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[Blizzard]

I could use some criticism/suggestions myself. I am trying to use the funky Advance Wars / old RPG style of pseudo-overhead rendering with actual squares for each spot on a battlefield.

First, please look at this without reading the spoiler description below:

Now, here is what I want to convey:

Spoiler

The tile is an elevator floor. When a new unit spawns, the elevator goes down below the level of the battlefield and brings a unit back up.

There are probably at least 2 ways to go about representing this, and I would welcome any suggestions since I am guessing the immediate impression it gives is not at all the desired one.

 

[Michael Armbrust]

I can't decide if it'd be beneficial to play Antichamber or not.

My game has some illusions that are similar to what I've gathered antichamber has. I've made a lot of illusions already, but there's still a lot more I need to design. The pros of playing antichamber (beyond just having fun are:

1. I'd know what to avoid. Making a copy or copying elements couldn't be farther from my intentions. If I play antichamber, I know exactly what illusions it uses so that I don't inadvertently come up with similar results.

2. It could help me come up with ideas. I'm not hitting a wall with development, but case studies are always valuable. Seeing how antichamber and its illusions work could help me make my own illusions better.

The cons are:

1. Right now the only thoughts in my head are my own. Playing antichamber could push me into thinking along the same lines as its developers. My illusions would be more likely to be inspired by antichamber verse being fully original.

2. I'm not sure my game or its illusions are that similar to antichamber in the first place. Like most of you in the middle of development, I'm spending the vast majority of the day working. If I play antichamber and it doesn't offer any benefits for my game, then I've effectively just wasted half a day's work.

I've been thinking about it for a couple days but I'm just going back and fourth. Any advice or thoughts would be super appreciated.

I could use some criticism/suggestions myself. I am trying to use the funky Advance Wars / old RPG style of pseudo-overhead rendering with actual squares for each spot on a battlefield.

There are probably at least 2 ways to go about representing this, and I would welcome any suggestions since I am guessing the immediate impression it gives is not at all the desired one.

I figured it out before reading the spoiler, but it wasn't apparent.

For starters adding a short delay between the elevator going down and then coming up could help. At least in my case it doesn't feel like the elevator goes all the way down before coming back up.

Kinda like this, but with the blue edge of the elevator frame not visible.

 

[missile]

It pretty much is the best there is at the moment (although it's by no means well documented or even bug-free).
I wouldn't expect too much different from the new Unity system, since it (and NGUI) are pretty much based on the same general idea that dfgui is.
Besides, it's light years ahead of the clusterfuck that the current Unity GUI system presents.

Interesting, their new idea of the Render Mode and Rect Transform was
literally the first thing I programmed for the simple rudimentary GUI seen in
one of my latest dev shots. May approach doesn't even fix the transformation.
A window/widget can have any transformation - sequences of transformation.
This will come in handy for animating the widget and for rendering stuff
straight into the widget itself.

missile, I showed a friend some of your stuff because he's interested in signal processing. He thinks it's awesome and he understood the explanation of your latest. ...

Tell him that he is on the right track! :+ What does your friend do, resp.
what does he want to do?

... He thinks this is art:

Of course it is!

 

[Pehesse]

Racing against a deadline is always something both exhilarating and exhausting.. I'm glad that first milestone is done, and I'm now looking to the ones ahead!

Here's a video of the first prototype currently out in the hands of testers :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJi5ZsI6PmM

Plenty of bugs have already been found and fixed, but mostly, I'm just glad people can now start playing around at all :-D
Going to be away for a short while and then start working on the narration visual novel segments, to have both halves of the game ready to show in a demo state at the very least.

I could use some criticism/suggestions myself. I am trying to use the funky Advance Wars / old RPG style of pseudo-overhead rendering with actual squares for each spot on a battlefield.

I had understood it was meant to be an elevator, but I'd definitely add a delay between it going down (and disappearing) and it going back up. Possibly with some kind of smoke effect rising to show that something arrived/was built in there, before rising back up.

I've been thinking about it for a couple days but I'm just going back and fourth. Any advice or thoughts would be super appreciated.

As for playing Antichamber or not : having neither played it extensively nor seen anything about your game I couldn't comment about the similarities, but faced in a similar scenario, I'd want to play the other game referenced. Imagination and creativity, to me, is largely an assembly of all the references you have seen/experienced, and the more you have, the smaller the bits of inspiration you can get from each one to get a new cohesive whole that appears "new and original" (or rather : the inspirational chunks are so small, disparate and numerous that having the precise same set of references would be difficult). So yeah, I'd play it, along with any other I could find related to that topic (like, for instance, Echochrome?)... or not related (or not even games at all), to get different kinds of inspiration from different places altogether. I wouldn't say time spent not working is "wasted", as it can lead to building references/imagination, if you're in such a mindset?

 

[DrNeroCF]

I could use some criticism/suggestions myself. I am trying to use the funky Advance Wars / old RPG style of pseudo-overhead rendering with actual squares for each spot on a battlefield.

First, please look at this without reading the spoiler description below:

Now, here is what I want to convey:

Spoiler

The tile is an elevator floor. When a new unit spawns, the elevator goes down below the level of the battlefield and brings a unit back up.

There are probably at least 2 ways to go about representing this, and I would welcome any suggestions since I am guessing the immediate impression it gives is not at all the desired one.

I'm pretty sure I could tell what it was, my feedback would be, make it go low enough that you don't see the blue outline, and the silver 'pole' thing that you can see, it looks like that's the mechanism pushing the platform (then the perspective doesn't work at all), I would say make something more subtle that would look like a track that the elevator is on, I think it would just look like a ladder in that style.

Ah, I just realized how difficult that's going to be to portray in that perspective. The lighter color looks more like a wall, so the elevator would be sliding south, instead of going downward. Maybe just have the elevator shaft the single dark color, then a track for the elevator to ride downward that connects close to the top.

 

[missile]

I can't decide if it'd be beneficial to play Antichamber or not.

My game has some illusions that are similar to what I've gathered antichamber has. I've made a lot of illusions already, but there's still a lot more I need to design. The pros of playing antichamber (beyond just having fun are:

1. I'd know what to avoid. Making a copy or copying elements couldn't be farther from my intentions. If I play antichamber, I know exactly what illusions it uses so that I don't inadvertently come up with similar results.

2. It could help me come up with ideas. I'm not hitting a wall with development, but case studies are always valuable. Seeing how antichamber and its illusions work could help me make my own illusions better.

The cons are:

1. Right now the only thoughts in my head are my own. Playing antichamber could push me into thinking along the same lines as its developers. My illusions would be more likely to be inspired by antichamber verse being fully original.

2. I'm not sure my game or its illusions are that similar to antichamber in the first place. Like most of you in the middle of development, I'm spending the vast majority of the day working. If I play antichamber and it doesn't offer any benefits for my game, then I've effectively just wasted half a day's work.

I've been thinking about it for a couple days but I'm just going back and fourth. Any advice or thoughts would be super appreciated. ...

It depends. It depends on how good you can draw on the work of others, i.e.
how good you are in extending the work of others. If you have such a skill
already, then play that game and extent upon it. If you don't have such a
skill, don't play it since case 1 (con) will hold pretty much. On a general
note, I would try to come up with my own stuff first even if it isn't as good
as the work of others. The skill you learn from chewing you own stuff will
payoff further down the road - exponentially. Guess you finish the game your
way, with your very own thoughts and "fully original". Once finished play that
two other games and you will immediately see how you can improve your game
(which is finished already), i.e. how you could improve your next game. The
reason this works is that you will have spent a sufficient amount time with
the problem at hand - in creating illusions etc. This will put your mind into
a setting where it becomes much easy to incorporate new stuff and much easier
to put the work of others to good use.

 

[bsp]

updated that creepy red to purple. kinda liking it

 

[Dascu]

updated that creepy red to purple. kinda liking it

http://puu.sh/9bEyZ/21f3a2b5c2.png[IMG][/QUOTE]

I really love the low-poly and crisp texture style. Keep it up.

 

[MrNyarlathotep]

There are probably at least 2 ways to go about representing this, and I would welcome any suggestions since I am guessing the immediate impression it gives is not at all the desired one.

Something like this but less shit and rushed?

(imo this would be better without the lift descending before the 'doors' open)

 

[JulianImp]

Something like this but less shit and rushed?

(imo this would be better without the lift descending before the 'doors' open)

I agree, having some kind of gate open up and reveal the unit as it goes up the lift would be interesting, but then there'd probably be the issue of resetting the tile graphics to the "gate closed" state without it looking weird.

Perhaps you could leave the tile in the "gate open, elevator up" state until the unit moves out of the way, and then you'd play the animation in reverse. Being a turn-based game, I guess it's highly unlikely that another unit would be moving into that tile before its animation ends.

If you go with the gate idea, I think it might be nice if you added some red warning lights around the tile that blink whenever the gate/elevator is operating.

 

[Blizzard]

Wow, I got a bunch of quick responses, thank you everyone!

For starters adding a short delay between the elevator going down and then coming up could help. At least in my case it doesn't feel like the elevator goes all the way down before coming back up.

I had understood it was meant to be an elevator, but I'd definitely add a delay between it going down (and disappearing) and it going back up. Possibly with some kind of smoke effect rising to show that something arrived/was built in there, before rising back up.

The delay is a great idea. I want to make sure that the spawning animation is quick since in an actual game a player might be spawning lots of units, but my original example was playing at half speed to show what was going on better. I should be able to add a delay but keep the rest of the animation fast.

Some sort of steam effect might be neat to show something arrived below the surface -- maybe I can experiment with that.

I'm pretty sure I could tell what it was, my feedback would be, make it go low enough that you don't see the blue outline, and the silver 'pole' thing that you can see, it looks like that's the mechanism pushing the platform (then the perspective doesn't work at all), I would say make something more subtle that would look like a track that the elevator is on, I think it would just look like a ladder in that style.

Ah, I just realized how difficult that's going to be to portray in that perspective. The lighter color looks more like a wall, so the elevator would be sliding south, instead of going downward. Maybe just have the elevator shaft the single dark color, then a track for the elevator to ride downward that connects close to the top.

Your second paragraph was the problem I was having. With this perspective, I probably can't show anything on the sides well. The track idea is what I was going for (not a piston), but I could try making it closer to a ladder.

Something like this but less shit and rushed?

(imo this would be better without the lift descending before the 'doors' open)

Interesting idea and thanks for taking the time to prototype it! If I'm interpreting this properly as a elevator "garage", my problem would be that I want the unit to drive off in any direction once the elevator has reached the battlefield surface, so no walls would be around it.

 

[MrNyarlathotep]

Interesting idea and thanks for taking the time to prototype it! If I'm interpreting this properly as a elevator "garage", my problem would be that I want the unit to drive off in any direction once the elevator has reached the battlefield surface, so no walls would be around it.

If you look at real world vehicle deployment systems using lifts, they usually don't have the 'lift' always exposed to the elements - look at things like aircraft carriers.

My crappy mockup was just to have a 'blast door' over the area where the lift comes up, with the doors retracting entirely as the lift comes to ground level - this would allow you to have a unit be able to move off of the lift in any direction, and when the lift descends the 'blast doors' would cover the 'hole' where the lift was, if you see what I mean.

 

[RicoTheMad]

Here's this weeks Screenshot Saturday pic for Rebirth. It's a foggy environment shot of a terrain that's been procedurally generated.

Just a reminder: Rebirth a procedural survival horror sandbox game influenced by games such as Silent Hill and the works of HP Lovecraft. A full feature list and more media/information can be found at our site.

http://www.deadmanwalkingstudios.com

Currently our plan is to make a small demo level with vertical slice of features (for the most part, not all of them) . We are generating the terrain and then hand-editing to make it a little more interesting. This is because we have a convention we need to present at next month, so I don't have enough time to finish the procedural system for terrain placement prior to that. Our hopes are to eventually have the game fully procedurally generated, though there's a good chunk of it done procedurally now.

I also finished out the building system this week which lets players place build able things using different systems. Certain things have attachment points which won't let you place items unless there's for example, 2 surfaces close together (like a barricade). Others allow you to place them on the ground, and others anywhere in mid-air even.

I'll probably do a bigger update on this system later though, maybe a video diary. I hope to expand the building system further in the future to provide players with a lot more options as well.

 

[Makai]

I mean this SUPER respectfully, and we've talked about this a bunch on IRC: You're color-blind, correct, Makai? It may not affect you precisely the same way it does other people.

Yep, I forget sometimes.

 

[amoeba]

First, please look at this without reading the spoiler description below:

The perspective does make it appear to be more of a sliding track than a descending elevator. Perhaps a gradient shift combined with a scale adjust to convey a sense of the platform descending into darkness, or a puff of smoke expanding out then getting sucked 'down' to give a suggestion of depth to the tile?

 

[RawNuts]

scale adjust

This is what I was thinking; is it possible to have it scale a bit as it moves down?

 

[razu]

I've finally thought of a point to my game!

Instead of Mike being a part of Super Something Squad™, the game is about him proving himself worthy of joining it!

The game is really an elaborate excuse to play with an assortment of gameplay toys, but there needs to be something joining it all together, and up until now I had no idea what that might be.

I'm so happy!!

 

[DinkyDev]

I've finally thought of a point to my game!

Instead of Mike being a part of Super Something Squad™, the game is about him proving himself worthy of joining it!

The game is really an elaborate excuse to play with an assortment of gameplay toys, but there needs to be something joining it all together, and up until now I had no idea what that might be.

I'm so happy!!

Congrats on nailing that! It would also lead in to a sequel where he's part of the Squad and give him access to even more gadgets and vehicles.

Looking forward to this!

 

[razu]

Congrats on nailing that! It would also lead in to a sequel where he's part of the Squad and give him access to even more gadgets and vehicles.

Looking forward to this!

Cheers!!

Now to get my dialog box system up and running for all the snappy dialog... xD

 

[RawNuts]

I've finally thought of a point to my game!

Instead of Mike being a part of Super Something Squad™, the game is about him proving himself worthy of joining it!

The game is really an elaborate excuse to play with an assortment of gameplay toys, but there needs to be something joining it all together, and up until now I had no idea what that might be.

I'm so happy!!

Perfect; assigning Mike trials to overcome will let you go crazy and creative with gameplay mechanics and goals, without having to always think about, "what is he trying to accomplish here and how does it pertain to the overarching goal?"

 

[Michael Armbrust]

As for playing Antichamber or not : having neither played it extensively nor seen anything about your game I couldn't comment about the similarities, but faced in a similar scenario, I'd want to play the other game referenced. Imagination and creativity, to me, is largely an assembly of all the references you have seen/experienced, and the more you have, the smaller the bits of inspiration you can get from each one to get a new cohesive whole that appears "new and original" (or rather : the inspirational chunks are so small, disparate and numerous that having the precise same set of references would be difficult). So yeah, I'd play it, along with any other I could find related to that topic (like, for instance, Echochrome?)... or not related (or not even games at all), to get different kinds of inspiration from different places altogether. I wouldn't say time spent not working is "wasted", as it can lead to building references/imagination, if you're in such a mindset?

I agree that nothing is truely original, but right now the sources of my ideas are life, films, books, etc. instead of something potentially really similar.

The reason I'd consider the time wasted is because I'm in the middle of a crunch. E3 is such a busy period. Not going to LA, but there are still some deadlines I have.

It depends. It depends on how good you can draw on the work of others, i.e.
how good you are in extending the work of others. If you have such a skill
already, then play that game and extent upon it. If you don't have such a
skill, don't play it since case 1 (con) will hold pretty much. On a general
note, I would try to come up with my own stuff first even if it isn't as good
as the work of others. The skill you learn from chewing you own stuff will
payoff further down the road - exponentially. Guess you finish the game your
way, with your very own thoughts and "fully original". Once finished play that
two other games and you will immediately see how you can improve your game
(which is finished already), i.e. how you could improve your next game. The
reason this works is that you will have spent a sufficient amount time with
the problem at hand - in creating illusions etc. This will put your mind into
a setting where it becomes much easy to incorporate new stuff and much easier
to put the work of others to good use.

A lot of money is invested in the game. Gaining experience with it will be great, but I can't just push things to the next project. If I finish the game, play antichamber, and see tons of ways VizionEck could have been better, then I'd be stuck between a rock and a hard place. Delaying it and rebuilding major parts of the game would be pretty much the only option.

I'm really starting to feel like playing it after E3 would be the smartest idea. I can have a large amount of illusions designed by then, but I wouldn't have spent that much time building any in game. That seems like a good middle ground. I'll get the skill from "chewing my own stuff" but I'll also minimize the risk. Thank you both for your thoughts.

I've finally thought of a point to my game!

Instead of Mike being a part of Super Something Squad™, the game is about him proving himself worthy of joining it!

The game is really an elaborate excuse to play with an assortment of gameplay toys, but there needs to be something joining it all together, and up until now I had no idea what that might be.

I'm so happy!!

That sounds great.

 

[Blizzard]

It took me way too long to play around with this, and in the process I fixed a cleanup issue I was not aware of, and found out about an animation design flaw I will need to work around.

At any rate, here is the original plus two newer versions after reading the suggestions made. Please forgive me since I was using gifcam and watching these loop at different rates may drive you insane.

The latter two are much faster than the original, and that is the speed that I THINK I would like to go with. Otherwise, I think I would be frustrated with my own game feeling clunky as I spawn a bunch of units. However, the result seems way too fast so that you can't see the action happening, at least in the GIF. I -claim- that at 60 fps, it's actually smoother and might be acceptable, but I'm not going to attempt to make a webm or something right now.

 

[Five]

@Blizzard
the new animations look good. The speed might be an issue. Not in understanding what's happening, but in believing that it could happen so fast. The inertia on such fast-moving machine parts would be insane, and hard to believe if nothing else moves at the same rate. Probably not something worth pondering or fixing, but if you want to find something wrong with the new animation then that's all I've got.

 

[missile]

I've finally thought of a point to my game!

Instead of Mike being a part of Super Something Squad™, the game is about him proving himself worthy of joining it! ...

Nice one. And DinkyDev's idea doing something with the squad in a sequel
sounds interesting as well.

... A lot of money is invested in the game. Gaining experience with it will be great, but I can't just push things to the next project.

I knew you would say this.

If I finish the game, play antichamber, and see tons of ways VizionEck could have been better, then I'd be stuck between a rock and a hard place. Delaying it and rebuilding major parts of the game would be pretty much the only option.

No delay. Next game.

So your are telling me that your game depends on playing another one, do you?
Well, your game needs to have a solid ground no matter whether you have played
anitchamber or not -- as you will know all by yourself. However, from your
writing it seems like you have not much confidence in your work at the moment,
and also that you have some fears that VizionEck will suck against
antichamber? And given that you are now under pressure money-wise ("A lot of
money is invested in the game...") your are now starting to call on all
frequencies for help, i.e. calling antichamber. If that's the case, then it
might be possible that you have overpaced the project and my argument of
chewing your own stuff, gain experience, and improve next game would still be
a sound solution. If that's not the case, i.e. if your are all fine and things
hold like I've written in may previous post, then play antichamber. However,
also consider that playing antichamber may leave you depressed behind while
seeing how good the game really is contrary to your one. This can also be a
result of playing antichamber. What will you do in this case? All good? What I
want you to tell is the following; if you have a key-element for your very
game, build on it with your own words/ideas to prevent getting aliased as
antichamber. This doesn't preclude playing antichamber in gaining new ideas
improving your game. It literally depends on the experience, confidence, and
the creativity of yours.

 

[RicoTheMad]

What are people's thoughts on showing some of the monsters in a horror game prior to release?

I've been holding back on showing off creatures and bad guys because I think a big part of horror is discovering these things for the first time. Horror is all about not showing too much and keeping things for the imagination, but when it comes to a saturated medium like games, it's a little hard to tease such things in static media like screenshots.

With videos I have a little more freedom to "hint at" but not show the monster but still I feel like part of the fun of meeting these things for the first time is lost a little.

So how does everyone else deal with keeping surprises surprising? Do you just show things and hope the average player is still surprised, or do you hold back and only hint at them>

 

[Jobbs]

What are people's thoughts on showing some of the monsters in a horror game prior to release?

I've been holding back on showing off creatures and bad guys because I think a big part of horror is discovering these things for the first time. Horror is all about not showing too much and keeping things for the imagination, but when it comes to a saturated medium like games, it's a little hard to tease such things in static media like screenshots.

With videos I have a little more freedom to "hint at" but not show the monster but still I feel like part of the fun of meeting these things for the first time is lost a little.

So how does everyone else deal with keeping surprises surprising? Do you just show things and hope the average player is still surprised, or do you hold back and only hint at them>

Show it here first and let us decide what you should do.

 

[Blizzard]

@Blizzard
the new animations look good. The speed might be an issue. Not in understanding what's happening, but in believing that it could happen so fast. The inertia on such fast-moving machine parts would be insane, and hard to believe if nothing else moves at the same rate. Probably not something worth pondering or fixing, but if you want to find something wrong with the new animation then that's all I've got.

Thanks. I should probably hold off on any further timing adjustment until I actually get to the point where I can have a bunch of units on the field at the same time. I'm more concerned with responsive feel than realism given the turn-based environment. I also have a robot that punches things with a giant boxing glove, so I may have already lost out on realism.

Any other comments are also welcome, as always.

 

[chubigans]

I'm currently having one of those moments where I'm realizing making a different change will significantly improve everything about my game, while leading to at least an extra month's worth of work.

*slams head against desk* why didn't I realize this sooner gah I'm so stupid DAMN ugh gah son of a

Ok, I'm better now.

 

[Turfster]

*slams head against desk* why didn't I realize this sooner gah I'm so stupid DAMN ugh gah son of a

If it's any consolation, I usually get those moments precisely because I've been working on something for a while in a different way.

 

[Timeaisis]

I'm currently having one of those moments where I'm realizing making a different change will significantly improve everything about my game, while leading to at least an extra month's worth of work.

*slams head against desk* why didn't I realize this sooner gah I'm so stupid DAMN ugh gah son of a

Ok, I'm better now.

Yup. Happens to me all the time, too.

 

[Michael Armbrust]

I knew you would say this.

No delay. Next game.

So your are telling me that your game depends on playing another one, do you?
Well, your game needs to have a solid ground no matter whether you have played
anitchamber or not -- as you will know all by yourself. However, from your
writing it seems like you have not much confidence in your work at the moment,
and also that you have some fears that VizionEck will suck against
antichamber?

It doesn't depend on playing another game, but this major part of VizionEck could be
pretty similar. I have lots of confidence in my work being good, but I'm worried I'll
"re-discover" illusions from Antichamber. Essentially it'd be convergent evolution.

I'm worried VizionEck's illusions will be too similar to Antichambers, not that VizionEck
will suck against it. As a total package, they're extremely different. Antichamber is a
puzzle game that uses illusions as parts of the puzzles, while VizionEck is an FPS that
has illusions incorporated into most of the multiplayer levels. If it wasn't for the
somewhat similar art-styles, similar illusions wouldn't even be a problem.

And given that you are now under pressure money-wise ("A lot of
money is invested in the game...") your are now starting to call on all
frequencies for help, i.e. calling antichamber.

That's incorrect. "A lot of money is invested in the game" means I can't just use it as a
trial run. This is a big project and the primary goal of this project is to release a high
quality game. I'll gain experience, but it's not a learning tool for future endeavors.

There's very little pressure money-wise. It's not a field of daises with investors indifferent
to making a profit, but there's lots of confidence in the project. The debate of playing
antichamber or not is primarily to avoid potential future problems, not to alleviate current
problems.

However, also consider that playing antichamber may leave you depressed behind while
seeing how good the game really is contrary to your one. This can also be a
result of playing antichamber. What will you do in this case? All good? What I
want you to tell is the following; if you have a key-element for your very
game, build on it with your own words/ideas to prevent getting aliased as
antichamber. This doesn't preclude playing antichamber in gaining new ideas
improving your game. It literally depends on the experience, confidence, and
the creativity of yours.

I'm not one to get depressed, but I understand that feeling of seeing a great game and
knowing you can't compete.

And again, thanks for the advice.

 

[Feep]

It doesn't depend on playing another game, but this major part of VizionEck could be
pretty similar. I have lots of confidence in my work being good, but I'm worried I'll
"re-discover" illusions from Antichamber. Essentially it'd be convergent evolution.

I'm worried VizionEck's illusions will be too similar to Antichambers, not that VizionEck
will suck against it. As a total package, they're extremely different. Antichamber is a
puzzle game that uses illusions as parts of the puzzles, while VizionEck is an FPS that
has illusions incorporated into most of the multiplayer levels. If it wasn't for the
somewhat similar art-styles, similar illusions wouldn't even be a problem.



That's incorrect. "A lot of money is invested in the game" means I can't just use it as a
trial run. This is a big project and the primary goal of this project is to release a high
quality game. I'll gain experience, but it's not a learning tool for future endeavors.

There's very little pressure money-wise. It's not a field of daises with investors indifferent
to making a profit, but there's lots of confidence in the project. The debate of playing
antichamber or not is primarily to avoid potential future problems, not to alleviate current
problems.



I'm not one to get depressed, but I understand that feeling of seeing a great game and
knowing you can't compete.

And again, thanks for the advice.

Wait, we have two line splitters now? AHHHHHHHHH

Guys plz

plz

 

[Michael Armbrust]

Wait, we have two line splitters now? AHHHHHHHHH

Guys plz

plz

Haha I only did it to make my comments look nice next to missile's; aka keep the same formating.

Wasn't planning on doing it for regular posts.

You don't like it?

 

[Five]

Does anyone else here use TIGSource? I just posted a devlog there, but it's my first time doing so. link

Also, has anyone else experimented with procedurally-generated music? I've been playing around with abundant-music.com the last couple days. I download the MIDI, change the instruments, give them a proper sound font (Titanic, using SynthFont to render). The results seem okay so far. Not amazing, but possibly good enough for now unless I come into a lot of money to pay for a real musician.

 

[Jarekx]

Hey, it sorta looks like a game! An ugly game but I'm making progress!

 

[chubigans]

If it's any consolation, I usually get those moments precisely because I've been working on something for a while in a different way.

Yup. Happens to me all the time, too.

Well that's good to hear in a weird way. Sometimes I dunno if it's part of game development or if it's just me being dumb. Thanks y'all.

 

[Thaumaturgic Tomato]

I actually just posted about this on the last page: basically, less than fifty percent of hardware users at the moment have discrete graphics solutions that support megatextures. Because of the vast possible differences in memory usage between those systems supporting megatextures and those not, it becomes very risky using them...if you make a huge world and use megatextures, the amount of memory space you'd need to hold all of that on older machines becomes insane.

It's okay in OpenGL. It's way worse in DirectX, because you need DX11.2, which also requires Windows 8.1, an OS that gamers have not nor likely ever will take to.

Thank you for the very clear explanation. Basically, it causes much trouble if the game isn't on ultra powerful hardware; if a dev wants to only target the present very high end hardware gamer, or target a release date 5+ years from now when common hardware can handle their "powerful" game, they could go with mega textures.

But considering typical gaming hardware, choosing mega textures would cut out a large population of potential customers. Not cut out, per say, but at least give them crappy technical experience.

In a perfect world where devs don't have to care about optimizing or power limitations, mega textures could be thrown around like free candy. I guess it could be grouped together with PhysX affects in that "ya gotta be in the club."

I'll pass on experimenting with it then. Thanks again.

 

[Thaumaturgic Tomato]

Here's this weeks Screenshot Saturday pic for Rebirth. It's a foggy environment shot of a terrain that's been procedurally generated.

Just a reminder: Rebirth a procedural survival horror sandbox game influenced by games such as Silent Hill and the works of HP Lovecraft. A full feature list and more media/information can be found at our site.

http://www.deadmanwalkingstudios.com

Currently our plan is to make a small demo level with vertical slice of features (for the most part, not all of them) . We are generating the terrain and then hand-editing to make it a little more interesting. This is because we have a convention we need to present at next month, so I don't have enough time to finish the procedural system for terrain placement prior to that. Our hopes are to eventually have the game fully procedurally generated, though there's a good chunk of it done procedurally now.

I also finished out the building system this week which lets players place build able things using different systems. Certain things have attachment points which won't let you place items unless there's for example, 2 surfaces close together (like a barricade). Others allow you to place them on the ground, and others anywhere in mid-air even.

I'll probably do a bigger update on this system later though, maybe a video diary. I hope to expand the building system further in the future to provide players with a lot more options as well.

The foggy woods and fields are great environments. I'd play a whole game that took place in such a setting. The idea of creatures just beyond the fog.. Fog is just cool. The more foggy wild lands, the better. If you can somehow get rolling fog, as if the fog itself is sentient, that would be awesome.

 

[Feep]

Haha I only did it to make my comments look nice next to missile's; aka keep the same formating.

Wasn't planning on doing it for regular posts.

You don't like it?

Nonononono = (

Thank you for the very clear explanation. Basically, it causes much trouble if the game isn't on ultra powerful hardware; if a dev wants to only target the present very high end hardware gamer, or target a release date 5+ years from now when common hardware can handle their "powerful" game, they could go with mega textures.

But considering typical gaming hardware, choosing mega textures would cut out a large population of potential customers. Not cut out, per say, but at least give them crappy technical experience.

In a perfect world where devs don't have to care about optimizing or power limitations, mega textures could be thrown around like free candy. I guess it could be grouped together with PhysX affects in that "ya gotta be in the club."

I'll pass on experimenting with it then. Thanks again.

You're very welcome! = D

 

[Popstar]

This talk about hardware support makes me wonder if Valve is ever going to fix their little DX10/11 chart.

 

[missile]

It doesn't depend on playing another game, but this major part of VizionEck could be
pretty similar. I have lots of confidence in my work being good, but I'm worried I'll
"re-discover" illusions from Antichamber. Essentially it'd be convergent evolution.

I'm worried VizionEck's illusions will be too similar to Antichambers, not that VizionEck
will suck against it. As a total package, they're extremely different. Antichamber is a
puzzle game that uses illusions as parts of the puzzles, while VizionEck is an FPS that
has illusions incorporated into most of the multiplayer levels. If it wasn't for the
somewhat similar art-styles, similar illusions wouldn't even be a problem.



That's incorrect. "A lot of money is invested in the game" means I can't just use it as a
trial run. This is a big project and the primary goal of this project is to release a high
quality game. I'll gain experience, but it's not a learning tool for future endeavors.

There's very little pressure money-wise. It's not a field of daises with investors indifferent
to making a profit, but there's lots of confidence in the project. The debate of playing
antichamber or not is primarily to avoid potential future problems, not to alleviate current
problems.



I'm not one to get depressed, but I understand that feeling of seeing a great game and
knowing you can't compete.

And again, thanks for the advice.

Clears up your position quite nicely. And now that I can rule out most of the
things I wrote previously (was meant to stimulate you in writing more about
the situation, sorry ), and given the overall setting and state of VisionEck,
i.e. its position with respect to other games, and the situation you are in
with respect to this game, I would strongly recommend playing Antichamber
for the reason to see that both games are really different and to get sure
about that VisionEck won't likely produce "potential future problems".



Edit:

Haha I [...] did it to make my comments look nice next to missile's; aka keep the same formating. ...

First I thought; Well, that's a man to watch out for! :+

But then I thought ...

Wasn't planning on doing it for regular posts.

... meh! xD

You don't like it?

Oh sure, he likes it!!! :+

 

[Blizzard]

I fixed at least one design issue today, that of how to handle shared animation instances. Before, if I did something like having a bunch of tiles animating at the same time, and they were all using the same animation instance, the animation would play way too quickly since it would progress through its animation multiple times a frame.

Now, each animation instance locally stores the last game frame count that it was drawn at. If it is drawn more than once per frame, it does not update the animation state again until the next frame.

 

[Robin64]

So I'm going to port my first game, Heartfall, to iOS. It feels like an iPhone game to me. Very simple and about getting a score. I already made a good start last night, seems to be doable (just stumped on different resolutions at the moment) but I was wondering...

How do you decide what payment model to follow? Do I make it free with iAds? 69p/99c without iAds? Or maybe make it free with adds but an IAP of 69p/99c to remove them?

 

[missile]

mouse cursor
right -> increases sampling frequency (red dots)
left -> decreases sampling frequency
up -> increase signal frequency (sine function, blue)
down -> decreases signal frequency

Cool to see how the copies of the spectrum of the sampled signal move closer
together when decreasing the sampling frequency, or while increasing the
signal's frequency while keeping the sampling frequency more or less the same.
If the sampling frequency is less than 2x the signals frequency, the spectra
will overlap leading to aliasing.

Currently there is no reconstruction of the signal from its samples since I
have to deal with the spectrum a little more, hence aliasing artifacts aren't
visible at the moment.

 

[Flai]

Hey, I got approved as a WiiU developer!

IdontknowwhatI'mdoing.

 

[show me your skeleton]

IdontknowwhatI'mdoing.

perfect fit for nintendo then! ayooooo.

seriously though, congrats. if there's one thing nintendo are doing right it's the indie gaming aspect.

 

[Amirai]

iOS 8 will have webgl and apple's nitro JavaScript engine for apps! Great news for HTML 5 gaming and us construct 2 users!

 

[razu]

Wait, we have two line splitters now? AHHHHHHHHH

Guys plz

plz

Ah, I get this now! Yeah, what's with the self-formatting!!


In other news, thanks for the recent kind words people! Helps!

I now have a foundation for a dialog system. Hope to have a placeholder mission/task structure in soon!

 

[retroman]

Hey, it sorta looks like a game! An ugly game but I'm making progress!

I like it!

 

[RicoTheMad]

The foggy woods and fields are great environments. I'd play a whole game that took place in such a setting. The idea of creatures just beyond the fog.. Fog is just cool. The more foggy wild lands, the better. If you can somehow get rolling fog, as if the fog itself is sentient, that would be awesome.

Rolling fog... I can do that...

I like that idea

Oh and yeah fog plays into more than just aesthetics in the game. In fact, one of my design philosophies is to try and make things that usually are there just for visual purposes and give them gameplay ramifications.

For example: Day/Night cycle that actually drives the gameplay. Weather affecting your status (Not in yet, but let's say it rains and its cold, so you get sick. Or if its raining, you can't start a fire, that sort of thing). The fog is definitely supernatural and we're actually going to use it as a way to guide the player in a way. No invisible walls here, but fog with scary and deadly things in it? Yes.

We'll throw in some variation too, perhaps make a foggy area that makes you get lost in it and you have to use flares/guides to find your way out. I seriously do mean that we're trying to take what other games see as nice visual elements and really own them and make them part of gameplay.

This game is gameplay over anything else.