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Mug posted:HelixFox - Kylie Rodgers Small point, my name is Kyle  I thought I'd show some of what I've been doing on Zybourne Clock since the end of the SA GameDev challenge. I've reworked a lot of the pixel art to be a lot cleaner, focusing on maintaining a solid contrast between the lighter background and the darker foreground. Most of the artwork I've been doing is sort of modern victorian inspired - the sort of stuff you'd see in London today. I don't want to go overboard with Steampunk stuff but any steampunk elements should slot in with victorian designs pretty nicely. The current direction of the game is on doing a Gravity Bone style short interactive story implementing all the known Zybourne Clock story elements (including the parody stuff) in as ridiculous a fashion as I can manage.  I think the street lamps might be a little too big, maybe. At least the top of them is. There are still the Sonic style ring balls from the challenge version in here, but I'll take them out as soon as I remember. I'll rework the damage system to something appropriate as the game progresses and I can see what fits.  This scaffolding looks a bit plain at the moment, but it's necessary to avoid having floating platforms. Johnny can jump up to get to the rooftops by jumping onto these platforms. I'm not happy with the wooden crate or the blocks you can just see over to the right of the screen - will work on those.  Johnny can now run across rooftops! I've also added an object that I can place down in the editor to direct the camera towards certain things. Here, it's pointing downwards so the player can easily spot those spikes before they jump down. Stuff I'm working on at the moment includes a basic conversation system and the ability to go indoors (I've been pixeling up a load of victorian furniture recently and trying to do some pixel art paintings which is loving hard!)
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Sep 14, 2012 13:32
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Mug posted:What are you using to make that, HelixFox? Is it going to be a kind of actiony run-and-jump RPG? Plain old Flash for the moment with a custom rendering engine I've built (similar to how flixel works). It hums along at 60fps within a browser pretty easily and does everything I need it to do so I'm pretty happy with Flash for the moment. There will be some actiony running and jumping and other platformer tropes but it won't be uber difficult like Super Meat Boy or VVVVVV (how do you actually pronounce that?). I want to put a lot of detail into the world and have a lot of inconsequential things that the player can interact with, like a duck pond that you can feed ducks at and a poker table that you can win at (with five aces, of course). I really appreciate that sort of stuff in games (flushing toilets, etc) and wish more people did it.
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Sep 14, 2012 15:47
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Most games education in the UK is pretty shocking. We were taught VRML at Sheffield Hallam Uni. In 2007.
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Sep 16, 2012 20:44
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Echoing the sentiments of actually finishing and releasing stuff. My current day job is a contract developer spending most of my time working on flash web apps (usually advergames, etc) and I got it pretty much entirely on the strength of the two lovely Flash games I made during my final year of university. Even if you get a job, don't stop finishing things in your spare time. If I was to put together a portfolio now I'd have 10+ finished games, plus everything I've worked on at my job - a pretty good advantage if I wanted to go after another development role somewhere.
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Sep 17, 2012 10:26
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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).
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Sep 19, 2012 22:02
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Commandos was a great game, if a bit poorly executed. I played the hell out of the demo that I got from a PC Format magazine disc. Ah, memories. I still remember Amiga magazines boasting about having a whole megabyte of content on their floppy disks. I'd love to see a modern take on the basic concept of the Commandos games or something similar like the Hitman series - a puzzle game portrayed through the medium of stabbing/shooting dudes and blowing things up.
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Sep 28, 2012 09:28
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Mug posted:edit: Maybe I should get in on this screenshotsaturday business. Here you guys go, have a thing to look at: Can't wait to play this. My only comment is that the wall looks a bit funny at the top bit where it's horizontal - like it's thinner at that point. It only has one pixel of fill there versus four pixels on the vertical bits elsewhere. Looks a bit odd to me.
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Sep 29, 2012 12:02
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I'm going to stick with pixel art because it's the only art style I can do that doesn't look like poo poo and I don't have the money to pay someone with actual talent. I do at least try to draw large objects (buildings, etc) and build my worlds out of those instead of using 10x10 block tilesheets. Also remember that we're a pretty insular community and what we think isn't necessarily what most consumers think - people thought zombie games were done to undeath three years ago but I can still think of loads of recent indie zombie games/mods that have succeeded despite being all about our brain-hungry friends. The public at large still love that poo poo. That said, Zybourne Clock will probably be my last 2D project for a while unless I feel like crapping out another platformer using the same engine (likely as it's low-effort now that I have a good engine/editor  ). I might try an isometric management thing next.
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Oct 1, 2012 09:32
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Svampson posted:The idea is a party based rougelike with SRPG combat mechanics + a town building game which you constantly feed into when you are adventuring (Your party members are recruited from your village, Found gold goes to the treasury, finding an enchanted anvil will improve the stuff your blacksmith can provide etc) I will play this video game.
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Oct 1, 2012 14:19
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The Cheshire Cat posted:it's very easy to get carried away with feature creep and never end up writing a single line of code because you keep coming up with more ideas and you don't want to start implementing anything until you've designed the perfect engine to be able to do anything you can possibly imagine. This is sort of what I'm doing at the moment, although I can imagine how all these creeping features I'm building will be used when I actually get down to some level design (latest feature to creep in was a properly animated temporary platform that falls away when you step on it). It kind of helps that I'm making a platformer where there are a lot of standard tropes that tend to be found in that kind of game. The next thing on my list is some sort of basic scripting system to control NPCs so I can have in-engine cut scenes and (semi)complex AI behaviours I tend to be quite disciplined and usually finish projects, though, so I'm not overly worried about all of that. I think it all boils down to your personal preference.
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Oct 2, 2012 17:09
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Mug posted:Do many of you guys actually follow a linear kind of "prototype/pre-alpha" -> alpha -> beta -> release path with the games you make? Nope. I just smash my head on the keyboard until I'm happy with the result.
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Oct 3, 2012 15:25
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eeenmachine posted:We're using this and love it: http://struct.ca/futile/ I've seen tons of fuss about this recently and am eager to get stuck into it for my next project. I presume it'll work with Unity 3.5? (Free pro version from earlier this year crew represent) HelixFox fucked around with this message at 15:07 on Oct 4, 2012 |
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Oct 4, 2012 15:01
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Posts like the above always make me feel like a Bad Coder.
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Oct 5, 2012 10:30
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Shalinor posted:physically-active characters for no reason. Now I want a game where you just roll fat people around.
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Oct 5, 2012 15:32
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Orzo posted:Define 'engine'. Because the more high level an engine is, the more freedom and control you sacrifice when making your game. It is almost guaranteed that using an engine will eventually lead to the inability to implement certain features, even if the engine is open-source. If this is cool with you (and it often is) then go for it. But there are advantages to rolling your own, so it certainly isn't a 'waste of time' as you put it. It's also a great learning experience and can help teach you how to handle complex organizational problems and abstractions, both very important skills in programming. Agree with this. Instead of using flixel or something for my AS3 platform games I wrote my own platform engine that is roughly equivalent. Adding in new features is pretty simple because I know how it all works, plus I was able to build a kickass editor alongside it so making new levels is easy as poo poo. Also, I can support things that flixel doesn't, like sloped surfaces. As an aside, this Sonic physics guide is a pretty amazing resource for anyone wanting to put together a 2D engine (not just platformers - I've made top-down shooters using the methods in there)
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Oct 5, 2012 16:27
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I don't really have a spritesheet - just a messy PSD I use to work on animations, etc. Here are Johnny's updated animation frames (jumping and pushing against a wall weren't in the contest version). Also, Scholtz! 
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Oct 7, 2012 21:09
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eeenmachine posted:Use this, it seriously is the bees knees: http://struct.ca/futile/ Everything I've heard about Futile makes it sound really compelling. The developer, Matt Rix, is also a former AS3 dev so hopefully I should be able to pick it up really quickly with my flash skills that are currently slowly becoming obsolete. I'm going to be disciplined and finish Zybourne Clock first but I have such a boner for getting into Unity right now.
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Oct 9, 2012 22:04
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A note that might be of interest to some: Kickstarter is allowing projects in the UK from the end of the month. I'm half tempted to put Zybourne Clock up on there as a semi-joke.
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Oct 11, 2012 10:43
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I've only had a little bit of experience with netcode and building multiplayer games, but getting synchronous multiplayer to work in a good way is a thousand times harder than you might imagine it to be. If you do decide to make a multiplayer game, keep it turn based or make sure the game design works primarily with discrete values (I found the biggest pain was float values having minor differences in rounding when used in calculations, eventually causing huge differences on different machines). For example, Frozen Synapse is essentially a turn based game, even if you're both taking your turns simultaneously.
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Oct 12, 2012 09:06
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Regalia posted:This should have said "One of the most notable characteristics of weaker games are smaller player bases". The key word here is weaker (I tried to find a work that didn't offend), not indie. Poor triple-A games have small player bases, too - because they're not good. I agree with this sentiment, but I'd still say a very good indie game probably wouldn't get anywhere near the same numbers as a very good AAA title. It's hard to imagine an indie game competing with, let's say, TF2, Starcraft 2, or Call of Duty.
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Oct 12, 2012 11:12
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So I'd like a bit of input on these room dividers, intended to separate two rooms inside a building:  There are three main styles: thin, thick and thick with bricks. I think the thin ones look neatest, but possibly a bit too thin, plus they're too thin for my collision tiles (which are 10x10 pixels). I don't dislike how the brick one looks, but I'm mindful of the fact that you don't actually get bricks inside interior walls. What do you guys think?
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Oct 12, 2012 13:29
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Mug posted:They don't really look like dividing walls. Can you make them hollow with wooden frames inside visible? How would that look? Wooden frames might work - I'll have a play with that when I get home. The door doesn't close - that's just for decoration to add a bit of separation between the rooms but also indicate that you can walk through it. There will probably also be different wallpapers/backgrounds in different rooms (when I get around to doing them...), which will hopefully add to the effect. I've also just noticed that door has a letterbox, which seems silly when it's inside!
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Oct 12, 2012 14:08
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SlightlyMadman posted:After I played FTL I found myself really enjoying it, but disliking the linear gameplay and short length of the games. I thought it would be much better as an open sandbox like Elite, so that's what I'm making. I thought the same thing about FTL. I do like the idea of an infinite rogue-like-like, though I think there would still have to be some sort of goal to keep the player focused. Anyway here's another Zybourne Clock screenshot. I filled in the interior walls with a lightly textured dark wood. It doesn't look out of place but still immediately says to the player "yo, you can't walk through this" so I'm happy enough with it. I also added some of the furniture I've been working on. 
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Oct 14, 2012 20:20
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1. Man doing science with some sort of measuring tool. 2. A plant whose name begins with the letter K 3. Rape 4. Murder-rape 5. A ninja. 6. Music.
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Oct 15, 2012 11:43
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1. Man lurking 2. CVC -or- man with three bigass horns 3. A crowd 4. Green checkbox (objective?) 5. Green checkbox complete 6. Blue checkbox (sub-objective?) 7. Still rape 8. Still murder-rape 9. Ninja party 10. Tunes They're mostly abstract really, but that's fine as long as they're distinguishable. The icons in Warcraft 3 are kind of incomprehensible until you see them in proper resolution (they were smaller ingame), but they do their job well.
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Oct 15, 2012 13:07
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prolecat posted:Ah, I wasn't getting blood from that one. On my screen, it looks a little more brown than red and doesn't really stand out from the rest of the image, so maybe make the blood brighter red? Of course, my screen calibration could just be off. The red doesn't stand out much for me either. I had to squint a bit to identify the murder.
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Oct 15, 2012 13:23
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Mug posted:Okay, one more one I just did then. Can you guys tell what this is meant to be? My first impression was a metal hand grasping an object OR robot goatse. Anyway I think I missed my calling in life because I'm having far too much fun designing miscellaneous bits of victorian style furniture that I doubt the player will ever pay attention to.  The TVs will show bits of little world building/story details and also tutorial instructions. You can turn them on and off because I like putting pointlessly interactive objects into games.
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Oct 15, 2012 13:42
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The White Dragon posted:Reminds me close enough, I get a Parasite Eve vibe from it. Wasn't RE1 (...and 2 too? I dunno) low-poly dudes on pre-rendered sets? That'd be the absolute best way to invoke those games if you ask me. The first three RE games had pre-rendered environments. I'd love to see a game made like that again but, to be honest, it's probably way too much effort for a solo developer to build and add the amount of detail that the RE and Final Fantasy games all had in their backgrounds. That screenshot reminds me of Silent Hill which did the creepy low poly vibe really well.
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Oct 16, 2012 09:06
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Mug posted:I would love to play a game with that fidelity. Silent Hill 1 is still terrifying. You just need to get sound design right to back it up. Agreeing with this. Lone Survivor is one of the creepiest games I've played recently based largely on its sound design (the graphics are all pixel art with filters applied).
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Oct 18, 2012 09:22
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"If it works, ship it" is great advice, but try not to be too lazy. I've been tripped up before by hacking something together that would only have taken a little bit more effort to code properly. But if something's going to take a substantial amount of time to do "properly" then gently caress it. My Internet at home is broken and I'm not sure when it's getting fixed. I'm not sure if this is a bad thing (loss of productivity tools, can't easily look stuff up) for development or a good thing (fewer distractions)! It does mean I need to sort out some other backup solution (please backup your poo poo)
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Oct 19, 2012 09:14
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Mug posted:I've heard of that but I don't know what that is. I just right click on my dev folder every night and go "Add to .rar" and it shoots away into the cosmos of off-site backup. I use Dropbox/Google Drive, which just automatically and instantly uploads any file changes to its magic server. There's stuff like Subversion or Git as well which let you revert back to previous revisions easily and handle merging files together if multiple people are working on the same thing, but they're a bit overkill for solo projects.
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Oct 19, 2012 09:44
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hitachi posted:Basically how do I learn to do what he is doing in those screenshots, even if its just piece by piece? One more vote for Unity. The free version has all the features you'll need and it's up for download here: http://unity3d.com/unity/download/ I haven't actually used Unity either, but I've heard it's very friendly towards people who dislike programming as there's an IDE that lets you drag and drop many features that most platforms require you to code from scratch (e.g. physics) thedaian posted:So, Greenlight has a Concepts section, which is free and seems geared to building up a fanbase for your game before diving in and paying $100. There's probably no harm in it as long as you've got some content that you're happy to show off. I can't wait until I actually finalise what I'm doing with Zybourne Clock and put together some marketing stuff for Greenlight, etc so I can blow goon minds.
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Oct 19, 2012 13:44
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Kunzelman posted:I just thought that I would poke my head in here to say that I made a twitter list of all the twitter names that are in the OP. I like using lists, and in case someone wants to check all those people out without individually following/making a twitter, I thought the list would be helpful. Ah, finally a lazy way to follow all the goons on Twitter. Ta!
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Oct 19, 2012 16:18
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SlightlyMadman posted:That sounds amazing and oh look Steam is selling it for $10. I think I need to do a bit more "research" into this idea. If my game never gets finished because of this, it's your fault! Legitimately playing a bunch of cool games as "research" is the best.
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Oct 19, 2012 16:59
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Man, designing a website is hard. I literally only want a basic html page with some kind of logo and a blurb and some screenshots of the game's current state, but I can't settle on any kind of design that I'm happy with. Doesn't help that I know nothing about website design or graphic design or even logo design as I don't actually have one yet. Does anyone have any favourite examples of simple pages for games? I quite like the Blendo Games ones (e.g. Atom Zombie Smasher)
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Oct 24, 2012 22:22
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xzzy posted:That page isn't that simple. I mean, it looks simple, but it's got a fair bit going on in the background. The CSS is several pages long and someone probably spent the better part of a day tweaking pixel sizes to get it where they wanted it. It's also using a bunch of javascript user tracking type stuff. Plus, someone had to make the images. I think this is the problem - it's simple in function (which is what I want) but not in execution. I spent half a day yesterday playing around with creating images and positioning them to try and get something nice, but couldn't cobble together anything I was happy with. I did look up some templates but didn't really like much of them either. They've already got the html licked, though, so I think I might just buy one and them customise it a bit. Ta, everyone.
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Oct 25, 2012 11:39
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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.
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Oct 26, 2012 18:05
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Freelancepolice posted:Does anyone have any suggestions for 2d tile map editors which are easy to customize the output to your needs? I've never found one that I've been totally happy with. I usually just end up hacking one together within the engine itself as I can make it do whatever I want then, plus instant testing. Is there a monday equivalent to screenshot saturday? Well, whatever, here's what I'm working on at the moment: a minion of Vaundermaus, armed with a ray gun: 
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Oct 29, 2012 21:45
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I don't even know what a quadtree is.
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Oct 30, 2012 09:58
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The Cheshire Cat posted:Essentially, it divides up space in such a way that big open areas are only one "tile" as far as your pathfinding is concerned, regardless of how many actual tiles they contain. You can do this because if it's all empty space, then any entity can reach any point in that megatile from any other point in the megatile by just pathing a straight line, so doing pathfinding within that area is just wasted processing time since you know the simplest possible path is already correct. Oh that actually sounds really handy for games with large maps. I've hobbled together engines with pathfinding routines before and performance was always the main bottleneck. Ta!
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Oct 30, 2012 16:32
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