Wow crazy. And thanks for the update when it happens! We'll really appreciate the views.
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Indie Game Development Discussion Thread | Of Being Professionally Poor
- Thread starter chubigans
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Wow crazy. And thanks for the update when it happens! We'll really appreciate the views.
Yeah, it makes perfect sense when you explain it this way. I was trying to give you my initial impressions earlier.
Is this a first for them? I haven't known them to help others out with KS projects, but that might just be my own ignorance.
Even if it's just twitter mention or press mention, I'm all for it.
RelentlessRolento
Member
Stick GAF helped me out with my thesis installation for the game I programmed 
I'll post pics once I start installing next week. My musician is making the last few tracks + SFX while I get started writing my thesis paper.
I'll post pics once I start installing next week. My musician is making the last few tracks + SFX while I get started writing my thesis paper.
Screenshot Saturday? Here, I will post some horrible placeholder pixel art as I teach myself about pixel art and tools to create it. The rates for these animations aren't even necessarily correct, since I just threw some frames together from screenshots instead of using a tool or generating a proper screen capture.
64x64 experiment, normal size:
64x64, zoomed in map:
Then I tried doing 32x32 sprites, normal size:
32x32, zoomed in:
I kind of like how the thing is bouncing in the last screenshot so I may keep that.
At any rate, I spent a long time agonizing about whether to try 32x32, 64x64, or some other sprite base size. I think I have finally decided I like the 32x32 as shown in the last two pictures, and that level of blockiness is kind of what I want from a visual style, at least for placeholders.
And if I change my mind and decide I need more detail later, I will be able to replace the 32x32 double scaled sprites with 64x64 single scaled sprites and everything can keep the same general ratios.
I'm going to try to spend at least a tiny bit of time every day practicing or doing pixel art in some form, with the theory that I will improve if I do that. We'll see how long it goes. I have been trying to do at least a little bit of progress on my game or engine every day and that has been progressing as a result.
The rates for these animations aren't even necessarily correct, since I just threw some frames together from screenshots instead of using a tool or generating a proper screen capture.64x64 experiment, normal size:
64x64, zoomed in map:
Then I tried doing 32x32 sprites, normal size:
32x32, zoomed in:
I kind of like how the thing is bouncing in the last screenshot so I may keep that.
At any rate, I spent a long time agonizing about whether to try 32x32, 64x64, or some other sprite base size. I think I have finally decided I like the 32x32 as shown in the last two pictures, and that level of blockiness is kind of what I want from a visual style, at least for placeholders.
And if I change my mind and decide I need more detail later, I will be able to replace the 32x32 double scaled sprites with 64x64 single scaled sprites and everything can keep the same general ratios.
I'm going to try to spend at least a tiny bit of time every day practicing or doing pixel art in some form, with the theory that I will improve if I do that. We'll see how long it goes. I have been trying to do at least a little bit of progress on my game or engine every day and that has been progressing as a result.
Damn, 20$/month for UE4 is really cheap. And as I understand you can even cancel the subscription after the first month and only resubscribe if you want updates. Any chance the subscription model for Unity Pro will be improved in the near future? If I weren't quite far into my project in Unity (Free), I'd consider switching. But I don't really have the time to learn a new engine from scratch right now...
No I mean adding more g-buffers. As it is now writing shaders for the deferred rendering path is very limited. I've written a nice functioning physically based shader that works in forward rendering but would like to port it to deferred rendering. Problem is adding more uniforms/attributes. I need another texture(g-buffer) to render to(stuff like roughness) but seems you can't do that.If you have Pro, you just turn it on. It's good for lots of little light sources, (lighting cost becomes a function of the number of pixels that are affected by lights).
Super Something Squad is using deferred, linear lighting, with hand-painted vertex Ambient Occlusion landscapes, rendered with dual lightmaps generated by the built-in Beast light mapping system... All this for less than a month's pay.. and it would take me decades to implement something nowhere near as good... These engines are pretty rad when you look at them that way!
For around $100/month you can have UE4, Cryengine, and Unity! If your hobby is making games you'd be spending less than most of the people on these forums spend playing them!
Oh, got you. Mmmm, not seen anything obvious that would let you do that..
Me. It's awesome.
For a pc 3D game is the best choice by far.
Unity is better for games you want to ship any where and 2D but i'm unreal already supporta the most common platforms and i'm sure it will be improved in the following months.
electroflame
Member
I believe you mentioned explosions earlier as an example, so I'll use that for my example.
It's important to remember that (even with high quality sound effect CDs) you'll rarely find a sound effect that's exactly what you're looking for. More often than not, you'll have to add some filters, or layer multiple sounds to get something that sounds like what you're going for.
As an example, an explosion can be created from many things. I've used cannons in the past, perhaps mixed with something hitting the ground. Some gunshots can also work, if you pitch shift and change the wavelengths so their more heavily biased towards the bass.
For one explosion/rock breaking apart effect, I used the tail end of a rock slide, with an aggressively ramping flange effect to achieve what I wanted. I think I added some kind of vibrato at the end of it to make it sound like it echoed a bit, too.
You've got to be creative and think outside the box a bit.
As for sound effect CDs, The Hollywood Edge is probably the best I've ever used, but they don't come cheap. My advice (if you're serious about sound design) would be to go onto Ebay and check for sound effect CDs, since I've seen them go up either used or lightly used for really cheap.
Yea me, I am loving it so far.
NSCoderTO is hoping to do an Apple centric game jam this summer. If you live in Toronto and are a mobile game dev then please fill out their survey:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/F3M3CKX
The results will help decide the format and features of the event.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/F3M3CKX
The results will help decide the format and features of the event.
Just gonna quote myself once real quick:
Also, anyone know where a good resource would be for finding artists? I'm not having a whole lot of luck lately. :\
Also, anyone know where a good resource would be for finding artists? I'm not having a whole lot of luck lately. :\
bumpkin
Member
I'll see Screenshot Saturday and raise you Screen-cap Saturday. Captured a new clip of my super, super early-in-development game on a Mac using SDL 2. In the clip I demonstrate:
- Different animation states (e.g. standing, running, ducking and jumping)
- Moving left and right
- Firing projectiles
- Projectiles hitting and damaging enemies
- Enemies dying once they take enough damage to deplete their health (every bullet deals 10 damage, they have 100 total HP)
http://youtu.be/p5N8Mnq1Cs4
Don't mind the awkwardly long pause at the beginning. Quicktime Player's recording function makes everything sluggish. And yeah, it's all against an empty blank/black background with awesome programmer art!
- Different animation states (e.g. standing, running, ducking and jumping)
- Moving left and right
- Firing projectiles
- Projectiles hitting and damaging enemies
- Enemies dying once they take enough damage to deplete their health (every bullet deals 10 damage, they have 100 total HP)
http://youtu.be/p5N8Mnq1Cs4
Don't mind the awkwardly long pause at the beginning. Quicktime Player's recording function makes everything sluggish. And yeah, it's all against an empty blank/black background with awesome programmer art!
Hi!
Here's a screenshot from a game I've been making for a while ("Spirit Huntress", I think it was featured in the indie games thread here on GAF).
I still have to fix some details here (the red carpet looks horrible) and there're two more NPC's missing, but I'm fond of how this scene is coming out.
I hope you like it.
Edit.- Damn I hope the image size is ok
Here's a screenshot from a game I've been making for a while ("Spirit Huntress", I think it was featured in the indie games thread here on GAF).
I still have to fix some details here (the red carpet looks horrible) and there're two more NPC's missing, but I'm fond of how this scene is coming out.
I hope you like it.
Edit.- Damn I hope the image size is ok
Everyone's using SDL. I switched away after feeling SDL was too crippling, but now I'm hearing stuff like SFML preventing you from using newer OpenGL states and so forth, so maybe I will eventually regret my decision. ;_; I just remember SDL having awful performance, but that probably wasn't SDL2, and maybe there's a way to work around SDL textures and work directly with OpenGL.
Hi!
Here's a screenshot from a game I've been making for a while ("Spirit Huntress", I think it was featured in the indie games thread here on GAF).
I still have to fix some details here (the red carpet looks horrible) and there're two more NPC's missing, but I'm fond of how this scene is coming out.
I hope you like it.
Edit.- Damn I hope the image size is ok
hey that art style is quite unique! good job!
Prophet Steve
Member
I am, I enjoy the UI but I need to do some basic tutorials, because I can barely do anything if I want to adjust the shooter template.
I made some sprite changes. I'm not sure if this is recognizable enough as a (look first, then highlight spoiler)
, or whether I need higher resolution for more detail.
Please excuse the uneven timing since I tried gifcam (http://blog.bahraniapps.com/?page_id=21) this time. If you download it be careful to only use the official site, since apparently some alternate downloads have malware.
boxing glove
Please excuse the uneven timing since I tried gifcam (http://blog.bahraniapps.com/?page_id=21) this time. If you download it be careful to only use the official site, since apparently some alternate downloads have malware.
This week we spent a lot of time making gas giants come to life w flowing bands of gassy awesomeness:
We also redid our sun surface to be more sun-like with flares erupting from the surface:
The CrystalShip is now in-game w/ a cool pulsing structure. Next week we will work on it's unique attacks, creating mico singularities:
And last up we have started mocking up some alien dialogue UIs... I'm still letting this one simmer.. feedback please:
We also redid our sun surface to be more sun-like with flares erupting from the surface:
The CrystalShip is now in-game w/ a cool pulsing structure. Next week we will work on it's unique attacks, creating mico singularities:
And last up we have started mocking up some alien dialogue UIs... I'm still letting this one simmer.. feedback please:
Hi!
Here's a screenshot from a game I've been making for a while ("Spirit Huntress", I think it was featured in the indie games thread here on GAF).
I still have to fix some details here (the red carpet looks horrible) and there're two more NPC's missing, but I'm fond of how this scene is coming out.
I hope you like it.
Edit.- Damn I hope the image size is ok
Sweet artstyle in this! I dunno about the speech box and font though, they look a bit odd compared to the rest of the clean art.
HellBlazer
Member
I immediately understood what it was, if that helps.
DangerMouse
Member
Hi!
Here's a screenshot from a game I've been making for a while ("Spirit Huntress", I think it was featured in the indie games thread here on GAF).
I still have to fix some details here (the red carpet looks horrible) and there're two more NPC's missing, but I'm fond of how this scene is coming out.
I hope you like it.
Edit.- Damn I hope the image size is ok
Looks really cool.
Dark Octave
Banned
Here are two stages from the game we're working on. A prehistoric style forest and a desert wasteland. Both are unfinished.
We've never done .gif images before so if they are wonky in any way (they took a while to load on my PC before running at 30fps) or anyone has tips on how to do them better, it would be appreciated.
We're also going to be putting the first game we worked on, Nono and the Cursed Treasure on Steam Greenlight this weekend.
We've never done .gif images before so if they are wonky in any way (they took a while to load on my PC before running at 30fps) or anyone has tips on how to do them better, it would be appreciated.
We're also going to be putting the first game we worked on, Nono and the Cursed Treasure on Steam Greenlight this weekend.
You just need to rotate the glove so the palm is parallel to the viewport. See: Super Bat Puncher
SlipperySlope
Banned
You can try oDesk or CGHub. I got all of my artists through those two.
Anyway, since it's Saturday, here's my screen. Added some lighting and a new enemy.
If you notice closely, I got hit by an arrow right at the end as I was trying to stop the video.
The lighting looks a lot better in video form:
http://youtu.be/zlL07CmQz5s
AusRoachman
Member
My late #screenshotsaturday , showing off some more of my base types. Unsure how many will be in the full game
Good job! Will you have some sort of grid to make tile distance more obvious?My late #screenshotsaturday , showing off some more of my base types. Unsure how many will be in the full game
http://fontstruct.com/
Thank you guys!
Regarding the text box and font, I'll probably change both. I can also provide an option to choose between many different speech boxes... I liked that "ninja scroll" style because the game is about "ninjas" (sort of). But I'll try different options.
My brother has just released his first full title on iOS.
Its a riff on Flappybirds but comes along with its own smelly charm. If anyone feels like giving it a bash on iOS let me know how it goes!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a4t5E-iGUo
iTunes link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/super-happyturd-lite/id840605777?ls=1&mt=8
Its a riff on Flappybirds but comes along with its own smelly charm. If anyone feels like giving it a bash on iOS let me know how it goes!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a4t5E-iGUo
iTunes link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/super-happyturd-lite/id840605777?ls=1&mt=8
Here are two stages from the game we're working on. A prehistoric style forest and a desert wasteland. Both are unfinished.
We've never done .gif images before so if they are wonky in any way (they took a while to load on my PC before running at 30fps) or anyone has tips on how to do them better, it would be appreciated.
Dude, these are great.
Even with this 'modern' pictorial artstyle, both stages have a strong 16-bit mood and I love it. Well done!
Good luck with Nono too!
Finally.. done... with the overworld.... aaaaaa
No wait I still have to do animations and sea travel. My rest was short lived.
I just made up for assets whatever I needed to test the code but it ended up being this neat looking busy debug room like you'd see people pull up from roms. I guess now I know how those come about!
No wait I still have to do animations and sea travel. My rest was short lived.
I just made up for assets whatever I needed to test the code but it ended up being this neat looking busy debug room like you'd see people pull up from roms. I guess now I know how those come about!
Finally done with the animations for one character... onto the next one, then!
I stubbornly want to be done with the assets once and for all for at least two characters before delving back into the prototype so as not to get sidetracked, so there's not much in the way of new game screenshots or visuals - but if you care to see said animations, or to follow the updates, I post them about daily on tumblr here : http://pehesse.tumblr.com/
EDIT : Many members here seem to be looking for artists? I don't know what it is you require specifically, but if you need something done and my style fits what you need, feel free to send a PM or something, maybe I can help.
I stubbornly want to be done with the assets once and for all for at least two characters before delving back into the prototype so as not to get sidetracked, so there's not much in the way of new game screenshots or visuals - but if you care to see said animations, or to follow the updates, I post them about daily on tumblr here : http://pehesse.tumblr.com/
EDIT : Many members here seem to be looking for artists? I don't know what it is you require specifically, but if you need something done and my style fits what you need, feel free to send a PM or something, maybe I can help.
Dark Octave
Banned
Thank you Galdelico. Your encouragement goes a long way. Hopefully in a couple of weeks we can show the main characters animating and then hopefully some actual gameplay shortly after that.
Welp, in four days, my server's bandwidth got iced from people downloading / playing my dumb burger game. So, I'm probably gonna have to move to a different host.
Anyone know of any hosts that would allow me to have both a web hosting front end, while also being able to set up my own unity masterserver on the same box? Ideally for not much money per month?
I'm also not sure if demand for this game will keep up enough to warrant paying for more servers.
Anyone know of any hosts that would allow me to have both a web hosting front end, while also being able to set up my own unity masterserver on the same box? Ideally for not much money per month?
I'm also not sure if demand for this game will keep up enough to warrant paying for more servers.
darkblade77
Member
Does anyone know of some decent C# GUI libraries? I'm doing a small-scale project in SFML's C# binding with some friends, and am hoping not to have to roll something from scratch.
SFGUI is presumably the closest thing to what you want, since it's a GUI system designed to work with SFML. BUT, it may still not have a C# binding...I didn't see one from a very brief Google search.
This might be another alternative:
http://code.google.com/p/gwen-dotnet/
I've been writing my own GUI system from scratch that works with an SFML engine, but I can hardly recommend doing that.
Prophet Steve
Member
GM has a sprite editor, but it is very basic, more useful for prototyping.
If you want a photoshop-like thing (brushes, pencils, things that resemble real life art tools) you can try GIMP, if you want to use vectors, you can try Inkscape.
Vectors are a bit more difficult to explain if you don't know what I mean by that, but you can see for yourself.
There is also Spriter, which I don't think is that expensive that is more useful for animation but does not have art creation.
Thanks,
Ill give Inkscape a go and try the GM one as well.
Only need something basic as I only plan on making a very simple game, nothing to the level of what most of you are working on
Cheers.
RelentlessRolento
Member
Finished putting the last of sounds in my game, which means it's ready for my thesis
I'll fix it up post thesis but it's good for now
I'll fix it up post thesis but it's good for now
I have a question to people used to Unity (and expecially those who make 60fps action games with it):
How do you manage to make it smooth?
I have an impeccable framerate, but no matter what the objects and characters move in a slight jerky non-linear way (some people don't notice, some like me do). I have tried changing the fixed update value, but with no good results.
When I see games such a assault android cactus looking so smooth, I really wonder how they did manage it.
How do you manage to make it smooth?
I have an impeccable framerate, but no matter what the objects and characters move in a slight jerky non-linear way (some people don't notice, some like me do). I have tried changing the fixed update value, but with no good results.
When I see games such a assault android cactus looking so smooth, I really wonder how they did manage it.
High average framerate is not sufficient for smoothness; smoothness requires absence of slow frames. 90FPS game that gets a 40ms frame now and then stutters. 60FPS game that never, ever misses a frame (all of them are under 16.7ms) is smooth.
1. Profile and see if some of your code is erratic and slow.
2. Look at memory consumption, also with the profiler. One possibility is that you are reserving and releasing memory over time, and that causes the garbage collector to eventually fire, causing a chug. Small amounts add up if it's on every frame. Apart from the obvious ways you could do this (keep Instantiating things and Destroying them) there are plenty of non-obvious ways. Even using a foreach loop can cause memory allocations, if I remember correctly.
3. Try to isolate a minimal test case. Can a single object chug? Can something chug even though no memory is being consumed over time?
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