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Indie Game Development Thread 3: Indie Jones and the Template of Doom

jahasaja

Member


I finally released Beastmancer on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/562250/Beastmancer/

I'll probably make a postmortem soon. For now I can only say that RPG's are no joke! don't get cocky like me just because you already had a published game!

I'm tired but I still need to keep posting stuff and testing the game (I attracted very few testers this time).

The Animations looks great! I really like the weight of the combat.
 

oxrock

Gravity is a myth, the Earth SUCKS!


I finally released Beastmancer on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/562250/Beastmancer/

I'll probably make a postmortem soon. For now I can only say that RPG's are no joke! don't get cocky like me just because you already had a published game!

I'm tired but I still need to keep posting stuff and testing the game (I attracted very few testers this time).

looks neat, what's it play like? Is it kind of like a more mature pokemon type game or maybe more like monster rancher or what? At anyrate, it looks nice. Hopefully you get some glowing reviews and it sells well.
 

Lautaro

Member
looks neat, what's it play like? Is it kind of like a more mature pokemon type game or maybe more like monster rancher or what? At anyrate, it looks nice. Hopefully you get some glowing reviews and it sells well.

Thanks. The combat is inspired by Heroes of Might & Magic (turn based in a grid). I don't know Monster Rancher but it does have a few similar features to Pokemon like capturing monsters using an item when they are weakened.
 

oxrock

Gravity is a myth, the Earth SUCKS!
Thanks. The combat is inspired by Heroes of Might & Magic (turn based in a grid). I don't know Monster Rancher but it does have a few similar features to Pokemon like capturing monsters using an item when they are weakened.

In monster rancher you're a monster breeder/trainer and you fight your monsters in tournaments. You can make improvements to your training ranch, breed 2 champion monsters to create uber monsters, etc. I loved it on PS1. Been looking for a more modern version forever.
 

RevenantKioku

PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS oh god i am drowning in them
I had a day of absolutely nothing to do so I challenged myself to make a game in one day.
Okay, it took longer because of Apple's approval process and me having a little mistake to fix, but hey, I did actually make it in a day.

It's an iOS game called ADITL. Pronounce it however you'd like.

It's a free to play text adventure based on my recent feelings and thoughts.

Hope you enjoy it.
 
What about your stuff, anything worth showing, yet?

Might have already posted, but making progress writing custom memory arenas and other small things that don't show well. Progress was limited due to a bike race with my father (training, actual, and recovery (read: attempting to never sit ever again))
 

missile

Member
I had a day of absolutely nothing to do so I challenged myself to make a game in one day.
Okay, it took longer because of Apple's approval process and me having a little mistake to fix, but hey, I did actually make it in a day.

It's an iOS game called ADITL. Pronounce it however you'd like.

It's a free to play text adventure based on my recent feelings and thoughts.

Hope you enjoy it.
I have this idea of writing a game in π days.
But sounds like an irrational idea to me, still.


Might have already posted, but making progress writing custom memory arenas and other small things that don't show well. Progress was limited due to a bike race with my father (training, actual, and recovery (read: attempting to never sit ever again))
Every bit counts!
Fair enough. ;)
 
The problem with retro graphics these days is that the shading resolution is
much higher than the texture resolution. So you have all these fine lowres
textures but with the shades (stemming from the illumination) being hires,
that is to say you get different shades across a texel. That's never going to
work.

Roughly speaking, the shading needs to be quantized artificially making it
appear of lower resolution, i.e making it the resolution of the texture. How?
Well, if you think about it, given phong shading, you get an interpolated
normal for each pixel (per-pixel lighting), which is fine, but way too good,
because a texel of your lowres texture may cover multiple pixel on the screen
and with the normal slightly changing across it due to the geometry of the
model. Hence, your texel receives multiple shades yet the texel should be flat
shaded to match up. You can achieve this if you record just one interpolated
normal for the whole texel in question. Hence, for all the pixels making up
the texel on the screen you use just one interpolated normal.

I did something like that ages ago (software rendering);

9wv165X.gif


Was sort of a test-bed for my own retro stuff I'm working on. As you can see
in the animation, the shades match the resolution of the texture quite nicely.

Yeah, the lighting solution that I've adopted is somewhat at odds with the retro look, though I don't mind it too much since I'm not aiming for total faithfulness. Plus, working within the constraints of modern hardware, in terms of lightmap resolution and so on, has lots of advantages when it comes to making levels, ie I don't have too worry to much about unwanted artifacts and the likes that would pop up if I adhered completely to the retro aesthetics. With that said I would be interested in learning how to program shaders, to do something like what you show in the gif, though I'm not sure that that would be sufficient to achieve the shading effect that you're talking about. I'm not sure Unity allows for that level of customization of the pipeline.

Hey guys!

I've been working on the UI for Light Fairytale since a few days. Here's some shots:
Any thoughts?

Personally I appreciate its being very clear, and I also like the light bloom. You can't go wrong with the Final Fantasy style, imo, though perhaps you could take advantage of the high resolution of modern displays to cram the text inside a smaller box, so that it occupies less screen estate.

I had a day of absolutely nothing to do so I challenged myself to make a game in one day.
Okay, it took longer because of Apple's approval process and me having a little mistake to fix, but hey, I did actually make it in a day.

It's an iOS game called ADITL. Pronounce it however you'd like.

It's a free to play text adventure based on my recent feelings and thoughts.

Hope you enjoy it.

I don't have an Iphone to test it out, but I applaude the spirit of it. I mean, forcing so strict a deadline on yourself it's probably the best way to get something done.
 

neko.works

Member
Old one looks better for me. But the decoration of the UI is a bit too techy with respect to the game. I would try some ornament or similar graphics for
the decoration, something which is in line with the beauty of the characters.

Something like this?

Very old prototype

This is from an old prototype, though I think that the sci-fi style UI fits the game better.

Nice. I tried a demo from your game some time ago and I liked it. The music was really cool too if I remember correctly. I like the new UI better than the old one.

Thanks for playing! I'm glad that you like the new UI better.

Personally I appreciate its being very clear, and I also like the light bloom. You can't go wrong with the Final Fantasy style, imo, though perhaps you could take advantage of the high resolution of modern displays to cram the text inside a smaller box, so that it occupies less screen estate.

I see. About the size of the UI, the game is designed to be playable on low-res devices, such as on the GPD Win or the Nintendo Switch.
 

F-Pina

Member
Hey buddy devs.
Been working for some time on the sequel to our last Steam game.
We just got the steam page up and I will try (again) to post more about the development, animation and other stuff.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/711920/

Right now what I can say is that I kept the original resolution and continued the pixel art work based on the same ground rules created for the first game. Everything is colorful with thick black outlines. Every character that you cannot interact is just some sort of "shadow", this way you don't waste time talking to every NPC. Other things I kept just as well like the way the interviews are conducted and item collection.
Also, since most of the game is spent on a train, the items are always jumping up and down, this way you can spot right away where they are and searching for them is a bit easier on the eyes.

The new things that we brought in are the challenges (mini-games). It looks like it's not that much but considering that every challenge is different it's still a lot of work. Really hope I have some time to get work shown here and ask for opinions. Specially animations since most of the artwork is almost finished.
Here are some screenshots we sent out to the press alongside the typical press release etc. Hope you guys like it :)

screenshot_01_english1.png

screenshot_02_english1.png

screenshot_04_english1.png

screenshot_05_english1.png
 

-COOLIO-

The Everyman
Hey buddy devs.
Been working for some time on the sequel to our last Steam game.
We just got the steam page up and I will try (again) to post more about the development, animation and other stuff.

lookin good my man.

fyi, there's a typo on your last pic with "length" that you may or may not have noticed.
 
We're getting really close to release, now!
Been working full time on Bomber Crew since January, and we're out in less than 2 weeks, now!

There's only 2 of us developing the game (me- mostly programming, and Dave- mostly art), so it's been quite a tiring few months...

New Trailer/Video thing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0c3geXFvK8

Trying to catch up with what all of you have been up to- always great to pop on this thread & see some cool things! :)
 

F-Pina

Member
lookin good my man.

fyi, there's a typo on your last pic with "length" that you may or may not have noticed.

Oh crap. Tks. The pics are being posted everywhere now :(
I can still change it in the game and for the Steam page but the inter-webs are now smeared with this tiny mistake.
 

missile

Member
Yeah, the lighting solution that I've adopted is somewhat at odds with the retro look, though I don't mind it too much since I'm not aiming for total faithfulness. Plus, working within the constraints of modern hardware, in terms of lightmap resolution and so on, has lots of advantages when it comes to making levels, ie I don't have too worry to much about unwanted artifacts and the likes that would pop up if I adhered completely to the retro aesthetics. With that said I would be interested in learning how to program shaders, to do something like what you show in the gif, though I'm not sure that that would be sufficient to achieve the shading effect that you're talking about. I'm not sure Unity allows for that level of customization of the pipeline. ...
The line between good retro graphics (and I'm not speaking about a faithfull
reproduction, which isn't my goal either) and between a trashy look is a fine
one. Shader programming or similar is at the heart when wanting to merge old
with new tech.


I wrote an article in my blog about one of the tricks I use to add dynamism to static pre-rendered backgrounds. Making them a little bit more dynamic helps to express the intended mood for that room better. Please check it out! English is not my first language so I hope it is easy to understand.

http://bumpytrailgames.com/2017/10/06/dynamism-static-backgrounds/

Dynamism4.gif

It's pretty hot in here isn't it?
Pretty hot! :) Nice one!


Something like this? ...
For me this looks better. I would even go one step further making the
decoration more pronounced, perhaps extending it outside out of the dialog.

... This is from an old prototype, though I think that the sci-fi style UI fits the game better. ...
Perhaps create a sci-fi-ornament style. :)


... Right now what I can say is that I kept the original resolution and continued the pixel art work based on the same ground rules created for the first game. Everything is colorful with thick black outlines. Every character that you cannot interact is just some sort of "shadow", this way you don't waste time talking to every NPC. Other things I kept just as well like the way the interviews are conducted and item collection.
Also, since most of the game is spent on a train, the items are always jumping up and down, this way you can spot right away where they are and searching for them is a bit easier on the eyes. ...
Some good thoughts here.


We're getting really close to release, now!
Been working full time on Bomber Crew since January, and we're out in less than 2 weeks, now!

There's only 2 of us developing the game (me- mostly programming, and Dave- mostly art), so it's been quite a tiring few months...

New Trailer/Video thing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0c3geXFvK8

Trying to catch up with what all of you have been up to- always great to pop on this thread & see some cool things! :)
Alywas loved seeing some of your developemt progess! But you never get those
beautiful 2d shots out of my head you started with. I still love them more
than the 3d ones, but I know, as you've said, that a couple of gamplay
elements won't work with 2d that well. Anyhow, good to see it gets finished!
All the best for release!


Oh crap. Tks. The pics are being posted everywhere now :(
I can still change it in the game and for the Steam page but the inter-webs are now smeared with this tiny mistake.
So he has spelling problems, so what? ;)
 

adixon

Member
Hey gaf! It's been a couple years, but I used to post here when I was teaching myself to code and working on my first game. I ended up running into health issues and had to stop working on that project (lost the ability to use my right hand) but I eventually figured out I could do all my coding by voice and still make games, teamed up with some awesome people, and now we're releasing our first game!

I've been working for the past nine months with a small team, mostly one other person, on this little VR game called Marshmallow Melee. It's a game about your toys coming to life, if your toys are miniature marshmallow people who like to subjugate similarly sized monsters with giant hammers, rusty spoons, cactuses, and whatever other weapons you can hand to them. We're just going into early access today on steam. My first game on Steam! It's been really great to finish something.

We've done basically no advertising aside from posting occasional updates and trailers on the Vive Reddit, and we just got our launch announcement post removed by a moderator over there, I think because we made the mistake of mentioning the price/early access discount in the launch video. (Apparently self-promotion is only okay over there if you don't emphasize the price too much?) So, it will probably be a small launch. But I thought I'd post over here in case anyone is interested in VR shenanigans. Would definitely love to hear people's thoughts.



Here's the gameplay trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOeGDmKmaTM

And here's the launch trailer that I think got us removed from Reddit: https://youtu.be/eavn4WiopSE

Here's the steam page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/705100/Marshmallow_Melee/

rNmlbjI.png


Q8c9q1T.png


ShPK4RZ.png
 

adixon

Member
I finally released Beastmancer on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/562250/Beastmancer/

I'll probably make a postmortem soon. For now I can only say that RPG's are no joke! don't get cocky like me just because you already had a published game!

Congratulations! As someone who has tried and failed to complete an RPG in the past, that's a really impressive accomplishment! It's cool that you did a monster training game with big scary ones instead of little cute ones, too. Not sure I've seen that.
 

Minamu

Member
I'm in the process of replacing all/most Unity cubes in our game and bringing in more ProBuilder cubes instead. I knew it would bring troubles but geez! The point was to get rid of some scaling bugs, but since Unity cubes have the origo in the middle, and PB stuff is at the lower left vertex, every child is now completely off center :lol So much math needs to be altered now, not to mention broken prefab connections xD
 

Noogy

Member
It's a huge relief to have finally announced my second game, Never Stop Sneakin'. My first game was never really announced, I just sort of started sharing assets early in development and the following grew. In many ways it was pretty easy to build up a fanbase for Dust, just based on the art and genre alone (which back in 2009 was relatively unique, a 2D combo-based action platformer).

I'm real curious to see what people think of NSS when it finally hits later this year. Now that the trailer is out there, I'm finding that a huge burden has been lifted, and my head is clear to finally finish this thing.

Oh, and one thing I've learned... for me anyway. There's no such thing as a short, small game.
 

konjak

Member
Nothing like 100%-ing your game - where it optimally seems to take me 6 hours - over and over and over to see what might still be broken.

It's a huge relief to have finally announced my second game, Never Stop Sneakin'.

Congrats!
 

Pehesse

Member
Clips with sound! (very early attempts, obviously, this will need a lot of iteration, but it's a start)

https://twitter.com/twitter/statuses/916564474085216257
https://twitter.com/twitter/statuses/916564726355759104
https://twitter.com/twitter/statuses/916564878483185665

I'm not exactly sure how to embed small clips like that - through webm, I imagine, but how?

Either way, it's time to tackle backgrounds, I guess, so, uh... see you back in another 8 months? Yeah, hopefully not.

It's a huge relief to have finally announced my second game, Never Stop Sneakin'. My first game was never really announced, I just sort of started sharing assets early in development and the following grew. In many ways it was pretty easy to build up a fanbase for Dust, just based on the art and genre alone (which back in 2009 was relatively unique, a 2D combo-based action platformer).

I'm real curious to see what people think of NSS when it finally hits later this year. Now that the trailer is out there, I'm finding that a huge burden has been lifted, and my head is clear to finally finish this thing.

Oh, and one thing I've learned... for me anyway. There's no such thing as a short, small game.

Congrats! I'll admit, I really didn't expect that kind of aesthetic or mechanics, but that's what you were going for, so good job :-D

Nothing like 100%-ing your game - where it optimally seems to take me 6 hours - over and over and over to see what might still be broken.

That's very impressive. Your dedication to detail is humbling! That's how many times you must've gone through, now? It's a testament to the game that you're not sick of it yet (at least, I believe I heard you're not - hopefully you're not!). You probably get a ton of propositions like this, but if you need another pair of eyes to test, I'd be happy to help.

How many other testers have there been apart from you, and how did you manage their help all around?

Testing was one of the most difficult parts for Honey (and I underestimated the work/time it would demand a lot), so I'd like to make the whole thing happen a lot earlier and gradually this time, include more people, and find a better way to communicate with them and get their feedback. Ideally I'd like to directly see how testers do and not just rely on written feedback (at conventions, through vids, etc), but it's a lot more difficult and costly to setup... hopefully this time I'll have a budget for that!
 

missile

Member
It's a huge relief to have finally announced my second game, Never Stop Sneakin'. My first game was never really announced, I just sort of started sharing assets early in development and the following grew. In many ways it was pretty easy to build up a fanbase for Dust, just based on the art and genre alone (which back in 2009 was relatively unique, a 2D combo-based action platformer).

I'm real curious to see what people think of NSS when it finally hits later this year. Now that the trailer is out there, I'm finding that a huge burden has been lifted, and my head is clear to finally finish this thing.

Oh, and one thing I've learned... for me anyway. There's no such thing as a short, small game.
The the t-t-trailer?
 

missile

Member
Some experimental 2d lighting.

arrGLdT.gif


Nothing fancy, just some simple bump-mapping. Not really impressive. The
problem with bump-mapping is that you can't have self-shadowing. With
self-shadowing the lighting on the object would be much better. But for
self-shadowing I need to approximate the geometry. Will see.
 
It's a huge relief to have finally announced my second game, Never Stop Sneakin'. My first game was never really announced, I just sort of started sharing assets early in development and the following grew. In many ways it was pretty easy to build up a fanbase for Dust, just based on the art and genre alone (which back in 2009 was relatively unique, a 2D combo-based action platformer).

I'm real curious to see what people think of NSS when it finally hits later this year. Now that the trailer is out there, I'm finding that a huge burden has been lifted, and my head is clear to finally finish this thing.

Oh, and one thing I've learned... for me anyway. There's no such thing as a short, small game.

Game looks amazing!

I’d love to hear how you went about making the sort of High res ps1 style it has, it’s something I have a bit of a fondness for
 

Noogy

Member
Game looks amazing!

I’d love to hear how you went about making the sort of High res ps1 style it has, it’s something I have a bit of a fondness for

It was really fun to do, but it was always a process of scaling back. Lowering textures, removing polygons, overcoming the instinct to make everything pristine. Honestly it wasn't very different than doing pixel-art. It's not a matter of lower fidelity, it's about doing more with less.

I had considered some texture warping effects, to further capture the 'look', but that was a little much considering how far back I have my camera pulled.
 

orioto

Good Art™
Hey guys so, for that break out type game i'm prototyping, we struggle with things i would have though should be super elementary.

Block collisions in unity for a start. It's been a mess. We need fixes for many stuffs, ball touching 2 blocks at the same time, ball going vertically against a block etc.. Are we doing something wrong ?

Also for the panel bouncing angles, i had that idea that i want something with more intuitive, more easy and precise control than in the usual arkanoid. So for now we're not using the incoming ball angle to calculate the bouncing angle. It's only dependent of the ball position on the panel, so that you can change direction easily and aim precisly, but then it feels maybe a little too limited. What do you think ? I've heard people say they can aim precisely as they want with the usual system.
 

LordRaptor

Member
Also for the panel bouncing angles, i had that idea that i want something with more intuitive, more easy and precise control than in the usual arkanoid. So for now we're not using the incoming ball angle to calculate the bouncing angle. It's only dependent of the ball position on the panel, so that you can change direction easily and aim precisly, but then it feels maybe a little too limited. What do you think ? I've heard people say they can aim precisely as they want with the usual system.

the human brain is pretty good at guesstimating various physics calculations by eye, and angle of incidence = angle of reflection is one of them - I mean, pool / snooker are basically built around being able to do that.
I don't think you should underestimate how intuitive stuff like trajectories are to folks.
 

orioto

Good Art™
the human brain is pretty good at guesstimating various physics calculations by eye, and angle of incidence = angle of reflection is one of them - I mean, pool / snooker are basically built around being able to do that.
I don't think you should underestimate how intuitive stuff like trajectories are to folks.

There is this yeah you're right. The thing is i, maybe wrongly, feel that if the incoming ball angle has an influence on the shot you do next, you're not controlling every criteria here. You're handling what's coming the best you can, see ? But the thing also is.. How good people are at Arkanoid and how niche are good Arkanoid players.

At least i'd like to make it more easy to aim. I know i can struggle like hell to reach the last block in gunbarich for exemple, but this one is tough, bouncing doesn't work the same and blocks are super small.
 

Dynamite Shikoku

Congratulations, you really deserve it!
Hey guys so, for that break out type game i'm prototyping, we struggle with things i would have though should be super elementary.

Block collisions in unity for a start. It's been a mess. We need fixes for many stuffs, ball touching 2 blocks at the same time, ball going vertically against a block etc.. Are we doing something wrong ?

Also for the panel bouncing angles, i had that idea that i want something with more intuitive, more easy and precise control than in the usual arkanoid. So for now we're not using the incoming ball angle to calculate the bouncing angle. It's only dependent of the ball position on the panel, so that you can change direction easily and aim precisly, but then it feels maybe a little too limited. What do you think ? I've heard people say they can aim precisely as they want with the usual system.

I thought arkanoid used the system that you said you are using . That's how I did it when I made a similar thing
 

LordRaptor

Member
There is this yeah you're right. The thing is i, maybe wrongly, feel that if the incoming ball angle has an influence on the shot you do next, you're not controlling every criteria here. You're handling what's coming the best you can, see ? But the thing also is.. How good people are at Arkanoid and how niche are good Arkanoid players.

You could probably make that intuitive by making the paddle a curve rather than a flat surface, as people will intuitively understand the change in reflection based on where on the curve the ball hits;

qs362b8.png


To make your life simpler, you could probably just create 'zones' that will have a fixed angle of reflection, rather than doing full curve calculations

I thought arkanoid used the system that you said you are using . That's how I did it when I made a similar thing

AFAIK, the 'real' way of exerting that control in arkanoid likes is via 'spin', by quickly moving the 'paddle' as the ball connects
 
Also for the panel bouncing angles, i had that idea that i want something with more intuitive, more easy and precise control than in the usual arkanoid. So for now we're not using the incoming ball angle to calculate the bouncing angle. It's only dependent of the ball position on the panel, so that you can change direction easily and aim precisly, but then it feels maybe a little too limited. What do you think ? I've heard people say they can aim precisely as they want with the usual system.

Personally my frustration with Arkanoid-likes comes almost solely from misuse of solid blocks, one of their effects being reliance of bounce chains which make regular precise aiming insufficient. The actual mechanism behind bounce angles is rarely the culprit.
 

orioto

Good Art™
You could probably make that intuitive by making the paddle a curve rather than a flat surface, as people will intuitively understand the change in reflection based on where on the curve the ball hits;

qs362b8.png


To make your life simpler, you could probably just create 'zones' that will have a fixed angle of reflection, rather than doing full curve calculations



AFAIK, the 'real' way of exerting that control in arkanoid likes is via 'spin', by quickly moving the 'paddle' as the ball connects

That's what i have actually, precisely, a curved panel

SSdemo.jpg


And fixed zone with fixed bouncing angles. That's what we have but it makes things a little mechanical and redundant.

Personally my frustration with Arkanoid-likes comes almost solely from misuse of solid blocks, one of their effects being reliance of bounce chains which make regular precise aiming insufficient. The actual mechanism behind bounce angles is rarely the culprit.

Tell me more i'm interested! I mean this is a level design matter right ? The thing is to make bouncing chains potential zones not easy to reach i guess.
 
Tell me more i'm interested! I mean this is a level design matter right ? The thing is to make bouncing chains potential zones not easy to reach i guess.

Restating that this a strictly personal take on things, from a player perspective, and I have no idea what I'm talking about, and I may have stumbled upon some shovelware, simply. But if you want more, sure.

1: I really don't like it when the ball is supposed to make a whole slalom among solid blocks to reach a breakable block. Three, sometimes four turns are bearable if used sparingly, bounces along the corridors notwithstanding, but even then you gotta be careful. I could draw an example but that kind of depends on the ball physics.

For instance, if all grayish blocks on your screenshot are solid, colored stuff all breaks after just getting hit a fixed amount of times and letters do some switch stuff with other letters, this looks completely fine assuming regular ball physics; because with blocks broken it looks like you could get everywhere from the arbitrarily placed (sideways wise) paddle with one turn; there are some relatively narrow holes along the way but with one turn that's completely understandable. But that assumes player has a high enough degree of control over the ball's angle, if it's very limited, the single major turn approach may be impossible, so it's to be determined.

2: I don't like levels which look like someone has put a slightly smaller solid block on 90% of black squares of a checkerboard, with some breakable blocks on the rest of them and on some white squares, and a big bunch of breakables, or a smaller bunch of ones requiring multiple hits, on top. I don't think this needs further description.

3: Solid blocks directly above paddle (so that slides along them) should not be overused, but aren't too bad, usually. Long solid blocks a little higher (so that it can happen that the ball will get in that border and require continuous bouncing) are, on the other hand, something I haven't seen used well ever.

4: Be very, very, VERY cautious about pinball-esque solid "round" bumpers with highly differentiated bounce angles (or anything like that, really). Using a big bunch of them to simulate a regular big block is especially crazy sometimes, they can take any of the patterns described above and take the frustration factor up to eleven.
 

missile

Member
Had an ear. Hmm ... I'm not a fan of her voice, currently. I'm not any sound
designer, but for me it doesn't sound gamey enough at the moment. She sounds
a bit too lovely/soft for all the hard action/combos she is doing.
 

Dynamite Shikoku

Congratulations, you really deserve it!
Clips with sound! (very early attempts, obviously, this will need a lot of iteration, but it's a start)

https://twitter.com/twitter/statuses/916564474085216257
https://twitter.com/twitter/statuses/916564726355759104
https://twitter.com/twitter/statuses/916564878483185665

I'm not exactly sure how to embed small clips like that - through webm, I imagine, but how?

Either way, it's time to tackle backgrounds, I guess, so, uh... see you back in another 8 months? Yeah, hopefully not.



Congrats! I'll admit, I really didn't expect that kind of aesthetic or mechanics, but that's what you were going for, so good job :-D



That's very impressive. Your dedication to detail is humbling! That's how many times you must've gone through, now? It's a testament to the game that you're not sick of it yet (at least, I believe I heard you're not - hopefully you're not!). You probably get a ton of propositions like this, but if you need another pair of eyes to test, I'd be happy to help.

How many other testers have there been apart from you, and how did you manage their help all around?

Testing was one of the most difficult parts for Honey (and I underestimated the work/time it would demand a lot), so I'd like to make the whole thing happen a lot earlier and gradually this time, include more people, and find a better way to communicate with them and get their feedback. Ideally I'd like to directly see how testers do and not just rely on written feedback (at conventions, through vids, etc), but it's a lot more difficult and costly to setup... hopefully this time I'll have a budget for that!

Looking great
 

orioto

Good Art™
Restating that this a strictly personal take on things, from a player perspective, and I have no idea what I'm talking about, and I may have stumbled upon some shovelware, simply. But if you want more, sure.

1: I really don't like it when the ball is supposed to make a whole slalom among solid blocks to reach a breakable block. Three, sometimes four turns are bearable if used sparingly, bounces along the corridors notwithstanding, but even then you gotta be careful. I could draw an example but that kind of depends on the ball physics.

For instance, if all grayish blocks on your screenshot are solid, colored stuff all breaks after just getting hit a fixed amount of times and letters do some switch stuff with other letters, this looks completely fine assuming regular ball physics; because with blocks broken it looks like you could get everywhere from the arbitrarily placed (sideways wise) paddle with one turn; there are some relatively narrow holes along the way but with one turn that's completely understandable. But that assumes player has a high enough degree of control over the ball's angle, if it's very limited, the single major turn approach may be impossible, so it's to be determined.

2: I don't like levels which look like someone has put a slightly smaller solid block on 90% of black squares of a checkerboard, with some breakable blocks on the rest of them and on some white squares, and a big bunch of breakables, or a smaller bunch of ones requiring multiple hits, on top. I don't think this needs further description.

3: Solid blocks directly above paddle (so that slides along them) should not be overused, but aren't too bad, usually. Long solid blocks a little higher (so that it can happen that the ball will get in that border and require continuous bouncing) are, on the other hand, something I haven't seen used well ever.

4: Be very, very, VERY cautious about pinball-esque solid "round" bumpers with highly differentiated bounce angles (or anything like that, really). Using a big bunch of them to simulate a regular big block is especially crazy sometimes, they can take any of the patterns described above and take the frustration factor up to eleven.

Ok thx!
All of this seems to be from people trying to make frustrating or long levels in this kind of game.

The thing is my game is more about the versus, and it's 2 people on the same stage. So it's more about how to make the more points than making long frustrating stages anyway. The logic will more be something like "the first who can place the ball somewhere or hit a certain block will have an advantage"
 

Minamu

Member
Woof. I must be too tired but I haven't been able all night to figure out how to instantiate stuff around our players and have them take player position and rotation into account xD world and local space is screwing up my for example transform.position.x + 5f etc. That new offsetted position is different depending on the player's angle :/ I need to offset just about every instantiation in the entire game to get the old functionality back on track (because origo has moved). What am I missing?

The player seems to be in space.world but instantiated projectiles aren't. Should I just set the projectile position/rotation to match the player's straight after the instantiation? Offsetting directly during the instantiation doesn't work like I want it to :'( The old code didn't need to take this into account because origo was at the dead center of all objects..
 

oxrock

Gravity is a myth, the Earth SUCKS!
Woof. I must be too tired but I haven't been able all night to figure out how to instantiate stuff around our players and have them take player position and rotation into account xD world and local space is screwing up my for example transform.position.x + 5f etc. That new offsetted position is different depending on the player's angle :/ I need to offset just about every instantiation in the entire game to get the old functionality back on track (because origo has moved). What am I missing?

The player seems to be in space.world but instantiated projectiles aren't. Should I just set the projectile position/rotation to match the player's straight after the instantiation? Offsetting directly during the instantiation doesn't work like I want it to :'( The old code didn't need to take this into account because origo was at the dead center of all objects..

Are your projectiles children of the player transform? Cause that would take them out of world space coordinates. That would also cause them to move around with the player which would be bad.
 

Fou-Lu

Member
Does anyone know of any good articles or videos about implementing RPG systems? More focused on the numbers, probabilities, and balancing. It's a daunting task.
 

Pehesse

Member
very cool to see this get to this point from the early days to now

And there's such a long way to go, too :-D

Had an ear. Hmm ... I'm not a fan of her voice, currently. I'm not any sound
designer, but for me it doesn't sound gamey enough at the moment. She sounds
a bit too lovely/soft for all the hard action/combos she is doing.

I hear you, thanks a lot! I actually wanted the character to sound softer and so far it sounds like what I hoped for (something that's not yet in the prototype but may affect your perception as far as hard action goes: no combat in the game ends in a kill, everytime you defeat a monster/possessed animal, they revert back to their unpossessed state and you can take the time to pet them if you want), but there's a lot of time ahead to rework a lot of things.
Right now I'm focused on removing clips that are too singular, and getting clips not to repeat by forcing the game to play a different clip if the natural random pick chooses the same one twice in a row, but after some time I'll go back over the whole thing to review if it works when all the context is present (sound effects, enemy sounds, music, etc).

Looking great

Many thanks :)
 

missile

Member
... I hear you, thanks a lot! I actually wanted the character to sound softer and so far it sounds like what I hoped for (something that's not yet in the prototype but may affect your perception as far as hard action goes: no combat in the game ends in a kill, everytime you defeat a monster/possessed animal, they revert back to their unpossessed state and you can take the time to pet them if you want) ...
Was just my first impression like "Wait! Something doesn't match.".
Yeah, lets hear again when there is more stuff all around.
 

_Rob_

Member
And there's such a long way to go, too :-D



I hear you, thanks a lot! I actually wanted the character to sound softer and so far it sounds like what I hoped for (something that's not yet in the prototype but may affect your perception as far as hard action goes: no combat in the game ends in a kill, everytime you defeat a monster/possessed animal, they revert back to their unpossessed state and you can take the time to pet them if you want), but there's a lot of time ahead to rework a lot of things.
Right now I'm focused on removing clips that are too singular, and getting clips not to repeat by forcing the game to play a different clip if the natural random pick chooses the same one twice in a row, but after some time I'll go back over the whole thing to review if it works when all the context is present (sound effects, enemy sounds, music, etc).



Many thanks :)

As well as randomising between a few clips, for things like footsteps I've found it works very well to have a random amount of pitch variation between two values. Do you know what style of music you'll be using?
 

Pehesse

Member
Was just my first impression like "Wait! Something doesn't match.".
Yeah, lets hear again when there is more stuff all around.

Absolutely! And it may indeed not match at all when all is said and done, in which case, I'll... uh... think of something :-D And again, thanks a lot for your thoughts, that's why I post this early stuff in the first place :-D

As well as randomising between a few clips, for things like footsteps I've found it works very well to have a random amount of pitch variation between two values. Do you know what style of music you'll be using?

Yeah, I tried that - though I didn't find an option to adjust "pitch" in C2 (a number of other things, just not that one). I tried a few workarounds with playback rate and other effects, and it does rather well, so between having different clips and applying variance on top of each, I'm not that worried about audio repetition.

As for music, though, I don't know exactly yet - I think that kind of annoys the composer, actually, as I'm not able to pinpoint him in a clear direction... but I'm counting on him to blow my mind :-D
 
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