Support NeoGAF

[JNT]

Sounds interesting. Which languages? So you want to go the voxel way, i.e.
represent geometry with voxels? Neat! Mind telling more about the engine and
stuff? Since you are interested in dithering and 3d. Did you know that you can
dither in 3d as well?

I mainly code in C, C++, and C#. The engine I'm working on now is not very interesting. I just decided to make a reusable engine that trivially iterates over a list of objects and calls update functions, resolves collisions, and such. It doesn't sound like much but last ludum dare I noticed that I spend waaay too much time just writing an engine, so now I have a solid, customizable foundation to stand on in preparation for the next one.

I've done some voxel research before and came out with a voxel renderer that uses discrete raytracing to render voxels by traversing a grid using a DDA algorithm. I also wrote a ray surfer which was a very interesting way of rendering voxels that I had never actually come in contact with before on an implementation level. I left my research before I could learn how to traverse SVOs or implement the rendering on the GPU. That's hopefully what I will be spending my time on next.

As for dithering, I figured it could be done in N dimensions. Could be a great way to compress the tree...

 

[missile]

Ahaha yeah, that's programmer art for you.

Everyone has his/her signature.

I mainly code in C, C++, and C#. The engine I'm working on now is not very interesting. I just decided to make a reusable engine that trivially iterates over a list of objects and calls update functions, resolves collisions, and such. It doesn't sound like much but last ludum dare I noticed that I spend waaay too much time just writing an engine ...

That's quite an old song.

... I've done some voxel research before and came out with a voxel renderer that uses discrete raytracing to render voxels by traversing a grid using a DDA algorithm. I also wrote a ray surfer which was a very interesting way of rendering voxels that I had never actually come in contact with before on an implementation level. I left my research before I could learn how to traverse SVOs or implement the rendering on the GPU. That's hopefully what I will be spending my time on next. ...

So you have a game on the blackboard using all of this?

Am after a volume rendere for rendering densities like smoke etc., but I
haven't the time considering it jet. Meh.

... As for dithering, I figured it could be done in N dimensions. Could be a great way to compress the tree...

Could be a great way to visualise volumetric data fast and in an artistic
way. I'm wondering whether such techniques were ever used in a game.

 

[RawNuts]

Formula D skills!

 

[cbox]

Please keep this in the game hahahaha

It would be amazing to have it spilling boxes of burger ingredients all over the road

 

[missile]

News about the button! xD Clicks are in!

Hey guys, what's the preferred mode when pressing down a button while moving
the mouse outside of it; should the button be released automatically upon
leaving it or should it kept be pressed until the mouse button is released
independent of where the mouse is currently located? I somehow like the latter
case which is shown in the animation below. Anyone?

The dithering of the background image (Chopper Mike / VAMflax) is due to
gifcam. The dithering within the window is my one.

 

[missile]

Are psychedelic hoverings welcome? xD

 

[Jobbs]

can anyone with some insight describe the virtues of spine 2d vs. spriter? on the surface they seem to do very similar things, but spine 2d costs dramatically more ($250) than spriter ($25).

anyone know the deets?

 

[Five]

can anyone with some insight describe the virtues of spine 2d vs. spriter? on the surface they seem to do very similar things, but spine 2d costs dramatically more ($250) than spriter ($25).

anyone know the deets?

From when we were talking about it earlier:

They appear pretty similar from a cursory examination. I only took notice of Spine when support for it was added to GameMaker a few months ago, and I don't know that much about Spriter. A Google search brings up this Reddit thread in which one of the Spine devs posts a few thoughts, so maybe that will help!

Painting a long and complicated story with very broad strokes, Spine basically exists because Spriter was kickstarted a long time ago, and people got very frustrated waiting for progress with it so rolled their own solution, but then decided on some different implementations.

In usage terms, Spriter exports traditional spritesheets, so lots of different assets potentially becomes a resource issue (as, say, a recoloured sprite using the same animset is treated like a new asset) where Spine can export JSON strings that lets you 'hot swap' assets at runtime with supported engines / frameworks. I believe Spine can retain your assets as vectors where Spriter rasterises them for use too.

If you're using Unity for 2D work, you can get very similar effects as Spine or Spriter natively (and free) with the Sprites and Bones plugin which also works with Unitys built in animation blending system

 

[Popstar]

News about the button! xD Clicks are in!

Hey guys, what's the preferred mode when pressing down a button while moving
the mouse outside of it; should the button be released automatically upon
leaving it or should it kept be pressed until the mouse button is released
independent of where the mouse is currently located? I somehow like the latter
case which is shown in the animation below. Anyone?

The standard button behaviour is (hope I haven't missed anything):

• move cursor over without mouse button pressed -> show widget over state
• move cursor off without mouse button pressed -> return widget to normal state
• press mouse button while cursor over -> show widget down state
• release mouse button while cursor over and widget in down state -> pressed!
• move cursor off while widget in down state -> show widget normal state
• move cursor over while mouse button pressed -> show widget normal state
• move cursor over while mouse button pressed when button hasn't been released since previously being over and putting widget in down state -> show widget down state

can anyone with some insight describe the virtues of spine 2d vs. spriter? on the surface they seem to do very similar things, but spine 2d costs dramatically more ($250) than spriter ($25).

anyone know the deets?

I took a look at this last year and decided to go with Spine and have no regrets. I can't even find a list of features Spriter currently supports. The feature list on their website is a "Projected feature list for Spriter 1.0". Spine is way ahead in features you can actually use.

 

[Ashodin]

Moar psyscrolrrrrrr

 

[GulAtiCa]

Success! Finally have a concrete launch date for my first Wii U game, ZaciSa's Last Stand (Tower Defense in Space). July 3rd for $2.99.

I'm very excited to finally release it!

 

[Ashodin]

Success! Finally have a concrete launch date for my first Wii U game, ZaciSa's Last Stand (Tower Defense in Space). July 3rd for $2.99.

I'm very excited to finally release it!

Hooray! Welcome to the release party!

 

[Jobbs]

Success! Finally have a concrete launch date for my first Wii U game, ZaciSa's Last Stand (Tower Defense in Space). July 3rd for $2.99.

I'm very excited to finally release it!

very nice

was it easy getting this lined up? are you able to determine your own release date entirely?

 

[Ashodin]

very nice

was it easy getting this lined up? are you able to determine your own release date entirely?

Uh I'm thinking Nintendo tries to pattern their releases after you're done submitting, so I believe they get to choose when to release your game to fit their schedule. Not entirely certain. I am certain you can set your own price, however.

edit:

 

[razu]

News about the button! xD Clicks are in!

Hey guys, what's the preferred mode when pressing down a button while moving
the mouse outside of it; should the button be released automatically upon
leaving it or should it kept be pressed until the mouse button is released
independent of where the mouse is currently located? I somehow like the latter
case which is shown in the animation below. Anyone?

The dithering of the background image (Chopper Mike / VAMflax) is due to
gifcam. The dithering within the window is my one.

Cool!

But.. that's Super Something Squad™!!

 

[Blizzard]

I finally have things set up to automatically do palette swaps based on the blue units. Of course, as a result the other colors are probably rather ugly. I am still not sure what common background tiles will look back, though I am leaning towards dark colors as shown in the screenshot.

I welcome any input on this, especially if there are any glaring problems with some of the swaps, or problems with color blindness. I figure that without customizing colors, going blue/red/yellow/black is my best bet. I think two of the biggest current problems are that the left two unit types lack sufficient contrast for the black team, and the yellow units look faded because of the tire color being changed to something non-black.

I do not want to spend much more time on this right now since the sooner I get actual gameplay working, the better. However, relatively low-impact changes to make things more visually appealing are always nice.

 

[vivin]

Long time posting, and even longer time posting some new work D:
We have been heads down working a heck of a lot these past few quiet months making some good progress

A screeny for screenshot saturday

Still WIP and lots to add in the near future!

I'm also very impressed by some of the work being pumped into this thread, its a beautiful thing to follow

 

[HellBlazer]

Success! Finally have a concrete launch date for my first Wii U game, ZaciSa's Last Stand (Tower Defense in Space). July 3rd for $2.99.

I'm very excited to finally release it!

Sweet, congrats. How long have you been working on it?

EDIT:

Long time posting, and even longer time posting some new work D:
We have been heads down working a heck of a lot these past few quiet months making some good progress

A screeny for screenshot saturday

Still WIP and lots to add in the near future!

I'm also very impressed by some of the work being pumped into this thread, its a beautiful thing to follow

Man, that looks really good. Nice art style.

 

[missile]

The standard button behaviour is (hope I haven't missed anything):

• move cursor over without mouse button pressed -> show widget over state
• move cursor off without mouse button pressed -> return widget to normal state
• press mouse button while cursor over -> show widget down state
• release mouse button while cursor over and widget in down state -> pressed!
• move cursor off while widget in down state -> show widget normal state
• move cursor over while mouse button pressed -> show widget normal state
• move cursor over while mouse button pressed when button hasn't been released since previously being over and putting widget in down state -> show widget down state

Thanx a lot! Will implement those as well! Well, Windows 7 (at least on my
machine) turns the button in "over state" if you have pressed the button down
while moving the cursor off the button. This is similar to my approach,
whereas I kept the button in down state. For the sake of completeness, I've
implemented Windows 7 behavior as well;

I think the meaning doing so is to relate the pressed mouse button with the
button in question, instead of releasing the button while having the mouse
still in a pressed state without any indication. Don't know for sure.

Whatever configuration, a user of my GUI can configure it at will. My
implementation of the mouse's behavior with respect to a window is fully
dynamic. Basically, any window, button, etc. can have a different
configuration next to each other which can also be modified at runtime. This
should satisfy the needs of almost everyone. xD

Cool!

But.. that's Super Something Squad™!!

Got it! Is SSS an official shorthand by now?

 

[missile]

Success! Finally have a concrete launch date for my first Wii U game, ZaciSa's Last Stand (Tower Defense in Space). July 3rd for $2.99.

I'm very excited to finally release it!

Congrats!


If I will release yet another game, it will be my first one! xD

 

[Five]

Long time posting, and even longer time posting some new work D:
We have been heads down working a heck of a lot these past few quiet months making some good progress

A screeny for screenshot saturday

Still WIP and lots to add in the near future!

I'm also very impressed by some of the work being pumped into this thread, its a beautiful thing to follow

Hey, I remember you posting some animations from this a few months back. I'm glad to see it's coming along well! Hopefully it won't be such a long time between updates next time!

 

[Roquentin]

Long time posting, and even longer time posting some new work D:
We have been heads down working a heck of a lot these past few quiet months making some good progress

A screeny for screenshot saturday

Still WIP and lots to add in the near future!

I'm also very impressed by some of the work being pumped into this thread, its a beautiful thing to follow

Looks interesting. What kind of game is it?

 

[asa]

A screeny for screenshot saturday

Looks beautiful! I just had to search your earlier messages to find out what is this magnificent thing, Ashen! Judging by your website infos, it looks like you have pretty amazing team behind it too! I love the atmosphere in the concepts visible on the site, very shadow of the colossus/last guardian/dark souls type of a thing!

Roquentin, check their website: http://www.ashen-game.com/

 

[Phandy]

Long time posting, and even longer time posting some new work D:
We have been heads down working a heck of a lot these past few quiet months making some good progress

A screeny for screenshot saturday

Still WIP and lots to add in the near future!

I'm also very impressed by some of the work being pumped into this thread, its a beautiful thing to follow

Ahh... you are the guys Tom Scholes is working with, I never put 2 and 2 together when I heard him mention Ashen. Awesome, always been a huge fan of Tom's work. Amazing stuff.
You guys are gonna make something special I can tell, can't wait to see more.

 

[Roquentin]

Looks beautiful! I just had to search your earlier messages to find out what is this magnificent thing, Ashen! Judging by your website infos, it looks like you have pretty amazing team behind it too! I love the atmosphere in the concepts visible on the site, very shadow of the colossus/last guardian/dark souls type of a thing!

Roquentin, check their website: http://www.ashen-game.com/

Thanks!

 

[vivin]

Cheers for the kind words everyone

We have been a bit quiet lately as there are only 2 of us full time on Ashen and we have been tackling challenges such as website/blog updates and other exciting activities such as recording homemade mocap with some kinects The other guys in the team have been doing a fine job helping out part time when they can.

Nice to see another fan of Tom Scholes, he has long been my favorite concept artist, and its a real honor to work with him on this project(also slightly terrifying as his work is so amazing) If anyone is interested in more concept work, here is his personal site http://www.artofscholes.com/

More updates should be flowing out soon

 

[GulAtiCa]

very nice

was it easy getting this lined up? are you able to determine your own release date entirely?

Uh I'm thinking Nintendo tries to pattern their releases after you're done submitting, so I believe they get to choose when to release your game to fit their schedule. Not entirely certain. I am certain you can set your own price, however.

Actually, I can set my own price and release date. I choose July 3rd.

Sweet, congrats. How long have you been working on it?

About 5 months or so. I started on the game in early Sept and essentially finished January. Got a few game breaking bugs that delayed me a good bit each time I tried to submit it. haha. Even with that it might have been released a month ago or so, I also got very busy with my own work and got sick, so that didn't help either.

But I'm excited to finally release it.

 

[Jobbs]

Actually, I can set my own price and release date. I choose July 3rd.


About 5 months or so. I started on the game in early Sept and essentially finished January. Got a few game breaking bugs that delayed me a good bit each time I tried to submit it. haha. Even with that it might have been released a month ago or so, I also got very busy with my own work and got sick, so that didn't help either.

But I'm excited to finally release it.

Does Nintendo have any kind of approval/QA process whereby they verify that your game isn't totally broken, or is it incumbent on you alone to see that it's not broken (aka, potentially some games on the eshop are broken)?

 

[GulAtiCa]

Does Nintendo have any kind of approval/QA process whereby they verify that your game isn't totally broken, or is it incumbent on you alone to see that it's not broken (aka, potentially some games on the eshop are broken)?

They have a lotcheck process. It's not so much a bug testing thing but more of a guidance/compliance thing. Making sure things are done correctly in terms of naming things, procedures (like if Wiimote full mode not being used, to be turned into min mode (there are like 2 or 3 states for Wiimotes to help conserve battery)).

They do however do a pretty big job going over the game, so they test is a lot. And if any game breaking bugs occur, they will require you to fix it (though except for when it's very rare or very inconsistent).

Basically lotcheck is to make sure the game works as intended and doesn't crash.

 

[Limanima]

I just drew this logo. What do you guys think?

There's "shovelware" in the name because I intend to do simple mobile games.
Although they will have some degree of quality in them.
Letters are misaligned and there's pixelation in the shovel, but it's just a draft.

 

[Jobbs]

I just drew this logo. What do you guys think?

There's "shovelware" in the name because I intend to do simple mobile games.
Although they will have some degree of quality in them.
Letters are misaligned and there's pixelation in the shovel, but it's just a draft.

I don't like the concept. You're degrading yourself and putting negative associations on yourself by your own branding, plus it limits where you can go in the future. My 2 cents.

 

[Popstar]

Thanx a lot! Will implement those as well! Well, Windows 7 (at least on my
machine) turns the button in "over state" if you have pressed the button down
while moving the cursor off the button. This is similar to my approach,
whereas I kept the button in down state. For the sake of completeness, I've
implemented Windows 7 behavior as well;

I think the meaning doing so is to relate the pressed mouse button with the
button in question, instead of releasing the button while having the mouse
still in a pressed state without any indication. Don't know for sure.

Oops. You're right. That was my mistake. Leaving it in the over state in that situation is indeed the thing to do.

 

[Limanima]

I don't like the concept. You're degrading yourself and putting negative associations on yourself by your own branding, plus it limits where you can go in the future. My 2 cents.

One of the reasons I decided to asked about the logo was that. If adding "shovelware" to it would be a bad idea. My line of thinking was: "mobile market is filled with shovelware, this is the shovelware market. Why not add shovelware to the name? 90% of the folks that play mobile games don't even know what that is anyway". But maybe I'm wrong...

Edit: maybe I'll just remove the word but leave the shovel?

 

[V_Arnold]

One of the reasons I decided to asked about the logo was that. If adding "shovelware" to it would be a bad idea. My line of thinking was: "mobile market is filled with shovelware, this is the shovelware market. Why not add shovelware to the name? 90% of the folks that play mobile games don't even know what that is anyway". But maybe I'm wrong...

Edit: maybe I'll just remove the word but leave the shovel?

Sorry to be blunt, but I find that mindset very off-putting. If you truly believe the bolded, the question naturally arises: why would you want to develop in the first place? There are potential satira and/or paradox in there, but that would severely limit the market.

So my point being: if you only want to go for that 10 percent, just make a good game. Which would mean you are not making "shovelware". And if you want that 90 percent, then your logo becomes a parody of yourself, if you know what I mean : )

 

[JNT]

That's quite an old song.

Yeah. I'm one of those programmers that have trouble solving a problem using a tailored solution that takes very little time implementing. Instead I find myself writing general code that does what I want along with a bunch of other things that I may or may not have any use for and that takes a lot of time to implement.

So you have a game on the blackboard using all of this?

Am after a volume rendere for rendering densities like smoke etc., but I
haven't the time considering it jet. Meh.

I never actually put any of that stuff inside a game. There are too many facets of optimization that I have yet to fully understand, and without them they would be useless for games. If you are interested in rendering voxels you can check out my source code at GitHub.

Aside from optimizing the renderer you would need to extend the code to handle transparency, but that should not be a problem. For smoke to look good you would also need to filter the results appropriately.

 

[Phandy]

I just drew this logo. What do you guys think?

There's "shovelware" in the name because I intend to do simple mobile games.
Although they will have some degree of quality in them.
Letters are misaligned and there's pixelation in the shovel, but it's just a draft.

I agree that the concept might be wierd, but if you do intend to do it and be sort of ironic/joking about it, you can't be that sublte. Most people won't see it as ironic and just think its bad/low quality. You have to shove the 'low quality-ness' in peoples face. Make the letters really mis-aligned and have the pixelation be much larger and far more obvious. You need to let people know that your joking, especially in something like a logo.

 

[BlastProcessing]

Success! Finally have a concrete launch date for my first Wii U game, ZaciSa's Last Stand (Tower Defense in Space). July 3rd for $2.99.

I'm very excited to finally release it!

Congrats! I've always loved the look of your game.

 

[Ashodin]

psyscrolr mockup of Stage 1 - The Badgreens by my artist

 

[Vrolik]

Can't remember if I ever posted this here or not, but...

I have a 'game' I'm making where you basically walk around and explore a surreal world based on the drawings I get from other various people (mostly children). So something in the vein of Proteus. It's based off of a simulated evolution thing I do, so all the plants and animals are related to each in various ways, and you can generally tell just by looking at them.

I like to ambush peoples streams on Twitch and coerce them into streaming it live so I can gauge their reaction. There's a video here if you want to see it in action http://www.twitch.tv/o_dingo77/c/4275962

I have a lot more detail about the project as a whole here http://evolutionanimation.wordpress.com/what-is-this/

and download links here http://evolutionanimation.wordpress.com/2014/05/15/even-more-evolution-game/

This is primarily built for the Oculus Rift so that's mostly why its kind of slow and all you can do is look around (plus I don't know what I'm doing at all!). There are Rift download links there as well.

Let me know what you think!

 

[SpookyAction]

Hi all!

Long time GAFer here (rarely post, but been reading for years - maybe a decade or more?). I saw this post come up and thought it would be a good place to share my new iOS game - a math-based puzzle game called Totalled.

Here's how it works - you're presented with a random grid of numbers and operators (plus, minus, multiply, and divide) and given a target. Your task is to find a path through the grid, starting with any number, that will evaluate to the target. Easy mode requires exactly three tiles (i.e. 3x3 for a target of 9), medium requires 5 tiles (3x5+3 for a target of 18), and hard requires 7 tiles (2x2x5+6 for a target of 26). Order of operations isn't considered.

Currently there is a normal mode where you can solve puzzles at your leisure and a timed mode where a countdown of varying length (based on the difficulty) signals the time until a new puzzle is displayed. Both modes have a "solved" counter.

There are also four themes you can choose from to give the game board different looks. Here are some screenshots:

Hope you'll check it out. It's out now and free in the iOS App Store for iPhone/iPod Touch (an iAd banner is displayed beneath the puzzle board).

Link to App Store Page: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/totalled/id874180611?mt=8

I'd love any feedback, positive or negative. Also interested in any of your experiences with iAd (I'll also be searching this epic thread for that). I've made a whopping 64 cents so far, mostly from the wife of a coworker who is addicted and plays most every night.

Tech details for anyone interested: this was made in Objective C with Apple's Sprite Kit. Quite a departure from my day job working in C# and VB.NET. I did the programming and a friend did the artwork.

 

[Whitebison]

Hi guys, I have a question...I'm developing a 2.5d metroidvania with the core of the story based on a popular sci-fi book.

Do you think there would be any copyright issues? Only the core of the story is based on the book, all the characters, dialogue,environments etc... are completely different.

 

[show me your skeleton]

psyscrolr mockup of Stage 1 - The Badgreens by my artist

yesssssssss.

 

[Ashodin]

yesssssssss.

GET DAT MUSIC GOIN

 

[JulianImp]

So, I've finally decide to get started doing stuff with my Bamboo tablet and Gimp, so I've been messing with it for the last two days:

Both of these took me slightly over three hours each, but I'm hoping I'll be able to speed up the process as I get used to drawing. My short-term goal is being able to make quick sketches for concept art and color keys, although I'd love to do full illustrations someday.

Criticism, tutorial links and any kind of tips will be greatly appreciated.

 

[Limanima]

How about this?
The shovel is still there, but it's not explicit why. And the reason is: I hate all that mobile shovelware.

 

[Five]

How about this?
The shovel is still there, but it's not explicit why. And the reason is: I hate all that mobile shovelware.

Why would you want to do something you hate? I think you're only *ahem* digging yourself in a hole here.

 

[Ashodin]

I could stare at this GIF all day

 

[Limanima]

Why would you want to do something you hate? I think you're only *ahem* digging yourself in a hole here.

Well, this doesn't mean I want to do shovelware. Simple games can be good games.
There's just some sarcasm in the logo.

 

[Five]

Well, this doesn't mean I want to do shovelware.

This part of your first post makes it sound like you do:

There's "shovelware" in the name because I intend to do simple mobile games.

Simple games can be good games.

This is true. I can't stand most mobile games, but there are a few (Super Hexagon, Sudoku, Threes!) that I keep coming back to. I just don't think it's a good idea to suggest that you're aiming for the crap heap, which is what putting a shovel on your logo tells me.

 

[desu]

A screeny for screenshot saturday

That looks really neat, awesome!

Success! Finally have a concrete launch date for my first Wii U game, ZaciSa's Last Stand (Tower Defense in Space). July 3rd for $2.99.

I'm very excited to finally release it!

Late, but congrats .