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Oddx
Sep 9, 2005

WMain00 posted:

So after looking at a couple of video tutorials and learning the basics a bit more(Unity websites tutorials are useless. 3D Buzz is amazingly helpful) i've taken my first steps toward making my own map using Unity:

Speaking of Unity video tutorials, the guy who made these http://www.unity3dstudent.com is actually now in charge of revamping Unity's training section on their site with video tutorials for everything relating to Unity 4. Those will probably not come out until next year though.

Might want to put that link in the OP, I think those tutorials are a great way to get started with Unity.

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Bongo Bill
Jan 17, 2012

Mug posted:

I'm pretty sure I can do this, so I will.

My game is intended to be ran full-screen, but windowed is an option.

As a rule of thumb, make sure it never takes more than a single keystroke to release the mouse even if you do ever capture it. One feature of the Steam overlay is adding this behavior to all compatible games run in windowed (or, if you've got multiple displays, even fullscreen) mode.

Mug
Apr 26, 2005

Bongo Bill posted:

As a rule of thumb, make sure it never takes more than a single keystroke to release the mouse even if you do ever capture it. One feature of the Steam overlay is adding this behavior to all compatible games run in windowed (or, if you've got multiple displays, even fullscreen) mode.

Hitting escape will bring up an overlay menu with real, uncaptured mouse that you can move anywhere. Would that be fine?

Bongo Bill
Jan 17, 2012

Mug posted:

Hitting escape will bring up an overlay menu with real, uncaptured mouse that you can move anywhere. Would that be fine?

This is how most games do it, in fact. If all of them did, the world would be a better place. Just make sure that menu can be brought up at any time, possibly excepting loading screens (maybe release the mouse during loading screens if they're long enough for it to matter).

Senso
Nov 4, 2005

Always working

Mug posted:

Hitting escape will bring up an overlay menu with real, uncaptured mouse that you can move anywhere. Would that be fine?

That's perfect, yes.

Mug
Apr 26, 2005
I've spent the last two days working on the camera and mouse so heavily and I'm really starting to get happy with it. I took a lot of cues from Cannon Fodder along the way. I can't think of any other game in the last 19 years that's used that type of mouse/camera movement and I think I've done a really good job of implementing it. Makes it really easy to click on an object even when the camera is moving.

Communist Bear
Oct 7, 2008

Derp, how the hell do I get tree colliders to work?

Mata
Dec 23, 2003
I think I'm going to spend the weekend getting pathfinding to work in my strategy game...
It's a really difficult problem though, because my map is so big! I think just A* with JPS is my best bet, but as far as I can tell it's not possible to implement roads (granting faster movement) using this?

Red Mike
Jul 11, 2011

Mata posted:

I think I'm going to spend the weekend getting pathfinding to work in my strategy game...
It's a really difficult problem though, because my map is so big! I think just A* with JPS is my best bet, but as far as I can tell it's not possible to implement roads (granting faster movement) using this?

From what I've read about it, it's based around a property of uniform-cost grid maps. Without weighting, I don't think faster movement through specific cells is going to be possible.

Shalinor
Jun 10, 2002

Can I buy you a rootbeer?
Presented without comment: My Little Pony GameJam

HelixFox
Dec 20, 2004

Heed the words of this ancient spirit.

Shalinor posted:

Presented without comment: My Little Pony GameJam

The sad thing is that the brony community is so hosed up that I can't think of a single way to subvert this without knowing that there's someone, somewhere, who would get off on it.

On the subject of game jams, though, I'm finding I never feel like doing them anymore. 48 hours or a week or whatever just isn't enough time to flesh out a concept enough to create something satisfactory. I much prefer stuff like the SA contest - a month is more reasonable (and even then it's hard to come up with something polished).

ExiledTinkerer
Nov 4, 2009

Shalinor posted:

Presented without comment: My Little Pony GameJam

Well...that's different. I guess at this stage it has become something of a heavily internalized Touhou kind of thing?

Who knows, perhaps they'll resurrect Anquestria all things considered, heh!

http://anquestria.blogspot.com/

Vermain
Sep 5, 2006



If I could solicit some advice: I'm not the greatest pixel artist, and I find this a significant roadblock in working on my own personal game development.

I find that my three biggest failings are:

  • I have a great amount of difficulty simplifying the human form into a 50x50 box. I'm not a professional artist, so this might just be an issue of a lack of understanding when it comes to how to properly "shape" a person.
  • Animation has always been hard, since I find it difficult to retain accurate proportions and bone structure.
  • I have difficulty with light and shadow, especially on inanimate textures such as cliff faces or trees or such.

With that in mind, what is the best thing to look at/best techniques to use to help myself improve with regards to these aspects?

Shalinor
Jun 10, 2002

Can I buy you a rootbeer?

Vermain posted:

With that in mind, what is the best thing to look at/best techniques to use to help myself improve with regards to these aspects?
Change the art style you're trying for?

It doesn't have to be pixel art. In fact, you might do better if it isn't - pixel art is all the rage these days, and you'll draw comparisons to all the big names in the craft.

I stumbled on an art style I can manage that involves constructing things out of very large irregular boxes, for instance. It's pretty unique, and looks pretty good. I was inspired by The Real Texas, which was in turn probably inspired at least in part by Minecraft and the resurgence of blocky games. Then there's Cube World, inspired by 3D Dot Game Heroes, which takes the blocky style in an entirely different, beautiful direction:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=729VkxC4Z6E

... not that you need to go cubes, but point is - you needn't go pixel art either. Unless you're going to dedicate time to becoming a fully fledged artist in your own right (which isn't time spent making games), instead figure out a style you can nail naturally, as-is.

Shalinor fucked around with this message at 22:30 on Sep 19, 2012

Juc66
Nov 20, 2005
Lord of The Pants

Vermain posted:

If I could solicit some advice: I'm not the greatest pixel artist, and I find this a significant roadblock in working on my own personal game development.

I find that my three biggest failings are:

  • I have a great amount of difficulty simplifying the human form into a 50x50 box. I'm not a professional artist, so this might just be an issue of a lack of understanding when it comes to how to properly "shape" a person.
  • Animation has always been hard, since I find it difficult to retain accurate proportions and bone structure.
  • I have difficulty with light and shadow, especially on inanimate textures such as cliff faces or trees or such.

With that in mind, what is the best thing to look at/best techniques to use to help myself improve with regards to these aspects?

The advice I'd give to you is to find professionally made pixel art, and then start deconstructing how various stuff is made.

What's proportions do they use, how do they blend colours, what sort of palette do they use etc.

and then practice, a lot.
And try to learn as much about general art as you can. Pixel art is a style but general art knowledge goes a long long way and is applicable through many different styles.



edit: ^^^^^^
That's a nice art style. I take that blockiness over less-than-perfect polygonal models any day.

Juc66 fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Sep 19, 2012

Red Mike
Jul 11, 2011
Can't really offer anything but general advice here.

  • There's two choices here: don't, or learn how to. The former meaning just not going for a human form from the beginning, and planning ahead so you're safe. The latter is what I suspect you wanted help with. My suggestion would be this: Start off with 500x500, and a reference picture of a person. Steadily lower the size and redraw, until you reach the desired size. After doing this once, maybe twice, start doing it directly at the desired size, and practice. If you still can't get anything recognisable, do the steadily-decreasing-size method again. This sounds like a lot of work. It is. It's also necessary if you can't manage it instinctively.
  • This is what I'd say is a matter of practice again, but before the practice, I'd say look into the animation you want in detail. By this I mean, for example, reproducing a small frame-by-frame of the movement on paper with stickfigures as you're watching it recorded, or trying to find a pre-existing animation and picking it apart. If possible, while drawing, overlap the previous frame (or frames) faded on top of the frame you're drawing. Onion-skinning, I think it's called? If that's not enough due to detail in the sprite, simplify to stickfigures, then redraw with correct details on top afterwards. I find that gives me enough information to keep proportions/structure correct for myself. Don't really have any advice further than that, however.
  • Coloring is something I'm struggling with immensely, and at the moment choose to avoid it as much as possible. Either styling the games so that there's little to no coloring, or avoiding proper shading and "hiding" it as one of the graphics style's features.

high on life and meth
Jul 14, 2006

Fika
Rules
Everything
Around
Me

Vermain posted:

If I could solicit some advice: I'm not the greatest pixel artist, and I find this a significant roadblock in working on my own personal game development.

I find that my three biggest failings are:

  • I have a great amount of difficulty simplifying the human form into a 50x50 box. I'm not a professional artist, so this might just be an issue of a lack of understanding when it comes to how to properly "shape" a person.
  • Animation has always been hard, since I find it difficult to retain accurate proportions and bone structure.
  • I have difficulty with light and shadow, especially on inanimate textures such as cliff faces or trees or such.

With that in mind, what is the best thing to look at/best techniques to use to help myself improve with regards to these aspects?

Not that I'm an amazing pixel artist or anything, but I learned doing pixel art by going to the Show Us Some Of Your Pixel Work thread on the TIGsource forums, grabbing sprites and mockups I liked the style of, and straight up copy them. Just literally open them up in your preferred pixel-making program, zoom the hell in, and copy every pixel. At first it'll feel pointless and dumb, but gradually you start understanding why certain colors are used in what spot, and how something abstract at first glance can create a specific visual element.

Helped me tremendously.

Mug
Apr 26, 2005
My game people are only like 17x24 or something to that effect in most cases. You can just copy my proportions if you want a general guide and then make them a little larger given your 50x50 canvas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAn455tLSLU

I can't really draw very well at all, so I usually just google image search the thing I'm looking for, paste it into photoshop and scale it waaaayyy down to the size I need, and then draw over it with my own little bit of style. That's where my plants and watercoolers came from.

Nition
Feb 25, 2006

You really want to know?
I want to put a small game up for sale on my website, but I'm not sure which system to use. Does anyone here have experience with using the different payment systems?

I'll get the game on Desura if I can, so that's one thing. I already have a Paypal account so I can use that, but I know a few people have had trouble in the past with Paypal freezing accounts etc unfairly. There's FastSpring, there's Google Checkout, I really like the Humble Store system a few indie games have but it seems you can only get that at the moment if you're part of one of the bundles.

Any tips or shared experiences?

Lord Humongus
Apr 10, 2009

ice ice baby :toot:
Hey guys, after some time I changed the "lighting" in my game, does this look better?

http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/14192

Mug
Apr 26, 2005

Nition posted:

I want to put a small game up for sale on my website, but I'm not sure which system to use. Does anyone here have experience with using the different payment systems?

I'll get the game on Desura if I can, so that's one thing. I already have a Paypal account so I can use that, but I know a few people have had trouble in the past with Paypal freezing accounts etc unfairly. There's FastSpring, there's Google Checkout, I really like the Humble Store system a few indie games have but it seems you can only get that at the moment if you're part of one of the bundles.

Any tips or shared experiences?

I would like to know some info on this one, too. Fastspring looks kinda interesting.

Fur20
Nov 14, 2007

すご▞い!
君は働か░い
フ▙▓ズなんだね!
Hey guys, I could use a suggestion for a good numeric font, just 0-9. I want Doulos SIL but nobody has it, I'm thinking Arial 'cause everyone has it, and I've been suggested to Georgia and am currently trying it. It's okay, maybe a little too stylized. It's only gonna be used for numbers, y'all seen my aesthetic so you can kinda figure what would match or not.

Lord Humongus posted:

Hey guys, after some time I changed the "lighting" in my game, does this look better?

http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/14192
Well that's cool, just make sure to concern yourself with the illusion of accuracy rather than actual accuracy. If the player thinks that the cast light doesn't look blocky, then it's good to go. Game designers who work in pixels aren't a good litmus for your average user because that's all we fuckin' see, haha.

I assume you're gonna also junk things that aren't being drawn when they're off-screen too? After running through rooms for about half a minute, that poo poo dragged like a motherfucker.

Vermain
Sep 5, 2006



Just wanted to say: Thanks for all the advice up above. Here's to trying to improve my abysmal artistic skills. :unsmith:

high on life and meth
Jul 14, 2006

Fika
Rules
Everything
Around
Me
Speaking of art, I just wrote a blog post on our website talking about how and why I made our game look the way it does. If anyone's at all interested in how a non-programmer approaches game design, give it a read.

Obsurveyor
Jan 10, 2003

The White Dragon posted:

I want Doulos SIL but nobody has it

So why not just include it with the game? It looks like it's open source.

Oddx
Sep 9, 2005

the chaos engine posted:

Speaking of art, I just wrote a blog post on our website talking about how and why I made our game look the way it does. If anyone's at all interested in how a non-programmer approaches game design, give it a read.

I really like your style!

For people interested in pixel art, Small Worlds is a fantastic game to check out (and pretty short) http://armorgames.com/play/4850/small-worlds

The simplicity and the play on scale is just great. One of my favourites.

Fur20
Nov 14, 2007

すご▞い!
君は働か░い
フ▙▓ズなんだね!

Obsurveyor posted:

So why not just include it with the game? It looks like it's open source.

Oh, okay, it's as easy as loading other resources into the project. I was worried players would have to have it installed in their computer's font database rather than just in the right place in the game folder.

DeathBySpoon
Dec 17, 2007

I got myself a paper clip!
Hey, I'm looking for some feedback on a game I'm working on. It's a Metroid-like and I'm trying to get a workable look and feel down.



How does this look? Criticism / critique? I'm pretty sure the game is going to have to look blocky just because of the way I'm handling tiles, but I want to make it look the best I can given that. Is the appearance passable or is the blockiness a big turnoff? I'll try and get something interactive soon, but hopefully this is enough to get some feedback on already. Thanks!

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe

DeathBySpoon posted:

Hey, I'm looking for some feedback on a game I'm working on. It's a Metroid-like and I'm trying to get a workable look and feel down.



How does this look? Criticism / critique? I'm pretty sure the game is going to have to look blocky just because of the way I'm handling tiles, but I want to make it look the best I can given that. Is the appearance passable or is the blockiness a big turnoff? I'll try and get something interactive soon, but hopefully this is enough to get some feedback on already. Thanks!

You can break up blockiness somewhat by using secondary, non-interactive background details; stuff like plants or holes/cracks in the walls, etc. Look at Super Mario World for a good example - that game is totally block based, but they break it up with a lot of curved and angled background details. A good 70% of the things you can see on any given screen in that game serve no gameplay purpose but make the environments look much more interesting.

Orzo
Sep 3, 2004

IT! IT is confusing! Say your goddamn pronouns!
Technically Super Mario World isn't "totally block based", as it does have angled floors and ceilings, but the advice is still good, a little decoration goes a long way. It may be worth it to at least implement 45 degree angle tiles though.

DeathBySpoon
Dec 17, 2007

I got myself a paper clip!
I guess that's a bad screen- I have 45 and 22.5 degree tiles done in code, but no visuals for them yet. I'll try and get something workable and show how they look. Thanks for the feedback already, I'll look into adding foliage details / etc too.

E:

Slants in place. I'll try adding some brush / foliage / etc now.

E:

Ok, yeah, that makes a huge difference. Not sure what to put on the floor though, if anything. More feedback?

DeathBySpoon fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Sep 20, 2012

high on life and meth
Jul 14, 2006

Fika
Rules
Everything
Around
Me

Oddx posted:

I really like your style!

For people interested in pixel art, Small Worlds is a fantastic game to check out (and pretty short) http://armorgames.com/play/4850/small-worlds

The simplicity and the play on scale is just great. One of my favourites.

Cheers! Also, Small Worlds owns.

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe

DeathBySpoon posted:

I guess that's a bad screen- I have 45 and 22.5 degree tiles done in code, but no visuals for them yet. I'll try and get something workable and show how they look. Thanks for the feedback already, I'll look into adding foliage details / etc too.

E:

Slants in place. I'll try adding some brush / foliage / etc now.

E:

Ok, yeah, that makes a huge difference. Not sure what to put on the floor though, if anything. More feedback?

For the floor you could probably just put some misshapen rocks - though lots of other stuff works too. Based on the environment in that screenshot you could have cave foliage like mushrooms or other fungi of varying sizes. In a city environment you could have things like trash or debris, etc. Lots of games do stuff like that so if you're ever hurting for ideas just google a few screenshots from Super Metroid and the like and just look at their environments.

Another thing you can use to break up the visuals a bit is negative space details - putting holes in the ceiling or floor past the edges, so that the walking surface is still solid but it's got a bit of a "Swiss Cheese" texture visually. It may be a bit tricky to do depending on how your engine is set up - the way I would probably do it is break up my visuals into graphical layers like background 1, background 2, foreground, etc. Your ground tiles that have an actual physical presence in the game would go in the foreground layer, and on top of that would be a special "alpha" layer. Anything drawn to that layer, instead of displaying a sprite, would cut out the shape of that sprite in the foreground layer, so that it would display whatever background layer was present behind it.

If you don't have your graphical system set up like that, it's not a big deal - what you can do instead is just draw up a few variation tiles that blend in with your regular tiles but have some extra detail on them to break up the tiling a bit. Said detail could include a transparent section, and you'd just plop that tile somewhere instead of a standard tile.

One issue with that approach is memory, which isn't really much of a big deal these days, but I think it's important to always be aware of the drawbacks of a particular design. Back in the NES and SNES days, having something like that might have broken your memory budget, since just one "variation" tile for each terrain type is going to double the memory footprint for foreground objects, which might prevent you from adding something more interesting like a new monster sprite.

The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 20:50 on Sep 20, 2012

Mug
Apr 26, 2005

DeathBySpoon posted:

I guess that's a bad screen- I have 45 and 22.5 degree tiles done in code, but no visuals for them yet. I'll try and get something workable and show how they look. Thanks for the feedback already, I'll look into adding foliage details / etc too.

E:

Slants in place. I'll try adding some brush / foliage / etc now.

E:

Ok, yeah, that makes a huge difference. Not sure what to put on the floor though, if anything. More feedback?

The foliage you have up the top, can you put it down the bottom but make it foreground stuff so your character runs behind it?

Nition
Feb 25, 2006

You really want to know?
I'm also finding it a bit of a nightmare looking for a good, simple, not hugely expensive registration system. Ideally I'd like people to be able to buy my game on my website, then automatically get emailed a registration key which they can put into the game. Ideally I'd want to, not restrict them to a certain amount of activations exactly, but at least see the amount of activations for each key so if I saw one key with like 200 activations I could block it. Maybe activation could also be tied to their email so their friends can't all use the same key so easily.

It's hard to find good threads that aren't just filled with geniuses replying "DRM sux every1 will crack it neway". I realise that, but I there are also people who don't even know what a crack is but if the game is totally unprotected, might just give it to a bunch of their friends who may have otherwise bought their own copies. Practically no-one ever replies in these threads who's actually released a game. :(

I'm thinking of just going with no copy protection, but if anyone has actually used a copy protection system in the past, I'd love to hear what you used and how it worked out. I'm working in Unity. Could probably use anything that's C#-based also.

Mug
Apr 26, 2005

Nition posted:

I'm thinking of just going with no copy protection, but if anyone has actually used a copy protection system in the past, I'd love to hear what you used and how it worked out. I'm working in Unity. Could probably use anything that's C#-based also.

Don't try to stop people copying your game. You'll never profit from trying to do that in this environment we're in.

Let people go to your site, pay using paypal, send them a special licence key to their email address that they can type in on your site and download your game as many times as they want forever.

Shalinor
Jun 10, 2002

Can I buy you a rootbeer?

Mug posted:

Don't try to stop people copying your game. You'll never profit from trying to do that in this environment we're in.

Let people go to your site, pay using paypal, send them a special licence key to their email address that they can type in on your site and download your game as many times as they want forever.
Even ignoring this excellent advice, you're working in Unity. Most copy-protection methods require in some way monitoring and responding to changes to the executable - which you basically can't do, if you're using Unity to target multiple platforms. You would have to tape your copy-protection on outside of Unity, in some way making it apply only after Unity has completed its build. Mac-side, this would mean doing it within Xcode / some native libraries, PC side, similar but different libraries, Android still another, you flat out couldn't do it for iOS since they sign your executable, etc.

That is, unless you elect to forgo multiple platforms, but I guarantee you'll get more sales by supporting all the platforms you can than you will via any attempt at converting pirates.


EDIT: Unless you mean something very, very, very basic. Like a manually entered key, that isn't online-verified, that they enter during boot that locks the game down. That will create user friction, so I wouldn't recommend it, but...

you can do that with a simple hash. Give the user an alphanumeric string, they enter it, and you convert each character to a byte. Add them all within a byte (which means it will wrap a bunch of times), you end up with a number. That's the hash code.

The idea is that any key you hand out always results in that hash code. Any string that doesn't, won't work. Stupidly easy to crack, but not so easy that a friend can just casually share their copy. If you want just enough to prevent casual sharing of a game, that'd be what I would recommend, but - it's still pretty silly, in this day and age. You actually want those people to share the game, since you have no marketing muscle of note on your own.

EDIT2: Though this wouldn't prevent them from sharing the CD key too; You could make some vague comments about registering their names / DON'T REUSE THE KEY, but they would be toothless. The only way to prevent that is with online registration. Please don't require an internet connection, just because you want DRM. You've seen the kind of negative press that gets the big names - now imagine all that ire focused on a tiny indie like yourself.

Shalinor fucked around with this message at 03:15 on Sep 21, 2012

Mug
Apr 26, 2005
Literally every attempt you make to stop someone copying your game will have 0 impact on someone who doesn't want to pay for your game, and anything from a "minor inconvenience" to a "extremely pissed off sales impacting" effect on people who would overwise be happy to pay $9.99 for your game.

Nition
Feb 25, 2006

You really want to know?
Thanks for the advice. I think I'll just go with no copy protection on this one. It's not like this little game is a huge deal anyway.

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Mug
Apr 26, 2005
Oh man I just ran the latest build of my engine on Windows 8 and it just locks up as soon as it tries to play the music. Now I'm worried.

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