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[Genji]

Awesome pixel work, those screenshots are very impressive. Any chance at seeing it in motion?

Today's Chopper Mike progress report..

It looks cool in motion, and really helps to fit Mike into the scene better.

I'm going to make some more levels now!

Looks better and better each time you put new stuff up.

 

[qq more]

Oh nice - I used TGF and MMF back in the day, but I haven't tried MMF2 yet. I may have to give a demo a try.

Definitely give it a try, it combines the best of both programs and improves on almost every single thing.

It's still a tad flawed though, but it's really awesome when you learn a lot about it.

 

[Diablohead]

Awesome pixel work, those screenshots are very impressive. Any chance at seeing it in motion?

Sometime soon, I want to have more then the test area and half finished skills before I show off the game any more, first impressions are important I think.

This is the kind of animation I have in the game:

 

[nicoga3000]

Definitely give it a try, it combines the best of both programs and improves on almost every single thing.

It's still a tad flawed though, but it's really awesome when you learn a lot about it.

Flawed how? And MMF2 is a 2D engine, yes?

 

[Secret Fawful]

Sometime soon, I want to have more then the test area and half finished skills before I show off the game any more, first impressions are important I think.

This is the kind of animation I have in the game:

This is gorgeous.

 

[Diablohead]

There are limits but for being a 2D engine where you can do so much stuff and have very flexible ways of doing things it is really worth learning, you still need to be good with concepts and math but it takes away typing code for event strings, and if you know what you are doing the performance of MMF2 on an iphone 4 is very good.

Some iOS games which use MMF2 are Awesome Land (mario bros sort of platformer), Clash Force and Polyroll (old graphic style platformers), that MANOS hands of fate game, Pocket Ninjas (a little like fruit ninja but with an original twist and some others I don't remember right now without looking.

I will say that my game is doing extremely well with everything it is doing and displaying on screen, the game has turned out much bigger then I planned but I am glad that I kept with it.

 

[lordfroakie]

Can someone recommend me good java/android tutorial sites?

 

[razu]

Looks better and better each time you put new stuff up.

Thanks!

 

[Noogy]

This is the kind of animation I have in the game:

That's looking really fantastic.

 

[charsace]

Another art style I'm considering:

 

[Kikarian]

Sometime soon, I want to have more then the test area and half finished skills before I show off the game any more, first impressions are important I think.

This is the kind of animation I have in the game:

Looks great, nice work!

 

[FormallyMegadrive]

Guess what

Oh heyy. I knew the names were the same but just thought it was some crazy coincidence! I have the crazy old MMF prototype from years back on a harddrive somewhere in my garage. Its really great to see you stuck with it because it looked amazing, even back then and you've only improved since. Keep it up diablohead!

 

[Blizzard]

I tried looking up MMF2 to suggest to a friend, but it looks suuuuper expensive for people just getting started, like $400 USD or more for the developer version plus iOS export.

 

[Diablohead]

I tried looking up MMF2 to suggest to a friend, but it looks suuuuper expensive for people just getting started, like $400 USD or more for the developer version plus iOS export.

Aye it will be, best thing to start with if you want to go with it is MMF2 normal, it's like £39 and without any extras it can make .exe windows files and some other stuff, I think .jav too. If you upgrade to the dev version Clickteam are kind and knock the original's price off the total if you email them first.

iOS exporter also works on the normal MMF2 but you get no gamecenter extensions or access to the camera.

Another art style I'm considering:

Have you tried making the black lines a darker shade of the skin tone? it might make the sprite look a little softer.

Oh heyy. I knew the names were the same but just thought it was some crazy coincidence! I have the crazy old MMF prototype from years back on a harddrive somewhere in my garage. Its really great to see you stuck with it because it looked amazing, even back then and you've only improved since. Keep it up diablohead!

This one? if so that's cool, I did work a lot more on that but as with most things I lost the file at some point.

 

[qq more]

Are you allow to sell games made with the Standard version of MMF2?

 

[Diablohead]

Are you allow to sell games made with the Standard version of MMF2?

Yes but you have to show a "made in MMF2" logo somewhere, I forget the exact instructions.

 

[charsace]

Aye it will be, best thing to start with if you want to go with it is MMF2 normal, it's like £39 and without any extras it can make .exe windows files and some other stuff, I think .jav too. If you upgrade to the dev version Clickteam are kind and knock the original's price off the total if you email them first.

iOS exporter also works on the normal MMF2 but you get no gamecenter extensions or access to the camera.



Have you tried making the black lines a darker shade of the skin tone? it might make the sprite look a little softer.



This one? if so that's cool, I did work a lot more on that but as with most things I lost the file at some point.

The inky look is done purposely.

 

[Item_Screen]

I just submitted my first app to the app store, Goblin Groove. It's under review right now and will hopefully be available this week or next for iPad. I'll post again when it's live and give out a few codes.

 

[Blizzard]

Can you post an image of [part of] your font texture? You probably don't won't want to be using sub-pixel / cleartype anyways. An image will help diagnose what's going on. It's possible you're hitting a gamma problem.

Thanks very much, I'd love to post a screenshot in case anyone has suggestions about it. I'll try to get one up tomorrow since I need to sync my code after the holiday break.

 

[Popstar]

Thanks very much, I'd love to post a screenshot in case anyone has suggestions about it. I'll try to get one up tomorrow since I need to sync my code after the holiday break.

I actually just fixed a font rendering problem in my own engine so I have it all in my head at the moment.

Top is incorrect gamma, bottom is corrected. Both use the same PNG file output from BMFont.

 

[Ashodin]

Still working on Mr. Wave, just taking a breather after intense development the past month or two haha. Holidays n all.

 

[Pietepiet]

Sometime soon, I want to have more then the test area and half finished skills before I show off the game any more, first impressions are important I think.

This is the kind of animation I have in the game:

Nice! I like that you've kept the movement from being overly bouncy. The sprite itself could use a bit of cleanup in some places though. The left (our right) arm, face and upper legs in particular feel a bit noisy.

 

[charsace]

What is a good resizing algorithm for make art as small as possible? Is it good to just jump straight to bicubic interpolation?

 

[Diablohead]

What is a good resizing algorithm for make art as small as possible? Is it good to just jump straight to bicubic interpolation?

Not too sure if there is a good one for super small sizes, you might have to sprite over the top of a re-sized image manually and just use the scaled image as reference.

Nice! I like that you've kept the movement from being overly bouncy. The sprite itself could use a bit of cleanup in some places though. The left (our right) arm, face and upper legs in particular feel a bit noisy.

i've done so many revisions and adjustments to most of the sprite now that I just leave them as they are for the time being, they look rather good in motion when the background is not a flat colour. I counted all the frames last night and I have about 220 frames for one direction only (but I just flip it for the opposite side) and thankfully it all fits in an ipod touch 4g's tiny ram pool

 

[Popstar]

What is a good resizing algorithm for make art as small as possible? Is it good to just jump straight to bicubic interpolation?

Images get blurry when you resize them smaller so you usually want to do the equivalent of 'bicubic sharper' in photoshop. Yes, jump on in.

If you need some source code there's some here.

 

[Ranger X]

What is a good resizing algorithm for make art as small as possible? Is it good to just jump straight to bicubic interpolation?

Not good. Do as Diablohead says or simply draw your stuff small. That's why sprites are drawn small after all, it doesn't take much time to draw.

 

[Tashi]

Happy New Year Indie Dev GAF. Best of luck to everyone going forward in 2013!

 

[abrack08]

2013 will finally be the year that I join you guys!

Hopefully.


But I'm such a bad artist ._.

 

[fin]

Yup 2013 here we go! This year I want to make money on a game, or at least sell a game. Also run more...

Happy new year everyone!

 

[usea]

Anybody doing one game a month this year?

 

[Tashi]

Anybody doing one game a month this year?

Sounds enticing. Don't know if I want to keep working on this prototype or just do this. Hmmmmm

 

[Tankshell]

I just submitted my first app to the app store, Goblin Groove. It's under review right now and will hopefully be available this week or next for iPad. I'll post again when it's live and give out a few codes.

Looks interesting, getting a serious Amiga vibe from those screenshots! Will give it a try when available.

 

[Tankshell]

Wow this is visually stunning! Great job!

Awesome job bro!

Looks really nice, great job.

Grats!!
Remember to add a press kit to your page. It's really important. For next time, it's a good idea to have all the pages up before you release and build up some hype and attention month before your game is available.
Make sure to send promo-codes to sites. It's also a good idea to contact big sites earlier and offer them exclusive early preview codes.

Thanks guys, your words are really encouraging. Game has been on sale now for 1.5 weeks over the Christmas period and is doing ok, getting a decent amount of daily downloads (although not enough to retire on yet :0)) and some good 5 star ratings and feedback.

Tash: yes I totally agree with your suggestions, I basically just ran out of time before Christmas to do any decent press kit/hype building at all. I will focus on this during the latter half of Jan after I have released my upcoming bugfix/feature update... and attempt to get a few reviews done by appropriate websites etc.

Thanks guys for all your help and encouragement again. We should totally do a GAF indie meetup this year.

http://handheldpixels.co.uk

 

[Noogy]

Happy New Year fellow indies Make something cool this year!

Having FINALLY finished something in 2012, it's great being back in design/preproduction. Always the most enjoyable part of the process.

 

[Kamaki]

Well I've got at least two projects to finish in 2013! Started a remake of my little pixel drop game that I made last year, this time aiming for Windows 8 Store. Being made with Construct 2, click here to play the test level. Basically the plan is to spend longer then a day or two and polish it up.

Also as part of my Final year at Uni I'm making a game in Unity, I'm actually an animation student so really the end game doesn't have to be totally playable as long as I get some nice animations going but I think I'd like to finish it. Hopefully get a demo up here soon. This is what it looks like at the moment. This is also a test scene.

 

[razu]

Thanks guys, your words are really encouraging. Game has been on sale now for 1.5 weeks over the Christmas period and is doing ok, getting a decent amount of daily downloads (although not enough to retire on yet :0)) and some good 5 star ratings and feedback.

Tash: yes I totally agree with your suggestions, I basically just ran out of time before Christmas to do any decent press kit/hype building at all. I will focus on this during the latter half of Jan after I have released my upcoming bugfix/feature update... and attempt to get a few reviews done by appropriate websites etc.

Thanks guys for all your help and encouragement again. We should totally do a GAF indie meetup this year.

http://handheldpixels.co.uk

All looks cool, except, from looking at the site I can't really tell what the game actually is..? Maybe a few shots of the basic gameplay concept would be good? Quality is top notch though!

 

[JasoNsider]

Happy new year, indie dev-GAF!

Doubt I'll be doing the game per month thing, though that sounds like a great idea at some point. I'm curious to see what people produce this year. A lot of projects here are going to be nearing completion by the looks of things.

Right now I'm working on trying to port Marvin's Mittens to 360. It's been...interesting My biggest headache has been trying to get our XML based files to load properly using .NET compact framework. The good news is that it's finally compiling! The bad news is the load times are horrendous. I'm unsure what part is so slow just yet, but it feels like it's the actual XML file querying/parsing. Yoinks!

 

[Diablohead]

Happy New Year fellow indies Make something cool this year!

Having FINALLY finished something in 2012, it's great being back in design/preproduction. Always the most enjoyable part of the process.

I look forward to anything you make noogy.

 

[KNT-Zero]

Been looking at old screenshots of my game from about 8~ ish months back and wow there is a huge change in visuals even though the character sprite work was mostly done back then, all the little touches add up when seen side by side:

Dayum! I wanna see it motion (aside from the character animation posted earlier) :3

Anybody doing one game a month this year?

I am! I'm planning my 1st game cautiously as I post

 

[Blizzard]

The good news is that it's finally compiling! The bad news is the load times are horrendous. I'm unsure what part is so slow just yet, but it feels like it's the actual XML file querying/parsing. Yoinks!

This reminds me of when I was trying to figure out over Christmas break why my engine was taking so long to load, at least on an old laptop...and then it turned out that a/the slow part was SFML's load-JPEG/PNG-from-memory call. D: I really didn't want to dive into their library to try to optimize that, so I'm just going to see if it ends up being a big deal in the end.

 

[Platy]

Happy January !

I did lots of tests today ... and here is my best result ! =D

Still a little slow ... did lots of pixel art tests and no Frames per second test so I ended up doing twice the fps =P

Any critiques ?

edit : damn ... the weapon has the exact same color as the background from this post xD

 

[chubigans]

Happy New Year fellow indies Make something cool this year!

Having FINALLY finished something in 2012, it's great being back in design/preproduction. Always the most enjoyable part of the process.

Congrats on all the GOTY nominations man!!

 

[charsace]

Happy new years people!

 

[Kikarian]

Happy new years people!

Happy New year!

I'm hoping to make a game this year.

 

[Ranger X]

Happy new years people!

tks bud!

Happy New Year all

 

[Tash]

Happy new year

 

[Tash]

Well I've got at least two projects to finish in 2013! Started a remake of my little pixel drop game that I made last year, this time aiming for Windows 8 Store. Being made with Construct 2, click here to play the test level. Basically the plan is to spend longer then a day or two and polish it up.

Also as part of my Final year at Uni I'm making a game in Unity, I'm actually an animation student so really the end game doesn't have to be totally playable as long as I get some nice animations going but I think I'd like to finish it. Hopefully get a demo up here soon. This is what it looks like at the moment. This is also a test scene.

That looks really nice so far

 

[JasoNsider]

This reminds me of when I was trying to figure out over Christmas break why my engine was taking so long to load, at least on an old laptop...and then it turned out that a/the slow part was SFML's load-JPEG/PNG-from-memory call. D: I really didn't want to dive into their library to try to optimize that, so I'm just going to see if it ends up being a big deal in the end.

It's super scary, right?? Haha. I have a sinking feeling that we are both gonna have to make drastic (ie time consuming/annoying) changes to the code. Gonna dive in now and see what I come up with!

Anybody release something on XBLIG recently? Curious what the traffic is like these days.

 

[Tash]

Btw, was reading this sprite article on Gamasutra earlier, if anyone is interested: 5 tips for making great animations for 2D Games

 

[Bollocks]

Well I've got at least two projects to finish in 2013! Started a remake of my little pixel drop game that I made last year, this time aiming for Windows 8 Store. Being made with Construct 2, click here to play the test level. Basically the plan is to spend longer then a day or two and polish it up.

Also as part of my Final year at Uni I'm making a game in Unity, I'm actually an animation student so really the end game doesn't have to be totally playable as long as I get some nice animations going but I think I'd like to finish it. Hopefully get a demo up here soon. This is what it looks like at the moment. This is also a test scene.

I really dig the art style, what kind of game is it?