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Indie Game Development Discussion Thread | Of Being Professionally Poor

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Paz

Member
Hello GAF lurkers, I know you're out there because I met 10+ of you at GDC, it's time to come out of the shadows and make some cool games!

You were all super friendly and intelligent folks in person so I'm sure you'll do just fine in here :)
 

Feep

Banned
Hello GAF lurkers, I know you're out there because I met 10+ of you at GDC, it's time to come out of the shadows and make some cool games!

You were all super friendly and intelligent folks in person so I'm sure you'll do just fine in here :)
Actually I'm a horrible person, don't listen to Paz
 

Paz

Member
You are not a lurker, so obviously that doesn't apply to you :p We should be friends at PAX East though, I'm excited to try out your ridiculous setup!

But at GDC I was approached by so many people who knew me from this thread, and insisted they don't post here and just lurk, so I figure we should call them out :)
 

missile

Member
Wondering if anyone could lend any opinions for our game.

Currently our game doesn't have an end game. Each mode is ongoing and really never ends. There are no lives, no levels, etc. The game just gets harder the smarter you play. I was wondering what would give people the incentive to keep playing. I mean we have leaderboards and stats, but I guess that could only keep someone interested for so long.

I'm thinking of maybe implementing a timed mode but I was hoping to get some opinions!

Cheers!
If you could just give me the time for playing the game... Arrgh! I would like
do give you some feedback since I somehow like the style of the game. And I
can anticipate many cool and challenging things happening while playing it!

Currently I do derive IIR filters, which is very time consuming. Problem is,
they need to be tailored to the issue at hand since otherwise they are not
going to work. They are very powerful compared to (standard) FIR filters when
adapted rightfully, yet they have weaknesses. Next to their computational
efficiency and filtering quality, some of their weaknesses do work in favor
for my CRT simulator in simulating weak/bad/fault filter networks used in old
CRT TVs and on the broadcaster's side. The price to pay is actually going
through all the math, a daunting task since you can go wrong on so many ends.
Anyhow, I hope the investment is well spent.
 

Ashodin

Member
There's a lot you've improved on in comparison to the first attempt, but I think the two changes that have most drastically influenced its newfound success are the new video pitch and the lowered initial goal. Your video is more inviting, not quite as vague, and draws the backers into your game concept and world in a seamless way. Your goal being a third than what it used to suggests a higher chance of success, driving backers to put their pledges down now so they can take advantage of the opportunities at hand (early bird, fundraiser exclusives, etc.). There are plenty of other improvements, as well, but that's what is most noticeable to me.

Seems like you guys will get the funding. You've done well for the first day, and you have near thirty fold that time left. Do you have stretch goals and captivating updates lined up for your backers, just in case momentum exceeds your expectations?

You betcha! Just wait and see. :)
 
Thanks, the FixedUpdate vs Update stuff is interesting, something to keep in mind along with the usual garbage collector (that one I know well, I shipped my last xna game two weeks ago, a perfect flat garbage graph during gameplay).

Looks awesome. C#? Combat reminds me of "ryse on a jetpack" - add executions in and you're all set!
 

Kitbash

Member
Hello GAF lurkers, I know you're out there because I met 10+ of you at GDC, it's time to come out of the shadows and make some cool games!
Non-GDC lurker reporting in. I rarely post because I always feel like I'm falling behind and should be working on the game instead of posting.

Vhxce57.gif


Been busy modelling space furniture lately. Is there any aspect of game development that doesn't take forever? :D
 
Does anyone have any experience with indiegogo?

I'm a freelance designer at the moment but I've been working on a game in my spare time. I'd love to take the next 3 months off and polish the game to eternity so I was looking into crowd funding cause I'd rather something along those lines than getting a loan. I'd only need about €3000 to survive for those 3 months so the project is project is probably too small for kickstarter and indiegogo's terms seem alright.
 
You are not a lurker, so obviously that doesn't apply to you :p We should be friends at PAX East though, I'm excited to try out your ridiculous setup!

But at GDC I was approached by so many people who knew me from this thread, and insisted they don't post here and just lurk, so I figure we should call them out :)

Hey, I didn't get a chance to talk to you at GDC, but I talked to your teammates at the Unity booth. Really enjoyed playing the game! I'm finishing up a big project now for work, but I'm hoping to start something soon. I've posted sporadically in here before, but haven't been posting lately because of the project.
 
I'm a lurker. Burrowing. Watch out for my ground spikes.

Shhhhkt!

But seriously, gonna try to post more and lurk less. Going to have some awesome new media for Rebirth soon that will hopefully blow some minds! (I really hope so at least)
 

Davision

Neo Member
I am wondering why noone has replied to your post, yet. Your game looks awesome. The style indicated by your "map progress" gifs is perfectly resembled in gameplay, with huge attention to details. Loving it.

Thanks! That post lacked some eye candy I assume. Here is a gif that illustrates a rather short adventure in the rogue rider adventure mode:
MeatyDecimalArgentinehornedfrog.gif
 
Hello GAF lurkers, I know you're out there because I met 10+ of you at GDC, it's time to come out of the shadows and make some cool games!

You were all super friendly and intelligent folks in person so I'm sure you'll do just fine in here :)

Hung at your Unity Booth on the first EXPO day for a while but couldn't find where you were at. Game is looking great and that Vita version is pretty slick!
 

GulAtiCa

Member
Damn, this is the project that never ends! My game, ZaciSa's Last Stand, has another fun little game crashing bug. Little harder to track down this time, so slightly harder to fix. Positive side is that the bug occurs as a very specific instance that has a limited function calls, so I just need to go line by line through the process when it might occur.

I swear I'll release my game one day!
 

charsace

Member
Actually I'm a horrible person, don't listen to Paz

I agree that you are a shithead. To make up for it you need to put dogs in your game that chew bees and when they are alerted to your presence the dogs chew bees at you causing critical damage.

I am the GOAT game designer motherfuckers! My advice will make any game a classic! Just ask anyone at Nintendo.
 

mantrakid

Member
I agree that you are a shithead. To make up for it you need to put dogs in your game that chew bees and when they are alerted to your presence the dogs chew bees at you causing critical damage.

I am the GOAT game designer motherfuckers! My advice will make any game a classic! Just ask anyone at Nintendo.

Do you have a freelance rate? I need some ideas for my game about washing / folding laundry.
 

Davision

Neo Member

Ito

Member
Here are two stages from the game we're working on. A prehistoric style forest and a desert wasteland. Both are unfinished.

forestx1.gif


desertx1.gif

Woahh, I didn't see these! The art looks amazing! Reminds me so much of Dust: An Elysian Tail and its colourful beauty.

What kind of game is it going to be?
 

Paz

Member
Non-GDC lurker reporting in. I rarely post because I always feel like I'm falling behind and should be working on the game instead of posting.

Vhxce57.gif


Been busy modelling space furniture lately. Is there any aspect of game development that doesn't take forever? :D

I always feel like I'm behind so I get that :) Looking cool though, glad you delurked to post a nice update.

Hey, I didn't get a chance to talk to you at GDC, but I talked to your teammates at the Unity booth. Really enjoyed playing the game! I'm finishing up a big project now for work, but I'm hoping to start something soon. I've posted sporadically in here before, but haven't been posting lately because of the project.

Best of luck finishing up your project! Sorry I wasn't at the Unity booth so much, looking forward to seeing what you're working on. I tend not to post much here either because it's fun just watching others do stuff, but I'm going to make more of an effort soon.

Hung at your Unity Booth on the first EXPO day for a while but couldn't find where you were at. Game is looking great and that Vita version is pretty slick!

Thanks mate, it was a pretty intense rush to get things to a showable state on console for GDC but I'm glad you dug it :)
 

cbox

Member
If you could just give me the time for playing the game... Arrgh! I would like
do give you some feedback since I somehow like the style of the game. And I
can anticipate many cool and challenging things happening while playing it!

We're fixing up a few things right now and we'll DEFINITELY be sending out a version of the game for testing, Hope you have a 360 controller on pc!
 

Noirulus

Member
Hey guys, I know this question probably gets asked a million times, but I'm going to ask anyway.

What are some good tutorials to teach myself basic/intermediate material for 3D game development? I'm planning on using Unity.

I apologize if the question is way too broad, but I really want to get into this.
 

pekkak

Neo Member
I forgot to introduce myself here, I am Pekka and I work on Prisonscape (check our thread here: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=671253) as a designer. It's been in development for a while and we are going to alpha phase slowly but surely.

Does anyone have any experience with indiegogo?

I'm a freelance designer at the moment but I've been working on a game in my spare time. I'd love to take the next 3 months off and polish the game to eternity so I was looking into crowd funding cause I'd rather something along those lines than getting a loan. I'd only need about €3000 to survive for those 3 months so the project is project is probably too small for kickstarter and indiegogo's terms seem alright.

We planned on running an Indiegogo campaign for our game, but then got an offer from a friend to do a KS. Kickstarter gets a LOT more traffic, especially for games, but IGG is probably a good choice for smaller projects. They were very helpful at IGG when we started planning and contacted them. We even had a good Skype talk talking over things about the campaign. The biggest problem with IGG is how to get people to find your project, as most people are only looking into KS. Start promoting early!
 

Dascu

Member
Had a breakthrough last night after replaying Dark Souls for a bit and finally figured out (with some trial and error, fooling around to see what sticks) how to fix the camera in Malebolgia.

It's wonderful now! A 3rd person camera that follows you around, allows for enemy lock-on and mouse/right stick control just like Dark Souls or Zelda.

If I were Jeff Green, I'd have a pretzel.
 

Dynamite Shikoku

Congratulations, you really deserve it!
Had a breakthrough last night after replaying Dark Souls for a bit and finally figured out (with some trial and error, fooling around to see what sticks) how to fix the camera in Malebolgia.

It's wonderful now! A 3rd person camera that follows you around, allows for enemy lock-on and mouse/right stick control just like Dark Souls or Zelda.

If I were Jeff Green, I'd have a pretzel.

What was the problem before?
 

bkw

Member
Non-GDC lurker reporting in. I rarely post because I always feel like I'm falling behind and should be working on the game instead of posting.

Vhxce57.gif


Been busy modelling space furniture lately. Is there any aspect of game development that doesn't take forever? :D
This is looking pretty good. I'm liking the teleport effect. Might pick your brain later on if I can't figure out how to do something similar. =) Following your dev blog now! I'm in the same boat as you right now, trying to tackle the art/3D/Blender stuff.

Hey guys, I know this question probably gets asked a million times, but I'm going to ask anyway.

What are some good tutorials to teach myself basic/intermediate material for 3D game development? I'm planning on using Unity.

I apologize if the question is way too broad, but I really want to get into this.
I got started with the video tutorials on Unity's site. Don't forget the Projects section. They were pretty helpful and cover a pretty wide range of topics. Take a look at Stealth and AngryBots sample projects and take them apart. They will help you get a grasp of the Component architecture if you're not familiar with it yet, as well as how game objects can reference each other using Unity's Editor/Inspector. Unity's forums are also a decent resource, but there's a lot to dig through. There's also cgcookie.com's Unity section. I haven't watched too many of their Unity videos, but if it's anything like their Blender section, it should be decent. (The Blender stuff is good if you're thinking of going that route for your 3D art.)

Just jump in and build things piece by piece and learn as you go. You'll probably learn the most building stuff, debugging it, then rebuilding everything. Good luck!
 

Dascu

Member
What was the problem before?

The camera remained in a static relative position no matter how the player moved.

From a top-down perspective, to visualize it, if the camera was to the right of the player, and the player then moved down, the camera would keep being to his right at the same distance.
Code:
P------C

|
v

P-------C
With mouse control, this isn't so bad. You can adjust the camera as the player moves so it hangs behind him. But with a controller it's much more annoying have to work with the right stick all the time.

Now I've managed to pull it off so the camera adjusts by itself automatically.
Code:
P------C

|
v  C
  /
P

It behaves like it should now and you can comfortably control the game with just WASD/left stick.
 

Five

Banned
^ Stuff like that makes me glad I'm just doing a 2D side-scroller. There's a little bit of dynamic behavior, but I don't have to worry about camera controls or clipping or a dozen other subtle things.

How did you solve it? Is the camera basically being kited around unless the player manually moves it?
 

Dascu

Member
If the player is moving the mouse or right stick, then use that to calculate the viewing angle and orbit around the player to match this angle. Otherwise, and this simple addition was the breakthrough, just look at the player (transform.LookAt in Unity) to get the viewing angle for the orbit (which is with a fixed distance/radius). If the player moves away or towards the camera, it stays in position, but when he moves left or right, the camera necessarily has to turn and move a bit stay in orbit at the set distance.

I knew what I wanted to do, but I never realized how simply I could implement it. It was just an extra line or two of easy code.
 

F-Pina

Member
Hey fellow devs.
We decided to do something a bit different with our indie game "Murder in the Hotel Lisbon". (or Desura link)
Instead of releasing a demo we decided to do a free episode that is not included in the game. It is a small story that gives the players a taste of our little game.

But we decided to go a step further and address a current political/academic issue in our country, the freshman welcoming that includes very dubious initiation rituals called "praxe". Earlier this year, 5 freshman students died on a beach at night when the sea engulfed them all while they were supposedly performing one of these rituals.
In our mini-episode Detective Case is hired by senior students to find a hiding freshman so they can perform the "praxe" on him. The player will have to make some important decisions about this.

Unfortunately the free episode is only in Portuguese, but anyone can download and check out our graphics, music and gameplay.

Download here - http://demo.caseandbot.com/

demo_01.png
 

TronLight

Everybody is Mikkelsexual
Question from a newbie: For modelling, is a mouse enough or I should buy a graphic tablet?

I've never modeled before, I've tried following a tutorial and I made a what I'd call a 3D stickman, but doing it with a mouse felt really slow and kinda uncomfortable.
 

Kitbash

Member
This is looking pretty good. I'm liking the teleport effect. Might pick your brain later on if I can't figure out how to do something similar. =)

Thanks! I'm trying to steer clear of Star Trek, but was having too much fun making the effect and got carried away. :)

It's made up of 3 particle effects. Glowing "fog" at the base, descending strips of a stretched computer terminal texture, and then a handful of spinning sprites based on this texture:

BwFwCiq.gif
 

JulianImp

Member
Random game update: I've finally managed to get the ball rolling regarding game art. Artist's currently trying stuff out, and I'm trying to think of a way to tile things without touching material properties, which would end up cloning the material and takes up a separate draw call for each instance.

So far, my solution is to change each individual mesh's UV coordinates according to their scale and the offset, so a 2x1 square with its pivot on the bottom-left and at position (0.5;0.5) would have the bottom-left vertex's UV as (0.5;0.5) and the bottom-right one as (2.5;0.5), for example. This lets all my objects draw in a single pass and tiles the texture perfectly, no matter the object's scale, but then I have the issue of having triangular ramps which can be rotated, that means I actually have to change the way I calculate UVs (so the base |\ ramp rotated 90º means the top vertex would use offsetX-scaleX, instead of offsetY+scaleY like it normally would.

Does anyone know if there's a better solution than manually calculating which axis to use for UV calculations based on the object's rotation?

Thinking about it while I was posting this, I guess I could use a special prefab for each rotation instead, and basically set UVs for each vertex to (offsetX+[uvX*scaleX]; offsetY+[uvY*ScaleY]). Is that a good idea?


Does anyone have any experience with shaders in Unity? I'm trying to do something, but my knowledge of shaders is spotty at best.

I know some basic-level shader stuff, and I guess there're some users more experienced with shader making in here.

I'd say you list what you want to do rather than just asking something vague, since even if IndieGAF can't help, we might be able to ask around for a solution or something like that.
 

omg_mjd

Member
Cant even start a project cause I suck at drawing arghh!!

Cant even draw proper sprites!

Every great game was once a prototype, which you can do using simple primitives or shapes. The "proper" sprites or models can be added after you implement your basic gameplay mechanics and initial level design. Bastion's prototype enemies were scanned drawings from the creators' Dungeons and Dragons books, for example.

I get the importance of good art--concept drawings can help shape the theme of the game while it's being created and provide some direction. But specific graphic assets like sprites and models have to conform to your game's mechanics. If you start out with assets before gameplay then you're actually limiting yourself and what you can do creatively as a game designer. So don't hesitate to start out with programmer art.
 

bumpkin

Member
Every great game was once a prototype, which you can do using simple primitives or shapes. The "proper" sprites or models can be added after you implement your basic gameplay mechanics and initial level design. Bastion's prototype enemies were scanned drawings from the creators' Dungeons and Dragons books, for example.

I get the importance of good art--concept drawings can help shape the theme of the game while it's being created and provide some direction. But specific graphic assets like sprites and models have to conform to your game's mechanics. If you start out with assets before gameplay then you're actually limiting yourself to what you can do creatively as a game designer. So don't hesitate to start out with programmer art.
What he said. As much as I'd love to have had "real" art to use in my game from the outset, I resorted to making simple graphics that tell me only what I need to know for the time being. In my case, I have an animated sprite that is literally a block with numbers on each frame. That way, I can code out my animation routines and be assured that they're cycling properly and so on.
 

Noirulus

Member
I got started with the video tutorials on Unity's site. Don't forget the Projects section. They were pretty helpful and cover a pretty wide range of topics. Take a look at Stealth and AngryBots sample projects and take them apart. They will help you get a grasp of the Component architecture if you're not familiar with it yet, as well as how game objects can reference each other using Unity's Editor/Inspector. Unity's forums are also a decent resource, but there's a lot to dig through. There's also cgcookie.com's Unity section. I haven't watched too many of their Unity videos, but if it's anything like their Blender section, it should be decent. (The Blender stuff is good if you're thinking of going that route for your 3D art.)

Just jump in and build things piece by piece and learn as you go. You'll probably learn the most building stuff, debugging it, then rebuilding everything. Good luck!

Thank you! And yeah, I was thinking of going with Blender for 3D art. I've got a long road ahead of me.
 

Galdelico

Member
Hey fellow devs.
We decided to do something a bit different with our indie game "Murder in the Hotel Lisbon". (or Desura link)
Instead of releasing a demo we decided to do a free episode that is not included in the game. It is a small story that gives the players a taste of our little game.

But we decided to go a step further and address a current political/academic issue in our country, the freshman welcoming that includes very dubious initiation rituals called "praxe". Earlier this year, 5 freshman students died on a beach at night when the sea engulfed them all while they were supposedly performing one of these rituals.
In our mini-episode Detective Case is hired by senior students to find a hiding freshman so they can perform the "praxe" on him. The player will have to make some important decisions about this.

Unfortunately the free episode is only in Portuguese, but anyone can download and check out our graphics, music and gameplay.

Download here - http://demo.caseandbot.com/

demo_01.png

Those chunky pixels...

gif-baby-lawd-gif.gif
 

Anustart

Member
Non-GDC lurker reporting in. I rarely post because I always feel like I'm falling behind and should be working on the game instead of posting.

Vhxce57.gif


Been busy modelling space furniture lately. Is there any aspect of game development that doesn't take forever? :D

I like the effects and such, but think it might be better if it didn't look like the people were popping up from the bottom and just kinda materialized instead.
 

Davision

Neo Member
THIS is what that beautiful looking map you've been showing off is for? Awesome! And it's on Steam - I'll be picking it up, congrats on the launch.
Thanks, yea that 3d map is for that new Rogue Rider Adventure mode that is still a work in progress which is also why it launches as Early Access. Have fun with it, feedback is also welcome. :)

I'm loving how that game looks. Congrats on getting it on steam, good work.
Thanks!
 
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