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Indie Game Development Discussion Thread | Of Being Professionally Poor
- Thread starter chubigans
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Michael Armbrust
Member
Wow looks great!!!
This is my first time seeing your game.
Do you have a website for it?
EDT: nevermind. Found it in your profile.
Looks great!
You've piqued my interest at getting a look at the dev kit now though ;_;
Nice.Exciting!
Hoping to be in this situation in the near future myself!
So, I'm pretty clueless how Nintendo handles indie stuff. How does one get involved?
I filled out the form here: https://wiiu-developers.nintendo.com/
I then got called, got sent a loaner devkit, and paid it off when the period expired. It was really painless.
Michael Armbrust
Member
It's a bit late in the day but nonetheless, screen shot Saturday!
This image also allows me to talk about the development thoughts behind VizionEck's spawn system.
VizionEck is at the core an FPS. When even huge AAA games have issues with spawn camping and bad spawn systems, I knew from the get go that at best VizionEck would have the same issues and at worse VizionEck would be fundamentally broken. Not the best options hahaha. So instead of attempting a traditional spawn system, I came up with what you see in the picture.
VizionEck has spawn rooms. These are pretty similar to what you find in most team verse team FPS games. The difference is that the spawn rooms in VizionEck are for all players, not just you and your team. This only works because the spawn points are hidden in plane sight.
Every cube in the spawn room is a spawn point. When a player spawns, they take over control of the cube. Thus until the player moves, enemies don't know they're there. This acts as a sort of cat and mouse mechanic and gives the spawning player a tactical advantage, thus pushing players out of the spawn room and into the rest of the level.
Let me know what you guys think, and if you have any doubts about the spawn system. I'm always open for feedback.
This image also allows me to talk about the development thoughts behind VizionEck's spawn system.
VizionEck is at the core an FPS. When even huge AAA games have issues with spawn camping and bad spawn systems, I knew from the get go that at best VizionEck would have the same issues and at worse VizionEck would be fundamentally broken. Not the best options hahaha. So instead of attempting a traditional spawn system, I came up with what you see in the picture.
VizionEck has spawn rooms. These are pretty similar to what you find in most team verse team FPS games. The difference is that the spawn rooms in VizionEck are for all players, not just you and your team. This only works because the spawn points are hidden in plane sight.
Every cube in the spawn room is a spawn point. When a player spawns, they take over control of the cube. Thus until the player moves, enemies don't know they're there. This acts as a sort of cat and mouse mechanic and gives the spawning player a tactical advantage, thus pushing players out of the spawn room and into the rest of the level.
Let me know what you guys think, and if you have any doubts about the spawn system. I'm always open for feedback.
SlipperySlope
Banned
Wow, looks great!
Michael Armbrust
Member
Yes but only because I'm in the fortunate position of having a decent day job, certainly not because I've released a game yet. XD
Heh heh heh...
Very cool! I gotta try Game Maker some time.
Oh man, that juggling is sick.
maniac-kun
Member
Does anyone know a good article about Nintendos game design process? Or Miyamotos?
2 articles i found:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/214472/diversity_communication_and_.php
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/190322/making_a_game_the_nintendo_way__.php
2 articles i found:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/214472/diversity_communication_and_.php
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/190322/making_a_game_the_nintendo_way__.php
Robin64
Member
Congrats!
[edit]
I enjoyed it! It was pretty simplistic, but it made it easy to get into. Gameplay was pretty standard, but the main thing I liked was the unique atmosphere of each level. Great work on that!
If you plan to work on it more in the future, I've got a few suggestions:
-Should make the in-game HUD look nicer. Just plain text floating there makes it look unfinished.
-You've got some potential for a story. Doesn't need to be anything mindblowing, but some context for why you're collecting hearts could make it more enjoyable.
I left a review on iTunes for you, hope it helps!
Wow, thanks for checking it out! Really appreciate that.
Agree on the HUD completely. During setup, it looked really minimalist on my PC screen but it hasn't translated too well to iOS screens and does, as you say, look unfinished. I can absolutely work on that next.
Funny you should mention story, the original scope was a bit bigger than it is right now. I had planned to have a basic world map which would allow for some of the map points to give a story update. Something horribly cute. Each world (eg desert world) would have many different stages within the theme, too, some easy and some downright hard (blocking secret paths). This is probably Heartfall 2 stuff though (along with character progression with exp and abilities) (oh and actual animations)
My main worry is that it starts out too easy and you have to go a few loops before the enemies are fast enough to be a threat. But on the other hand, that does allow anyone to submit a score, so I think I'll leave that.
Yes, the game was indeed inspired on Lemmings a game that I loved. Always wanted to develop a game inspired on it, but I didn't want to do a rip off, that would make no sense for me. We made 2 changes that completely changed the gameplay:
-The creatures walk on walls and ceilings. This alone totally changes gameplay
-In Lemmings, the player issues orders to the creatures: dig, build bridge, etc. In Snails, the creatures are dumb. They just know how to walk. The player interacts with the surroundings or drop objects on the floor instead of commanding the creatures
This is were I think the game fails: it's too challenging for the mobile market. It's a much more hard game then Lemmings was, because it's much more a puzzle game then Lemmings. I don't think is even possible for someone besides the developers to get all the gold medals or even pass some of the levels. In the free version we tried to soft things up and made simpler levels, introduced the "Hint" button and published youtube videos with all the gold medals solutions.
Well, the art was an issue. We are just two guys both of us professional programmers. We didn't had someone to do the art for us, so I did all those drawings. It's just regular simple art, and was the best I could do. The game I'm currently working on will have the same type of art, but the target audience is different. This time around I'm targeting the super-casual gamer.
The game has some level of polishment yes, and some details. We "lost" a tremendous
amount of time in those menus. We wanted the game to have a professional look on it.
Thanks, I hope it's good!I left a review for you as well.
I have published a devcast! It's totally unedited. What you see is what I did.
In this video I implement the state machine for showing and hiding my pause menu system. This is C# code, in Unity.
You probably want to watch in 1080p so you can read the code.
Hope someone finds this useful! If you do, please tweet a link/share somewhere. Would really help, thanks!
In this video I implement the state machine for showing and hiding my pause menu system. This is C# code, in Unity.
You probably want to watch in 1080p so you can read the code.
Hope someone finds this useful!
If you do, please tweet a link/share somewhere. Would really help, thanks! More_Badass
Member
Saw this on TIG earlier, looks great! Hope your Kickstarter does well
Buddha Beam
Banned
I'm finally joining your tanks, indie games GAF.
We've been working on a game we're calling Kitten Rocket for about 6 weeks now. This is my first time ever making a game that isn't a simple Flash game, so it's been a big learning experience so far. But everything is really coming together and I'm quite happy about it.
I think about 2 more weeks and it'll be more or less finished and ready to be released on the iOS, Play and Windows Phone app stores.
It's built in Unity and it's just an endless level style game. I'm keeping it simple so I can try to focus on polish and just making it fun to play with, like a toy. It's more of a score attack game, really.
Here are some screen shots:
I finally figured out that weird thing going on with the clouds a few days ago, so when the next build gets tested, that should be gone. I hope. haha.
I don't really expect this to light the world on fire or anything. Really, I'm just hoping to make my (tiny) budget back within 4-6 months, haha. I'm treating it as a learning experience as much as anything else. I'm not doing the code, but I've done all the graphics and art. My hope is to release this, then do a substantial update to it and add a bunch of features and such. Then release a second game in 2015. Before the end of 2015, I'm hoping to have enough experience and enough of a portfolio to start making games of Nintendo and Sony's consoles.
that's my long term plan, at least.
We've been working on a game we're calling Kitten Rocket for about 6 weeks now. This is my first time ever making a game that isn't a simple Flash game, so it's been a big learning experience so far. But everything is really coming together and I'm quite happy about it.
I think about 2 more weeks and it'll be more or less finished and ready to be released on the iOS, Play and Windows Phone app stores.
It's built in Unity and it's just an endless level style game. I'm keeping it simple so I can try to focus on polish and just making it fun to play with, like a toy. It's more of a score attack game, really.
Here are some screen shots:
I finally figured out that weird thing going on with the clouds a few days ago, so when the next build gets tested, that should be gone. I hope. haha.
I don't really expect this to light the world on fire or anything. Really, I'm just hoping to make my (tiny) budget back within 4-6 months, haha. I'm treating it as a learning experience as much as anything else. I'm not doing the code, but I've done all the graphics and art. My hope is to release this, then do a substantial update to it and add a bunch of features and such. Then release a second game in 2015. Before the end of 2015, I'm hoping to have enough experience and enough of a portfolio to start making games of Nintendo and Sony's consoles.
that's my long term plan, at least.
Nice work, man. What are you using to make the game?
Changed up one of the enemies to shoot out a BUNCH more smaller chunks, love it so far. Adds a new level of difficulty.
http://www.gfycat.com/CaringNeedyAmericanindianhorse#
http://www.gfycat.com/CaringNeedyAmericanindianhorse#
Thanks we're using game maker studio for our game.
Wow, I had a really horrible mistake in my game engine because I was using the same iterator in two different places and did not realize there was a conflict.
Specifically, I protect the iterator with a mutex using SFML's sf::Mutex system. Super safe, right? The stupid mistake I made was not noticing (or forgetting) that sf::Mutex is recursive with no error cases. If the same thread locks a mutex a second time, there is apparently no error and execution continues.
Unfortunately, it appears there is no interface to check whether an sf::Mutex is already locked, so I cannot even add recursion protection on my own without a potentially complex solution like subclassing sf::Mutex and trying to somehow add detection there.
Of course, the overall situation is that I had a design problem, but if I had a way to do recursion-protected mutexes I could have detected it earlier. The result was a very confusing situation where some, but not all, game resources were loading, and I never noticed it until I started stepping through the loading code and seeing very odd jumps happening.
Specifically, I protect the iterator with a mutex using SFML's sf::Mutex system. Super safe, right? The stupid mistake I made was not noticing (or forgetting) that sf::Mutex is recursive with no error cases. If the same thread locks a mutex a second time, there is apparently no error and execution continues.
Unfortunately, it appears there is no interface to check whether an sf::Mutex is already locked, so I cannot even add recursion protection on my own without a potentially complex solution like subclassing sf::Mutex and trying to somehow add detection there.
Of course, the overall situation is that I had a design problem, but if I had a way to do recursion-protected mutexes I could have detected it earlier. The result was a very confusing situation where some, but not all, game resources were loading, and I never noticed it until I started stepping through the loading code and seeing very odd jumps happening.
Here is the subclass I ended up writing to detect the recursive lock bug, so hopefully if I ever screw up logic in the future, I will immediately get an error and a crash to bring it to my attention:
http://pastebin.com/KkRhVQdN
Public domain, feel free to use it if you're using SFML and want it. Although, just a note, that IsLocked() method might theoretically not be thread-safe! I just deleted it in my own code since all I wanted was the recursion protection. It's a bit hard for me to imagine how a boolean value wouldn't be thread-safe to read it, but I'm still super paranoid about such things after working in the embedded world.
http://pastebin.com/KkRhVQdN
Public domain, feel free to use it if you're using SFML and want it. Although, just a note, that IsLocked() method might theoretically not be thread-safe! I just deleted it in my own code since all I wanted was the recursion protection. It's a bit hard for me to imagine how a boolean value wouldn't be thread-safe to read it, but I'm still super paranoid about such things after working in the embedded world.
I actually found it useful. I run in similar things while my UI gets moreI have published a devcast! It's totally unedited. What you see is what I did.
In this video I implement the state machine for showing and hiding my pause menu system. This is C# code, in Unity.
You probably want to watch in 1080p so you can read the code.
Hope someone finds this useful!
functional.
Cool stuff, dude!......
Are you developing your own engine? What technologies are you using?
Edit: just checked SFML, which I never had heard of. Seems to be something similar to SDL.
OccamsBlender
Member
Thank you for the link, good sir!
Yeah, I am very slowly making my own 2D game engine, and SFML and SDL are two semi-common C/C++ multiplatform (Windows/Mac/Linux) game libraries I am aware of. SDL is probably higher-profile and may be better (some people switch to it?), but I seem to recall disliking certain aspects so I ended up porting everything from SDL to SFML instead.
Regarding my earlier posts, I fortunately appear to have only had one recursive mutex conflict that anything was hitting, so fixing it was relatively minor.
I finally have a cleaner and easier to maintain approach for adding sprite animations into the engine, and I am working on adding palette-swapped unit sprites now.
C++ coding question! This seems really trivial, and yet I failed to even find any stackoverflow questions asking about it, so that I could verify whether this is standard-compliant:
Code:
enum
{
VALUE_A = 0,
VALUE_B = 1,
NUM_VALUES,
VALUE_DEFAULT = VALUE_A
};Specifically, does the standard say you can immediately use earlier enum values later in the very same enum definition? MSVC++ seems fine with it, but that is of course no indication of whether it's universal.
*edit* This page includes an example of exactly this behavior, but as a side note and does not seem to explicitly call attention to it: http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/enum
*edit again* Actually, two different C++ standard drafts ALSO give that behavior in examples but do not seem to specify it, so I'm just going to say that it's standard behavior. =P
For added peace of mind, I just tested this with clang (Xcode) and it works fine.
archangelmorph
Member
Yeah, I am very slowly making my own 2D game engine, and SFML and SDL are two semi-common C/C++ multiplatform (Windows/Mac/Linux) game libraries I am aware of. SDL is probably higher-profile and may be better (some people switch to it?), but I seem to recall disliking certain aspects so I ended up porting everything from SDL to SFML instead.
Regarding my earlier posts, I fortunately appear to have only had one recursive mutex conflict that anything was hitting, so fixing it was relatively minor.
I finally have a cleaner and easier to maintain approach for adding sprite animations into the engine, and I am working on adding palette-swapped unit sprites now.
C++ coding question! This seems really trivial, and yet I failed to even find any stackoverflow questions asking about it, so that I could verify whether this is standard-compliant:
Code:enum { VALUE_A = 0, VALUE_B = 1, NUM_VALUES, VALUE_DEFAULT = VALUE_A };
Specifically, does the standard say you can immediately use earlier enum values later in the very same enum definition? MSVC++ seems fine with it, but that is of course no indication of whether it's universal.
*edit* This page includes an example of exactly this behavior, but as a side note and does not seem to explicitly call attention to it: http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/enum
*edit again* Actually, two different C++ standard drafts ALSO give that behavior in examples but do not seem to specify it, so I'm just going to say that it's standard behavior. =P
Yes this is perfectly standards compliant behaviour. I've seen mature, production code that does this everywhere, I.e. Defining each successive enum value in terms of it's predecessor (don't do this btw).
Typically if you're worried about this kind of thing in future you can push your compiler warning level to max and also try a static analyser like lint (I believe the latest VS compiler & Clang have this built in) which should sufficiently tell you when you're doing something non-standard/dangerous.
I would generally advocate getting that setup as part of your compilation process in general since it will save you a ton of pain upfront with early detection of potential bugs and issues.
Yeah, I am very slowly making my own 2D game engine, and SFML and SDL are two semi-common C/C++ multiplatform (Windows/Mac/Linux) game libraries I am aware of. SDL is probably higher-profile and may be better (some people switch to it?), but I seem to recall disliking certain aspects so I ended up porting everything from SDL to SFML instead.
Regarding my earlier posts, I fortunately appear to have only had one recursive mutex conflict that anything was hitting, so fixing it was relatively minor.
I finally have a cleaner and easier to maintain approach for adding sprite animations into the engine, and I am working on adding palette-swapped unit sprites now.
C++ coding question! This seems really trivial, and yet I failed to even find any stackoverflow questions asking about it, so that I could verify whether this is standard-compliant:
Code:enum { VALUE_A = 0, VALUE_B = 1, NUM_VALUES, VALUE_DEFAULT = VALUE_A };
Specifically, does the standard say you can immediately use earlier enum values later in the very same enum definition? MSVC++ seems fine with it, but that is of course no indication of whether it's universal.
*edit* This page includes an example of exactly this behavior, but as a side note and does not seem to explicitly call attention to it: http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/enum
*edit again* Actually, two different C++ standard drafts ALSO give that behavior in examples but do not seem to specify it, so I'm just going to say that it's standard behavior. =P
I have this in my code, and it compiles in GCC, VC and Xcode, I think it's safe.
I'm developing my own 2D engine (actually it should support 3D too, at least I'm developing with that in mind) I'm using SDL and it seems to work just fine. The main reason I choose SDL was because it now supports iOS and Android and this are my main targets.
Is your engine in an advanced development stage? I've been working on mine for a few months now and I have a game almost ready to publish. If you want to change information about architecture that would be great. I really enjoy game engine development...
Some further progress...
A window's client area can now handle quite some cool backgrounds! Why not
some retro ones?
UI development, RSA / NG
Very nice effect
Well, I posted this screen before but I figured now I'm somewhat ready to try and go into detail about what I'm working on.
What I'm trying to create is a simple turn based combat system. The basic idea is each side takes turn with the person at the front of their line performing an action and then moving to the back of the line.During that action phase, you can either move one person wherever you want in the line, or perform a skill.
Right now, I've got the basics of the system working. Status effects and buffs are in, all skills targets a specific position (or positions) in a line and status effects aren't really any different. Some may linger with a certain character once applied, or persist at a position in the line creating a Buff/Debuff/Status effect zone for the person who entered it.
I've also got it set up to allow speeding up the line to move through two people each turn or reverse the flow so the line is going backwards.
What I'm hoping to create is a lot of encounters that can feel kind of like puzzles with multiple solutions. I've thought up a couple and maybe I'll get those in the prototype I've got running currently and let some people try it out if they want.
Adam Scott Aukerman
Member
Really late reply, but I've taken some time to actually act on this advice. I've only run through one tutorial at the moment, but Unity certainly seems to be a very good fit for my needs. So thanks for that!
I've been working with Pixelnest's 2D game tutorial, and it's been really helpful in introducing me to Unity's basic ins and outs. Can anyone else recommend some particularly good 2D game tutorials? I know there's some more on the Unity website, but I'm yet to check anything out there.
Cheers.
Dynamite Shikoku
Congratulations, you really deserve it!
FMOD Studio is great. And it's actually quite easy to use with their Unity plugin. I can see that I'll be able to do a lot of good sfx and music stuff.
Thx a lot! Will get a lot cooler with some 3d stuff rendered in theVery nice effect
background. :+
Upon tinkering around with the windows I got an idea to use them for visually
evaluating different image processing filters solely on parts of the screen/
image of interest. Should come in handy for the video/crt stuff^^
I both love and hate tweaking stuff like flocking algorithms. It can take hours to get it right.
This looks very cool, what's your final vision like?
RelentlessRolento
Member
nice! Playstation Mobile may be an option as well already since you are using Unity, so think about that since it's free and already easy to port over.
on that note I finally got to mess with Untiy on my Vita and it runs a bit odd but I just threw a quick test scene in there to see how it runs. I need to copy over some older projects and see how they run on the vita.
Does anyone has an easy way to instantly setup joystick support for the character controller (I'm using Ultimate FPS Controller from the asset store as well)? I am not a coder and been using Playmaker for most of my stuff to work.
EDIT: Seriously considering picking up Spine. I do wish it was cheaper for the features I want, and I have yet to try it out, but my primary reasons I am interested in it is because of GameMaker support and the UI being a bit nicer than Spriter. I still have yet to check out the trial but I'll check it today. If I buy the $60 version is there an option to upgrade to the $250 version without having to pay $60 then $250?
Some further progress...
A window's client area can now handle quite some cool backgrounds! Why not
some retro ones?
UI development, RSA / NG
Looks cool. Also, I remember you posting some gif of a cube rotating on what could be a Game Boy or TI screen with dithered shading. If you don't mind me asking, what reading materials can I study to do these kinds of downsampling?
Thanks! When it's done, there will be flocks of enemies and single enemies that will react to the player and the player's music in different ways.
The player can aim in any direction and his weapon will shoot and hit enemies according to the music he is listening. I've spent a lot of time researching and making a music analyzer for unity and now It's time to see if I can actually use it in a game.
I was playing with Heathen Occluded shaders in Unity today that allow to see objects as ghost images behind obstacles and this was very relevant
Could be very cool in an adventure game too, especially if you could highlight certain objects or reveal invisible parts inside the effect
Dynamite Shikoku
Congratulations, you really deserve it!
Like Beat Hazard?
I'm currently working on a design for a simple inventory with a simple shop, turns out it is not simple to design it:
Will have to work with mouse and gamepad. It is still a work in progress, critique welcome.
The visuals look a bit too busy to me. I'm not really sure where I'm supposed to point my attention to because of all the information displayed at once. Maybe try a system where the game either puts focus on the shop or the customisation (by hiding/dimming the unused one), and you can toggle between them?
Hope that helps.
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