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Indie Game Development Discussion Thread | Of Being Professionally Poor

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anthn

Member
Posted this one for #screenshotsaturday.

hoD6Qjd.gif


The minimap arrow will be the only hint the player will get each level in Turnover. From there, it's up to you to find out how to escape the floor.

Also, this week, Turnover's website went live. Check it out here: http://www.turnovergame.net/
 
Not sure many know, but I also do indieteamup on twitter to help get devs and talents together, we released a site a few hours ago for that purpose. I just really want to help get people together to create games. If you feel you need help with your game please check out http://www.indieteamup.com/ and let me know if it's something that could help ^ ^
 
Any Montreal indie devs posting here? I'm moving from Kelowna BC to Montreal in January, looking forward to meeting some other indie devs out there, and hopefully land a job in the industry.

January uh? Enjoy a real winter. ;) But yeah, I'm in Montreal, but not really connected to the scene I guess; I just work on my little prototypes in my corner. :) There are monthly indie meet-ups though, which might interest you: http://mrgs.ca/ There are plenty of possibilities for industry jobs as well: Ubisoft of course, but also Eidos, WB, EA, Bioware, and other smaller studios like Red Barrels.
 

Ito

Member


Screenshot saturday thread crosspost, as always. Except this time it really is a screenshot.. with a video hidden behind it.
A small demo of the current looks of the second match with most of the basic animation in. Still missing some, but we're way past the halfway point now! Missing in action are only moves that are... uh, very long to do. So not that great, but still, getting there!

Amazing! I'm already in love with your game, and Honey looks splendid in every new animation you show.

Those poses and expresions add a lot in terms of characterization; something that I believe most indie games often forget about.


Okay, it's been a long time coming. First video of the game. http://youtu.be/J3KMT6SwAL4

Kickstarter in a week or so.

Hope you like, indiegaf!

Really awesome. As a die-hard Streets of Rage / Bare Knuckle fan, I'm loving the 90's vibes. I agree that the main character should lean forward when he's walking, even the idle pose shold feel more aggressive. Anyway, Good job.

in this encounter, you need to manage your resources properly to survive. shooting the beetle with certain weapons can slow it down, other enemies can slow it down, and you must also carefully manage your dash timer and armor in order to make it through the spikes, or you could find yourself quickly out of luck.

click for bigger. I think the timing on these gifs might be weird or something, they look a bit fast motiony on my screen right now. either that or I'm evolving hyper reflexes. er, I guess that'd be the opposite of hyper. maybe I'm slowing down. I don't konw. It's late. I need sleep.


Wow, that seems intense. I feel that as much as I'm going to love the game when it's out, the best thing about following you is reading your comments and learning about gameplay design, subtle visual tweaks, and atmosphere tips directly from you.

And I could say the very same thing from a lot of indies that I usually find here.
 
January uh? Enjoy a real winter. ;) But yeah, I'm in Montreal, but not really connected to the scene I guess; I just work on my little prototypes in my corner. :) There are monthly indie meet-ups though, which might interest you: http://mrgs.ca/ There are plenty of possibilities for industry jobs as well: Ubisoft of course, but also Eidos, WB, EA, Bioware, and other smaller studios like Red Barrels.

Haha, ya not really looking forward to apartment hunting in -30 weather. I grew up in Ontario, and spent of ton of time snowboarding out here, but still feel totally unprepared for the Montreal winter. Thanks for the tip, will totally be attending that meetup!
 

Jobbs

Banned
Wow, that seems intense. I feel that as much as I'm going to love the game when it's out, the best thing about following you is reading your comments and learning about gameplay design, subtle visual tweaks, and atmosphere tips directly from you.

And I could say the very same thing from a lot of indies that I usually find here.

thanks -- I feel like you're giving me a bit too much credit though, I am as insecure as most other people and if you set expectations in the statosphere you can only be disappointed! :)
 

Mikado

Member
Any Montreal indie devs posting here? I'm moving from Kelowna BC to Montreal in January, looking forward to meeting some other indie devs out there, and hopefully land a job in the industry.

We used to be in Montreal but we moved to BC :p

When you get there, you should definitely go to the Mont-Royal Game Society meetups. Awesome group of people there.

The IGDA presentations in Montreal are really good too; they get high-profile speakers in to do presentations pretty regularly (Cliff Blezenski, Arkane Studios, etc.).
 

SeanNoonan

Member
Any Montreal indie devs posting here? I'm moving from Kelowna BC to Montreal in January, looking forward to meeting some other indie devs out there, and hopefully land a job in the industry.
That's where I'm located (I work at Ubisoft Montreal). I'll be showing up at the next indie meet up I imagine, probably to demo the new version of Jack B Nimble. I'd like to think I'll be demoing my next game there, come January, so I'll probably see you there :)

Speaking of which, the Halloween update for Jack B. Nimble is now live!

screen520x924.jpeg


https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/jack-b.-nimble/id918891211?ls=1&mt=8
 

TouchTiltGames

Neo Member

Xtra Mile

Neo Member
Yeah, while the game looks like it has a lot of potential, those animations are pretty rough to be honest, especially the walking cycles. That's completely understandable and acceptable at this point since I realize the game is only at an alpha stage - and hell, I certainly couldn't do better myself - but... if you intend to go on Kickstarter next week? Personally, I fear the KS crowd can't be expected to empathize with the development process, and will not be very forgiving of this lack of polish. From what I've seen, it has become increasingly harder to get crowd-funded these days. The novelty of Kickstarter has worn off, and potential backers have become very critical. Case in point, two IndieGAF ongoing Kickstarters, Red Cobra and Anomaly 1729, which I think already show quite a bit of polish in the gameplay they demo, are unfortunately doing quite poorly at the moment.

I'm hardly a Kickstarter expert but these are my thoughts, take what you will from it. Also listen to whatever Jobbs has to say, since he actually ran a successful campaign.

Hey, thanks for the comments everyone. I appreciate it. Sure, the idle and walking animation should be easy enough to get fixed. I will post the updated animations as a comparison. Any other comments welcome. Cheer!
 

Five

Banned
How many posts or rep points do you need to starta topic?

I've mentioned Buildanauts on this thread a month or so ago, but we're a lot farther into development. We'll have a pre-alpha private build ready for december and we're making great progress.

Looks great!

You need to be a full member, which takes three months and three hundred posts. Note that you're not allowed to start threads for self-promotion. To that end, you're much better off having someone else open a thread for you.
 

TouchTiltGames

Neo Member
Looks great!

You need to be a full member, which takes three months and three hundred posts. Note that you're not allowed to start threads for self-promotion. To that end, you're much better off having someone else open a thread for you.

Ah ok thanks for the tip and feedback! Would someone be so kind as to offer the thread start for Buildanauts?

Cheers!
 

Xtra Mile

Neo Member
Need to change the game title. Noticed there was an android title already. Preference of these two Gaf?

Dead on Automatic
Dead on Assault
 

Jobbs

Banned
How many posts or rep points do you need to starta topic?

83c9db3ef7ea510a756f5b2c9753ea7f_large.gif


Cheers!
Shane & Jeremy

You definitely have the "desconstruct" (or whatever that mechanism is that causes the jackhammer) feedback right. It's very pleasing watching that tile break and come out. It almost feels like my brain is being massaged.
 
Site migration is done. Took about 4 hours to move all files and databases over to a new host and reconfigure. About 95% of that time was waiting for my DNS records to propagate, lol. There was a brief moment where I thought Google Domains broke. Then again all of my CNAME and MX records are served directly through their servers so it took a while. No sense in bouncing from registrar to host then back to registrar so I try to keep all things running on the registrar. Site is much snappier. Now to start creating automatic cached pages for even snappier action before slogging away at game code tomorrow.
 

Pehesse

Member
Amazing! I'm already in love with your game, and Honey looks splendid in every new animation you show.

Many thanks :-D As you said on tumblr, some voice clips for the fights would probably go a long way towards adding more personality, but I tried using my voice/some free assets online, and when the voice is not good... it *really* detracts from the whole thing :-D So I'm keeping that thought for later, if I realize that's really the only thing missing or I unexpectedly get the budget! :-D
The other issue with voice acting is the visual novel segment part - as a player, it'd feel weird to have voice clips during the fights, but nothing during the VN part... but if I were to add anything voice-wise to that, the weight of the game would skyrocket due to how much I'd need even for the most basic barks. So that's something to really consider as well! But I'm thinking about it :-D
 

kingPenguin

Neo Member
This threat is moving fast! Really cool stuff everyone!

I've been working on a little side project because I got to a point with Rain Reverse where I just couldn't tell if the art and feeling of it were any good. Does anyone else "suffer" from that? Where you're just to close or something and can't look at your own stuff objectively?

Anyway, I've been working on this super simple soccer game where I stripped the game down to the most basic rules: score the most goals before time runs out.

I'm trying to keep everything simple including limiting the controls to just 2 buttons plus the left stick for movement.

edeCNjz.gif
 

_machine

Member
Hey thanks!
Yeah I made a push for the team to provide more detailed devblogs from now on, a lot of folks actually seem to enjoy the in-depth process involved. We tend to have a very strict minimal aesthetic for our projects, not just in terms of UI, but also applied to all of our PR stuff which goes back all the way to our first mod Canvas and debut free game Black Snow.

Here's Tay's actual portfolio, which has a bunch more of his UI/graphic design work, the dude is quite the wizard for great designs!
http://www.ominous1.net/
I'm a sucker for the minimal aesthetics, especially in the UI and PR departement so I really like your website and blog style. It doesn't always work for the actual ingame graphics for me, but Beacon is looking really great. I would personally maybe like a bit more details in the ground, because it looks a bit simple when you have a lot of it on the screen versus seeing props or the level edges in the screen.

And thanks for linking the portfolio, feel free to tell him I'm a fan of his stuff :)
We'll have a pre-alpha private build ready for december and we're making great progress.

Here's our Greenlight Vote for us!
Good luck Guys, it's looking really nice and I'll definitely give a vote and encourage the team to do so as well. And feel free to share your thoughts on Greenlight as well, I'm especially interested to see how you've approached the press so far and what the results have been. I can also suggest on reading a little guide on Greenlight and KS that a few Finnish developers wrote when preparing for their Battlestation Kickstarter.

Need to change the game title. Noticed there was an android title already. Preference of these two Gaf?

Dead on Automatic
Dead on Assault
I definitely prefer Dead on Assault; the Automatic doesn't really describe the gameplay as well even though it's still a bit less generic word.
 

kiguel182

Member
This threat is moving fast! Really cool stuff everyone!

I've been working on a little side project because I got to a point with Rain Reverse where I just couldn't tell if the art and feeling of it were any good. Does anyone else "suffer" from that? Where you're just to close or something and can't look at your own stuff objectively?

Anyway, I've been working on this super simple soccer game where I stripped the game down to the most basic rules: score the most goals before time runs out.

I'm trying to keep everything simple including limiting the controls to just 2 buttons plus the left stick for movement.

edeCNjz.gif

That looks so good. I really liked the aesthetic and the little animations.
 

SeanNoonan

Member
This threat is moving fast! Really cool stuff everyone!

I've been working on a little side project because I got to a point with Rain Reverse where I just couldn't tell if the art and feeling of it were any good. Does anyone else "suffer" from that? Where you're just to close or something and can't look at your own stuff objectively?

Anyway, I've been working on this super simple soccer game where I stripped the game down to the most basic rules: score the most goals before time runs out.

I'm trying to keep everything simple including limiting the controls to just 2 buttons plus the left stick for movement.

edeCNjz.gif
Looks a LOT like TENNNES, if you're putting it out on itch.io maybe you could get in touch with JW to make a collection/pack?
 

kingPenguin

Neo Member
That looks so good. I really liked the aesthetic and the little animations.

Thanks

Looks a LOT like TENNNES, if you're putting it out on itch.io maybe you could get in touch with JW to make a collection/pack?

Yeah, I think TENNES was uploaded to itch the day after I started on this game, great timing :)

A pack would be cool, but TENNES was already in the Sports Friends Pack, right? Are games legally allowed to be in multiple packs? ;)
 

TouchTiltGames

Neo Member
Good luck Guys, it's looking really nice and I'll definitely give a vote and encourage the team to do so as well. And feel free to share your thoughts on Greenlight as well, I'm especially interested to see how you've approached the press so far and what the results have been. I can also suggest on reading a little guide on Greenlight and KS that a few Finnish developers wrote when preparing for their Battlestation Kickstarter.

Cheers. Thanks for the feedback and support.

I can tell you that getting a response from press has been pretty difficult. Probably because the game is pretty niche and cutesy, but under the hood it's so much more. I've even found a way to contact any writer I choose who writes about this target and still no response. Another issue is of course competition - there's so many games out there and they get so many emails every day. So I can understand that.

We have had some response, like the nice folks at Indie Game Mag and more will come, we just have to keep working :)

Kickstarter has been a challenge too because it's fickle and sore. We didn't build up enough hype prior either.

Our Greenlight has been the best place thus far for feedback. The community is great. We're currently at 26% after 20 days, so it's going to be slow unless we can get some more press, but that will happen. We'll have an alpha build out this December. We've also created a GOG Wishlist and we're on IndieDB, too.

Cheers!
 

Galdelico

Member
Hey, thanks for the comments everyone. I appreciate it. Sure, the idle and walking animation should be easy enough to get fixed. I will post the updated animations as a comparison. Any other comments welcome. Cheer!

If you don't mind me asking... Your sprites remind me a bit of those in KoFXIII: are you using a similar technique, as in starting from 3D models?

Really digging the look of your brawler, anyway. Can't wait to see more. :)
 
We used to be in Montreal but we moved to BC :p

When you get there, you should definitely go to the Mont-Royal Game Society meetups. Awesome group of people there.

The IGDA presentations in Montreal are really good too; they get high-profile speakers in to do presentations pretty regularly (Cliff Blezenski, Arkane Studios, etc.).

Oh nice, im guessing you moved to Vancouver? Beautiful city. I've been in BC for 10 years, just mostly need some change, and want to be a bit closer to my Dad in Ontario.

That's where I'm located (I work at Ubisoft Montreal). I'll be showing up at the next indie meet up I imagine, probably to demo the new version of Jack B Nimble. I'd like to think I'll be demoing my next game there, come January, so I'll probably see you there :)

Oh awesome, would love to see that presentation. I'll introduce myself if I see you there. Must be difficult working full time and wrapping up a game. I had to quit my part-time job because I just contstantly burned out (and could afford it). I'm hoping to land a job at one of the big companies in Montreal after I release Shutter, and while I'm just doing early concept work on a new game.

Added anth, fuzzy_slippers, GulAtiCa, Mystic River, OldmanAndroid to the list
Couldn't find a Twitter page for OldmanAndroid

Thanks! I'm at @Doc__Logic.
 

Sizzerb

Neo Member
Posting this for my friends since they are waiting for their account to get activated (Anyone know how long that takes? It's been a while). I will also forward any of your comments to them!

They are working on a mobile game, this is their latest progress

#ScreenshotSaturday

MsKBSP7.png

f3cv583.png
 

TouchTiltGames

Neo Member
Posting this for my friends since they are waiting for their account to get activated (Anyone know how long that takes? It's been a while). I will also forward any of your comments to them!

They are working on a mobile game, this is their latest progress

#ScreenshotSaturday

MsKBSP7.png

f3cv583.png

Looks intriguing lol. What game is it?
 

_machine

Member
Cheers. Thanks for the feedback and support.

I can tell you that getting a response from press has been pretty difficult. Probably because the game is pretty niche and cutesy, but under the hood it's so much more. I've even found a way to contact any writer I choose who writes about this target and still no response. Another issue is of course competition - there's so many games out there and they get so many emails every day. So I can understand that.

We have had some response, like the nice folks at Indie Game Mag and more will come, we just have to keep working :)
Yeah, reaching press these days for Kickstarter or Greenlight can be really, really though. We too were lucky enough to be featured on the next Indie Game Magazine, but I would feel a lot better if we could get just one or two more press features. We'll be reaching some of the Finnish press as well who have been pretty good at covering local Kickstarters and Greenlights.

What kind of stats did you guys have when you went to Greenlight and Kickstarter, since looking now you seem to have a pretty decent amount of views/followers through Twitter and IndieDB?
 
Cheers. Thanks for the feedback and support.

I can tell you that getting a response from press has been pretty difficult.
Our first Kickstarter attempt was a complete failure for that reason as well. It's hard to get anyone to care, yet I had seen games with lesser amounts of content get coverage. I dunno how you do it.

We're doing a demo now. Figure that has to count for something.

Was able to get some super small sites to cover us, but they didn't bring in anyone really. i've had more luck just posting random screenshots in this thread.
 
Posting this for my friends since they are waiting for their account to get activated (Anyone know how long that takes? It's been a while).

It can take months unfortunately. They should check from time to time if their account is activated though, I think you don't always get a notification e-mail about it.
 
Just finished my first "full" playthrough of GunWorld, with development set to wrap up in the next two weeks. I had a level bug out so I had to skip it, and there is some content still missing from the build I played. Took me about 54 minutes.

Our development goal was to build an NES style game that, once memorized, could be cleared by skilled players in around an hour. I can't tell you how great it feels to have completely nailed that. I've seen some testers spend two hours trying to clear a single level, only to return to it after beating it and finish it in ten minutes. It's so satisfying to see things come together in a way that closely emulates what you set out to do.

I can't wait to play some of the great looking games I've seen in this thread, and I hope some of you folks seek out the sacred temple when we launch GunWorld next month.

BY170gB.png
 

TouchTiltGames

Neo Member
Yeah, reaching press these days for Kickstarter or Greenlight can be really, really though. We too were lucky enough to be featured on the next Indie Game Magazine, but I would feel a lot better if we could get just one or two more press features. We'll be reaching some of the Finnish press as well who have been pretty good at covering local Kickstarters and Greenlights.

What kind of stats did you guys have when you went to Greenlight and Kickstarter, since looking now you seem to have a pretty decent amount of views/followers through Twitter and IndieDB?

Greenlight has been far better a result than KS. We reached about 15% in just a few days on there and now at 26% in 20 days. We'll have to get some press to pump it up again.

Twitter and IndieDB are also great - yes. We've been in the top 10 a few times on IndieDB which is easy to get if you have a nice video update. You'll get 1,000+ views on it doing that. Twitter you have to post daily a few times and engage with others. Go to your ads.twitter.com and check your stats for your posts. I find that tweets with images are most effective.

What is your game?

Cheers.
 

TouchTiltGames

Neo Member
Our first Kickstarter attempt was a complete failure for that reason as well. It's hard to get anyone to care, yet I had seen games with lesser amounts of content get coverage. I dunno how you do it.

We're doing a demo now. Figure that has to count for something.

Was able to get some super small sites to cover us, but they didn't bring in anyone really. i've had more luck just posting random screenshots in this thread.

Yeah it takes time for people to warm up to your game. It's like going window shopping and seeing something you like but not ready to buy just yet, then you see it somewhere else advertised and you eventually get it. :)
 

Jobbs

Banned
Our first Kickstarter attempt was a complete failure for that reason as well. It's hard to get anyone to care, yet I had seen games with lesser amounts of content get coverage. I dunno how you do it.

We're doing a demo now. Figure that has to count for something.

Was able to get some super small sites to cover us, but they didn't bring in anyone really. i've had more luck just posting random screenshots in this thread.

I really wish I understood completely how KS works. I ran a successful one and I still don't really understand. Looking back, I don't even think my game looked all that good in the prototype form it was shown in for that listing.

I think luck has a lot to do with it -- Having the right thing at the right time. I also wonder if it's generally getting harder compared to a year or two ago as the novelty of backing something wears off.

Just one thing, can't wait for the beta :D.

shankye :)
 

SeanNoonan

Member
I'll need to write up a bigger blog post about this, but I thought I'd share the quite awesome news that Jack B. Nimble is now profitable, and I'm almost at the point where I have enough to fund an Android port just off the back of the iOS profits :)

Oh and just an FYI - I made nothing from the Windows 8 version ;)
...in fact I made a loss. Didn't even make back the platform fees - those along with the cost of the Surface (used for other development, but I could bundle that in) and the dev time (roughly 20 or so man-hours) mean I'll never make money on that version.
 

TouchTiltGames

Neo Member
I really wish I understood completely how KS works. I ran a successful one and I still don't really understand. Looking back, I don't even think my game looked all that good in the prototype form it was shown in for that listing.

I think luck has a lot to do with it -- Having the right thing at the right time. I also wonder if it's generally getting harder compared to a year or two ago as the novelty of backing something wears off.

shankye :)

It's definitely getting harder in the last 2 years since the explosion of the indie scene. There's a lot more Indies out there and I think that's great, but yes it seems like luck doesn't it. In my opinion, I think Notch and Apple started the indie explosion. Notch showed the world it's cool to have this awesome idea and share it's growth with the audience and earn a living from it. Apple also did this with the iphone/iPad but in a different way.

It's just all more healthy competition I feel :) Despite the floodgates opening to shovelware, but that's normal in any entertainment industry.
 

Xtra Mile

Neo Member
I definitely prefer Dead on Assault; the Automatic doesn't really describe the gameplay as well even though it's still a bit less generic word.

Thanks. It won out unanimously. Let the re-branding commence.

If you don't mind me asking... Your sprites remind me a bit of those in KoFXIII: are you using a similar technique, as in starting from 3D models?

Really digging the look of your brawler, anyway. Can't wait to see more. :)

You have a keen eye, sir! Originally we started with regular sprites and a much lower frame count, but the artist and I wanted to raise the bar much higher. And we studied the technique used by that team. Thanks for your kind words. There will be more very soon.
 
Boom!

Still needs some more work, but the idea is that the landmines can be used as a strategic weapon as well as a trap to harm you. Hopefully we will make it so that you can shoot them from a distance to trigger it and blow up enemies, or kite them towards one, quickly sprint/roll over it and watch it explode in their face :)
 

Blizzard

Banned
Thanks for the Greenlight tips, people who share those.

I'm hoping to do Greenlight in the next year, and I feel like I have missed the boat on Steam by 1-2 years with the advent of Greenlight and how open the Steam store is now. I feel like it's a more difficult time to try to make a game now compared to when Steam was more closed off, but I suppose there's also more opportunity. Mixed bag!
 

TouchTiltGames

Neo Member
This is giving me the chuckles. I imagine everyone is back there confused as to why some rogue city worker is busting up their sidewalk.

Haha yeah..if you decide you want to destroy some already built sidewalk in front of a residence, they'll get angry and you'll lose some merit points ;)
 
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