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Indy Game Development: any GAF'er ever make their own game, or even make money on it?

My test was a SUCCESS !

This sprite was made with a skeletal vector image made in flash
WhuNY.png
I'll be honest, if you can make the top of the umbrella (the section in her hand) a little more apparent in the original pixel art model, it would alleviate the problem, looking back on the ones you posted before and comparing it with this new set. The white/grey and darker grey umbrella and black hair contrast enough, but you can't really tell she's holding anything. Seeing it motion might help of ocurse.
 
Message for people thinking they would release some GameMaker HTML5 game at some point...

My GameMaker game (wich I thought wasn't that costly) has been running like shit when converted to HTML5. I think it's GML converted to Java and damn, it's painfully slow it seems.

I had to start some drastic optimisation even just to be able to run my test room at a satisfying framerate. I changed the way I was doing some conditions so the engine is drawning less collision rectangles, I scrapped my parallaxed backgrounds for a fixed one, removed draw events for sprites, and remove a little "move contact solid" I was doing in certain situations in order to fix and admittedly rare bug.

Right now I am running my room between at 60fps with hiccups (some stuttering). It still is quite alarming because I can't imagine the thing when I will have NPCs in there + sound, etc. Even worse, my game is a Metroidvania platformer so the environnement will be semi-open and quite huge. I am a bit discouraged and I wonder if having a 60fps HTML5 game without being an experimented programmer is possible at all. :(
 
Message for people thinking they would release some GameMaker HTML5 game at some point...

My GameMaker game (wich I thought wasn't that costly) has been running like shit when converted to HTML5. I think it's GML converted to Java and damn, it's painfully slow it seems.

I had to start some drastic optimisation even just to be able to run my test room at a satisfying framerate. I changed the way I was doing some conditions so the engine is drawning less collision rectangles, I scrapped my parallaxed backgrounds for a fixed one, removed draw events for sprites, and remove a little "move contact solid" I was doing in certain situations in order to fix and admittedly rare bug.

Right now I am running my room between at 60fps with hiccups (some stuttering). It still is quite alarming because I can't imagine the thing when I will have NPCs in there + sound, etc. Even worse, my game is a Metroidvania platformer so the environnement will be semi-open and quite huge. I am a bit discouraged and I wonder if having a 60fps HTML5 game without being an experimented programmer is possible at all. :(

If HTML5 is Javascript, it's scary for me to think of high-performance games in it.

Also I couldn't even figure out how to convert my game to HTML5 when I was using GameMaker HTML5 for the global game jam -- is there a trick to it?
 
If HTML5 is Javascript, it's scary for me to think of high-performance games in it.

Also I couldn't even figure out how to convert my game to HTML5 when I was using GameMaker HTML5 for the global game jam -- is there a trick to it?

Well, when you open Game Maker HTML5 you have an import option. You can therefore import your GM81 in the program and run it right away in HTML5 (and cry lol)
 
If HTML5 is Javascript, it's scary for me to think of high-performance games in it.

Also I couldn't even figure out how to convert my game to HTML5 when I was using GameMaker HTML5 for the global game jam -- is there a trick to it?

JS really wouldn't be the problem, canvas is hardware accelerated in most browsers and WebGL is accelerated by default. Most likely, he's right and there's some intermediate translation going on between GML and JS.
 
It's sad that I guess I was getting kind of stressed this weekend at how long it takes me to get minor parts of my engine written. At least I'm still making progress.

I added input-handling code and filter plugins, and if everything works properly, I -almost- have everything set up to take input events and start searching through a list of input handlers with different priorities, passing events to them if their filters allow it. This would in theory allow for popup menus or whatever to grab keyboard and mouse input once I start implementing a GUI system. I still have to finish the input handler registration method and doublecheck that my search method looks correct. :)
 
If you've already posted this prior, I apologize, but what are writing these in?
I'm curious about your 'innovative' fps, are you willing to share more on that or are yo keeping it under wraps?

I'm doing everything in Unity, Blender and Gimp so far. Working on evenings and weekends, all while attempting to not neglect my gf. For scripting I'm using UnityScript which is based off of Javascript. Some of the Unity add-ons are written in C# so I've been slowly learning that as well.

The FPS I was prototyping, without giving too much away, was kind of like Minecraft with it's material/object generation in these test chambers similar to Portal. I got one key system working OK. But I was still pretty novice with scripting, I can improve it a lot now and cut the code down like crazy. But it's still a pretty big effort and I want to get this smaller racing project complete.
 
http://spaceflyboy.com/

prototype of the game. press f1 once you're in to see the controls. there currently isn't any collision (except on some asteroids) so pretty much you're just fighting off waves of enemies. Also F4-F8 I believe will change the overlay on the game screen. I don't know how to change them on a mac. All of this is still a work in progress. Big thanks to the friend of one of the guys in my group. he got us a site going and helped out setting this up.
 
Well, I am deceived tonight. I don't know if I am deceived about me or GameMaker but there's no way my game can run in HTML5. I don't know how to optimise it further with my current scripting knowledge. Its a fucking bad and discouraging feeling because I bought the God damned GameMaker HTML5 but there's no way you can something run greatly unless you're a programmer it seems. And this is the selling phrase of the product!

fuck me.
 
That sucks man. I was thinking about using construct 2 to try my hand at making something that could be run in a web browser, but I'm not sure how it compares features-wise to gamemaker. According to this, its HTML5 performance is better, but it's their own internal research, so you should probably take it with a grain of salt.
 
Even worse, my game is a Metroidvania platformer so the environnement will be semi-open and quite huge. I am a bit discouraged and I wonder if having a 60fps HTML5 game without being an experimented programmer is possible at all. :(

A 60fps Metroidvania running in HTML5 would be a difficult task for the world's best programmer, let alone someone who doesn't know much programming.
 
The problem with HTML5 is that it will end up requiring hardware acceleration at some point to run anything fancy, and that ends up being browser / platform dependent. So after all the clamor of HTML5 being this platform independent thing it ends up needing to be platform dependent to really squeeze anything fancy out of it. In other words, "This game runs on Chrome and IE10 only" will be in the "game requirements" fine print of games in X months from now.
 
The problem with HTML5 is that it will end up requiring hardware acceleration at some point to run anything fancy, and that ends up being browser / platform dependent. So after all the clamor of HTML5 being this platform independent thing it ends up needing to be platform dependent to really squeeze anything fancy out of it. In other words, "This game runs on Chrome and IE10 only" will be in the "game requirements" fine print of games in X months from now.

Not really, all the browsers will have acceleration. Heck right now, IE9+10, Chrome, and Firefox all have it. And if you're worried about it, just use WebGL-2D. Consistent hardware acceleration by default, except in IE in which case it falls back to just canvas which IE handles really well anyways.
 
If HTML5 is Javascript, it's scary for me to think of high-performance games in it.

Take a look at Google's v8 engine. JIT compiled javascript performs rather well, actually. It's inspired Mozilla into doing more for Jagermonkey. Rising tide, etc.
 
This is complete bullshit.

http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Views/SiteMap/

Any one of the graphics demos should get 60FPS in IE9 on a decent machine.

A non-animated demo of a pie-chart (lol) is not a 60 fps Metroidvania. Have you tried making an HTML5 game? I'm guessing the answer is no.

Blizzard said:
I was just curious and googled, and I found what appears to be a Metroid clone of sorts using HTML5.

It runs at 400x320 or something. HTML5 also has no sound support and a bunch of compatibility issues. It's in it's infancy - you can find a lot of ok tech demos around the web but very few full-featured games. Bleeding edge technologies that are not quite ready for prime time are not a good fit for people who can't program. HTML/Javascript is pretty nasty to work with compared to something like Flash as well.

I expect since mobile devices aren't going to support Flash that HTML5 will mature but it's just not quite there yet.

This is not me spouting some theoretical bullshit. I'm working on an HTML5 project right now and have a lot of experience with HTML/Javascript. It's just not an ideal environment for full, high performance games.
 
I don't exactly mind to make a downloadable game but not being on all of those browser gaming websites hurts. They accept HTML5 games more and more. For now I don't know Flash so it's not a option for me in the short term.

Anyhow, I think I should focus on making one full game at least for a start. Or maybe I shouldn't and try to learn some other simple language asap? (but honestly, that's boring, I just got some ease in the GameMaker pseudo javascript...)
 
I'm doing everything in Unity, Blender and Gimp so far. Working on evenings and weekends, all while attempting to not neglect my gf. For scripting I'm using UnityScript which is based off of Javascript. Some of the Unity add-ons are written in C# so I've been slowly learning that as well.
Any tips/suggestions on reading material? Those are basically what I'd use to do any fiddling around, but never know where to start.
 
"Yeah, any good books on Unity in particular? Or webcasts?"

Video series I watched to learn Unity interface and scripting language:

Unity Jump Start (Uses Javascript)
3D Buzz 2D Shooter tutorial (Essentially the same tutorial as above, but remade using C#)
Alex Holowka's Unity3D tutorial. A bit old, but the interface in Unity hasn't changed that drastically over the past few years so it should still be fine.


Will Goldstone (Who is the author of a few Unity books, like This one) used to have some video tutorials on Unity, but they are really old and I don't believe they're available anymore. He does have this website: http://www.unity3dstudent.com/, though, which goes over how to do a bunch of little things within Unity. More useful after you've come to grips with using Unity in general.
 
"Yeah, any good books on Unity in particular? Or webcasts?"

Video series I watched to learn Unity interface and scripting language:

Unity Jump Start (Uses Javascript)
3D Buzz 2D Shooter tutorial (Essentially the same tutorial as above, but remade using C#)
Alex Holowka's Unity3D tutorial. A bit old, but the interface in Unity hasn't changed that drastically over the past few years so it should still be fine.


Will Goldstone (Who is the author of a few Unity books, like This one) used to have some video tutorials on Unity, but they are really old and I don't believe they're available anymore. He does have this website: http://www.unity3dstudent.com/, though, which goes over how to do a bunch of little things within Unity. More useful after you've come to grips with using Unity in general.

Ooh, awesome, thanks man!

Will take a while to go through this stuff but I can tell it'll be worth it.
 
Will Goldstone (Who is the author of a few Unity books, like This one) used to have some video tutorials on Unity, but they are really old and I don't believe they're available anymore. He does have this website: http://www.unity3dstudent.com/, though, which goes over how to do a bunch of little things within Unity. More useful after you've come to grips with using Unity in general.
Since I'm not good with video tutorials, would that book be good for an absolute beginner?
 
New Thatcher concept art by our second artist, Angie.

thatchercolordone.jpg


Done up because Bam doesn't have the time to work on a project as large as Army of Tentacles, but was able to work on our dinosaur game.

Thatcher_color.jpg


Her name's Thatcher. She is not a Chocobo. Her original design was a lot more aquatic to match the other monsters in your player's party, but we figured out early on that, being an inland monster, it did not work for story or physiological purposes.
 
Any tips/suggestions on reading material? Those are basically what I'd use to do any fiddling around, but never know where to start.

I think where to start depends on you, what kind of game do you want to make? Then start Google-ing. The first thing I tried to make was a RTS, so I was searching for pathfinding and shooting AI. Just search for anything and put UNITY after the keywords, you'll get a ton of hits.
Since I'm not good with video tutorials, would that book be good for an absolute beginner?
Try this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Unity-Development-Example-Beginners-Guide/product-reviews/1849690545
It's well written and you make a couple games, which are kind of hilarious.

I check these sites daily:
http://answers.unity3d.com/index.html

http://forum.unity3d.com/


"Yeah, any good books on Unity in particular? Or webcasts?"

Video series I watched to learn Unity interface and scripting language:

Unity Jump Start (Uses Javascript)
3D Buzz 2D Shooter tutorial (Essentially the same tutorial as above, but remade using C#)
Alex Holowka's Unity3D tutorial. A bit old, but the interface in Unity hasn't changed that drastically over the past few years so it should still be fine.


Will Goldstone (Who is the author of a few Unity books, like This one) used to have some video tutorials on Unity, but they are really old and I don't believe they're available anymore. He does have this website: http://www.unity3dstudent.com/, though, which goes over how to do a bunch of little things within Unity. More useful after you've come to grips with using Unity in general.

Thanks for the links, I'm gonna be watching those tutorials for sure.

Another one that I found useful was this series:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL11F87EB39F84E292&feature=plcp
 
Productive thing of the night:

I got my input handler registration and search code finished. All the framework is there for keyboard events, so I just need to copy data (and add little bits of code into the existing framework when I start needing mouse/gamepad input as well).

Unproductive thing of the night:

I found that my game paused if I pressed F10. Why? Turns out it's due to default Windows behavior, with Windows trying to activate a (nonexistent) menubar? The same happens for alt, and for whatever reason this made my SFML game freeze until I pressed them again. Fortunately SFML is open-source, so I added a little bit of code (see my response at http://www.sfml-dev.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=46732) to let me handle those keys normally with SFML. :)

Thing to ponder of the night:

I am at the point where I need to match key presses with game actions, and my temptation is to let the input handler class have a pointer to the game class. Thanks to someone who posted earlier in this thread, however, I find myself wondering about how to make this interface clean and not break the encapsulation too much, so that in theory user input could be simulated in an automated fashion to allow certain game behavior to be tested.
 
Anyone have any experience with some of the network multiplayer tutorials/libraries in the Unity Asset Store?

I've scanned through every book on Unity I could find on Safari O'Reilly, and I don't think anyone of them touch on networking which sort of surprised me.
 
2D games I agree should be easy to get good performance out of today, 3D might still get hairy. I can only predict that at some point the browsers will diverge after converging, it's too hard for me to imagine IE and Chrome and whatever behaving exactly the same 3 or 4 years from now.
 
PonyGAF's Cutie Mark Crusade is coming along nicely. The work is practically finished on the Python engine, barring any new requirements that we may come across, and optimization that will be done before release time.

Now is the time for scripting and for replacing all the placeholders with actual assets!

Right now, I'm working on sprite animations based on the show's own animation work, using Inkscape for vectors.

wtz27.gif
 
I've seen people wanting video tutorials on Unity, so here is a very deep collection of how to make games in Unity:
http://www.burgzergarcade.com/

They cover almost everything and the website is constantly updated. Be warned, this is a tutorial overload on how they are making their game. :-P Better to just browse through the topics then select what you need to learn and just use the tutorial for your own stuff...
 
A non-animated demo of a pie-chart (lol) is not a 60 fps Metroidvania. Have you tried making an HTML5 game? I'm guessing the answer is no.



It runs at 400x320 or something. HTML5 also has no sound support and a bunch of compatibility issues. It's in it's infancy - you can find a lot of ok tech demos around the web but very few full-featured games. Bleeding edge technologies that are not quite ready for prime time are not a good fit for people who can't program. HTML/Javascript is pretty nasty to work with compared to something like Flash as well.

I expect since mobile devices aren't going to support Flash that HTML5 will mature but it's just not quite there yet.

This is not me spouting some theoretical bullshit. I'm working on an HTML5 project right now and have a lot of experience with HTML/Javascript. It's just not an ideal environment for full, high performance games.

I've been posting in this thread about my HTML 5 project (Terraia clone, currently small but does get 60FPS with no optimization). I do web development professionally.
 
This is not me spouting some theoretical bullshit. I'm working on an HTML5 project right now and have a lot of experience with HTML/Javascript. It's just not an ideal environment for full, high performance games.

This is kinda where I ended up with my poking around with JS / HTML5. I've got nothing really against JS, you can make stuff happen just fine with it. But is has some really serious limitations with trying to create serious games in it. And honestly when I look around I see lots of stuff like Dart, NaCL, Stage 3D, and Unity I really don't see the big web / game companies looking to commit to JS / HTML5 moving forward, more like trying to do what they can to get way from it. I can see plenty of smaller games and cool rich websites using it, but I don't see it as providing the big takeover for games.
 
This is kinda where I ended up with my poking around with JS / HTML5. I've got nothing really against JS, you can make stuff happen just fine with it. But is has some really serious limitations with trying to create serious games in it. And honestly when I look around I see lots of stuff like Dart, NaCL, Stage 3D, and Unity I really don't see the big web / game companies looking to commit to JS / HTML5 moving forward, more like trying to do what they can to get way from it. I can see plenty of smaller games and cool rich websites using it, but I don't see it as providing the big takeover for games.

This is primarily because most of those sorts of devs and people in threads like this are getting education in traditional OO programming. Javascript is not like C/Java/C#. It takes vastly different design patterns and requires you to throw away a lot of what you know and how you structure yourself. I used to hate it with a passion but after working with it for a couple years and learning from some talented people I definitely have much more respect for its power.
 
hmmmm, ok.


another question. im really interested in javascript/canvas game development, but if i made a reaaaally good game and wanted to monetize it what are the best options?

i heard that javascript apps can be ported to android as native apps. is that still true if i made extensive use of canvas?
 
hmmmm, ok.


another question. im really interested in javascript/canvas game development, but if i made a reaaaally good game and wanted to monetize it what are the best options?

i heard that javascript apps can be ported to android as native apps. is that still true if i made extensive use of canvas?

Yes. AppMobi, PhoneGap, and Appcelerator will take HTML5 games and make them into executable apps for a wide variety of platforms.

As for monetizing an actual HTML5 game on the web, you can sell it on the Chrome Web Store, use Google In-App Payments, or use advertising.
 
One thing to point out is that there are no real good hosting solutions for HTML 5 apps. These apps are tiny yet you'll probably be paying the minimum of $10 a month to host it on some server with far more features than you actually need.
 
One thing to point out is that there are no real good hosting solutions for HTML 5 apps. These apps are tiny yet you'll probably be paying the minimum of $10 a month to host it on some server with far more features than you actually need.

Chrome Web Store allows you to upload apps up to 10 MB in size last I checked, and when I asked about it they said they'd be expanding that or ditching the limit altogether eventually which may be the case now. Note that this is just for the raw asset count, if you get creative there's unlimited storage using localStorage or the File API.

GitHub offers fantastic free hosting. No bandwidth limits, no storage limits, nothing, for free. But you have to use Git (which isn't too hard.) 4kg: Prototype is hosted on GitHub and the Chrome Web Store and I haven't had to pay a cent for hosting.
 
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