 2 or 4 more maps to the game and add in online leaderboards. Maybe I'll add in new modes or challenge mode. But for now going to take it slightly more easy.

Soon I'll prob begin on my 2nd game (physic puzzle game to test out a new level editor I'll make). Will be quite smaller, so should be a lot quicker/smother to finish.
 

Saganator

Member
Getting back into my turn based game, in the past I was going the space route , but I've decided the world needs more dinosaurs with lasers .

So I'm looking into dinosaur models , hoping to have an ingame shot shortly, researching has been fun as it brings up one of my fav tv shows from my childhood - Dinoriders

dino_riders.jpg

Nice to see some dinosaur ideas. I'm working on a dinosaur game myself. A top down survival rogue-like. Wish I had the skills to go 3D, as I have some grand ideas, but just not the knowledge/skills... yet. Good luck with your project, I know people have been yearning for more dinosaur games.
 

Jarekx

Member
2Teu0Kg.png


qAIxLQZ.png


Just messing with different styles. Neither are really complete but I am not sure which I like more. Regardless, it's going to look simple with my skill level. :p
 
We just put this artwork of Fleish & Cherry in Crazy Hotel on twitter with some of the characters of the 1st and 2nd levels so people knew we are still alive and voted for steam greenlight (at the mean time it seems to helping a little :) )
All this characters are already in the story and with finished design, but still, theres a lot more characters on those two levels we havent showed yet.
bd7lv3ucyaanldkqqzpg.png


On other news, I broke my right arm and sadly I will have to sto drawing levels during this three weeks. Still working on things were I dont need to use my arm, but I hope I can return in full as soon as possible.
 

Karram

Member
So I'm wondering if there are any 3D games kind of like Thirty Flights of Loving, that manages to render animated human models not necessarily realistic without being too expensive ? I noticed many games do but they just don't feel as relatable as they are in TFOL.
 
Just random complaining. I hate content development. I love coming up with the mechanics and figuring out how to program them, making music, making graphics, etc, etc. I get to a point where I approach engine completion and can start making meaty levels with the things I've created, but I rapidly lose interest. I find for most game types, when it comes to level design and what not, you're just regurgitating the same ideas over-and-over except this time the platform is 32 pixels higher than the last one. It's important but I hate it and wish I didn't. Maybe I'm just destined to to focus on procedural content instead.
 

Five

Banned
Just random complaining. I hate content development. I love coming up with the mechanics and figuring out how to program them, making music, making graphics, etc, etc. I get to a point where I approach engine completion and can start making meaty levels with the things I've created, but I rapidly lose interest. I find for most game types, when it comes to level design and what not, you're just regurgitating the same ideas over-and-over except this time the platform is 32 pixels higher than the last one. It's important but I hate it and wish I didn't. Maybe I'm just destined to to focus on procedural content instead.

I came to the same conclusion in the middle of last year, so I'm working on a procedural game now. It's a totally different beast, but I'm loving it so far.
 
I'm not a gamedev, but I love popping into this thread on a regular basis to see what you guys are working on. Some really cool stuff here. Keep up the good work everyone!
 
Thanks for the feedback. Loving the style of the cave, it's like a funky version of Yoshi's Island underground scenes :)

Thanks! Cuphead looks really cool, can't wait to see more of it :)

Those backgrounds are freaking great. Awesome colors and some nice depth :D I'm also digging the "Paper Mario" vibe I'm getting from some of the enemies.

Awesome backgrounds. How do you go about making them?

Those look great!

Thanks guys! I model them in blender and texture in photoshop. The tricky part is that they have to tile and be split into small sections. For example, here's the whole cave background:

pcHnrSz.png


And here it is split up into pieces:

juniDTX.png
 
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