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[Kyuur]

Have been working on my ability to digitally draw and paint recently; I've always struggled with my inability to make art for my projects. Don't have anywhere near the expendable cash I need to get someone to do it for me and pixel art has always worn me out quite quickly, so here I am! Finally starting to get to the point where I am comfortable enough with the tablet to pump out semi-usable assets.

Now that I'm here, I must admit that I'm confused as hell on how to actually build scenes out of assets like these. I've been using tiles for the longest time and don't really get how to build individual assets that can fit together in a scene on the same plane. Anyone know of tutorials or write-ups on the subject, or have their own examples?

 

[Fou-Lu]

I have an odd question, but does anyone know of a good place to ask questions when you want to make the science in your sci-fi games more realisitic? I am a physicist by education myself, so I often can make the physics at least SOUND realistic, but I am mostly lost when it comes to say biology or even engineering. I don't want my game to read like a research paper, but I love when games like Xenosaga at least try to make things sound plausible.

 

[stan423321]

I did not try this, but Stack Overflow has a bunch of sister sites handling all sorts of topics and I would probably start there.

 

[HellBlazer]

I have an odd question, but does anyone know of a good place to ask questions when you want to make the science in your sci-fi games more realisitic? I am a physicist by education myself, so I often can make the physics at least SOUND realistic, but I am mostly lost when it comes to say biology or even engineering. I don't want my game to read like a research paper, but I love when games like Xenosaga at least try to make things sound plausible.

I did not try this, but Stack Overflow has a bunch of sister sites handling all sorts of topics and I would probably start there.

They actually have a sub-site dedicated to world-building, for just this purpose: https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/

 

[Fou-Lu]

That's an amazing resource! Thank you so much.

 

[Aki-at]

Hello all! I've been meaning to post more often in these threads but I've scarcely been updating my game that I'd have nothing to show, but I've been trying to set time aside the last few days and revamping one of the stages I made a long time ago, left is new with right being old.

Plenty of issues in the original, not least I'm trying to stick with colours available on the Mega Drive/Genesis and I cheated with some in the older version but also I wasn't keeping to a 32 x 32 tileset, figured as I'd have to redo parts of it I might as will scrap it and start from the beginning. Now the cubes are properly drawn instead of me cheating that too. For the most part I'm actually really happy, now to decide if I want to add some moss since this is a ruin level...

 

[Noogy]

Have been working on my ability to digitally draw and paint recently; I've always struggled with my inability to make art for my projects. Don't have anywhere near the expendable cash I need to get someone to do it for me and pixel art has always worn me out quite quickly, so here I am! Finally starting to get to the point where I am comfortable enough with the tablet to pump out semi-usable assets.



Now that I'm here, I must admit that I'm confused as hell on how to actually build scenes out of assets like these. I've been using tiles for the longest time and don't really get how to build individual assets that can fit together in a scene on the same plane. Anyone know of tutorials or write-ups on the subject, or have their own examples?

This is exactly how I built my maps. I learned how to do it via a book by James Silva (Dishwasher/Salt & Sanctuary). I briefly talk about it in my post-mortem: https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/180520/postmortem_humble_hearts_dust_.php

Here's my editor in action, which was based on his work. I don't know what you are using, but I did this in XNA, and finding similar ways in Unity:

 

[Kyuur]

Hello all! I've been meaning to post more often in these threads but I've scarcely been updating my game that I'd have nothing to show, but I've been trying to set time aside the last few days and revamping one of the stages I made a long time ago, left is new with right being old.

Plenty of issues in the original, not least I'm trying to stick with colours available on the Mega Drive/Genesis and I cheated with some in the older version but also I wasn't keeping to a 32 x 32 tileset, figured as I'd have to redo parts of it I might as will scrap it and start from the beginning. Now the cubes are properly drawn instead of me cheating that too. For the most part I'm actually really happy, now to decide if I want to add some moss since this is a ruin level...

Looks much better, nice job!

This is exactly how I built my maps. I learned how to do it via a book by James Silva (Dishwasher/Salt & Sanctuary). I briefly talk about it in my post-mortem: https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/180520/postmortem_humble_hearts_dust_.php

Here's my editor in action, which was based on his work. I don't know what you are using, but I did this in XNA, and finding similar ways in Unity:

Awesome, thanks for this! I am using Unity, so the editor portion should come fairly easy I hope (my controller is already being built to handle arbitrary colliders). The art process is what had me kind of stumped because I was thinking that I should be painting reusable pieces and then assembling the whole from them (ala tiles). Your process, starting from a full sketch and segmenting it, makes more sense. I'll have to get faster at painting to battle how labour intensive it is I guess!

 

[Bollocks]

Thinking of a Serious Sam like shooter where levels and enemies are procedurally generated from a website.

Levels are based on the DOM(1 HTMLElement = 1 Room, including any pictures on the website), enemies/stats are taken from the JavaScript(e.g. click event listener = 1 super enemy, enemy health based on LOC or number of expressions in a function, etc), color scheme based on the websites colors, health/gun pickups based on the text content.

Will be hilariously unbalanced but that is part of the appeal why I seriously want to do it

 

[missile]

^ Cool idea!

 

[DemonNite]

Thinking of a Serious Sam like shooter where levels and enemies are procedurally generated from a website.

Levels are based on the DOM(1 HTMLElement = 1 Room, including any pictures on the website), enemies/stats are taken from the JavaScript(e.g. click event listener = 1 super enemy, enemy health based on LOC or number of expressions in a function, etc), color scheme based on the websites colors, health/gun pickups based on the text content.

Will be hilariously unbalanced but that is part of the appeal why I seriously want to do it

use the favicon as the boss

 

[sinxtanx]

Thinking of a Serious Sam like shooter where levels and enemies are procedurally generated from a website.

Levels are based on the DOM(1 HTMLElement = 1 Room, including any pictures on the website), enemies/stats are taken from the JavaScript(e.g. click event listener = 1 super enemy, enemy health based on LOC or number of expressions in a function, etc), color scheme based on the websites colors, health/gun pickups based on the text content.

Will be hilariously unbalanced but that is part of the appeal why I seriously want to do it

that sounds like an awesome challenge!
(and if you make links into teleporters...)

 

[extralite]

My first VR game called The Mighty Eye should release today on the Gear VR side of the Oculus Store. It's a puzzle game in which you collect bricks of the same color to build your tower. Controls are simple, just look at a brick to automatically select it, then find more of the same color to snatch them all at once. Looking at a brick of a different color will reset the collection attempt so basically you have to avoid other colors until one set is complete.

Near bricks obstruct far bricks and as you snatch them away the structure around you changes. There are three variations to this basic premise:

In the main mode, racking up points will yield coins that can be collected by yourself or your partner. If you don't collect the coins soon enough, crows might try to steal them.

In Wall of Text, the bricks are letter shaped and come moving towards you. You have to eliminate them in time before they can shove you off the platform.

In The Descent, the bricks are arranged as sides of rotating dice. You have to snatch them quickly or your rival will outpace you in a race to the bottom of infinity.

Trailer at youtube and more info at the official site.

 

[oxrock]

Well my goal for this week was to implement a working threat system in my game to replace the simplistic target closest enemy solution I've been using. I'm happy to say that it went MUCH smoother than I anticipated and I'm done already. Now I have to figure out what to do with the rest of the week. I'm thinking I might get started on the skills system finally. It feels so good when things just work right without a hassle 😁

 

[GroundCombo]

Thinking of a Serious Sam like shooter where levels and enemies are procedurally generated from a website.

For a gritty realistic experience, include ads and autoplaying videos that pop in your face and obstruct your aiming. Adblockers as powerups.

 

[sbkodama]

Draft of another bonus outfit.

 

[-COOLIO-]

Hey guys,

What are your thoughts on doing all of your marketing on launch day or shortly after for smaller games?

I've always read that you're supposed to do your marketing months in advance but unless you're a bigger studio or have a fan following I don't really see the logic of it. Blasting out press kits on launch day seems smarter to me because:

- Every reader of every article that you manage to get written about your game could be a potential sale if your game is already released.

- Getting articles written about your game is probably more likely if your game is this polished, brand new, novel thing that no one has ever seen before.

- Many times I read about what seem like interesting indie games, but I completely forget about them down the line because I couldn't buy them at the time and I wasn't interested enough to follow their social media.

- Putting all of your marketing efforts and dollars into a single blitz probably has a compounding return on investment since it might be seen in multiple places at once and thus appear especially important in that frame of time.

Negatives:

- People might be less likely to buy or talk about your game if they see your launch date was a month ago?

For games like undertale, hyperlight, and other substantial indie games, i do see the value in building a following as they're developed. But for $5 side projects, doing all of the marketing post launch is okay, right?

 

[Minamu]

Does Unity support vector graphics? Is that even a good idea for icons? We need to update our ability icons to be something other than a colored circle :lol

 

[Heart of Black]

Hey guys,

What are your thoughts on doing all of your marketing on launch day or shortly after for smaller games?

I've always read that you're supposed to do your marketing months in advance but unless you're a bigger studio or have a fan following I don't really see the logic of it. Blasting out press kits on launch day seems smarter to me because:

- Every reader of every article that you manage to get written about your game could be a potential sale if your game is already released.

- Getting articles written about your game is probably more likely if your game is this polished, brand new, novel thing that no one has ever seen before.

- Many times I read about what seem like interesting indie games, but I completely forget about them down the line because I couldn't buy them at the time and I wasn't interested enough to follow their social media.

- Putting all of your marketing efforts and dollars into a single blitz probably has a compounding return on investment since it might be seen in multiple places at once and thus appear especially important in that frame of time.

Negatives:

- People might be less likely to buy or talk about your game if they see your launch date was a month ago?

For games like undertale, hyperlight, and other substantial indie games, i do see the value in building a following as they're developed. But for $5 side projects, doing all of the marketing post launch is okay, right?

Press do not like writing about games when they are out, which.. is kinda weird. Your press likelihood drops by a ton once you are released.

 

[LordRaptor]

Does Unity support vector graphics? Is that even a good idea for icons? We need to update our ability icons to be something other than a colored circle :lol

not natively, but you can make a custom font out of svgs, which can then be handled as part of the UI system as a Text component - if you use Textmesh Pro (now free) on an iconfont you have a lot of control over it.

 

[Minamu]

not natively, but you can make a custom font out of svgs, which can then be handled as part of the UI system as a Text component - if you use Textmesh Pro (now free) on an iconfont you have a lot of control over it.

Huh, cool. Are there any specific guides out there on how to do this? My programmer might delve into Illustrator soon to get some icons going. I saw something called a SVG Importer plugin as well (but for Unity 4.6). So if I understand you correctly, you're saying to make our icons part of a custom font, as if they're letters/wing dings, and add the icons that way?

 

[SeanNoonan]

Ludum Dare results are in!

I came 60th (out of ~1000) - my strongest result so far for a Ludum Dare.

I definitely learned a tonne from my experience. For those interested, I wrote a little about it here: http://noonan.design/devlogs/ludum-dare-39-time-lapse-oil-patrol/

How did everyone else do?

 

[Chris Murphy]

Been working on a lot of stuff that I'm not ready to show but I'd thought I'd share some of the exploration of the mining complex.

 

[-COOLIO-]

Press do not like writing about games when they are out, which.. is kinda weird. Your press likelihood drops by a ton once you are released.

Hmmm, that's unfortunate. Oh well, thems the breaks.

 

[Jarekx]

Ahhh programmer art

I decided to start messing around with game maker 2 after the idea for my current project popped in my head. It's a (sort of) turn-based card game. I say sort of because you don't really have 'turns' as each action from the card relies on a charge time or an action length for defensive action. So you and the opponent can attack at the same time, block or parry, interrupt actions and so forth.

It's my take at a 'turn-based' souslike.

I may center the hud elements with the enemy's above them and the players below so you can time actions a little easier. I'm not sure. It's all really early but i'm having fun with it.

 

[LordRaptor]

Huh, cool. Are there any specific guides out there on how to do this? My programmer might delve into Illustrator soon to get some icons going. I saw something called a SVG Importer plugin as well (but for Unity 4.6). So if I understand you correctly, you're saying to make our icons part of a custom font, as if they're letters/wing dings, and add the icons that way?

yeah, exactly the way fontawesome works. Its just a font that has icons instead of regular letters/numerals

 

[conceptequals]

Just finished converting my remaining UnityScript files to C# after hearing that Unity are going to deprecate UnityScript

https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/08/11/unityscripts-long-ride-off-into-the-sunset/

There's a converter available here, it's currently in beta

https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/unityscript-2-csharp-conversion-tool.487753/

 

[Minamu]

yeah, exactly the way fontawesome works. Its just a font that has icons instead of regular letters/numerals

This sounds hacky af. I love it!

 

[Dynamite Shikoku]

Ludum Dare results are in!

I came 60th (out of ~1000) - my strongest result so far for a Ludum Dare.

I definitely learned a tonne from my experience. For those interested, I wrote a little about it here: http://noonan.design/devlogs/ludum-dare-39-time-lapse-oil-patrol/

How did everyone else do?

Well done

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

I've spent a few hours dicking around with Unreal Engine 4 for a 2d pixel-art sidescroller. It seems ok so far, but I'm at like a sub-sub-sub-basic level of competence, and going through a few tutorials.

How does UE4 rate for appropriateness to that kind of game?

 

[Tain]

I've spent a few hours dicking around with Unreal Engine 4 for a 2d pixel-art sidescroller. It seems ok so far, but I'm at like a sub-sub-sub-basic level of competence, and going through a few tutorials.

How does UE4 rate for appropriateness to that kind of game?

I'd probably suggest GameMaker to someone asking what engine to look at for a pixel art side scroller, but if you've never really done coding or scripting and you find Blueprint to be accessible (it's a great place to start imo), by all means keep at it. It's obviously plenty capable for that sort of game and probably what I'd use at this point (especially if I weren't going for a low-res game).

 

[Blizzard]

Ludum Dare results are in!

I came 60th (out of ~1000) - my strongest result so far for a Ludum Dare.

I definitely learned a tonne from my experience. For those interested, I wrote a little about it here: http://noonan.design/devlogs/ludum-dare-39-time-lapse-oil-patrol/

How did everyone else do?

Is 1000 higher or lower than usual? I definitely bailed out because I hated the theme so much.

 

[fresquito]

Been working on a lot of stuff that I'm not ready to show but I'd thought I'd share some of the exploration of the mining complex.

I have this strange feeling that air movement is faster than ground movement. Looks odd. Air movement should probably be a tad slower than air movement to make it look more natural.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

I'd probably suggest GameMaker to someone asking what engine to look at for a pixel art side scroller, but if you've never really done coding or scripting and you find Blueprint to be accessible (it's a great place to start imo), by all means keep at it. It's obviously plenty capable for that sort of game and probably what I'd use at this point (especially if I weren't going for a low-res game).

CompSci was my major and my job involves a moderate amount of JS and PHP so I'm comfortable with having to code. The blueprint system does seem fairly straight forward though. How powerful is it, exactly?

 

[CertifiedFP]

Some UI progress, icons for almost every item finally done styled ala Metal Gear 2 - Hopefully I'll have some more work to show from my end of things rather than my art team, but I've been having a bit of a creative block lately and went on a bit of a hiatus.

 

[LordRaptor]

I came 60th (out of ~1000) - my strongest result so far for a Ludum Dare.

How did everyone else do?

I maintain strong bellcurve mediocrity at 444th overall, and despite actually being pretty pleased with my graphics people skipped rating me on that - my best score was in theme in the low 200s which I think is the best I've ever done

This sounds hacky af. I love it!

An alternative would be that IIRC you can import SVGs into Blender and it will autoconvert them into meshes, so if you have the poly budget to handle that, that would also be a highly scalable alternative to native SVG support

I've spent a few hours dicking around with Unreal Engine 4 for a 2d pixel-art sidescroller. It seems ok so far, but I'm at like a sub-sub-sub-basic level of competence, and going through a few tutorials.

How does UE4 rate for appropriateness to that kind of game?

Honestly, your best bet is to give a bunch of engines a try and see which clicks with you, and 2D sidescrollers are a common enough indie learning template that you should be able to find a tutorial for making one for any of the engines out there to go through and see if you can envisage using that engine beyond following the tutorial / expanding what you have made.

 

[The Friendly Monster]

Does Unity support vector graphics? Is that even a good idea for icons? We need to update our ability icons to be something other than a colored circle :lol

I would suggest another alternative if you like working in vectors. Unity can import Photoshop .psd files, so if you either work in vectors in Photoshop, or place a linked .ai/smart object in a .psd you can import it at whatever scale you like.

True vectors embedded into a font file will have a smaller storage footprint, but there are a bunch of downsides. You have to remember that a texture will be created in memory at some point along the way, and that is not a free process, particularly on mobile. You will also have extremely limited options when it comes to colours and gradients if you use a font file.

 

[wwm0nkey]

I keep on trying, but I really hate BluePrints in UE4

C# plugin is coming along but maybe I should just learn C++?

 

[Bollocks]

use the favicon as the boss

haha good idea!
somehow the favicon flew past me.
I just couldn't come up with a reason why you'd be there, defeating the favicon seems the perfect reason. before, the overall reason I could come up with was to defeat javascript

Idk how to layout the levels
a)take DOM elements as single rooms and connect them via pathfinding
b)take the website as is and make a 3d version, where top down view would display the website like in a browser. there would be no hallways, players have to destroy walls to get around.

b gives the player better orientation and I like that you have to break down walls to move around, more sense of exploration, kinda minecrafty. if you encounter an enemy that is way to strong you can just go nope and make a hole in another wall and see what's there. but idk how a 3d version of a 2d page should look like, all the graphics on the floor sounds shit. also technically, you would have one big rectangle, the body element at least where you could see from one end to the other.

a was my initial idea but not sure I like it anymore, think it's important to give the player some orientation and a straight 2d to 3d conversion is a better fit.

 

[Noogy]

Been working on a lot of stuff that I'm not ready to show but I'd thought I'd share some of the exploration of the mining complex.

Technically cool, I'd be careful about how close the camera gets to the culled walls. There are moments where nearly 20% of your screen is being blocked by a wall cross-section. You might pull those in, or look at adjusting the FOV.

 

[oxrock]

I keep on trying, but I really hate BluePrints in UE4

C# plugin is coming along but maybe I should just learn C++?

if you know C# making the jump to C++ really isn't that bad. Learn the standard library then just keep coding it for a bit until it feels natural. I did the same thing not that long ago. I was quite surprised how quick it came to me.

 

[Tain]

CompSci was my major and my job involves a moderate amount of JS and PHP so I'm comfortable with having to code. The blueprint system does seem fairly straight forward though. How powerful is it, exactly?

It comes at a slight performance cost compared to C++, but it's powerful enough for the vast majority of game logic. You may occasionally see some small functionality that isn't exposed to BP, but pretty much everything I've done in Horizon Vanguard has started as BP (enemies, core mechanics, "stage controllers", etc) with some of it turning into C++ later for the sake of optimization. BP calls also reflect the C++ API in a very obvious way, and it's very easy to reparent a BP class to a C++ class or recreate a given BP snippet in C++ if needed, so you're never locked in.

 

[wwm0nkey]

if you know C# making the jump to C++ really isn't that bad. Learn the standard library then just keep coding it for a bit until it feels natural. I did the same thing not that long ago. I was quite surprised how quick it came to me.

But I don't wanna! (Will probably try this week lol)

 

[DD]

This probably is the best place to ask, so... Guys, is there a 3D art thread here on gaf? I tried searching, but searching "3D" on a videogame forum isn't the smartest idea.

 

[andymcc]

Perhaps someone here can clarify this for me: we are cutting a teaser for our kickstarter with ios being one of the main platforms. Do we need permission from Apple to use the standard App Store button?

 

[tamaster92]

So I mentioned getting a rift and being enamored with VR...

Spent a day getting VR working (at a basic level) with a turn based system i previously used.

Idea being it's like a board game come to life

I was hoping to do pick and move the pieces manually but found that would be very difficult due to accuracy and having to lean over things.

Developing in VR is like learning a whole new concept though, things like camera height, rotations, movements etc let alone different rendering techniques

 

[Pixels]

Turtur needs to back off omg

 

[Dynamite Shikoku]

Perhaps someone here can clarify this for me: we are cutting a teaser for our kickstarter with ios being one of the main platforms. Do we need permission from Apple to use the standard App Store button?

You can check the App Store marketing guidelines. But i doubt they would care anyway if that's what you're releasing it on

 

[Minamu]

An alternative would be that IIRC you can import SVGs into Blender and it will autoconvert them into meshes, so if you have the poly budget to handle that, that would also be a highly scalable alternative to native SVG support

I would suggest another alternative if you like working in vectors. Unity can import Photoshop .psd files, so if you either work in vectors in Photoshop, or place a linked .ai/smart object in a .psd you can import it at whatever scale you like.

True vectors embedded into a font file will have a smaller storage footprint, but there are a bunch of downsides. You have to remember that a texture will be created in memory at some point along the way, and that is not a free process, particularly on mobile. You will also have extremely limited options when it comes to colours and gradients if you use a font file.

Thanks for the suggestions and comments

We haven't decided on an approach yet but tonight I've been diving into the current code we use. Basically we have a standard Unity knob image that we splice in realtime as a cooldown timer, and while its base color is white, we dynamically set it to correspond to the player's material.color. What a mess that code is :lol

I've been trying for hours to get the game to set the image's sprite to something else depending on what color it finds and the player's state (alive or dead basically). Seems like I finally got all but 2 classes working. Problem 1 arose when I realized that two classes' material.color is the same but still need different sprites. Problem 2 was that I was looking for Color.Green, while my character wasn't pure green. Problem 3 was the fact that while one class' appearance is pure yellow, Unity's Color.Yellow ISN'T :O One would be forgiven to assume that all such default values are set to the most saturated value possible, but no, Color.Yellow is set to a "nice to look at" number (it literally says so in Visual Studio when you hover over the code), "1, .92, .016" of all numbers, whatever that means in RGB :lol

I've spent more than 4 hours on this tonight xD All I'd need is a player class name, instead of going by color. Seems to me like the actual png icon could also determine its own color just as fine.

 

[Master Milk]

This probably is the best place to ask, so... Guys, is there a 3D art thread here on gaf? I tried searching, but searching "3D" on a videogame forum isn't the smartest idea.

Art Self Study |OT| Putting the Fun in Art Fundamentals

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