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Indy Game Development: any GAF'er ever make their own game, or even make money on it?
- Thread starter Mengy
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lordfroakie
Member
Well...since my netbook could barely handle some software, going to start drawing again. Going to wait until I get a better computer.
Don't language flop. Once you've picked something, stick with it -- chances are good if you change frameworks / languages a ways in you're only going to make some things easier at the expense of making other things harder.
That said, as you've mentioned you have no code: Stick with XNA. It's C#, which will give you a massive leg up if you ever attempt to use something like Unity (yeah, it supports Boo, but NOBODY uses that).
Try both and see what you feel more comfortable to work with. I guess it all depends on where you want your games to be seen. C# could give you a start to Unity and of course you've looked at XNA. If it's IOS games you are going for then you could try Objective-C and Cocos2D, but you need to pay Apple for hardware testing. There's also Corona which is a LUA scripting SDK for IOS/Android which is free until you want to publish.
Python will be good for desktops, not sure about Android?
Edit: There's also nothing stopping you doing both C# and Python, alternate between the two to stop boredom. :]
That's completely up to you. Which do you think is more intuitive? Your #1 priority right now should be to get to a point that makes it easiest for you to prototype ideas, and that is entirely hinged on which language framework you personally like more. I'd say spend a day with each and then decide one to push forward with.
ThatObviousUser
ὠαἴÏÏιÏÏÎ¿Ï Ïαá¿Ï εἶ
Java. C/C++ are supported through the NDK. Mono also supports Android I think. The Android Scripting Environment allows you to use Lua, Python, and others.
Of course, use JavaScript and you've got basically everything covered in one way or another (except maybe, ironically, traditional desktop OS's.) UnityScript for Unity, WebViews for iOS and Android, pure JS for the web and mobile web.
It's been hard to find the time and motivation to keep it up (after programming all day at work). I got a new milestone, enemies. There's 2 types and some basic attack, die logic (you'll need to F5 to restart once killed).
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13787691/caverns/caverns.html
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13787691/caverns/caverns.html
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
Looking good, Somnid.
About your tearing problem...
I only get it at the top of the screen when I am displaying my game in a non 4:3 resolution. I however found a work around. When I display my game in fullscreen but with a view that is bit less wide than the screen (creating some black borders) I can't see any tearing. Here's a shot of the results in my test room:
FEATURE COMPLETE (except for sound effects?), POLISHIN' STAGE GO
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
All of this works if you are doing the jam naked.
Can anyone link (or tell me) about good practices in programming games? This will be my first game (hopefully) done in C++, so I'm especially interested in the good practices regarding memory allocation/deallocation (and more specifically, the use of new) and resource loading and stuff. I think I've achieved a good enough way of managing those, but still I want to make sure.
JasoNsider
Member
Game Jam was awesome this year!! I'll post our project up as soon as I can. The cool thing is that for the first time our game can be played right away since we did Flash 
Well, that was nuts. So tired = )
There were some very talented people at the USC game jam, but of the four on my team, I didn't come out very lucky. I had a pretty good designer, veteran in the industry, but the sound guy and artist were almost useless. Finally, the fifth, who was supposed to be the lead programmer, was being a dick, and eventually just left, never to reappear.
This left me as the only programmer on the team, so sticking to my guns, I busted out the tried-and-true XNA. It was exhausting. As a result, the game design was very simplistic, but I'm actually sort of proud of how it came out. 48 hours is just...nothing.
You can download Ophiuchus and play it here! You'll need to install the XNA 4.0 Redistributable, but if you've played Sequence, you already have it. = D
There were some very talented people at the USC game jam, but of the four on my team, I didn't come out very lucky. I had a pretty good designer, veteran in the industry, but the sound guy and artist were almost useless. Finally, the fifth, who was supposed to be the lead programmer, was being a dick, and eventually just left, never to reappear.
This left me as the only programmer on the team, so sticking to my guns, I busted out the tried-and-true XNA. It was exhausting. As a result, the game design was very simplistic, but I'm actually sort of proud of how it came out. 48 hours is just...nothing.
You can download Ophiuchus and play it here! You'll need to install the XNA 4.0 Redistributable, but if you've played Sequence, you already have it. = D
Which is the point
Congratulations on what you achieved within the timeframe & project limitations. Just about anything that comes out of a GameJam is a success in my opinion, it's all about learning/growing as an individual & team player.
Due to the weird screen size and my inability to quickly find a tool (preferably open-source) to crop the video, I don't have YouTube video(s) yet, but here are some screenshots from our game, Horizon:
(not actual size, I don't have the original on this computer)
We used the Ouroboros theme as thinly connected to Quetzacoatl, and more heavily connected to the link between player 1 eating stars and player 2 making buildings...and if they fail to get enough sacrifices, not enough stars will be respawned, and Quetzacoatl will fall out of the sky.
We had a programmer (me), and artist, and a guy who ended up doing mostly sound. We prototyped a different game on Friday evening, threw out everything Friday night, and I believe almost everything besides some Game Maker scraps and a little code is from Saturday morning onwards. We also tried to get 5-6 hours of sleep each night in a nearby hotel, and even had time to go out for food.
The music isn't super fancy, but I think it's neat since it was the guy's first experience with Garage Band as far as I'm aware. He made it using the iPad version, recorded the (hilarious) vocal sound effects on the iPad, and I used bfxr.net to generate the other sound effects.
It's about a 10MB download for the .exe. It's probably best with two players, and you definitely want audio to hear the sound effects. However, if you're really coordinated with both hands, you could play it singleplayer.
If anyone tries it, let me know what you think! Altogether it was a fun experience, I finally got to meet these two particular internet friends (my teammates), and everything meshed together quite well even though we basically started over on Saturday. The best compliments we got from other people were from two playtesters, who sat down and then played it like 10 times over (while we still had submission stuff to finalize), and from the audience when we gave the presentation, who were laughing at the sound effects. =)
It's late so that's all for now. Another day I should try to post some more thoughts on the event, things we did, things I may have learned, etc.
*edit* We also had these two diversifiers:
Asymmetry: (Every player is different) The game requires more than one player, but each player has entirely different goals and rules.
Collaborative Casual/Hardcore: (Two players: one casual, one hardcore) Collaborative play for two, but one player has more to do than the other (or the difficulty level is different between them).
*edit again* Here's the download link:
http://globalgamejam.org/sites/default/files/uploads/2012/5048/Horizon_FINAL.exe
(not actual size, I don't have the original on this computer)
We used the Ouroboros theme as thinly connected to Quetzacoatl, and more heavily connected to the link between player 1 eating stars and player 2 making buildings...and if they fail to get enough sacrifices, not enough stars will be respawned, and Quetzacoatl will fall out of the sky.
We had a programmer (me), and artist, and a guy who ended up doing mostly sound. We prototyped a different game on Friday evening, threw out everything Friday night, and I believe almost everything besides some Game Maker scraps and a little code is from Saturday morning onwards. We also tried to get 5-6 hours of sleep each night in a nearby hotel, and even had time to go out for food.
The music isn't super fancy, but I think it's neat since it was the guy's first experience with Garage Band as far as I'm aware. He made it using the iPad version, recorded the (hilarious) vocal sound effects on the iPad, and I used bfxr.net to generate the other sound effects.
It's about a 10MB download for the .exe. It's probably best with two players, and you definitely want audio to hear the sound effects. However, if you're really coordinated with both hands, you could play it singleplayer.
If anyone tries it, let me know what you think! Altogether it was a fun experience, I finally got to meet these two particular internet friends (my teammates), and everything meshed together quite well even though we basically started over on Saturday. The best compliments we got from other people were from two playtesters, who sat down and then played it like 10 times over (while we still had submission stuff to finalize), and from the audience when we gave the presentation, who were laughing at the sound effects. =)
It's late so that's all for now. Another day I should try to post some more thoughts on the event, things we did, things I may have learned, etc.
*edit* We also had these two diversifiers:
Asymmetry: (Every player is different) The game requires more than one player, but each player has entirely different goals and rules.
Collaborative Casual/Hardcore: (Two players: one casual, one hardcore) Collaborative play for two, but one player has more to do than the other (or the difficulty level is different between them).
*edit again* Here's the download link:
http://globalgamejam.org/sites/default/files/uploads/2012/5048/Horizon_FINAL.exe
Dark Octave
Banned
I'm curious, was the art and sound not good enough? Did they not have the proper equipment? Were they lazy?
nicoga3000
Saint Nic
Slopes in GM...Ha. There are extensive discussions on optimizing this on the GMC forums. I haven't dealt with them yet myself, but I fully intend to study example code on it when the time inevitably comes.
This might be good to read:
http://info.sonicretro.org/SPG:Solid_Tiles
I don't know if it'd help you if you're using Game Maker though as I never used it.
I own 2 GameMaker games made by other people that have perfect slope behavior. I will need to get the right mindset to get it done like those guys. They are the proof its perfectly doable but it seems to be a tad over my head right now. And I can't exactly grasp what they are doing when I look at their code.
For those looking at getting into C# (will help for XNA / Unity) there is a good free book here. It has a nice simple way of explaining classes and methods etc.
http://www.programmersheaven.com/2/CSharpBook
http://www.programmersheaven.com/2/CSharpBook
nicoga3000
Saint Nic
I own 2 GameMaker games made by other people that have perfect slope behavior. I will need to get the right mindset to get it done like those guys. They are the proof its perfectly doable but it seems to be a tad over my head right now. And I can't exactly grasp what they are doing when I look at their code.
It's not that they're not doable, but just that most people are using the same engine as everyone else. There's a few accepted engines that work, and even then, people will tweak it to their liking. VERY few people write their own anymore.
Here are the games that were made by the people here in my city for the Game Jam
The people who made the phoenix one made this Trapped! In the Chamber of Eternal Darkness
Also, some other friends made this cool fire management game called Unlimited Fire for android
The people who made the phoenix one made this Trapped! In the Chamber of Eternal Darkness
It is a multidirectional shooter binding of isaac style
Also, some other friends made this cool fire management game called Unlimited Fire for android
If you happen to know a method from the top of your head that would work in GameMaker...
Seriously right now I am not sure how to proceed. I used my same "bottom detection" than normal ground (that worked fine) and used my lateral/wall detections for pushing the character up when it touches the slopes. It works but it looks very rough and I had some other bugs. I probably need a completely different way of tackling this.
nicoga3000
Saint Nic
If you happen to know a method from the top of your head that would work in GameMaker...
Seriously right now I am not sure how to proceed. I used my same "bottom detection" than normal ground (that worked fine) and used my lateral/wall detections for pushing the character up when it touches the slopes. It works but it looks very rough and I had some other bugs. I probably need a completely different way of tackling this.
This one seems to have some high regard:
http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=436111
And it seems to go straight to the point and does what it sets out to do. I haven't personally tried it (I used another engine for learning a while back), but this SHOULD be a good starting point.
No one tried my game? *cries forever* It has funny sound effects, I promise!
Also, I forgot to mention that I think there are 8 secret keys left in the game. They're all normal alphabet keys (a-z), 5 of them are cheats for debugging, 2 are usability things, and 1 is a silly effect left over from the game we scrapped on Friday night.
Also, I forgot to mention that I think there are 8 secret keys left in the game. They're all normal alphabet keys (a-z), 5 of them are cheats for debugging, 2 are usability things, and 1 is a silly effect left over from the game we scrapped on Friday night.
Sorry, I did but had my nose stuck in a Unity window. It's quite hard for 1 person to play but good job. Was this done using Gamemaker HTML?
Oh and yes and the "Nom Nom Nom", "Help Me!" and "ARGHH" raised a smile. ;]
Yes, it was using the GameMaker HTML5 version with the free registration that people got for the global game jam time period (maybe for a bit longer). It's definitely intended for 2 players...I think the only serious playtesters we had got a highscore of about 2000 by working together.
By the way, I didn't see how you actually export an HTML5 game, so I stuck with the .exe version. I'm guessing I was using incompatible features anyway. Most everything was done with code blocks in create or step, plus alarm events for timing and animation, and a few other events.
Cool, I may have another look at it. I did see some news on the site about a new studio version coming that allows self publishing of iPhone / Android apps, which sounds promising. Although, I'll be damned if I can find it again...
I've been following some Unity stuff that this guy has been making http://www.quickfingers.net and he just completed a flash game with the new Unity export called Covert (playable here. It's like if Sid Meier's Covert Action had a baby with Frozen Synapse and a little Deus Ex? Anyways it's quite impresive and I am a incredibly envious as one of my main goals was to one day create some sort of hybrid Covert Action.
Cool. Didn't know your game was done with GameMaker. Will totally download it now. I will most probably learn a thing a two by looking at your work.
Cool, I may have another look at it. I did see some news on the site about a new studio version coming that allows self publishing of iPhone / Android apps, which sounds promising. Although, I'll be damned if I can find it again...
I've been following some Unity stuff that this guy has been making http://www.quickfingers.net and he just completed a flash game with the new Unity export called Covert (playable here. It's like if Sid Meier's Covert Action had a baby with Frozen Synapse and a little Deus Ex? Anyways it's quite impresive and I am a incredibly envious as one of my main goals was to one day create some sort of hybrid Covert Action.
http://www.quickfingers.net/covert Great game and nice ideas here !
They were there probably half the number of hours the designer and I were (36 vs. 18 or so), and their output was just...low quality. I mean, anyone can come to a game jam and that's super cool, but over half of their stuff was unusable. I kind of felt bad at times, but c'est la vie.
JasoNsider
Member
Loving seeing all the game jam updates!
Guys, here's our game plus a small article about the experience
http://breakfall.ca/content/frosted-feud-global-game-jam-2012
And a small warning that there is sound on the game in case your speakers are on.
Guys, here's our game plus a small article about the experience
http://breakfall.ca/content/frosted-feud-global-game-jam-2012
And a small warning that there is sound on the game in case your speakers are on.
Either or
Heart of Black
Member
You can pick your team.
This was my first year and I ended up joining up with a guy I had met before at another event and the two people he already knew. We had one more guy show up and had a great time.
Much to my surprise Kotaku posted about it today.
http://kotaku.com/5880467/this-72+hour-game-lets-you-fly-through-the-galaxy-and-into-one-mans-mind
This was my first year and I ended up joining up with a guy I had met before at another event and the two people he already knew. We had one more guy show up and had a great time.
Much to my surprise Kotaku posted about it today.
http://kotaku.com/5880467/this-72+hour-game-lets-you-fly-through-the-galaxy-and-into-one-mans-mind
Yeah, I was going to the jam to meet two online friends. We were originally going to pick up another programmer but we decided the only two people we -almost- joined up with were too scary.
Having a small group was really nice for discussions though, and we all managed to not get too attached to our own ideas if they got shot down. Getting sleep, showers, and food probably also helped keep us happy through the weekend, in addition to being productive.
Having a small group was really nice for discussions though, and we all managed to not get too attached to our own ideas if they got shot down. Getting sleep, showers, and food probably also helped keep us happy through the weekend, in addition to being productive.
Dark Octave
Banned
That sucks. Hopefully next time you get a better team going.
I'm a music guy who lives in San Diego, if I wanted to work with you in the next Game Jam, would I have to drive my whole studio up to LA or do they provide decent sound tools of some sort?
Fish Factory Games
Neo Member
The main character is one of the art assets I didn't make. Basically, pick one of the assets that is terrible, and I probably made it.
I am more of a programmer/designer. But when you make indie games you often have to wear hats that really don't fit your head.
Their computers had some decent stuff on them (Photoshop CS5, Unity, Visual Studio, etc.), but that's up to the Game Jam site...I don't know what they had in terms of software, and definitely no hardware. Still, I doubt you would need more than a simple condenser and an M-Box, though. Our game (and many games) didn't have spoken voiceover, lyrics, or recorded music anywhere.
One of the interesting things at the Atlanta game jam site was that they had an agreement with a school of music at Berkeley. Apparently that school had maybe 30 musicians of whatever sort, all sitting around wanting to make game music over that weekend, so teams that had problems with music could get on Skype and get something set up. At least one team said they produced some amazing stuff.
For sound effects, bfxr.net and getting random guys to yell in a hallway worked. =P
So I stumbled upon Kickstarter's main site, and I remembered seeing all of you discussing it off and on in here.
I guess I'd better get busy looking to see if any of them look like they need some freelance art done for their projects (some of them must, I'd guess!).
If any of you in here are looking for art for your projects, let me know as well.
I guess I'd better get busy looking to see if any of them look like they need some freelance art done for their projects (some of them must, I'd guess!).
If any of you in here are looking for art for your projects, let me know as well.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Well implementing my own animation system these last few days has definitely produced the highest rate of occurrence of "it only has to work in this one specific situation, its alright if the code isn't pretty" moments.
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