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Indie Game Development Discussion Thread | Of Being Professionally Poor

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Feep

Banned
I like the transparency but I think you should move the GO and BACK buttons so that they're not tangent to the border.
I agree with this, and also second killing the Go/Back delay time. As long as pressing a new button requires removing a finger and then repressing, it shouldn't be an issue.

My vertical slice is basically done! Expect a sweet video on Thursday or Friday. ;)
 

Ashodin

Member
OlQsUcp.gif


I hope this is better.
 
I just recently released a freeware enhanced port of a game I made a while back:

It has Windows/Mac/Linux/Web (HTML5)/Android (No Touch Controls Supported) builds available, with the desktop versions being the recommended one by far.

Download Link:
http://mtmbstudios.wordpress.com/games/null-divide/

Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YO4ZCrAr79k&feature=player_detailpage

Image:
uPf9jnZ.png


Blurb:
"Null Divide+ is a top down shooter presented with a retro look and authentic NES music. Your ship is out of fuel, and your only hope for getting home is to salvage a nearby abandoned space station. You’ll explore the station, do battle with the machines lurking within and find upgrades for your ship to aid you in your mission."
 
I just recently released a freeware enhanced port of a game I made a while back:

It has Windows/Mac/Linux/Web (HTML5)/Android (No Touch Controls Supported) builds available, with the desktop versions being the recommended one by far.

Download Link:
http://mtmbstudios.wordpress.com/games/null-divide/

Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YO4ZCrAr79k&feature=player_detailpage

Image:
uPf9jnZ.png


Blurb:
"Null Divide+ is a top down shooter presented with a retro look and authentic NES music. Your ship is out of fuel, and your only hope for getting home is to salvage a nearby abandoned space station. You’ll explore the station, do battle with the machines lurking within and find upgrades for your ship to aid you in your mission."
Oh cool, you're a GAFfer as well? (I emailed to ask if you had Twitter page a day or two ago) My article about Null Divide will be up tomorrow :)
btw, you should post in the Indie Thread
 

Feep

Banned
OlQsUcp.gif


I hope this is better.
Mmmm...I liked them in the box, (they need the dark contrast just as much as the text), but you could have just shifted them up and inward by a few pixels each. It was just weird that they were touching the border directly.
 

Ashodin

Member
Mmmm...I liked them in the box, (they need the dark contrast just as much as the text), but you could have just shifted them up and inward by a few pixels each. It was just weird that they were touching the border directly.

Gotcha!
 
I just recently released a freeware enhanced port of a game I made a while back:

It has Windows/Mac/Linux/Web (HTML5)/Android (No Touch Controls Supported) builds available, with the desktop versions being the recommended one by far.

Download Link:
http://mtmbstudios.wordpress.com/games/null-divide/

Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YO4ZCrAr79k&feature=player_detailpage

Image:
uPf9jnZ.png


Blurb:
"Null Divide+ is a top down shooter presented with a retro look and authentic NES music. Your ship is out of fuel, and your only hope for getting home is to salvage a nearby abandoned space station. You’ll explore the station, do battle with the machines lurking within and find upgrades for your ship to aid you in your mission."
Impressions are up! Great game, very fun, KB/M works perfectly
 

JulianImp

Member
So, I've been looking into making a custom Unity inspector to speed up level building, and it looks like there isn't as much documentation of that, even less so for C#. The differences weren't that big, but it was still a bit complicated to get things to work, even if it mostly works like your average GUILayout.

It took me quite a while to get that the inspector extension had to be put in the Assets/Editor path, and that you had to link it to another script whose inspector you'd be replacing. Tinkering with it, it seems like you can even add buttons using GUILayout rather than the EditorGUILayout class, and that managing an array has to be done manually (both array size and drawing array elements one by one using your loop of choice).

One thing I also wanted to do is have some of the inspector buttons let you navigate a linked list of objects, automatically selecting the next or previous one whenever you hit them. After delving into the Unity documentation for a little bit, it looks like "Selection.objects", a GameObject array, is exactly what I had been looking for.

Hopefully, the time I've spent making this tool for arranging and controlling level patterns will end up saving us a lot of time in the long run, while also making it easier for the rest of the team to play around with the designs, which were kind of complicated to use before. Once this tool is done and we've released some stuff about the game, I'll probably post the source code for this editor extension here.
 

Anustart

Member
What's the proper way to figure out gravity in Unity (2d game) in an orthographic camera?

Right now I'm using:

Code:
vel.y -= gravityY * Time.deltaTime;

And this to apply it:

Code:
// apply movement 
        vel2 = vel * Time.deltaTime;
        thisTransform.position += new Vector3(vel2.x, vel2.y, 0f);

But even absurdly high values for gravityY result in slow slow fall speeds.
 

JulianImp

Member
What's the proper way to figure out gravity in Unity (2d game) in an orthographic camera?

Right now I'm using:

Code:
vel.y -= gravityY * Time.deltaTime;

And this to apply it:

Code:
// apply movement 
        vel2 = vel * Time.deltaTime;
        thisTransform.position += new Vector3(vel2.x, vel2.y, 0f);

But even absurdly high values for gravityY result in slow slow fall speeds.

I think you're actually multiplying the Y component by Time.deltaTime twice there (once when you assign the gravity, and again right before you move the object). Also, why are you using two "vel" variables? I'd rather use:

Code:
vel += gravity;
transform.position += vel * Time.deltaTime;

Using a Vector3 gravity variable would be a lot more useful, since you could eventually make gravity go up, to the sides, or a mix of both. That, and adding Vector3s together is quite simple.

If you're using Vector2s to hold position data, I think you can cast them to Vector3 like this:
Code:
vel += gravity; //Both are Vector2
transform.position += (Vector3)(vel * Time.deltaTime);
 

missile

Member
I think you're actually multiplying the Y component by Time.deltaTime twice there ...
Which is correct. To get velocity (v) from acceleration (a) you have to
integrate once. To get position (p) from velocity you have to integrate again,
i.e. (using simple Euler stepping);

a = F/m;
v += a * dt;
p += v * dt;

Edit: A fundamental equation.
The space, s, traveled in a given time, t, equals 1/2*a*t^2 assuming uniform
acceleration during time, i.e. s = 1/2*a*t^2.


What's the proper way to figure out gravity in Unity (2d game) in an orthographic camera?

Right now I'm using:

Code:
vel.y -= gravityY * Time.deltaTime;

And this to apply it:

Code:
// apply movement 
        vel2 = vel * Time.deltaTime;
        thisTransform.position += new Vector3(vel2.x, vel2.y, 0f);

But even absurdly high values for gravityY result in slow slow fall speeds.
Don't know about Unity, but perhaps Time.deltaTime might be way too small
for whatever reason. To find out just try some user defined values of for dt
(Time.deltaTime), i.e. 0.001, 0.01, or 0.1 and see if things move farther
per frame.
 

Anustart

Member
Which is correct. To get velocity (v) from acceleration (a) you have to
integrate once. To get position (p) from velocity you have to integrate again,
i.e. (using simple Euler stepping);

a = F/m;
v += a * dt;
p += v * dt;



Don't know about Unity, but perhaps Time.deltaTime might be way too small
for whatever reason. To find out just try some user defined values of for dt
(Time.deltaTime), i.e. 0.001, 0.01, or 0.1 and see if things move farther
per frame.

I figured it out :/ I'm a dummy, I was limiting y velocity elsewhere in my code and momentarily forgot about that. Increasing the gravity was just decreasing the time it took to reach max velocity lol.
 

JulianImp

Member
Which is correct. To get velocity (v) from acceleration (a) you have to
integrate once. To get position (p) from velocity you have to integrate again,
i.e. (using simple Euler stepping);

a = F/m;
v += a * dt;
p += v * dt;



Don't know about Unity, but perhaps Time.deltaTime might be way too small
for whatever reason. To find out just try some user defined values of for dt
(Time.deltaTime), i.e. 0.001, 0.01, or 0.1 and see if things move farther
per frame.

Forgot gravity equals m/s^2, so multiplying it by deltaTime once would still leave you with m/s... whoops!

I've never actually messed too much with Unity's own physics implementation, but the times I did, I had to tweak variables around for a while until I found force and drag values that resulted in the kind of physics I wanted.
 

missile

Member
@KMD: Shit happens!


... but the times I did, I had to tweak variables around for a while until I found force and drag values that resulted in the kind of physics I wanted.
Which is always the hardest part, I guess. Currently, am quite in such a
position deriving some good force formulas for lift, drag, and friends.
 

JulianImp

Member
@KMD: Shit happens!



Which is always the hardest part, I guess. Currently, am quite in such a
position deriving some good force formulas for lift, drag, and friends.

It's just that when I'm programming, I tend not to pay too much attention to thinking about it from a physics standpoint (ie: keeping track of units), which sometimes leads to cases such as this. I guess getting used to having an engine take care of lower-level calculations sometimes gets in the way of properly handling formulae and/or noticing mistakes.
 

JulianImp

Member
Nintendo called me back today too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So much is going awesome today!!!

It's awesome how Nintendo's opening up to peopel who want to make games for WiiU, but I still can't get completely over how I won't get accepted for geographical reasons. I guess I just chose the wrong region to be born in during character creation! :p
 

missile

Member
It's just that when I'm programming, I tend not to pay too much attention to thinking about it from a physics standpoint (ie: keeping track of units), which sometimes leads to cases such as this. ...
I just see rates of change. Let people label them whatever they want! Ha!
 

Servbot24

Banned
It's awesome how Nintendo's opening up to peopel who want to make games for WiiU, but I still can't get completely over how I won't get accepted for geographical reasons. I guess I just chose the wrong region to be born in during character creation! :p
Yeah that seems bizarre to me. :/ Hopefully they come around sometime during development.
 

Tash

Member
Nintendo called me back today too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So much is going awesome today!!!

Grats :)
Did you talk to Dan Adelman?

It's awesome how Nintendo's opening up to peopel who want to make games for WiiU, but I still can't get completely over how I won't get accepted for geographical reasons. I guess I just chose the wrong region to be born in during character creation! :p

Wait what? What's the problem?
 
I wish I could make my own thread for this, but alas I am still only a junior here.

I had possibly the worst experience with Valve yesterday & would like to vent my frustrations and warn any potential teams building a game for indie on Source.

So basically I've been involved in an indie project for the last year with a team I've known for the last 3 or 4 years. I have a daytime industry job, and took it upon myself to sacrifice a lot of my free time to work on this game. All of the team are incredibly proficient in the Source Engine, myself with over 8 years of experience, so we chose it as the platform to release our first title on.

We are working on the Alien Swarm branch of the engine (essentially Portal 2) and have implemented & optimised a fully deferred renderer & a whole host of impressive shader work. The game pretty much matched any DX11 indie UDK game visually, and we weren't even in full alpha.

Essentially, we got to the point where we were ready to showcase this publicly in the next few months, preparing to launch a Kickstarter, with an announcement trailer and all that jazz. We emailed Valve for prices on a licence and full engine code - we wanted to implement DX11 finally & get access to their NextBot AI - but they had other plans.

The email response yesterday, in one fell swoop destroyed over a year's worth of work. And destroyed my stupid faith in Valve being this demigod amongst the developers.
It was pretty much a stock cut & paste reply saying. "we are no longer officially supporting the engine commercially, if you would like to get your 'mod' onto greenlight, we can assist you. But it is advised you seek out another engine like Unity".

No words.

I know some of you might be thinking "well, tough luck, move on". But this mess is far more complicated than that. Firstly, Valve are still advertising on their site about licencing:

http://source.valvesoftware.com/

They haven't made any effort to let the indie community know or update their stance on the situation.

Secondly, one of our members, works on another Source Engine game by the name of Consortium, which has been funded on KS and received a licence this year. So we have no idea when they decided to close the floodgates to potential licencees.

They offered only Source 2013 on their GitHub, which is a pile of shit. We needed at least P2/Alien Swarm for deferred - it was literally the only thing keeping us on the engine. And that wasn't for commercial usage either.

It is greatly disappointing that they have come back to us with this. The team has worked so hard to push the engine to where it is and Valve have pretty much said "GG, fuck you".

We emailed back advising them to update their website. It's a sign of things to come, with them most likely prepping for Source 2, but there is no way we can sit around and wait for that, it could be over a year or longer before it's publicly available. I am no longer likely to ever going to touch Source again because of this.

So, instead of moaning and whining for the rest of eternity, we had an emergency meeting & decided to email Epic for licencing info. We know we can use UE3, but UE4 is much closer on the horizon, with some teams already using it. Plus licence costs are dirt cheap in comparison - the KS was originally to cover the cost of the Source Engine licence if we got a number back from them - so we won't be in extreme debt before we release anything at least. We get access to a lot of things in Unreal that we were doing insane hacks to get to work on Source & DX9.

Art-wise, we are not pushed back too far. we can easily import assets over & remake the shaders quite quickly, snce the art pipeline is 10x better. But programming-wise. We're fucked. UE3 is currently UnrealScript, & our programmers are C++ proficient. So all that code is lost forever (another reason we want UE4 is the programmers don't need to learn the finnicky nature of Uscript). Also we are likely at a major setback AI-wise. Source had a great framework to build upon & access to NextBot (L4D2 AI) would of been a huge improvement. We have to basically write all this from scratch now. Fun times indeed.

The small upside for me is now I have a legitimate excuse to dive into and learn UDK.

So that's that. We'll wait for Valve to reply again & see if they dramatically change their mind (unlikely). Epic said they would be in touch within a day or so. We'll continue to push for Kickstarter but it's had a huge impact to development - we reckon maybe 4 months to get back up to scratch - so it will be launched sometime early next year hopefully.

Games Development - You cruel bastard.
 

bumpkin

Member
Nintendo called me back today too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So much is going awesome today!!!
'Grats! I got approved by 'em a few weeks ago, and after some initial tinkering, I haven't had time to go back and do more since. Admittedly I've been hesitant to pull the trigger on ordering the dev units because I don't want to commit to the expense until I have something to see through to completion; I'm still working on building the engine itself on my Mac. And that is pretty much at a standstill 'cuz I got in a rut where I'm out of desirable pieces to work on (aka that I can easily figure out). Sucks when you run out of "fun" stuff to do on a project.

Admittedly a major part of me having shelved the game coding is trying to make some updates to my iPhone App (non-game) and actually finish the Android port. I've been promising friends with 'Droid phones that a version was coming for a good 6 or 7 months now. I should probably see it through before going back to the project I actually want to work on. :)

...the Android SDK is such a piece of trash compared to iOS.

There, I said it. I feel a little better.
 

Tash

Member
That sucks that you had such a bad experience and luck with steam/valve :/
And grats on the Epic deal. Kinda expensive though?

Shiftlings is going to get little enemies btw and I just love those guys :D
I think the saw blade one is my fav. He just looks so confused, high and drunk the same time hehe.
Shiftlings is coming to WiiU btw - Xbox as well and I am talking to Sony about PS and Vita. Fingers crossed :)

critters.png
 

GulAtiCa

Member
I'm getting so close to being done with my game, code wise. (ZaciSa's Last Stand) I completely redid the gamepad controls/functionality. Now much much easier to use/nderstand. Only have a few things left to code now. Mainly local leaderboard, online leaderboard, and lastly game balance issues/etc.

I'll then port it to web to help get feedback. Not sure how to handle the controls though, since that's on the gamepad and there is no gamepad on web .lol. I think I'll likely keep both and have them on top of each other with gamepad can be opened/closed. After that, I will start work on graphics and see if I can find soemone who can do some music for it.
 

Bollocks

Member
Unless I'm misunderstanding you, just use the normal of the contact point (at your character's feet).

haha of course :D
just raycast down, use normal of contact point. that should do it

also how would you implement going up stairs?

I read that to simplify things, the stairs shouldn't be actual stairs(for the physics model) but approximated by a slope.

But I doubt it's that hard to have actual stairs working?
pseudo code:
steplimit = 1;

offset = (raycast down - raycast down slightly in front of you)
//make sure theres a climbable stair
if(offset < steplimit && offset > 0){
push character up
pus character forward
}
?

I know there's a character controller in Unity but I would rather write my own implementation because I would like to learn something.
 

Mikado

Member
But I doubt it's that hard to have actual stairs working?
I know there's a character controller in Unity but I would rather write my own implementation because I would like to learn something.

The pseudocode for a proper character controller that steps up onto steps and handles downward slopes without going airborne every second frame is roughly like:

1-Attempt to move the character UP by the maximum step-up height.
2-Attempt to move the character FORWARD by their desired displacement
3-Attempt to move the character down by the maximum step-down height PLUS the amount it moved up in step 1.

This is sort of an oversimplification though; there are a lot of edge cases that need special handling. Often you'll want to disable steps 1 & 3 depending on the type of motion the character is doing (like jumping). You'll want to avoid stepping UP onto invalid (slopey) surfaces or else the character will vibrate when grinding against a slope. You'll certainly need to handle sliding as its own case.

On top of all this, you'll probably need to handle gravity and intersection recovery yourself in the controller since this type of non-physical kinematic behaviour largely eschews the higher level physics system.

soogood.gif when you get it all working though.

For reference in building your own, there's a sort of half-working*
(at least the last time I checked. It was a known issue. They might have improved it by now)
version in the bullet physics library which you can take a look at, which in turn seems based on the half-working PhysX controller in the public sources? Both should be good starting points if building your own is something you're interested in.

Or just use the unity one if you've got it and it does what you need.
 

Bollocks

Member
The pseudocode for a proper character controller that steps up onto steps and handles downward slopes without going airborne every second frame is roughly like:

1-Attempt to move the character UP by the maximum step-up height.
2-Attempt to move the character FORWARD by their desired displacement
3-Attempt to move the character down by the maximum step-down height PLUS the amount it moved up in step 1.

This is sort of an oversimplification though; there are a lot of edge cases that need special handling. Often you'll want to disable steps 1 & 3 depending on the type of motion the character is doing (like jumping). You'll want to avoid stepping UP onto invalid (slopey) surfaces or else the character will vibrate when grinding against a slope. You'll certainly need to handle sliding as its own case.

On top of all this, you'll probably need to handle gravity and intersection recovery yourself in the controller since this type of non-physical kinematic behaviour largely eschews the higher level physics system.

soogood.gif when you get it all working though.

For reference in building your own, there's a sort of half-working*
(at least the last time I checked. It was a known issue. They might have improved it by now)
version in the bullet physics library which you can take a look at, which in turn seems based on the half-working PhysX controller in the public sources? Both should be good starting points if building your own is something you're interested in.

Or just use the unity one if you've got it and it does what you need.
oh cool thanks.
Do you have a link or books that you can recommend for that sort of stuff?
I'm still trying to figure out the best way to implement the movement mechanics.
 
That's rough times. Damn.

Yeah man. It hasn't been the most relaxing 24 hours.

Although there has been an update on the situation.
Valve replied, agreeing they will update the website to reflect their stance on commercial licencing.

They also changed their mind regarding a licence. But it's sort of a little ridiculous. I get the impression that they simply don't want to sell the engine right now, because the figure they gave us was about 5 times the amount we initially projected, and they said they would offer no code or bug support. So I have no idea what is happening with them right now. Their handling on SDK updates and developer support has been a shambles in the past, but this is beyond stupid. Why change your mind and insult us with a price we could never ever manage to afford? Whatever, though I guess. We can't stick around for Source 2, because god knows when that will be publicly available.

Anyways, Epic also responded to us, and we have some positive news at least to build off of, with them interested in chatting to us next week. Also the guy responded within 7 hours of the email WHILST on vacation. That's commitment right there.

We're already setting up the SVN in preparation for UDK & porting over one of the areas to test. So all aboard the Unreal train and time to flush Source down the toilet.
 

Bamihap

Good at being the bigger man
We are starting our beta test very soon! Want to try out Castaway Paradise and provide is with your feedback? Sign up now for the iOS beta:

 

usea

Member
Yeah man. It hasn't been the most relaxing 24 hours.

Although there has been an update on the situation.
Valve replied, agreeing they will update the website to reflect their stance on commercial licencing.

They also changed their mind regarding a licence. But it's sort of a little ridiculous. I get the impression that they simply don't want to sell the engine right now, because the figure they gave us was about 5 times the amount we initially projected, and they said they would offer no code or bug support. So I have no idea what is happening with them right now. Their handling on SDK updates and developer support has been a shambles in the past, but this is beyond stupid. Why change your mind and insult us with a price we could never ever manage to afford? Whatever, though I guess. We can't stick around for Source 2, because god knows when that will be publicly available.

Anyways, Epic also responded to us, and we have some positive news at least to build off of, with them interested in chatting to us next week. Also the guy responded within 7 hours of the email WHILST on vacation. That's commitment right there.

We're already setting up the SVN in preparation for UDK & porting over one of the areas to test. So all aboard the Unreal train and time to flush Source down the toilet.
Wow. Yeah, sounds like the best of a bunch of horrible options. I'm glad they got back to you with an option at least. :\
 

TrickRoom

Member
I just got a call back from Nintendo. After a month of that application being in the back of my mind, it was shocking to hear from them so suddenly. Shocking and paralyzing.

I... I think I'm allowed to make something now, I think.
 

JulianImp

Member
I just got a call back from Nintendo. After a month of that application being in the back of my mind, it was shocking to hear from them so suddenly. Shocking and paralyzing.

I... I think I'm allowed to make something now, I think.

I also got a reply within a month, so it seems like things have sped up now compared to the three to four months it took Nintendo to contact othe GAFfers who signed up earlier. I guess not that much people is applying nowadays, so they can process applications faster than before.

Regarding my own project, I'm slowly figuring out how the editor tool should behave since there're a few corner cases I still hadn't addressed in paper. Gotta make sure getting it to do what you want is as simple and intuitive as possible.
 

Bollocks

Member
Yeah man. It hasn't been the most relaxing 24 hours.

Anyways, Epic also responded to us, and we have some positive news at least to build off of, with them interested in chatting to us next week. Also the guy responded within 7 hours of the email WHILST on vacation. That's commitment right there.

We're already setting up the SVN in preparation for UDK & porting over one of the areas to test. So all aboard the Unreal train and time to flush Source down the toilet.

That's good to hear :)
So it is UE4 then?

Can't wait for the release of UE4 myself, mainly also because they ditched UnrealScript. It's been over a year since I saw the demo at GDC, I miss it :(
 

scaffa

Member
Started to implement some graphics into my game to get a good feeling how everything works and looks together. Kinda happy with the first results but still have to draw and build a lot for what I really want to achieve :)

Posting a gif, its 2mb hope thats not to bad. Not sure what settings in gifcam are the best.

roVyQGB.gif
 

charsace

Member
What's the proper way to figure out gravity in Unity (2d game) in an orthographic camera?

Right now I'm using:

Code:
vel.y -= gravityY * Time.deltaTime;

And this to apply it:

Code:
// apply movement 
        vel2 = vel * Time.deltaTime;
        thisTransform.position += new Vector3(vel2.x, vel2.y, 0f);

But even absurdly high values for gravityY result in slow slow fall speeds.

You should try to use the translate method to move instead of position. Also what is the size of your quad you draw to and gravity amount? Looks like you aren't using rigid bodies to move, but the bigger the quad is, larger the gravity number has to be. Which Update are you using?
 

Ashodin

Member

Super dope! Love the effects and the voice commands. I worry about the reception of the game by regular gamers though. Looks like the recognition is working fine, but the problem I foresee is that there are gamers who have

A) no voice
B) a terrible slur voice
C) trouble remembering commands

I also foresee your most requested feature be controller input. Which totally goes against the point of the game, I know.
 

Feep

Banned
Super dope! Love the effects and the voice commands. I worry about the reception of the game by regular gamers though. Looks like the recognition is working fine, but the problem I foresee is that there are gamers who have

A) no voice
B) a terrible slur voice
C) trouble remembering commands

I also foresee your most requested feature be controller input. Which totally goes against the point of the game, I know.
This will not be a requested feature at all, because it will be in the game. >.>
 
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