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Indie Game Development Discussion Thread | Of Being Professionally Poor

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Sycle

Neo Member
Seriously, I recommend everyone do this. Take screenshots of your work so you can look back and see how your project has grown. I regret that I didn't take more screens during development, as it's always fun to reminisce the various stages of development, good and bad.

This is an excellent point! It really helps to be able to look back and remind yourself of all the ways your game has developed!

here's a few from the earliest playable build of Assault Android Cactus I can find (and current version)
then_now_01.jpg

then_now_02.jpg

then_now_03.jpg

The funny thing is the early screenshots are from maybe a week or two after I first downloaded Unity. Getting a character running around and shooting was really straight forwards! But it's taken from then until now to understand and refine the gameplay. (and the graphics have gotten a little better along the way)

This is the latest level I've been working on! It uses a series of squares that relocate themselves to be under the players feet (with a slight offset based on the players current velocity) and the pattern is driven by a texture that can change over time. Since blocks can't switch if an enemy (or player, or powerup) is currently on them, the enemies sort of drag the level into elongated shapes, so if you try to back-pedal too much you run out of level (but you can get more by shooting enemies and letting the level spring back... it's... sort of hard to describe how it plays)

aac_repeater.gif
 

RawNuts

Member
I've posted a few graphical assets for my iOS project, but haven't explained what the game is
and how it plays yet. It's time to do that, with the aid of this amazing diagram:

masterpiece.jpg


Basically one round of this game is split up into three phases, with performance in each phase benefiting the next.

Phase 1 is where you run up the side of the tower, jumping wall to wall to avoid spikes and other cliched obstacles.
Your objective here is to get as high as possible; the position of obstacles and such make it more difficult the higher up you travel.

Phase 2 begins whenever you fuck up phase 1. In this phase, you lose your footing on the side of the tower and start
plummeting toward the ground. Your objective now is to gain as much speed as possible during your fall, avoiding things
like missiles being shot up at you (for no reason other than someone hates you and has missiles at their disposal).
You gain more and more speed the longer you fall without hitting something, so you'll have to have done well in phase 1
to give you the best opportunity for starting phase 2.

Phase 3 happens when you hit the ground. Rather than dying in a horrifically graphic manner, your character will bust into
the ground and use the momentum gained from falling to propel themselves through the dirt. There will be things to
avoid here as well as buried treasure to collect, with the most worthwhile riches being buried deeper. The valuables
you grab can then be used to purchase upgrades of various kinds to improve your abilities in the different phases.


What you want to do is run up the tower as far as you possibly can until you hit something, use the height you gained
to reach a ridiculous falling speed, then use the speed from the fall to dig deep into the ground and collect valuable items.
Your overarching goal is to reach the top of the tower, which will be absurdly difficult; you will be able to make this goal slightly
more achievable by purchasing upgrades to make your character harder/better/faster/stronger.

I welcome any feedback on this game concept.

tl;dr
1. Run up
2. Get done up
3. Profit


Also, here is the tower put together, which is pretty much the main asset that you see most of in a game session:

tower.png
 

Anustart

Member
I've posted a few graphical assets for my iOS project, but haven't explained what the game is
and how it plays yet. It's time to do that, with the aid of this amazing diagram:

masterpiece.jpg


Basically one round of this game is split up into three phases, with performance in each phase benefiting the next.

Phase 1 is where you run up the side of the tower, jumping wall to wall to avoid spikes and other cliched obstacles.
Your objective here is to get as high as possible; the position of obstacles and such make it more difficult the higher up you travel.

Phase 2 begins whenever you fuck up phase 1. In this phase, you lose your footing on the side of the tower and start
plummeting toward the ground. Your objective now is to gain as much speed as possible during your fall, avoiding things
like missiles being shot up at you (for no reason other than someone hates you and has missiles at their disposal).
You gain more and more speed the longer you fall without hitting something, so you'll have to have done well in phase 1
to give you the best opportunity for starting phase 2.

Phase 3 happens when you hit the ground. Rather than dying in a horrifically graphic manner, your character will bust into
the ground and use the momentum gained from falling to propel themselves through the dirt. There will be things to
avoid here as well as buried treasure to collect, with the most worthwhile riches being buried deeper. The valuables
you grab can then be used to purchase upgrades of various kinds to improve your abilities in the different phases.


What you want to do is run up the tower as far as you possibly can until you hit something, use the height you gained
to reach a ridiculous falling speed, then use the speed from the fall to dig deep into the ground and collect valuable items.
Your overarching goal is to reach the top of the tower, which will be absurdly difficult; you will be able to make this goal slightly
more achievable by purchasing upgrades to make your character harder/better/faster/stronger.

I welcome any feedback on this game concept.

tl;dr
1. Run up
2. Get done up
3. Profit


Also, here is the tower put together, which is pretty much the main asset that you see most of in a game session:

tower.png

That's a really cool concept!
 

Fox1304

Member
So ... how are you not-full-time guys dealing with your time on Game Developing projects ?
I'm currently leaving my society, looking for another standard job, and develop my first game in the meantime.
It's been really hard to focus on job hunting when I'm so attracted by going forward with my game.
Anyone in a similar situation ? How are you dealing with such fractionated time ? Allocating days, doing as things come, or utter chaos ? Just curious here, since I've shifted priorities quite a few time already.
 

amanset

Member
So ... how are you not-full-time guys dealing with your time on Game Developing projects ?
I'm currently leaving my society, looking for another standard job, and develop my first game in the meantime.
It's been really hard to focus on job hunting when I'm so attracted by going forward with my game.
Anyone in a similar situation ? How are you dealing with such fractionated time ? Allocating days, doing as things come, or utter chaos ? Just curious here, since I've shifted priorities quite a few time already.

I try to do something every night if I am home, even if it is just fifteen minutes. That way I keep myself on my toes, I don't forget about things.

Then I just spend time at the weekend. If it is a quiet one I can get a lot done, but sometimes (like the weekend just gone, which was unfortunate as I am working towards a Candy Jam game) it might just be a small bit on a Sunday evening.

Basically, I don't plan beyond, as I said, doing enough to keep me knowing what is going on I don't want to leave it for two weeks and come back not remembering stuff.
 

Jocchan

Ὁ μεμβερος -ου
Day jobs must come first, of course. Family gotta eat.

If your job takes up too many hours each week, you don't have much time left for, well, anything else really. It's sad, but there's no way around that. The trick to keep going is trying not to waste the little spare time you have left: good discipline and no procrastination (but that could mean giving up other things, including spending said time with said family, so it's not always really as doable as one may wish).


I try to do something every night if I am home, even if it is just fifteen minutes. That way I keep myself on my toes, I don't forget about things.

Then I just spend time at the weekend. If it is a quiet one I can get a lot done, but sometimes (like the weekend just gone, which was unfortunate as I am working towards a Candy Jam game) it might just be a small bit on a Sunday evening.

Basically, I don't plan beyond, as I said, doing enough to keep me knowing what is going on I don't want to leave it for two weeks and come back not remembering stuff.
Seconding this. Not losing your rhythm and trying to do at least a little something every day is also very, very important. Going from experience, the longer a project is left behind, the smaller the chance gets to ever come back.
 

Jarekx

Member
So ... how are you not-full-time guys dealing with your time on Game Developing projects ?
I'm currently leaving my society, looking for another standard job, and develop my first game in the meantime.
It's been really hard to focus on job hunting when I'm so attracted by going forward with my game.
Anyone in a similar situation ? How are you dealing with such fractionated time ? Allocating days, doing as things come, or utter chaos ? Just curious here, since I've shifted priorities quite a few time already.

Well, I have my regular job to worry about most of the time, and two children and a wife to try and entertain so it's definitely tough to try and make time.

Most of the time I work on my project is either on lunch and break at job or when I wake up early in the morning and don't have anything else that needs to be done.

I'm also still in school so that eats up a bunch of time as well. :p
 
juggling a full time 'pays the bills' job whilst trying to compose for games (my dream career) and also doing the occasional advertisement/ident work (easier to make a decent amount of money) is damn hard but it is making me a much more focused and economical worker.
 

Empirion

Neo Member
When I was getting closer to finish my first game (which I mentioned yesterday) I ended up using my time like so:

- if i was working a later shift (from 13:30 to 23:00) I would work for a couple of hours in the morning after dropping my son off at daycare, before having lunch and go to work.

- If I was doing the morning shift (09:30 to 19:00) I would go work on the project for another 2 hours until 21:00. Then I would go have dinner and be with my wife and son.

When I had a day off (I work weekends) I would work both morning and afternoon. I basically wasn't resting or doing anything else. Fortunately i have a very supportive wife.

I'm actually going to lose my job at the end of March, and I want to already be into production of my next game,by then. Maybe it will turn into something good, 'cause I can't stand my day job anymore.
 

EDarkness

Member
So ... how are you not-full-time guys dealing with your time on Game Developing projects ?
I'm currently leaving my society, looking for another standard job, and develop my first game in the meantime.
It's been really hard to focus on job hunting when I'm so attracted by going forward with my game.
Anyone in a similar situation ? How are you dealing with such fractionated time ? Allocating days, doing as things come, or utter chaos ? Just curious here, since I've shifted priorities quite a few time already.

Working and making a game is hard as hell. In my case, I just try to spend free time working on the game. Sometimes this leads to bedtimes in the wee hours and lots and lots of tired days. Heh, my students get a kick out of it and I use the experience as material in my classes. These days I'm working a lot harder so I get basically no free time. I can't remember the last time I actually played a game. Heh, heh.

Still managing my time is difficult, but one of the most important things I have to do each day. I try to spend two or three hours a day working on my project after work. I have to also juggle writing my book in there as well, but that doesn't need to be an everyday thing. I wish there was simply more time in the day.
 

Fox1304

Member
In my current situation I'm using my personnal project as a breath of air when I'm tired of either job hunting or doing the transition with my company in order to leave "cleanly".
I've allocated most of my leisure time to this, and it allows to continue going forward and feeling "fresh" when going back on it, since it's much more of a pleasure than the other parts of my life right now.
But as many said, everyday job goes first, so I'm only using this as a distraction for now.
And I try to allocate some time not only for coding, but also for reading about the game developing business, some post-mortems, articles on monetisation, standard mistakes or successes and such. It allows to cool down from the coding a bit, and get a broader view of the project, bringing some much needed new focus on what I'm doing.
I must say that it's not working bad for now, even if a lot of the coding time is late in the night.
But I do love dancing in front of my desk at 2AM when coding standing up :D
 

razu

Member
Wondering if my code is wrong or what.

Say a bullet hits my player and this is detected via OnTriggerEnter(Collider c)

To send a message to the object that hit my player, is it c.SendMessage?

I'm trying this, and have a debug.log in the method I've supposedly sent the message to but I'm not picking up anything as if the method is firing.


Edit: I'm an idiot, I forgot to attach an important script to the object lol.


If it helps, I do this all the time :D
 

rottame

Member
After the kids go to bed, at around 8PM, I start to work and I usually finish around 11. At that point I still have one hour or so to read or play some games. I do this 5/6 days a week. Not very relaxing but doable.
 

bumpkin

Member
After the kids go to bed, at around 8PM, I start to work and I usually finish around 11. At that point I still have one hour or so to read or play some games. I do this 5/6 days a week. Not very relaxing but doable.
I've tried doing that, I find that the first hour or so is pretty much a waste as its spent changing mental gears and getting back "into the zone." The only times I ever get anything done are when I can plop my ass down on a day off (weekend) and spend the entire day working on stuff.
 

rottame

Member
Yeah, that is the best, and that's why I'm setting things up to go part time.
And it's not just a matter of quantity: the spike of productivity when you work rested vs. working after a day's work (or a day with the kids, in my case, as I'm on paternal leave) is insane.
Still, two full hours of full productivity a day is not impossible. The only real problem is that I don't think it's a very healthy thing to do for long stretches of time.
 

Fox1304

Member
A nice time to dev my project is during my train commute to work ( about 2h/day ). Fully focused, no distractions, allows for some good progress.
 

Jack_AG

Banned
Where did my animations go? No dope sheet? No animation selector on the animation editor? Partner opens the exact same project on his machine. Its there. I close Unity and reopen, its working fine now. Close it again and reopen later, lose it again.

Unity 4.3 doesn't even qualify as an RC or even beta, fml. Really REALLY messing with my Zen, man. Fuck.
 

AxiomVerge

Neo Member
I try to work on my game a couple of hours after getting home from work each day. Weekends are hit and miss since I often have family obligations now. Sometimes I'll try to sneak in some work on my lunch break; usually just peripheral things like taking notes about what I want to do at night.
 

AxiomVerge

Neo Member
This is the latest level I've been working on! It uses a series of squares that relocate themselves to be under the players feet (with a slight offset based on the players current velocity) and the pattern is driven by a texture that can change over time. Since blocks can't switch if an enemy (or player, or powerup) is currently on them, the enemies sort of drag the level into elongated shapes, so if you try to back-pedal too much you run out of level (but you can get more by shooting enemies and letting the level spring back... it's... sort of hard to describe how it plays)

This sounds like the kind of feature that entire games could be based around. Pretty sweet!
 

Jobbs

Banned
Aww SHIT son

XMXxGP0.png


Also I'm PUMPED to develop today!

yeah, I've been looking at C2 for a while. I may do a solo project on it at some point once I have the time.

I heard a rumor somewhere that there may be some deal in the works to get this thing exporting to PS4. Did anyone else hear anything about that or know more?
 

Ashodin

Member
yeah, I've been looking at C2 for a while. I may do a solo project on it at some point once I have the time.

I heard a rumor somewhere that there may be some deal in the works to get this thing exporting to PS4. Did anyone else hear anything about that or know more?

I haven't heard that. I do get the impression that multiplayer support might be coming later. Seems heavily requested and would be amazing to implement in APEXICON's PC version.
 

rottame

Member
Where did my animations go? No dope sheet? No animation selector on the animation editor? Partner opens the exact same project on his machine. Its there. I close Unity and reopen, its working fine now. Close it again and reopen later, lose it again.

Unity 4.3 doesn't even qualify as an RC or even beta, fml. Really REALLY messing with my Zen, man. Fuck.

Yep. Unity 4.3 has issues. On PC I get a crash everytime I try to close the program. Fortunately it doesn't corrupt the project or stuff like that. On Mac it's just random crashes. Considering how much they're focusing on QA it's very weird it's still so unstable.
 

Dynamite Shikoku

Congratulations, you really deserve it!
Anyone here work on macs? There's a weird thing on my iMac where if I run my game at full screen it runs like crap, stuttering all over the place. But if I run it in windowed mode at the same resolution it runs perfectly, even if the window fills the whole screen. It also runs perfectly in full screen on windows (through bootcamp). Anyone seen or heard of this? I've never played any other games on osx so I don't know if this is a common issue
 

Turfster

Member
Today's "seriously, Unity/PhysX?" is brought to you by: a rigidbody's upwards force/velocity grows exponentially the more colliders it's touching. The only thing a quick google returns is someone that added a kinematic rigidbody to everything else in the scene, which seems... wasteful for big, static level geometry...
 

desu

Member
I heard a rumor somewhere that there may be some deal in the works to get this thing exporting to PS4. Did anyone else hear anything about that or know more?

Well that would be interesting, as lets say Unity export to PS4 will probably eat you alive (cost wise).
 
This is the latest level I've been working on! It uses a series of squares that relocate themselves to be under the players feet (with a slight offset based on the players current velocity) and the pattern is driven by a texture that can change over time. Since blocks can't switch if an enemy (or player, or powerup) is currently on them, the enemies sort of drag the level into elongated shapes, so if you try to back-pedal too much you run out of level (but you can get more by shooting enemies and letting the level spring back... it's... sort of hard to describe how it plays)

aac_repeater.gif

Your apparent progress is substantial, dude. I want to see more from you. Very slick gameplay you've got going on there. More? I think so. More.
 

Jobbs

Banned
There's this area in Ghost Song that's sort of a descent through a dangerous, thorny shaft. I call this room the "thorny descent".

This is what it looked like in the old pre-KS version of the game:

careful2.gif


I like having to carefully drop through things.

I wanted to include this area in an upcoming video, but didn't do the new art assets for it yet. So that's what I'm working on right now.


I wanted to make it tenser (as with most parts of the game now) by making it feel kind of dark and maybe a bit clausterphobic. I got the idea to try and make them [the thorns] look sort of colorful and pretty. Do they still read as hazards?

Well that would be interesting, as lets say Unity export to PS4 will probably eat you alive (cost wise).

I haven't heard that. I do get the impression that multiplayer support might be coming later. Seems heavily requested and would be amazing to implement in APEXICON's PC version.

well I don't mean to spread rumors, but I swear to god someone mentioned this to me as an upcoming thing, but for the life of me I can't remember who it was or what the details were. :) take it with a grain of salt, I guess.
 

Blizzard

Banned
Nice Jobbs, but be careful...if you haven't traversed that room upwards first, it looks like the sort of thing that would be impossible to get correct the first time since you fall too quickly to see the spikes below.

Unless you're making the sort of twitch instant retry game where people are SUPPOSED to fail the first time... :p
 

Jobbs

Banned
Nice Jobbs, but be careful...if you haven't traversed that room upwards first, it looks like the sort of thing that would be impossible to get correct the first time since you fall too quickly to see the spikes below.

Unless you're making the sort of twitch instant retry game where people are SUPPOSED to fail the first time... :p

if you go slow you can always see where the next safe platform is before you drop... maybe with one exception. (it could still be tweaked) but not really unfair, just progress carefully.

let me expand on that a bit.. sometimes you don't see the next platform before you drop, but I attempt to make it so if you drop straight down in the most obvious spot you'll end up on a platform. it's suppoed to be intuitive if you are careful.
 
Nice Jobbs, but be careful...if you haven't traversed that room upwards first, it looks like the sort of thing that would be impossible to get correct the first time since you fall too quickly to see the spikes below.

Unless you're making the sort of twitch instant retry game where people are SUPPOSED to fail the first time... :p

There is a safer/slower path to the right of the screen, so if intentional I like the "slow or steady" or "speed run just go for it" option.
 

Jobbs

Banned
There is a safer/slower path to the right of the screen, so if intentional I like the "slow or steady" or "speed run just go for it" option.

and yeah, in that GIF example, there is indeed platforms on the right which are a bit easier if you want to jump over to them. and if you aim for the opening between the thorns, in that gif, you'll be caught by a platform straight under it.
 
and yeah, in that GIF example, there is indeed platforms on the right which are a bit easier if you want to jump over to them. and if you aim for the opening between the thorns, in that gif, you'll be caught by a platform straight under it.

Sounds good. Do they do damage or is it instant kill?
 

AxiomVerge

Neo Member
I wanted to make it tenser (as with most parts of the game now) by making it feel kind of dark and maybe a bit clausterphobic. I got the idea to try and make them [the thorns] look sort of colorful and pretty. Do they still read as hazards?

They look hazardous in the way that brightly colored jungle plants always look like they will eat you. Maybe they could be shinier, as if coated with something not-so-healthy for the skin.
 

Hinomura

Member
Hello dear Gaffers,

after several tutorials and experiments with Game Maker (Studio), I'm starting (again lol) my project (PC Engine/TurboGrafx like shoot'em up but with a bit more modern scope and game mechanics)... long story short, I started it with Classic Construct and dropped it 'cause of the fear of its limits experienced by many, then switched to C#/XNA but dropped it because in almost three years I had more headaches than results (my fault, but very scarce freetime can be quite an offender).

So, I'd like to share a couple of screenshots of its really early stage (I'm really at the beginning), as I understood a bit of GM and GML.

Just made a working menu (with 4096 scrolling stars using directly sprites and not objects, just to test) and a test room where I'll try various game mechanics (wow, now I can move freely my ship around the screen and even shoot the basic bullets!). Made sprite fonts too and scanlines*. Later I'll add to the testroom different switchable weapons, enemy waves with their own patterns, classical bosses, etc.

For now my project is silk smooth with my config with 4096 stars, but tried it on a obsolete hardware and I had to trim down to about 2000 stars to get 60fps (I doubt there'll be so many objects on screen, btw!).

* Only trouble I've met for now is with the scanlines, since I can't force a fullscreen resolution (original game window is 320x240, doubled for the scanlines effect). Probably I'll check the desktop resolution and create the game room height according to it, slightly increasing/decreasing the height according the ratio or adding horrid horizontal black bars (I've yet to decide it).

Here we go! I hope to give you another update soonish, but I'll be already forty, since my bday is on the 30th of this month ^__^

iu2JktOtMTBNF.png


iJjRW15hTPzR5.png
 

Jack_AG

Banned
Hello dear Gaffers,

after several tutorials and experiments with Game Maker (Studio), I'm starting (again lol) my project (PC Engine/TurboGrafx like shoot'em up but with a bit more modern scope and game mechanics)... long story short, I started it with Classic Construct and dropped it 'cause of the fear of its limits experienced by many, then switched to C#/XNA but dropped it because in almost three years I had more headaches than results (my fault, but very scarce freetime can be quite an offender).

So, I'd like to share a couple of screenshots of its really early stage (I'm really at the beginning), as I understood a bit of GM and GML.

Just made a working menu (with 4096 scrolling stars using directly sprites and not objects, just to test) and a test room where I'll try various game mechanics (wow, now I can move freely my ship around the screen and even shoot the basic bullets!). Made sprite fonts too and scanlines*. Later I'll add to the testroom different switchable weapons, enemy waves with their own patterns, classical bosses, etc.

For now my project is silk smooth with my config with 4096 stars, but tried it on a obsolete hardware and I had to trim down to about 2000 stars to get 60fps (I doubt there'll be so many objects on screen, btw!).

* Only trouble I've met for now is with the scanlines, since I can't force a fullscreen resolution (original game window is 320x240, doubled for the scanlines effect). Probably I'll check the desktop resolution and create the game room height according to it, slightly increasing/decreasing the height according the ratio or adding horrid horizontal black bars (I've yet to decide it).

Here we go! I hope to give you another update soonish, but I'll be already forty, since my bday is on the 30th of this month ^__^

iu2JktOtMTBNF.png


iJjRW15hTPzR5.png
Reminds me of Truxton on Genesis. Very nice so far. Keep us up to date.
 

Amirai

Member
I heard a rumor somewhere that there may be some deal in the works to get this thing exporting to PS4. Did anyone else hear anything about that or know more?

I haven't heard that. I do get the impression that multiplayer support might be coming later. Seems heavily requested and would be amazing to implement in APEXICON's PC version.

Scirra has tweeted recently that multiplayer is in fact coming, which means probably soon as well since it's been known they've had it on the todo list for a while.

well I don't mean to spread rumors, but I swear to god someone mentioned this to me as an upcoming thing, but for the life of me I can't remember who it was or what the details were. :) take it with a grain of salt, I guess.

Not sure where you heard about C2 exporting to PS4, but I keep up with news about Scirra quite intently and I haven't heard a single thing about it other than, as I recall, a tweet about them asking a Sony rep about HTML5 gaming and getting a blank stare in response. That was a while ago, though.

As far as I can tell, the ball is in Sony's court, and they should really think about supporting it since the wii U, XB1 (I think? They've said win 8 apps will work, and C2 can make win 8 apps, but I haven't heard anything about this), PC and mobile all either support it or are working on supporting it too.

Sony, if you're reading this, please support HTML5 games and webGL! I want to develop stuff for your system! :)
 

Servbot24

Banned
Really can't wait to play your game, Jobbs! That and Hyper Light Drifter are the two biggest Kickstarted games I'm excited about. :)

Btw are you working on the game full time with the kickstarter funds?
 

fin

Member
Ugh don't know what I broke, but getting really unstable frame rate right now...profiler says it's camera rendering, but I haven't changed anything to do with rendering. It's like 60-40-60-50-60-20-60-30....so fucking weird. I think it might be because I was forcing vsync 30fps in the editor for testing physics and that's fucked up the project somehow, like it's still in there in a phantom state or something.

Don't use SVN or anything, so restoring a back-up and copying pasting, scripts, prefabs and scenes into it. See how it goes.

Play test often! After everything!
 

Jobbs

Banned
Really can't wait to play your game, Jobbs! That and Hyper Light Drifter are the two biggest Kickstarted games I'm excited about. :)

Btw are you working on the game full time with the kickstarter funds?

Thank you!

For the most part, yes. I have a weekend thing now to help the funds last longer, but generally speaking I'm full time on this game.
 

Servbot24

Banned
Thank you!

For the most part, yes. I have a weekend thing now to help the funds last longer, but generally speaking I'm full time on this game.

Awesome! Hopefully we can do the same when we Kickstart our game. Might try to get some budgeting tips from you when that time comes. :)
 
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