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Indie Game Development Thread 3: Indie Jones and the Template of Doom

DemonNite

Member
How do you guys determine sizes for streets, buildings, windows, etc?
I am currently blocking out my city and restarting as I want to define a few standards.

You doing 3d? In the past I built by eye but after doing VR for a while it became necessary to build to size as in real measurements and it is a lot easier to do this way e.g. in Unity 1 unit = 1 meter (same with Blender, using metric scale). It is totally noticeable if the scale is off in VR but even if you don't do anything in VR its just easier imo
 

MimiMe

Member
yeah right, it is 3D and scale is right up to real world metrics.
VR capable project again

But I need real world reference to block it correctly from the start

- How wide is a 50m, 100m, 300m building
- What size do windows have?
- How wide is a road? Cars should be 2m, correct?

for example:
Took the Sears Tower as reference for easy Skyscraper blocking.
3x3 blocks, 1 block is 25m² (75feet for the real world example).
 

LordRaptor

Member
You can probably just google some builders floor plans / city ordinances layouts / car manufacturer details to get accurate measurements, but ballpark would be:
car = 2m, wide by 3-5m long
small house = 10m box
road = 3m wide per lane
 

embalm

Member
So, we launch on Monday and I have no idea what to do with my life now.

Launch should be more hard work. Email websites, get a presskit together, and post some images in this GAF thread. I might have missed your previous posts, but lets see your game.
 
How do you guys determine sizes for streets, buildings, windows, etc?
I am currently blocking out my city and restarting as I want to define a few standards.

You can do it as an artist and get real dimensions, or you can do it as a designer and get the dimensions that are most fun to play in.

For instance, if you are making a game where you are driving around a city, you want to make the streets much wider than they would be in real life, otherwise you'll literally just get stuck in traffic and not be able to drive around other cars. It's not fun. This is something they do in any GTA style game, they make the roads wider than is realistic because it has to be fun.

On one open world game I worked on this was a constant battle between artists and designers, where artists wanted something to look realistic but designers said realism in some cases isn't fun.
 

Temathael

Member
The eccentric puzzle game I've been working with my team of friends for the past year was finally released on Steam last week :)
Steam link

5EpW7f8.gif


Grab the Bottle is basically a game where the player controls an infinitely stretchy arm and solves puzzles by grabbing and pulling different objects, while also avoiding hitting anything. While the gameplay is bit simplistic, the game is supposed to be carried by the unique mechanic of solving puzzles. Bit like a mixture of physics puzzles, operation and Snake. With graphics we tried paying homage to old-school games like The Incredible Machine, mixing in pop art.

It is our first real PC game (And first Unity game) outside of Game Jam projects and we learned so much during the year, especially about importance of scope management. The idea was to use only few months, but yeah. Didn't happen so easily.

I'm happy and proud of our small team to have it finally completed.
 
Hello indie dev gaf!

I've been seeing some really cool stuff in here! I'm not a programmer or anything, but I have been working on a couple indie games myself doing music. I wish I could show off the one I just wrapped up working on, but it's not announced quite yet. Really fun stuff though!

If any of you guys and gals are looking for music for your games hit me up! I don't think this is considered punishable self promotion since we're all kind of showing off our stuff here, but you can hear several examples of my music here and see what else I've worked on.

Keep up the good work you brave one-man/woman dev teams!
 

friken

Member
Some of you may recall I was working on StarDiver a while back (long while). It has been a rough ride life wise and only recently got back to dev after over a year off it. I was working on a hyperspace travel effect shader and wanted fractal trippy visuals for that effect. In my research I decided to play w volume ray casting. I loved the results and decided I needed to do an art project for burningman out of it by driving the fractal math with audio spectrum data. What I link to here is a build I used to project on our sound camp DJ tent during a regional burn last weekend.

Maybe this will be a much needed distraction to build some uumph to get back on StarDiver fulltime. If you have a few minutes, please download and run this dev build and message me the following: gpu model, resolution ran, and average fps. Spacebar pauses, mouse button-drag pans camera, scroller zooms, middle button drag pans. https://www.dropbox.com/s/8rt4424sl4mwz2c/Fractalhuasca-AncientFuture-Demo1.zip?dl=0

KindheartedMediumCaterpillar.gif

CourteousBriskBee.gif
 

Ashodin

Member
So I got a response back from Nintendo re: Switch dev. They basically need to see whatcha workin' on and then they'll eval from there whether or not to let you in. So basically you need a good concept/game first.
 
Here's the most recent thing I've been working on. Dungeon work has moved to the back burner since the bosses for the new dungeons are going to take longer than expected. Moved to revamping our weapon shop interior that will show off what weapons you have unlocked, and if we get time, even show off weapon descriptions and let you rotate a close up of the model.

It's been fun working with small spaces with these interiors, but can be difficult fitting everything in.

DX5Y9uV.png

Building exterior.

ImXjbvA.png

Building interior with no unlocked weapons.

WIcW28e.png

Weapon inspector window.

Yi0pHHQ.png

Close up view of the weapon racks.

3mrhAbp.png

Room with all weapons unlocked.

xtlMT0G.png

Close up view with the unlocked weapons.
 

Blizzard

Banned
So I got a response back from Nintendo re: Switch dev. They basically need to see whatcha workin' on and then they'll eval from there whether or not to let you in. So basically you need a good concept/game first.
That's the same as I've encountered. Basically a proposal / demo, maybe ports aren't allowed, maybe they are, it's all pretty vague.
 

Pehesse

Member
So I got a response back from Nintendo re: Switch dev. They basically need to see whatcha workin' on and then they'll eval from there whether or not to let you in. So basically you need a good concept/game first.

Interesting, thanks for the info! How advanced does said concept need to be?

Also, here's finally some new animation for the new thread!
 

_Rob_

Member
Also, here's finally some new animation for the new thread!

Have you ever thought about or done a steam or speed-draw of your process? I'd love some more insight into your workflow, especially with things like the smears and her hair!

I've been working on the transition area between the canyons and the main drag of "Mars Town". After painting in all the vertex lighting and scattering some props, it's really coming together!

giphy.gif
 

Minamu

Member
Have you ever thought about or done a steam or speed-draw of your process? I'd love some more insight into your workflow, especially with things like the smears and her hair!

I've been working on the transition area between the canyons and the main drag of "Mars Town". After painting in all the vertex lighting and scattering some props, it's really coming together!

giphy.gif
Are you working with a team on this? I'm curious as to where all your assets come from :)
 

_Rob_

Member
Are you working with a team on this? I'm curious as to where all your assets come from :)

Not in the traditional sense. I occasionally have input from some game dev friends with more complicated code work but besides 2D character art and the soundtrack I'm solo! Some of the smaller props like barrels and weapons were Asset Store purchases, but 90% of the environment is my own work as are all the characters, textures and animation.
 

Pehesse

Member
Have you ever thought about or done a steam or speed-draw of your process? I'd love some more insight into your workflow, especially with things like the smears and her hair!

I have thought about it, yeah, but I don't have any for Pacha, or at least, not yet - I'm planning to do one eventually, though I'm still wondering whether I should wait until I have colored a full animation to release a "complete process" speed-draw video, or make separate ones for cleaning and coloring.

Thing is, there isn't much more to the process than what you're seeing: it's basically just taking each sketch at a time, drawing over them, and then fixing what goes wrong when they're played in sequence :-D I don't have any special technique or tool to show off, and my previous attempts at process vids from Honey turned out to be rather boring to watch, since nothing special happens in them. But I've been thinking about giving it another try, yeah :)
 

embalm

Member
A story of scope creep.

So last month I started on Combat for my JRPG. This is the feature that stands between me and a finished prototype. The key features were Monster AI, player UI, player attack selection, player targeting, and applying damage. 5 features that seem easy at a glance.

I completed all the tasks except for applying damage. Everything went so great that I decided to add another features, Defensive Stances. They are options to skip your attack and instead prepare counter attacks against the enemy. It would offer a passive option for players and adds some depth to the combat.

It easily doubled my work. I planned for attacks to have multiple targets, but with defensive attacks so many more things could go wrong. Attack cycles were getting nested and need to wait on each other to finish. I had async issues all over the place, like checking to see if the battle was over before all attacks resolved, so the players turn would start but there was nothing to attack.

Last night I finished it. We're back to cleanly handled combat cycles and I now have a firm handled on Unity's Async processes too.

In short, always be careful about what requirements you let in.
 
Well, $100 is less scary than I thought it might be. Although $100 per game + 30% commission makes me think that tons of games won't even break even. Although I'm assuming that's the result they were going for.

I've already spent a few hundred dollars on REDFOXES in between paying project contributers, buying development tools, assets where needed, and other crap.

Another hundred dollars for access to Steam is my last concern as far as barriers to profit go at this point.
 

friken

Member
Well, $100 is less scary than I thought it might be. Although $100 per game + 30% commission makes me think that tons of games won't even break even. Although I'm assuming that's the result they were going for.

$100 is super reasonable. Far better than I thought it would be. Many devs wanted the fee to be $1k minimum to get rid of all the super low budget devs. I'm really glad to see they did not do that.
 

LordRaptor

Member
I wonder if people who have paid their greenlight fees but not yet released a title get a 'free coupon' for their first release, or a refund of their greenlight fee?
 

DemonNite

Member
I'd like to know what happens to my App Credits that I have. Currently I have published one title and have used another Credit to prepare for my next game. I also have one last credit for being a Vive dev...

I hope those 2 credits means I don't have to pay for at least 2 titles.
 

oxrock

Gravity is a myth, the Earth SUCKS!
I've already spent a few hundred dollars on REDFOXES in between paying project contributers, buying development tools, assets where needed, and other crap.

Another hundred dollars for access to Steam is my last concern as far as barriers to profit go at this point.

$100 is super reasonable. Far better than I thought it would be. Many devs wanted the fee to be $1k minimum to get rid of all the super low budget devs. I'm really glad to see they did not do that.

I totally agree it's reasonable. I think i'm just being ultra pessimistic of my game's prospects at the moment. It simply draws no attention whatsoever, I don't see it doing so any better on steam than it does on facebook/twitter/whatever. Was trying to keep an active DevLog to drum up interest but I figured out that I was simply wasting tons of time trying to create content simply to talk to myself while everyone continued not giving a shit. So I'm more thinking of it as a $100 donation to valve on top of the countless hours of dev work I'll never receive any compensation for.
 
for your interior wall transparencies, are you just relying on backface culling and building the walls as 'single side only'?

thats ingenious

Unfortunately, it's not something that interesting. It's just a different tiling model. I should add that our camera doesn't rotate, so the angle inside of a shop won't change. Our interiors are off in a black void, set up with different pieces. It was actually done by another artist on our team, and I've been working on refining the interiors, and building exteriors to match the same size. Just as an example, there's a picture of our Armor Show, which is the old size of what the building used to be. So my next job will probably be changing the size and shape of the exterior, then adjusting the lighting to reflect any windows or stuff like that.

On a side note, I'm not sure how much you could rely on backface culling to hide an entire model. Depending on the mesh and the angle of the faces, it might show small slivers of mesh. I don't see why it couldn't be done though, it's a very interesting idea.

btT5Fyo.png

Building interiors off in the distance in a black void.That large white plane is used a lighting gobo for the windows.

wGGNr5U.png

Close up of tiling models together and broken apart.

RRmV6ZO.png

Armor shop exterior, in the shape of an old square shaped building.

RJVAFrW.png

The Armor shop interior, which is more rectangle than square, which means I'll be changing the exterior to match the same shape.
 

nillapuddin

Member
Update from my previous post about the desktop bridge converter

I messed around with it this week and was able to make Discord and Notepad++ store apps for myself with just 3 lines of code, it was pretty neat.

I had a more difficult time getting other apps to work (mostly UAC permission stuff) but I did try with a few small games I had (FTL and Rogue Legacy) to no avail, I wasn't getting any errors but the process was just taking a super long time, not sure what the deal was. But it was very cool to now have "App" versions of Notepad++ and Discord, I am sure with a little more know-how, this could work for yall as easy as it does in their youtube videos.

Also, I found this tool on MS website, Advanced Installer I did a trial version and I was pretty impressed, I couldn't actually load the appx's I was making (because trial) but they really seem to have all the tools to make this as easy as possible

I was hoping I could have some great success and come show off to yall, but no dice. Anyways, I hope this helps... someone, somehow ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Ill go back to lurking now, keep up the good work everyone
 

JulianImp

Member
Doing some more work on the arena shooter, I've finished implementing a navmesh for player movement, stagger, death and respawn animation and logic states for the player, basic turret-style enemies and a spherical spawner that periodically creates new enemies. We'll be tackling it as a side-project with the rest of the Drop team (unless someone opts out this time around, I guess), so it'll probably progress at a smoother pace now.

I won't be posting any screenshots for now since it's still chibi Unity-chan vs sphere-shooting spheres, but I'll probably be sharing something once the core mechanics are in place or the concept art starts coming in.
 

friken

Member
I don't know if it's just my computer, but the video appears to have lots of glitchy frames and stuttering for some reason...

hmmm... it was a live stream... so not perfect but functional and not terrible here. Try setting quality to source. It is 1080p/60
 

missile

Member
Some of you may recall I was working on StarDiver a while back (long while). It has been a rough ride life wise and only recently got back to dev after over a year off it. ...
Man, what happend? Weren't your whole family involved in making the game?

... I was working on a hyperspace travel effect shader and wanted fractal trippy visuals for that effect. In my research I decided to play w volume ray casting. I loved the results and decided I needed to do an art project for burningman out of it by driving the fractal math with audio spectrum data. What I link to here is a build I used to project on our sound camp DJ tent during a regional burn last weekend. ...
Yeah these fractals could make some cool background even for my game.
Anyhow. How does the hyerspace travel effect looks right now?

... Maybe this will be a much needed distraction to build some uumph to get back on StarDiver fulltime. If you have a few minutes, please download and run this dev build and message me the following: gpu model, resolution ran, and average fps. Spacebar pauses, mouse button-drag pans camera, scroller zooms, middle button drag pans. ...

KindheartedMediumCaterpillar.gif
...
Looks cool!
 

friken

Member
Man, what happend? Weren't your whole family involved in making the game?

Yeah these fractals could make some cool background even for my game.
Anyhow. How does the hyerspace travel effect looks right now?

Looks cool!

Yeah... it was a family project.... divorce... health problems... life problems.. drama... blah blah blah... but I'm back at dev so that's a good thing.

Hyperspace... well... I kinda got stuck making this fractal stuff after looking into ray marching lol. It's just too fun to mess with and I want to work on this more than the game right now. Honestly, working on the game has been tough for a while... maybe this fractal thing will be a needed distraction and clear the head to get back to StarDiver.... I know I will finish StarDiver... just not in a huge hurry.
 

missile

Member
Yeah... it was a family project.... divorce... health problems... life problems.. drama... blah blah blah... but I'm back at dev so that's a good thing. ...
Tough. All the best for your next steps! Good to have you back!

.... Hyperspace... well... I kinda got stuck making this fractal stuff after looking into ray marching lol. It's just too fun to mess with and I want to work on this more than the game right now. Honestly, working on the game has been tough for a while... maybe this fractal thing will be a needed distraction and clear the head to get back to StarDiver.... I know I will finish StarDiver... just not in a huge hurry.
Ah ok. Yeah I also got into ray-marching (some sdf stuff) etc. recently and
did some volume rendering etc.. Rendering some fractal objects may perhaps
add some interesting aspect to some games. Will see.
 

Minamu

Member
I totally agree it's reasonable. I think i'm just being ultra pessimistic of my game's prospects at the moment. It simply draws no attention whatsoever, I don't see it doing so any better on steam than it does on facebook/twitter/whatever. Was trying to keep an active DevLog to drum up interest but I figured out that I was simply wasting tons of time trying to create content simply to talk to myself while everyone continued not giving a shit. So I'm more thinking of it as a $100 donation to valve on top of the countless hours of dev work I'll never receive any compensation for.
I know the feeling oxrock. To me, 100$ ain't a whole lot, and we could probably split it three ways easily. But the chances of making that money back, I've considered selling our game for like 1$ or whatever, are slim to none afaik. So it's basically money for nothing.
 

_Rob_

Member
I have thought about it, yeah, but I don't have any for Pacha, or at least, not yet - I'm planning to do one eventually, though I'm still wondering whether I should wait until I have colored a full animation to release a "complete process" speed-draw video, or make separate ones for cleaning and coloring.

Thing is, there isn't much more to the process than what you're seeing: it's basically just taking each sketch at a time, drawing over them, and then fixing what goes wrong when they're played in sequence :-D I don't have any special technique or tool to show off, and my previous attempts at process vids from Honey turned out to be rather boring to watch, since nothing special happens in them. But I've been thinking about giving it another try, yeah :)

I find that kind of thing fascinating to watch regardless! In 3D I have the ability to go back and make a change that affects every other frame in a single move, whereas with 2D you have to get it spot on from the get go. As such I always feel watching 2D animators work helps me improve my workflow.

Speaking of which, I really need to make better use of Unity's animation layering. Spent the last few hours adding a tail-off to the end of Clive 'N' Wrench's spin attack. I've masked it off so that it only affects Clive from the second spine bone up, and Wrench's whole body. The result gives much more weight to the feeling of the attack, and it blends nicely regardless of which main animation it transitions into! Why the hell didn't I think of this before!?

giphy.gif
 
Finally we made something ingame from Sitcom Valley for the screenshot saturday today.
A little gif showing the dialogue between Julian and Alex before a fight.
sitcomvalleybattlediabcu4e.gif


Sorry for the image quality, we had to make it low so it could fit twitter standards.
 

Pehesse

Member
I find that kind of thing fascinating to watch regardless! In 3D I have the ability to go back and make a change that affects every other frame in a single move, whereas with 2D you have to get it spot on from the get go. As such I always feel watching 2D animators work helps me improve my workflow.

Speaking of which, I really need to make better use of Unity's animation layering. Spent the last few hours adding a tail-off to the end of Clive 'N' Wrench's spin attack. I've masked it off so that it only affects Clive from the second spine bone up, and Wrench's whole body. The result gives much more weight to the feeling of the attack, and it blends nicely regardless of which main animation it transitions into! Why the hell didn't I think of this before!?

giphy.gif

Well, you prompted me to try one, so keep an eye out, I have a video coming of an animation cleanup timelapse, hopefully it'll be of interest to you and/or others :)

Finally we made something ingame from Sitcom Valley for the screenshot saturday today.
A little gif showing the dialogue between Julian and Alex before a fight.
sitcomvalleybattlediabcu4e.gif


Sorry for the image quality, we had to make it low so it could fit twitter standards.

I like it (and I feel you for the compression issues!). The one thing I might raise concerns about is the dialog font: I'm not a fan of serif fonts for use in text heavy games, as it makes it slightly harder to read on a screen - and I don't think it's the best fit with the rest of the aesthetic, either. If you've got another sans serif one handy (or best, a choice of several for the player to customize) I think it might help, though it can of course also work as is :)
 
LUnerCW.gif


Blocking out divisions of body parts on a voxel model (lighting off).

Hoping to create a game featuring randomized creatures made from mixed and matched pieces.
 
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