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Indie Game Development Discussion Thread | Of Being Professionally Poor
- Thread starter chubigans
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this must happen
edit: shameless mode activate
amazing.
hide a banana pickup somewhere in this level, too. or something.
holy shit
anonymous_abc
Member
One moar
The sun must set before you get darkness
Just curious, what is the logic behind depicting health as test tubes?
So the character is lugging around glass tubes of heath, and when he is hit he looses some of the health liquid?
oxrock
Gravity is a myth, the Earth SUCKS!
Been wondering the same thing. I know hearts are cliche but health potion vials or whatever they are don't really make sense imho.
Hi guys, amazing works as always, i need an opinion.
I'm not an animator and this is my first serious attempt to make a game, so i'm experimenting various animation techniques, for some reason i seem to not able to do smears that look good enough to me so i'm going with multiples, at least for the moment.
My question is, ignoring the rest of the body(it's just a lazy test animation to try arm attack animations, it doesn't have all the right movements and all the editing i plan to do to final animations), does the movement of the arm look fluid enough and convey a sense of power/impact?
EDIT:
changed animated png to animated gif
EDIT2:
the gif destroyed the tranparencies!
I posted the png again...
here the link to the (bad )gif if you don't see the animated png(so the page is not too heavy)
http://s6.postimg.org/7xfncsaox/jillatk_002.gif
I'm not an animator and this is my first serious attempt to make a game, so i'm experimenting various animation techniques, for some reason i seem to not able to do smears that look good enough to me so i'm going with multiples, at least for the moment.
My question is, ignoring the rest of the body(it's just a lazy test animation to try arm attack animations, it doesn't have all the right movements and all the editing i plan to do to final animations), does the movement of the arm look fluid enough and convey a sense of power/impact?
EDIT:
changed animated png to animated gif
EDIT2:
the gif destroyed the tranparencies!
I posted the png again...
here the link to the (bad
)gif if you don't see the animated png(so the page is not too heavy)http://s6.postimg.org/7xfncsaox/jillatk_002.gif
oxrock
Gravity is a myth, the Earth SUCKS!
The picture is a .png, I'm assuming you meant to post a gif because there's no movement.Hi guys, amazing works as always, i need an opinion.
I'm not an animator and this is my first serious attempt to make a game, so i'm experimenting various animation techniques, for some reason i seem to not able to do smears that look good enough to me so i'm going with multiples, at least for the moment.
My question is, ignoring the rest of the body(it's just a lazy test animation to try arm attack animations, it doesn't have all the right movements and all the editing i plan to do to final animations), does the movement of the arm look fluid enough and convey a sense of power/impact?
On to my question! I'm trying to improve my art a bit more and starting by making improvements so that my game has a better orthographic perspective. Currently I'm trying to alter this tree I made to make the angle look better. Any advice as to how to lessen this tree's apparent sideview angle and make it look slightly more top-down?
Imagine he's drinking the vials to restore his health (in essence, only having one health)
The picture is a .png, I'm assuming you meant to post a gif because there's no movement.
On to my question! I'm trying to improve my art a bit more and starting by making improvements so that my game has a better orthographic perspective. Currently I'm trying to alter this tree I made to make the angle look better. Any advice as to how to lessen this tree's apparent sideview angle and make it look slightly more top-down?
It's an animated png... I should have considered that not every browser supports them :\
That tree looks really good!
Maybe i'm not the best person to help you but look at this:
the foliage shape should be "rounder" and cover more of the trunk and roots should be more evident.
anonymous_abc
Member
Yea alternatively to the cliché hearts, you could just use cliché jam all over your face.
I can somewhat get behind that. Not sure it's very intuitive though.
Obviously at the end of the day it makes no difference, everyone will understand that the red icons depict your left over life/refills thereof.
The picture is a .png, I'm assuming you meant to post a gif because there's no movement.
On to my question! I'm trying to improve my art a bit more and starting by making improvements so that my game has a better orthographic perspective. Currently I'm trying to alter this tree I made to make the angle look better. Any advice as to how to lessen this tree's apparent sideview angle and make it look slightly more top-down?
It's actually an APNG. There's a plugin for Chrome. I think Firefox supports them by default.
For your tree, are you looking at reference images to try to compare? Less of the trunk visible, background parts slid up some and foreground slid down slightly. Trunk rounded on the bottom somewhat. That kind of thing.
@2+2=5
Yeah, it looks good. A little stiff in the rest of the body, as you mentioned, but the attack itself looks fairly powerful.
Sword Familiar
178% of NeoGAF posters don't understand statistics
oxrock
Gravity is a myth, the Earth SUCKS!
I've never heard of an APNG until now, now I feel like a fool. I got a chrome plugin and now I see it fine.
As for my trees, I am trying to eyeball the differences between my current perspective and those similar to what I'm aiming for, I just don't have a good eye for it though. I have no artistic training or ability. Honestly I prefer to avoid this stuff but with as much effort as I'm putting into my game project, I'd much rather not have my jank art make it look like a steaming pile, so doing the best that I'm capable of. I most certainly appreciate your input both present and past, it's been an immense help. I figure I'll post this tree's evolution so it's clear the steps I've at least attempted to take and maybe mandatory alterations will be more apparent.
Tree Evolution
Original:
Slightly altered:
Current:
Is the latter one more in line with the norm? I'm thinking that maybe I would thicken the trunk a bit, maybe that's off. The original was scale accurate to my reference but now that so much has changed I don't think it translates as well.
Sorry to trash up the thread with my art crap yet again, I don't really have people to run this kind of stuff by and I'm always so amazed at the work I see in here.
Edit: 2+2=5, now that I can actually see your animation, i think it's looks pretty powerful. It's pretty good for a prototype animation, keep adding and refining!
Try to hide the symmetry of the foliage altering the center vertical line of foliage and add roots(even little ones should be enough) and it's perfectI've never heard of an APNG until now, now I feel like a fool. I got a chrome plugin and now I see it fine.
As for my trees, I am trying to eyeball the differences between my current perspective and those similar to what I'm aiming for, I just don't have a good eye for it though. I have no artistic training or ability. Honestly I prefer to avoid this stuff but with as much effort as I'm putting into my game project, I'd much rather not have my jank art make it look like a steaming pile, so doing the best that I'm capable of. I most certainly appreciate your input both present and past, it's been an immense help. I figure I'll post this tree's evolution so it's clear the steps I've at least attempted to take and maybe mandatory alterations will be more apparent.
Tree Evolution
Original:
Slightly altered:
Current:
Is the latter one more in line with the norm? I'm thinking that maybe I would thicken the trunk a bit, maybe that's off. The original was scale accurate to my reference but now that so much has changed I don't think it translates as well.
Sorry to trash up the thread with my art crap yet again, I don't really have people to run this kind of stuff by and I'm always so amazed at the work I see in here.
Edit: 2+2=5, now that I can actually see your animation, i think it's looks pretty powerful. It's pretty good for a prototype animation, keep adding and refining!
Thanks for the good impression and the cheer up! XD
jimmythepage
Member
I hope there is nothing wrong in what I'm posting, but it looks like Square-Enix decided to give us a chance on their Collective
"crowdfeedback" website, I will be honored if some of you would give their opinion on the projects
http://collective.square-enix.com/projects/62/ars-tactica-dragon-tournament
oxrock
Gravity is a myth, the Earth SUCKS!
Yeah, the last one was just a quick throw together job to make sure the concept was right before devoting time into fine tuning it. Thanks for the feedback, i'm definitely going to hide the symmetry and try throwing some roots onto the trunk and see how that changes the look.Try to hide the symmetry of the foliage altering the center vertical line of foliage and add roots(even little ones should be enough) and it's perfect
Thanks for the good impression and the cheer up! XD
the background in this image: (click for larger size webm)
comes from this:
I had a bit of a eureka moment a while ago after putting in a color reduction shader (it's a shader that limits the number of colors on screen that a stencyl person wrote for me-- basically, depending on how you configure the value, it causes varying degrees of color banding from gradients).
it can be hard to capture the full effect of this in an animated gif due to degradation, but basically I take various rocks/chunks of rocks that I already use in the game and use the engine to scale them way, way up. The engine has anti aliasing it applies, which causes the sort of enlargement softness/blur you'd imagine, but after the color reduction shader this effect is not evident at all and the pattern is not easily recognizable as being a small graphic blown up. This technique is being used heavily in many images I've already posted, and also appears in the last video too.
Obviously there are some cases where the background needs to be far more detailed and thus needs to be made from bigger images, but when you're trying to populate a map with hundreds of rooms you find yourself relying on any shortcut you can come up with.
comes from this:
I had a bit of a eureka moment a while ago after putting in a color reduction shader (it's a shader that limits the number of colors on screen that a stencyl person wrote for me-- basically, depending on how you configure the value, it causes varying degrees of color banding from gradients).
it can be hard to capture the full effect of this in an animated gif due to degradation, but basically I take various rocks/chunks of rocks that I already use in the game and use the engine to scale them way, way up. The engine has anti aliasing it applies, which causes the sort of enlargement softness/blur you'd imagine, but after the color reduction shader this effect is not evident at all and the pattern is not easily recognizable as being a small graphic blown up. This technique is being used heavily in many images I've already posted, and also appears in the last video too.
Obviously there are some cases where the background needs to be far more detailed and thus needs to be made from bigger images, but when you're trying to populate a map with hundreds of rooms you find yourself relying on any shortcut you can come up with.
eltantillo
Neo Member
I hope there is nothing wrong in what I'm posting, but it looks like Square-Enix decided to give us a chance on their Collective
"crowdfeedback" website, I will be honored if some of you would give their opinion on the projects
http://collective.square-enix.com/projects/62/ars-tactica-dragon-tournament
Looks good, are theye any plans for online gameplay?
BomberMouse
Member
Congrats on the RPS write-up Jobbs
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/09/15/ghost-song-metroid-castlevania-kickstarter/
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/09/15/ghost-song-metroid-castlevania-kickstarter/
oh, cool. this is the first I'm seeing this. Wasn't expecting a writeup at this point. Cool stuff.
I hope there is nothing wrong in what I'm posting, but it looks like Square-Enix decided to give us a chance on their Collective
"crowdfeedback" website, I will be honored if some of you would give their opinion on the projects
http://collective.square-enix.com/projects/62/ars-tactica-dragon-tournament
A tactics-style game with pixel art!?
I need this in my veins!!!!!!
show me your skeleton
Member
MAKE THEM RUNES. SWEET SWEET RUNES.
electroflame
Member
Unity might be on the market.
Pretty much the worst thing that could happen to them. If any one of the big companies buys them, they'll either gradually or immediately shift the focus to their hardware. They may not discontinue support for other hardware, but the engine will almost for sure magically run better on their hardware.
And I just bought Unity 5 Pro, too.
Pretty much the worst thing that could happen to them. If any one of the big companies buys them, they'll either gradually or immediately shift the focus to their hardware. They may not discontinue support for other hardware, but the engine will almost for sure magically run better on their hardware.
And I just bought Unity 5 Pro, too.
You sir are a mad man
It's pretty sweet already! I suppose you're intending for it to be colored? I could definitely picture a black and white series of illustrations/comics like this, though.
Also, that's an awesome write-up on RPS for Ghost Song! Congrats!
Tiu Neo
Member
Unity might be on the market.
Pretty much the worst thing that could happen to them. If any one of the big companies buys them, they'll either gradually or immediately shift the focus to their hardware. They may not discontinue support for other hardware, but the engine will almost for sure magically run better on their hardware.
And I just bought Unity 5 Pro, too.
Could be the worse, or the best, if the company has resources AND the right mentality.
Say someone like Microsoft buys Unity. They could limit the engine to their platforms, yeah, but then Unity would lose one of it's main sale points. Wouldn't be better for Microsoft to get those people who do games for Android and iOS using Unity, show them how easy it is to port to Windows Phone, and then get more apps? What mobile dev would use Unity if it only compiled to Windows Phone?
This reasoning may also work on consoles, on a smaller scale. It's better for them to embrace Unity multiplatform culture, than to force people to use it only for their tools (and risk losing most of their users because of that).
Of course, maybe that's not their way of thinking, but this would make sense.
MrNyarlathotep
Banned
The same ones still using XNA I guess.
My initial reaction was the same as anyone -- MS is buying it in order to make it exclusive.
If you think about it, though, while that may or may not be a good idea (from their perspective) to do to Minecraft, it makes really no sense to do it to Unity. Unity's main draw is its portability -- that it exports to everything. That's, like, THE reason people use it.
Who pays 2 billion for a property then guts its main appeal and subsequently drives away everyone who uses it? Doesn't sound wise.
snoopeasystreet
Member
Balancing loot tables is a pain. Anyone got some tips for it? I really need to get some people testing my game but I don't think it's there yet.
balancing loot tables, I imagine, is the same as balancing anything else. Make a rough guess/eyeball it on the first go, then just keep testing and playing the game, identify what feels wrong, and keep making adjustments. As you say, true refinement probably requires other testers than just yourself.
Crossposting from the screenshot saturday thread!
Almost done with the animation reworks/additions planned for Honey, only four more to go... for now.
As for the rest, plenty of stuff in the background: style point management, collision boxes displacement on hit/collision, a rework of Honey's attack manager and Little Sun's AI, and some groundwork for some visual effects stuff... A bit disheartening when after all that, it still looks *mostly* the same, but it should hopefully feel a lot better to play when all is said and done.
Wow, this is really coming together now! It's that thing of all the little touches becoming a whole. Very cool.
after thinking about it, I added my "teaching flowers" to this spot to draw attention to where to stand and how far your dashes can go.
I've used these moving flowers in a number of spots, particularly near the beginning, to draw attention to things. closest thing to a tutorial in the game.
"Cues", you've got them. Top tier stuff!
Unity might be on the market.
Pretty much the worst thing that could happen to them. If any one of the big companies buys them, they'll either gradually or immediately shift the focus to their hardware. They may not discontinue support for other hardware, but the engine will almost for sure magically run better on their hardware.
And I just bought Unity 5 Pro, too.
No.
No no no no no.
Nooooooooooooooooooooo!
Unity might be on the market.
Pretty much the worst thing that could happen to them. If any one of the big companies buys them, they'll either gradually or immediately shift the focus to their hardware. They may not discontinue support for other hardware, but the engine will almost for sure magically run better on their hardware.
And I just bought Unity 5 Pro, too.
I have bought 5 too. I would suggest the course is more or less set for 5, so no matter what happens, 5 will do what you want it to do. 6 could be a different story, but I don't see why anyone would dabble with unity's platformability. If MS bought it, then they'd be getting a slice of Android, OSX and iOS unity games development costs.. why cut that off? It's not like Unity has a prestige status. Most people have the opinion, "Oh, it's a Unity game..", like that makes any difference!
And, if they kill it, then someone else will fill the gap.
I reckon we're fine.
MrNyarlathotep
Banned
Do you mean balancing for power or drop rate?
For power, and assuming you're using a procedurally generated stats system, take your optimal possible desired weapon / armour / whatever stats for that area, and then reduce stats downwards based on your stat variables.
Generating loot this way will give you a bell curve, where the majority of loot stats are 'meh', but you have an equal chance of going above average as below.
Skewing stats so you get more desirable loot and less straight up vendor trash would involve using coefficients to skew your bell curve higher, eg:
(regular loot drop stats) base stat + random(max bonus)
(skewed loot drop stat) base stat + (5+(random(maxbonus/2)*2))
(where base stat is the best possible stat you want for this loot area, minus the maxbonus, and maxbonus is the amount of discrepancy in that stat you want to randomise)
For value, create a baseline comparison value that you can apply to all loot - for example, "value" (how much gold its worth) and a timeframe for a player to achieve that in (so "gold per hour" or whatever).
When you have that as a value, you can then create drop tables where average earnings dictate the drop probability when you know a few other variables like "time to kill loot dropping monster" by extrapolating all of that data out.
You're really going to want to spreadsheet it too, and probably use constants or variables for individual elements, so changing things like the time it takes to kill a monster (making it easier / harder) doesn't destroy all your existing balancing work.
It's also a little drily statistical, so you might want to (again) use coefficients for things like the monster being particularly tough / rare to locate / annoying to fight / only available in small numbers so you don't make anything too obnoxiously grindy.
EDIT:
Also, for 'flavouring' drops, don't bother with making Creature A have n% difference in dropping Loot C than Creature B does; Players won't notice, and killing different enemies for loot will be interchangeable in their minds - just make Creature B drop Loot D instead so Players who want to farm can figure out what they should be farming for specific loot, rather than playing percentages which most players never notice, and those who do rarely understand.
dragonzdogma
Member
The picture is a .png, I'm assuming you meant to post a gif because there's no movement.
On to my question! I'm trying to improve my art a bit more and starting by making improvements so that my game has a better orthographic perspective. Currently I'm trying to alter this tree I made to make the angle look better. Any advice as to how to lessen this tree's apparent sideview angle and make it look slightly more top-down?
I gave it a shot.
Once you create your game maybe the shadows will be coded instead of actually drawing them right?
HellBlazer
Member
That's some really efficient deceleration on that ship.
Looks good though. Space exploration game?Conkersbadfurday
Member
So we decided to add weapon crafting to The Regret of Vitrerran. Was my brother's idea to add crafting and my own to make it exclusively for weapons.
Weapons are the most fun parts of RPGs, so I figure its' just best to keep it fun. Plus, drawing armor sucks.
Full scoop can be found here: http://www.dualwieldsoftware.com/blog/2014/9/14/utility-cards-and-weapon-crafting
Weapons are the most fun parts of RPGs, so I figure its' just best to keep it fun. Plus, drawing armor sucks.
Full scoop can be found here: http://www.dualwieldsoftware.com/blog/2014/9/14/utility-cards-and-weapon-crafting
That's some really efficient deceleration on that ship.
Yeah
I know what you mean haha. I am certainly not claiming it to be realistic, although the physics are all legit, just not things like planet sizes, and very powerful engines. That deceleration in real life would turn a human in to a puddle on the floor of their cockpit.
Not so much an exploration game, although that is certainly a feature.
Kinda like Rust, but in space, and on planets, and with the ability to build spaceships and other vehicles like you would in Kerbal Space Program.
Only a lot more in-depth in terms of systems, and more forgiving towards vehicle design mistakes.
snoopeasystreet
Member
Thanks for the help guys
Yeah, the game I'm making isn't incredibly loot heavy, I don't need to worry about giving a dmg+50 item out in the early game or anything like that, I just need to find an average rate of drops (like one every five minutes or whatever) without putting a timer in, cause I think having things drop on a timer means players will just find that out and it makes combat in 90% of the game meaningless.
All it really takes is tweaking numbers until the distribution feels right and balanced on the grand scale. It feels like spinning plates, where if I change something like the amount of enemies in an encounter at any time, it radically changes the probability of loot dropping.
Getting things perfect isn't that big of an issue right now, because I'm only planning on releasing my game on itch.io for a euro or two in hopes that'll generate enough positive feedback and a small bit revenue to hire an artist and work on a more balanced complete version of the game.
MrNyarlathotep
Banned
Thanks for the help guys
Yeah, the game I'm making isn't incredibly loot heavy, I don't need to worry about giving a dmg+50 item out in the early game or anything like that, I just need to find an average rate of drops (like one every five minutes or whatever) without putting a timer in, cause I think having things drop on a timer means players will just find that out and it makes combat in 90% of the game meaningless.
All it really takes is tweaking numbers until the distribution feels right and balanced on the grand scale. It feels like spinning plates, where if I change something like the amount of enemies in an encounter at any time, it radically changes the probability of loot dropping.
You could try using a points system, where every kill = x points (and give tougher enemies higher point values or whatever) and every time you reach y points you get a drop?
Its not truely random, but its also not as obvious and gamable as a timer.
snoopeasystreet
Member
That's a great idea. I might make a system where as points build up, your odds of getting a chance increases, but you can still get drops at any time. That solves pacing for the most part.
Thanks buddy
Tiu Neo
Member
Would that be a lot of people, today, if not for Monogame?
Yeah. It would make a lot of sense, for Microsoft, to keep Unity multiplatform, at least on mobile, where they need all the help they can. If you cannot convert them, at least make them port your games to your platform!
But then, again, companies do dumb things, sometimes.
zero shift
Banned
OccamsBlender
Member
Your progress is freakin' metal. Got a blog with all your progress updates in one nice place?
Image Devlog: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=41459.0
Wordy Devlog: actosgames.com
ROTATING BANANASSSSSSSSS
OccamsBlender
Member
Swaaaaaaaaaaaaaank. This all in Unity? /stupidquestion
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