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[SpacePirate Ridley]

We were roughly on Steam's average.. It depends on the stage of development you're in, but I wouldn't mind too much about that

Thanks a lot, really appreciated!

Our game is fiished, but some of the no votes are coming from being a mobile port. The things is, we added a bunch of things to make ti bigger and different on PC, and if we put it on PC is becuase people who played it on mobile find the game too difficult and there was no market for the game there.
I suppose that mobile stigma will alway be there.

 

[HellBlazer]

Hey guys,

Quick A&B update:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qzd5H-Lyk4&feature=youtu.be

Coming along nicely! It's already quite fun to play and when enemies bunch up on you, it can already become quite difficult to fend them off

Making nice progress there, looking good.

 

[ZServ]

Hey guys,

Quick A&B update:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qzd5H-Lyk4&feature=youtu.be

Coming along nicely! It's already quite fun to play and when enemies bunch up on you, it can already become quite difficult to fend them off

This looks awesome! Can't wait to see more

Stencyl has limited audio features, but I came up with a semi creative solution for making a sound taper off and change as you get further away.

The long and short of it is I made it so two sounds are playing at once -- a "dry" version, and a version with the highs removed and reverb added (or whatever, but that's what I did in this test case). I play these at the same time on two different audio channels, and then I use the distance between the player and the target to set the volume levels of the two channels. Close up = 100% / 0%, max distance = 0% / 100%. The max distance was a number I set arbitrarily based on what seemed to feel right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3iKQrOPjjc

Surprisingly good first test result.

That is actually rather clever. Are you concerned with essentially "doubling" your sound space requirements?

 

[NipplesAndToes23]

What music program do y'all prefer to use?

Edit: I was also wondering you do need a passport or somekind of document to work in the UK if you don't live there right? I'm from the US and applying to a game job in London

 

[Jobbs]

That is actually rather clever. Are you concerned with essentially "doubling" your sound space requirements?

Thanks, and yes. I need to figure out some solution for getting channels assigned to enemies/other things in a functional way as they are spawned, but if it's ultimately not enough (there are 32 total channels) or too problematic, at very least I can use it where it really matters -- like on vocals and certain other key sounds.

 

[Teknopathetic]

"What music program do y'all prefer to use?"

Reaper is the all-around choice. Interface ain't so cute, but it's cheap and extremely powerful.

 

[HP_Wuvcraft]

Yesterday evening brought geat news. Pulsar Raiders was Greenlit!

Golf claps.

 

[liliththepale]

Slow it down a bit and make the easing smoother and slower to full speed. It's too off-putting right now. You don't realize how often you turn around in games like that until you have a camera system like that. I'd suggest watching some various GDC talks on camera system implementation and how many games do it. Or studying something like Mario World.

Here's a good starter: Scroll Back: The Theory and Practice of Cameras in Side-Scrollers

Thanks! Pehesse already linked that article, but I appreciate it nonetheless. I get back home late tonight, so I'm going to try out some of these things.

Hey guys,

Quick A&B update:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qzd5H-Lyk4&feature=youtu.be

Coming along nicely! It's already quite fun to play and when enemies bunch up on you, it can already become quite difficult to fend them off

This is really going to be something special, I can tell.

Is there a specific reason that the weapon trails are so low here? Usually weapon trails are either just as wide as the weapon or else fixed to the far tip of the weapon, not narrow and low. While this might just be an aesthetic choice to some, I think it belies a shorter weapon reach than is actually applicable, underselling the present danger.

Stencyl has limited audio features, but I came up with a semi creative solution for making a sound taper off and change as you get further away.

The long and short of it is I made it so two sounds are playing at once -- a "dry" version, and a version with the highs removed and reverb added (or whatever, but that's what I did in this test case). I play these at the same time on two different audio channels, and then I use the distance between the player and the target to set the volume levels of the two channels. Close up = 100% / 0%, max distance = 0% / 100%. The max distance was a number I set arbitrarily based on what seemed to feel right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3iKQrOPjjc

Surprisingly good first test result.

Sounds good to me. Though, wouldn't you have to have two channels for every sound you want to mix this way? Or are you only doing it with dialogue?

 

[Misha]

Finally figured out pretty much what I'm aiming for so... concept art! (or i guess this is probably more of a mockup)

The story is pretty simple, a crow steals your hat and you follow the crow into the woods to try to get it back before your mom calls you in for dinner/before it gets dark.

For the mechanics, its a side scrolling point and click where you enter a series of encounters and can use any of the actions to interact with the environment (as in it'll never say "you can't do that"). It also has elements of a turn based rpg, following a formula of your turn to do an action then the environment reacts.
In this scene for instance, you could try to say something to the fox (it would have a sims style speech bubble since I'm avoiding text and voice), you could decide to poke it with your stick, or you could even just try to walk past it, which, depending on the encounter, may work or may get you into a stickier situation.

Right now my biggest things to work on visually are the color palette(specifically the scarf and grass), the kid's clothing, and the UI since I'm not really thrilled about the black line look.

Also I'm trying to decide how to show the time of day. Right now I'm thinking of doing something related to the sun like one of these:

The first one is showing the sun's place in the sky and the second is the sun mixed with a clock. The purpose of the white background is to show that thats not actually where the sun is as the sun would often not be visible because of trees
Whatever I go with, its most likely going to end up in the upper left (anything intractable will be more to the right of the screen and generally lower unless its up in a tree)

 

[Jobbs]

Sounds good to me. Though, wouldn't you have to have two channels for every sound you want to mix this way? Or are you only doing it with dialogue?

Like I said, it's going to be challenging to figure out a way to make it work for every sound, and certainly require a creative solution. But at very least I can use it on voices.

Voices are what prompted me to come up with it. In the cases where you are able to run freely while someone speaks, their voice not changing as you run far away is distracting and odd. This will at least address that.

 

[liliththepale]

I'm doing some experimenting with the camera. Every system seems to have its ups and downs. I don't know if that's endemic to camera design, if my tastes are obtuse, or if I'm still just doing it wrong. That said, here are three candidates:

https://youtu.be/LI2zpmQ7TV4
https://youtu.be/irDruefqRlg
https://youtu.be/6hJ_qHtKHC8

Hopefully one of these is closer to ideal.

Like I said, it's going to be challenging to figure out a way to make it work for every sound, and certainly require a creative solution. But at very least I can use it on voices.

Voices are what prompted me to come up with it. In the cases where you are able to run freely while someone speaks, their voice not changing as you run far away is distracting and odd. This will at least address that.

Oh, I must have missed you saying that. Sorry.

 

[The Real Abed]

I'm doing some experimenting with the camera. Every system seems to have its ups and downs. I don't know if that's endemic to camera design, if my tastes are obtuse, or if I'm still just doing it wrong. That said, here are three candidates:

https://youtu.be/LI2zpmQ7TV4
https://youtu.be/irDruefqRlg
https://youtu.be/6hJ_qHtKHC8

Hopefully one of these is closer to ideal.

Definitely the first one. Ease in and out is the least jarring. The other two are still just as jarring as the original. Use the first one.

The only problem is when you dropped down to the area with the enemies and the camera couldn't keep up. To me it seems wrong because you could jump into danger and not have enough time to react before someone hits you. Maybe the camera should keep up faster when moving vertically.

 

[liliththepale]

Definitely the first one. Ease in and out is the least jarring. The other two are still just as jarring as the original. Use the first one.

The only problem is when you dropped down to the area with the enemies and the camera couldn't keep up. To me it seems wrong because you could jump into danger and not have enough time to react before someone hits you. Maybe the camera should keep up faster when moving vertically.

That's kind of what I assumed would be the answer. Thank you for giving it another look! ♥

 

[spazchicken]

What music program do y'all prefer to use?

I use Cakewalk Sonar.

 

[Blizzard]

I use Cakewalk Sonar.

I use this too. I'm not GOOD at it, but it seems fine and the company seems to support the products well.

 

[Jobbs]

I'm doing some experimenting with the camera. Every system seems to have its ups and downs. I don't know if that's endemic to camera design, if my tastes are obtuse, or if I'm still just doing it wrong. That said, here are three candidates:

https://youtu.be/LI2zpmQ7TV4
https://youtu.be/irDruefqRlg
https://youtu.be/6hJ_qHtKHC8

Hopefully one of these is closer to ideal.

First one seems pretty good! Others are still too fast for my taste.

I don't know that your tastes are obtuse, but when you're stuck inside your own thing sometimes you don't realize what's glaring other people in the face. I ran into this a lot before my public demo thingy which resulted in a lot of the feedback I received being incorporated into improvements. For example, a lot of people had trouble identifying what was a hazard and what was harmless environment art, whereas I thought it couldn't be more obvious. I watched a number of streams where people would just walk into a barrier of spikes, the same one, because they didn't realize it wasn't background art. Because of this I ended up making several rounds of changes in effort to make it easier to distinguish.

 

[Blizzard]

I invested in this book a while back but had not consulted it much before: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1466560010/?tag=neogaf0e-20

Tonight, I decided to check it in regard to scripting languages. It turns out that yes, as with tons of other topics in 900+ pages, it has a nice overview of the topic. It even includes a little Naughty Dog source code as a tiny case study.

 

[Violet_0]

got a quick question about isometric perspective and animation

how often do games animate the character facing only two directions - one for when the character faces the player, one for when they have their back turned - and then just mirror the sprite for when they are looking left or right?

like in this example http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2781/1930/1600/sprites.png you can see that the sword switches sides

now, this is fine for perfectly symmetrical characters, but when the character carries a sword and shield for example they switch the hands in which they are holding the weapons whenever they look in another direction. Can you think of any commercial games that handled the character animation that way?

obviously the ideal solution would be to animate them correctly for all four directions, but that's twice the effort, and animation is already by far the most time-consuming work. Alternatively, I'm considering an Advance Wars/Fire Emblem-esque style where you only need to animate characters facing one direction, but I'd rather like to work with isometric perspective

 

[anteevy]

Definitely the first one. Ease in and out is the least jarring. The other two are still just as jarring as the original. Use the first one.

The only problem is when you dropped down to the area with the enemies and the camera couldn't keep up. To me it seems wrong because you could jump into danger and not have enough time to react before someone hits you. Maybe the camera should keep up faster when moving vertically.

I agree 100%. Maybe a solution would be to make the camera follow faster on the Y axis (dropping down to a lower floor) but keep it smoother on the X axis (like in the video), which happens way more often (when turning around etc.).

Or smoothly zoom out a bit when falling, i.e. bind the camera zoom to the PC's movement velocity? That's what I'm doing in my game, even if only a little so the zooming isn't really obvious.

 

[Pehesse]

I'm doing some experimenting with the camera. Every system seems to have its ups and downs. I don't know if that's endemic to camera design, if my tastes are obtuse, or if I'm still just doing it wrong. That said, here are three candidates:

https://youtu.be/LI2zpmQ7TV4
https://youtu.be/irDruefqRlg
https://youtu.be/6hJ_qHtKHC8

Hopefully one of these is closer to ideal.




Oh, I must have missed you saying that. Sorry.

First one for me as well, with some vertical tracking adjustments, as said above!

got a quick question about isometric perspective and animation

how often do games animate the character facing only two directions - one for when the character faces the player, one for when they have their back turned - and then just mirror the sprite for when they are looking left or right?

like in this example http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2781/1930/1600/sprites.png you can see that the sword switches sides

now, this is fine for perfectly symmetrical characters, but when the character carries a sword and shield for example they switch the hands in which they are holding the weapons whenever they look in another direction. Can you think of any commercial games that handled the character animation that way?

obviously the ideal solution would be to animate them correctly for all four directions, but that's twice the effort, and animation is already by far the most time-consuming work. Alternatively, I'm considering an Advance Wars/Fire Emblem-esque style where you only need to animate characters facing one direction, but I'd rather like to work with isometric perspective

Yeah, most examples I can think of do simple symmetry, not unique animations for left/right. I think you'll be hard pressed to find some that go the extra mile. After all, more often than not, the flip is done in engine, which saves memory as well since you don't need two animation sets... And economy is the name of the game for most of the industry, for both time and technical considerations. I'll try to find examples of assymetrical designs with correctly flipping sprites, but most classic examples don't bother, like SF2 Guile and his american flag tattoo, or Sagat and his scar/eyepatch :-D

 

[liliththepale]

Definitely the first one. Ease in and out is the least jarring. The other two are still just as jarring as the original. Use the first one.

The only problem is when you dropped down to the area with the enemies and the camera couldn't keep up. To me it seems wrong because you could jump into danger and not have enough time to react before someone hits you. Maybe the camera should keep up faster when moving vertically.

First one for me as well, with some vertical tracking adjustments, as said above!

I agree 100%. Maybe a solution would be to make the camera follow faster on the Y axis (dropping down to a lower floor) but keep it smoother on the X axis (like in the video), which happens way more often (when turning around etc.).

Or smoothly zoom out a bit when falling, i.e. bind the camera zoom to the PC's movement velocity? That's what I'm doing in my game, even if only a little so the zooming isn't really obvious.

Okay, I think it's solved now. I tightened the vertical dampening some and clamp the coordinates so it never loses track of the player regardless of how fast you move. I also made it target behind the player instead of in front when she's pressed against or hanging on a wall because I figure you're just as likely to go backward in those cases as forward.

https://youtu.be/jnAbw5fNO3k

First one seems pretty good! Others are still too fast for my taste.

I don't know that your tastes are obtuse, but when you're stuck inside your own thing sometimes you don't realize what's glaring other people in the face. I ran into this a lot before my public demo thingy which resulted in a lot of the feedback I received being incorporated into improvements. For example, a lot of people had trouble identifying what was a hazard and what was harmless environment art, whereas I thought it couldn't be more obvious. I watched a number of streams where people would just walk into a barrier of spikes, the same one, because they didn't realize it wasn't background art. Because of this I ended up making several rounds of changes in effort to make it easier to distinguish.

Oh, yeah, that's a tricky one. Establishing a clear visual language is important for most players, but it feels tacky to some if it's overdone and it can feel restrictive to the artist.

 

[SpacePirate Ridley]

Okay, I think it's solved now. I tightened the vertical dampening some and clamp the coordinates so it never loses track of the player regardless of how fast you move. I also made it target behind the player instead of in front when she's pressed against or hanging on a wall because I figure you're just as likely to go backward in those cases as forward.

https://youtu.be/jnAbw5fNO3k




Oh, yeah, that's a tricky one. Establishing a clear visual language is important for most players, but it feels tacky to some if it's overdone and it can feel restrictive to the artist.

Was going to say also first one, but you seem to have already done the tweak on that. It keeps now with her when you fall, so i think is working freat right now.

 

[superNESjoe]

So I'm getting into the final stages of development for my second Xbox One game, and I'm up against the part where I've had basically zero success: Marketing.

Some things worked out for me last time. I was able to get on the indie show on the official Xbox Twitch channel, but aside from that I just lucked out with about 5 streamers who were dedicated to streaming my game for the first week. As far as any real traditional coverage (from a major site or an indie-focused one) it's been pretty much impossible to get through.

I'm active enough on Twitter, and I engage regularly with the fans I do have. The only people that tend to respond to my emails are very small youtubers and streamers. I took a chance on them last time and only got about 10% of the people I sent codes to ever do a piece of content on it.

I'd like to start ramping up my marketing efforts this week and try to build some attention for the game over the next 2 months, but I'm not 100% sure where to start. Are there any reasonably priced Indie Marketing websites that get worthwhile results? Is that a viable option? I'm working with Microsoft for promotion specifically on Xbox One, but beyond that I'm flying solo.

 

[ChanoMarrano]

Hi all, long time reader, first time poster.

For you what's the best audio library for indie games?

I'd like something like GLFW for audio, a basic multiplatform audio library with a BSD-like license.

For me the best match is SDL2_mixer, but I'd like something without SDL as a dependency.

Thanks.

 

[Blizzard]

Hi all, long time reader, first time poster.

For you what's the best audio library for indie games?

I'd like something like GLFW for audio, a basic multiplatform audio library with a BSD-like license.

For me the best match is SDL2_mixer, but I'd like something without SDL as a dependency.

Thanks.

I had the same situation and ended up using SoLoud (http://sol.gfxile.net/soloud/). It should have minimal dependencies, depending on how you configure it. However, it may not be as well-known and full-featured as other libraries.

I was never able to get super-low latency but even commercial games also seemed to have latency for me, so I basically gave up on that pursuit.

 

[ken_matthews]

Pulled an all-nighter testing various polygon hair creation methods; Maya's nHiar seems to produce the best results so far (while keeping the poly count manageable). The beard line is kinda of jacked, but what do you guys think, good, bad, somewhere in between?

 

[Xtra Mile]

Kickstarter re-launched with playable demo. Thanks to all who helped critique our game.

 

[Pehesse]

Pulled an all-nighter testing various polygon hair creation methods; Maya's nHiar seems to produce the best results so far (while keeping the poly count manageable). The beard line is kinda of jacked, but what do you guys think, good, bad, somewhere in between?

I think it works for the hair, but for the beard, I find the individual strands too thick - maybe it works better for an overall cartoonish aesthetic, but from what I understand from your previous posts, that's not what you're going for. I don't really have any suggestions as I have little experience in the way of 3D hair modeling, and I suppose you might have already considered the obvious, but just in case: did you try applying planes, rather than have each individual strand as an individual polygon assembly, and apply more complex textures on these planes along with transparency effects? I feel at least as far as the beard is concerned, you'd get better results that way... and if procedural generation is your concern, you can still work on getting the plane placement and size/length different, to get different shapes of beards (and hair, too).

Kickstarter re-launched with playable demo. Thanks to all who helped critique our game.

Good luck with the KS

It's probably too late to offer feedback on every minute detail of the demo, so I'll just say I liked it overall and I think it works better than older versions I seem to remember, though I'm not convinced by the overall weightless feel (the jumping, for instance, or the way dialog appears - many small details like weight, recoil, stuff that feels reactive to player input, here it all sorts of "slides" with little impact - out of desperation I'll refer to Tim Roger's notion of crunchiness here, as I really have no better, but especially for a beat'em all, I think this notion is really key).

One thing that sticks out to me is the amount of available inputs: I feel it's too much, and you could/should reduce the number of available functions to fewer keys. For instance, I find little purpose in a separate interaction key - older beat'em ups have "interact" coupled with the main attack key, which works just fine. The other downside is that many of the keys feel underused: once you're grabbed on to someone, for instance, I found only the attack key to do something, with the directional arrow changing the effect. Same thing for jumping, dashing, etc... Here, your number of available buttons make us want to try every combination, but very few have actual effect, even though you have a wide array of moves. Reducing the number of inputs would make the character feel more reactive and able, and the player more clever for figuring out the "combos", even though they'd really be only two button presses at most, and you'd still have the exact same amount of moves.

A tengential point is the grabbing mechanic, as I'm not convinced it needs to be attached to a key - again, referring to older beat'em up tropes here. Most I can think of would automatically latch you on to an enemy upon contact, which makes for a more fluid experience.

(disclaimer: I played on keyboard, I'm not sure if the experience is different on gamepad, but I'm pretty sure I'd say the same thing)

I understand if it's too late to change many of these, but I still hope it might help to bring them up all the same, just in case, now that I had the chance to get a feel of your design for myself, not just through videos but actual play!

 

[Razlo]

So I'm getting into the final stages of development for my second Xbox One game, and I'm up against the part where I've had basically zero success: Marketing.

Some things worked out for me last time. I was able to get on the indie show on the official Xbox Twitch channel, but aside from that I just lucked out with about 5 streamers who were dedicated to streaming my game for the first week. As far as any real traditional coverage (from a major site or an indie-focused one) it's been pretty much impossible to get through.

I'm active enough on Twitter, and I engage regularly with the fans I do have. The only people that tend to respond to my emails are very small youtubers and streamers. I took a chance on them last time and only got about 10% of the people I sent codes to ever do a piece of content on it.

I'd like to start ramping up my marketing efforts this week and try to build some attention for the game over the next 2 months, but I'm not 100% sure where to start. Are there any reasonably priced Indie Marketing websites that get worthwhile results? Is that a viable option? I'm working with Microsoft for promotion specifically on Xbox One, but beyond that I'm flying solo.

This is tough, especially for indie games. During my Kickstarter I e-mailed different press for everyday of the campaign and only got 10% to ever actually put a blurb on their site. The info that got the most traction was the cameos reveal, which I know you're doing, so that should help.

I think your game has some pretty unique concepts that if you hit people over the head with in a fast paced trailer, it'd get some traction. Ex. GROW GUN TREES, FIGHT SUPER HEROES, BECOME PRESIDENT EAGLE...

Weird stuff tends to get more traction is my point.

I've got a lot of coverage from conventions, but video games tend to get less of that post release.

 

[superNESjoe]

This is tough, especially for indie games. During my Kickstarter I e-mailed different press for everyday of the campaign and only got 10% to ever actually put a blurb on their site. The info that got the most traction was the cameos reveal, which I know you're doing, so that should help.

I think your game has some pretty unique concepts that if you hit people over the head with in a fast paced trailer, it'd get some traction. Ex. GROW GUN TREES, FIGHT SUPER HEROES, BECOME PRESIDENT EAGLE...

Weird stuff tends to get more traction is my point.

I've got a lot of coverage from conventions, but video games tend to get less of that post release.

Thanks. I'm planning on attending PAX East, but that will be after the game has already launched. Hopefully it still helps out. Speaking of, I'll be emailing you soon again about that cameo.

 

[SpacePirate Ridley]

Kickstarter re-launched with playable demo. Thanks to all who helped critique our game.

Good luck! Hope you can make it!

 

[HP_Wuvcraft]

I'm doing some experimenting with the camera. Every system seems to have its ups and downs. I don't know if that's endemic to camera design, if my tastes are obtuse, or if I'm still just doing it wrong. That said, here are three candidates:

https://youtu.be/LI2zpmQ7TV4

This one.

 

[Nezzhil]

Kickstarter re-launched with playable demo. Thanks to all who helped critique our game.

Good luck with your KS!

 

[bad guy]

I just finished my mech game. It took me about a year.
Navpoint Alpha is a simulation game in which you pilot a mech through a single player campaign.
Lasers, rockets, cannons, infantry, vehicles, mechs!
There is a DevLog over at MWLL.

You can download it at itch.io.

 

[Xtra Mile]

Good luck with the KS

It's probably too late to offer feedback on every minute detail of the demo, so I'll just say I liked it overall and I think it works better than older versions I seem to remember, though I'm not convinced by the overall weightless feel (the jumping, for instance, or the way dialog appears - many small details like weight, recoil, stuff that feels reactive to player input, here it all sorts of "slides" with little impact - out of desperation I'll refer to Tim Roger's notion of crunchiness here, as I really have no better, but especially for a beat'em all, I think this notion is really key).

One thing that sticks out to me is the amount of available inputs: I feel it's too much, and you could/should reduce the number of available functions to fewer keys. For instance, I find little purpose in a separate interaction key - older beat'em ups have "interact" coupled with the main attack key, which works just fine. The other downside is that many of the keys feel underused: once you're grabbed on to someone, for instance, I found only the attack key to do something, with the directional arrow changing the effect. Same thing for jumping, dashing, etc... Here, your number of available buttons make us want to try every combination, but very few have actual effect, even though you have a wide array of moves. Reducing the number of inputs would make the character feel more reactive and able, and the player more clever for figuring out the "combos", even though they'd really be only two button presses at most, and you'd still have the exact same amount of moves.

A tengential point is the grabbing mechanic, as I'm not convinced it needs to be attached to a key - again, referring to older beat'em up tropes here. Most I can think of would automatically latch you on to an enemy upon contact, which makes for a more fluid experience.

(disclaimer: I played on keyboard, I'm not sure if the experience is different on gamepad, but I'm pretty sure I'd say the same thing)

I understand if it's too late to change many of these, but I still hope it might help to bring them up all the same, just in case, now that I had the chance to get a feel of your design for myself, not just through videos but actual play!

Thanks for that. Will take it on board. As always, wish we had more time .

Good luck! Hope you can make it!

Good luck with your KS!

Thanks guys. Kicktraq looking pretty good so far. Hopefully get some more press soon .

 

[Insolitus]

I've been working on this game for about half the year now, It's sort of like Jet Set Radio if it were a metroidvania.

It's slooowly getting there.

 

[ZServ]

I've been working on this game for about half the year now, It's sort of like Jet Set Radio if it were a metroidvania.

It's slooowly getting there.

Think the gradient thing surrounding the HUD on the top left could go, personally. Looks fine without it

Today was supposed to be simple. 1-2 cutscenes, chart out 2-3 side quests for development this week. Instead, that 1-2 cutscenes turned into seven or eight, and spawned into an entire quest line that starts a side quest. AND a new item got added. Perhaps you guys will have some ideas for what it should be called?

This new item is a weapon. Every time the player does a normal attack (versus a special one/using an item/defending/missing), they gain a status effect called "Focused." For every stack of "Focused," their damage output goes up. So, considering I've designed my entire combat/gear system around NOT mashing attack, I thought it would be fun to have an item that encourages it, and is strong enough to build around.

 

[Ashodin]

You may think Dire Bats are dumb, but they can evade your shots.

 

[liliththepale]

I've been working on this game for about half the year now, It's sort of like Jet Set Radio if it were a metroidvania.

It's slooowly getting there.

Hey, I like how this looks! Don't be a stranger.

You may think Dire Bats are dumb, but they can evade your shots.

Neat! Enemies with evasion techniques automatically make the game a lot more interesting to me.

 

[HP_Wuvcraft]

You may think Dire Bats are dumb, but they can evade your shots.

I remember when an enemy ducked my first shot in Quake 2. It was a 'oh fuck' moment.

 

[ken_matthews]

Kickstarter re-launched with playable demo. Thanks to all who helped critique our game.

I love that music and background / environment art. It definitely has the old school beat-em-up vibe. But, something feels weird about the way the character controls though; I don't know if it's the button mapping (did not like the default), but are you considering an option to move the character with the analog stick?

 

[Ashodin]

I'm thinking of going back and retooling some of the enemies' tactics as well.

 

[Xtra Mile]

I love that music and background / environment art. It definitely has the old school beat-em-up vibe. But, something feels weird about the way the character controls though; I don't know if it's the button mapping (did not like the default), but are you considering an option to move the character with the analog stick?

Hey, thanks. Sure, the controls will be fully customizable in the final release.

 

[ChanoMarrano]

I had the same situation and ended up using SoLoud (http://sol.gfxile.net/soloud/). It should have minimal dependencies, depending on how you configure it. However, it may not be as well-known and full-featured as other libraries.

I was never able to get super-low latency but even commercial games also seemed to have latency for me, so I basically gave up on that pursuit.

Since I'm not interested in low latency, it looks perfect!

Thanks a lot.

 

[Blizzard]

Since I'm not interested in low latency, it looks perfect!

Thanks a lot.

To clarify, it MIGHT be possible to get low latency out of SoLoud as well. For whatever reason, my own computer (Windows 7 64-bit) seems to have audio latency. The only low-latency audio mechanism I've gotten working was with Sonar X3 using some sort of exclusive mode.

 

[ken_matthews]

...did you try applying planes, rather than have each individual strand as an individual polygon assembly, and apply more complex textures on these planes along with transparency effects?

Yeah, that is the standard way for 3d game character hair. But I really do not like the way it looks, plus its extremely tedious (and I kind of suck at it). The nHair generator produces good results really quickly (just needs a good shader), but the only thing I am worried about is the poly count. To get decent coverage of the head while keeping the strands fairly thin, its about 4x the poly count verses the conventional poly plane method. I wonder what is more expensive, lower poly count with overlapping transparency textures, or higher poly with no transparencies....I'll have to run some tests in engine on a later date.

Either way, started rigger all the character meshes for engine import. I am hoping to get all the data structures and procedural character construction blueprint done by tomorrow.

 

[SpacePirate Ridley]

I've been working on this game for about half the year now, It's sort of like Jet Set Radio if it were a metroidvania.

It's slooowly getting there.

Wow, this looks pretty good!

 

[asa]

Experimented with GFYCAT today: a short loop showing desert gameplay and sandworms

http://zippy.gfycat.com/MarriedSimilarHousefly.webm

 

[mStudios]

Tracks:

Project Nostalgia - 06 Donec Rursus Convenerimus
Project Nostalgia - 05 Situation

 

[JulianImp]

I'm coding a faily simple arena shooter, but this time I've decided to leverage Unity's component-based architecture as much as possible. I've already implemented some base classes (ie: mobile, health, weapon) by splitting their models and controllers, thus allowing for multiple ways of using any given model, worked on modifiers that can be applied to each property (ie: attack speed, movement speed, health recovery) both as additive values (+5 movement speed/sec) or multipliers (75% movement speed), made a class that acts as a middleman for Unity's input class (since you can't even modify mapped keys during runtime in it!) and began coding my first character-specific behavior (a special attack unique to a PC).

My goal is to make a PvE game with a single static arena, a few different types of enemies and several playable characters with varying sets of skills, and focusing on cooperation and mechanics that reward playing as a team. I've been playing some LoL, which was very interesting due to the way the game's developers have worked on giving each champion its own unique identity encompassing both aesthetics and mechanics, which I'll have in mind for when I'm making my game's PCs.

Still, I'm trying to keep the scope as small as possible for now so I can make a first playable prototype ASAP. Scaling the project up could always be a possibility later (ie: implementing levels the players have to roam rather than an arena), but I don't want to set my sights onto goals that I just won't be able to produce by myself in a timely manner.