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[rexor0717]

Hello GAF lurkers, I know you're out there because I met 10+ of you at GDC, it's time to come out of the shadows and make some cool games!

You were all super friendly and intelligent folks in person so I'm sure you'll do just fine in here

I don't think I met you, but I met someone on your team (I forgot his name, sorry). You're game is really fun! I'll definitely buy a copy when its out.

 

[EDarkness]

I know some basic-level shader stuff, and I guess there're some users more experienced with shader making in here.

I'd say you list what you want to do rather than just asking something vague, since even if IndieGAF can't help, we might be able to ask around for a solution or something like that.

Well, the thing I need is to have a section of a second screen copied onto a mask, then displayed on the main screen. It's mainly for cropping out objects in front of the player. I have the whole setup done, I just need the shader to do the grunt work. I'm not too familiar with shaders to get this done. So I'm wondering if someone would know something about it.

 

[Mystic River]

Does anyone tried to do procedural 2d tiled textures for top down 2d games? I am trying to add 2d sprites for floors and walls to my game, so it can have a very large variety of looks and colors, but can't find any good link or info so far.

 

[Five]

Does anyone tried to do procedural 2d tiled textures for top down 2d games? I am trying to add 2d sprites for floors and walls to my game, so it can have a very large variety of looks and colors, but can't find any good link or info so far.

Depends on how your level data is set up, but the usual method is to do a check on each side of a given cell to see if it's an edge or not. You can store the edges per cell as bits in a number. Say 0000 means there are no edges, but 0001 means there's an edge on the left, 0010 means an edge above and 0011 means both are an edge, then you can order a length-16 array of tiles such that any given cell with a value between 0000 and 1111 will have an appropriate tile displayed.

I usually compute this with a formula like this:
n = isLeftEdge()*1 + isUpEdge()*2 + isRightEdge()*4 + isDownEdge()*8;
where the functions evaluate the level data appropriately and return either a 0 or 1.

If you want to add variation or there are other things to consider, just add more bits of information, even if you aren't strictly using binary any more.

Consider a case where each of the possible 16 arrangements (up-left, down-right-up, etc.) each have 5 versions added for variation's sake. Maybe the bumps look different or the blades of grass are in a different pattern. Take your value n (0000–1111), multiply it by 5, then add a random integer 0–4 to it. n will now be in the range 0–79 instead of 0–15.

Or just hold the information in different arrays. Maybe one array tells you where the edges are, another tells you what the variation on that pattern is, and another yet tells you what the base material is (Is it a building? Grass? Rocky dirt?). If you can fit all of your tiles onto one texture atlas, it's probably best to just use one array, but otherwise multiple arrays is fine.

 

[JulianImp]

Well, the thing I need is to have a section of a second screen copied onto a mask, then displayed on the main screen. It's mainly for cropping out objects in front of the player. I have the whole setup done, I just need the shader to do the grunt work. I'm not too familiar with shaders to get this done. So I'm wondering if someone would know something about it.

So you have some things you want to render on the main screen, but is the second screen rendered as well, or is it merely used to superimpose it on top of the first screen? If it's the latter case, you could possibly use a second camera to render something else on top of the first one, and use camera flags to make it only render the objects you want it to.

If I got your explanation wrong, I'd appreciate a slightly more elaborate explanation, because if it's rendering specific stuff and not rendering others, then I'd say using camera settings to filter out layers is what you'd need.

 

[EDarkness]

So you have some things you want to render on the main screen, but is the second screen rendered as well, or is it merely used to superimpose it on top of the first screen? If it's the latter case, you could possibly use a second camera to render something else on top of the first one, and use camera flags to make it only render the objects you want it to.

If I got your explanation wrong, I'd appreciate a slightly more elaborate explanation, because if it's rendering specific stuff and not rendering others, then I'd say using camera settings to filter out layers is what you'd need.

That's it. Right now I have two cameras. One camera is the main one and is what rendering everything. There's a second camera that is used to render a version of the scene without the object that is obstructing the player's view. I then want to render a section of that window onto a round texture to be displayed by the main camera.

If you've played Wonderful 101, then you know the effect when you go behind certain buildings a circle displays over your character so you can see what's behind it. I've done ll of the work...except for the shader.

 

[Mystic River]

Depends on how your level data is set up, but the usual method is to do a check on each side of a given cell to see if it's an edge or not. You can store the edges per cell as bits in a number. Say 0000 means there are no edges, but 0001 means there's an edge on the left, 0010 means an edge above and 0011 means both are an edge, then you can order a length-16 array of tiles such that any given cell with a value between 0000 and 1111 will have an appropriate tile displayed.

I usually compute this with a formula like this:
n = isLeftEdge()*1 + isUpEdge()*2 + isRightEdge()*4 + isDownEdge()*8;
where the functions evaluate the level data appropriately and return either a 0 or 1.

If you want to add variation or there are other things to consider, just add more bits of information, even if you aren't strictly using binary any more.

Consider a case where each of the possible 16 arrangements (up-left, down-right-up, etc.) each have 5 versions added for variation's sake. Maybe the bumps look different or the blades of grass are in a different pattern. Take your value n (0000–1111), multiply it by 5, then add a random integer 0–4 to it. n will now be in the range 0–79 instead of 0–15.

Or just hold the information in different arrays. Maybe one array tells you where the edges are, another tells you what the variation on that pattern is, and another yet tells you what the base material is (Is it a building? Grass? Rocky dirt?). If you can fit all of your tiles onto one texture atlas, it's probably best to just use one array, but otherwise multiple arrays is fine.

thanks abe_bly,

Well what I was thinking is a little bit more simple , I have texture atlas but I wanted to create some atlas files on the fly based on a seed, so for example you enter a planet and generate the land/wall tiles into an atlas so the rest of the game will use that kind of pattern to show up the world, once you leave that place and go to another planet for example a new seed will be used to create a different look. At this stage I was thinking to use it to create space ships tiles for corridors and floors, so if that works fine I may extend it to planets and so. So I was looking for interesting math functions I can use to make it different and at the same time interesting, very hard to do I think, but starting with simple patterns will help.

So the arrangement you are talking about is not a problem, the problem is to define the parameters and math to create the textures, I have some ideas on my head now, but will only give a set of pre-defined sets based on mixing several pre-defined parts ,but I am looking to have things that I can't even imagine so random numbers may provide that, but can't find any good page nor tutorial yet

 

[Five]

thanks abe_bly,

Well what I was thinking is a little bit more simple , I have texture atlas but I wanted to create some atlas files on the fly based on a seed, so for example you enter a planet and generate the land/wall tiles into an atlas so the rest of the game will use that kind of pattern to show up the world, once you leave that place and go to another planet for example a new seed will be used to create a different look. At this stage I was thinking to use it to create space ships tiles for corridors and floors, so if that works fine I may extend it to planets and so. So I was looking for interesting math functions I can use to make it different and at the same time interesting, very hard to do I think, but starting with simple patterns will help.

So the arrangement you are talking about is not a problem, the problem is to define the parameters and math to create the textures, I have some ideas on my head now, but will only give a set of pre-defined sets based on mixing several pre-defined parts ,but I am looking to have things that I can't even imagine so random numbers may provide that, but can't find any good page nor tutorial yet

Sorry, I only know how to do the "from predefined parts" type of generation. I know that people do some interesting stuff with fractals and with Perlin noise, but I don't have enough experience with either to be able to explain anything.

Ultimately, any art style is just a big set of rules, but being able to program those rules might not be worth the investment.

 

[Mystic River]

Depends on how your level data is set up, but the usual method is to do a check on each side of a given cell to see if it's an edge or not. You can store the edges per cell as bits in a number. Say 0000 means there are no edges, but 0001 means there's an edge on the left, 0010 means an edge above and 0011 means both are an edge, then you can order a length-16 array of tiles such that any given cell with a value between 0000 and 1111 will have an appropriate tile displayed.

I usually compute this with a formula like this:
n = isLeftEdge()*1 + isUpEdge()*2 + isRightEdge()*4 + isDownEdge()*8;
where the functions evaluate the level data appropriately and return either a 0 or 1.

If you want to add variation or there are other things to consider, just add more bits of information, even if you aren't strictly using binary any more.

Consider a case where each of the possible 16 arrangements (up-left, down-right-up, etc.) each have 5 versions added for variation's sake. Maybe the bumps look different or the blades of grass are in a different pattern. Take your value n (0000–1111), multiply it by 5, then add a random integer 0–4 to it. n will now be in the range 0–79 instead of 0–15.

Or just hold the information in different arrays. Maybe one array tells you where the edges are, another tells you what the variation on that pattern is, and another yet tells you what the base material is (Is it a building? Grass? Rocky dirt?). If you can fit all of your tiles onto one texture atlas, it's probably best to just use one array, but otherwise multiple arrays is fine.

Sorry, I only know how to do the "from predefined parts" type of generation. I know that people do some interesting stuff with fractals and with Perlin noise, but I don't have enough experience with either to be able to explain anything.

Ultimately, any art style is just a big set of rules, but being able to program those rules might not be worth the investment.

Thanks,

Yeah, I am thinking about it and most probably will use a pre-define set of parts and mix them on the fly to make a final texture, I've been doing that for other parts of my game, but I wanted to have more than what I am able to make, maybe a few million iterations with pre-defined parts, with fractals and others I may be able to make billions maybe but the effort to program that seems bit too much for a one person game only... I was able to make a few dozen parts now and maybe finish a few dozens more and that may be more than enough for now...

 

[Ito]

Hi gamedevs!

It's almost saturday, so I'd like to share with you some animation I'm working on.

I know there are "raccord" errors, I'm already fixing them

Also, there's this OST theme I've posted on my Blogger and Tumblr sites. It's also a WIP, that's why it's still unfinished and some parts might sound "weird".

Listen this soundtrack on Soundcloud

Have a nice weekend everyone.

And Jobbs, if you see this, please post some Ghost Song gifs D: (and thanks for recommending me Gifcam!).

 

[bumpkin]

Hi gamedevs!

It's almost saturday, so I'd like to share with you some animation I'm working on.

I know there are "raccord" errors, I'm already fixing them

Also, there's this OST theme I've posted on my Blogger and Tumblr sites. It's also a WIP, that's why it's still unfinished and some parts might sound "weird".

Listen this soundtrack on Soundcloud

Have a nice weekend everyone.

And Jobbs, if you see this, please post some Ghost Song gifs D: (and thanks for recommending me Gifcam!).

That looks awesome, dude! At some point I'm going to have to start working on art for my game. I was a pretty average artist -- though better than most of my peers -- when I was younger, haven't done any serious drawing in 15 or 16 years. Pretty much kind of stopped when my grandmother passed away. She was an artist, oil painting was her thing. She was the person in my life who nurtured my talent the most. Always giving me advice and helping me work on tougher pieces. I miss her…

At any rate, I've got a few more bits and pieces of the game engine itself to get working, and then I'll probably take a break from coding and see if I still have any artistic talent left in me. lol. It'll be my first time using a Wacom tablet to draw digitally, should be interesting. Hard to believe that I've written as much as code as I have over the past few weeks. Here's the report for my game's codebase from a neat Application I found called "Xcode Statistician." I'm not sure how accurate the line count is for my game given that it doesn't explicitly call out .cpp files. It's clearly tailored to reading projects for iPhone and iPad Apps using Objective-C (.m and .h files).

A terminal command I found online for counting number of lines in given files gave me a total of 8,731. That's even harder to believe!

 

[JulianImp]

That's it. Right now I have two cameras. One camera is the main one and is what rendering everything. There's a second camera that is used to render a version of the scene without the object that is obstructing the player's view. I then want to render a section of that window onto a round texture to be displayed by the main camera.

If you've played Wonderful 101, then you know the effect when you go behind certain buildings a circle displays over your character so you can see what's behind it. I've done ll of the work...except for the shader.

Render to texture's something I've never done due to it being a pro only feature, but if it works the way I think it might, you could:

• Have the camera that renders first render everything BUT the tall buildings and objects that might fully hid the player behind them
• Have the second camera render the buildings only to a texture
• Alpha blend the second camera's texture output with a circle that's fully transparent on the inside and opaque on the outside
• Apply the second camera's texture output on top of the first camera's

I don't know how render to texture keeps the camera texture, but if it's something that creates a reference and doesn't change it, so that you can assign it to a material, you could use a shader that takes that as the main texture and blends it with the transparent circle to produce the output you want. Perhaps this could work:

Shader "Custom/TransparencyCookie" {
	Properties {
		_MainTex ("Base (RGB)", 2D) = "white" {}
		_Transparency ("Transparency (Alpha)", 2D) = "white" {}
	}
	SubShader {
		Tags {"Queue"="Transparent" "RenderType"="Transparent"}
		Pass {
			SetTexture[_Transparency]
			SetTexture[_MainTex]
			{
				Combine Texture, Previous
			}
		}
	} 
	FallBack "Diffuse"
}

It's been a long while since I've written shader code, so you might need to fix a few things, but given that the texture already comes lit and shaded, you dont' even need to take all that into account while shading the building textures, so this simple unlit shader should be able to get it done.

 

[MrKayle]

just released Cavesweeper on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone.

The game is an addictive mashup of minesweeper and and dungeon crawling (with loot!).

Took me like 3-4 months to make. I paid an artist for the graphics and this is the first game I'm trying to sell for 99c, we'll see how it goes.

 

[mantrakid]

Yo dudes, I mostly lurk in here, but wanted to shout out my Kickstarter campaign... just cuz... well.. i donno. it seems like you guys are cool and would maybe envision jetpacking through space with your twig and berries (or lack thereof) dangling in the cosmic wind (or lack thereof..)

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nateschmold/cosmochoria

Pass it on if you know anyone who likes tiny pinkish cartoon nipples.

 

[Blizzard]

I ran a code analysis tool on my engine a week or two ago, and I think I got some hilarious result like 8,000 lines containing a comment.

I just like to document things, ok???

 

[Jobbs]

Hi gamedevs!

It's almost saturday, so I'd like to share with you some animation I'm working on.

I know there are "raccord" errors, I'm already fixing them

Also, there's this OST theme I've posted on my Blogger and Tumblr sites. It's also a WIP, that's why it's still unfinished and some parts might sound "weird".

Listen this soundtrack on Soundcloud

Have a nice weekend everyone.

And Jobbs, if you see this, please post some Ghost Song gifs D: (and thanks for recommending me Gifcam!).

Nice work, I look forward to seeing more poses and motions, I know keeping up that level of detail is a lot of work, but it should make a fine whole package if you are successful.

As for me, I wasn't really planning on showing anything new or different today than I've already shown, but for the heck of it let's see how far we can get into the map in one gif, and let's see how sadistic we can make one gif be in its file size.

edit: I'm aware there's one little layering bug noticeable in this footage, I can fix it easily just haven't gotten around to it yet.

 

[rexor0717]

I ran a code analysis tool on my engine a week or two ago, and I think I got some hilarious result like 8,000 lines containing a comment.

I just like to document things, ok???

I'm so forgetful that I have to comment everything.

Man, there is so much awesome stuff being shown off in this thread. I want to play all of it.

just released Cavesweeper on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone.

Downloading, seems like something I'd enjoy.

 

[daedalius]

Couple new things

Some art for a personal project

See the original line-art here: http://michael-galefire.tumblr.com/post/80917808254/bladewing-outsider-and-its-horde-of-thralls-the

and some art for an upcoming indie RPG, Fractures of Destiny

See some process shots and concept art here: http://michael-galefire.tumblr.com/post/80987792904/teleportation-dais-for-fractures-of-destiny-an

 

[bumpkin]

I ran a code analysis tool on my engine a week or two ago, and I think I got some hilarious result like 8,000 lines containing a comment.

I just like to document things, ok???

Nothin' wrong with that. My code is commented, but mostly in spots where it might not be obvious to me weeks or months later what something was doing. I'm not sure how many lines are comments in my overall codebase. I'm almost certain the free program I used to analyze it wasn't counting any of my implementation files. I think I'm going to buy an App I found on the Mac App Store and run it through that.

http://www.lamobratory.com/project-statistics-xcode/

It's only 5 bucks and since the App Store will let me download it on both of my computers, it breaks down to $2.50 each. That's inexpensive piece of mind.

EDIT: There we go, ran my project through that App I linked above. 5,534 lines minus comments.

 

[Kamaki]

Thanks! That post lacked some eye candy I assume. Here is a gif that illustrates a rather short adventure in the rogue rider adventure mode:

Eye candy always helps, which is fine because your game looks lovely! That map is a thing of beauty!

Hey fellow devs.
We decided to do something a bit different with our indie game "Murder in the Hotel Lisbon". (or Desura link)
Instead of releasing a demo we decided to do a free episode that is not included in the game. It is a small story that gives the players a taste of our little game.

That's a great idea, I'm a fan of a unique chunk of the game acting as demo, normally a prologue of sorts. Sadly I don't speak Portuguese, otherwise I'd give it a go.

Cant even start a project cause I suck at drawing arghh!!

Cant even draw proper sprites!

Draw anything! Using bright pink squares and green triangles! The art can always be replaced later.

Looks great, I can't imagine how long it's taking to do art for your game. Must take ages.

What was a side project currently has my full attention; working on a circular bullet hell game, inspired by Trish. I wish I was a more programme savvy person though, I feel like there should be a more efficient way of making patterns in the game then telling each bullet what angle to spawn at and when.

 

[SloaneRisette]

Yo indie dev GAF!

Currently getting ready to start a side project I've been wanting to do for about a year while gearing up on Unity to do a bigger project with some other people, but I'm here for some advice on this smaller project if you all wouldn't mind!

I'm planning on doing a simulator based game, very heavy on UI/menus with not a lot of art, and I'm wondering what the best way to go about that would be. I have Unity and GameMaker: Studio, and have been trying out some JFrame stuff in NetBeans IDE, but I'm not sure what to use for making it. Anyone have any advice on what to use?

 

[Water]

I'm planning on doing a simulator based game, very heavy on UI/menus with not a lot of art, and I'm wondering what the best way to go about that would be. I have Unity and GameMaker: Studio, and have been trying out some JFrame stuff in NetBeans IDE, but I'm not sure what to use for making it. Anyone have any advice on what to use?

What kind of simulator? How do you want to render the game world? What kind of UI/menu elements are you going to need primarily?

 

[SloaneRisette]

What kind of simulator? How do you want to render the game world? What kind of UI/menu elements are you going to need primarily?

Essentially it's going to work as a pro gamer sponsorship simulator, you sponsor different players, send them off to events, manage their training, streaming, manage recruiting of other players, stuff like that.

So far my thought is to just render the game world as the menus themselves, as that's the whole of the game that I have planned out. Essentially just one main window with seven different tabs that cover everything you need for the simulator. So there would be a main one that just has some basic information, the map one would have different maps on it (that would probably be where most of the "art" goes in, heh), and then stuff like expenses and calendar, where you need to plan out stuff, would probably have the most to them, at least compared to some of the other ones that would just be icons and text and bulleted lists type of thing.

 

[belushy]

Essentially it's going to work as a pro gamer sponsorship simulator, you sponsor different players, send them off to events, manage their training, streaming, manage recruiting of other players, stuff like that.

So far my thought is to just render the game world as the menus themselves, as that's the whole of the game that I have planned out. Essentially just one main window with seven different tabs that cover everything you need for the simulator. So there would be a main one that just has some basic information, the map one would have different maps on it (that would probably be where most of the "art" goes in, heh), and then stuff like expenses and calendar, where you need to plan out stuff, would probably have the most to them, at least compared to some of the other ones that would just be icons and text and bulleted lists type of thing.

Heh, I had an idea like this a few years ago when I was really deep into watching Halo MLG. Good luck, I'm interested in playing something like that.

 

[SloaneRisette]

Heh, I had an idea like this a few years ago when I was really deep into watching Halo MLG. Good luck, I'm interested in playing something like that.

Thanks! I was hoping to get a really basic prototype done during spring break (which ends Monday for me ), but unless things go well these next few days, I'll have failed! D:

 

[friken]

Struggle as we may, we couldn't get where we wanted to with our sketch art so we commissioned the help of more skilled artist. I'm very pleased with the progress from our sketch concepts to something more usable ingame without a clashing style shift. Feedback please:

orig sketch art:


New artists prepaint of alien on starship bridge. Time to chop and animate:

 

[Five]

Struggle as we may, we couldn't get where we wanted to with our sketch art so we commissioned the help of more skilled artist. I'm very pleased with the progress from our sketch concepts to something more usable ingame without a clashing style shift. Feedback please:

That looks absolutely fantastic. I was watching a long-play of Star Control II last night and actually wondered when you'd be posting about your game again.

 

[friken]

That looks absolutely fantastic. I was watching a long-play of Star Control II last night and actually wondered when you'd be posting about your game again.

Thanks so much... the kind words count for more than you realize! It has been a long week of melancholy as we had that terrible sinking feeling as we did some self evaluation and realized our alien art just wasn't cutting it. No matter how we massaged it, tried to remake parts of it, tried to make new backgrounds, tried to do better lighting... it looked like pasted layers of terrible. Even if it did look better, the style shift from ingame to colored sketch art just didn't feel right. Having to come to terms with our best wasn't good enough realy stung

Said and done though, the new artist's help has been invaluable! I wish we had of had that realization months ago and we would have had far more time to be spending on the game engine and gameplay. So our family only project is no longer just a family project, but the end result will be much better for it.

 

[friken]

Next up we gave the artist this planet and story element to illustrate:


Quick story, in the game you will discover some cool abandoned tech. I look forward to animating the illustration with parallax pan/zoom and those wispy clouds rolling through the scene:


Gif for reference to in-game art and style:

 

[Diablohead]

This page alone is making me really happy right now, so much good work going on.

 

[-COOLIO-]

holy crap, this thread got intense.

 

[friken]

I really love 2d animation like this! I look forward to seeing more as this progresses. Is this for a fighting game? platformer?

 

[Sandfox]

I'm jealous of the art skills in this thread lol.

 

[Galdelico]

Ok, this last streak of awesome art-related posts - Ito, Jobbs, daedalius, friken... All of you guys are a great inspiration to me! - pushed me to show you the (little) progress I made with my project.

I'm still working on basic game design elements and gameplay features/ideas, plus I got back at my favourite part of the whole thing, which is concept and drawing: so, here's some new enemy, a couple of old ones which I cleaned up a bit.

Kunoichi's sprite has been changed too:

Sorry it's all awfully still, hopefully I'll show you something in motion... SOON.

 

[mantrakid]

Ok, this last streak of awesome art-related posts

Sweet jesus, this looks amazing. Do you have a link i can follow you somehow?

 

[EDarkness]

Render to texture's something I've never done due to it being a pro only feature, but if it works the way I think it might, you could:

• Have the camera that renders first render everything BUT the tall buildings and objects that might fully hid the player behind them
• Have the second camera render the buildings only to a texture
• Alpha blend the second camera's texture output with a circle that's fully transparent on the inside and opaque on the outside
• Apply the second camera's texture output on top of the first camera's

I don't know how render to texture keeps the camera texture, but if it's something that creates a reference and doesn't change it, so that you can assign it to a material, you could use a shader that takes that as the main texture and blends it with the transparent circle to produce the output you want. Perhaps this could work:

*snip*

It's been a long while since I've written shader code, so you might need to fix a few things, but given that the texture already comes lit and shaded, you dont' even need to take all that into account while shading the building textures, so this simple unlit shader should be able to get it done.

Thanks for the information. At the moment, the second camera is turned off until it's actually needed. Something is in front, it turns on and renders everything except the building that's blocking the view. It's kind of the same way you were suggesting, except the two cameras are reversed. That texture is then rendered on top of the main camera.

I'll try out the shader and see what I can do with it. Thanks for the idea. I'm still learning shaders, so trying to come up with the right setup was driving me insane. Heh, heh.

 

[MrOddbird]

A new screenshot of Katakomb:

Unfortunately, I cannot guarantee such vivid imagery in the final version as the areas require low lighting fo creating a mood that fits the game. It's shame really, because the maximum lighting you have is your light source of choice with some areas having electric lightsources. So I made this test area to test the normal maps and such. Looks much better compared to the earlier iteration.

I wish I could put such scenes in the game and I have tried to make different lighting conditions that reflect the current scene. Most of them are currently pretty dark, but the source of light that you get in the particular scene makes the scene look completely different. In addtion, a dark complementary ambient color is added so that the scene can have at least some amount of variation.

There's especially one area that has a very strong player light that tints all the materials to very strong color that looks too plain. I just want to have at least some scenes, where you could see the movement of shadows - a very dynamic lighting scene.


Overall the game is doing nicely, but as I've stated there is just too much other work for me to concentrate on the game. While many new additions and refinements have been made, the perfectionist inside me says that some areas need polishing desperately. Some areas start to look dull and very boring: I hate it!

There certainly has been a scope creep, that began when I first started concepting the game. I have to put content lock soon or otherwise I will never finish the game. Although there have been huge delays, I think that I am finally getting the outcome I originally visioned, although in a much larger scale.

I'm not sure when I'll release the next trailer. The reason for this, is that I want the game to be a huge suprise for everyone that plays it: with no hype there are minimal expectations, but at the same time this doesn't lead to disapointments. Still, I am trying to constantly develope this game in a manner that it fulfils the goals I've set for myself. The motivation is to finally see the game being played by others and it's the reason I continue the developement.

Sorry for the long text. Helps with analyzing the current progress, you know?

 

[Mystic River]

Added lights and procedural tile set creation during the week.

 

[Jobbs]

Gif for reference to in-game art and style:

a lot of good stuff on this page, and by golly is this game gorgeous. I don't know how many of you guys used to stay up all night playing star control 2 with your friends, but I did, and so this is like a big nostalgia trip for me. I'd definitely buy this.

 

[friken]

a lot of good stuff on this page, and by golly is this game gorgeous. I don't know how many of you guys used to stay up all night playing star control 2 with your friends, but I did, and so this is like a big nostalgia trip for me. I'd definitely buy this.

Thanks Heh... I remember those days very well! The 3do version got a ton of play in my house. Before that the countless hours I put into StarFlight 1+2, SunDog, Omnitred Universe games. IT IS TIME for the classic space romps to be brought to the new generation of gamers. I have to admit though, for those not familiar with the 20+ year old games like that (95% of gamers) it is very hard for them to get the idea of what we are trying to make from our video clips. I get a lot of 'oh hum... another astroids shooter'. I think it will help when we are far enough alone to do a proper promo video showing entering a star system, alien ship comes to chat, dialog seq, tick off the alien, and battle. maybe quick clips of planet mining, story stuff.

 

[Amirai]

a lot of good stuff on this page, and by golly is this game gorgeous. I don't know how many of you guys used to stay up all night playing star control 2 with your friends, but I did, and so this is like a big nostalgia trip for me. I'd definitely buy this.

Star control 2! Loved that game. Played it for hours and hours with my dad.

I guess I'll post about my game too.

Shards - the Shattered World

Shards is a 2D HD rpg made with construct 2 that is about reaction as well as action.

The battle system is somewhat unique (as far as I know) – I admit to having some difficulty describing it properly, but it’s somewhere between real time with pause and a turn based battle system where everyone’s turns play at the same time, the game auto pauses when most commands are complete, and the game can be paused and commands modified at any time. All of this happens in a somewhat Zelda-like world, with traps and such that players use their abilities to make their way past.

Using this battle system, instead of just getting hit by incoming attacks, players can evade or use them to their advantage. They can also interact with the environment and use nearby traps as weapons. This enables players to be creative in combat.

Shards is still very early in development, but I’ve already got basic exploration working and the beginnings of the battle system.

Shards is a planned trilogy (yeah, I know, I'm ambitious ^^), but each game will stand just fine on it’s own, having its own story arc and won't leave off on a cliffhanger or right in the middle of anything.

I should also mention I have problems with my hands, so this game is going to take quite a while to make. To get content in front of people faster, I'm going to be releasing the prototype publicly to get feedback.

Am I allowed to post links to places with more info, like my development log? I've got a thread at the scirra forums and tigsource as well as a twitter account, but I don't want to spam the forum or anything.

 

[Ito]

That looks awesome, dude! At some point I'm going to have to start working on art for my game.[...]

Thank you! Don't hesitate to return to the artistic field!

Nice work, I look forward to seeing more poses and motions, I know keeping up that level of detail is a lot of work, but it should make a fine whole package if you are successful.

As for me, I wasn't really planning on showing anything new or different today than I've already shown, but for the heck of it let's see how far we can get into the map in one gif, and let's see how sadistic we can make one gif be in its file size.

edit: I'm aware there's one little layering bug noticeable in this footage, I can fix it easily just haven't gotten around to it yet.

(I can't believe it worked, lol) Thanks for posting that awesome gif! I shared it on twitter the moment I saw it . It's unbelieveable the ammount of detail that can be seen in your work. To be honest, Ghost Song is my most anticipated independent game in the works. Keep up the good work.

You know, I started my project several years ago, but now I feel like Ghost Song and my project are kinda "brother projects". The big sprites, the detailed backgrounds, the metroid influence -my game is a "metroidvania" too-. I'm really looking forward to see Ghost Song finished and stop doing everything just to enjoy it for a couple of weeks.

Looks great, I can't imagine how long it's taking to do art for your game. Must take ages.

Thank you! the art in this is really the most time-consuming part, but I'm getting there!

Next up we gave the artist this planet and story element to illustrate:

Gif for reference to in-game art and style:

I really love 2d animation like this! I look forward to seeing more as this progresses. Is this for a fighting game? platformer?

I really love the art in your game, congratulations!

Answering your question, it's a "metroidvania", a mix of platforming, action and adventure 2d side-scroller. Thanks for you interest!

Ok, this last streak of awesome art-related posts - Ito, Jobbs, daedalius, friken... All of you guys are a great inspiration to me! - pushed me to show you the (little) progress I made with my project.

I'm still working on basic game design elements and gameplay features/ideas, plus I got back at my favourite part of the whole thing, which is concept and drawing: so, here's some new enemy, a couple of old ones which I cleaned up a bit.
Kunoichi's sprite has been changed too:
Sorry it's all awfully still, hopefully I'll show you something in motion... SOON.

Dude that looks amazing. And the main character of your project is also a female ninja, which is amazing . Those screens caught my interest. I was wondering about the white outlines. Are those definitive? Makes the game look like "paper mario", but in a "japanesque" traditional way.

I ask this because at one screen, one monster does not feature this outline.


sorry for the kilometric post

 

[friken]

Sorry it's all awfully still, hopefully I'll show you something in motion... SOON.

I was also wondering if the what paper outline look was the target. I noticed the one baddie elephant didn't have it. If you want any input, I vote that it looks cool with the paper outlines. It does remind me of paper mario in a good way, and not copycat as it is a totally different type of game.

 

[friken]

Added lights and procedural tile set creation during the week.

Any link to project details? I'm curious about it. By the screenshots I'm not sure what the gameplay will be, but my guess is pretty fun. I like the art style.

 

[AzureSkies]

Okay IndieGAF, I need some help:

I'm interested in starting work on a project that I've wanted to make for years, but I have no idea where to start. I don't mind learning a language, but what should I start with if I'm looking for something that can work well with online networking and 2D graphics?

GameMaker would be an option if it actually supported networking.

 

[Lautaro]

Well if you learn C# or Javascript you could start with Unity. The last version has 2D tools and is very easy to use (if you don't skip the tutorials... seriously, don't skip the tutorials).

 

[eot]

What was a side project currently has my full attention; working on a circular bullet hell game, inspired by Trish. I wish I was a more programme savvy person though, I feel like there should be a more efficient way of making patterns in the game then telling each bullet what angle to spawn at and when.

Well, you always have to define where each bullet is going to go and when. Otherwise it's undefined (duh!). Could you elaborate on how you're doing it? Because there certainly are different ways with varying degrees of efficiency. Like, manually making a vector of bullet angles is pretty inefficient. Writing a method that generates a pattern of n equidistant bullets over an angular interval with an offset angle is a lot more efficient, for that pattern anyway.

 

[Galdelico]

Sweet jesus, this looks amazing. Do you have a link i can follow you somehow?

Thanks man, right back at you! You already found my Tumblr and I plan to open a dev blog too, as soon as I have at least some decent animation ready. I'll post it here when it's done.

Oh, and let me congratulate you on your project and artstlye in general. Cosmochoria looks just plain gorgeous. Absolutely love those clean visuals and the way the game flows in motion.

Dude that looks amazing. And the main character of your project is also a female ninja, which is amazing . Those screens caught my interest. I was wondering about the white outlines. Are those definitive? Makes the game look like "paper mario", but in a "japanesque" traditional way.

I ask this because at one screen, one monster does not feature this outline.

I was also wondering if the what paper outline look was the target. I noticed the one baddie elephant didn't have it. If you want any input, I vote that it looks cool with the paper outlines. It does remind me of paper mario in a good way, and not copycat as it is a totally different type of game.

Thank you so much guys.

Yeah, I'm calling this project Paper Ninja because it makes quite a full use of the 'paper' element. It works in two ways:
- visually, with the whole game being completely hand-drawn, as if each character/part of the scenario is vividly paint-brushed on different layers of paper, one over each other, in an ideal homage to sumi-e art.
-gameplay-wise, since every single sprite is drawn on a separate cut-out and each enemy class is connected to a different kind of paper, requiring a certain amount of hits or some specific weapon in order to be defeated.

I thought of that white outline in order to keep the action on screen always clear (the main characters, the enemies and everything related to them - as in the projectiles for example - are outlined, whereas all that is scenario isn't) and... Yeah, also because I love Paper Mario and Rakugaki Showtime.

Specifically, the elephant is not an enemy, but just a (supposedly animated) layer of the background.

And about the game mechanics: it's a classic 2D beat/slash'em up, inspired by Strider, Ninja Gaiden and Shinobi series.

 

[friken]

Okay IndieGAF, I need some help:

I'm interested in starting work on a project that I've wanted to make for years, but I have no idea where to start. I don't mind learning a language, but what should I start with if I'm looking for something that can work well with online networking and 2D graphics?

GameMaker would be an option if it actually supported networking.

I've always been a jump into the deep end and sink or swim kinda guy. I vote Unity3d and c#. Game dev wise there is very little you can't do with that combo. Unity's 'killer app' so to speak is the asset store. About anything you may want to make that is difficult, someone else has done and sells on the asset store

 

[AzureSkies]

I've always been a jump into the deep end and sink or swim kinda guy. I vote Unity3d and c#. Game dev wise there is very little you can't do with that combo. Unity's 'killer app' so to speak is the asset store. About anything you may want to make that is difficult, someone else has done and sells on the asset store

I guess I'll check it out! Is there any good resources for starting to learn C# that you guys would recommend?