aerique posted:

Fangz posted:

Hi, I made this in GameMaker Studio this weekend in a gamejam. I hope people enjoy it, any comments would be welcome on whether it's worth working a bit more on.

It's called Project1Too Many Nodes.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/3j4fi94pyv5ph7s/TooManyNodes-Default-1.0.0.0.exe
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/88366863/TooManyNodes.zip

Since during judging, a lot of players were apparently confused despite ingame instructions, some hints:

You control the GREEN DUDE.
You are trying to prevent the RED NETWORK from reaching the boundary. Touching the network yourself is inconvenient and disorientating, but having the network reach the boundary is a game over.
The Red Network grows towards you when you are nearby, and away from you when you are far away.
Each time you use a bomb, the game gets harder, so use your bombs at the last moment, where they can do the most damage. (Ideally, near the source).

Have you got some screenshots or a video perhaps? I'm not going to run a random binary on my work machine (not to mention I am on Linux).

OtspIII posted:

Was this Indie Speed Run? Did anybody else make anything for it?

My screenshots are on another computer, but I ended up making a local competitive multiplayer game (Fire Farm) where you play two nature spirits running from a fire that spreads more quickly the more you've walked over a square. It's got issues, but it was also my first game jam game ever and I had a whole different half-done platformer due for my studio class just afterwards, so I'm happy with it for being completed on time.

SlightlyMadman posted:

This is a super interesting conversation, as I've particularly noticed that the great indie game success stories all seem to be projects that were started by a very talented artist. The idea being that an artist can put something together that looks great, and use that to drum up interest and raise money, then once that's accomplished you can always find the resources to get programmers and build the game.

As a programmer who's a terrible artist, this makes me sad. If I ever got a project far enough to the point that I felt like I could put together a kick-started and make a marketable game out of it, the main thing I'd need fund-raising for is to pay an artist to make amazingness out of my lovely programmer and placeholder art. It doesn't seem like that would ever really work, so I guess that path is not for me.

I think the best avenue for success for somebody like me (and I know there's others in this thread in the same boat) is to just build something and put it out there and see if people like playing it. If the game built up a dwarf-fortress style following, then something like kickstarter or greenlight might be able to ride the wave.

HelixFox posted:

Pixel art is more like architecture than drawing which makes it a great art style for programmers as you can really take your time with it and analyse exactly what you're building and why each pixel is going where it's going. All you need is knowledge of some basic colour theory and a decent palette and it's not hard to put together something that looks quite striking.

Myron posted:

Pretty much, yes.


Yeah, that's what I'm worried about, though I'm not too happy with the glancing blow method either...

Coldrice posted:

I'll keep playing with it A lot of artists hate excessive dithering so I took a little risk on this one to see how it'd look.

Orzo posted:

Okay, I need some advice. This is important to me because I want to make an indiedb page very soon, but don't want to do it until I have the name of my game down.

The working title is 'Super Obelisk'. I've posted here about 100 times about my progress so you've probably seen it (blog here if not). Since the blog is mostly technical, it doesn't really go into the gameplay too much except that it's obviously inspired by top-down Zelda games like LTTP.

In the game, you will travel around an island overworld finding temples and dungeons and whatnot. Each major area has an 'Obelisk' to be found which serves as a central point--health refill, item refill, and save point. But the catch is that Obelisks can be powered up to provide benefits in a certain radius, and that radius can be upgraded to help you travel further and further away (although you'll need to step out of the comfort zone frequently). I put Obelisk in quotes because, while the first one will be a traditional stone obelisk, the rest might be themed for the area you're in--picture a giant cactus for a desert, or a snowman for a winter area.

So, my question is, what do you think of the name? Personally I think it looks good on paper and sound awkward out loud, so I don't know whether or not to keep it. The artist I'm working with more or less feels the same way. Other people have given me positive feedback and say they like the name. I'm having trouble deciding!

Angryhead posted:

Github's second month-long game jam is about to start!

More details on the site.

I'll try to take part and make something while learning Unity, if I find the free time (and motivation), next to work and school projects.

Cheston posted:

I've been trying to figure out what the scale and camera scope should be for the game I'm working on, so I looked at games with similar level design and noticed that "normal" rooms in Gunpoint and Mark of the Ninja are the same height (three times the height of a character), but that Mark of the Ninja's camera covers a ninth the area. It's pretty neat.

Has anyone here made 2D levels of buildings, or know of games similar to the above two that would be useful to look at? I don't have any jumping/wall-climbing, so there's no need for high ceilings, but I don't want the rooms to look tiny or crowded from a moderate camera distance. I'm gonna take a look at how Gemini Rue handled this, and more examples would be really helpful.

DStecks posted:

Coding, making art assets, and testing; if we're just talking about raw numbers.

I'm hardly an expert on the industry, but as far as I know, design is not something you're just hired into fresh out of school. It's like directing a film, you either start with something lower and work your way up, or make a name for yourself as an independent first.

Corbeau posted:

You can do failure states and punishment without death, but that overlooks one critical factor:

Everyone is mortal.

There is no player who cannot, at least on some level, connect with a life-or-death struggle. Death is a subject that everyone has to deal with eventually, making it highly relatable. Similarly, life and death is one of the highest-stakes struggles possible. Considering that combination of universal appeal and universal power, it's not surprising that most games present their mechanical challenges as a life and death struggle. It's the easiest way to make the player give a drat.

spider wisdom posted:

I've had an idea for a roguelike for a while now and I'd like to actually make it a thing that exists. I have no experience with code outside of a rudimentary understanding of HTML and CSS, but I'm willing to learn. With this in mind, should I jump right in with Python and Roguebasin's tutorial, or maybe start off with Multimedia Fusion 2 (thanks HIB)?

George Lazenby posted:

So, I posted some screenshots of my current project in this thread aaages ago. I've been working on it solidly since then, so here are some screenshots to show how far it's come! The game is called Lulanda, it's a sort of action/adventure/platformer thing.

FuzzySlippers posted:

I was looking for specific examples, could you provide some? Like a game that definitely should have been successful but couldn't find the marketing traction or whatever? Not saying it doesn't happen I just don't know of any.

Nition posted:

The argument that no-one can list any great games that didn't make it because by definition, no-one's heard about them looks good on the surface. But it doesn't hold up because if no-one knows about any games that didn't make it, there's be no evidence that there are any games that didn't make it.

Omi no Kami posted:

So I'm currently fighting with my own better judgement vis-a-vis my control scheme. I promised myself, promised that I would never use contextual prompts, as they are sucky and endemic of a criminal lack of creativity on the part of console developers.

Unfortunately, I'm easily racking up a good 20-30 separate, common tasks that I want players to be capable of, and it's incredibly tempting to either dump them in a boring MMO-style action bar or just have a storm of "Press X to engage in a lively conversation" popups.

ToxicSlurpee posted:

I can FEEL him hitting on me, no matter what I happen to be. It's beautiful. He's all like "Hey there, whatever you are, let's do it."

FuzzySlippers posted:

Fangz posted:

So I made a game for a game jam


http://fhnuzoag.itch.io/wizard-sports

Plays not entirely unlike Freedom Force, except with a ball and also Men of War style active control. It would be lovely if people would playtest and tell me whether it's too hard or easy or if the tutorial is too hard to understand.

Devlog at

https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/10046-releasedevlog-wizard-sports/