Just tried this out for the first time, really fun little game! Currently 19th on the leaderboard!Noogy, that is a really great article and I just wanted to say thanks for taking to time to share it with the public. After stealth following your progress here on gaf for the last few years it was nice to see your game turn out so awesome.
Now for a quick update on my own progress..
Over the past week I decided I really wanted online leaderboards in Antibody, so I started reading about PHP/SQL (never used them before) and unity integration, as it turns out there are lots of people out there who don't know how to do this stuff so there was an abundance of information on the net
I'm happy to say that Antibody 1.2 is now live with full online leaderboards! http://circleofjudgement.com/antibody/
Thankfully Tim (the programmer/artist I'm working with) ended up handling the Unity side while I figured out the logic/databases etc so I wasn't completely overwhelmed. The next challenge awaits...
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Indie Game Development Discussion Thread | Of Being Professionally Poor
- Thread starter chubigans
- Start date
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OccamsBlender
Member
Thank you for the kind comment. The black lines look strange with the character standing there but I thought the character might get lost too easily in the BG during play.
Then again, that's my fault for using sky colors too similar to the character's pallet.
Sadly nothing I can shareI can say sales aren't bad, but they aren't mindblowing either. Still, I can't complain.
Ah, I understand. Thanks again for the awesome article.
Would be better to change up your character's palette then. In the end it'll be for the best
OccamsBlender
Member
Would be better to change up your character's palette then. In the end it'll be for the best
:O I never thought of that! Especially after struggling with the pallet for a week. Pallets are by far the most difficult thing for me. The current character pallet is a mix of warm and cool. Maybe unify it as cool and make the bg warm? Mmm. So much to learn.
I intended to make the BG duller since I worried about the gameplay objects getting lost in the fray as well. Something like these
http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/43859.htm
http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/69212.htm
I've been meaning to play with less saturated pallets. I have a strong tendency to go over saturated.
I agree with Pietepiet about the outlines, it looks way better without them. I think the only other complaint are the boots... something about them looks off. Maybe another shade will help.Main Character regular vs SD, no black outline vs black outline test.
Genre is matching puzzle.
Cool sprite though! (I like the non-SD look the most)
Main Character regular vs SD, no black outline vs black outline test.
The biggest problem with the SD version is that .... it isn't SD
Secret File : Super Puzzle Fighter 2X
shaowebb
Member
Currently I'm trying to find work in the industry as an Animator in shape or fashion and while I'm doing that I'm working on concept art with an indie group. Doing that made me kind of hungry to do my own Indie stuff and since I have no coding training since I am purely art I've been looking at Scirra's Construct 2 engine. Especially since the Noitu Love 2 guy is doing his new game on it.
Anyone here able to break down any limitations it has in event/behaviorial controls for me? I'm looking to play around a lot with momentum, hit stun, and AI for an action platforming based game and I'm curious if I can get the thing to do a whole lot in these areas without suffering slowdown or lag. I'll also be using a lot of animation frames on screen at once if possible so anyone with input on lag from Construct 2 would be nice.
Anyone here able to break down any limitations it has in event/behaviorial controls for me? I'm looking to play around a lot with momentum, hit stun, and AI for an action platforming based game and I'm curious if I can get the thing to do a whole lot in these areas without suffering slowdown or lag. I'll also be using a lot of animation frames on screen at once if possible so anyone with input on lag from Construct 2 would be nice.
So you got quite some feedback for your character, eh?
Feels better?The latest article in our Inside PikPok series covers the Programmer role. More at the link
http://pikpok.com/news/inside-pikpok-programmer/
Former "Inside PikPok" articles below:
Art Director
http://pikpok.com/news/inside-pikpok-art-director/
Producer
http://pikpok.com/news/inside-pikpok-producer/
Game Design
http://pikpok.com/news/inside-pikpok-game-design/
Technical Art
http://pikpok.com/news/inside-pikpok-technical-art/
Usability
http://pikpok.com/news/insidepikpok-usability/
Quality Assurance Testing
http://pikpok.com/news/inside-pikpok-quality-assurance-testing/
http://pikpok.com/news/inside-pikpok-programmer/
Former "Inside PikPok" articles below:
Art Director
http://pikpok.com/news/inside-pikpok-art-director/
Producer
http://pikpok.com/news/inside-pikpok-producer/
Game Design
http://pikpok.com/news/inside-pikpok-game-design/
Technical Art
http://pikpok.com/news/inside-pikpok-technical-art/
Usability
http://pikpok.com/news/insidepikpok-usability/
Quality Assurance Testing
http://pikpok.com/news/inside-pikpok-quality-assurance-testing/
Looking for a good alternative myself. Friend recommended checking out some of these, but haven't gotten around to it yet: http://frapsalternative.com/
BomberMouse
Member
A few years back I had a shit PC and wanted to take a video of my game. What I did was force GM to render every frame and create a BMP with it, then join every BMP into a big single movie. A less than ideal solution, but the results were very good.
Thanks for the link...I was figuring I should just buy the full version of FRAPS and it might have everything I needed, but it sounds like I may still need an alternative for demo or trailer videos etc.
For music, what kind of tool would you be looking for? There are probably a fair number of mod-tracker-esque tools out there, but if you're looking for something more, you may want to invest in a tool like GarageBand (I think the iPad version is actually relatively inexpensive and pretty neat).
I was going to say that there used to be an Aviary suite of free online in-browser tools for simple music stuff, that was kind of cool, but apparently that completely shutdown as of September.
For music, what kind of tool would you be looking for? There are probably a fair number of mod-tracker-esque tools out there, but if you're looking for something more, you may want to invest in a tool like GarageBand (I think the iPad version is actually relatively inexpensive and pretty neat).
I was going to say that there used to be an Aviary suite of free online in-browser tools for simple music stuff, that was kind of cool, but apparently that completely shutdown as of September.
Dreamwriter
Member
Well, it kinda depends on your goal. If it's just for fun, I'd start showing it off once it starts looking like a real game, with HUD and everything, and keep updating people on its progress. That helps get the project finished if you have people expecting to see progress, and you can get some good feedback that way.
If you are intending to sell your app commercially, I've read that you don't really want to spread info about the game too wide until right before the game is available to buy - because consumers don't have long attention spans, if they get excited about a project, they aren't going to be excited 5 months later, except in the cases of huge franchises and big companies that can spend really big bucks on promotion. So I'm taking that tactic, except I have a website with a little info (and development blog) that people could stumble upon, and every once in a while I share info with my Facebook friends. I don't even talk about the project much at all on message boards like this.
My bother used that for the Gunman Clive music. Haven't really touched it myself though so I can't say anything about it
Tell your brother I said what's up. Sounds like this app is a beast.
Since I'm developing right to my 360 with XNA and own a capture card that I stream Halo with, I'm using that.(Black Magic Intensity Pro) It's wonderful. 720p, 60fps, totally uncompressed and gorgeous. My game is just a little shitty looking prototype though so lol
I have that card. I can't figure out a way to film my fucking PC screen with their shit software "Media Express" lol.
The card itself is awesome though. I filmed my LBP levels and such things with it. In glorious HD.
I assume your talking about Konjak? He uses construct classic which is direct x based I think, compared to construct 2 which exports to html/javascript.
OccamsBlender
Member
I'm very serious about my projects and I'd like to try and see if there's interest out there/possibly build a fan base ASAP. Advertising is worthless unless you spend a house down-payment on it, which as an individual, I can't do.
I remember my friends at Exit Strategy Entertainment getting royally hosed for having rough spots in their prototype. Sometimes people just don't realize things will get improved down the road and such.
I know if I do try to drum up interest early, I've gotta be prepared to post regular updates and such to maintain it which can be a distraction to dev. But I know it's necessary...
Yes! I am very surprised and happy, this is a very nice and helpful group here on this thread. I'm fairly new here, I wasn't sure what to expect.So you got quite some feedback for your character, eh?
It's a little melancholy, I have abandoned this project temporarily since my real world job involves so much overtime I barely sleep, plus my programmer quit.
It's a simple enough game that maybe if I had the right tools I could code it myself...
I'll have to make a new mock up, I've changed a lot about the interface since this one but I was happy to get replies, especially from some amazing experts.
Thank you for reference! *save to hard drive.*
Slashing the color count certainly helps with
I'll try with and without outlines in the actual game as well. I agree the outlines look bad.
ohhh, what the hell, Avira is finding suspicious/malicious files into that Ezvid webpage.
EDIT: also, that page was very useful to demonstrate there's no good alternative. I hope people will maybe suggest great paying alternatives. I'm tired of this shit. So many trailers out there and I can't make a decent video at home? come the fuck on.
These are quite cool! Love the flick kick football game, always makes my bathroom visits really fun haha.
Cheers man! Glad you liked it
We've been working little by little to complete the Android port, and as of yesterday it is now available for free on Google play! https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.CircleOfJudgement.Antibody&hl=en
We ended up changing the name to Antibody Boost to avoid confusion with the other game out there, it uses its own leaderboard as the controls/balancing were completely rebuilt to suit tablets and phones.
It might be a little while before we do any more work on this project but I have to say it has been really fun to work on, we got it up and running so quickly with the initial weekend push and then it has just been adding little bits and pieces during the week nights in our spare time. Thanks for all the feedback and I hope you guys enjoy it!
I have that card. I can't figure out a way to film my fucking PC screen with their shit software "Media Express" lol.
The card itself is awesome though. I filmed my LBP levels and such things with it. In glorious HD.
I'm not sure that you can. I believe it can only record from what the input is. You can try Xsplit the streaming software. I believe that has a local recording option to your HDD.
edit: Ok so I think I may have fixed the issue with the character not always landing at the ground level. I still don't really understand why my previous tries weren't really working. I basically set the floor up as the collision I used for the game screen.
Code:
if (circle <= ground)
{
circle.setYposition(ground);
}edit 2: Just made it look pretty. Fuck yes! Now I can work on my combat loop
I think I'm gonna start development of a new game, but this time with intention to actually sell it. It's kind of a hard decision, because I know how difficult it can be and chance of me loosing motivation is pretty high. And that's exactly why I think I should do it. Currently I'm unemployed with no social life to speak of, so time is available. The real problems I have are my inability to stay motivated and focused, procrastination and getting easily distracted with constant Internet looping or Dota2. These issues are quite serious and it's time to somehow fight them off.
The game itself is relatively simple to code and I've already implemented the very core gameplay in the past, but this time I have to also create game around it. I decided not to use any existing engine and to write most of the code myself (C++, STL is a given of course, I may also use Boost and Lua). The plan is to develop the game by myself, with placeholder art (2D) and sound, and only if I'm happy with it and close to actually finishing it, I'll invest some money to make it look and sound good. Of course if I find a new job during the early stage of development, the chance of releasing it is pretty slim, but the time spent on this project definitely won't be considered wasted.
Sorry for the slightly livejournal-like post, but sharing my plans with other people has helped me to actually get things done in the past.
The game itself is relatively simple to code and I've already implemented the very core gameplay in the past, but this time I have to also create game around it. I decided not to use any existing engine and to write most of the code myself (C++, STL is a given of course, I may also use Boost and Lua). The plan is to develop the game by myself, with placeholder art (2D) and sound, and only if I'm happy with it and close to actually finishing it, I'll invest some money to make it look and sound good. Of course if I find a new job during the early stage of development, the chance of releasing it is pretty slim, but the time spent on this project definitely won't be considered wasted.
Sorry for the slightly livejournal-like post, but sharing my plans with other people has helped me to actually get things done in the past.
I suspect many a long Flick Kick Football session is played on the crapper.
Sir, you are the King of Kings. Hopefully this thread will inspire people to begin making games, and some years from now (when they are famous devs) they will tell magazines of how this thread started it all.
DeanoCalver
Splash Damage
If you have source (and on pc), its worth looking at the old but tried and tested way of making a huge memory buffer and stick each frame after its displayed in there (try something like LZO or LZ4 to make them a lot smaller), when you hit a button go through each frame convert into a png or the like and then use common video editing software (i.e. lightworks) to convert the pngs into a video.
It sounds crazy but because you only touch each frame once during game, the OS VM will kick them out to disk as soon it can. As long as you disk isn't really bad, a few 4K writes every few frames should be under the performance noise level.
Its common to use a similar trick on console, the main difference being sending each frame over the network to the host pc's memory.
Flick Kick was the first game on a phone that I actually enjoyed, since worm on the old Nokias... High five!!
If you need any code writing... well, I can do that! jamielowesdev.com, no job too small!
Dreamwriter
Member
I disagree. Posting to message boards, twitter, Facebook, that's advertising. Getting your game seen by journalists, that's advertising. And the services like Tapjoy aren't all that expensive, and they can drive a TON of people to download your game (admittedly many of them will just install your game and play it once so they can get credits for other games). There are many avenues of cheap advertising. You aren't going to be putting commercials on TV, but there are many forms of advertising for the creative person. Heck, it's even pretty cheap to put ads in theaters in the middle of those trivia slides
As for building a fan base, what I read was, in terms of real sales, it's almost impossible to build a large enough fan base to make a difference, when there is nothing they can play. The people you do get, other than people who personally know you, will tend to follow your game's development for a small period of time, and then never check on it again. And if they later hear about your game's release, they may automatically skip over the news because in their mind subconciously that's old news they already know about.
Just an update on my part. To further enhance my DCPU-16 3d engine, I've now
implemented a scanline rasterizer to scan convert a polygon into the frame
buffer. The polygon needs to be convex but can have arbitrary many vertices -
not just only triangles. So it's an n-gon rasterizer so to speak. The
algorithm is rather simple, it doesn't use any lists, spans whatsoever, it's
a pure in-place rasterizer that doesn't even use interpolation (= an
additional division per edge) to step along the edges. I use an integer line
rasterizer of type Bresenham (derived from scratch using Taylor's formula) to
step along the edges to generate the start and ending x-coordinate for the
line to be drawn. The only issue using this techniques is just to not miss any
pixels due to near horizontal lines. Anyhow, I also have a strong interest in
implementing a span-version.
The animation above seem to miss some pixels now and then. For verification
I also draw the outline of the polygon. However, the scan converter currently
uses a modified line rasterizer with a weaker error term for stepping along
the edges. This is a minor issue, I just need to incorporate the better one,
which will also generate better polygon edges as well as endpoints. Anyhow,
the error term will be reworked further down the road to incorporate multi-
precision sub-pixel rendering. Something I really want to see happen, since I
really love seeing all the edges floating smoothly around the screen - an
effect real stunning on low-res resolution.
For now I incorporate the polygon rasterizer into the engine while adapting
the data structure to make use of filled polygons. And then let's see how the
Cobra Mk III will look with some of its faces filled.
I disagree. Posting to message boards, twitter, Facebook, that's advertising. Getting your game seen by journalists, that's advertising. And the services like Tapjoy aren't all that expensive, and they can drive a TON of people to download your game (admittedly many of them will just install your game and play it once so they can get credits for other games). There are many avenues of cheap advertising. You aren't going to be putting commercials on TV, but there are many forms of advertising for the creative person. Heck, it's even pretty cheap to put ads in theaters in the middle of those trivia slides
As for building a fan base, what I read was, in terms of real sales, it's almost impossible to build a large enough fan base to make a difference, when there is nothing they can play. The people you do get, other than people who personally know you, will tend to follow your game's development for a small period of time, and then never check on it again. And if they later hear about your game's release, they may automatically skip over the news because in their mind subconciously that's old news they already know about.
I'm not expecting big things for my first few games. But hopefully people will play them, and see the VAMflax screen and start associating that with fun, arcade games that control well. Once I have a few games out, I intend to advertise a bit and see what happens. But, I think, as with everything, it's down to luck. But, also, you make your own luck. I will be contacting everyone and anyone to do some sort of interview or promotion. Once the game is done it's promotion, plus working on the next game... It'll never end. But that's cool, because I like making games! And if I end up old and poor, well, I'll have spent my time making rad games, (that not many people played)...
Heart of Black
Member
I use CAMTASIA. We used that to record DS footage when we were editing trailers for GTA Chinatown Wars, and I currently have been using it for QA testing from Game Maker.
Not sure what I'm going to use to get footage from a Vita though.
Ok, I'm gonna try that because I couldn't find FRAPs alternatives yet.
FormallyMegadrive
Member
I'm prototyping some ideas and I'm stuck on a mechanic in terms of no-death. The only really great no-death mechanic I remember seeing in games were Braid's rewind feature and the 3D PoP's rewind feature and those are nearly the same. Creating a real lose mechanic without using the idea of "lives" or continues in a game is really hard.
Well, we are hiring programmers right now
I've been meaning to get in touch with you anyway. Will PM.
I liked Warioland 2 and 3 which had the same mechanic, but it can get frustrating or be hard to do properly.
The mechanic was that in a lot of cases if you missed a jump or got hit by a boss, you could end up falling onto spikes or some exit chute that would fire you all the way out of the room, or down into some previous room you had already completed, and you would have to make your way back up. You wouldn't "die" and you might not "rewind" per se, but I think you might have lost gold/points and it might take a good bit of time to make all the right jumps to get back back to the target area.
It might also lead to stressful places where you were like, if I fall here it's going to take forever to climb back up...
Of course all of the above probably only really applies to platformers.
FormallyMegadrive
Member
I liked Warioland 2 and 3 which had the same mechanic, but it can get frustrating or be hard to do properly.
The mechanic was that in a lot of cases if you missed a jump or got hit by a boss, you could end up falling onto spikes or some exit chute that would fire you all the way out of the room, or down into some previous room you had already completed, and you would have to make your way back up. You wouldn't "die" and you might not "rewind" per se, but I think you might have lost gold/points and it might take a good bit of time to make all the right jumps to get back back to the target area.
It might also lead to stressful places where you were like, if I fall here it's going to take forever to climb back up...
Of course all of the above probably only really applies to platformers.
A platformer is what I'm thinking of, with a similar swipe-to-set-direction as Mirror's Edge had. I really like that idea, instead of promoting it as death, just push the player further behind. I suppose. Come to think of it, Sonic 3's Marble Garden main boss was in the air and whenever Sonic would fall, Tails would fly down and pick him up. That could be interesting, similar to how when you fall off the track in Mario Kart, you'd get picked up.
I'm trying to make this prototype to be very accessible and not really detrimental to the players progress, as the market is intended for 5-10 year olds, who would generally steal their parents devices to play.
As mentioned, writing BMPs to disk or something may actually be one of the better options if nothing works for you, especially if your game has a small screen resolution.
If you haven't tried it yet, you might also try CamStudio (http://sourceforge.net/projects/camstudio/). It's free, open-source, and you can record screen regions for making tutorial videos...but I don't know how well it works for a 60 fps game.
*edit* Bandicam (http://www.bandicam.com/downloads/) seems like another option. It's shareware, but I don't know anything about how reputable the author(s) are.
So you are a time millionaire. People say money = time, but on my cards it
reads time > money. One can always earn money, but time is running out for
everyone ... no matter what.
There is nothing to fight against. You just simply have to stop it.
There you go. Tell us about the game you're - going - to make.
No worries!
OccamsBlender
Member
Wise words from missile!
No one can make you waste your time without your permission. Don't fire up DotA unless you've done something meaningful for your game. Keep it as a reward for doing something.
Make yourself a schedule and update it. If you say you'll do Task X in 3 days, but you think it'd need more time, fine, that happens, but then change the schedule to however much more time you need.
And now for another one of my silly questions:
For those of you out there in teams, where did you find good development partners?
I'm currently making a new iOS game with a different batch of people(abandoning those sprites I posted last time, for now) because of team dynamic problems.
What keeps you all together? Or is this why you go at it alone?
No one can make you waste your time without your permission. Don't fire up DotA unless you've done something meaningful for your game. Keep it as a reward for doing something.
Make yourself a schedule and update it. If you say you'll do Task X in 3 days, but you think it'd need more time, fine, that happens, but then change the schedule to however much more time you need.
And now for another one of my silly questions:
For those of you out there in teams, where did you find good development partners?
I'm currently making a new iOS game with a different batch of people(abandoning those sprites I posted last time, for now) because of team dynamic problems.
What keeps you all together? Or is this why you go at it alone?
Dreamwriter
Member
The Elgato Game Capture HD might work for you. This is a box where you plug in HDMI from a source (your video card), then you plug another HDMI cable going from the box to your monitor, and USB to your PC. Using its software you can record whatever comes in from HDMI, so in theory you could set it to start recording everything your PC does, then minimize it and run your game, and when you're done running your game maximize it and hit stop. Its software then lets you edit the movie you made (no replacing audio or anything cool like that though), and you can even upload it directly to YouTube if you want. You just have to make sure your game is running in one of the standard TV resolutions.
I've never tried recording PC from it, but it works great for tablets and game consoles, and there's no reason I can think of that it wouldn't work for PC, as long as your video card has HDMI. The box costs like $160.
I wouldn't say I'm a time millionaire. I have enough time to get this project up and running, but I will definitely have to get a job before finishing it.
I agree. That's one of the reasons why I'm currently unemployed.
It's a habit, so it's not a one step process. I must keep stopping it for as long as it takes for a new habit to become stronger than the old one.
That's what I've been doing for past few days. Things done = rewards.
I'm still in "figuring it out" stage of the project (which produced some nice results), but in 2 or 3 days I'll start turning design and ideas into code, using schedule of course
Thanks for your input, guys.
RelentlessRolento
Member
Hey guys... something worth backing:
LA GameSpace
I'm currently in Grad school and before starting I was and am planning post grad to do the same but in Miami.
Support!
LA GameSpace
I'm currently in Grad school and before starting I was and am planning post grad to do the same but in Miami.
Support!
- Status