BLACK AMERICAN PSYCHO
Junior Member
Okay since I've never programed before in my life. ( I did ruby once but that was for editing a Pokemon rom I think.) Should I start off with game maker? Or should I just learn C#/C++ so I can use unreal/unity?
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Indie Game Development Discussion Thread | Of Being Professionally Poor
- Thread starter chubigans
- Start date
- Status
Yes. There are indie's that use it to port their xna games to other platforms and it is windows 8 metro compatible.
Nice job OP!
The first thread has been a great help and certainly a great inspiration. Keep on posting your Indie games and what you guys are working on.
I'll be working more on my prototype tonight. Hoping to add an attack mechanic and then an enemy. I also have an idea for how to deal with my substate problem. I'm hoping Arrays and For Loops are the key.
The first thread has been a great help and certainly a great inspiration. Keep on posting your Indie games and what you guys are working on.
I'll be working more on my prototype tonight. Hoping to add an attack mechanic and then an enemy. I also have an idea for how to deal with my substate problem. I'm hoping Arrays and For Loops are the key.
S tier OP !
Just need some review for engines like Construct and it will be perfect
Loved the pallete you have there... very kirbesque
Just need some review for engines like Construct and it will be perfect
Loved the pallete you have there... very kirbesque
BigWeather
Member
Wonderful thread, thanks for creating it! At some point I'll post what I'm working on, after it looks a bit better and has a bit more functionality.
I've finally decided to give up on game development (Actually, I've been done for months and it's way too stressful), so I figured I may as share what I did end up with the end (eh, I'm bored waiting for black mesa to download, so don't mind me if I try to get a bit of enjoyment out of this):
This was my game, called Solar Storm. It's feature complete and was halted at about the half way point of the beta phase. I did everything alone and by myself. It's completely playable, just buggy and horribly balanced.
It uses game maker 8.1 beta, and pushes the software way past its limits, so porting to the studio version is sadly just not an option. I chose game maker because I know GML and all the little quirks of that engine by heart, so it would vastly decrease my development time. It took me about 2 1/2 months of development time, working ~10 hours a day with no days off. I took a half an hour Gaf break here and there for lunch or something.
The issue with game maker is it doesn't handle large maps (rooms) well. I had to come up with a dynamic streaming system for everything. That includes tiles, their positions and states, lighting, static items, interactive items and their states, ect. This eats up a lot of performance. The larger the screen, the slower since everything has to be hard coded to be as efficient as possible when loading in new terrain and deleting the old.
Anyways...
General:
If I had to describe the game, it would be a mix between: Borderlands, Terreria, and of course, Metroid.
Features:
Usually non-advertised features:
Story:
You are found laying in front of a cryogenic chamber inside of a dark room. You wake up and have to escape. Once you reach the surface, you realize you are in the future, inside of a dyson sphere. An evil army that has harnessed the dark power of the sphere has transformed themselves into pure energy. Basically, are you a bad enough dude to stop the dark lord leader?
That's really about it. I love Borderlands and Metroid, and felt Terreria did a fantastic job with its shooting mechanics, so that's why I chose what I did. It was fun to work on for the first month when I was making the terrain engine and such but then it just dragged on and on. I forced myself to get as far as I did for 2 reasons:
1. I hoped I would make some money to pay off my crazy debt.
2. I wanted to prove I could.
I failed at #1, but I'm happy with #2. Too bad it was a stupid challenge that basically cost me my sanity and left me with lingering panic attacks. It was ultimately a waste of time because I despise anything programming and want to pursue other things with my life. Haha, that's life though, right!?
Some other screens (I didn't feel like starting up my laptop for the development build and I don't remember my debug codes so I couldn't show weapons, sorry)
And before I get gripe about pixel densities, your art sucks, blah blah blah; I'm not an artist! I'm not a sound designer. I'm not even a competent programmer. I just took my shot at it, that's all.
----
I can give general advice to people in here about development (not that anyone wants it) and avoiding Development-hell. Good luck everyone, it can be quite the ride.
START SMALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Indie devs use simple pixel graphics FOR A REASON.
This was my game, called Solar Storm. It's feature complete and was halted at about the half way point of the beta phase. I did everything alone and by myself. It's completely playable, just buggy and horribly balanced.
It uses game maker 8.1 beta, and pushes the software way past its limits, so porting to the studio version is sadly just not an option. I chose game maker because I know GML and all the little quirks of that engine by heart, so it would vastly decrease my development time. It took me about 2 1/2 months of development time, working ~10 hours a day with no days off. I took a half an hour Gaf break here and there for lunch or something.
The issue with game maker is it doesn't handle large maps (rooms) well. I had to come up with a dynamic streaming system for everything. That includes tiles, their positions and states, lighting, static items, interactive items and their states, ect. This eats up a lot of performance. The larger the screen, the slower since everything has to be hard coded to be as efficient as possible when loading in new terrain and deleting the old.
Anyways...
General:
If I had to describe the game, it would be a mix between: Borderlands, Terreria, and of course, Metroid.
Features:
- 180 unique gun models with 13 different classes of weaponry from revolvers to plasma rifles. Guns have unique properties and are randomly generated in a loot system with meaningful changes for a total of some ungodly number of weaponry that I don't care to give out. Most guns are based on real life guns weighted with statistics that revolve around their real life counterparts. You can get an AA-12 for example that shoots like a real AA-12 would (in 2d of course). Every single gun is modeled and visible on the player.
- Each individual gun is customizable with multiple parts that vastly change the behavior of the weapon, or add different damage types like freezing.
- 4-player online coop. Play the entire story in 4 player coop with friends. It is a drop-in/drop-out system.
- Class based RPG system. Gain abilities and powers as you level up and collect experience. Follow an upgrade tree to gain different abilities and take different paths to make a unique character that suits whatever you want. Find different armor and armor upgrades. Every single piece of armor is visible on your player.
- Map is randomly generated. Use your drill to dig down and work your way deeper fighting stronger enemies as you go. Gain upgrades and enhancements to open up the path to new areas of exploration. Find lootable chests of varying quality guarded by strong enemies.
- Boss attack mode after you beat the story with a high score functionality.
- Add your own music. Every single track is easily replaced in-game with your own custom music. You can even make playlists too.
Usually non-advertised features:
- Save and load system for the map.
- Save and load for a character.
- Multiplayer streaming of the map.
- Dynamic sound that changes upon your location. Shooting a gun outside will actually sound like you shot a gun with proper reverb and echo (as opposed to a dry sound booth most games sound like).
- Hud opacity and reticle color changes
- Other general PC tweaks like resolution, ect.
Story:
You are found laying in front of a cryogenic chamber inside of a dark room. You wake up and have to escape. Once you reach the surface, you realize you are in the future, inside of a dyson sphere. An evil army that has harnessed the dark power of the sphere has transformed themselves into pure energy. Basically, are you a bad enough dude to stop the dark lord leader?
That's really about it. I love Borderlands and Metroid, and felt Terreria did a fantastic job with its shooting mechanics, so that's why I chose what I did. It was fun to work on for the first month when I was making the terrain engine and such but then it just dragged on and on. I forced myself to get as far as I did for 2 reasons:
1. I hoped I would make some money to pay off my crazy debt.
2. I wanted to prove I could.
I failed at #1, but I'm happy with #2. Too bad it was a stupid challenge that basically cost me my sanity and left me with lingering panic attacks. It was ultimately a waste of time because I despise anything programming and want to pursue other things with my life. Haha, that's life though, right!?
Some other screens (I didn't feel like starting up my laptop for the development build and I don't remember my debug codes so I couldn't show weapons, sorry)
And before I get gripe about pixel densities, your art sucks, blah blah blah; I'm not an artist! I'm not a sound designer. I'm not even a competent programmer. I just took my shot at it, that's all.
----
I can give general advice to people in here about development (not that anyone wants it) and avoiding Development-hell. Good luck everyone, it can be quite the ride.
START SMALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Indie devs use simple pixel graphics FOR A REASON.
Are you going to do that for every developer fulltime? That will be rough. (Notch used to do that but only part-time)
I guess I'll post my stuff. I'm currently a student at the University of Tasmania doing all manner of things. I did a few game courses for funsies, and realised that maybe making small video games isn't as bad as I thought it'd be. Keeping in mind that I'm never ever going to make this a job, or a real source of income. I'm doing it in my free time, because I like video game design. And as a means of turning my programming skills into something that others can appreciate and be entertained by.
So, anyway, over the past three months I've been working on a first person platformer. Outside of that concept I'm kind of just making it up as I go along.
Video Walkthrough
Controls:
WASD - Movement
Mouse 1 - Pick up physics objects
Spacebar - Mantle on top of objects
Esc - Menu
I'll probably keep working on it until the end of November. Maybe longer if I'm still motivated by the concept / if it isn't complete enough.
As always, suggestions and criticisms and all of that are not only welcome but encouraged.
So, anyway, over the past three months I've been working on a first person platformer. Outside of that concept I'm kind of just making it up as I go along.
Vlander Build 13
Video Walkthrough
Controls:
WASD - Movement
Mouse 1 - Pick up physics objects
Spacebar - Mantle on top of objects
Esc - Menu
I'll probably keep working on it until the end of November. Maybe longer if I'm still motivated by the concept / if it isn't complete enough.
As always, suggestions and criticisms and all of that are not only welcome but encouraged.
Looking at the OT someone might get the feeling that Indie Game Development,
i.e. making games, simply consist of choosing the right game maker. Man, never
thought it was that easy! Anyways, good start! Oh, and yes, the title rulz. xD
mechanics yourself.
instead of reading books about techniques and programming the stuff on their
own. A dev dairy is fine, but streaming? Perhaps there was a reason nobody
ever did it before.
i.e. making games, simply consist of choosing the right game maker. Man, never
thought it was that easy! Anyways, good start! Oh, and yes, the title rulz. xD
Start small. Choose a language of your choice and implement the basic game
mechanics yourself.
Pretty useless. People think by watching others they will learn something
instead of reading books about techniques and programming the stuff on their
own. A dev dairy is fine, but streaming? Perhaps there was a reason nobody
ever did it before.
Added #screenshotsaturday to the OP. Also, today is
Post a pic on your Twitter feed, then come back here and post it in the thread! Here's a format I'd like to use:
Post a pic on your Twitter feed, then come back here and post it in the thread! Here's a format I'd like to use:
@chubigans said:
Totally redesigned some Cook, Serve, Delicious menus based on beta feedback. Man I love betas. #screenshotsaturday http://twitpic.com/auwo5d
@chubigans
No twitter account so...
Those are shot from the seperated tutorial mode.
The game will be part a "Metroidvania platformer" and part "Precision platformer" (super meat boy, League of Evil). Right now I am at starting the level design in the Metroidvania part as the graphics are pretty much ready and the base systems and behaviors are also coded. No sound integration yet and for a long time again.
There will be a PC version first, with probably a lite free version available at as many places as possible and then a "full" version downloadable for a very small fee on my website and indy stores. I hope to finish this sometimes in 2013...
Those are shot from the seperated tutorial mode.
The game will be part a "Metroidvania platformer" and part "Precision platformer" (super meat boy, League of Evil). Right now I am at starting the level design in the Metroidvania part as the graphics are pretty much ready and the base systems and behaviors are also coded. No sound integration yet and for a long time again.
There will be a PC version first, with probably a lite free version available at as many places as possible and then a "full" version downloadable for a very small fee on my website and indy stores. I hope to finish this sometimes in 2013...
Another option for selling your game:
Indievania is an online indie game marketplace for independent developers to sell their games directly to players, no DRM client required, where 100% of the cost of the game goes to the developer. This allows developers to give the best promotions and deals possible to gamers. Customers can purchase games directly from the developers own merchant account, supporting the original developers and helping fund further development.
http://www.indievania.com/
Indievania is an online indie game marketplace for independent developers to sell their games directly to players, no DRM client required, where 100% of the cost of the game goes to the developer. This allows developers to give the best promotions and deals possible to gamers. Customers can purchase games directly from the developers own merchant account, supporting the original developers and helping fund further development.
http://www.indievania.com/
Man, replaying Resident Evil and Silent Hill on my Vita I'm very tempted to make such a game. Zombies, fixed camera angles, hard ass riddles where you need a guide,...
When I played them originally on the PSX I wished I could make such games, now years later I have the knowledge to all put it together, very tempted.
When I played them originally on the PSX I wished I could make such games, now years later I have the knowledge to all put it together, very tempted.
Warm Machine
Member
I'm going to talk a little bit about Orbitron: Revolution. Some of this info has been talked about in interviews, posts, our site and so on but I'll try to put most of it here.
Orbitron: Revolution started as a game called Orbital. The idea for the game came from looking at a piece of artwork I made many years ago, which was the basis of the ring.
Originally, the sections that made up the ring faced inward as opposed to outward and were designed as an outerspace stadium for a whole other game concept. Visually it was take on Halo and Killzone architecture, with strong 45 degree struts and built in lights.
Where there is steel between the support struts, there used to be translucent pressurized glass. This was so the virtual audience could look out to view the action within the bounds of this stadium. I'm one to not want to waste artwork so I took this model and tried to figure out a way of using it another way.
I'd been a fan of Pom Pom's Astro Tripper on PC and loved how the ship controlled and flipped around on a direction change. If you haven't played it, it was very much an old school shmup with a modern take on controls and action. While that game was 3d with primarily 2d gameplay, it was also top down. I thought that I could make a similar game but using a looped environment.
This quickly led me to thinking about Darius and how the three screen arcade game showed you enemies from quite far away. While 16:9 is great it still isn't wide enough to capture that so my solution was to use the ring I had designed and flip the design so it faced outward. The player would then be looking down the curvature of the ring, seeing more than they would otherwise if the environment was flat or curved inward. The environment being a Ring would also mean that travelling in one direction for too long would put you back where you started, which was ideal. It is a self contained game location with no start and no end.
Incidently, this is why the game is constantly suggested to be a Defender clone when it was never intended or designed to be one. The environment design more or less forced the Defender environment loop into the game.
As soon as that was cemented, I needed a reason to have the player move at all and came up with a number of ideas. Having enemies attacking the ring was the first idea and it stuck, however originally I wanted to have all of the middle strip of the ring attackable. This simply became too complicated to visualize and convey threat to the player so I settled on 4 clearly marked Sector Ports, taking a cue from Star Wars and a myriad of other sci-fi shmup concepts.
After this was settled on the enemies were drafted up. They needed to have clear, fair, patterns. The ring attacking Driller was first in the cue but one of the last to get fully modelled and textured. I wanted a classic arcade game looking lander drone (Drone), a Boo like ghost (Scout), a Defender style splitting enemy (Atom), A fast direct enemy like the red jets in GeoWars 2 (Fighter), A classic arcade game UFO like in Asteroids/Space Invaders that shot at you (Scanner), and an enemy you needed to concentrate fire on like a bomb (Carrier) and then could be chained like barrels in Doom. Finally I wanted something that would simply get in your way and force you to move up and around, taking another cue from Super Mario Bros. with the rotating Sword enemy.
Visually the enemies needed too look like they are from the same family, designer, and factory but have very different silhouettes so they could be indentified easily. Each enemy has a central beveled cylindrical power center. They share 45 degree angle design, and most of them have floating "feet" or fins. They were also uniquely coloured, though I ran out of colours.
The player ships were designed to be a hybrid of a racing vehicle you would see in Wipeout and a military ship from Homeworld. I previously worked on Homeworld: Cataclysm and while working on it I talked with and closely studied Arron Kambietz and Rob Cunninghams artwork, which was inspired by the artist Chris Foss, among others. Not knowing where my polycounts should be for a game at a decent framerate I intentionally designed all assets to be as angular as I could get away with. The angles were meant to look intentionally part of the physical design, and not a product of a limitation. Knowing too that the ships would be seen banking more than they would be from the side they were designed to have a sexier top and bottom than side profile.
Building all of the this art in 3ds max and Photoshop I then used the Sunburn Engine by Synase Gaming, which is beautiful lighting and shading editor for XNA. It is currently rumoured that they are moving into monogame territory and allowing the engine to be more flexible. I highly recommend taking a look at it.
http://www.synapsegaming.com/
It basically allowed me to use Visual Studio to run one of their samples and then overwrite the sample artwork with my own. So I wouldn't have a game but I could see what I built and textured on an actual Xbox.
After being satisfied that I had a good template for a game did I hook up with a good friend of a friend to start building the game.
Starting with simple flying and shooting, then moving on to adding the enemies and their predesigned behavior It started to come together. Even though the game was intended to be a ring defense game, we knew we wanted to give the player a bit more to choose from. The first mode we designed was Countdown mode which is the 3 minute score attack mode. It was inspired by Pac-Man CE and Deadline in Geometry Wars 2. We give the player a fixed time period and consistent, yet random enemy drops and they have to make the most out of it. Only when we found that constantly spawning enemies with infinite player lives was dull as dirt and unfun did we added Waves in to the mode. The moment the waves went in it turned into a more psychologically engaging mode. Much like in Asteroids, the player simply has a burning desire to clear the screen of all enemies. We started with a handful of enemies have the player clear them, then add more and more types, and so on until we pack the screen with stuff. It was basic, but the clear change of the Wave was a massive step to making Countdown into a fun mode to play.
Much like the death spawning Geoms in Geo Wars 2 and many other games, we added in the Power Cells for the player to collect to build up enough energy to release bigger firepower. The Power Shot was designed from inception as a big blast that would do a full 360 degree of the ring. However it was also thought that if they player had enough energy to fire one in one direction and the second in the other that if they collided they would destroy all enemies around the ring. It never got put into the game but would probably show up for a sequel.
The simple Wavebomb was a very late addition. We wanted to give the player something that they could use if there was no hope in outflying the enemies surrounding them and give them some air. The Defender/Geo Wars style smartbomb was a pretty easy win.
Now the Boost Gates were put in to speed the player 90 degrees around the ring quite quickly. They were the anti hyperspace gates from a game like Stargate. In that game it was random where you ended up and most of the time you simply died by dropping right on top on an enemy. We wanted something clear, understandable, desirable, and most of all fair when used.
The biggest single piece of artwork in the game is actually the bay where the player select's their ship. The location is essentially valueless in terms of gameplay, however it serves as a flow bridge between the front end UI and the game itself. It was put in only to add visual production value to the game and make everything seem bigger than it really is.
The game seriously needed real sound effects to play as being a high end Xbox Live Indie game, approaching Xbox Live Arcade Game. We thought we had the visuals for it so we didn't want to let people down when it came to sound. For music I had played a good 200 hours of Geometry Wars 2 and seeing as though I had never gotten bored of the music in it I thought I would attempt to get Chris Chudley to do the music. As luck would have it, (though this is very bad luck really) Bizarre was in the process of closing down and Chris was actually free to help work on the game. Simply emailing him, telling him what our needs were, we quickly settled on getting music created.
Sound effects were similar. I had Paul Ruskay come on over to my place to view the game and he suggested simply doing a captured video of the game. I then went to Studio X to show the game footage to the audio team there, and they asked me to make a master Excel list of every sound we thought we needed. Also they suggested a fantastic voice actress and singer would could do the voice work for the game. Over a period of a couple weeks they built sound effects and we did a little back and forth trying to get things right.
Part 2 is on the next page!
Orbitron: Revolution started as a game called Orbital. The idea for the game came from looking at a piece of artwork I made many years ago, which was the basis of the ring.
Originally, the sections that made up the ring faced inward as opposed to outward and were designed as an outerspace stadium for a whole other game concept. Visually it was take on Halo and Killzone architecture, with strong 45 degree struts and built in lights.
Where there is steel between the support struts, there used to be translucent pressurized glass. This was so the virtual audience could look out to view the action within the bounds of this stadium. I'm one to not want to waste artwork so I took this model and tried to figure out a way of using it another way.
I'd been a fan of Pom Pom's Astro Tripper on PC and loved how the ship controlled and flipped around on a direction change. If you haven't played it, it was very much an old school shmup with a modern take on controls and action. While that game was 3d with primarily 2d gameplay, it was also top down. I thought that I could make a similar game but using a looped environment.
This quickly led me to thinking about Darius and how the three screen arcade game showed you enemies from quite far away. While 16:9 is great it still isn't wide enough to capture that so my solution was to use the ring I had designed and flip the design so it faced outward. The player would then be looking down the curvature of the ring, seeing more than they would otherwise if the environment was flat or curved inward. The environment being a Ring would also mean that travelling in one direction for too long would put you back where you started, which was ideal. It is a self contained game location with no start and no end.
Incidently, this is why the game is constantly suggested to be a Defender clone when it was never intended or designed to be one. The environment design more or less forced the Defender environment loop into the game.
As soon as that was cemented, I needed a reason to have the player move at all and came up with a number of ideas. Having enemies attacking the ring was the first idea and it stuck, however originally I wanted to have all of the middle strip of the ring attackable. This simply became too complicated to visualize and convey threat to the player so I settled on 4 clearly marked Sector Ports, taking a cue from Star Wars and a myriad of other sci-fi shmup concepts.
After this was settled on the enemies were drafted up. They needed to have clear, fair, patterns. The ring attacking Driller was first in the cue but one of the last to get fully modelled and textured. I wanted a classic arcade game looking lander drone (Drone), a Boo like ghost (Scout), a Defender style splitting enemy (Atom), A fast direct enemy like the red jets in GeoWars 2 (Fighter), A classic arcade game UFO like in Asteroids/Space Invaders that shot at you (Scanner), and an enemy you needed to concentrate fire on like a bomb (Carrier) and then could be chained like barrels in Doom. Finally I wanted something that would simply get in your way and force you to move up and around, taking another cue from Super Mario Bros. with the rotating Sword enemy.
Visually the enemies needed too look like they are from the same family, designer, and factory but have very different silhouettes so they could be indentified easily. Each enemy has a central beveled cylindrical power center. They share 45 degree angle design, and most of them have floating "feet" or fins. They were also uniquely coloured, though I ran out of colours.
The player ships were designed to be a hybrid of a racing vehicle you would see in Wipeout and a military ship from Homeworld. I previously worked on Homeworld: Cataclysm and while working on it I talked with and closely studied Arron Kambietz and Rob Cunninghams artwork, which was inspired by the artist Chris Foss, among others. Not knowing where my polycounts should be for a game at a decent framerate I intentionally designed all assets to be as angular as I could get away with. The angles were meant to look intentionally part of the physical design, and not a product of a limitation. Knowing too that the ships would be seen banking more than they would be from the side they were designed to have a sexier top and bottom than side profile.
Building all of the this art in 3ds max and Photoshop I then used the Sunburn Engine by Synase Gaming, which is beautiful lighting and shading editor for XNA. It is currently rumoured that they are moving into monogame territory and allowing the engine to be more flexible. I highly recommend taking a look at it.
http://www.synapsegaming.com/
It basically allowed me to use Visual Studio to run one of their samples and then overwrite the sample artwork with my own. So I wouldn't have a game but I could see what I built and textured on an actual Xbox.
After being satisfied that I had a good template for a game did I hook up with a good friend of a friend to start building the game.
Starting with simple flying and shooting, then moving on to adding the enemies and their predesigned behavior It started to come together. Even though the game was intended to be a ring defense game, we knew we wanted to give the player a bit more to choose from. The first mode we designed was Countdown mode which is the 3 minute score attack mode. It was inspired by Pac-Man CE and Deadline in Geometry Wars 2. We give the player a fixed time period and consistent, yet random enemy drops and they have to make the most out of it. Only when we found that constantly spawning enemies with infinite player lives was dull as dirt and unfun did we added Waves in to the mode. The moment the waves went in it turned into a more psychologically engaging mode. Much like in Asteroids, the player simply has a burning desire to clear the screen of all enemies. We started with a handful of enemies have the player clear them, then add more and more types, and so on until we pack the screen with stuff. It was basic, but the clear change of the Wave was a massive step to making Countdown into a fun mode to play.
Much like the death spawning Geoms in Geo Wars 2 and many other games, we added in the Power Cells for the player to collect to build up enough energy to release bigger firepower. The Power Shot was designed from inception as a big blast that would do a full 360 degree of the ring. However it was also thought that if they player had enough energy to fire one in one direction and the second in the other that if they collided they would destroy all enemies around the ring. It never got put into the game but would probably show up for a sequel.
The simple Wavebomb was a very late addition. We wanted to give the player something that they could use if there was no hope in outflying the enemies surrounding them and give them some air. The Defender/Geo Wars style smartbomb was a pretty easy win.
Now the Boost Gates were put in to speed the player 90 degrees around the ring quite quickly. They were the anti hyperspace gates from a game like Stargate. In that game it was random where you ended up and most of the time you simply died by dropping right on top on an enemy. We wanted something clear, understandable, desirable, and most of all fair when used.
The biggest single piece of artwork in the game is actually the bay where the player select's their ship. The location is essentially valueless in terms of gameplay, however it serves as a flow bridge between the front end UI and the game itself. It was put in only to add visual production value to the game and make everything seem bigger than it really is.
The game seriously needed real sound effects to play as being a high end Xbox Live Indie game, approaching Xbox Live Arcade Game. We thought we had the visuals for it so we didn't want to let people down when it came to sound. For music I had played a good 200 hours of Geometry Wars 2 and seeing as though I had never gotten bored of the music in it I thought I would attempt to get Chris Chudley to do the music. As luck would have it, (though this is very bad luck really) Bizarre was in the process of closing down and Chris was actually free to help work on the game. Simply emailing him, telling him what our needs were, we quickly settled on getting music created.
Sound effects were similar. I had Paul Ruskay come on over to my place to view the game and he suggested simply doing a captured video of the game. I then went to Studio X to show the game footage to the audio team there, and they asked me to make a master Excel list of every sound we thought we needed. Also they suggested a fantastic voice actress and singer would could do the voice work for the game. Over a period of a couple weeks they built sound effects and we did a little back and forth trying to get things right.
Part 2 is on the next page!
Very exciting, I know. I'm still prototyping and I'm still a rookie :lol
@tashi0106
#screenshotsaturday
Going to redo what I have so far. It's all in one class and is a giant mess. And now that the prototype is becoming more complex it's making it very hard to track things. Time to hit up some OOP.
Ihateyouchris
Member
Here's my #screenshotsaturday for Another Castle. I should be able to launch the barebones prototype for the game by Monday.
@UncadeGames said:
JasoNsider
Member
I don't mean to sell it short - I don't look down on hobbyists or prototypes in any way! I made our own game in XNA (Marvin's Mittens). Don't get me wrong, you can do almost anything with XNA, but without monogame porting you are seriously restrained on what you can do with your work. Being an XBLA game is also not a realistic option for most indies, as it's a whole other ball game from XBLIG. Publishers, cert, mega capital, etc.
Maybe just to be fair, we should just update that XNA summary to make a mention about porting using monogame. When I wrote it, it was meant to talk about XNA stand-alone. I thought it was fair to mention that you are at Microsoft's (and now monogame's) mercy as to what you do with your work.
The Vlambeer guys gave a talk at GDC about cloning (notable because of the way their game Radical Fishing was cloned). One of the things they mentioned as being most damaging is that open development would be destroyed because people are afraid of having their idea copied. They basically pleaded for people to share and remain pen about ideas, mechanics, etc. Far more good comes from sharing than the rare bad.
here is an entire forum of ideas, ripe for stealing. Few, if any, are copied outright.
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?board=27.0
So please, share.
RelentlessRolento
Member
I'll post web versions of my unity projects as they go along
AusRoachman
Member
I've finally decided to give up on game development (Actually, I've been done for months and it's way to stressful), so I figured I may as share what I did end up with the end (eh, I'm bored waiting for black mesa to download, so don't mind me if I try to get a bit of enjoyment out of this):
This was my game, called Solar Storm. It's feature complete and was halted at about the half way point of the beta phase. I did everything alone and by myself. It's completely playable, just buggy and horribly balanced.
It uses game maker 8.1 beta, and pushes the software way past its limits, so porting to the studio version is sadly just not an option. I chose game maker because I know GML and all the little quirks of that engine by heart, so it would vastly decrease my development time. It took me about 2 1/2 months of development time, working ~10 hours a day with no days off. I took a half an hour Gaf break here and there for lunch or something.
The issue with game maker is it doesn't handle large maps (rooms) well. I had to come up with a dynamic streaming system for everything. That includes tiles, their positions and states, lighting, static items, interactive items and their states, ect. This eats up a lot of performance. The larger the screen, the slower since everything has to be hard coded to be as efficient as possible when loading in new terrain and deleting the old.
Anyways...
General:
If I had to describe the game, it would be a mix between: Borderlands, Terreria, and of course, Metroid.
Features:
- 180 unique gun models with 13 different classes of weaponry from revolvers to plasma rifles. Guns have unique properties and are randomly generated in a loot system with meaningful changes for a total of some ungodly number of weaponry that I don't care to give out. Most guns are based on real life guns weighted with statistics that revolve around their real life counterparts. You can get an AA-12 for example that shoots like a real AA-12 would (in 2d of course). Every single gun is modeled and visible on the player.
- Each individual gun is customizable with multiple parts that vastly change the behavior of the weapon, or add different damage types like freezing.
- 4-player online coop. Play the entire story in 4 player coop with friends. It is a drop-in/drop-out system.
- Class based RPG system. Gain abilities and powers as you level up and collect experience. Follow an upgrade tree to gain different abilities and take different paths to make a unique character that suits whatever you want. Find different armor and armor upgrades. Every single piece of armor is visible on your player.
- Map is randomly generated. Use your drill to dig down and work your way deeper fighting stronger enemies as you go. Gain upgrades and enhancements to open up the path to new areas of exploration. Find lootable chests of varying quality guarded by strong enemies.
- Boss attack mode after you beat the story with a high score functionality.
- Add your own music. Every single track is easily replaced in-game with your own custom music. You can even make playlists too.
Usually non-advertised features:
- Save and load system for the map.
- Save and load for a character.
- Multiplayer streaming of the map.
- Dynamic sound that changes upon your location. Shooting a gun outside will actually sound like you shot a gun with proper reverb and echo (as opposed to a dry sound booth most games sound like).
- Hud opacity and reticle color changes
- Other general PC tweaks like resolution, ect.
Story:
You are found laying in front of a cryogenic chamber inside of a dark room. You wake up and have to escape. Once you reach the surface, you realize you are in the future, inside of a dyson sphere. An evil army that has harnessed the dark power of the sphere has transformed themselves into pure energy. Basically, are you a bad enough dude to stop the dark lord leader?
That's really about it. I love Borderlands and Metroid, and felt Terreria did a fantastic job with its shooting mechanics, so that's why I chose what I did. It was fun to work on for the first month when I was making the terrain engine and such but then it just dragged on and on. I forced myself to get as far as I did for 2 reasons:
1. I hoped I would make some money to pay off my crazy debt.
2. I wanted to prove I could.
I failed at #1, but I'm happy with #2. Too bad it was a stupid challenge that basically cost me my sanity and left me with lingering panic attacks. It was ultimately a waste of time because I despise anything programming and want to pursue other things with my life. Haha, that's life though, right!?
Some other screens (I didn't feel like starting up my laptop for the development build and I don't remember my debug codes so I couldn't show weapons, sorry)
And before I get gripe about pixel densities, your art sucks, blah blah blah; I'm not an artist! I'm not a sound designer. I'm not even a competent programmer. I just took my shot at it, that's all.
----
I can give general advice to people in here about development (not that anyone wants it) and avoiding Development-hell. Good luck everyone, it can be quite the ride.
START SMALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Indie devs use simple pixel graphics FOR A REASON.
Awesome work man, is it playable anywhere ? I love some of your art, especially the desert backdrops e.t.c , have you ever though about releasing it despite not being fully complete?
Good luck
It's been a couple of years since I did proper C++ coding. Decided to write a simple game to dust off my C++ skills.
I've finally decided to give up on game development (Actually, I've been done for months and it's way to stressful), so I figured I may as share what I did end up with the end (eh, I'm bored waiting for black mesa to download, so don't mind me if I try to get a bit of enjoyment out of this):
This was my game, called Solar Storm. It's feature complete and was halted at about the half way point of the beta phase. I did everything alone and by myself. It's completely playable, just buggy and horribly balanced.
It uses game maker 8.1 beta, and pushes the software way past its limits, so porting to the studio version is sadly just not an option. I chose game maker because I know GML and all the little quirks of that engine by heart, so it would vastly decrease my development time. It took me about 2 1/2 months of development time, working ~10 hours a day with no days off. I took a half an hour Gaf break here and there for lunch or something.
The issue with game maker is it doesn't handle large maps (rooms) well. I had to come up with a dynamic streaming system for everything. That includes tiles, their positions and states, lighting, static items, interactive items and their states, ect. This eats up a lot of performance. The larger the screen, the slower since everything has to be hard coded to be as efficient as possible when loading in new terrain and deleting the old.
Anyways...
General:
If I had to describe the game, it would be a mix between: Borderlands, Terreria, and of course, Metroid.
Features:
- 180 unique gun models with 13 different classes of weaponry from revolvers to plasma rifles. Guns have unique properties and are randomly generated in a loot system with meaningful changes for a total of some ungodly number of weaponry that I don't care to give out. Most guns are based on real life guns weighted with statistics that revolve around their real life counterparts. You can get an AA-12 for example that shoots like a real AA-12 would (in 2d of course). Every single gun is modeled and visible on the player.
- Each individual gun is customizable with multiple parts that vastly change the behavior of the weapon, or add different damage types like freezing.
- 4-player online coop. Play the entire story in 4 player coop with friends. It is a drop-in/drop-out system.
- Class based RPG system. Gain abilities and powers as you level up and collect experience. Follow an upgrade tree to gain different abilities and take different paths to make a unique character that suits whatever you want. Find different armor and armor upgrades. Every single piece of armor is visible on your player.
- Map is randomly generated. Use your drill to dig down and work your way deeper fighting stronger enemies as you go. Gain upgrades and enhancements to open up the path to new areas of exploration. Find lootable chests of varying quality guarded by strong enemies.
- Boss attack mode after you beat the story with a high score functionality.
- Add your own music. Every single track is easily replaced in-game with your own custom music. You can even make playlists too.
Usually non-advertised features:
- Save and load system for the map.
- Save and load for a character.
- Multiplayer streaming of the map.
- Dynamic sound that changes upon your location. Shooting a gun outside will actually sound like you shot a gun with proper reverb and echo (as opposed to a dry sound booth most games sound like).
- Hud opacity and reticle color changes
- Other general PC tweaks like resolution, ect.
Story:
You are found laying in front of a cryogenic chamber inside of a dark room. You wake up and have to escape. Once you reach the surface, you realize you are in the future, inside of a dyson sphere. An evil army that has harnessed the dark power of the sphere has transformed themselves into pure energy. Basically, are you a bad enough dude to stop the dark lord leader?
That's really about it. I love Borderlands and Metroid, and felt Terreria did a fantastic job with its shooting mechanics, so that's why I chose what I did. It was fun to work on for the first month when I was making the terrain engine and such but then it just dragged on and on. I forced myself to get as far as I did for 2 reasons:
1. I hoped I would make some money to pay off my crazy debt.
2. I wanted to prove I could.
I failed at #1, but I'm happy with #2. Too bad it was a stupid challenge that basically cost me my sanity and left me with lingering panic attacks. It was ultimately a waste of time because I despise anything programming and want to pursue other things with my life. Haha, that's life though, right!?
Some other screens (I didn't feel like starting up my laptop for the development build and I don't remember my debug codes so I couldn't show weapons, sorry)
And before I get gripe about pixel densities, your art sucks, blah blah blah; I'm not an artist! I'm not a sound designer. I'm not even a competent programmer. I just took my shot at it, that's all.
----
I can give general advice to people in here about development (not that anyone wants it) and avoiding Development-hell. Good luck everyone, it can be quite the ride.
START SMALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Indie devs use simple pixel graphics FOR A REASON.
Are you crazy? It seems to be almost finished and it looks way better than many indie games, finish it, at least you'll gain some money for your hard work!
Prototyping my rally game...
Handling is based on my Kyosho 4wd drift RC car: http://www.kyosho.com/eng/products/rc/detail.html?product_id=100046
It's going pretty well. But now that it's driving good, I'm back on Chopper Mike...
Handling is based on my Kyosho 4wd drift RC car: http://www.kyosho.com/eng/products/rc/detail.html?product_id=100046
It's going pretty well. But now that it's driving good, I'm back on Chopper Mike...
bumpkin
Member
Collision detection has been kicking my ass for at least two weeks now. I'll work out the kinks someday (I hope), but until that time, it's the bane of my existence.Good luck
It's been a couple of years since I did proper C++ coding. Decided to write a simple game to dust off my C++ skills.
Such a simple thing and yet collision detection is not stable
Wow, love the designs here. I also like Astro Tripper, very underrated game. Can't wait to hear more about your game.
Bomber Bob
Banned
Yo guys just a question:
how much of your revenue goes away in taxes?
in my case (italy) about 55%
how much of your revenue goes away in taxes?
in my case (italy) about 55%
Visualante2
Member
How much are you earning? Sounds like you would benefit from hiring a tax advisor.Yo guys just a question:
how much of your revenue goes away in taxes?
in my case (italy) about 55%
or relocating
Anyone doing any work for the Adventure Time Jam ?
I'm doing my final papers for university ... but all my creativity gets changed to thinking about games when I know a game jam is happening, even if I never did a game for one =/
I'm doing my final papers for university ... but all my creativity gets changed to thinking about games when I know a game jam is happening, even if I never did a game for one =/
JasoNsider
Member
Wow, had no idea that was going on. Would have loved to have gotten in on the ground level.
This was also going on in Toronto not too long ago:
http://www.tiffnexus.net/
And there are some talks you can check out there as well. Wish I had known about it sooner so I could have head down there
Another option for selling your game:
Indievania is an online indie game marketplace for independent developers to sell their games directly to players, no DRM client required, where 100% of the cost of the game goes to the developer. This allows developers to give the best promotions and deals possible to gamers. Customers can purchase games directly from the developers own merchant account, supporting the original developers and helping fund further development.
http://www.indievania.com/
I'll add this...but why was fin banned? That sucks.
Anuxinamoon
Shaper Divine
Hey there, nice cute little sub 1000's tri models you got there for the ships xD Only nitpicky thing I saw was that you use a normal map which was surprising because I honestly don't see any of your normal definition coming through in those renders. Then I read your breakdown and saw you did it with the Nvidia plugin.
Now I'm not knocking the plugin because I used to use the Nvidia psplugin to do some of my finer noise samples on occasion, but I found crazy bump and NDo2 to produce much higher quality depth and form read outs. NDO2 would probably suit your application much better as you can get those panel depths really popping.
Otherwise you are wasting a whole texture pass on something that you canny even see. If you canny see it, better of culling it unless you really make em worth it :3
Other than that its very nice and clean and the colours really pop!
I've got issues with both.
I didn't like the pygame API. The library just strikes me as cluttered.
Pyglet I couldn't get to work on 64 bit systems, but the API was much cleaner.
it is oficialy supported ... so i'm pretty sure that it will happen again sometime ... and I will have more time to breath and will try to make an OT for it
FormallyMegadrive
Member
The new OP is fantastic. Well done!
Telling me man. I made this jpeg of the resolutions of the devices I can test on...
Too painful for words.
Telling me man. I made this jpeg of the resolutions of the devices I can test on...
Too painful for words.
That reminds me, I will never ever dev for a game that supports iPad 3 resolution. That's just way too much.
I'm also curious about this since that seems to be the last post they made. Was it considered advertising without asking the mods first? Can any mods chime in?I'll add this...but why was fin banned? That sucks.
*edit* Ah, thanks Tekno.
Teknopathetic
Member
Had nothing to do with this thread, he dropped the C-bomb elsewhere.
JasoNsider
Member
Jebus, that is awful. Too many standards :S
I was working on something yesterday and it reminded me just how many times I use dot and cross in a given week. I had even made a video introducing them and how they may be used in a game a while back. People new to game dev - get to know your vector operations, and especially have dot and cross memorized as part of your every day tools!
Anyway, I'm studying some AI concepts right now between work on our next title. It's really interesting. A very talented colleague had once recommended this book to me, and I must say it's fantastic. Right now I'm almost ready to start doing blends and arbitrations between different steering behaviors to do something fun like flocking
I'll put up a new video entry when I do.Oh, and on books - I had put this in a previous thread, as well as my channel there, but Game Engine Architecture by Jason Gregory is seriously boss. It's the first tech book I was able to recommend wholeheartedly to any game programmers/engineers. Everything in plane english, and most importantly, gives you an overview of the entire stack inside an engine. If you've ever felt dizzy at the enormity of content you need to understand about a game engine (from content pipeline, to hardware devices, all the way to gameplay logic) then give this a read!
Thanks for the recommendations. I still have the huge "Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach" Russel/Norvig book sitting around unread...but by now I'm guessing my edition is dated. I still have hopes that if I ever get around to AI it will prove to have some useful things in it.Anyway, I'm studying some AI concepts right now between work on our next title. It's really interesting. A very talented colleague had once recommended this book to me, and I must say it's fantastic. Right now I'm almost ready to start doing blends and arbitrations between different steering behaviors to do something fun like flocking
Oh, and on books - I had put this in a previous thread, as well as my channel there, but Game Engine Architecture by Jason Gregory is seriously boss. It's the first tech book I was able to recommend wholeheartedly to any game programmers/engineers. Everything in plane english, and most importantly, gives you an overview of the entire stack inside an engine. If you've ever felt dizzy at the enormity of content you need to understand about a game engine (from content pipeline, to hardware devices, all the way to gameplay logic) then give this a read!
Finally a replacement for this thread http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=445986 which is the best thread on GAF.
We are using Monogame to port from Windows XNA to other platforms.
The port is rather easy, and in just a few hours we had the game running. Not fully tested, but it works with some minor issues that we are yet to solve. At the moment we are very happy with it.
About our project:
It's called Snails, we are two guys developing the game from more than 2 years now. He both have fulltime jobs, so we don't have much time.
The game is a lemingish type of game, but it plays differently.
Snails was in the 20 finalists on this years Dream Build Play on both XBox and Windows Phone.
There's a demo available here www.SnailsVideoGame.net. The build is 4 months old, we have added a lot since that, but it is totally playable with 17 levels.
We submitted the game to Greenlight, so if you enjoy the game and have a Steam account, please support us!
Feel free to contact us if you have any questions.
Here are some screenshots:
We are using Monogame to port from Windows XNA to other platforms.
The port is rather easy, and in just a few hours we had the game running. Not fully tested, but it works with some minor issues that we are yet to solve. At the moment we are very happy with it.
About our project:
It's called Snails, we are two guys developing the game from more than 2 years now. He both have fulltime jobs, so we don't have much time.
The game is a lemingish type of game, but it plays differently.
Snails was in the 20 finalists on this years Dream Build Play on both XBox and Windows Phone.
There's a demo available here www.SnailsVideoGame.net. The build is 4 months old, we have added a lot since that, but it is totally playable with 17 levels.
We submitted the game to Greenlight, so if you enjoy the game and have a Steam account, please support us!
Feel free to contact us if you have any questions.
Here are some screenshots:
- Status