Support NeoGAF

[GMM]

I'm doing everything myself. 'art', and 'music'

I've always been interested in drawing, 3d modelling/rendering, and making music in 'tracker' type programs, but have never had any training.

I would always suggest giving *anything* a go yourself. Start small, keep at it, and whatever it is, you will improve!

This basically. I don't do music, but i design 3D graphics, code the game, design 2D elements and everything else except for music. The more you do things, the better you become at them and Unity is pretty god damn amazing when working on your own.

It is all about creating your own workflow and improving on it as you go. It is never too late to learn something new.

 

[Kamaki]

Late screenshot for screenshot Saturday, that's how it looks in the current web-build if you click on the image That's not the latest build as I actually have multiple chasers and stuff, but I can't for the life of me get collision to work properly.

 

[charsace]

I have got back to the Ouya version today. There was a GC problem with the input that people had solved. But piecing that info together and making it work has taken most of the day!!

Pretty happy with it!!

You're way younger than I thought or you're immortal.

 

[Genji]

You're way younger than I thought or you're immortal.

Seriously, game is even more impressive now that I know a pre-teen coded it!

 

[razu]

Ha! That's next-gen me...

 

[embalm]

Screen shot of the 200 unit test. Can't really tell what's going one, but thermocrats attacked from the left, freeblades from the right, with blood archers caught in the middle.

 

[Feep]

Good luck and remember my advice. No one but feep look at the spoiler as I'm under verbal nda.

Spoiler

Underpants on the inside

I think that will serve you well during development.

It's a good thing I have you lookin' out for me.

Feep: Do you have plans yet for rewards or swag? A friend and I help crowd funding projects with shirts and other rewards. If you want to look into it check out teelaunch dot com. My goal isn't to sell the service (why its not a direct link) but want to see if we can help. None the less good luck with your campaign.

Did anyone see the news about Game Closure open sourcing their HTML5 game SDK? http://www.gameclosure.com/

It looks pretty good and the demo game that was released plays great. I was considering Unity but I know JS very well so the 2d game I'm planning will be easier to get going with this over Unity.

PM sent.

 

[Diablohead]

Eh I wanted to have it finished today but I am still spriting frames, should get them all done and dusted tomorrow.

I now have over 228 frames of animation, adding in an extra frame here and there has made the sprite look much better in motion but I need to limit myself before I run out of serious time, also making sure they look good enough since they were converted from a basic low poly model, sometimes the legs or arms can be a little off.

The basics of what goes on for my lighting, it's really simple yet it adds so much to a game like this, you get different strengths depending what you are standing near.

Enemies also get the effect:

 

[Dynamite Shikoku]

Very nice

 

[Noogy]

Eh I wanted to have it finished today but I am still spriting frames, should get them all done and dusted tomorrow.

Those look rad, do you have any video footage? Loving the look of this.

 

[Feep]

So.

Who's good at making OP's?

 

[Darryl]

what type of game you tryin to make kamaki? it looks neat

 

[Chaotic Kitten]

I've been wanting to post about my game here for a bit, but because it's so far along I felt like the cool progress aspect would be lost, and that's half the fun! So I put my ladybrain to work and solved my silly problem. Here is a quick time travel for you all, in images.

The game is something my husband and I are working on, It's called Legend of Dungeon, and it's a single player/co-op Roguelike "Crawl&Brawl" with Dynamic shading on pixel sprites.

An early test of the dynamic lighting on our 2D Sprites:

Getting some texture in to test more dynamic lighting and stuff.

Better dungeon blocks, a lot closer to what we imagined:

And this was a Kitten test from just last week:

It's been about four months in progress, and we are feeling really good about where it's headed. Almost every time we go in to test something, we end up playing through it, which is both good and bad >.>

That's about it for the recap!

Thanks for looking ^_^ I'll post more videos and stuff if anyone is interested.

 

[Jocchan]

The wall is crying

Looks amazing. I guess you're using normal maps, which is a great approach for lighting in 2D games.

 

[razu]

The game is something my husband and I are working on, It's called Legend of Dungeon, and it's a single player/co-op Roguelike "Crawl&Brawl" with Dynamic shading on pixel sprites.

An early test of the dynamic lighting on our 2D Sprites:

Looks fantastic! Those little doolies on the left look really planted in the scene.

I've always wanted to play with lit 2d. Another idea for the future project pile!

 

[razu]

In amongst some skateboard maintenance this morning I managed to get some time to try out... Chopper Mike on Ouya, via a Philips PicoPix projector! It's only.. SUPER RAD!!

Click for big...

​

 

[AusRoachman]

I've been wanting to post about my game here for a bit, but because it's so far along I felt like the cool progress aspect would be lost, and that's half the fun! So I put my ladybrain to work and solved my silly problem. Here is a quick time travel for you all, in images.

The game is something my husband and I are working on, It's called Legend of Dungeon, and it's a single player/co-op Roguelike "Crawl&Brawl" with Dynamic shading on pixel sprites.

An early test of the dynamic lighting on our 2D Sprites:

Getting some texture in to test more dynamic lighting and stuff.

Better dungeon blocks, a lot closer to what we imagined:

And this was a Kitten test from just last week:

It's been about four months in progress, and we are feeling really good about where it's headed. Almost every time we go in to test something, we end up playing through it, which is both good and bad >.>

That's about it for the recap!

Thanks for looking ^_^ I'll post more videos and stuff if anyone is interested.

Been following this game for ages and it looks amazing. I first stumbled across the artists characters on reddit before realising he had helped with your project .

Love the art style and looks like your kick starter was hugely successfull.

Can't wait to see what improvements you make from here. I'd this Also planned for mobile? It's steam only ATM correct?

 

[CUD]

Hot damn Diablohead, that's looking very nice. You have my support.

 

[Diablohead]

Chaotic kitten indeed, looks amazing.

 

[Valygar]

I've been wanting to post about my game here for a bit, but because it's so far along I felt like the cool progress aspect would be lost, and that's half the fun! So I put my ladybrain to work and solved my silly problem. Here is a quick time travel for you all, in images.

The game is something my husband and I are working on, It's called Legend of Dungeon, and it's a single player/co-op Roguelike "Crawl&Brawl" with Dynamic shading on pixel sprites.

This is awesome. It's a game I saw on greenlight and I am looking forward to play!

Could I ask what engine are you using? I want to fuss about with 2d lightning, and I'm not decided yet, probably unity but I don't know... Impressive work for 4 months.

 

[BlazeHedgehog]

Haha, a guy I know on Twitter mentioned Legend of Dungeon to me just the other day as a game he was really, really, really anticipating. Looks awesome, Chaotic Kitten!

 

[missile]

...

...

Is there a planned / expected release date?

 

[Dali]

Wow really good stuff you guys. I'm like hesitant to show anything because of the quality of work I'm seeing here.

Anyway, while prototyping mechanics and just trying to figure out how I want the game to play it occurred to me the sheer amount of art assets will be staggering. Even for a small game ive stepped back considerably jn scope im looking at modelling levels obstacles, enemies, powerups, other items...

Omg this is impossble.

 

[Diablohead]

Is there a planned / expected release date?

Summer is about as good as I can guess, I have an iOS deadline and the pc version should be done around the same time, give or take a week.

Those look rad, do you have any video footage? Loving the look of this.

I wanted to make a video this weekend but the sprites are delaying me, I will also make a more reasonable area to show the game off in, right now EVERYTHING is in one stage for testing and it looks real messy.

Wow really good stuff you guys. I'm like hesitant to show anything because of the quality of work I'm seeing here.

Anyway, while prototyping mechanics and just trying to figure out how I want the game to play it occurred to me the sheer amount of art assets will be staggering. Even for a small game ive stepped back considerably jn scope im looking at modelling levels obstacles, enemies, powerups, other items...

Omg this is impossble.

You can do it it's taken me 18 months to make what I have, you have plenty of time.

 

[missile]

... I've always been interested in ... making music in 'tracker' type programs, but have never had any training. ...

Same over here. I played a lil with SID an stuff, but nothing serious. Making
music and sounds is one of the last few categories I want to explore and I'm
eager to dive into but from another perspective. I want to build sounds from
scratch by programming the waves straight from the sines and use modulation
whatever to generate the final sound.

In my game, Ex Nihilo, I want to use, next to procedural generated geometry,
procedural generated sounds, sounds that change and act upon the action and
are perfectly synchronized to certain events and rhythms. It's important for
me since my game uses different tempos and the sounds should match and esp.
amplify the action ... the thrill.

However, currently, I have no profession in generating good music or sounds.
But at least I have the mathematical knowledge how to generate them. I just
need to find ways to translate numbers into good sounds.

Having said this, I'm looking for a real native sound programmer or one who
feels a strong need to become a master of it. One who can generate sounds from
plain native code in real-time. One who also follows an interest in sound
propagation, i.e. who may work with me on a model for computing the propagation
of 3d sound waves. Would be awesome. A cool game needs a kicking sound, right
in your face!

 

[ebbybeh]

I love the pixel art style of "Legend of Dungeon". Good work Chaotic kitten!

 

[Hazaro]

So.

Who's good at making OP's?

If you are screwed, just get me media and a mission statement buy Sunday night.

There are way better people to do it though.

 

[razu]

Same over here. I played a lil with SID an stuff, but nothing serious. Making
music and sounds is one of the last few categories I want to explore and I'm
eager to dive into but from another perspective. I want to build sounds from
scratch by programming the waves straight from the sines and use modulation
whatever to generate the final sound.

In my game, Ex Nihilo, I want to use, next to procedural generated geometry,
procedural generated sounds, sounds that change and act upon the action and
are perfectly synchronized to certain events and rhythms. It's important for
me since my game uses different tempos and the sounds should match and esp.
amplify the action ... the thrill.

However, currently, I have no profession in generating good music or sounds.
But at least I have the mathematical knowledge how to generate them. I just
need to find ways to translate numbers into good sounds.

Having said this, I'm looking for a real native sound programmer or one who
feels a strong need to become a master of it. One who can generate sounds from
plain native code in real-time. One who also follows an interest in sound
propagation, i.e. who may work with me on a model for computing the propagation
of 3d sound waves. Would be awesome. A cool game needs a kicking sound, right
in your face!

We've had CG graphics for ages. CG sound, I'm sure, would be amazing.

 

[Chaotic Kitten]

Wow, Thank you all so much for the kind words! It's a great thing to wake up too ^_^

It still feels a little weird when someone knows about the game already, I guess I'm doing an OK job shouting from the rooftops

Can't wait to see what improvements you make from here. I'd this Also planned for mobile? It's steam only ATM correct?

It's going to come to Android once the PC version is complete, and if there is a huge call for it, on iPhone too perhaps We are trying to get on Steam, but we will have it for sale on our own site, and we may also put it up on Desura once its ready/beta enough.

Could I ask what engine are you using? I want to fuss about with 2d lightning, and I'm not decided yet, probably unity but I don't know... Impressive work for 4 months.

^_^ Yeah, we are using Unity3D, and so far it's been fantastic. 4 months is longer than we expected it to take, but isn't that how it always goes ?

The wall is crying

Looks amazing. I guess you're using normal maps, which is a great approach for lighting in 2D games.

We called that spot the crying wall, because it looks so sad! It's not there anymore, because that was pre- precedural generation. I miss you, sad wall!

Normal maps indeed! The stylistic simplicity of the sprites makes the normal maps fairly simple, but even so, it adds a lot of extra work to making the sprites and animations

 

[Genji]

Wow, Thank you all so much for the kind words! It's a great thing to wake up too ^_^

^_^ Yeah, we are using Unity3D, and so far it's been fantastic. 4 months is longer than we expected it to take, but isn't that how it always goes ?

Very cool looking game! Are you using any add-on for the 2D sprites for Unity 3D?

 

[Diablohead]

In amongst some skateboard maintenance this morning I managed to get some time to try out... Chopper Mike on Ouya, via a Philips PicoPix projector! It's only.. SUPER RAD!!

Click for big...

​

Pocket projector? what model and price? I been looking at the £70 pocket projectors for a while but they all seem to be low SD res or limited in use, but that one looks a little bigger.

 

[razu]

Pocket projector? what model and price? I been looking at the £70 pocket projectors for a while but they all seem to be low SD res or limited in use, but that one looks a little bigger.

It's one of these: http://www.philips.co.uk/c/pocket-projector/picopix-80-lumens-with-mp4-player-ppx2480_eu/prd/

854 x 480, so it's not exactly super high res, but fine for watching films on the bedroom wall. It has built-in storage and battery, so you can load up a film and have it just sat on a tripod with no cables at all! Take it camping if you want! It has a standard camera 'screw hole' for mounting on tripods. It cost a bit, but is a very nice toy.

Back on topic, I am taking the projector to an Ouya event in London on the 25th, so it will have come in handy!


And, on that gorillapod, it reminds me of the robot-camera from Metal Gear

 

[Kamaki]

what type of game you tryin to make kamaki? it looks neat

Thanks, I just describe it as Pac-Man but in 3d at this point. The idea is you play a sheep that's running away from hungry villagers. Once I've got the game working from a programming point of view I'm going to be pretty heavily redoing most of my assets.

 

[Limanima]

I'm finally finishing the development of the game I've been working on for more then 2 years, so I decided to share some more info and screen grabs.
The first one is from the main menu. We lost a lot of time in the menus presentation, there is a lot of animations in them, we wanted it to look alive.
The other captures are from gameplay, one from each theme.
There are 84 levels in 4 different themes and about 40 achievements/trophies to get.
We are at the moment in a testing phase. Testing and sound is what is left to be done.

 

[Dali]

I'm kinda a regular in the Arts and Farts thread and there's somewhat of a standing rule of don't "if you don't have anything nice to say... unless they ask for critiques". Some people are just passing time with a productive hobby; They're using it as a learning experience and maybe what they show looks not so good, but they learned how to use whatever tools they are using and had fun along the way. Others its their job or are looking to make money off of their game. With that said, what's the general thinking on giving un-solicited negative criticism here? Of course not being an asshole but giving your honest opinion on a game that may need improvement? Sometimes its too late to even have your crits addressed. Is it still useful to say what you think is wrong with a game ITT?

 

[Limanima]

I'm kinda a regular in the Arts and Farts thread and there's somewhat of a standing rule of don't "if you don't have anything nice to say... unless they ask for critiques". Some people are just passing time with a productive hobby; They're using it as a learning experience and maybe what they show looks not so good, but they learned how to use whatever tools they are using and had fun along the way. Others its their job or are looking to make money off of their game. With that said, what's the general thinking on giving un-solicited negative criticism here? Of course not being an asshole but giving your honest opinion on a game that may need improvement? Sometimes its too late to even have your crits addressed. Is it still useful to say what you think is wrong with a game ITT?

I think it's very important to give feedback especialy if it's bad feedback, or else how can things improve? Bad criticism is more useful then good criticism. At least that's how I see it.

 

[Blizzard]

I think criticism is good as long as it's reasonable (e.g. if someone is trying to sell a game instead of just sharing a thing they are doing as a very occasional hobby) and constructive (e.g. not just saying "that sprite sucks" or something).

 

[beril]

I finally made a breakthrough with my new game and found a pretty cool artstyle.

After Gunman Clive I initially felt quite a lot of pressure for the visuals for my next game to have the same uniqueness, but after some rather unsuccessful rendering experiments I had pretty much settled on using a much more traditional style. I haven't really been able to get started on the game until very recently though and struggled with making decent looking assets. Then the other day I got a somewhat crazy idea involving very heavy geometry shader usage, and the results so far are very promising.

If I can really pull off this style it will mean that creating the assets might be even easier and faster than for Gunman Clive, and I think I can get away with some pretty sparse environments without it feeling cheap, and the game will definitely look unique.

I think I'll wait a bit longer before I show anything though.

 

[The Friendly Monster]

Made this yesterday at the Berlin Mini Game Jam.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCAfbOQynZ8
https://www.dropbox.com/s/q0xx6j2nogfjnl2/pope.jar

 

[ThatObviousUser]

I finally made a breakthrough with my new game and found a pretty cool artstyle.

After Gunman Clive I initially felt quite a lot of pressure for the visuals for my next game to have the same uniqueness, but after some rather unsuccessful rendering experiments I had pretty much settled on using a much more traditional style. I haven't really been able to get started on the game until very recently though and struggled with making decent looking assets. Then the other day I got a somewhat crazy idea involving very heavy geometry shader usage, and the results so far are very promising.

If I can really pull off this style it will mean that creating the assets might be even easier and faster than for Gunman Clive, and I think I can get away with some pretty sparse environments without it feeling cheap, and the game will definitely look unique.

I think I'll wait a bit longer before I show anything though.

I'm intrigued. Is it a completely new technique?

Also, platforms?

 

[harrypmgaga]

So I did a ton of concept drawing (if you can call it that) last night for my project. Also in the past week wrote about 20 pages of backstory for my, let's call it, world the game will be set in, and about 20 pages of dialogue for what (in my mind) is the first part of the game.

It's a really ambitious project, and knowing my shittiness with coding it'll /never/ get off the ground. But if nothing else it's been great to plunge myself into a narrative story I'm really enjoying fleshing out and making it come alive.

 

[Blizzard]

So I did a ton of concept drawing (if you can call it that) last night for my project. Also in the past week wrote about 20 pages of backstory for my, let's call it, world the game will be set in, and about 20 pages of dialogue for what (in my mind) is the first part of the game.

It's a really ambitious project, and knowing my shittiness with coding it'll /never/ get off the ground. But if nothing else it's been great to plunge myself into a narrative story I'm really enjoying fleshing out and making it come alive.

If nothing else, have you considered making it into a short story or a novel? That might provide you something good even if the game doesn't make it. =)

 

[harrypmgaga]

If nothing else, have you considered making it into a short story or a novel? That might provide you something good even if the game doesn't make it. =)

The idea for this game's plot actually came from the idea for a novel I've had in my mind for a while, so yeah it's totally something I do want to keep exploring be it in a game (that would be ideal as the narrative just "fits" so well with the game mechanic/story ideas I've got) or in some other form for sure.

 

[Dynamite Shikoku]

I'm finally finishing the development of the game I've been working on for more then 2 years, so I decided to share some more info and screen grabs.
The first one is from the main menu. We lost a lot of time in the menus presentation, there is a lot of animations in them, we wanted it to look alive.
The other captures are from gameplay, one from each theme.
There are 84 levels in 4 different themes and about 40 achievements/trophies to get.
We are at the moment in a testing phase. Testing and sound is what is left to be done.

That looks really nice. Love the colours. What platforms did you say this was for again?

 

[Dynamite Shikoku]

I'm kinda a regular in the Arts and Farts thread and there's somewhat of a standing rule of don't "if you don't have anything nice to say... unless they ask for critiques". Some people are just passing time with a productive hobby; They're using it as a learning experience and maybe what they show looks not so good, but they learned how to use whatever tools they are using and had fun along the way. Others its their job or are looking to make money off of their game. With that said, what's the general thinking on giving un-solicited negative criticism here? Of course not being an asshole but giving your honest opinion on a game that may need improvement? Sometimes its too late to even have your crits addressed. Is it still useful to say what you think is wrong with a game ITT?

I think it's good to offer constructive criticism, especially if you have some experience or knowledge about something that you can share with the person. But I also think it's important to offer reasons when you do it. For example: 'That button is too small.' is not as good as 'I would make that button a little bigger because it might be easy to miss if you aren't looking directly at it.'

 

[missile]

We've had CG graphics for ages. CG sound, I'm sure, would be amazing.

Indeed. CG sound is possible, but music I don't now for sure.

The problem essentially is generating music from some known data
algorithmically similar to computing a spline surface by giving some control
points and a basis that blends everything together. I don't know if something
like this can work for music. And something tells me that generating music
algorithmically is kind of an ill-post problem, meaning having no unique
solution and a sensitive dependency on the input data. That's something I will
find out some day. The funny thing is that we essentially know everything
about music. It just breaks down to the Fourier series resp. Fourier analysis.
In a sense, any music is a blend of sines with some given amplitude and
frequency. However knowing this, no one has ever made a number one music album
solely generated from algorithms. This situation is quite different from
images.

... With that said, what's the general thinking on giving un-solicited negative criticism here? Of course not being an asshole but giving your honest opinion on a game that may need improvement? Sometimes its too late to even have your crits addressed. Is it still useful to say what you think is wrong with a game ITT?

I'm insisting on that people give me un-solicited negative criticism. It's a
way that someone can tell you something who has a real different perspective
than yours. So say if the colors are crap, say if the picture looks wrong, say
if you don't like the setting etc. if you feel that way! I'm immune to the
so-called - negative - critics. I do not separate the world into good or bad,
positive or negative. Such things are just sociological words created by
humans to separate things (their mind) to paint the world in their colors. I'm
not one of those. The way I like it is getting critics and maybe have
discourse about it. Simple, isn't it?

 

[Limanima]

That looks really nice. Love the colours. What platforms did you say this was for again?

We will realease it first on windows phone (it's a xna game), then we will port to iOS and Windows 8. Not sure about the Android yet.

 

[Dynamite Shikoku]

We've had CG graphics for ages. CG sound, I'm sure, would be amazing.

Indeed. CG sound is possible, but music I don't now for sure.

The problem essentially is generating music from some known data
algorithmically similar to computing a spline surface by giving some control
points and a basis that blends everything together. I don't know if something
like this can work for music. And something tells me that generating music
algorithmically is kind of an ill-post problem, meaning having no unique
solution and a sensitive dependency on the input data. That's something I will
find out some day. The funny thing is that we essentially know everything
about music. It just breaks down to the Fourier series resp. Fourier analysis.
In a sense, any music is a blend of sines with some given amplitude and
frequency. However knowing this, no one has ever made a number one music album
solely generated from algorithms. This situation is quite different from
images.

You guys should have a look at BitWiz Audio Synth

 

[missile]

You guys should have a look at BitWiz Audio Synth

Yep. That's all the way cool. If I won't find a good sound programmer, I guess
I need to code it myself. Will see. What really kicks me is when combining the
sound generating parameters with game action/parameters. Boahh...

Here are some others interesting sound generation programs;
http://woolyss.com/chipmusic-generators.php. Sfxr is perhaps known by some
people here.

 

[beril]

I'm intrigued. Is it a completely new technique?

Also, platforms?

I woulnd't go so far as to say completely new tech, but I haven't really seen anything quite like it. Technically it's completely different from Gunman Clive at least, though it's also going for a rough handdrawn look but in a different style, somewhat inspired by Yoshis Island.

I'm focusing on 3DS for now; with potential ports later. I'm not sure if I'll get it to work on smartphones though with the heavy geometry shader use; I'd have to do everything on the CPU which I guess could be slow; it's also quite fillrate heavy so I might have some trouble running it in native resolution on those devices.