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Indie Game Development Discussion Thread | Of Being Professionally Poor

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M

missile

Member
McSpidey said:
I think Sycle just misses the posts due to coding and animating...and right now he's at GDC.
I just dig up his tweet on this for you though :) NOTE: GIF has a max speed of 50fps, not 60 sadly.
https://twitter.com/ironicaccount/status/442427138352742400


Fraps for capture, VirtualDub for cutting/editing etc, Photoshop for GIFing.

Hope that helps! ...
Click to expand...
Thx for clearing it up!

I skimmed through the gif specs and found that even "100fps" are possible
(better; one can specify the delay after a frame has been drawn), yet no
browser has implemented it rightfully. An animated-gif's delay is given as a
multiple of 1/100th of a seconds, hence no "60fps" (as you said) while "50fps"
is possible represented as 2/100th of a second. So we have at best "100fps",
"50fps", "33fps", "25fps", etc. Yet the true frame rate actually depends on
the frames (size, #colors used, compression, etc.) stored in the animted-gif
and on the execution speed of the computer in rendering (decode and drawing)
each. So while people just set the delay time while expecting it to be the
frame rate, they will get wrong results. One way to get near the expected
frame rate is by storing the frames in such a way that decoding them is the
fastest, i.e. decoding each frame should only take a fraction of the delay
time. And there are some options/parameters to play with as indicated above.
 
J

Jobbs

Banned
Baconsaurus Rex said:
You're wrong, Gobbs.
Click to expand...

I go by what the creator of the format, Steve Wilhite, said. It's jif. Same as I've always said it.

Steve Wilhite, inventor of the Graphic Image File, sent a shock wave across the Internet Tuesday night by declaring what he insists is the proper pronunciation of the format he invented more than 25 years ago. According to Wilhite: “It’s pronounced ‘JIF’ not ‘GIF’”
Click to expand...
 
J

Jobbs

Banned
Baconsaurus Rex said:
I know ;)

Wilhite was a programmer, not a linguist.
Click to expand...

From the internet:

Usually, a c or g sound is hard or soft depending on the vowel that follows it. Here's the general rule:

When c or g meets a, o, or u, its sound is hard.

cap, cave, colt, comedy, curly, cuddle
gas, gather, goblet, goddess, gum, gutter

When c or g meets e, i, or y, its sound is soft.

census, center, circle, citizen, cycle, cymbal
gel, general, giant, ginger, gypsy, gyrate
Click to expand...

JIF.
 
G

genbatzu

Member
so I'm nearing the finishing of my first game, with a lot of help from my wife and we could need some advice from indieGAF, since you all have waaay more experience than us=)

It's a small 2 button control runner game, cute graphics, kids friendly, with increasing difficulty and a score-unlockable gallery.

I'll publish it on iOS, plan is with an ad banner and option to remove it (with option to restore purchases of course, but no microtransaction stuff, only remove-ads for something between $0.99-$1.99).
not sure about android, since I can't test it, because I have no android devices and there are so many different android devices availabe, that it's hard to optimize it for every device, much easier with iPhone/iPad. And I don't want to deliver a buggy/unplayable game :/

It's also built to work on PC with mouse and keyboard controls.
So what do you think, is it worth it putting it on steam greenlight? or not worth the effort, because of 99€ greenlight cost and too small of a game + the additional "advertisement" (mouth of worth, steamgift, etc.) to get it greenlit at all.

What do you think about Desura?
I think it's too small of a game to bundle it in any indiebundle.

some beginners advice would be very appreciated! =)
 
J

Jobbs

Banned
amanset said:
"Usually".

Counterexample: gift, which just happens to start with "gif".
Click to expand...

I was establishing a basis for the soft G existing. Combine this with the creator saying it's a soft G in GIF, and I feel good about saying the correct prounciation is with the soft G...

It's canon. Just like if the creator of Star Wars says Jar Jar Binks exists. You may or may not like it, but it's canon.
 
J

Jobbs

Banned
to change the subject, and a bit of a shot in the dark, any talented illustrators here who may be available to do stand alone pieces? digital paintings. hit me up, and with links if you have them.
 
eot

eot

Banned
giraffe

gif

tumblr_mpwn08lI2B1szrmd1o1_500.gif
 
C

Cromat

Member
I have a question about Game Maker for those who know about. Could I make HTTP requests from the game, for example if I wanted to display Google search results within the game could I do that?
 
W

Water

Member
Quick question to the Unity guys. This is probably very simple, but it would save me a lot of time if you could steer me away from dead-end approaches.

I haven't touched the rendering side of Unity at all. How would you render something ilke the classic shoot'em up white flash effect with an arbitrary, textured 3D mesh in Unity? My initial thought is that one could probably temporarily modify some shader parameter, switch the mesh to use a different material or something. We're using stock Unity diffuse shaders at the moment. This effect will be on a ton of objects (everything that can be damaged) so it should not waste an absurd amount of performance.

(I have written GLSL shaders and am not afraid of rendering stuff in general, but would not like to wade deep into Unity rendering at this point. We have at least a month's worth of game logic work that is more urgent than making things look good. So a hack that looks crude would be OK. If the sensible thing to do is to modify the default shader a bit, I can buckle down and do that too.)
 
W

Water

Member
Teknopathetic said:
http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/13763/making-a-model-flash-a-certain-color-when-shot.html

Try this?
Click to expand...
Thanks for the suggestion, but it doesn't sound too promising:
quick note for anyone using this. The code above works for the diffuse shader, not the mobile diffuse shader, also, it affects the material across all models in your scene so you'll want to be careful if you have a bunch of clones running around, those will blink as well unless you change it so they have unique materials assigned. This works perfectly though.
Click to expand...
Having to generate unique material per object instance can't be 1) the smart way or 2) the easy way of doing this. I'd like to be able to drop this effect into any object with a mesh.
edit: forgot to mention just in case it matters - we are targeting 100% PC, mobile perf is not a concern.
 
T

Teknopathetic

Member
"Thanks for the suggestion, but it doesn't sound too promising:"


I just made a small test scene with 3 capsules sharing the same material (standard unity Diffuse with a simple texture), left clicking calls a function to change the color on the capsule clicked to white and then back to the original color.

It only changed the material for the specific capsule clicked, *not* for all capsules with the same material in the scene. It did not change the capsule to a pure white, only increasing the overall brightness of the mesh a bit, though.


Alternatively, I suppose you could keep a reference to a small all white texture and swap between it and the normal texture as well?
 
D

DemonNite

Member
alternatively, could you not swap out the texture at Element 1 so you retain the original under the layer? that way it will look like you flashed the original texture and not turn it pure white.
 
H

HellBlazer

Member
Lo_Fi said:
Hey guys, I'm getting ready to launch a Kickstarter for my game soon, hoping you guys could give me some feedback. Mainly looking for feedback on the video(s):
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lofi/311062933?token=be8ae6e2
B5C0AwD.jpg


Things I know I still need to fix:
-The volume at one point in the video
-Change "Ludo Land" logo to "Ludo Land presents"
-Cut down on gif size on the kickstarter page
-Update "repeats" on the kickstarter page to match the new content
-Update the budget pie chart
Click to expand...

I would back.

That's a lot of images on that page though. I'd say it could do with more text and less images. Condensing things a bit would probably be good too. For instance, the team members section looks rather messy right now as a jumble of "avatars", names and logos. Also, I'm not sure about the repeating effect thing... I see what you're going for, but personally I think it's more confusing than anything else at the moment.
 
L

Lo_Fi

Member
abe_bly said:
It looks pretty good. The page is a bit long; probably too many images.

As you're mentioning Thomas Was Alone and Sword & Sorcery as inspirations, the video is showing cutscenes. While each of those games had their share of cutscenes, most of their atmosphere was built while you were playing it. Most of TWA happens by the narrator explaining things while you're jumping around and getting stuff done. S&S was largely about walking around and taking in the environment for me. So it feels disingenuous to me to be watching non-interactive parts of a game be compared to what were mostly interactive experiences for me.

Is that pointed wipe supposed to be an example of transitions seen only in film? Because when I think of wipes, I think of arcade games, YouTube videos and Star Wars. Wipes don't seem super filmic to me.

When you mention that you want to do this game because you can do new stuff using Unity, the player character starts teleporting into the near frame and back. This is confusing from a gameplay standpoint because teleporting between frames isn't going to gel with most people's concept of screen wrapping, and also because it's uncertain whether you're trying to express that this specific depth effect is something you couldn't have done without Unity. Changing depth doesn't come across as complicated (whether or not it is in your engine), so it doesn't seem like something that only the power of Unity would permit but the voiceover suggests otherwise.

My immediate reaction to "see it in every stage of development" is that puzzle games with "no filler" don't lend well to that transparency. I have faith that you know what you're doing, but I as a potential backer and as someone interested in the game don't want to see all of the secrets, don't want to see levels as they're being developed. I feel like that would spoil a lot of the entertainment value of actually playing the end product. Then again, people who don't want to be spoiled aren't being forced into it. I just don't know what portion of people will be interested in behind the scenes of puzzle building for puzzles they haven't solved yet.
Click to expand...

Great, I'll make some changes to the video! To reply to some of your concerns:
-I'll change it to make it more obvious, but the "pointed wipe" is a tree in the foreground creating the wipe. And these transitions are being done during gameplay, not cutscenes, making it unique to the game (at least to my knowledge). The other transitions I have implemented so far are jump cuts and fading between two levels, but jump cuts aren't apparent in a video since that could be seen as part of the video, and I show the fade later in the video.
-As to new stuff only possible in Unity, the original game was in Game Maker, making those mechanics near-impossible. I guess that needs clarification but there's only so much I can fit into the video.

HellBlazer said:
I would back.

That's a lot of images on that page though. I'd say it could do with more text and less images. Condensing things a bit would probably be good too. For instance, the team members section looks rather messy right now as a jumble of "avatars", names and logos. Also, I'm not sure about the repeating effect thing... I see what you're going for, but personally I think it's more confusing than anything else at the moment.
Click to expand...

Thanks, this is good to know. I'll try to cut down on the number of images, but I do try to be succinct with what I create, so I'm trying to keep text minimal.

And yeah, I wish kickstarter had more formatting options so that I could organize the team section better. They don't even let you center images or text!

It's tough, because I want to have all of the team images act as hyperlinks as well, which forces me to make them separate images, meaning I can't "format" them in photoshop.
 
C

chubigans

y'all should be ashamed
Big thanks to Jobbs for updating the Stencyl description in the OP. I've updated the GM Studio one as well.

Can anyone update the Unreal and Unity descriptions with the latest GDC announcements? Also I think a section for Crytek would be good too. I'm unfamiliar with those tools so I rather have someone who has more knowledge than me to update it.

edit: Monogame would be good too!
 
F

Five

Banned
Lo_Fi said:
Great, I'll make some changes to the video! To reply to some of your concerns:
-I'll change it to make it more obvious, but the "pointed wipe" is a tree in the foreground creating the wipe. And these transitions are being done during gameplay, not cutscenes, making it unique to the game (at least to my knowledge). The other transitions I have implemented so far are jump cuts and fading between two levels, but jump cuts aren't apparent in a video since that could be seen as part of the video, and I show the fade later in the video.
-As to new stuff only possible in Unity, the original game was in Game Maker, making those mechanics near-impossible. I guess that needs clarification but there's only so much I can fit into the video.
Click to expand...

It doesn't necessarily need clarification, but, speaking as someone who currently has two open GameMaker windows, I didn't see anything in the video that I couldn't do, especially since GM has shader support now. I imagine the 3D stuff is much easier in Unity, but I don't think it's going to appear to be a very complicated thing to your average viewer.

Really, though, I'm probably getting far more caught up on this than anyone else will since I have a hard-on for GameMaker. I keep rewatching this part of the video so that I can find a better way to articulate what my issue was, but with every watch it seems like less of a problem. At this point, I'm not sure if it's Stockholm's syndrome or if I'm coming to my senses, ha ha.
 
M

MaritalWheat

Member
Woah, one of the Treachery in Beatdown City guys posts in here right? Whoever of that team just gave a GDC talk, hope you see this - great talk about just going out there and making your game, didn't realize it was your team going in!
 
L

Lo_Fi

Member
abe_bly said:
It doesn't necessarily need clarification, but, speaking as someone who currently has two open GameMaker windows, I didn't see anything in the video that I couldn't do, especially since GM has shader support now. I imagine the 3D stuff is much easier in Unity, but I don't think it's going to appear to be a very complicated thing to your average viewer.

Really, though, I'm probably getting far more caught up on this than anyone else will since I have a hard-on for GameMaker. I keep rewatching this part of the video so that I can find a better way to articulate what my issue was, but with every watch it seems like less of a problem. At this point, I'm not sure if it's Stockholm's syndrome or if I'm coming to my senses, ha ha.
Click to expand...

Oh, it's interesting in your earlier comment that you saw those parts during the mentions of Thomas was alone and Sword and Sworcery as cutscenes - they're actually pieces of concept art modified a bit so that they can have moving parts to make them less static. I put them there so that viewers can see the plan for the world and atmoshpere (which is the part that TWA and S&S influenced) - currently we only have the summer assets in-game, so I wanted to show that there will be diversity in the environments.
 
W

Water

Member
Teknopathetic said:
I just made a small test scene with 3 capsules sharing the same material (standard unity Diffuse with a simple texture), left clicking calls a function to change the color on the capsule clicked to white and then back to the original color.

It only changed the material for the specific capsule clicked, *not* for all capsules with the same material in the scene. It did not change the capsule to a pure white, only increasing the overall brightness of the mesh a bit, though.
Click to expand...
Wow, thanks! It appears the last poster on the Unity Q&A didn't know what they were talking about then. I'll give it a try tomorrow, but I doubt I'll have any trouble since it worked for you.
 
T

Teknopathetic

Member
"Wow, thanks! It appears the last poster on the Unity Q&A didn't know what they were talking about then. I'll give it a try tomorrow, but I doubt I'll have any trouble since it worked for you."

Another thing to note is that this only really works if your base diffuse color *isn't* white, which is the default. You could choose a different color to flash (like red in Under Defeat), but if it's just something you only need to work "for now" until you create a solution that works perfect for you, it should work fine.
 
P

Popstar

Member
Speaking of Kickstarter, a campaign that cut and pasted several paragraphs of text from ours asked us to give them a shoutout in our next update. Rather ballsy of them.

I'm going to get that slot reserved for Ashodin anyways.
 
F

fin

Member
Lo_Fi said:
Hey guys, I'm getting ready to launch a Kickstarter for my game soon, hoping you guys could give me some feedback. Mainly looking for feedback on the video(s):
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lofi/311062933?token=be8ae6e2
B5C0AwD.jpg


Things I know I still need to fix:
-The volume at one point in the video
-Change "Ludo Land" logo to "Ludo Land presents"
-Cut down on gif size on the kickstarter page
-Update "repeats" on the kickstarter page to match the new content
-Update the budget pie chart
Click to expand...

Game looks awesome!
 
P

Popstar

Member
Ashodin said:
Oh snap really!?
Click to expand...
Yeah.

And I noticed one of their tiers was cut and paste from Hyper Light Drifter, including spelling error. We were going to just ignore it until they contacted us. They did apologize and change the text when we pointed it out them. I wonder if it was different people who wrote the page text and contacted us.
 
L

Letterbomb

Banned
Popstar said:
Yeah.

And I noticed one of their tiers was cut and paste from Hyper Light Drifter, including spelling error. We were going to just ignore it until they contacted us. They did apologize and change the text when we pointed it out them. I wonder if it was different people who wrote the page text and contacted us.
Click to expand...

Try not to be too hard on them! Your Kickstarter for HLD was structured in a fantastic way, so it's easy to understand why others would take (too much) inspiration from it. My team and I have been building our Kickstarter page for over three months, and we've taken guidance from the better campaigns such as yours, Double Fine's, and et cetera. Examples such as yours make the process easier all around, especially for teams that are just trying to get established.

Let 'em down easily... :p

EDIT: I read your post wrong. Didn't realize they flat-out ripped the text, rather than just having a similar structure. NVM.
 
P

Popstar

Member
Letterbomb said:
Try not to be too hard on them! Your Kickstarter for HLD was structured in a fantastic way, so it's easy to understand why others would take (too much) inspiration from it. My team and I have been building our Kickstarter page for over three months, and we've taken guidance from the better campaigns such as yours, Double Fine's, and et cetera. Examples such as yours make the process easier all around, especially for teams that are just trying to get established.

Let 'em down easily... :p
Click to expand...
Our Kickstarter was actually Darkest Dungeon. Not HLD.

I understand what we're saying though. We looked at a lot of other Kickstarters also when we did ours. Nothing wrong with that. You be stupid not to.

But that's a bit different that just making your kickstarter from literally copy-and-pasted text from others. Its not just sorta rude but you're taking a big chance that someone might notice and start thinking you're just a scam, and posting such in comments.
 
L

Letterbomb

Banned
Popstar said:
Our Kickstarter was actually Darkest Dungeon. Not HLD.
Click to expand...

D'oh. I'm on a roll tonight with my reading comprehension.
Darkest Dungeon, by the way, had the best pitch video I've seen for the Games category in Kickstarter. Can't wait for its release. Glad it was funded, and glad I backed it.

I understand what we're saying though. We looked at a lot of other Kickstarters also when we did ours. Nothing wrong with that. You be stupid not to.

But that's a bit different that just making your kickstarter from literally copy-and-pasted text from others. Its not just sorta rude but you're taking a big chance that someone might notice and start thinking you're just a scam, and posting such in comments.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I misread earlier. Tried to edit my post in time, but nada. That simply isn't acceptable, lol.
 
O

OldRoutes

Member
Lo_Fi said:
Hey guys, I'm getting ready to launch a Kickstarter for my game soon, hoping you guys could give me some feedback. Mainly looking for feedback on the video(s):
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lofi/311062933?token=be8ae6e2
B5C0AwD.jpg


Things I know I still need to fix:
-The volume at one point in the video
-Change "Ludo Land" logo to "Ludo Land presents"
-Cut down on gif size on the kickstarter page
-Update "repeats" on the kickstarter page to match the new content
-Update the budget pie chart
Click to expand...

Dude that looks brilliant. Would back.
 
M

Makai

Member
Sounds like you're having a good day, Ashodin. It's not a cease-and-desist letter, right? ;)

Please let us know the good news when you can.
 
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