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Indie Game Development Thread 3: Indie Jones and the Template of Doom
- Thread starter Makai
- Start date
Another meeting with part of the team, another slew of changes and upgrades we'll be making to our 3D assets. I've got to say it's been pretty cool to see how quickly the two artists in our team have managed to transition from working strictly on 2D art to modelling and animated in 3D, and it looks like the low-poly aesthetic's actually helping a fair bit, since it manages to look good enough even though I, a programmer, am often giving them tips on topology, animating, UVs and so on. I'm glad that it looks like my brief foray into 3D modelling has finally paid off, since I know the basics but lack the artistic skill to actually model stuff.
We're close to having something worth showing (ie: no more Unity-chans running around and firing spheres at other larger spheres), so hopefully we'll be able to share some screenshots on this thread soon(ish).
Damn, that looks like quite a piece of work! The storyboards look exactly like the professional ones I've got in my Madoka artbooks.
Those are some pretty nice sprites and animations! Kind of reminds me of Paper Mario.
Still, why does the bear's wind-up key disappear during its walking back animations? The idle apparently has it in place, even.
We're close to having something worth showing (ie: no more Unity-chans running around and firing spheres at other larger spheres), so hopefully we'll be able to share some screenshots on this thread soon(ish).
Here's a few shots from the theme-song Anime of Light Fairytale we've been working on recently:
Cut
Any thoughts?
Damn, that looks like quite a piece of work! The storyboards look exactly like the professional ones I've got in my Madoka artbooks.
I'm finally able to put our original art assets into the game and it feels good! I'm looking forward to sharing more with you guys soon, too. There should be some substantial progress within the next couple of weeks!
Those are some pretty nice sprites and animations! Kind of reminds me of Paper Mario.
Still, why does the bear's wind-up key disappear during its walking back animations? The idle apparently has it in place, even.
Fresh look at Crabby Cove!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JKquqS1TIQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JKquqS1TIQ
I made a small game as a student project using Unity. What is the best method of putting this online so that people can play it. I'm not looking to make any money off of it. I just want an easy way for people to access it. I'm looking to make it accessible on the pc platform.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Looks better each time. I though about the hp bar once more. What aboutI ended up spending today playing catch-up on my game instead of taking some time off. I'm happy with the progress so I won't whine about it at least, I'll just begrudge the heck out of everything!
The main priority today was finally getting mana functionality into my game. So now party members actually have mana, max mana is based on stats, skills use mana, mana potions work and are automatically used when appropriate, etc. Mana as well as health is now also property integrated into the UI.
Earlier in the week I worked on the ability to toggle your party's 3d healthbars on/off. It's something that's been brought up here a few times as unwanted clutter so now there's a checkbox in the escape menu to set it to your personal preference. I also updated the visuals on the hunter's multi-shot ability. He now shoots blue flaming arrows with that ability as opposed to the default ones.
...
making them start to glow (heated, halo, etc.) or something when running low?
Good to have you back!
Thanks for the compliments! The assets are still being worked on, hence the inconsistencies in the wind-up key. It'll always be there when it's completed.
Finished my small bowling game last night. I'm a bit disappointed in the course being incomplete so the game gets stuck in an infinite tidy loop after the last frame. Not sure if I'll ever get it completely done, I was gonna create a more elaborate environment but not sure if that'll happen around an unfinished gameplay loop :/
The new zombie survival shooter sounds intriguing though!
The new zombie survival shooter sounds intriguing though!
bumpkin
Member
I don't know what your game is about, but color me interested. The sprites and animations look great!I'm finally able to put our original art assets into the game and it feels good! I'm looking forward to sharing more with you guys soon, too. There should be some substantial progress within the next couple of weeks!
oxrock
Gravity is a myth, the Earth SUCKS!
I'm finally able to put our original art assets into the game and it feels good! I'm looking forward to sharing more with you guys soon, too. There should be some substantial progress within the next couple of weeks!
Why are they walking on fence panels? Also, are they playing "the ground is lava" game? That might explain the fences anyway. Anyhow, looks cute. I look forward to seeing more.
I still don't know whether NavMeshAgents are a boon or a curse. On one hand, pathfinding, but on the other, such pathfinding doesn't let you use waypoints, turns corners like it was a racing AI rather than a character, and pretty much disregards turning speeds (like, setting a low angular velocity doesn't make the agent take wider turns, but rather makes it lerp its forward orientation to where it's going more slowly, which often leads to awful-looking results)...
For now, I'll probably be removing them from playable characters, and leave them only for AI entities that need them, since I keep running into issues such as suicide-bombing enemies never colliding with the player since their agent stops before hitting the target (had to make the agent's radius smaller and the damaging collider larger to fix that, and even then it's just a band-aid fix at best).
For now, I'll probably be removing them from playable characters, and leave them only for AI entities that need them, since I keep running into issues such as suicide-bombing enemies never colliding with the player since their agent stops before hitting the target (had to make the agent's radius smaller and the damaging collider larger to fix that, and even then it's just a band-aid fix at best).
oxrock
Gravity is a myth, the Earth SUCKS!
Have you tried setting their stopping distance to 0? I've never had any issues like you're describing. Also for waypoints, just setup your own system to feed destinations to the agent.
JeffG
Member
Do you have a Nav Mesh Obstacle on your player?
Players have a NavMeshAgent of itheir own with the same radius as their capsule collider and the enemy agent's stopping distance was set to 0, and yet they would more often than not just sit right in front of the player without a collision ocurring.
Continously waiting for the agent to get to sub-waypoints before feeding them the next one is pretty much a waste of update checks IMO, and would be much better if the agent system itself had a queue of waypoints or an event system you could subscribe to, at the very least. Maybe it's just that I still haven't found satisfactory speed/acceleration/angular speed settings, but from what I've seen so far agents prefer straight lines, which often results in pretty stiff and unnatural paths.
The tricky thing about the game is that exploration works similar to Mario & Luigi in the sense that it exists on a 2D plane but I give an illusion of the existence of a Z axis. Those "grates" are visual representations of the "Ground Level". When the objects "Jump", their Z elevation rises. Depending on their Z elevation it allows them to "land" on other elevations if they come in contact with them, changing their "height". When the objects come in contact with that always existing ground level panel, they are defined at being at"height" 0.
Same thing goes for that Green Cone shape. That's just the visual representation of what Beat Bear can interact with. In this case, when the bird is in his cone, the speech bubble pops up over her head, signaling that he can talk to her.
I could have hid all that stuff, but I chose not to
The ground won't be an orange void for long. The artist is busy finalizing the environment art for the first area and putting some serious thought and time into it so that not only does it look great but it's future proof as well. I'm hoping that by next weekend we'll have something to show on that front. If you're interested you can follow us on twitter @filbertgames
Gingerbread Fetus
Neo Member
So we just started our senior project, in a game design program. Probably going to be here a lot from now on.
oxrock
Gravity is a myth, the Earth SUCKS!
agents avoid other agents by relying on their agent radius telling them what space is currently occupied. An agent simply tries to avoid occupying the same space as another agent. So if you're basing a mechanic on physical contact between two you're going to run into issues. I'm assuming the bomber type gameobject gets really close, may as well be touching but never actually triggers a collision event. You already found a workaround that works it seems, I personally just avoid that hassle and just run a distance check to see if something is close enough to warrant triggering an effect. You could just as easily just add a trigger collider to the bomber slightly larger than his radius and activate via onTriggerEnter.
As far as agents walking in straight lines, that's pretty much what I would expect with a efficient AI path finding system. Going from point A to point B in a straight line is the quickest approach. You'd need your own home-brew solution if you're wanting to avoid that.
When it comes "wasting update checks" with a waypoint system, i'm not really following your logic. If the navmesh agent worked on a waypoint system and allowed interaction of any kind, it would need to keep track of that waypoint system and update accordingly just the same as if you created the solution yourself. It would have a similar performance hit either way. Maybe I'm not understanding what exactly you mean by waypoints. I'm assuming you're talking about going from point A to point D but making pitstops at points B and C along the way.
@K Monkey @Blizzard the snapshots may not be convincing, you can take a look at the gifs in our kickstarter page, or you can even try our game on steam or download it for free.
Steam demo link
Weve been working our butts off for this Kickstarter campaign. In the Kickstarter page you can find more detailed information about this game - My Time at Portia (with lots of gifs and screenshots)
My Time at Portia Kickstarter!
We are aiming for a goal of $100,000 over the course of 30 days. Well post our stretch goals once we have reached the goal (Xbox and Switch versions, anyone?).
Please support us in any way you can, spread the word anywhere and everywhere, be it on Reddit, gaming boards, news media, Twitter, Facebook, whatever, we need all the help we can get! We want to make this a very good life-sim RPG adventure game that players will remember for years to come, and your support will go a long way in insuring that.
Thanks everyone!
Steam demo link
Weve been working our butts off for this Kickstarter campaign. In the Kickstarter page you can find more detailed information about this game - My Time at Portia (with lots of gifs and screenshots)
My Time at Portia Kickstarter!
We are aiming for a goal of $100,000 over the course of 30 days. Well post our stretch goals once we have reached the goal (Xbox and Switch versions, anyone?).
Please support us in any way you can, spread the word anywhere and everywhere, be it on Reddit, gaming boards, news media, Twitter, Facebook, whatever, we need all the help we can get! We want to make this a very good life-sim RPG adventure game that players will remember for years to come, and your support will go a long way in insuring that.
Thanks everyone!
FullMetaltech
Member
That's some fantastic stuff you have there. Love the Dark Could concept and mix of other games in it. Hope a publisher see this and gets to help you guys out if you don't make the goals.@K Monkey @Blizzard the snapshots may not be convincing, you can take a look at the gifs in our kickstarter page, or you can even try our game on steam or download it for free.
Steam demo link
We've been working our butts off for this Kickstarter campaign. In the Kickstarter page you can find more detailed information about this game - My Time at Portia (with lots of gifs and screenshots)
My Time at Portia Kickstarter!
We are aiming for a goal of $100,000 over the course of 30 days. We'll post our stretch goals once we have reached the goal (Xbox and Switch versions, anyone?).
Please support us in any way you can, spread the word anywhere and everywhere, be it on Reddit, gaming boards, news media, Twitter, Facebook, whatever, we need all the help we can get! We want to make this a very good life-sim RPG adventure game that players will remember for years to come, and your support will go a long way in insuring that.
Thanks everyone!
super-heated plasma
Member
I have a game idea I really want made and am looking for a company who can produce it for me. I'm not any good at programming, and I don't have the time to learn. I am an artist but have no real experience in game art and frankly don't have time to do all the art required either. I do however have a lot of the game design doc finished, and some levels designed. I have a potential investor lined up as well. Does anyone know of any good game development companies I can look to hire?
Sorry but this approach never works. Make it yourself or with friends, or it'll likely never see the light of day. Game companies don't work like you think.
oxrock
Gravity is a myth, the Earth SUCKS!
There are companies that create games via paid contracts as opposed to only working on in-house ideas. If he has a legit investor but not the requisite time or skills then this would be a valid way to go. A lot depends on the scope of the game and money available to invest. It would probably be cheaper to manage the project personally and hire contractors for individual jobs, but that's a drain on time and energy as well.
I make my own stuff so I don't have any personal experience to lend you as far as naming particular companies to help build your game. I can tell you that finding contractors to do specific jobs is pretty easy to do @ places like freelancer.com. Heck, you could probably contract out the whole job there if you wanted.
On a final note, everyone has their own supposedly awesome idea for a game. Games take a whole lot more than an idea to get made, so be prepared to pay for all that extra work. Good luck.
super-heated plasma
Member
I originally was supposed to make it with some friends and a couple people from neogaf actually, but no one knew Unity and they started out learning, but wasn't willing to put the time in, so now I'm left with no other option really but to seek outside help. I have the game design doc almost complete, its just a matter of taking that and turning it into an actual game now.
I would say that "just a matter of taking that and turning it into an actual game" is 97% or more of the challenge in making a game.
Guess I need to post this again since there are some people who seem to have already forgotten after 2 page. Wow, how the mind slips!
"Allegedly"
Opening admitting to sexually assaulting someone(then banning anyone who called him out for it)
Posting revenge porn with their real full names then another admin(a now jailed pedophile) printed the photos and jacked off over them and sent it to the boyfriend.
You're right, how can we even know if he's guilty or not? HMMMM
Also:
WASD is common, or maybe the arrow keys, but -please- include keybinding support so people with other preferences or disabilities can adapt.
Thanks for the reply. I'll write a follow-up on the NavMeshAgent topic soon.
Arrow keys if your game is played entirely on keyboard, or WASD for keyboard plus mouse set-ups. Be careful that, AFAIK, French keyboards have a slightly different key layout (AZERTY instead of QWERTY), so you might want to offer that as a control scheme variation if you aren't going to allow custom key bindings.
Arrow keys if your game is played entirely on keyboard, or WASD for keyboard plus mouse set-ups. Be careful that, AFAIK, French keyboards have a slightly different key layout (AZERTY instead of QWERTY), so you might want to offer that as a control scheme variation if you aren't going to allow custom key bindings.
Dynamite Shikoku
Congratulations, you really deserve it!
Give me all your funding and 5 years and I'll deliver something that is kinda ok
super-heated plasma
Member
How could I possibly turn down that offer?
Is it? a design document is good for sharing your vision but cannot predict the challenges your project will face so its not that simple as taking a document and start working. Besides do you have the assets ready?
I'm not a super experienced dev but I have a Unity game in Steam (and other close to launch) and let me tell you: gamedev is very iterative, you can end with something very different than what you had in mind at the beginning.
This. You're pretty unlikely to find people who're already working in the industry and would be willing to partner up to make your game, so your best bet is to either seek out freelancers to handle the different aspects of your game or, if you happen to have more money, just look for a studio that can handle most of the development by itself.
timetokill
Banned
I'm not saying this to be mean, but because it's a hard lesson to finally learn. Ideas are worthless. Execution is everything.
Love those one-liners of yours! xD
@super-heated plasma: Depending on your funding, I may perhaps be interested
as long as the there is coding (preferably C/C++), math, and graphics.
Weltall Zero
Member
Ideas are not like fine china, ideas are like paper cups
they are cheap to manufacture, and when one has holes in it, go get another one.
Jesse N. Schell, video game designer.
oxrock
Gravity is a myth, the Earth SUCKS!
I was thinking about having them color lerp from green to red. It also wouldn't be hard to increase emission strength for a short period after taking damage. The only hurtle to this is figuring out material instancing in Unity. I doubt it'll be difficult, I just haven't looked into it at all yet.
electroflame
Member
Depends on the game, I think. WebGL performance leaves a lot to be desired depending on what you're doing.
Worst-case scenario you can provide both. The browser version could be a quick way to check if you want to download and install the rest of the game (basically a demo). Might help reduce friction and get more people to try it.
I know I'm late, but that looks great! Following your project has been very inspiring. With the early access release coming up, I'll be sure to be playing soon myself. Best of luck!
super-heated plasma
Member
I'm getting a lot of interest from Freelancer and from Upwork. A mix of full studio and separate artists and coders. Not sure which route I want to go. Most are based overseas, which I assume would happen, but I was hoping to have someone closer. Our hope is my friend and I can get out some games, market them properly, and then open a studio here and bring everything in house.
oxrock
Gravity is a myth, the Earth SUCKS!
Well, you could add whatever stipulations to your posting as you'd like honestly. There are certainly worse things than wanting your contractors to be in your same country. A few people in this thread might have interest as well apparently. You could post particulars about what it is you want done and maybe you'd get some bites. This is largely a US populated forum after all.
Anyone got any good resources for making low poly models with good topology? Our team has run into a couple issues trying to animate our first character that might be due to the modeller being new to the craft, so she might've made the characters' topology too hard to animate without breaking stuff, or perhaps it's just that our animator, who's also migrating from 2D to 3D, might not be knowledgeable enough about working on low-poly stuff.
I know the basics of animating with bones through parenting and skinning, but I see he's using NURBS and BlendShapes, so I can't really give him any advice regarding what he should try doing to make animating easier for him. Also, aren't those elements better fit for non-game animations?
I know the basics of animating with bones through parenting and skinning, but I see he's using NURBS and BlendShapes, so I can't really give him any advice regarding what he should try doing to make animating easier for him. Also, aren't those elements better fit for non-game animations?
I've always found taking a look at some of the DS, N64, PS1 etc models over on https://www.models-resource.com/ to be helpful in this regard.
Additionally, when it comes to setting up joints for low poly characters, this may be of some help:
Non-games is from where they came from (car manufacturing). Well, NURBS are a
bit hard to control, which is why they never really took off outside of defining
some nice shapes. Doing character animation by animating the control points is
harder than doing it the traditional way esp. when you want to have the NURB
surface at a given location and orientation. Anyhow, they are pretty cool when
you need to algorithmically animate shapes more in a freeform way. Animating
the control points then is dead easy. But for character animation, I'm not
convinced right out of the box. But given you have tools at hand which allow
you to patch shapes together in all ways possible, I can see the advantage
wanting to use such a system, for, the more different patches one can use, the
better can the topology be controlled.
I followed some related ideas using NURBS for building certain tunnel sections
for my game. The idea was/is to patch multiple control point/surfaces of
different patches together (like Coons etc.) in a smooth way, such that you
may run over a Coons patch and then into a NURB section, all animated.
Edit:
Hey JulianImp,
have you made some progress with your Arduino 101 from last year?
Dynamite Shikoku
Congratulations, you really deserve it!
i made a snail
i made a snail
Her name is Snailzor McSlurrpykins.