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Devs who use Unity: What would you say are the most used complementary software suites and programs you use alongside it? I'm browsing my university's software database and found that I can get Visual Studio 2013 pro for free and was wondering what the heck else I can get while I still have access.
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May 26, 2015 15:35
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FraudulentEconomics posted:Devs who use Unity: What would you say are the most used complementary software suites and programs you use alongside it? I'm browsing my university's software database and found that I can get Visual Studio 2013 pro for free and was wondering what the heck else I can get while I still have access. I basically do everything Unity-related with VS, Blender, and Photoshop.
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May 26, 2015 15:38
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Visual Studio is infinitely better than MonoDevelop for Unity work. Though Unity is going to be bundled with VS soon so that's cool! The other other software I use regularly for Unity dev is Photoshop and TexturePacker.
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May 26, 2015 15:47
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Is there any way to make Blender more like MODO? My MODO trial is about to end and I love it and now I hate Blender even more.
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May 26, 2015 16:01
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StickFigs posted:Is there any way to make Blender more like MODO? My MODO trial is about to end and I love it and now I hate Blender even more. Realistically the genie is out of the bottle and Blender is always going to bother you now. That's what happened to me. Have you looked into the indie version? There's also Silo for pure modelling, it's no longer supported (and crashes more than you'd like), but I've not used anything faster for pushing points around. Silo + Blender is ..probably.. a reasonable toolchain but it'd be a compromise. Hidden Asbestos fucked around with this message at 18:08 on May 26, 2015 |
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May 26, 2015 16:26
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HelixFox posted:Visual Studio is infinitely better than MonoDevelop for Unity work. Though Unity is going to be bundled with VS soon so that's cool! The other other software I use regularly for Unity dev is Photoshop and TexturePacker. I only ever end up using MonoDevelop to do line-by-line debugging stuff. I can't get Unity and VS to work together properly for whatever reason but Unity can connect to MD right out of the box.  made me give up trying to get it to use VS. I can still write all my code there and most of the time can figure out what's wrong by just running stuff and watching what breaks.
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May 26, 2015 17:10
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ToxicSlurpee posted:I basically do everything Unity-related with VS, Blender, and Photoshop. Let's say you could have anything you desire, what software would you love to have?
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May 26, 2015 18:15
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FraudulentEconomics posted:Let's say you could have anything you desire, what software would you love to have? I want a program where I describe what I want in natural language and it asks me questions to refine what I mean and at the end it programs up a game / makes an art asset / writes a song / produces a sound effect / cooks me dinner.
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May 26, 2015 18:20
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ToxicSlurpee posted:I only ever end up using MonoDevelop to do line-by-line debugging stuff. I can't get Unity and VS to work together properly for whatever reason but Unity can connect to MD right out of the box. Have you installed UnityVS? Once you install it, it allows you to add the files you need to your Unity project so you can hook up to Visual Studio.
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May 26, 2015 18:38
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:I want a program where I describe what I want in natural language and it asks me questions to refine what I mean and at the end it programs up a game / makes an art asset / writes a song / produces a sound effect / cooks me dinner. This does make me wonder. When humankind finally reach that point. The point were there is no scarcity of skill, so to speak, what will happen? Will the bloated iOS market look quaint? Will standards be impossibly high to filter out the decent and even "good" work that we today would think is the best thing ever? Indie would be king, and there would be no reason for major studios to exist anymore. Finally, my Sonic/Starfox fps visual novel could be realized. It's exciting and scary.
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May 26, 2015 18:51
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Aneurexorcyst posted:It's actually an intentional small freeze that's meant to make hitting each of the chip/pip/squares feel more impactful - maybe it isn't achieving what I want, especially if you thought it was a bug I think if you couple it with a special visual effect it would go a long way to both make it more obvious why it 'freezes' and make it more satisfying and impactful for your senses, just like hitting your opponent in fighting games. Right now the game lacks some sort of way to track progress, like going through levels or even a simple highscore, so even though it's fun and interesting it feels more like a neat toy than an actual game, if that makes any sense. It makes it hard, for me at least, to play it for a prolonged period of time. Maybe adding some sort of obstacle course in later levels to spice things up would work. Overall I think it's great and has a lot of potential, it's definitely inspiring for me.
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May 26, 2015 19:59
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Hidden Asbestos posted:I love MODO too. But what about it do you want Blender to be more like? All of it.  Hidden Asbestos posted:I personally found remapping the default key shortcuts was very helpful - I forget how but I once had 1 2 3 mapped to verts, edges and polys and that helped my modelling speed. Realistically though, I hate how Blender handles selecting things and doesn't have nice 3D manipulation gizmos like 3ds max or MODO. Then there's that weird bit where assets need to be, I forget what it is, like assigned to things or they won't be saved when you save the document? I might look into Silo + Blender, but it looks like I could do MODO Indie for $16/month but that's definitely a commitment that I might not be ready to make.
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May 26, 2015 20:33
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Bel Monte posted:This does make me wonder. When humankind finally reach that point. The point were there is no scarcity of skill, so to speak, what will happen? Will the bloated iOS market look quaint? Will standards be impossibly high to filter out the decent and even "good" work that we today would think is the best thing ever? Indie would be king, and there would be no reason for major studios to exist anymore. I'm assuming that if humanity ever reaches Star Trek computer level of natural language design where you just kind of describe a vague premise and the holodeck produces exactly what you want, market bloating won't really be an issue because there would be no reason to play someone else's game. Everyone will essentially have their own personal game dev capable of producing a finished product instantaneously.
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May 26, 2015 21:02
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The Cheshire Cat posted:I'm assuming that if humanity ever reaches Star Trek computer level of natural language design where you just kind of describe a vague premise and the holodeck produces exactly what you want, market bloating won't really be an issue because there would be no reason to play someone else's game. Everyone will essentially have their own personal game dev capable of producing a finished product instantaneously. I think probably realities of complexity/information theory means even star-trek level game-design will take a non-instant amount of time and computation energy + storage, so it'll still be way cheaper to use a highly-rated predesigned content template or something.
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May 26, 2015 21:29
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The Cheshire Cat posted:I'm assuming that if humanity ever reaches Star Trek computer level of natural language design where you just kind of describe a vague premise and the holodeck produces exactly what you want, market bloating won't really be an issue because there would be no reason to play someone else's game. Everyone will essentially have their own personal game dev capable of producing a finished product instantaneously. If that were true then we wouldn't read stories written by other people. I don't know in advance everything that I will find entertaining; other people make stuff that I enjoy that I would not have thought to make on my own even if my capacity for creation were limitless.
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May 26, 2015 21:34
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What if the computer is so smart it knows what you'll like better than you do and it just makes it before you even ask. 
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May 26, 2015 21:42
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I'm sure before this happens we'll just have probes attached to our brain pleasure centers that we can just turn on and off. Seems a lot easier than having some motive parsing magic. I think they tested something like this on monkeys and the monkeys ended up starving themselves to death rather than turn it off...
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May 26, 2015 22:11
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Yeah it's not a particularly realistic scenario so I wouldn't worry about computers replacing game designers just yet.
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May 26, 2015 22:58
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Manslaughter posted:I think they tested something like this on monkeys and the monkeys ended up starving themselves to death rather than turn it off... it was mice but yeah, they would obsessively hit the button that activated that part of their brain every couple seconds and refuse to move away from the button.
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May 27, 2015 03:25
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How do you guys feel about the double click run in adventure games? I feel like it's really taking away from the laid back tone these games set, but I've heard people saying they wish they could move faster. Definitely implementing double click fast scene exit, too.
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May 27, 2015 15:26
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Mr Underhill posted:How do you guys feel about the double click run in adventure games? I feel like it's really taking away from the laid back tone these games set, but I've heard people saying they wish they could move faster. Definitely implementing double click fast scene exit, too. The last adventure game I played was Sword & Sworcery which I think had double-click run. I just ended up using it constantly, so I would have preferred just a faster baseline speed with no double-click run. BUT I could see the double-click option giving a placebo effect to players where if you made the walk speed the same as the run speed and took away the option of run players might still feel like they're too slow.
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May 27, 2015 15:47
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Ekster posted:I think if you couple it with a special visual effect it would go a long way to both make it more obvious why it 'freezes' and make it more satisfying and impactful for your senses, just like hitting your opponent in fighting games. Right now the game lacks some sort of way to track progress, like going through levels or even a simple highscore, so even though it's fun and interesting it feels more like a neat toy than an actual game, if that makes any sense. It makes it hard, for me at least, to play it for a prolonged period of time. Maybe adding some sort of obstacle course in later levels to spice things up would work. I think I fixed the issue - I was doing some bad 'math'... Update/fix: http://sean-noonan.com/development/dev_noonantap/1_6/ I think the fail condition means it qualifies as a game rather than a toy, but I'll add a highscore next - I basically need to think about how to show it from a UI point of view. I was thinking about potentially making different modes - some of which would have obstacles, others maybe some form of shooting. I've yet to make an indie game with multiple modes yet, so I'd be interested in the challenge. Thanks for the feedback.
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May 27, 2015 15:47
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StickFigs posted:The last adventure game I played was Sword & Sworcery which I think had double-click run. I'd say it really depends on your environments. The Telltale Games Sam & Max series didn't have running, and I never missed it, but the locations are relatively small so it never takes very long to go from point A to point B. But I tried to play e.g. Beyond Divinity: Original Sin (which is an RPG, of course, but still) and it has gigantic environments combined with a painfully slow movement speed, no option to speed it up, and the requirement to backtrack for sidequests. So I shelved the game after about an hour and still haven't picked it up again. If you're going to make people go back through the same location more than once, and you aren't going to do anything significantly new with that location on the revisit(s), then you should respect the player's time and give them the option to skip over content they've already seen.
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May 27, 2015 15:58
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Aneurexorcyst posted:I think I fixed the issue - I was doing some bad 'math'... I think keeping it simple and elegant and immediately understandable is for the best. I'm not sure what obstacles or other modes would add. Put in High scores and I think the game is ready.
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May 27, 2015 16:00
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FraudulentEconomics posted:Let's say you could have anything you desire, what software would you love to have? Anything I desire? Well that wouldn't have much to do with software. So far I've been able to do really anything I need to using only those things and Unity. If it were "anything I desire" it would be entirely hardware. My computer is like 7 or 8 years old and is starting to chug in its age. There are a lot of things I can't test properly because the hardware is just plain too old to do it. I also have gently caress all when it comes to hardware and digital art tools. A Cintiq tablet would be pretty great. The software I have right now suits my needs. I guess it would be nice to have professional modelling software that doesn't have Blender's interface issues. I'd like to play with Maya or 3DSMax but I don't think I really need them. I can't really think of any 2D programs or programming environments that are interesting. Adobe stuff and Visual Studio do everything I need them to.
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May 27, 2015 16:04
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For games with walk/sprint options I like it when the modes offer considerations other than speed. Like in FPS games, sprinting is great when you want to get somewhere in a hurry, but maybe it takes half a second to ready your weapons when you come to a halt which means you could be in trouble if you sprint into a firefight. I don't know what the options would be in an adventure game, maybe your character gets a chance to notice details when walking? Characters say mean things about you when all you do is run past them? But if the only difference is "get somewhere faster" you might as well just increase the walk speed and not bother with a sprint.
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May 27, 2015 16:07
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Fangz posted:I think keeping it simple and elegant and immediately understandable is for the best. I'm not sure what obstacles or other modes would add. Put in High scores and I think the game is ready. Yeah, main focus is getting in highscores, fixing up the UI to acomodate that and then adding the mobile controls (probably tap and tilt). From there, it's just the uphill struggle trying to get the game to run at 60 fps on iPhone 5 (always my target) - I think the one thing that I'll have to lose on iOS is the noise filters (they murder frame rate). Might get a pal to compose some music for it too... though perhaps an ambient audio track would be sufficient - I really like how the audio currently "feels", though I'd be interested in trying something dynamic with a soundtrack, i.e. tempo speed up as pips shrink. I have no idea how I'd go about implementing this though 
Aneurexorcyst fucked around with this message at 16:15 on May 27, 2015 |
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May 27, 2015 16:10
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Shared some more detail on the Guild side of the game: http://steamcommunity.com/games/317820/announcements/detail/169229043542442733  Getting closer to being finished now... yaargl, this is stressful!
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May 27, 2015 17:33
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I can't find any good resources for creating low-poly 3d assets on Google. All I can get are tutorials on baking hi-res models onto low poly meshes with normals and whatnot, which isn't what I need. I'm trying to make 3D assets for my game in a way that I'll end up spending as little time as possible creating the assets, meaning low detail and in turn low-poly. Organic stuff is easy enough but I can't find any resources for modeling hard-surface objects without using subdivided surface workflow. Topics I'm struggling with include:
I think this belongs here more than the 3d modeling thread in CC because it's pretty much constrained to game asset creation.
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May 27, 2015 18:19
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StickFigs posted:I can't find any good resources for creating low-poly 3d assets on Google. All I can get are tutorials on baking hi-res models onto low poly meshes with normals and whatnot, which isn't what I need. I'm trying to make 3D assets for my game in a way that I'll end up spending as little time as possible creating the assets, meaning low detail and in turn low-poly. Organic stuff is easy enough but I can't find any resources for modeling hard-surface objects without using subdivided surface workflow. Keeping low detail levels is smart for minimizing your time investment, but that doesn't mean keeping the poly count low. Assuming you're running on remotely modern hardware, you can absolutely have your models be subdivided once or maybe twice and still maintain reasonable polycounts. Actual low-poly modeling is super hard and requires a lot of practice to make things that look at all good.
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May 27, 2015 18:51
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Keeping low detail levels is smart for minimizing your time investment, but that doesn't mean keeping the poly count low. Assuming you're running on remotely modern hardware, you can absolutely have your models be subdivided once or maybe twice and still maintain reasonable polycounts. Low poly modding is definitely a specific skill - it's about knowing what you can take away without losing the essential form you're trying to represent, and like pixel art really shouldn't be seen as "like regular art, but easier". Good pixel art skill itself is actually an element of low poly art, too, because your texture work is going to have to pull a lot more weight in terms of representing detail than it would on a high poly model. You can get away with pretty high poly counts on modern hardware now, though, so you probably shouldn't worry too much about making your models as efficient as possible if they aren't actually causing problems. Premature optimization is a trap for more than just programmers - anyone can end up wasting a ton of time trying to make something "perfect" when all that was really needed was "good enough".
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May 27, 2015 19:02
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If it's speed you want then you need to forget about polycount not worry even more about polycount which is what low-poly modelers have to do.
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May 27, 2015 20:04
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That all makes sense, especially the sprite art comparison. So should I go for subdivided surfaces but skip steps like baking normal maps and just use low subdivision settings?
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May 27, 2015 20:21
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These are hard questions to answer without knowing anything about the look or style you're going for. All you've mentioned is your desire for speed. Speed means you reduce details, go for broad strokes, and model only those elements that you want in order to most quickly communicate what an object is or does, and you model them in whatever way 1) plays nice with the engine and 2) is easiest/fastest for you. You also try to minimize texturing as UV mapping and texture painting takes up a lot of time. From there, if you have specific style requirements or whatever, then you can start to pick elements of the process to add back in. Maybe you can get away without specular maps. Maybe you want them. Maybe you're working on a collection of machines that just need 1 normal map sheet of various rivets and panel seams that you can apply like decals. Maybe you need to model in all of your details but that will make it so you can skip diffuse texture maps and just use flat color or vertex color. I dunno man!
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May 27, 2015 20:41
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mutata posted:These are hard questions to answer without knowing anything about the look or style you're going for. All you've mentioned is your desire for speed. Speed means you reduce details, go for broad strokes, and model only those elements that you want in order to most quickly communicate what an object is or does, and you model them in whatever way 1) plays nice with the engine and 2) is easiest/fastest for you. You also try to minimize texturing as UV mapping and texture painting takes up a lot of time. Agreed. Clearly I have to consider an overall, cohesive style before I make any more assets so I don't end up backtracking later to make them all look like they belong together.
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May 27, 2015 21:05
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Try using materials for all of your textures rather than drawing UV textures. You can bake the material(s) into UV and normal maps later. Personally I find drawing UV texture maps to be hard, mostly because I have zero practice at it.
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May 27, 2015 21:12
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Try using materials for all of your textures rather than drawing UV textures. You can bake the material(s) into UV and normal maps later. Personally I find drawing UV texture maps to be hard, mostly because I have zero practice at it. Wouldn't this still require unwrapping the UV map? Which to me is the largest chunk of work.
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May 27, 2015 21:26
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StickFigs posted:Wouldn't this still require unwrapping the UV map? Which to me is the largest chunk of work. You'd have to mark the seams in the model so the program knows how to "flatten" it for mapping the texture on, but that should just be a matter of tagging certain edges. I know Blender can do the actual UV-mapping process after that automatically, so I'd fully expect other programs be able to do so as well.
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May 27, 2015 21:28
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Auto-created uvs are messy as poo poo, though. Edit: That is, if you're going to paint/create a unique texture(s) for the object, they are. If you're just applying tileables to different sections, then it's less important.
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May 27, 2015 21:30
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mutata posted:Auto-created uvs are messy as poo poo, though. Yeah, I was suggesting combining auto-UVs with baking textures from materials, so you don't actually have to draw the textures yourself.
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May 27, 2015 21:33
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