|
SSH IT ZOMBIE posted:Welp. I'm tossing the level I made, I got the game sort of in a playable state, had a couple people try it. They got confused and died a lot. Guess I'm going to have to ramp up the difficulty really gradually. It's not a complete waste, the spike traps and difficult pieces I made in the level, I can just remake or use elsewhere. The ideas are there...just not good for a first level I guess. We are all quite a bit more hardcore than the norm in here, and it's a hard mindset to get out of. A learning cure that seems natural to us looks like The Black Gate to normal/casual gamers, I've had to severely lengthen every tutorial I've ever made once I get it out of the lab and into what might be called "The real world". If you really want to test it out, have a boomer take a spin at it. If they can figure your game out step-by-step, you know you're golden, but it might be worth a "Skip" option for people more like us.
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2012 17:39
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 29, 2024 13:47 |
|
|
GetWellGamers posted:We are all quite a bit more hardcore than the norm in here, and it's a hard mindset to get out of. A learning cure that seems natural to us looks like The Black Gate to normal/casual gamers, I've had to severely lengthen every tutorial I've ever made once I get it out of the lab and into what might be called "The real world". I once made a flash tower defense once and tuned it so I could comfortably beat every level without too much trouble. Then I increased all player damage values by 30-50% across the board. It was still way too hard. Some people really suck at video games.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2012 18:05
|
|
|
GetWellGamers posted:We are all quite a bit more hardcore than the norm in here, and it's a hard mindset to get out of. A learning cure that seems natural to us looks like The Black Gate to normal/casual gamers, I've had to severely lengthen every tutorial I've ever made once I get it out of the lab and into what might be called "The real world". If you really want to test it out, have a boomer take a spin at it. If they can figure your game out step-by-step, you know you're golden, but it might be worth a "Skip" option for people more like us. Well, there is that. I'm definitely targeting a niche, not casual players. It's going to be pretty drat esoteric. But, the difficulty half way through the level is basically that of the beginning of the Cave Story hell level combined with various gravity traps you either need to shorthop out of, or run and not jump. If you jump you'll hit spikes. It's not as bad as I Wanna Be the Guy..but...the difficulty combined with game breaking bugs that still are rampant, I can tell it's not the right direction for a first level regardless of skill level. He was also taking paths through the level I wouldn't think of, and I saw him double back at least a couple times. To beat it, you would have to actually memorize what to do. The first level I'm going to have to make nearly completely horizontal, and introduce some of the concepts that will get you through various areas without the penalty of spikes. And I won't even give the gravity gun until the end of the level so people can first learn how to move the character around right. The physics are intentionally strange. Ie, punching reduces your gravity by like 98%, so it can juggle enemies and carry you over pits. Really it's mostly my fault, I made a confusing level for anyone. He's actually pretty good at games, and so are the other people I showed. SSH IT ZOMBIE fucked around with this message at 00:13 on Oct 27, 2012 |
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2012 00:04
|
|
|
Do any of youse guys use Desura? I wouldn't mind adding Desura profiles to the OP. Seems like a decent site.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2012 00:39
|
|
|
What do you guys think would be an appropriate and/or intriguing art style for a dialogue-and-social-manoeuvring-based Roguelike about the mafia set on a fictional Mediterranean island in the 1970's?
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2012 05:17
|
|
|
I'd suggest something like the way people were depicted on old travel posters- sharp shapes but soft shading/colors: http://img0.etsystatic.com/006/0/7291161/il_fullxfull.381349592_e5x3.jpg Edit: Eeep, tables. Does posting an image url automatically add img tags now or something? 
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2012 06:23
|
|
|
I've been playing around with recording decent video of my game and getting it onto youtube, but I figured while I had something uploaded I might as well share a video of this sweet cabinet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQXwFt-xcbM Lucid Dream fucked around with this message at 06:29 on Oct 27, 2012 |
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2012 06:25
|
|
|
GetWellGamers posted:I'd suggest something like the way people were depicted on old travel posters- sharp shapes but soft shading/colors: It adds the tags when you paste the link in. You could always use the timg tag so it'll resize it for you and link to the big version.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2012 06:48
|
|
|
Serious Ultima Online flashbacks with that inventory, heh.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2012 06:59
|
|
|
It's screenshot Saturday, so here's a shotday screenursat for your eyeballs to see. Almost done with asset design for a complete new area - still one (maybe two if I think of anything special) asset(s) left to add in.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2012 11:00
|
|
|
A heavy rain cloud on its own for Screenshot Saturday:  When it first shows up it'll appear as a massive cloud covering the lake approaching from the horizon and when it fades away it'll break up into smaller pieces like this cloud as they fade away and drift off. I don't know why but this makes me excited. Oddx fucked around with this message at 16:01 on Oct 27, 2012 |
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2012 15:51
|
|
|
GetWellGamers posted:I'd suggest something like the way people were depicted on old travel posters- sharp shapes but soft shading/colors: Very nice! I like that a lot!
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2012 16:25
|
|
|
Screenshotsaturday I've missed you so much never leave me again.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2012 17:20
|
|
|
Amazing work Mug, Oddx, and the chaos engine. Oddx posted:When it first shows up it'll appear as a massive cloud covering the lake approaching from the horizon and when it fades away it'll break up into smaller pieces like this cloud as they fade away and drift off. I don't know why but this makes me excited.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2012 17:37
|
|
|
You are the master of gradients. Did you go to art school? Your color sense is really good.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2012 17:41
|
|
|
the chaos engine posted:Screenshotsaturday I've missed you so much never leave me again.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2012 17:55
|
|
|
Is it supposed to be scary? Because the one on the left looks so incredibly  to me.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2012 17:55
|
|
|
GetWellGamers posted:Is it supposed to be scary? Because the one on the left looks so incredibly It's supposed to be scary in the same way Bowsers Castle is supposed to scary. Incredibly.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2012 17:57
|
|
|
Thanks everyone  Also, Oddx I love the hell outta your game visually. Polo-Rican posted:You are the master of gradients. Did you go to art school? Your color sense is really good. I didn't go to art school, but I have been forcing myself to do more / better with color lately. So thanks! GetWellGamers posted:Is it supposed to be scary? Because the one on the left looks so incredibly ... Now I can't unsee it. I will probably have to change that.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2012 18:16
|
|
|
Kunzelman posted:I've been intrigued every time you post a shot or a video, but I'm still really confused as to what your game actually is. At its most basic, it's a touch based generative music game. It has a fixed camera view point where you swipe to throw stones onto a lake to hear the sounds they make. As that goes on, the environment changes from day to night, causing the sounds to change, with things like weather effects triggered randomly. Everything has a musical component to it. At the same time poetry appears across the lake and sky revealing a narrative. I'm really just experimenting in creating a small environment that reflects some themes and feelings that I want to explore in a digital way. I'm not sure if that really makes it any more clear though.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2012 18:28
|
|
|
the chaos engine posted:Thanks everyone Thanks! I'm going to plug my buddy again because he's been coming up with the incredible style to my silly ideas: http://narwolf.tumblr.com Edit: quote/edit rar
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2012 18:31
|
|
|
Oddx posted:At its most basic, it's a touch based generative music game. It has a fixed camera view point where you swipe to throw stones onto a lake to hear the sounds they make. As that goes on, the environment changes from day to night, causing the sounds to change, with things like weather effects triggered randomly. Everything has a musical component to it. At the same time poetry appears across the lake and sky revealing a narrative. That sounds absolutely amazing. That's really my reason for making/playing around with games, too. I just like making small art experiences that people can enjoy--Smash The Patriarchy! was a part of that. Last weekend I "jammed out" a little art game about a goblin that has a story. I put a lot of thought into it philosophically--in that I'm trying to generate a specific effect through all the the mechanics, art, story, etc.--but I also wanted to make something that takes a minute to play, is accessible (the opposite of STP!), and made me happy to work on. I didn't really post it here, but here is a link to Goblin Story if anyone is interested in checking it out. Anyway, I am super excited about your game Oddx. Make sure you post in the thread when it is done!
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2012 19:11
|
|
|
Oddx posted:A heavy rain cloud on its own for Screenshot Saturday: I know artists hate it when they hear this, but this visual style reminds me a lot of Darwinia.  Although that game goes more for a digital look, whereas yours looks more natural, with a more tranquil color palette.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2012 23:19
|
|
|
Kunzelman posted:Last weekend I "jammed out" a little art game about a goblin that has a story. I put a lot of thought into it philosophically--in that I'm trying to generate a specific effect through all the the mechanics, art, story, etc.--but I also wanted to make something that takes a minute to play, is accessible (the opposite of STP!), and made me happy to work on. This is really intriguing, but I don't think I really *get* it. I'll wait for some others to play it first, literally only takes a minute.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2012 23:20
|
|
|
Mug posted:I'll wait for some others to play it first, literally only takes a minute.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2012 23:53
|
|
|
Making pathfinding deal with "I bumped into another creature" had taken my whole day away from me today. I've decided on a flow thats something like: Bump into another creature; move to the next best tile; mark the previous tile as slightly shitter incase you were thinking about ever going back to it; try going from there. Then theres a bunch of counters for "how many times have I bumped into another creature today", "how many times have I jammed myself into a corner today", etc. Based on those numbers the creature will either switch to "straight line" pathing and then recalculate when it hits a wall - or randomly take a step left/right and try pathfinding again from there. I test it by putting together a squad of 5 creatures and making them frantically run through doorways and up and down coridoors. I'm *almost* totally happy with it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2012 09:36
|
|
|
Oddx posted:Thanks! I'm going to plug my buddy again because he's been coming up with the incredible style to my silly ideas: http://narwolf.tumblr.com That's really strong work. Yo, Polo-Rican, if you want to see good color sense check out that link! I kinda thought that the inspiration for the style came from this: http://geoaday.tumblr.com/
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2012 11:55
|
|
|
I adore low-poly stuff! Especially the undressed and irregular, asymmetric styles. Looks smashing with some heavy post-processing. 2D artists like Liam Brazier produce some very striking polygon art as well. I'm planning to use an irregular low-poly look in my project, but I imagine I'll come to regret it (it's difficult). On that note: Oddx, I think your stuff looks great! Low-poly in motion, in case anyone's as obsessed: http://vimeo.com/45012893 http://vimeo.com/28959265 http://vimeo.com/9178331
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2012 13:18
|
|
|
Spent most of my weekend creating a trailer for my game. Not gonna release it until I reach a beta state however. Getting poo poo done feels so good! P.s. anyone needing voice over work for cheap (free even!) hit up the lovely people on the Voice Acting Club forums. The quality of work they produce is amazing - http://voiceacting.proboards.com/ I posted a request for some voice over work for my trailer and had 5 replies overnight!
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2012 15:05
|
|
|
Mug posted:Making pathfinding deal with "I bumped into another creature" had taken my whole day away from me today. Pathfinding is one of those things I always have trouble wrapping my head around. It seems so simple on paper, just because there are so many well known algorithms for it... until you try to implement one of those algorithms and the whole thing runs at 10 FPS. A thought about creatures bumping into each other though - maybe if two creatures are within a certain tile distance of each other, they would be able to see the path laid out for the other one, and would intentionally avoid stepping into tiles that are "claimed" by the other one? It would probably take a bit of tweaking to get it just right, but it might look nicer to have two entities seem to be coordinating and walking around each other rather than bumping into each other and pausing for a second to try to figure out how to go around. It might be tricky to deal with the case where both entities have paths that overlap where they meet, since you'd have to figure out a rule to give one of them priority when it comes to who actually "claimed" a tile that both of them are pathing through. It would probably be simple enough to just set it up so whoever processes their next move first is the one that has to pick a new path, and then the later one just passes into the tile they've already used. Or if you wanted to get fancy, if your units have in-game ranks, higher ranking units would get priority on claiming tiles. That might have a nice little visual effect of making it so that officers always walk directly where they're going while other entities scramble out of their way. The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 17:16 on Oct 28, 2012 |
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2012 17:12
|
|
|
^I can't really factor one creature's pathfinding results into anothers because they all recalculate every time they hit a wall or their target goes out of their line-of-sight or if they just feel like it. I also have to keep recalculations to a minimum because, as you said, it slows the game down heaps every time they calculate. Anyway, I'm thinking about doing my first Linux build sometime this week; what do people who play games of linux use? Is it just Ubuntu? Maybe a bit of Fedora? Are they all the same? I just want to install one or two distros for testing. Is it gonna be a nightmare?
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2012 22:32
|
|
|
I am pretty new to game programming stuff and this may be too little information for anyone to provide an answer. I found a random video on youtube that depicts something I thought was pretty cool and was hoping someone could help me figure it out. In the Unity scene view you can see the field of vision as well as the proximity circle around his enemy. I have been messing around with enemy seek behavior for a bit and am doing pretty well with that but I would like to add this field of vision and proximity stuff but am having trouble figuring out how this guy went about it. If anyone has any guesses that could help me get to researching I would appreciate it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2012 23:03
|
|
|
Finally finished my Halloween game: LaserCat's Halloween Deadventure! A whole 3 days before Halloween's over too! I'm going to release it in another format tomorrow, but if anyone wants to give it a go through Game maker's steam workshop, here's the link http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=105290190&searchtext=  Quite happy with how the message boxes turned out, much better than my last game. Banjo Kazooie Wobbly text was one of the top priorities. 
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2012 23:52
|
|
|
I've got a really odd question: Any Linux friendly options for C++ web-playable games? I'm teaching C++ and I'd love to give my students options for writing games they can easily share with friends.
|
|
#
?
Oct 29, 2012 01:07
|
|
|
Xand_Man posted:I've got a really odd question: Any Linux friendly options for C++ web-playable games? I'm teaching C++ and I'd love to give my students options for writing games they can easily share with friends. You could maybe get away with something hooked into Chromium's Native Client API. Alternatively, and probably easier, give them the libraries for Allegro, and just have them build static binaries. They might be huge, but they should run just fine as long as they're compiled for the correct type of processor the receiver has (32-bit vs 64).
|
|
#
?
Oct 29, 2012 04:13
|
|
|
Mug posted:^I can't really factor one creature's pathfinding results into anothers because they all recalculate every time they hit a wall or their target goes out of their line-of-sight or if they just feel like it. A couple of ways to speed up path-finding (assuming A*, although these tips probably work for other algorithms) are:
|
|
#
?
Oct 29, 2012 11:37
|
|
|
Mug posted:^I can't really factor one creature's pathfinding results into anothers because they all recalculate every time they hit a wall or their target goes out of their line-of-sight or if they just feel like it. The way I deal with the creature in the way problem is to add a quick check to my edge cost calculation that checks every tile adjacent to the actor for other actors, and considers those tiles to have double cost. When an actor following a path bumps into another actor, they recalculate their path, and since they just bumped into the actor they'll now be adjacent to them, and will route around them. So far the only problem with it is that if two actors meet in one-cell hallway, and have no other path around, they'll block each other indefinitely. I haven't seen it happen yet except when specifically testing yet for it, but if it becomes an issue I'll just add a check to only allow a certain number of path recalculations without any successful moves, before abandoning the destination and resetting the actor's state.
|
|
#
?
Oct 29, 2012 14:33
|
|
|
SlightlyMadman posted:The way I deal with the creature in the way problem is to add a quick check to my edge cost calculation that checks every tile adjacent to the actor for other actors, and considers those tiles to have double cost. When an actor following a path bumps into another actor, they recalculate their path, and since they just bumped into the actor they'll now be adjacent to them, and will route around them. Since the latter is a specific edge-case, could you just test for it directly? i.e. if they bump into another actor and they have no other free tiles around them except the one they just came from, then you know they're in this situation, and you could have it recalculate their path treating the other actor as an impassible barrier. Of course the disadvantage of that is that both your actors will now path out of the hallway and take the long route around, assuming there even is another route for them to take, rather than one of them backing out and taking the long way while the other continues on its original path. In that sort of situation it's probably better to just fix it with your game design rather than through code; just don't make any one-tile wide hallways, or allow actors to squeeze past each other (maybe at some sort of movement speed penalty) if they can't simply walk around, ala Dwarf Fortress (if the ability to block movement is important to the gameplay, you could set it so that actors can only squeeze past friendlies).
|
|
#
?
Oct 29, 2012 15:21
|
|
|
The Cheshire Cat posted:Of course the disadvantage of that is that both your actors will now path out of the hallway and take the long route around, assuming there even is another route for them to take, rather than one of them backing out and taking the long way while the other continues on its original path. Perhaps, in a case like that, use some sort of secondary feature of the actors to determine who has to move? If they're different types of unit, give some sort of priority list, and the lower of the two chooses to recalculate. If they're equal, they "negotiate" it and simply choose one of the two at random to move. The problem I see with that is if you get into a situation where you have two adjacent units looking something like this: code:There might really be no good solution to this one that doesn't rely on good level design or allow for sub-optimal pathing to be an option.
|
|
#
?
Oct 29, 2012 16:42
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 29, 2024 13:47 |
|
|
The Cheshire Cat posted:Since the latter is a specific edge-case, could you just test for it directly? i.e. if they bump into another actor and they have no other free tiles around them except the one they just came from, then you know they're in this situation, and you could have it recalculate their path treating the other actor as an impassible barrier. Of course the disadvantage of that is that both your actors will now path out of the hallway and take the long route around, assuming there even is another route for them to take, rather than one of them backing out and taking the long way while the other continues on its original path. Yeah, like I said it hasn't actually happened yet, but the advantage of just setting a maximum number of path recalculations is it could work for other outcomes I haven't anticipated. I keep my hallways to 3-tile widths wherever possible, but board features and the like could could always cause problems. I've considered the passthrough movement, and may add it eventually if it really becomes an issue, but I'm not a fan of fixing problems that aren't problems yet.
|
|
#
?
Oct 29, 2012 18:05
|
|