Making Games Megathread: The Normals are Stored in the Balls

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Making Games Megathread: The Normals are Stored in the Balls

«‹›1363 »

Nition: Feb 25, 2006; You really want to know?

Trying to make my maps look a little bit nicer.

Although I think it also looks better in motion.

# ? Feb 21, 2015 05:43

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Jun 5, 2024 18:30

xzzy: Mar 5, 2009

Looks like Sandtrap from Halo 3. :v:

# ? Feb 21, 2015 05:47

Nition: Feb 25, 2006; You really want to know?

That particular map (DustBowl) is sort of inspired by a map from Interstate '76 that was just a big crater. Can't find a video of it unfortunately.

In other news, I told the AI that they could make this sweet jump:

Nition fucked around with this message at 06:20 on Feb 21, 2015

# ? Feb 21, 2015 06:18

shs: Feb 14, 2012

SharpenedSpoonv2 posted:

Shindragon and I finished up a game for the JamGame - Dog Watch! A game where you try to suppress your instinct to bark at everything by playing keyboard twister and holding down keys. It was fun, and I love the art and the mechanics.

http://sharpenedspoon.itch.io/dog-watch

There are things that are missing (sound, juice), things that can be done better (better difficulty ramp, player feedback, misc polish); but honestly I didn't have any time for that stuff, and planned for it not to be in there, in favor of finishing the original scope of the game - which I did, 100%! So it's not a perfect game, but it is the perfect thing to have gotten me out of a lack-of-dev funk that I've been in for a while.

I was far too uncoordinated to play this well, but it did inspire me to make my own similar mechanic... which I am not very good at either.

# ? Feb 21, 2015 08:37

Nition: Feb 25, 2006; You really want to know?

Sorta orthographic views of my Scraps multiplayer maps right now.

TestMapMP is huge but a bit behind the times in coherence and quality. It really only exists because there's a big map with all sorts of terrain for testing vehicles on, and I thought there might as well be a playable version in Multiplayer.

Nition fucked around with this message at 10:38 on Feb 21, 2015

# ? Feb 21, 2015 10:34

KiddieGrinder: Nov 15, 2005; HELP ME

Nition posted:

If I were you. I'd consider zooming the camera a lot tighter in on the car. It seriously looks like an RC car at this distance, especially with the oversized wheels.

If they are RC cars then good job.

# ? Feb 21, 2015 11:24

Pizzatime: Apr 1, 2011

Yo, meant to show off my game in this thread, not the game dev megathread. Pretty confusing.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pizzamakesgames.down

Only on Android for now, coming to iOS once Apple's done approving it. Tell me what you think!

# ? Feb 21, 2015 11:31

Lucid Dream: Feb 4, 2003; That boy ain't right.

Screenshot saturday! Here is an elevator call button thing:

# ? Feb 21, 2015 11:36

Mr Underhill: Feb 14, 2012; Not picking that up.

Congrats on releasing Hot Tin Roof, Shalinor! I gotta wait for my next paycheck to pick it up since now I'm broke but I watched 3 or 4 let's plays and I gotta say it looks great. I think my two favorite things are the environments - great stylizing on those, I think construction sites are my favorites - and the lighting and overall feel of the game is great. That's just the highlights though, writing's great, music too, it overall looks like a fun and charming experience.

The two things I've seen people complain about were reloading the gun - which I understand you can somehow skip or accelerate - and the lack of dialogue. Yeah, I guess a noir-y game could greatly benefit from dialogue, but working on a dialogue-heavy game, too, we're now in the process of cutting out a lot of lines just so we can fit into a minimum budget so I get why you didn't put in any.

Overall, looks great and I can't wait to play it. And it's not a 4x FTL roguelike rpg! 'Grats again.

Mr Underhill fucked around with this message at 12:03 on Feb 21, 2015

# ? Feb 21, 2015 11:45

Programmer Humor: Nov 27, 2008; Lipstick Apathy

Man, I just spent the entire week trying to get animations from blender working in UE4. Apparently there are some bugs with the fbx files, but no one seems to know if it's in blender or Unreal. The workaround seems to be to export to the old fbx 6.1 ascii format, then run that through the autodesk fbx converter tool, and import that into Unreal.

# ? Feb 21, 2015 13:24

Catgirl Al Capone: Dec 15, 2007

Lucid Dream posted:

Screenshot saturday! Here is an elevator call button thing:

i am distressed, by the application of a shirt. please remove said travesty immediately.

# ? Feb 21, 2015 16:15

xgalaxy: Jan 27, 2004; i write code

Programmer Humor posted:

Man, I just spent the entire week trying to get animations from blender working in UE4. Apparently there are some bugs with the fbx files, but no one seems to know if it's in blender or Unreal. The workaround seems to be to export to the old fbx 6.1 ascii format, then run that through the autodesk fbx converter tool, and import that into Unreal.

Yea its pretty disappointing. Epic even gave the blender folks some money to help improve the FBX export and it kind of looks like the Blender guys just took the money and ran. Every time someone brings them a blender scene that doesn't export correctly to Unreal the blender guys blame Epic and close the ticket.

# ? Feb 21, 2015 16:25

Lucid Dream: Feb 4, 2003; That boy ain't right.

a medical mystery posted:

i am distressed, by the application of a shirt. please remove said travesty immediately.

A sweater and jorts are much more appropriate for a spaceman.

Lucid Dream fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Feb 21, 2015

# ? Feb 21, 2015 16:25

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

Mr Underhill posted:

The two things I've seen people complain about were reloading the gun - which I understand you can somehow skip or accelerate - and the lack of dialogue. Yeah, I guess a noir-y game could greatly benefit from dialogue, but working on a dialogue-heavy game, too, we're now in the process of cutting out a lot of lines just so we can fit into a minimum budget so I get why you didn't put in any.

Thanks!

and yup - I'm adding a more obvious tutorial for the hold-button-to-fast-reload thing a bit later in the game as we speak. We didn't tell users that at the beginning because user tests showed if we did that - that's all they ever did. They never figured out how the revolver actually WORKS, which is an issue, heh. There's an NPC that tells you about it, but if you don't read that dialog line, whelp. The other... yup, budget, not really anything to be done about that.

# ? Feb 21, 2015 18:48

Fur20: Nov 14, 2007; すご▞い！
君は働か░い
フ▙▓ズなんだね！

Lucid Dream posted:

A sweater and jorts are much more appropriate for a spaceman.

I was gonna say, those Daisy Dukes are a suitable replacement for underpants.

# ? Feb 21, 2015 19:17

SharpenedSpoonv2: Aug 28, 2008

shs posted:

I was far too uncoordinated to play this well, but it did inspire me to make my own similar mechanic... which I am not very good at either.

Oh, awesome! That looks like a really good way to implement that mechanic in a non-gimmicky game. Glad we could inspire you!

# ? Feb 21, 2015 19:23

Pi Mu Rho: Apr 25, 2007; College Slice

Added missiles and some explode-y stuff. I also doubled the size of the ship components.

http://i.imgur.com/8298nAi.gifv

The player is getting hit there, I just have God mode on, and there's nothing to indicate hits yet.
Next up is the (homing) missile launchers on the big ship weapon component, then on to the hangar component, that launches enemy fighters at you.

# ? Feb 21, 2015 20:29

Nition: Feb 25, 2006; You really want to know?

KiddieGrinder posted:

If I were you. I'd consider zooming the camera a lot tighter in on the car. It seriously looks like an RC car at this distance, especially with the oversized wheels.

If they are RC cars then good job.

You're right but that's at max zoom out - the player can zoom the camera in and out a bit.

# ? Feb 21, 2015 21:41

KiddieGrinder: Nov 15, 2005; HELP ME

Oh ok then that's cool.

edit: In cockpit view?

# ? Feb 21, 2015 22:00

Nition: Feb 25, 2006; You really want to know?

There's no in-cockpit view at the moment although it would be possible, since vehicles already require some reasonable amount of visibility from the cockpit. Main reason it isn't in is that it would be a disadvantage in a fight vs. a third-person view. For instance you might have a turret weapon you can aim behind you, but you couldn't really use it in cockpit view. Could be fun to have anyway though.

# ? Feb 21, 2015 22:10

JossiRossi: Jul 28, 2008; A little EQ, a touch of reverb, slap on some compression and there. That'll get your dickbutt jiggling.

Shalinor posted:

Thanks!

and yup - I'm adding a more obvious tutorial for the hold-button-to-fast-reload thing a bit later in the game as we speak. We didn't tell users that at the beginning because user tests showed if we did that - that's all they ever did. They never figured out how the revolver actually WORKS, which is an issue, heh. There's an NPC that tells you about it, but if you don't read that dialog line, whelp.

If you knew this was an issue why didn't you redesign the mechanic though? Instead of making the revolver easier to use, you force people to use it in a way that is unenjoyable so they they can later not enjoy their use of it when it is required. I'm confused this is the conclusion that was come to.

Honestly, I think you could have done a Metroid style thing where there's a key/button to change the current bullet type you are firing. If you want to stop rapid fire shooting (which since there's no combat there's little problem with just spamming bullets) then you could have kept a reloading pause after 4 shots, no matter the type fired, because there is NO REASON to over complicate your primary means of interaction/exploration. Small cool down, then you can fire another 4 shots however fast you want. If you made this an option, I'd take it in a heartbeat as it would improve my experience of the game so far immensely.

In the end what does having a player need to manually reload add to the game play?

# ? Feb 21, 2015 22:43

Nition: Feb 25, 2006; You really want to know?

Tried Scraps in Unity 5. Good to see the physics working perfectly without any changes needed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUujEe3uqns

Edit: Flipping Intensifies?

Nition fucked around with this message at 02:09 on Feb 22, 2015

# ? Feb 22, 2015 01:28

Mr Underhill: Feb 14, 2012; Not picking that up.

Nition posted:

Tried Scraps in Unity 5. Good to see the physics working perfectly without any changes needed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUujEe3uqns

Is it already out? My programmer says he's waiting for it like the second coming. Says it'll solve a LOT of our problems.

# ? Feb 22, 2015 01:53

Pi Mu Rho: Apr 25, 2007; College Slice

Mr Underhill posted:

Is it already out? My programmer says he's waiting for it like the second coming. Says it'll solve a LOT of our problems.

There's a beta.

# ? Feb 22, 2015 01:53

Nition: Feb 25, 2006; You really want to know?

There's a Release Candidate now. If you have a Unity 5 licence you can download it.

# ? Feb 22, 2015 02:00

KRILLIN IN THE NAME: Mar 25, 2006; goku i won't do what u tell me

Nition posted:

Tried Scraps in Unity 5. Good to see the physics working perfectly without any changes needed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUujEe3uqns

Aww yeah http://youtubedoubler.com/eDNC

# ? Feb 22, 2015 02:02

Turtlicious: Sep 17, 2012; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

How come no-one has made a Halo clone for the PC? I mean with the tons of vehicle variety, the map editor, the shitton of unique weapons, the whole 9 yards?

# ? Feb 22, 2015 02:12

Yodzilla: Apr 29, 2005; Now who looks even dumber?

Beef Witch

Probably because that's a fuckload of work??

e: also there already is a great version of Halo on the PC :colbert:

# ? Feb 22, 2015 04:07

FuzzySlippers: Feb 6, 2009

Nition posted:

There's a Release Candidate now. If you have a Unity 5 licence you can download it.

Even a Unity dev admitted they don't really do RC properly and its still pretty beta. I think they just want to rush a release announcement for GDC.

# ? Feb 22, 2015 05:13

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

JossiRossi posted:

Honestly, I think you could have done a Metroid style thing where there's a key/button to change the current bullet type you are firing.

That'd be a different game. It wouldn't let you quick fire ammo combos, and it wouldn't focus the player on ammo choice. You're describing a mechanic best suited to run and gun, where the player waves the gun at everything - and that is very much the opposite of what Hot Tin Roof is. Theming matters, as well.

The reason we have revolver + quickload is because the player chooses a combo loadout for an area/puzzle, and can then quickly reload and try again. They change on a per-puzzle or per-task basis. Without the quick reload mechanic, retrying puzzles repeatedly becomes a slog.

# ? Feb 22, 2015 05:49

JossiRossi: Jul 28, 2008; A little EQ, a touch of reverb, slap on some compression and there. That'll get your dickbutt jiggling.

Shalinor posted:

That'd be a different game. It wouldn't let you quick fire ammo combos, and it wouldn't focus the player on ammo choice. You're describing a mechanic best suited to run and gun, where the player waves the gun at everything - and that is very much the opposite of what Hot Tin Roof is. Theming matters, as well.

The reason we have revolver + quickload is because the player chooses a combo loadout for an area/puzzle, and can then quickly reload and try again. They change on a per-puzzle or per-task basis. Without the quick reload mechanic, retrying puzzles repeatedly becomes a slog.

HTR is still a run and gun. Instead of enemies though you are shooting obstacles. Either to remove them or to move the player. My experience in the underground was one where all I wanted to do was move faster, instead every time and obstacle is presented I needed to open my gun do a bunch of clicking then get back to the level do what I needed to do until the next moment where I then needed to open the gun. "Run and gun" should have been a goal to strive for instead of a "run and stop and sort bullets and gun". And to say that being able to swap bullets would not allow for combos is simply untrue. Players would be able to fire, tap a key however many times, fire again and then succeed.

In fact this would give the player more consistent control over what bullet is fired. Because you might set up a combo, but if you mess up you need to reset your pattern by shooting a few extra times to get into place. Which you might remember wrong because there's no immediate way to discern what your bullet combo is without opening a menu, which is clunky.

And I don't know why you are saying that the player is not supposed to wave their gun everywhere when your exploration is entirely shoot all over the place based. In some places you need to shoot platforms you can't even see to progress. In terms of theme I really don't see what the gun mechanic is actually supposed to add. Maybe at one point it was intended to be, I recall the idea of russian roulette and a kind of intimidation gauge, but from the 3 hours I played I wasn't getting that.

# ? Feb 22, 2015 06:18

Yodzilla: Apr 29, 2005; Now who looks even dumber?

Beef Witch

Just got an iPhone 6 Plus and good thing because it turns out Bungle is hella tiny on it!

Time for a winter update :smugwizard:

# ? Feb 22, 2015 06:44

Zereth: Jul 9, 2003

Shalinor posted:

Hey I have a bug report:

Default settings, windowed, I can't read the last option when asking Johnny da Horn Playah to play something.

I also had a point in the Ossified Egg where just after I entered a room, my gun pointed in the opposite direction of my mouse, which was weird.

# ? Feb 22, 2015 07:13

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

Zereth posted:

Hey I have a bug report:

Default settings, windowed, I can't read the last option when asking Johnny da Horn Playah to play something.

I also had a point in the Ossified Egg where just after I entered a room, my gun pointed in the opposite direction of my mouse, which was weird.

Yup, the Johnny one is known / it'll probably be in the next patch. The other is... weird. Is that the one where you enter a room (via an up/down teleport) and are aiming with the mouse before you've moved left/right again? Or did you get into the state a different way?

# ? Feb 22, 2015 07:17

Zereth: Jul 9, 2003

Shalinor posted:

Yup, the Johnny one is known / it'll probably be in the next patch. The other is... weird. Is that the one where you enter a room (via an up/down teleport) and are aiming with the mouse before you've moved left/right again? Or did you get into the state a different way?

Is there a way to not aim with the mouse? :confused:

So probably.

I've had a couple rats in the Dump also have the left edge of dialogue options poke off the left edge of the screen, but that's not as bad as Johnny which is largley off-screen period.

# ? Feb 22, 2015 07:49

Spek: Jun 15, 2012; Bagel!

I found a bug/sequence break. You can use knockback ammo to propel yourself through doors on the background or foreground. Shoot down as you move towards them and you just pop right through.

Even works with doors that I don't think you ever go through like this door next to the chief's office that I can't elsewise enter. It just ends up putting me into the town fortunately. Ends up being a nice shortcut.

Doing it on foreground doors is way trickier and I can't manage it reliably but for background doors it's really easy and reliable. It doesn't work at all for left/right doors.

# ? Feb 22, 2015 08:48

Zereth: Jul 9, 2003

I must be missing something, where's the smoke shop the Chief tells me to go to? ~~And also I need to find Hi-Top?~~ oh that's the gum factory.

Zereth fucked around with this message at 10:13 on Feb 22, 2015

# ? Feb 22, 2015 10:11

Internet Janitor: May 17, 2008; "That isn't the appropriate trash receptacle."

A few observations.

The Clues screen requires you to go through the configuration/controls menu every single time and click on a small and easily missed button in the right corner. This seems backwards, as you only reconfigure the display once or twice at the beginning of the game and you need to access clues constantly.
In dialogue options containing more than one line of response, moving the mouse between two options will cause them to rapidly flip back and forth while Z-fighting. Z-fighting also comes up frequently when dialogue boxes end up close to one another or overlapping.
Coin pickups frequently spawn in front of or behind the player's plane, leaving them unreachable.
Corners which can be turned (particularly those internal to buildings) often don't give any visual indication that there's more to explore in that direction unless you walk all the way into them and see the arrow indicator. It's very easy to miss large areas, and actual dead ends can be frustrating.
Some obstacles force multiple gun reloads for seemingly no pacing related reason. Piles of boxes tend to come in groups of 8 to 10, Fully reloading your gun is 10 clicks. Passing this obstacle without knowing about fast reload means you may have to click the mouse 28 times or more simply to proceed.
There's no indication which direction the revolver's chambers rotate, so creating a complex sequence of bullet types would require significant trial and error. I didn't encounter any puzzles which actually required more than one bullet type loaded.
Some wall types allow you to grapple and some do not. This is introduced in the sewer level, where brown dirt walls can be grappled and brown metal(?) walls cannot. It is difficult to distinguish which surfaces should work and there is very little visual or auditory indication when a grapple fails. A sound effect and or particle effect distinguishing surface types could help, as could some consistent application of color or texture to indentify surfaces you can grapple.

# ? Feb 22, 2015 15:05

SupSuper: Apr 8, 2009; At the Heart of the city is an Alien horror, so vile and so powerful that not even death can claim it.

While we're here, some issues I noticed:

You can't select menu options with the keyboard. While WSAD works fine to highlight them, E/Enter/Space/whatever don't do anything so you're always forced to use the mouse.
Sometimes you start dialogue with Frankie when she is out of sight (eg. when platforming) so you end up only seeing half the conversation, probably should reset her position before-hand.
Sometimes one or both characters get stuck outside the world when moving between doors, though they seem to snap back eventually.
There's no ingame cursor/crosshair. This gets particularly problematic if you're using a controller, since your only indicator of where you're aiming is your gun, and often your character might be covered by foreground objects.
Sometimes characters clip through objects when positioned for a dialogue.
No way to back out of a dialog tree (the traditional adventure game "Bye!") if you accidentally roll into one.
No visual indicator of which thing you can interact with when there's multiple available (eg. in a group of NPCs). A little arrow like you use for the doors would work.
No indicator of which save slots have data or not.
Some visual bugs like the garbage bags clipping through in the alley, characters still visible in the void of unloaded areas, and I have no idea what's going on with the bookcases in the Ossified Egg.

These are by no means game-breaking problems, just little quirks you can fix up and polish if you're looking to give your game some extra care.

However I have to second that the revolver mechanic is just aggravating. I realize you're going for a slow methodical type of game, but the reload mechanic is not inherently fun. It's a gimmick, it's cute the first few times, but since you have to use it throughout the whole game it gets old and just completely halts the flow of the game. Yes having a specific combination might come in useful, but before that you've already spent tons of time just reloading and swapping bullet types to care (and it takes 10 clicks just to do a full load), and there's no indicator of the order the bullets anyways (until you memorize it by trial and error). Even if you wanna stick with it, there's plenty of ways to improve it:

Instead of needing two clicks to remove the old bullet and place the new one, just make one click automatically replace the bullet. This halves the required amount of clicks.
Don't keep the quick reload feature from the player, early-game it's a lot more useful since you'll rarely be swapping bullets and more shooting tons of boxes.
If you consider the bullet order important, than have some visual indicator for it. A HUD indicator of the current loadout would also work, so you don't have to keep stopping to check.

SupSuper fucked around with this message at 16:45 on Feb 22, 2015

# ? Feb 22, 2015 16:31

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Jun 5, 2024 18:30

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

Spek posted:

Doing it on foreground doors is way trickier and I can't manage it reliably but for background doors it's really easy and reliable. It doesn't work at all for left/right doors.

I... WOW. Ok, so I know this is a bug, right but... I may leave it alone. It's SO specific a glitch, and SO hard to do that I kind of don't want to gently caress with it / kinda just want to leave it there for sequence breakers. We'll see if anyone stumbles into it accidentally, but it strikes me as a pretty intentioned thing to trigger. (I'll have to fix it if it's a thing people start stumbling into commonly)

There's actually a sequence break that I DID design that lets you short-cut straight to knockbacks, too, so this + that is a hell of a synergy.

PM me. I'd really like to put your name in the credits for that. Nice find.

SupSuper posted:

However I have to second that the revolver mechanic is just aggravating.

The latest patch tutorializes quick reloading in the Dump entrance, after you fall down. Hopefully, that'll mean everyone learns that mechanic before they hit any major shoot'y sequences.

SupSuper posted:

While we're here, some issues I noticed:

You can't select menu options with the keyboard. While WSAD works fine to highlight them, E/Enter/Space/whatever don't do anything so you're always forced to use the mouse.

No visual indicator of which thing you can interact with when there's multiple available (eg. in a group of NPCs). A little arrow like you use for the doors would work.

I have no idea what's going on with the bookcases in the Ossified Egg.

#1 I need to fix ASAP, #2 is fantastic idea, and - can you describe what you mean by #3? I've only had one instance of a "thing that isn't in a vis group" reported in Ossified Egg, and it isn't a fireplace. What glitch are you seeing wrt. them?

Shalinor fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Feb 22, 2015

# ? Feb 22, 2015 17:48

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Making Games Megathread: The Normals are Stored in the Balls

«‹›1363 »