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[lashman]

Are you using shaderforge on the PBR stuff?
The mateirals are definitely looking like different surfaces, nice job! Since its metal, go crazy on the coloured specular highlights that should help make it really pop

nope, not Shaderforge ... I'm using the Alloy shaders
and yeah - I was thinking about adding some colour variation to some of the metal pieces you can't really see it in this screenshot - but the sides are more of a copper-colour

and thanks - glad you like it so far

 

[Pehesse]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong. But I'm pretty sure this is about how much vram you are currently using.

https://www.scirra.com/blog/112/remember-not-to-waste-your-memory

Thanks for confirming, that's pretty much what I figured/observed!

 

[Geminosity]

Wow, I'm kind of amazed at how good a lot of the things posted here are :3

I guess I better introduce myself then...

I'm attempting to work on my first commercial indie game, which I'm calling "Glyph & SIgil". It's just a simple first person puzzler I'm making in Unity to get myself started

The general jist is that you're taking on the role of 'Erina', who's working her way up the heirarchy of the 'glyph keeper' guild. This involves donning a medieval-style radiation suit and stepping into the large thrumming Glyph Cauldrons that magically power most of the world's devices, in order to repair and maintain them. The act of doing so is done by moving magical sigils around on the inner core's walls until they join to create powered 'glyphs' which get the cauldron back up and running properly.

I wanted to keep this easy to play so the entire thing is done from a fixed point (no WASD or the like) and entirely played via the mouse :3
I've already finished the actual core game and levels, so I'm just chugging on through the meta-stuff like menus, story, modelling proper environments to replace my current placeholder one and some items of polish.

Here's some quick screenies to give you a rough idea of where I'm at:

The main headache for me is how to tell the story. I'm currently working on adding a sort of 'prologue' to give the player a brief introduction to the world; giving it all some context. That said I've been dabbling with a dialogue system and while I try to make everything easily skippable I'm always slightly worried about interrupting the flow or boring less story-oriented players too much XD

Any thoughts on what you see or my puzzle story dilemma are welcome :3

 

[shacklesmcgee]

Hey Guys, I posted in the Buy/Sell thread, but I also thought maybe someone in here might be interested; I'm trying to sell an Oculus Rift Dk1, with the case, lenses , cables, and papers. I'm looking for $300, as that's what I payed for it and it seems to be going for around $400 on ebay. If anyone was looking for a DK1, PM me!

 

[wondermega]

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10152488935589780

Hit the link to see the 1st gameplay look at Blast Rover, an fairly mechanic heavy action-puzzler by myself (art & concept), w fellow gaffers MTMBStudios (coding & design) and Sadsic (tunes). Yes there's a fair amount of stand-in art still in this vid. Almost done!

Inspiration - Super Meat Boy meets Moon Patrol - with just a smidgen of Blaster Master.

 

[Blizzard]

Quoted images, click to enlarge.

Original from 3 days ago:

Current:

All units now have consistent palettes, I switched to using a green team, and I -think- this is okay to at least move forwards again. Next up I'm hoping to get a spawn user interface working so you can pick which unit you want.

*edit* And I just realized I forgot to fix the spawn tile colors, one more thing to do!

 

[RawNuts]

I can't see anything but Optimus Prime.

 

[Geminosity]

Quoted images, click to enlarge.

Original from 3 days ago:


Current:


All units now have consistent palettes, I switched to using a green team, and I -think- this is okay to at least move forwards again. Next up I'm hoping to get a spawn user interface working so you can pick which unit you want.

*edit* And I just realized I forgot to fix the spawn tile colors, one more thing to do!

Well, the green definitely stands out more against the dark background you've got in those pics :3

I don't know if your pallette allows it, but I'd be tempted to darken the highlight colour you're using for the blue and red vehicles a bit, as it seems almost a bit too pale when constrasted against the base colour

 

[MrNyarlathotep]

The main headache for me is how to tell the story. I'm currently working on adding a sort of 'prologue' to give the player a brief introduction to the world; giving it all some context. That said I've been dabbling with a dialogue system and while I try to make everything easily skippable I'm always slightly worried about interrupting the flow or boring less story-oriented players too much XD

If you're willing to bit the bullet and do V/O narrative, you can just have it play in the background while the Player plays - think Bastion or Defence Grid (although this approach only really works well with monologuing)

...wait... don't I know you IRL?

Quoted images, click to enlarge.

I meant to mention this before, but didn't - every time I see your spider-legged unit (the far right one) I get the feeling that the perspective is a bit off on it;

quick and dirty mockup to show what i would expect using that forced sideways perspective the AW games go with

 

[Geminosity]

If you're willing to bit the bullet and do V/O narrative, you can just have it play in the background while the Player plays - think Bastion or Defence Grid (although this approach only really works well with monologuing)

...wait... don't I know you IRL?

Unless you're a different MrNyarlathotep from the one I know, I'd imagine you do XD
Hope ye olde work place is treating you well :3

VO could be tricky, especially as the race you play doesn't speak (well, not in a way humans would understand) I was thinking of putting in the 'tones' they make while doing dialogue though as audio always helps bring some life to these things
That said, I guess I could easily come up with an excuse for a human narrator if needs be. It's something for me to think about, if nothing else :3

Due to it being a puzzle game I don't want to distract them while they're actually in the levels so I'm aiming on using the between-levels interface as the vehicle for getting the world/plot across for now. Well, that and simply I've noticed while observing people playtesting other folk's games that players are more likely to skip stuff during gameplay than in the resting periods between

 

[Bit-Bit]

Ahaha that is an awesome idea

Ruins yo

I love this art.

 

[Blizzard]

Well, the green definitely stands out more against the dark background you've got in those pics :3

I don't know if your pallette allows it, but I'd be tempted to darken the highlight colour you're using for the blue and red vehicles a bit, as it seems almost a bit too pale when constrasted against the base colour

I meant to mention this before, but didn't - every time I see your spider-legged unit (the far right one) I get the feeling that the perspective is a bit off on it;

quick and dirty mockup to show what i would expect using that forced sideways perspective the AW games go with

Thanks for the replies! You're probably right about the sideways view. It was difficult for me to make something that even looked vaguely like legs. The mockup still looks odd to me, like the top legs are TOO far down, but maybe I can find a happy medium.

 

[harrypmgaga]

Anyone know good places to find level designers (points for multiplayer experience?) and artists (both 3d and 2d)? I've gone through some forums but it's a pita to find anyone.

 

[Feep]

DANGEROUS ENEMY ALERT

 

[show me your skeleton]

DANGEROUS ENEMY ALERT

dangerous? all he does is spin around!

Spoiler

looks awesome!

 

[Dascu]

Is anyone here arachnophobic?

 

[HellBlazer]

it seems to be going for around $400 on ebay

That's... good to know. $_$

Now considering selling my DK1 to get a DK2.

 

[BlastProcessing]

Wow, I'm kind of amazed at how good a lot of the things posted here are :3

I guess I better introduce myself then...

I'm attempting to work on my first commercial indie game, which I'm calling "Glyph & SIgil". It's just a simple first person puzzler I'm making in Unity to get myself started

The general jist is that you're taking on the role of 'Erina', who's working her way up the heirarchy of the 'glyph keeper' guild. This involves donning a medieval-style radiation suit and stepping into the large thrumming Glyph Cauldrons that magically power most of the world's devices, in order to repair and maintain them. The act of doing so is done by moving magical sigils around on the inner core's walls until they join to create powered 'glyphs' which get the cauldron back up and running properly.

I wanted to keep this easy to play so the entire thing is done from a fixed point (no WASD or the like) and entirely played via the mouse :3
I've already finished the actual core game and levels, so I'm just chugging on through the meta-stuff like menus, story, modelling proper environments to replace my current placeholder one and some items of polish.

Here's some quick screenies to give you a rough idea of where I'm at:



The main headache for me is how to tell the story. I'm currently working on adding a sort of 'prologue' to give the player a brief introduction to the world; giving it all some context. That said I've been dabbling with a dialogue system and while I try to make everything easily skippable I'm always slightly worried about interrupting the flow or boring less story-oriented players too much XD

Any thoughts on what you see or my puzzle story dilemma are welcome :3

First I really like the vibe of your world and your screenshots look great.

I would say the first thing you need to decide is whether or not the story stuff is compelling enough to have highlighted in the game in the first place. Take a hard look at the story stuff you have and ask yourself if including it will increase the end product. What do you want the story to accomplish? How do you want your game to make players feel?

The setting is unique, i like the idea of combining the medieval with scifi things like radiation. Do you just need to set up that premise or do you feel that there is a story worth telling in this world?

One way to get people to engage more with the story, especially in a puzzle game, might be to make the player feel like they are earning glimpses of the story through gameplay rather than making them feel that it is being foisted on them.

WIthout knowing more about your game, I if I were in your position I think I would put most of the plot, beyond the very basic premise building, behind a set of challenges separate from the main line of the game. Maybe behind some kind of metapuzzle, separate puzzles, or extra conditions placed on the primary puzzles. The people most drawn to a puzzle game should respond better to a story that is also a mystery to be solved.

I know my mind is already racing to try to figure out why this world is the way it is? Is the the future or the past? Are these people isolated, are they known in the community? Who controls them and what are they really doing? What is the origin of the glyphs? It could be really cool.

For the world/premise building I agree that Bastion is a good example. I would also point to Portal and Left 4 Dead and the way they use environment to tell a story in a passive way. Your screenshots look like they are going to train the player to pay attention to details. So don't be afraid to use that expectation to place intriguing story tidbits in your game. se those oddities to motivate the player into the story.

This has gotten a bit long, but the last thing I will say is: If you can look at your story objectively and feel that its quality, then don't be afraid to confidently place it in the game. Allowing the player to easily skip it can signal to the player that you don't think the story is worth their time. If you think it adds value to the game don't go halfway with it.

 

[Geminosity]

Is anyone here arachnophobic?

A little; looks like the sort of situation I'd strongly consider legging it from than getting hacky-slashy in XD

First I really like the vibe of your world and your screenshots look great.

I would say the first thing you need to decide is whether or not the story stuff is compelling enough to have highlighted in the game in the first place. Take a hard look at the story stuff you have and ask yourself if including it will increase the end product. What do you want the story to accomplish? How do you want your game to make players feel?

The setting is unique, i like the idea of combining the medieval with scifi things like radiation. Do you just need to set up that premise or do you feel that there is a story worth telling in this world?

One way to get people to engage more with the story, especially in a puzzle game, might be to make the player feel like they are earning glimpses of the story through gameplay rather than making them feel that it is being foisted on them.

WIthout knowing more about your game, I if I were in your position I think I would put most of the plot, beyond the very basic premise building, behind a set of challenges separate from the main line of the game. Maybe behind some kind of metapuzzle, separate puzzles, or extra conditions placed on the primary puzzles. The people most drawn to a puzzle game should respond better to a story that is also a mystery to be solved.

I know my mind is already racing to try to figure out why this world is the way it is? Is the the future or the past? Are these people isolated, are they known in the community? Who controls them and what are they really doing? What is the origin of the glyphs? It could be really cool.

For the world/premise building I agree that Bastion is a good example. I would also point to Portal and Left 4 Dead and the way they use environment to tell a story in a passive way. Your screenshots look like they are going to train the player to pay attention to details. So don't be afraid to use that expectation to place intriguing story tidbits in your game. se those oddities to motivate the player into the story.

This has gotten a bit long, but the last thing I will say is: If you can look at your story objectively and feel that its quality, then don't be afraid to confidently place it in the game. Allowing the player to easily skip it can signal to the player that you don't think the story is worth their time. If you think it adds value to the game don't go halfway with it.

Ooh! Thanks for your considered feedback :3

I agree with the idea of drip-feeding teasing bits of story as I found the simple bites of text in these robotic hearts of mine to be quite tantalising to the point where I was almost frustrated at having to deal with the puzzle to find out what would be said next XD
Inspired by that, I initially had the 'levels' in a book, with each 'task' having a diary entry from the player character (excuse the nonsense pictures and somewhat random writing, it was mostly placeholder ):

Unfortunately, in user testing people weren't turning the pages (often re-doing the same puzzles again by accident even with some almost excruitatingly in your face UI stuff trying to stop it ) and I felt it was a bit limiting in regards to giving a real sense of progress and general navigation. I could've perhaps redesigned the book around that but in the end I found the scroll idea I finally went with appealed to me more :3

As for the game world, a.k.a. the environment the players see: It'll mostly be relegated to the task scroll where you select what your'e doing and the cauldron interiors but I was hoping to use the decor and stuff to at least give a sense of place with some detailing and symbols :3
Again, I'm currently dabbling with 'dialogue' which I have this EXTREMELY PLACEHOLDERY screenie of XD (unlike this, the final result will bear no resemblance to zero punctuation )

The general idea being that through these little skits, I could maybe get across the key characters, dialogue and even drop some hints about the world. I was somewhat inspired by things like Grim Grimoire in that respect, as I rather enjoyed how the story aspect was handled in that game.
In hindsight maybe the diary entries would still be a better thing to fall back on though as they afford more mystery and require a lot less content to be generated, though it does limit my ability to get across things like the characters themselves (which I believe are usually best shown through their interactions with each other :3 )

Ultimately, I'm super confident in my world building abilities, so the issue really comes down to whether I can tell a story from said world effectively or not.
The skipping stuff is less a lack of conviction and more just because I know some players would skip almost any story no matter how good it is and I often end up testing this game in silly environments like a pub where people aren't at their most receptive to reading XD
I'll do more 'closed environment' testing soon though, especially when checking the story stuff :3

Edit: I had a quick peek to see what you're working on Blast and WOW, that trailer you posted a few days back is awesome! I love the arts and crafts look you guys are going for and the soundtrack gives me weird nostalgia pangs for David Bowie's Labyrinth film XD Seriously though, I'm still somewhat in the dark as far as the trailer goes as to what the actual game is but that's some slick presentation

 

[BigWeather]

Heya! Hopefully this is a pretty simple problem, but I need a nudge in the right direction. Basically I'm converting some XNA code to Unity and running into a bit of a problem with matrix transforms.

In XNA:

this.mxT = Matrix.Identity;
this.mxT *= Matrix.CreateTranslation(-v3CameraPos); // v3CameraPos = {X:15470 Y:2400 Z:0}
this.mxT *= Matrix.CreateScale(v3TileSize / v3WorldCoordinatesPerTile); // v3TileSize = {X:87 Y:75 Z:1}, v3WorldCoordinatesPerTile = {X:261 Y:225 Z:1}

In Unity:

this.mxT = UnityEngine.Matrix4x4.identity;
this.mxT *= UnityEngine.Matrix4x4.TRS(-v3CameraPos, UnityEngine.Quaternion.identity, UnityEngine.Vector3.one);
this.mxT *= UnityEngine.Matrix4x4.TRS(UnityEngine.Vector3.zero, UnityEngine.Quaternion.identity, new UnityEngine.Vector3(v3TileSize.x / v3WorldCoordinatesPerTile.x, v3TileSize.y / v3WorldCoordinatesPerTile.y, v3TileSize.z / v3WorldCoordinatesPerTile.z));

I'd expect this.mxT to be the same in XNA and Unity (well, XNA is row major, Unity column major, but other than that the numbers should be the same, right?). However, I get the following:

XNA:

{ {M11:0.3333333 M12:0 M13:0 M14:0} {M21:0 M22:0.3333333 M23:0 M24:0} {M31:0 M32:0 M33:1 M34:0} {M41:-5156.667 M42:-800 M43:0 M44:1} }

Unity:

{
0.33333	0.00000	0.00000	-15470.00000
0.00000	0.33333	0.00000	-2400.00000
0.00000	0.00000	1.00000	0.00000
0.00000	0.00000	0.00000	1.00000
}

Note XNA's M41 of -5156.667 vs. Unity's M14 of -15470.00000 and XNA's M42 of -800 vs. Unity's M24 of -2400.00000.

It is as if the scalar affected the translation in XNA but not in Unity. I thought the above code was equivalent between the two, is it a problem with me not doing the translation and scale all in one TRS or something?

Any help is appreciated, thanks!

 

[Popstar]

I'm guessing the concatenation order needs to be changed also.

Try this.mxT = UnityEngine.Matrix4x4.TRS * this.mxT instead.

 

[ZeroCartin]

Is anyone here arachnophobic?

Love the look so far Any devblog?

EDIT: Are there rules here to post any videos or links to indie games youve made yourself?

 

[BlastProcessing]

A little; looks like the sort of situation I'd strongly consider legging it from than getting hacky-slashy in XD



Ooh! Thanks for your considered feedback :3

I agree with the idea of drip-feeding teasing bits of story as I found the simple bites of text in these robotic hearts of mine to be quite tantalising to the point where I was almost frustrated at having to deal with the puzzle to find out what would be said next XD
Inspired by that, I initially had the 'levels' in a book, with each 'task' having a diary entry from the player character (excuse the nonsense pictures and somewhat random writing, it was mostly placeholder ):

Unfortunately, in user testing people weren't turning the pages (often re-doing the same puzzles again by accident even with some almost excruitatingly in your face UI stuff trying to stop it ) and I felt it was a bit limiting in regards to giving a real sense of progress and general navigation. I could've perhaps redesigned the book around that but in the end I found the scroll idea I finally went with appealed to me more :3

As for the game world, a.k.a. the environment the players see: It'll mostly be relegated to the task scroll where you select what your'e doing and the cauldron interiors but I was hoping to use the decor and stuff to at least give a sense of place with some detailing and symbols :3
Again, I'm currently dabbling with 'dialogue' which I have this EXTREMELY PLACEHOLDERY screenie of XD (unlike this, the final result will bear no resemblance to zero punctuation )

The general idea being that through these little skits, I could maybe get across the key characters, dialogue and even drop some hints about the world. I was somewhat inspired by things like Grim Grimoire in that respect, as I rather enjoyed how the story aspect was handled in that game.
In hindsight maybe the diary entries would still be a better thing to fall back on though as they afford more mystery and require a lot less content to be generated, though it does limit my ability to get across things like the characters themselves (which I believe are usually best shown through their interactions with each other :3 )

Ultimately, I'm super confident in my world building abilities, so the issue really comes down to whether I can tell a story from said world effectively or not.
The skipping stuff is less a lack of conviction and more just because I know some players would skip almost any story no matter how good it is and I often end up testing this game in silly environments like a pub where people aren't at their most receptive to reading XD
I'll do more 'closed environment' testing soon though, especially when checking the story stuff :3

Edit: I had a quick peek to see what you're working on Blast and WOW, that trailer you posted a few days back is awesome! I love the arts and crafts look you guys are going for and the soundtrack gives me weird nostalgia pangs for David Bowie's Labyrinth film XD Seriously though, I'm still somewhat in the dark as far as the trailer goes as to what the actual game is but that's some slick presentation

Thanks for the kind words about Ephemerid. My partner, who wrote all the music, will be pumped to hear you invoke Labyrinth. He sings those songs all the damn time while we are working. The game is a musical adventure game that takes elements from rhythm games and adventure games to make a sort of interactive album. It will be out on iPad this month!

Another game that has great world building and storytelling that might be a good example is Little Inferno. I bet it shows up on the steam sale for super cheap. It works from the same sort of limited camera angles that your game does and actually uses that fact to the benefit of the story. It's really clever from a storytelling perspective. Even the descriptions of the items tell you so much about the world. I beat it in under 2 hours and I would say it's definitely worth checking out.

I am really excited to see your game come together.

 

[BigWeather]

I'm guessing the concatenation order needs to be changed also.

Try this.mxT = UnityEngine.Matrix4x4.TRS * this.mxT instead.

Yup, this was precisely it! Row v. column major means having to reverse the operations. Thanks!

 

[Michael Armbrust]

EDIT: Are there rules here to post any videos or links to indie games youve made yourself?

Well the standard site rules apply, but there aren't any others that I know of.

If you've made a game then share it!

 

[BigWeather]

Is it me or is Unity just... flaky?

I set compiler settings (#defines, basically) and they don't always take. MonoDevelop fails to launch lots. And now, suddenly, I can't attach to Unity from MonoDevelop -- I got some message about Unity not being able to move something and ever since I can't debug. Very frustrating.

I do value Unity's ability to deploy to every platform under the sun, but coming from Visual Studio this is really jarring.

 

[wondermega]

Love the look so far Any devblog?

EDIT: Are there rules here to post any videos or links to indie games youve made yourself?

I think that is sorta the point, right?

In this thread you can share your game project, get tech help from others, support each others indie game releases, and so on. This is meant to be a topic for everyone involved with indie game making, whether you're first starting or a veteran of game makin'. Here's a few helpful tools to make game making that much easier!

 

[Michael Armbrust]

Is it me or is Unity just... flaky?

I set compiler settings (#defines, basically) and they don't always take. MonoDevelop fails to launch lots. And now, suddenly, I can't attach to Unity from MonoDevelop -- I got some message about Unity not being able to move something and ever since I can't debug. Very frustrating.

I do value Unity's ability to deploy to every platform under the sun, but coming from Visual Studio this is really jarring.

Unity works perfectly for me.

I have 5 different versions of it installed and none of them have the issues you're describing.


My latest PC geared install is pretty old though. Maybe the newest release has a bug?

 

[fuzzy_slippers]

Unity can be a little goofy sometimes. I'm always telling people if you run into some weird bug to try restarting the editor or try a standalone build before tearing your hair out.

That's sounding like a monodevelop problem though, why not use visual studio?

Also in Windows the unable to move file bit sounds like a file permission issue.

 

[Blizzard]

I meant to mention this before, but didn't - every time I see your spider-legged unit (the far right one) I get the feeling that the perspective is a bit off on it;

quick and dirty mockup to show what i would expect using that forced sideways perspective the AW games go with

Hopefully the last version for now:

Unless anyone notices something that bugs them a great deal about this, I think I'm okay with this look for now. I'm never getting to gameplay, am I?

 

[anonymous_abc]

Hopefully the last version for now:

Unless anyone notices something that bugs them a great deal about this, I think I'm okay with this look for now. I'm never getting to gameplay, am I?

Looks great, I would say though that the spider legs looks slightly weird because only their tips are bobbing, any chance you can give the entire leg a bit of stretch?

 

[Blizzard]

Looks great, I would say though that the spider legs looks slightly weird because only their tips are bobbing, any chance you can give the entire leg a bit of stretch?

I've tried poking at a bunch of different pixels, but it's difficult at this resolution with only a one-pixel drop to make the legs stretch without looking weird. I might be able to improve something though, thanks.

 

[Adam Scott Aukerman]

Does anyone know of any good 2D platformer tutorials for Unity? The two I've done so far have both been for scrolling shooters!

Unity can be a little goofy sometimes. I'm always telling people if you run into some weird bug to try restarting the editor or try a standalone build before tearing your hair out.

That's sounding like a monodevelop problem though, why not use visual studio?

Also in Windows the unable to move file bit sounds like a file permission issue.

Funnily enough, when I installed Monodevelop on a Mac I ran into a permission issue, preventing it from booting. I had to go to the Monodevelop app folder and give my user account full read/write access to the contents.

 

[timetokill]

Since it's my first foray into pixel art, I just had to post my first running sprite here too:

 

[oxrock]

Since it's my first foray into pixel art, I just had to post my first running sprite here too:

Might be my imagination, but your running man appears to have a tiny penis when his right leg is forward. Not sure if that's intentional or not but I'll be damned if it wasn't the first thing I noticed.

 

[Geminosity]

Thanks for the kind words about Ephemerid. My partner, who wrote all the music, will be pumped to hear you invoke Labyrinth. He sings those songs all the damn time while we are working. The game is a musical adventure game that takes elements from rhythm games and adventure games to make a sort of interactive album. It will be out on iPad this month!

Another game that has great world building and storytelling that might be a good example is Little Inferno. I bet it shows up on the steam sale for super cheap. It works from the same sort of limited camera angles that your game does and actually uses that fact to the benefit of the story. It's really clever from a storytelling perspective. Even the descriptions of the items tell you so much about the world. I beat it in under 2 hours and I would say it's definitely worth checking out.

I am really excited to see your game come together.

Thanks! I just had to comment on the trailer as it's incredibly well done. I had a peek later at the other vids on the channel and the quality through out is great, I hope your game does well with all the passion you've clearly put into it :3

I'll definitely check out Little Inferno then as I'm always curious to see new ways of getting story across

I'm looking forward to completing Glyph & Sigil, though I'm hoping it won't take me too much longer as I already have people asking when I'm getting onto some of my next games (I've let people play some prototypes as early user testing) and... well... gotta make money eventually XD

Hopefully the last version for now:

Unless anyone notices something that bugs them a great deal about this, I think I'm okay with this look for now. I'm never getting to gameplay, am I?

It's probably good enough to just get in there and get your game going. You can always come back to them later if need be and you never know, once you get the mechanics all done up you might need to change a whole bunch of graphical stuff anyhoo :3

 

[Timeaisis]

Wow, I'm kind of amazed at how good a lot of the things posted here are :3

I guess I better introduce myself then...

I'm attempting to work on my first commercial indie game, which I'm calling "Glyph & SIgil". It's just a simple first person puzzler I'm making in Unity to get myself started

The general jist is that you're taking on the role of 'Erina', who's working her way up the heirarchy of the 'glyph keeper' guild. This involves donning a medieval-style radiation suit and stepping into the large thrumming Glyph Cauldrons that magically power most of the world's devices, in order to repair and maintain them. The act of doing so is done by moving magical sigils around on the inner core's walls until they join to create powered 'glyphs' which get the cauldron back up and running properly.

I wanted to keep this easy to play so the entire thing is done from a fixed point (no WASD or the like) and entirely played via the mouse :3
I've already finished the actual core game and levels, so I'm just chugging on through the meta-stuff like menus, story, modelling proper environments to replace my current placeholder one and some items of polish.

Here's some quick screenies to give you a rough idea of where I'm at:



The main headache for me is how to tell the story. I'm currently working on adding a sort of 'prologue' to give the player a brief introduction to the world; giving it all some context. That said I've been dabbling with a dialogue system and while I try to make everything easily skippable I'm always slightly worried about interrupting the flow or boring less story-oriented players too much XD

Any thoughts on what you see or my puzzle story dilemma are welcome :3

Love this concept. As far as story goes, there's three important considerations:
1) How much story do you want to tell?
2) How important is it to convey it to the player?
3) Where can you fit it without interrupting gameplay?

Unlike a more story-driven game, I completely understand your desire to not interrupt the flow of a player's puzzle solving, which I completely get. "Cutscenes" after puzzles work, but you'd probably want to keep them short enough to not make the player annoyed, or let them easily skip through them. The problem here, of course, is most people playing a puzzle game would want to skip through any post-puzzle cutscenes anyway and get right into the meat and potatoes.

If you can give out your story in small but digestible pieces, I think that would work the best. I don't really know the "flow" of your game right now (Puzzle -> story -> puzzle? or is there an exploration element in first person?), but the style seems to be very in-world UI like with glyphs and scrolls and the like (see what I did there ).

A cool way to present some story would be to:
1) Frontload an intro cutscene or exposition before starting the game
2) Give out a message or two that would decode at the end of some of the puzzles.

Just some thoughts. I really dig your "first person view" puzzle style along with your backstory. Keep up the good work!

Is it me or is Unity just... flaky?

I set compiler settings (#defines, basically) and they don't always take. MonoDevelop fails to launch lots. And now, suddenly, I can't attach to Unity from MonoDevelop -- I got some message about Unity not being able to move something and ever since I can't debug. Very frustrating.

I do value Unity's ability to deploy to every platform under the sun, but coming from Visual Studio this is really jarring.

MonoDevelop is flaky, not Unity. After switching to Visual Studio I have yet to have a "cannot attach" or "could not move file" since. For the record, you can develop with VS with Unity by changing your environment, however you lose the debugger. I went ahead and invested in UnityVS which is a plug-in for VS2012 to be able to link with Unity and act as a debugger just like MonoDevelop could. It's great and I couldn't recommend it more.

 

[Loginius]

Welcome to the thread. With pics like those, I hope you visit often!

Thank you for the warm welcome

Our first lvl is now completely done, now its time to finish work on the other 7. Only two more weeks until our deadline...

 

[JulianImp]

Hopefully the last version for now:

Unless anyone notices something that bugs them a great deal about this, I think I'm okay with this look for now. I'm never getting to gameplay, am I?

Perhaps you could look into doing sub-pixel animations rather than just moving whole pixels up and down, since that'd make the bouncing animation smoother. Still, I think you should probably move on to other stuff that needs to be built for now, and iterate on the character sprites once you have a working version of everything in place.

 

[harrypmgaga]

Concept time for one of our locations...

Sadly level design is a huge bottleneck for us. So we have all these assets and no LD to guide us for the time being.

 

[Geminosity]

Love this concept. As far as story goes, there's three important considerations:
1) How much story do you want to tell?
2) How important is it to convey it to the player?
3) Where can you fit it without interrupting gameplay?

Unlike a more story-driven game, I completely understand your desire to not interrupt the flow of a player's puzzle solving, which I completely get. "Cutscenes" after puzzles work, but you'd probably want to keep them short enough to not make the player annoyed, or let them easily skip through them. The problem here, of course, is most people playing a puzzle game would want to skip through any post-puzzle cutscenes anyway and get right into the meat and potatoes.

If you can give out your story in small but digestible pieces, I think that would work the best. I don't really know the "flow" of your game right now (Puzzle -> story -> puzzle? or is there an exploration element in first person?), but the style seems to be very in-world UI like with glyphs and scrolls and the like (see what I did there ).

A cool way to present some story would be to:
1) Frontload an intro cutscene or exposition before starting the game
2) Give out a message or two that would decode at the end of some of the puzzles.

Just some thoughts. I really dig your "first person view" puzzle style along with your backstory. Keep up the good work!

Thanks!
Yeah, small and digestable is definitely my aim if possible :3

The current flow is the task scroll -> level -> task scroll.
There's no exploration as such, but the task scroll isn't entirely linear: it's kind of broken into 'licences' or 'tiers' and you can do the levels in each tier in whatever order you like and even skip one or two.

There are two 'types' of level so I'm thinking of the structure differing around these two and basically combining the story methods
so for a 'task' which is like a normal job you do to earn ebbstone, it'd possibly be:
task scroll -> task briefing (single page with some quick description) -> level -> task scroll.
quick and to the point basically

The other type are 'trails' (previously called exams) which you have to unlock first by buying them with the ebbstone you got from the tasks.
These act as sort of bottlenecks as you can't access the next 'tier' until they're complete and they introduce a new mechanic as well as giving Erina a new 'licence' or a rank-up if you like :3
Because these are a bit more pivotal to the game I was thinking of having dialogue bookending these (almost always Erina talking to her Guild Warden, Atele, who is the one who finds her work and assesses her performance ). So for these the flow would be:
task scroll -> opening dialogue -> trial level -> end dialogue -> task scroll.

Dialogues can be completely skipped with a simple press of the ESC button if people aren't interested though and they're purely story (no vital mechanics explanations/tutorials in them )

I'm also definitely thinking of front-loading a little bit of the world via a sort of 'prologue' that only plays when you start a new game.

One idea I was tempted by was maybe having a side 'library' of short stories you can unlock as you progress, somewhat like the books you can find in skyrim. They'd be something completely optional that you could ignore if you're not into story stuffs. Only issue is that'd be a small mountain of work I suspect as I'd have to write them in a few different styles to give a sense of variation XD

Of course, this is all subject to change based on how well the story stuff in genral does when i sit people down in front of them... it might end up requiring more mystery/subtlety which means less dialogues and maybe even no prologue, or if the dialogue turn out to get more engagement out of peeps then I might shift the tasks to those too. Ultimately it's just a case of whatever seems to work once exposed to the harsh fumblings of a player :3

It's a big world so there's plenty to tell, but I'm trying not to tell too much more than the player needs. if it ever comes down to it I could always just make more games based in said universe if I felt I wanted to get more of it out there

Thank you for the warm welcome

Our first lvl is now completely done, now its time to finish work on the other 7. Only two more weeks until our deadline...

Nice! I find a lot of forests in games look a bit too sparse or 'clean' but the pic there has some nice detail and organic sort of 'messiness' to make it believable

Concept time for one of our locations...

Sadly level design is a huge bottleneck for us. So we have all these assets and no LD to guide us for the time being.

Ooh! Nice Shame about the level design issues though.
Are those green vapours going to be hazardous?

 

[harrypmgaga]

Ooh! Nice Shame about the level design issues though.
Are those green vapours going to be hazardous?

That vapour is tied into the lore for this particular section of the planet, and we'll be doing some stuff with it in the area itself. The real interesting thing will be tying the open world and level design together in a seamless way that tells that story implicitly rather than explicitly.

 

[Ashodin]

Aaaand this is where you start off

 

[show me your skeleton]

Aaaand this is where you start off

okay i am going full fez on this soundtrack.

 

[SlipperySlope]

MonoDevelop is flaky, not Unity. After switching to Visual Studio I have yet to have a "cannot attach" or "could not move file" since. For the record, you can develop with VS with Unity by changing your environment, however you lose the debugger. I went ahead and invested in UnityVS which is a plug-in for VS2012 to be able to link with Unity and act as a debugger just like MonoDevelop could. It's great and I couldn't recommend it more.

MonoDevelop freaking suuuuucks. It's been over 10 years since I've seen an IDE that... simple. They couldn't even get the text editor portion right. It screws up on the draw calls frequently... in the text editor!... craziness. I didn't know about that Visual Studio plugin for debugging. Thanks! Definitely moving to VS.

 

[Jobbs]

Aaaand this is where you start off

Looks good, man. I'm always interested in a good platformer. Can you tell a bit more about what the game is?

 

[BiGBoSSMk23]

Just popping in here to say that I just watched Indie Game: The Movie and... wow. Having just recently read this I'm left thinking about the defiling nature of big budget AAA devlopment approach to games and the detrimental effects of fanboyism on both the creators and their creative process. Also, when did it stop being about putting the essence of a single (or group of) creative person(s) into an meaningful, crazy, flawed piece of interactive art, and it became about empty shells of cookie cutter gameplay formulas rehashed by overworked, uninspired and yet talented individuals under the glossy, sterile vision of conglomerates like EA/Activ/Ubisoft?

I find it so tragic that someone like Hideo Kojima has been trying to get a message across since his supposedly last Metal Gear (MGS2) and Konami's greed and the fickle fanbase have kept him chained to the AAA developer throne with the soul of an indie dev.

Anyway, just my two cents on all this. There's a lot of ungratefulness and under-appreciation going around in this industry. But I'm glad that indies are in a period of ascendancy.

 

[timetokill]

Might be my imagination, but your running man appears to have a tiny penis when his right leg is forward. Not sure if that's intentional or not but I'll be damned if it wasn't the first thing I noticed.

Whoa now, seriously?


Why do you gotta insult his penis size?

 

[Ashodin]

Looks good, man. I'm always interested in a good platformer. Can you tell a bit more about what the game is?

psyscrolr is a psychic Norse-inspired sidescroller.

As The Scrolr, you are outcast from your village after discovering your psychic abilities. A mysterious voice came with the psychic abilities, urging the Scrolr to find the world's destiny.

The Scrolr has no name - he only remembers being called that because he enjoyed exploring outside of the village often. The villagers thought he moved through the countryside like he liked to scroll through his textbooks.

In gameplay terms, using the Wii U GamePad, you will be able to use the stick to move the Scrolr, while using the screen to activate his psychic abilities, moving blocks, solving puzzles, and fighting enemies with them. Doing so will help you get through each stage (of six) to uncover the truth and destiny of the world.

 

[show me your skeleton]

also there is going to be a banging* soundtrack.



*soundtrack quality is not guaranteed.