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Indie Game Development Discussion Thread | Of Being Professionally Poor
- Thread starter chubigans
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If you do something you like, you have a very good chance others will like
it too - by nature. Why? Because most processes in nature do pose a continuity
property. One can interpret this as the law of continuity. Some processes
which seem to be suddenly occurring are (by closer inspection) continues as
well. However.
Put a bunch of people in the same environment. And you know what? They will
all do similar things. Same holds for ideas as well. People come to similar
ideas while in the same environment. That means you have a good chance meeting
someone who likes your idea. And given the world, there might be thousands of
people liking your idea.
With the above reasoning we get rid of whether someone will like our idea
or not. Second to this is the range of people we want to sell the game to.
Usually we want to reach as many people as possible. To do this we have to
know something about the people / the market, i.e. how the "like-function" of
our game is changing with respect to a set of people. And this is something
you can't know right from the start. We have to explore while going into,
while going into the market. And after some time we will know our audience
quite well - selling them what they need.
I strongly think that new game developers don't know the market or the
audience they are targeting. They may think they know, but they will find out
once they sell the game. It is a process - to find it all out. Hence, a new
game developer cannot assume that his/her idea and the game made out of it
will skyrocket the charts, even if the idea is very good.
But now comes the problem. There are exceptions! For example; Minecraft.
The problem is ultimately coupled with the ego of each person. And the problem
is; people do love heroes! Because it creates the phantasy of being the one
who could made it as well. That's what a hero boils down to. Despite it can be
a nice phantasy, many people are slave to it. And many game developers (not
only new ones) are slave to is as well.
So if one is a (new) game developer having a good idea and want to sell the
game a "million" at first try, then (s)he is just following this phantasy
straight. Doing so is just feeding ones very own ego. I have met a lot of
people esp. at university who wanted to become game developers. But most of
them were dying on this phantasy. Each and everyone has a good idea, no
question about that, but the problem is that your ego tells you that once
your game is finished you will be the one. And that's how one lives this
phantasy forever.
Sure, we all want to sell our games well. But without any experience of
releasing some games beforehand, one cannot say anything about how well the
first or second game will do, no matter how good the idea. If anything, one
can make a guess. So we can safely drop "sells well" for the first one or two
games. And that's a let down for many new game programmers.
Yep. There is a drift away from big studios in going smaller and indie. Latest
example are the former WipEout developers. Four of them have founded a new
company called Sawfly. Here is an interesting article;
How Sawfly rose from the ashes of Studio Liverpool.
Btw; I have a similar problem with the art. The trick is to circumvent it
smoothly. xD
That seems like a bit of a contradiction, since I think major points of sniping are sitting still so your shot is clean, and possibly waiting in one spot for a while for the perfect opportunity.
I guess one could make a CounterStrike AWP Quick Scoper game where you have to keep moving.
Hi NeoGaf Indie developers! My name is Chris and I'm a 3D Character and Technical Artist that recently worked on Dance Central 3 at Backbone Entertainment. After Backbone closed its doors, I joined up with a team of new indie developers, JV5 Games. We're working on Air Dash Online, a platform fighter focused on creating fast paced, agile combat in a competitive setting. We certainly are inspired by Smash Brothers, but will be taking a different approach in a number of ways, first by moving away from the idea of a mascot fighter and building our own cast of characters:
(www.AirDashOnline.com)
Welcome! Good luck with your game and your Kickstarter campaign. I guess we will get to see more with tha actual Kickstarter campaign?
Sounds interesting. Something about "online" in game titles makes my balls recede into my stomach though. It's synonymous with crap mmos and pay to play. It's ok for a game to be playable online or even online only without making "online" part of the title.Hi NeoGaf Indie developers! My name is Chris and I'm a 3D Character and Technical Artist that recently worked on Dance Central 3 at Backbone Entertainment. After Backbone closed its doors, I joined up with a team of new indie developers, JV5 Games. We're working on Air Dash Online, a platform fighter focused on creating fast paced, agile combat in a competitive setting. We certainly are inspired by Smash Brothers, but will be taking a different approach in a number of ways, first by moving away from the idea of a mascot fighter and building our own cast of characters:
(www.AirDashOnline.com)
Excited to mention that in the future I will be doing a series of casual live streams as I work, hosted by Clash Tournaments on twitchTV. I use a lot of my own custom built modeling tools in Maya, so even if you are a 3D pro, you might see a few new things.
Seeing a lot of familiar projects and talented developers in here, so I will definitely be contributing to this thread when I can. I'll keep an eye out for Unity3D shader programming questions as well, as that is also one of my responsibilities on the game.
Technobabel
Member
Woo, my game Dungeon Hearts (you can find some development posts earlier in this thread) is in the Indie Royal bundle!
To celebrate, the iPad version is on sale for 99 cents.
To celebrate, the iPad version is on sale for 99 cents.
-COOLIO-
The Everyman
congrats!
We will certainly have more info when we launch the Kickstarter, but have been working on consistent updates for our Facebook, Twitter, thread on Smashboards, and the website. I hope eventually we can get things moving on IndieDB as well, but we are still pending there.
I'll be announcing here when I'm streaming as well.
Noted, though I'll make no promises about a name change. I can say however "Pay to Play" and especially "Pay to Win" models directly conflict with our goals for ADO and we will not be using them.
Congrats!
Technobabel
Member
Thanks! For anyone interested, I'm continuing to support the game post-release with new content, 2 updates have already been made.
I'm gonna give it a shot. I've never participated in a game jam before. Going to target the Mac using Cocos2D I think.
Dead Prince
Banned
Dead Prince
Banned
Excessive use of color. Fail.
0/minimalism
im trying yes lol.
But that's like, EVERY Ludum Dare.
ganbareneopokekun
Member
currently working on a pixelart shootemup with a friend, i posted some sprites earlier in this thread ;D
here's a video of our current state, many stuff is still wip but you get the idea of the game and the engine behind it i guess
such a good feeling when you see your graphics moving
klick here for the video
here's a video of our current state, many stuff is still wip but you get the idea of the game and the engine behind it i guess
such a good feeling when you see your graphics movingklick here for the video
BlazeHedgehog
Member
In to the third and final game of the set of three I was contracted to make
Only got maybe 3 weeks left-ish, need to pick up the pace. Got no level art or nothin'!
Only got maybe 3 weeks left-ish, need to pick up the pace. Got no level art or nothin'!
Dynamite Shikoku
Congratulations, you really deserve it!
What do you guys use to make gifs of your games?
BlazeHedgehog
Member
Camstudio to capture the video (FRAPS would work, too) and then I open it in Virtualdub to crop/trim the length. Once I have a small enough clip, I import the AVI in to Animation Shop 3, a super old GIF tool that came with an OEM install of Windows 98 I had years ago (it's part of Paintshop Pro 7).
LOL Awesome! xD......
phantomsnake
Neo Member
Congrats!
I haven't used this myself but I think you need to use a tool like 2D ColliderGen to create a mesh and then use it with the Mesh Collider component in Unity.
The PlayStation Mobile game I've been making is in review with Sony now and so I've been looking at what to do next. I'm still playing around with ideas, but I'm thinking of trying a 3D platformer in Unity (Ratchet & Clank style, though obviously less ambitious!) There's one thing I'm not sure about at the moment though. It might seem like a bit of an odd question, but I figured this was the best place to try asking: how much can you alter your course (direction and speed) while jumping or falling (not using any glide mechanics, like Clank's jetpack/rotor blades) in a typical 3D platformer, or R&C specifically, compared to how much you can move while on the ground? Is the answer different if you are starting from a standing jump?
I don't have access to my PS3 at the moment, so I can't check for myself, and it's impossible to get an idea from watching Youtube gameplay, so I wondered if anyone here had any idea!
Does this sort of thing (forgetting or just not being able to visualise how actual games work) happen to anyone else when they're developing stuff? I had to load up Uncharted on my Vita to remember how a normal third person camera and movement system worked as well!
On an unrelated note: has anyone had any experience with using Scuptris to make 3D models? I have no 3D modelling or animating ability whatsoever, so it seems like an easy way to create models compared to using Blender, but I wondered if there would be any problems with rigging/animating/applying materials and textures to different parts etc? I need to learn how to do all that, but it would be nice to be able to save some time modelling organic enemies. With my limited artistic talent I need all the shortcuts I can take, but if it's going to cause more trouble than it's worth later on with animations etc, then I won't bother with it!
I don't have access to my PS3 at the moment, so I can't check for myself, and it's impossible to get an idea from watching Youtube gameplay, so I wondered if anyone here had any idea!
Does this sort of thing (forgetting or just not being able to visualise how actual games work) happen to anyone else when they're developing stuff? I had to load up Uncharted on my Vita to remember how a normal third person camera and movement system worked as well!
On an unrelated note: has anyone had any experience with using Scuptris to make 3D models? I have no 3D modelling or animating ability whatsoever, so it seems like an easy way to create models compared to using Blender, but I wondered if there would be any problems with rigging/animating/applying materials and textures to different parts etc? I need to learn how to do all that, but it would be nice to be able to save some time modelling organic enemies. With my limited artistic talent I need all the shortcuts I can take, but if it's going to cause more trouble than it's worth later on with animations etc, then I won't bother with it!
I was like, I have too many projects, but maybe I'll try the Ludum Dare in like 12 hours anyway. And I found a cool website with music I could use! But then of course I realized, I'd have to make the complete soundtrack during the ludum dare period and couldn't use it, so if I used external music it would have to be the ludum jam instead. But who wants to do a JAM.
So after struggling with cocos2d-x the past few nights, I finally have it building an Android project that runs on my phone. I swear I hit every possible error trying to get it all set up. I'm excited to finally start working on a game now. The good thing about the past few days of frustration was that I was able to come up with some game ideas. Going to attempt to make an RPG with a lot of touch features.
i'm not sure exactly what you mean. in unity there's multiple ways of controlling your movement. you can do it via the physics engine and add force to a rigidbody (a ragdoll like object) or you can control it directly via a speed you set to modify yourself.
by default in the physics engine, you wouldn't be able to move at all in the air without building up momentum on the ground. if you control it directly via character controller you'd move exactly the same in the air as you would on the ground unless you specified it to act differently at the two separate times. you can create as many whacky styles of movement that you can dream of in unity, it does movement really well.
Secret Fawful
Member
Working on scenes out of sequence means I get more done faster. WHY DIDN'T I DO IT BEFORE.
If you jumped in a direction in real life you wouldn't be able to change direction until you hit the ground but in most platformers you can, he just seems to want to know how much damping goes on with most platformers when changing direction in mid air.
Personally, I have no experience with platformers, but I'd probably build my character movement around movement angle, velocity and acceleration. Then when accounting for in-air movement, maybe use half the acceleration.
Hi NeoGaf Indie developers! My name is Chris and I'm a 3D Character and Technical Artist that recently worked on Dance Central 3 at Backbone Entertainment. After Backbone closed its doors, I joined up with a team of new indie developers, JV5 Games. We're working on Air Dash Online, a platform fighter focused on creating fast paced, agile combat in a competitive setting. We certainly are inspired by Smash Brothers, but will be taking a different approach in a number of ways, first by moving away from the idea of a mascot fighter and building our own cast of characters:
(www.AirDashOnline.com)
Excited to mention that in the future I will be doing a series of casual live streams as I work, hosted by Clash Tournaments on twitchTV. I use a lot of my own custom built modeling tools in Maya, so even if you are a 3D pro, you might see a few new things.
Seeing a lot of familiar projects and talented developers in here, so I will definitely be contributing to this thread when I can. I'll keep an eye out for Unity3D shader programming questions as well, as that is also one of my responsibilities on the game.
Whoa, that's some sweet concept art there. You sure do have talent on your team! I wish you well!
Hey, Unity bros
I'm instantiating some prefabs during runtime...little ghost sprites that pop up randomly. But I want some text to hover over their head. I figure the best way to do that is to create a child text sprite along with each ghost (and offset its transform by a few units up), but I don't know how to instantiate an object and then make it a child of another object.
Halp
I'm instantiating some prefabs during runtime...little ghost sprites that pop up randomly. But I want some text to hover over their head. I figure the best way to do that is to create a child text sprite along with each ghost (and offset its transform by a few units up), but I don't know how to instantiate an object and then make it a child of another object.
Halp
I just did that in my last game, lemme look at my code real quick and get back to ya.
Edit: Looks like I just used thisTransform.parent = transform (of gameobject that is to be the parent) Then I'm sure you can just alter the transform.position of that child to be above the parent.
instantiate them both on different lines and then
textprefab.transform.parent = ghostprefab.transform;
?
MaritalWheat
Member
You could also just set up your ghost prefab with the text as a child (and offset correctly) and deactivated and simply activate/deactivate that text gameobject as needed, but all roads lead to rome.
"Setting the parent of a transform which resides in a prefab is disabled to prevent data corruption"
Right, that's what I want to do. How?
Are you setting the instantiated object as parent, or setting the prefab as a parent? You'd want to set the instantiated object as the parent if you're getting that message from trying to alter the prefab.
And other guy is just saying set the text as a child then make that the prefab. Have the text disabled if need be and activate it when you need it.
MaritalWheat
Member
In the editor just child your text gameobject under your ghost one and then you can probably just physically manipulate it in the scene so that it is offset as you want it from the ghost, make a prefab of that, and then wherever you want to script the text trigger stuff just use GameObject.SetActive() to activate/deactivate that text gameobject. Then you can just instantiate that prefab.
I think that should do what you want?
Edit: yeah, as KMD said - just a different way to get the same result
Okay, I understand that, now...prefabs are essentially plaster casts, they themselves don't get altered or messed with at runtime.
The Instantiate function seems to return an object. To get a transform, though, it needs to be a GameObject, but the cast doesn't seem to work.
Here's my code:
Code:
public Transform ghost;
public Transform ghostText;
GameObject ghostClone, ghostTextClone;
// Use this for initialization
void Start () {
//rand = new Random();
}
// Update is called once per frame
void Update () {
Vector3 spherePoint;
float radius = 20.0f;
if (Input.GetKeyDown("f"))
{
spherePoint = Random.onUnitSphere * radius;
ghostClone = (GameObject) Instantiate(ghost, spherePoint, Quaternion.identity);
ghostTextClone = (GameObject) Instantiate(ghostText, new Vector3(spherePoint.x, spherePoint.y, spherePoint.z), Quaternion.identity);
ghostTextClone.transform.parent = ghostClone.transform;
}
}Error: Cannot cast from source type to destination type
Edit:
People keep saying this like I know how to do it. = (
Just drag the object you want to child onto the object you want to be the parent in the Hierarchy tab.
In code, if you're doing a prefab, I generally have them in my Resources folder and do something like:
(GameObject)Instantiate(Resources.Load("Resources Sub-Folder/Prefab Name"), Position, Quaternion)
MaritalWheat
Member
Ah, sorry! I'm being vague. You can make anything you have in a scene a child of something else by dragging its name in the hierarchy tab on top of the thing you want to be its parent (it will then visually represent this hierarchy).
So you could temporarily drag your text and ghost prefabs into the scene, find them in the hierarchy, drag text onto ghost so it makes it a child of ghost, and then create a new prefab out of that.
Yay! This worked! Sorry for being dumb. It seems like you should be able to do that in the assets view...I don't have my prefabs in the hierarchy, because I don't want any to be in the scene during the start of the program.
Thanks!
MaritalWheat
Member
Glad to help--and you're totally right about it being silly to not be able to do in assets view.
He just did that haha.
Yeah, it's a quick "typing of the dead" type thing inside the Oculus Rift. I'm doing it because 1) I figured it would be a good way to get familiar with Unity, and 2) I just got my Rift and I really really want to do something with it.
RelentlessRolento
Member
Funny you should mention a typing game, since I just noticed Notch made a typing game with Unity: drop.notch.net
He might have been starting something for Ludum Dare and scrapped it.
*edit*
Almost any time I try to do something with a library or game system like Flixel, or even UDK, I feel like I always hit roadblocks (very quickly in Flixel) trying to do things. With Flixel it's like, well I want to handle a mouse click anywhere on the screen. I keep trying to figure out the magical google search term combination for that, thinking SURELY someone has done it and it doesn't require creating a button, but I'm failing to even find that information thus far.
He might have been starting something for Ludum Dare and scrapped it.
*edit*
Almost any time I try to do something with a library or game system like Flixel, or even UDK, I feel like I always hit roadblocks (very quickly in Flixel) trying to do things. With Flixel it's like, well I want to handle a mouse click anywhere on the screen. I keep trying to figure out the magical google search term combination for that, thinking SURELY someone has done it and it doesn't require creating a button, but I'm failing to even find that information thus far.
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