Forget selling, good luck getting your game noticed in a land of infinite games now.
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Indie Game Development Thread 3: Indie Jones and the Template of Doom
- Thread starter Makai
- Start date
oxrock
Gravity is a myth, the Earth SUCKS!
Forget selling, good luck getting your game noticed in a land of infinite games now.
Ain't that the truth. I'll just keep chugging along on my game posting updates everywhere and praying. Every once in a rare while someone will point out something cool they like or say something nice and it almost feels like it may not quite be a complete waste of time ;p
CertifiedFP
Member
Honestly the goal I'd be going with if you want to get exposure or have a chance at decent sales is try to make something that could catch a Publisher's eye, or at least pique their interest if you go to them with it.
That's my main focus at the moment with REDFOXES now that I've finished all my prototyping - Producing a compelling Vertical Slice to pitch to publishers. Before that though, probably a public-facing demo to try and build a following first.
On that - Does anyone have any advice on "best-practices" concerning VSes and Demos?
Never was a fan of that, well, tethered programming either. It's too
cluttered for me, too much information. A couple of distilled lines of
code tells me more and keeps me focused.
Dynamite Shikoku
Congratulations, you really deserve it!
me three
MikeHaggar
Member
So this is my project:
It's an action platformer with exploration elements. Mega Man-style level select with the ability to return to levels even after they've been completed with new upgrades allowing you to access previously inaccessible areas. So Mega Man meets Metroid.
In order to finish this game we are going to have to launch a Kickstarter. I'm just curious what you guys think the demand for a game like this is. We want to launch on Steam for Windows, Mac, and Linux and then have stretch goals to release on Playstation, Xbox, and Switch.
Assuming we put together a competent Kickstarter campaign (we will), do you think there would be enough interest in this to raise significant funding? Any thoughts/insight is appreciated!
It's an action platformer with exploration elements. Mega Man-style level select with the ability to return to levels even after they've been completed with new upgrades allowing you to access previously inaccessible areas. So Mega Man meets Metroid.
In order to finish this game we are going to have to launch a Kickstarter. I'm just curious what you guys think the demand for a game like this is. We want to launch on Steam for Windows, Mac, and Linux and then have stretch goals to release on Playstation, Xbox, and Switch.
Assuming we put together a competent Kickstarter campaign (we will), do you think there would be enough interest in this to raise significant funding? Any thoughts/insight is appreciated!
I really like the art style, reminds me of Metal Slug (which is intended as a huge compliment). I'm afraid I can't offer much advice on Kickstarter (managed to screw up two campaigns myself), but it's certainly the kind of game I would back! The one thing I would recommend though is establishing a small fan-base first, a Facebook page or group somewhere that can help get the word out.
Do you have any gameplay/animation to show?
Do you have any gameplay/animation to show?
So this is my project:
It's an action platformer with exploration elements. Mega Man-style level select with the ability to return to levels even after they've been completed with new upgrades allowing you to access previously inaccessible areas. So Mega Man meets Metroid.
In order to finish this game we are going to have to launch a Kickstarter. I'm just curious what you guys think the demand for a game like this is. We want to launch on Steam for Windows, Mac, and Linux and then have stretch goals to release on Playstation, Xbox, and Switch.
Assuming we put together a competent Kickstarter campaign (we will), do you think there would be enough interest in this to raise significant funding? Any thoughts/insight is appreciated!
This looks pretty sick! More broadly I don't know what the demand is, but to me the detailed traditional-style professional-looking pixel art combined with the level-based structure (as opposed to something procedural or even straight-up Metroid-style) makes it stand out quite a bit. Despite being in such a packed broad genre, there's a surprisingly small amount of games coming to mind that have the sort of focus this potentially could have.
So this is my project:
It's an action platformer with exploration elements. Mega Man-style level select with the ability to return to levels even after they've been completed with new upgrades allowing you to access previously inaccessible areas. So Mega Man meets Metroid.
In order to finish this game we are going to have to launch a Kickstarter. I'm just curious what you guys think the demand for a game like this is. We want to launch on Steam for Windows, Mac, and Linux and then have stretch goals to release on Playstation, Xbox, and Switch.
Assuming we put together a competent Kickstarter campaign (we will), do you think there would be enough interest in this to raise significant funding? Any thoughts/insight is appreciated!
really like the sprite work done here
Very impressive art by that screen alone. In order to explode on KS a lot depends on how much there already is to show. I seen competent KS failing because they sell a dream with an impossible goal. Timing is going to be another important thing. I would suggest wait until august/september when work/school takes off again. Don't ask for to much but show as much as you feel is possible, that way people will throw more money at it.
Looks very Super Nintendo, which is already a plus in my book.
If you plan on physical goodies, it could be a good idea to have a t-shirt and what not to show in the campaign. Nothing is more frustrating when the item you receive looks like something else when it finally arrive
So this is my project:
It's an action platformer with exploration elements. Mega Man-style level select with the ability to return to levels even after they've been completed with new upgrades allowing you to access previously inaccessible areas. So Mega Man meets Metroid.
In order to finish this game we are going to have to launch a Kickstarter. I'm just curious what you guys think the demand for a game like this is. We want to launch on Steam for Windows, Mac, and Linux and then have stretch goals to release on Playstation, Xbox, and Switch.
Assuming we put together a competent Kickstarter campaign (we will), do you think there would be enough interest in this to raise significant funding? Any thoughts/insight is appreciated!
Have to echo the above: I have no answer to your question about potential audience (though I certainly hope it's there, since ours overlap quite a bit), but I certainly appreciate the level of work that went into what you're showing here! If you had anything moving to show, that'd be even better :-D
I also echo the recommendation to build your audience before launching the kickstarter: you want as strong a start as possible, and you can't expect a large amount of random people stumbling on your campaign in the first few days. If you start posting regularly on screenshot saturday threads on twitter/tigsource and elsewhere, I'm fairly hopeful you'll start getting looks!
MikeHaggar
Member
Thanks for all of the kind words, guys! So the Kickstarter would feature video of actual in-engine gameplay. Nothing scripted and no mockups or anything like that. There would perhaps be some static images of concept art or even finished pixel art that hasn't been animated yet. We have a fairly robust and flexible dev environment already in place. We just need to continue to get the art assets created. A majority of the funding would go towards that.
I appreciate the advice about garnering a bit of hype before the Kickstarter launches. I think the screenshot saturday advice is spot on.
Lastly, I'm not sure we want to offer physical rewards. We are a two man team and would really like to focus on the actual game without having to juggle the logistics of having physical goods created then shipped etc... Do you think it would be a mistake to not offer physical rewards?
I appreciate the advice about garnering a bit of hype before the Kickstarter launches. I think the screenshot saturday advice is spot on.
Lastly, I'm not sure we want to offer physical rewards. We are a two man team and would really like to focus on the actual game without having to juggle the logistics of having physical goods created then shipped etc... Do you think it would be a mistake to not offer physical rewards?
For a two staff pixelart game I wouldn't ask for more then 100k, depending on the quality thats shown. A few successful pixelart games:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/chevyray/ikenfell CA$61,787
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1068694633/narita-boy-the-retro-futuristic-pixel-game 160,946
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1027299776/witchmarsh £102,430
And skip physical if you are a small team, consider having digital soundtracks and early bird options instead
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/chevyray/ikenfell CA$61,787
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1068694633/narita-boy-the-retro-futuristic-pixel-game 160,946
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1027299776/witchmarsh £102,430
And skip physical if you are a small team, consider having digital soundtracks and early bird options instead
How much money would you consider asking for? I'd say a good option might also be to start right off the gate with a Switch port or something of the like to get attention from that audience.
MikeHaggar
Member
That's exactly what I've been thinking regarding both the funding goal and the rewards. Perhaps I have a realistic handle on things (which is good!). Thanks again everyone!
LordRaptor
Member
'classic' sprite based games used raster graphics, so all of their graphics would be comprised of tiles of fixed sizes; the NES for example could do tiles of 8x8 or 8x16 pixel size, with the SNES doing 16x16 tiles.
Most modern engines use polygons for their 2D rendering, so you can make sprites at pretty much any arbitrary resolution you want (although its a pretty good idea to either do a spritesheet that is a power of 2 in size, or use sprites that are powers of two for performance reasons)
For Aspect Ratios, 'classic' games were often designed to run on TV resolutions (which are 4:3), or were created knowing that they would be stretched to fit that resolution (non-square pixels). This is muddied a bit more by different regions having slightly different pixel density / TV standards (PAL vs SECAM vs NTSC).
Basically, for pixelart, you ideally want to have your 'frame' be an exact multiple of the display it is going to be shown on so that you don't get any blurriness / faux-aliasing / stretching when the TV scales it - an exact multiple of the target resolution will do 'perfect' resizes.
Modern displays (1080p being the international standard, even for PC monitors and phones nowadays) are in 16:9 ratio, so a target screensize that exactly fits into that - 480x270 (4x), 640x360 (3x), 960x540 (2x) - will let you 'naturally' scale to that.
You'll notice that 640x360 also scales perfectly to 720p, so thats a fairly popular choice as it also scales vertically to common sprite resolutions (16x16, 32x32) with some horizontal overdraw, or exactly if you don't mind some dead space at the edges.
Pixeljoint forums have a pretty good tutorial topic for starting to pixelart.
MikeHaggar
Member
I don't think I want to publicly talk about specific numbers at this point. Options are still being weighed/decided. I'd absolutely love to do a Switch port, but I don't think I can guarantee that right off the bat. It's been hard enough trying to talk to Microsoft and Sony. Nintendo is even harder and they aren't exactly being generous with Switch devkit access. The good news is that the game engine has support for all of these platforms, so hopefully it ends up everywhere
ken_matthews
Member
I had a really rough last year and a half that threw me off my game dev efforts (and life efforts in general). I finally see the light at the end of the tunnel and want to eventually start back up again, but I feel terrible about it because I flaked on my dev partner without much communication (some of it was out of my control). I need to get back into it, but I am apprehensive about reaching back out to him. And I am not a shy or indirect person either, and I always own up to my failings, but this guy is a good and talented person who really had the passion and I simply just let him down. I just feel bad about it.
CertifiedFP
Member
Hehe, I've got a bit of a rut myself.
Now that I have a complete prototype for everything and am focused solely on putting meat on the skeleton, I'm finding myself a lot less compelled by the process.
Before I was making constant tangible progress on things. Now it's not quite that feeling even if what I'm doing is in fact progress, and what programming I am doing now is just polish and fine-tuning for which the end differences I've been making are minuscule and probably not stuff the end-user will probably notice much of.
Honestly I think I have a much better spark for the technical processes than the creative processes >.>
Now that I have a complete prototype for everything and am focused solely on putting meat on the skeleton, I'm finding myself a lot less compelled by the process.
Before I was making constant tangible progress on things. Now it's not quite that feeling even if what I'm doing is in fact progress, and what programming I am doing now is just polish and fine-tuning for which the end differences I've been making are minuscule and probably not stuff the end-user will probably notice much of.
Honestly I think I have a much better spark for the technical processes than the creative processes >.>
oxrock
Gravity is a myth, the Earth SUCKS!
Just be honest and talk it out with him/her. The worst thing that can happen is that they decide not to work with you simply leaving you in the same situation you're in now.
Tiny update from us: We decided to skip having a dedicated tutorial level, we had too much trouble getting it to load properly from within our lobby system. As a result, I moved some of the tutorial's geometry onto other maps and instead gave the map choice to the player so they can try each map on their own in an offline setting. A better decision for sure.
We've also updated our options menu to have functional master volume levels etc, and mouse sensitivity. Options can also be accessed by pressing Escape while playing. Along with some minor bugs, we also added a screen fadein/out when moving from scene to scene so the game seemingly loads smoother. The next step is to add this fade when going back to the lobby from the actual game, and turn off the connection to Unity's servers properly so you can reload a game :lol Our menu logic for traversing between different sections isn't entirely thought out ahead of time so some menus, such as loading the tutorial, quitting, and trying to load a new tutorial, are broken due to missing code. Planning, guys!
Not sure if I've already mentioned it but we've added a radaresque ability to our adversary class. Stand still for a few seconds and you'll be able to spot the direction of the other players. Makes it a lot easier to locate and them hunt down.
We've also updated our options menu to have functional master volume levels etc, and mouse sensitivity. Options can also be accessed by pressing Escape while playing. Along with some minor bugs, we also added a screen fadein/out when moving from scene to scene so the game seemingly loads smoother. The next step is to add this fade when going back to the lobby from the actual game, and turn off the connection to Unity's servers properly so you can reload a game :lol Our menu logic for traversing between different sections isn't entirely thought out ahead of time so some menus, such as loading the tutorial, quitting, and trying to load a new tutorial, are broken due to missing code. Planning, guys!
Not sure if I've already mentioned it but we've added a radaresque ability to our adversary class. Stand still for a few seconds and you'll be able to spot the direction of the other players. Makes it a lot easier to locate and them hunt down.
Hey ya'll.
Been snooping for a while. I work in a recording studio that mostly works on video games and anime these days. I am a voice director and script coordinator. I also do some sound design. Credits include Borderlands 2, Smite, Battleborn, Splision Man, most DBZ games and some other stuff.
Anyway, I've been in a bit of a rut at work and I am looking to contribute to something small and indie. If anybody reading this wants any pro-bono sound stuff just message me.
I'm not sweating the details and my boss is super cool. Just wanna branch out and do something cool.
Been snooping for a while. I work in a recording studio that mostly works on video games and anime these days. I am a voice director and script coordinator. I also do some sound design. Credits include Borderlands 2, Smite, Battleborn, Splision Man, most DBZ games and some other stuff.
Anyway, I've been in a bit of a rut at work and I am looking to contribute to something small and indie. If anybody reading this wants any pro-bono sound stuff just message me.
I'm not sweating the details and my boss is super cool. Just wanna branch out and do something cool.
I find it a bit annoying that you post a picture asking us what the demand forSo this is my project:
It's an action platformer with exploration elements. Mega Man-style level select with the ability to return to levels even after they've been completed with new upgrades allowing you to access previously inaccessible areas. So Mega Man meets Metroid.
In order to finish this game we are going to have to launch a Kickstarter. I'm just curious what you guys think the demand for a game like this is. We want to launch on Steam for Windows, Mac, and Linux and then have stretch goals to release on Playstation, Xbox, and Switch.
Assuming we put together a competent Kickstarter campaign (we will), do you think there would be enough interest in this to raise significant funding? Any thoughts/insight is appreciated!
a game like this is for doing a kickstarter. Game? Where is the "game" to draw
any conclusion from, of your ideas, vision etc.? Or is the picture everything
there is? I guess not. So you were working in this game for a while now coming
in here at times asking for any artist once in awhile without showing or
saying anything about it (or I've missed something). So why haven't you post
anything about the game like some wip or similar? Sure, you don't have to.
Perhaps your game is so unique or one of its kind that you strictly want to
hide it from anyone else. No problem, really. But asking for something like a
Kickstarter for a game nobody has any idea of, doesn't come with any footage
nor has any dev history, doesn't go together. So your questions can't really
be answered. As _Rob_ said, you should really build a small fanbase first
resp. post more about the game in here such that we get to know it better and
know where you want to go with it.
A part from that, I can only say that the art looks cool. No doubt about it!
This took forever, but I'm finally DONE cleaning Inti's animations!! I'll finally be able to start coloring them, and putting them in the game to have cool stuff within the prototype itself.
In the scope of the whole game it's a small milestone, but it still feels like the end of something big - I've never cleaned so much animation for so long (usually did it in short two to four weeks bursts in Honey), and I can't believe some people out there do this every day as part of their actual job. I'm glad to finally move on to something else, though I'm sure when I reach this step in the color marathon, I'll be sick of that, too :-D
Sooo nice! Can't imagine everything colored.
This took forever, but I'm finally DONE cleaning Inti's animations!! I'll finally be able to start coloring them, and putting them in the game to have cool stuff within the prototype itself. ...
And anew for each game. How many drawings can one make until the pain from any
hand, back etc. takes over? I think drawing on such a high level with such an
amount of details puts the body under some high tension. How do artist deal
with any such degeneration over time?
I'm trying to sort out how to do a certain material effect. In UE specifically, but I'm sure any general advice would help:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDB6utGmAYU
It's at the very beginning of this video, where the triangles making up the surrounding blue sphere scale away in an inward-out formation. I'm guessing this is a material thing and not an instanced mesh or particle thing, but I can't quite wrap my brain around how to build something like that and I'd like to mess with aligned tile effects like that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDB6utGmAYU
It's at the very beginning of this video, where the triangles making up the surrounding blue sphere scale away in an inward-out formation. I'm guessing this is a material thing and not an instanced mesh or particle thing, but I can't quite wrap my brain around how to build something like that and I'd like to mess with aligned tile effects like that.
Haha, me neither, if I'm being honest - I expect it to turn out one way, but we'll see, it might end up different :-D That's going to be the real test, too - that, plus backgrounds, of course. There's actually been a fair few games announced since october that use 2D hand drawn aesthetics, so I hope it'll still have a place moving forward, but I'm happy to do the work in and of itself, so there's that!
Badly, I think :-D Though in my case, regular exercice certainly helps alleviate some of the back troubles. Doc recommended swimming above all else for the back muscles, but since I'm not very fond of that, I do biking, which seems to work well enough, at least so far. But yeah, I really believe every gamedev/sitting intensive job out there should *really* watch out for those problems, and have a plan in place to delay them (unfortunately, I'm not sure we can completely prevent them, it's more a matter of when it'll happen)!
thanks, this was really helpful, I am going to check that link and see how it goes.
We're finally on the tail end of finishing up Shwip. When i showed the game earlier, it was an XNA version running on pc, but after our acceptance into id@xbox, we decided to restart the game from scratch and take advantage of what Unity had to offer. In hindsight, we probably could have launched, but I'm glad we went dark. Gave us more of an opportunity to polish and add features just not possible with XNA at the time. More screens and videos coming soon
I just finished this shield death particle system last night. The new unity particlesystem is pretty damn awesome.
I just finished this shield death particle system last night. The new unity particlesystem is pretty damn awesome.
Don't know, could be their own sphere like projection, like when you do project
a skydome onto a 2d screen, yet drawing tiles instead of mapping pixel from any
image. Threasholding the drawings of the tiles may produce the transition.
Well, I actually have a similar idea with such transition for my game, like
having a skydome which tears apart showing the map behind.
So I will program something like that in the near future.
Swimming has perhaps the best overall benefit, I guess. But you are right,
sooner or later it gets us nevertheless.
I was always wondering what you were cocking up new, but didn't knew it'sWe're finally on the tail end of finishing up Shwip. When i showed the game earlier, it was an XNA version running on pc, but after our acceptance into id@xbox, we decided to restart the game from scratch and take advantage of what Unity had to offer. In hindsight, we probably could have launched, but I'm glad we went dark. Gave us more of an opportunity to polish and add features just not possible with XNA at the time. More screens and videos coming soon
I just finished this shield death particle system last night. The new unity particlesystem is pretty damn awesome.
...
still that game! Ok, lets see!
Meanwhile...
I've now added (pseudo-) wavelength dependency for the specular attenuation
due to diffraction from rough surfaces. With wavelength dependency the
attenuation will differ for each color component. Usually, longer wavelengths
lead to less attenuation, but I've reversed it in the animation for the fun of
it (switching red with blue and emphasis a bit). Hence, the bluish cast of the
reflection is due to destructive interference of the reflecting light waves
from a rough surface of a given rms roughness, approximately. You can see how
the reflection strongly attenuates towards normal incidence which isn't due to
Fresnel, but due to destructive interference. It's what you experience when
looking on a reflection of an object on a glossy floor (away from grazing),
i.e. the reflection diminishes quickly depending on the roughness.
Well, I still have to put some more work into it. For example, I need to match
the rms roughness of the above model with the roughness the glossy is computed
with. That is to say, combining the roughness used in the model above with the
roughness parameters of any BRDF model like for example Phong, Cook/Torrence
etc.. Later it would also be cool to put the whole thing on solid microfacet
grounds where the roughness can actually scale from 0 to whatever you have,
which requires to modify the microfacet distribution and stuff (which start to
depend on wavelength for very smooth surfaces, if you want to compute the
input and reflected energy rightfully). Anyhow, that's for the future.
Another idea I have is to do some glossy parallax mapping if that makes any
sense. For, basically, the texture/light seen through a glossy surface needs
to exhibit some glossyness as well (glossy transparency so to speak) resp.
needs to shift due to refraction. So given the IOR, some pseudo depth of the
surface's finish (dielectricum) and the refraction ray, one should be able to
compute an offset shifting the texture, no?
I've now added (pseudo-) wavelength dependency for the specular attenuation
due to diffraction from rough surfaces. With wavelength dependency the
attenuation will differ for each color component. Usually, longer wavelengths
lead to less attenuation, but I've reversed it in the animation for the fun of
it (switching red with blue and emphasis a bit). Hence, the bluish cast of the
reflection is due to destructive interference of the reflecting light waves
from a rough surface of a given rms roughness, approximately. You can see how
the reflection strongly attenuates towards normal incidence which isn't due to
Fresnel, but due to destructive interference. It's what you experience when
looking on a reflection of an object on a glossy floor (away from grazing),
i.e. the reflection diminishes quickly depending on the roughness.
Well, I still have to put some more work into it. For example, I need to match
the rms roughness of the above model with the roughness the glossy is computed
with. That is to say, combining the roughness used in the model above with the
roughness parameters of any BRDF model like for example Phong, Cook/Torrence
etc.. Later it would also be cool to put the whole thing on solid microfacet
grounds where the roughness can actually scale from 0 to whatever you have,
which requires to modify the microfacet distribution and stuff (which start to
depend on wavelength for very smooth surfaces, if you want to compute the
input and reflected energy rightfully). Anyhow, that's for the future.
Another idea I have is to do some glossy parallax mapping if that makes any
sense. For, basically, the texture/light seen through a glossy surface needs
to exhibit some glossyness as well (glossy transparency so to speak) resp.
needs to shift due to refraction. So given the IOR, some pseudo depth of the
surface's finish (dielectricum) and the refraction ray, one should be able to
compute an offset shifting the texture, no?
CertifiedFP
Member
Made some changes to the AI that should improve their pathing ability - Just a week ago there was an issue where if a loud noise was made near a wall, it would be interpreted as being inside of the wall itself (Outside of any pathing nodes range) and be subsequently ignored. This was especially problematic for doing things such as knocking on walls to grab a guard's attention. All fixed now!
Also changed was the Spawning system for backup. Previously I relied on a fixed set of nodes exclusively placed at the entrances to a map, however that became problematic for large maps or ones without many entrances - As such, I have came up with a new system that still uses fixed spawning nodes, but can now be placed all over the map - As such, instead of having backup spawn at a door that could be on the opposite end of the map and require them to run all the way to the action (Which was biased towards the player's advantage), Guard backup will now spawn at the nearest node outside of a certain range of the player (In this case right now, a roughly 2000 pixel radius, which puts the range to be just outside of Kaufman's viewing area) - Which also compensates for using binoculars and other view-enhancing items so an enemy will never spawn inside of the player's vision. Functionally, this works just like how Guard spawning worked in the Metal Gear games for MSX as well as Metal Gear Solid on the PS1.
But as for a more graphical preview of what I've been working on, have a editor screenshot of an area the player will visit in the early-game that introduces all the "mundane" mechanics in a soft-tutorial before Magic is introduced.
Victory Tower Suites (149th floor).
The visual assets certainly aren't there yet - This will represent more of a luxury apartment building once it's done, with carpeting and other amenities inside of the four apartments at the center, as well as a proper set of doors for the Penthouse Suite entrance at the top, and of course things to make the elevators at the bottom actually look like elevators.
If you're curious, the blue dots represent spawning nodes under the new spawn system, and orange ones are patrol nodes followed by enemies. They're relatively simple for this level in order to be simple to figure out, as this is the very start of real gameplay and ideally the only challenge here should be to guide the player towards learning the mechanics instead of testing knowledge they should have been building.
Not visible in plain view is which doors are locked, among other minor things, but if you look closely you can see vents along certain walls that the player can crawl through to bypass locked doors...
Also changed was the Spawning system for backup. Previously I relied on a fixed set of nodes exclusively placed at the entrances to a map, however that became problematic for large maps or ones without many entrances - As such, I have came up with a new system that still uses fixed spawning nodes, but can now be placed all over the map - As such, instead of having backup spawn at a door that could be on the opposite end of the map and require them to run all the way to the action (Which was biased towards the player's advantage), Guard backup will now spawn at the nearest node outside of a certain range of the player (In this case right now, a roughly 2000 pixel radius, which puts the range to be just outside of Kaufman's viewing area) - Which also compensates for using binoculars and other view-enhancing items so an enemy will never spawn inside of the player's vision. Functionally, this works just like how Guard spawning worked in the Metal Gear games for MSX as well as Metal Gear Solid on the PS1.
But as for a more graphical preview of what I've been working on, have a editor screenshot of an area the player will visit in the early-game that introduces all the "mundane" mechanics in a soft-tutorial before Magic is introduced.
Victory Tower Suites (149th floor).
The visual assets certainly aren't there yet - This will represent more of a luxury apartment building once it's done, with carpeting and other amenities inside of the four apartments at the center, as well as a proper set of doors for the Penthouse Suite entrance at the top, and of course things to make the elevators at the bottom actually look like elevators.
If you're curious, the blue dots represent spawning nodes under the new spawn system, and orange ones are patrol nodes followed by enemies. They're relatively simple for this level in order to be simple to figure out, as this is the very start of real gameplay and ideally the only challenge here should be to guide the player towards learning the mechanics instead of testing knowledge they should have been building.
Not visible in plain view is which doors are locked, among other minor things, but if you look closely you can see vents along certain walls that the player can crawl through to bypass locked doors...
oxrock
Gravity is a myth, the Earth SUCKS!
Slowly making progress in Quests Unlimited. Now that monsters are dropping loot I've been prioritizing getting the party loot distribution system up and running. Not only did I have to figure out who can wear each piece of equipment that drops and needs it most, I then had to interface it all with an inventory system I wrote months ago and honestly forgot everything about. Not to mention it was my first inventory system I'd ever done, so I'm sure it's far from perfect. Somehow things are mostly working though. Without inventory movement sounds or being able to see objects move from the general inventory window to a character's equipment window, it just looks like items are disappearing though. There's always a million more things to do i seems. Slowly but surely I'll get there.
Edit: since I'm the last post I'll just update this post with the new info instead of needlessly bumping. This update isn't exactly exciting anyhow. So... This is the second day of full day migraine so I just couldn't force myself to try and code through it. I decided that I hate my current health/mana potion inventory icons and that should be something simple enough to concentrate on. So incoming programmer art! ;p
old versions:
new versions:
of course in game they'll look more like this due to inventory slot size:
Edit: since I'm the last post I'll just update this post with the new info instead of needlessly bumping. This update isn't exactly exciting anyhow. So... This is the second day of full day migraine so I just couldn't force myself to try and code through it. I decided that I hate my current health/mana potion inventory icons and that should be something simple enough to concentrate on. So incoming programmer art! ;p
old versions:
new versions:
of course in game they'll look more like this due to inventory slot size:
Nice work! Very smooth animation.
We're finally on the tail end of finishing up Shwip. When i showed the game earlier, it was an XNA version running on pc, but after our acceptance into id@xbox, we decided to restart the game from scratch and take advantage of what Unity had to offer. In hindsight, we probably could have launched, but I'm glad we went dark. Gave us more of an opportunity to polish and add features just not possible with XNA at the time. More screens and videos coming soon
I just finished this shield death particle system last night. The new unity particlesystem is pretty damn awesome.
I really can't wait to play this. It looks really fun. I recall your posts way back when I started on stardiver years ago. Congrats on the long haul dev cycle and seeing it through. High five
Meanwhile...
I've now added (pseudo-) wavelength dependency for the specular attenuation
due to diffraction from rough surfaces. With wavelength dependency the
attenuation will differ for each color component. Usually, longer wavelengths
lead to less attenuation, but I've reversed it in the animation for the fun of
it (switching red with blue and emphasis a bit). Hence, the bluish cast of the
reflection is due to destructive interference of the reflecting light waves
from a rough surface of a given rms roughness, approximately. You can see how
the reflection strongly attenuates towards normal incidence which isn't due to
Fresnel, but due to destructive interference. It's what you experience when
looking on a reflection of an object on a glossy floor (away from grazing),
i.e. the reflection diminishes quickly depending on the roughness.
Well, I still have to put some more work into it. For example, I need to match
the rms roughness of the above model with the roughness the glossy is computed
with. That is to say, combining the roughness used in the model above with the
roughness parameters of any BRDF model like for example Phong, Cook/Torrence
etc.. Later it would also be cool to put the whole thing on solid microfacet
grounds where the roughness can actually scale from 0 to whatever you have,
which requires to modify the microfacet distribution and stuff (which start to
depend on wavelength for very smooth surfaces, if you want to compute the
input and reflected energy rightfully). Anyhow, that's for the future.
Another idea I have is to do some glossy parallax mapping if that makes any
sense. For, basically, the texture/light seen through a glossy surface needs
to exhibit some glossyness as well (glossy transparency so to speak) resp.
needs to shift due to refraction. So given the IOR, some pseudo depth of the
surface's finish (dielectricum) and the refraction ray, one should be able to
compute an offset shifting the texture, no?
I consider myself fairly versed in graphics tech/programming and your posts make me realize how little I actually know.... Thanks! Seriously, I learn a little something nearly every post.
VisceralBowl
Member
Edit: Wow wrong thread
Hahaha, I know the feeling regarding thread killing :-D I assume the thread's a bit slower than usual because of E3?
I'm not sure exactly how much you want in the way of comments about programmer art, but just in case, here are a few thoughts regarding the potions: I think different width line would give them a lot more presence, and might actually turn them into completely workable assets of their own. You could either go for the "thicker outlines/thinner inlines" combo, or attempt to redraw each line individually and see what comes out!
Either way, good luck, and good going, I think it could work as is already :-D
I don't know how the hell I'd missed this before, but Clive 'N' Wrench's wild west level had no horses! Cue a couple of days designing and animating one and here we are!
I'd never attempted to animate a horse before, and although it's only an idle at the moment I'm pretty pleased with it! I never released quite how twitchy an animal they are, but as always, reference is key!
I'd never attempted to animate a horse before, and although it's only an idle at the moment I'm pretty pleased with it! I never released quite how twitchy an animal they are, but as always, reference is key!
I don't know how the hell I'd missed this before, but Clive 'N' Wrench's wild west level had no horses! Cue a couple of days designing and animating one and here we are!
I'd never attempted to animate a horse before, and although it's only an idle at the moment I'm pretty pleased with it! I never released quite how twitchy an animal they are, but as always, reference is key!
That looks great! But who's that yellow guy photobombing your gif in the background? :-D
I can't speak on his account, of course, and I'm not involved in his project, but I had the chance to chat with MikeHaggar for a while, in the past, and I had the - sincerely very positive - impression he was extremely focused and serious. I hope he doesn't mind me sharing this, because I don't have anything but good things to say. We got in contact to discuss about my game project - which I had to put on hold since then, due to life changes bringing me in a different direction, but that I still cultivate in my free time - and he was looking so far ahead, compared to myself, that I kinda felt like I would've wasted his time, at that stage and time.
All this to say that - even though your point is entirely fair, in my opinion - I personally don't doubt there's already a very solid product, behind that one and only screenshot.
Thanks! Oh, that's one of the "generic" enemies for the level (Lee Van Thief).He's a lizard desperado who swaggers along until you enter his radius; at which point he spins the gun around in a fanciful display and starts firing! (I've been watching too many westerns lately...)
CertifiedFP
Member
So, what's the general opinion here on building a demo in a different engine than what the full game is intended to use?
Honestly at a point with GameMaker where I feel the tools of Unity or Unreal 4 would serve the purposes I need far better, but it's too late to just abandon what I've built on GMS2, despite my growing preference of C++ over GML.
Honestly at a point with GameMaker where I feel the tools of Unity or Unreal 4 would serve the purposes I need far better, but it's too late to just abandon what I've built on GMS2, despite my growing preference of C++ over GML.
oxrock
Gravity is a myth, the Earth SUCKS!
Thanks, but honestly as far my artwork is concerned, those are masterpieces, lol. Considering I'm left handed drawing everything right handed with a mouse, I'm just glad it came out recognizable. Someday hopefully I'll be able to collaborate with an awesome artist instead of flying solo.
SeanNoonan
Member
I did a one hour game jam this weekend...
SCALD
In Scald, you must collect as many gems as you can. Avoid the fireballs and don't fall into the lava
You can play it here: https://sean-noonan.itch.io/scald
The jam theme was "the floor is lava". I know, my entry isn't particularly original. I clocked in around 3 hours - difficulty balancing took longer than expected and I wanted to get some audio in. Also, the game is much easier with headphones
Would super appreciate some retweets too: https://twitter.com/SeanNoonan/status/876257979678457856
SCALD
In Scald, you must collect as many gems as you can. Avoid the fireballs and don't fall into the lava
You can play it here: https://sean-noonan.itch.io/scald
The jam theme was "the floor is lava". I know, my entry isn't particularly original. I clocked in around 3 hours - difficulty balancing took longer than expected and I wanted to get some audio in. Also, the game is much easier with headphones
Would super appreciate some retweets too: https://twitter.com/SeanNoonan/status/876257979678457856