thanks! i hope i actually do work on this. i really dont even care even if the game is 30 minutes long. i just want to finish something
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
GAF Indie Game Development Thread 2: High Res Work for Low Res Pay
- Thread starter Jacksinthe
- Start date
- Status
thanks! i hope i actually do work on this. i really dont even care even if the game is 30 minutes long. i just want to finish something
The ones on the right look better to me -- left simply look off to me. But whichever direction you go, I think the characters could stand out more from the backdrops. I didn't even see the character at first.
Pazu
Member
what are the keys to great puzzles in adventure games? what are some of y'alls favorites? building a VR adventure and it has been extremely challenging to bridge the gap between decent idea for a level/puzzle and rewarding/fun gameplay experience. looking for some inspiration...
edit: this article on puzzle dependency charts was a pretty good read indeed! (warning: reallly ugly font)
edit: this article on puzzle dependency charts was a pretty good read indeed! (warning: reallly ugly font)
I did some tweeking to the lighting. I decided there needed to be some stronger contrast between the background and the foreground objects.
Yeah, the game has some stealth elements to it so I feel the dark shadows are important to the atmosphere, but I realize if it's too dark to see enemies right away that can be frustrating for some. To note I added a feature to look around a certain distance from the player's position.
Yeah, the game has some stealth elements to it so I feel the dark shadows are important to the atmosphere, but I realize if it's too dark to see enemies right away that can be frustrating for some. To note I added a feature to look around a certain distance from the player's position.
neko.works
Member
Are any of you guys selling your game's sountrack? If so, which platform do you recommend?
The soundtrack of Super Night Riders is available as a DLC on Steam which sold OK, plus as a humble widget on the game's website which had an impressive ZERO sales so far...
Also, are there any platform that support high-res audio files? My sources are in 96khz / 24bits lossless.
The soundtrack of Super Night Riders is available as a DLC on Steam which sold OK, plus as a humble widget on the game's website which had an impressive ZERO sales so far...
Also, are there any platform that support high-res audio files? My sources are in 96khz / 24bits lossless.
This post just taught me that some Steam DLC -doesn't- require the base game? I was afraid that I couldn't buy a game's soundtrack as Steam DLC unless I buy the game too.
JeffG
Member
Thinking or fetching?
What are the mechanics?
Has it been done before? (and if so...can you somehow make it your own?)
IMO...More thinking than fetching is better.
But how does one force a player to "Think" to solve the puzzle?
Is it a physical puzzle? Do you have to read/see clues to solve each step of the puzzle?
I looked at children games for my inspiration. I created a sliding tile "game" (shown in this really crappy video. I would classify this as a physical puzzle. (The video was captured with the xbox dvr app. and I have yet to redo it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEAYvU38pRo
I have another "puzzle" Which is just a maze. Not sure I like it though. May try a different camera angle to give it a different feel.
Yikes...Ugly font warning. lol
Systolique
Member
Are any of you guys selling your game's sountrack? If so, which platform do you recommend?
The soundtrack of Super Night Riders is available as a DLC on Steam which sold OK, plus as a humble widget on the game's website which had an impressive ZERO sales so far...
Also, are there any platform that support high-res audio files? My sources are in 96khz / 24bits lossless.
You should try making a bandcamp account, supported format include FLAC, wav, mp3 and more.
You can also fix the price you want to, and bandcamp doesn't take much from your revenues, it truly is the best site to sell your music online without getting by an intermediary
RelentlessRolento
Member
Alright, I'm back from the rough month of Kickstarter and haven't posted here in a while.
So the news is that the Kickstarter was not successful but that dosn't bum me out. I'm realizing it may be best to do the project as a two man team, and I need to look around for a programmer while I widdle away at art and animations.
The good news is that I now have something to show for looking for a programmer plus the game is greenlit to for steam ^_^
Later I'll come back with the game more together and do another Kickstarter.
so lessons learned from the Kickstarter:
- Being a one man team for promoting, event planning (had a Kickstarter party), art making, writing, and programming plus trying to take care of a family is alot... like, alot alot >_<
- Even with the above stated, it's totally doable! I just understand more now what it is in reality having experienced it firsthand
- The hardest thing to understand but best for yourself to be open to is: You can do everything "right", but still have the Kickstarter fail. The more you know this, the less of a problem you'll have dealing with whatever happens in the end.
I don't know what other pointers I could say, but yeah... bleh.
I'll be taking a break from making Wotan and work on a smaller fun title as a break. Planning to do a narrative based clicker game of sorts, plus I am trying my hand at writing a childrens' book.
Maybe add some of the creatures you've been making peaking out a bit in the back... ie. add some things that'll create some curiosity ala old zelda posters, etc... or something. I don't know. Maybe ghostly figures peering down (think Ganon NES dark shadow look or something)
Honestly looks great, it just needs a little more happening in my eyes.
So the news is that the Kickstarter was not successful but that dosn't bum me out. I'm realizing it may be best to do the project as a two man team, and I need to look around for a programmer while I widdle away at art and animations.
The good news is that I now have something to show for looking for a programmer plus the game is greenlit to for steam ^_^
Later I'll come back with the game more together and do another Kickstarter.
so lessons learned from the Kickstarter:
- Being a one man team for promoting, event planning (had a Kickstarter party), art making, writing, and programming plus trying to take care of a family is alot... like, alot alot >_<
- Even with the above stated, it's totally doable! I just understand more now what it is in reality having experienced it firsthand
- The hardest thing to understand but best for yourself to be open to is: You can do everything "right", but still have the Kickstarter fail. The more you know this, the less of a problem you'll have dealing with whatever happens in the end.
I don't know what other pointers I could say, but yeah... bleh.
I'll be taking a break from making Wotan and work on a smaller fun title as a break. Planning to do a narrative based clicker game of sorts, plus I am trying my hand at writing a childrens' book.
Looking for feedback on this piece. What does it communicate to you? What would you change, if anything?
Maybe add some of the creatures you've been making peaking out a bit in the back... ie. add some things that'll create some curiosity ala old zelda posters, etc... or something. I don't know. Maybe ghostly figures peering down (think Ganon NES dark shadow look or something)
Honestly looks great, it just needs a little more happening in my eyes.
Pazu
Member
Looking for feedback on this piece. What does it communicate to you? What would you change, if anything?
I like the colors, but it doesn't communicate anything to me about the character and scenario. What does (she?) want, why does she want it, what's at stake? It looks like she's bending down to reach for something, but it's unclear if that's what's meant to be communicated (and if it is, it's too confusing as presented).
I guess the intention is for the character to look distressed/burdened.
bumpkin
Member
Are any of the ghosts represented literally in the game as spirits? Maybe having the silhouettes of some key ones hovering over the character?
It looks bad-ass otherwise.
RelentlessRolento
Member
Maybe have the arms more in a "hurt" position then, like one arm hanging broken and the other arm grabbing the broken arm.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, where did I drop my right arm?Looking for feedback on this piece. What does it communicate to you? What would you change, if anything?
On a more serious note: A darker more ominous background would help.
floatstarpx
Member
ScriptableObjects are brilliant for data structuring... and yeah, they aren't the best documented things in Unity.
This is the simplest guide I could find- worth having a read... once you 'get' them, though, you'll be fine:
https://medium.com/@mormo_music/game-settings-with-scriptable-objects-in-unity3d-6f753fe508fd#.1rp47w79j
So, you can create a class (with a data structure), and then save instances of it to .asset files. You can reference these from other scripts (kinda like how you might reference a prefab...) & access the data.
So, you might have a 'MoveType' ScriptableObject (with anim details, attack, power, whatever)... You'd create some of these & they would end up as files in your project (MyAwesomeMove.asset, etc...).
Then in your player, you just reference a MoveType- in the inspector you can select it by dragging MyAwesomeMove.asset in to the field (like you would with a prefab, but instead of referencing a GameObject, you're referencing a MoveType) & they can use the data in there.
It's really simple, but one of those things that is a little clumsy to explain/communicate!
Working on animations for my game.
This is a variant of the backflip animation for when you have a sword equipped in your main hand. She does a slash while you backflip! Really fun getting alot of my more annoying spritework done (converting for pallet control in engine, adding weapon variants for all the mundane animations and hit animations)
There's a pixel error with how i rendered it out from photoshop if you can spot it. ;<
Edit: Added in the rolling animation when wielding a sword. I decided to make it so only the spear gives you a slash animation when rolling in the air.
thanks =)
that type of injury isn't exactly applicable given the story/setting, but I'll think about if there's anything I can do.
the right arm is visible btw
borborygmus
Member
Looking for feedback on this piece. What does it communicate to you? What would you change, if anything?
The burst of color around the character reads "damage" to me. It reminds me of blood / damage particle effects. If not for your comment, I'd say the character was injured or is having a malfunction of some kind. I didn't get "reaching towards something" - instead I got limping/floundering.
Looking for feedback on this piece. What does it communicate to you? What would you change, if anything?
Well for one thing I think this image is perfect. Here's what it communicated to me. I am not an artistic person so I'll just post the key words:
- loneliness
- isolation
- beautiful but hostile environment
- damage ( totally stole this one from smorgasbird but I can't unsee it now)
- desperation
- struggle
- strong will
I love the coloring so please don't change that ;_;
Cute Dragon Here
Member
Looking for feedback on this piece. What does it communicate to you? What would you change, if anything?
I think it captures the loneliness vibe pretty well, but like others have said I think the background, particularly the upper part could use a little more detail or something to make the it feel more distressful.
Well ... Guess we've stopped fighting the hype !
https://twitter.com/polarbeardgames/status/752857952416129024
https://twitter.com/polarbeardgames/status/752857952416129024
neko.works
Member
Thanks, I'll check this out.
floatstarpx
Member
This appears to be not loading properly for me.
oh, odd... it's working for me on chrome (even clicking the link from the post...). should be the first link here.
if that doesn't work - I'm sure there are another couple of good tutorials out there! it's definitely worth getting to grips with, an excellent way to store simple or complex data for your game!
HONEY IS GREENLIT! afgkgharb! I almost can't believe it, but the stats page says it is, so I'll take its word for now! I'll look into the next steps for... whatever needs to happen, but yeah! That wasn't how I expected today to turn out!
In other news: the intro match is done! Only thing missing from the core game is the options menu... and I'll be able to make it into a nice demo while I work onto the bonus stuff!
Lastly, might as well toss this in for this newsdump, even though it was posted yesterday: an article by Commander Jarenth of Ninja Blues with a fair critique of the current status of the test build! http://www.ninja-blues.com/2016/07/11/indie-shortieland-honey-rose-underdog-fighter-extraordinaire/
In other news: the intro match is done! Only thing missing from the core game is the options menu... and I'll be able to make it into a nice demo while I work onto the bonus stuff!
Lastly, might as well toss this in for this newsdump, even though it was posted yesterday: an article by Commander Jarenth of Ninja Blues with a fair critique of the current status of the test build! http://www.ninja-blues.com/2016/07/11/indie-shortieland-honey-rose-underdog-fighter-extraordinaire/
Pazu
Member
That is coming across clearly. I think the challenge here is communicating what is distressing/burdening the character, while still maintaining what's working for you in the overall vibe and tone.
Congrats!
Some good news, some bad news.
The good: Drop Alive, a game I'm making alongside five other teammates, has been selected for showcasing it at the Indie Game Area for this year's Tokyo Game Show! We were expecting to go as part of a small latin dev group, but getting our own space for showcasing the game was some very good news we got last weekend.
The bad: The company I was working at told me they wouldn't be renewing my contract once the initial 3-month trial period runs out, which is going to happen on July 18th. It appears that adding multiple new programmers to the team at once actually didn't result in as much of a performance increase as they had expected, mostly since the lead programmer ended up spending more time teaching us the ropes, answering our questions about specific subsystems and making sure we wouldn't screw up, and that meant the team's best programmer (and the one most knowledgeable of the whole codebase) couldn't get too much coding done himself.
So, I now have a plane ticket to Japan for September, and am seriously considering looking into doing freelance work in order to stay around there longer than the two weeks I had initially planned (internet work would be great for earning some money on the go). An artist friend of mine recommended me Freelancer.com, but game progamming and design stuff appears to be full of "copy this whole game for $20", and almost everything tagged as "Game design" is about drawing characters for some strange reason.
TL;DR: I'm out of a job, so do you guys know about any places where I could look for oportunities to do freelance programming?
The good: Drop Alive, a game I'm making alongside five other teammates, has been selected for showcasing it at the Indie Game Area for this year's Tokyo Game Show! We were expecting to go as part of a small latin dev group, but getting our own space for showcasing the game was some very good news we got last weekend.
The bad: The company I was working at told me they wouldn't be renewing my contract once the initial 3-month trial period runs out, which is going to happen on July 18th. It appears that adding multiple new programmers to the team at once actually didn't result in as much of a performance increase as they had expected, mostly since the lead programmer ended up spending more time teaching us the ropes, answering our questions about specific subsystems and making sure we wouldn't screw up, and that meant the team's best programmer (and the one most knowledgeable of the whole codebase) couldn't get too much coding done himself.
So, I now have a plane ticket to Japan for September, and am seriously considering looking into doing freelance work in order to stay around there longer than the two weeks I had initially planned (internet work would be great for earning some money on the go). An artist friend of mine recommended me Freelancer.com, but game progamming and design stuff appears to be full of "copy this whole game for $20", and almost everything tagged as "Game design" is about drawing characters for some strange reason.
TL;DR: I'm out of a job, so do you guys know about any places where I could look for oportunities to do freelance programming?
Yoo! Big congrats Pehesse! I told you you would make it
Also, it´s nice to see the game some media attention little by little. One last effort, you´re almost at the goal!
Pazu
Member
I know the Unreal slack community has a jobs channel that is pretty regularly trafficked, you could check that out
shadow2810
Member
I like how the main thing I took away from that was using [Header("")] in my code to make it nice looking in the inspector. Stuff like [Tooltip("")] and [SerializeField] are fun to use.
Congrats Pehesse! I hope to be there some distant day.
Thanks a lot :-D :-D If Honey could make it, I'm pretty sure any project can, since the stats didn't have anything particularly standing out! (1800 visitors over 34 days, 709 yes votes, a "yes/no" ratio that's below the current average, and no visitor spike after the initial first day one... it's a wonder how it got greenlit at all!!)
Yoo! Big congrats Pehesse! I told you you would make it
I don't know about *almost*, since I still have a few months left either way, but it sure takes a HUGE load off my mind :-D Now, I just need to take care of the steamworks paperwork (anyone have any advice with that?) and the steamworks integration (anyone have any advice with THAT?!!). I'll... leave that for later, for now I'll still focus on finishing the actual game :-D
That's a lot better, exactly the change i tried to suggest with bad results lol.
Feel free to ignore me but it doesn't completely convince me, it's like something is missing, i see the character in pain and blood flying like he/she was just hit but i don't see neither the impact nor the enemy or whatever who hit him/her, it also seems like the blood is going up for some reason, the blood going up is not something natural hence it's difficult to understand at first look in a static image, at least for someone who didn't play the game.Looking for feedback on this piece. What does it communicate to you? What would you change, if anything?
If otherwise you are trying to show him/her keeping on going on despite the wounds, i would do him/her trying to stop the blood leak with one hand or something similar.
Awesome!
It's a bug! xD
Cute Dragon Here
Member
All right, perhaps I'll try again later.
Speaking of which, I think I might also need some help with Unity and mouse-pointer-based raycasting.
Right now, I'd like to be able to use the mouse cursor to select an enemy on the scene, which should have their game objects have a script and collider.
1. When the mouse pointer is on an enemy's collider (basically covering their entire sprite on the screen), but I have not clicked it yet, the game should grab just enough information (I'm thinking of their "slot number" in the actual program) and the program displays their information. (I'm doing this because I need a battle preview.)
2. When I click on said enemy's collider, the action then actually takes place, again by notifying the game program of said click.
x. Should I use a double click or create an additional confirm button instead for people on touch screens?
The game uses 2D physics.
Seems like the usual method for getting a raycast hit to the scene from the camera by mouse pointer position won't work with 2D physics - the stuff I've seen is for 3D physics.
LordRaptor
Member
If you have a Unity UI in your scene, then you have an EventsSystem, and the EventsSystem is already catching pointer to screen raycasts - so you can use OnMouseEnter(), OnMouseOver() and OnMouseExit() functions on basically any GameObject.
e:
Actually I have a feeling these were just added as standard monobehaviours when Unity introduced Unityactions along with the EventsSystem in 4.6
Cute Dragon Here
Member
Any game object, huh? Well, it's not reacting to anything when I'm hovering over my enemies or player characters. I'm probably missing something, but is it supposed to "just work"?
e: wait, I probably need to add a "using" something...
LordRaptor
Member
The example code at https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/MonoBehaviour.OnMouseEnter.html
worked for me on a test scene I just made that had a UI in it - I just made a cube then dropped that onto it (using Unity 5.3)
e:
Make sure your sprites have colliders on though - it doesn't matter if they're 2D or 3D colliders, but the raycast has to 'hit' something
worked for me on a test scene I just made that had a UI in it - I just made a cube then dropped that onto it (using Unity 5.3)
e:
Make sure your sprites have colliders on though - it doesn't matter if they're 2D or 3D colliders, but the raycast has to 'hit' something
Cute Dragon Here
Member
Aha! That was it. I was using the OnPointer... stuff, which wasn't the ones I want right now. Thank you!
Speaking of which, asking everyone: what do you feel is a good difficulty for a JRPG when you're aiming for a high completion rate, and yet want it to not be too easy?
Dlink16
Member
Looking for feedback on this piece. What does it communicate to you? What would you change, if anything?
Loving the colour vibrancy with the warms and cools bouncing around. I find that the background detracts the eye because of 'layer caking'; basically each one of those mountains? is too similar in shape and size and thus repetitive. I would try varying them up a little to make it more interesting.
More than that, I think the biggest issue I hae with the image is that the moon kind of eclipses the player in importance because of how bright it is. Perhaps you could try adding some vignetting to push the viewer's eyes downwards along the central line and into the character?
SeanNoonan
Member
Anyone here have much experience using cocoon.io?
(hi, I'm not dead)
(hi, I'm not dead)
Finally had some time to work on my game again and I'm almost at the point where I feel like I'm actually making a game. Feels weird to say that but I feel like I've done very little "designing" and more building the foundation of my game. I enjoy it, but I get to create some of the actual fun parts soon lol.
Also random Unity question. Is there a reason sometimes Unity just breaks/acts weird? Like I came back to my project and it wouldn't transition from scenes properly at all. When I checked the build setting all my scenes were greyed out and didn't work properly anymore so I had to re-add them. Not a big deal but I have no idea why that happened. I'm also getting some minor errors that don't seem to cause any problems so that's fun.
Also random Unity question. Is there a reason sometimes Unity just breaks/acts weird? Like I came back to my project and it wouldn't transition from scenes properly at all. When I checked the build setting all my scenes were greyed out and didn't work properly anymore so I had to re-add them. Not a big deal but I have no idea why that happened. I'm also getting some minor errors that don't seem to cause any problems so that's fun.
Pazu
Member
just submitted our VR adventure, Chiaro, to Fantastic Arcade. huge milestone for me personally since Fantastic Fest in Austin is my favorite thing that happens every year!
have gotten quite a bit of help since I started reading and posting in this thread. thanks everybody, yall are reallllll cool 8)
Code:
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/dKiJTmW.png[/IMG]have gotten quite a bit of help since I started reading and posting in this thread. thanks everybody, yall are reallllll cool 8)
- Status