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dannymate

Member
Oct 26, 2017
644
We just released a new trailer + release date for Lightmatter. It feels surreal to be so close to releasing our very first commercial game on Steam :O


That actually looks really good, super well done. I love the atmospheric puzzler kind of stuff.

In other news in my abominable modelling adventures, I've learned about manipulating your model for things like character creation using blend shapes. Big heads, changing body sizes that kind of thing. I'm planning on using something like this to generate models from my default source along with a DNA string as a sort of save to recreate it on the fly.

I've also been screwing around with ragdolls and runtime animations. Ragdolls were simple just using the ragdoll generator in the Unity menu. You can spot the head getting bigger if you look closely.
dr8JrAnIaL.gif


Then I got into my head ragdolling specific body parts (to show things like a broken arm) and I became a bit unhealthily obsessed with it. Certainly helped me understand animation in unity a bit more. My solution was ok but barely worked when expanded to a whole body. I used the "Animation Rigging" package which allows you to create... well I don't really get it, I guess like manipulating animations for more context specific stuff and it would still count as one animation for memory purposes. To do these kinds of things you use a "constraint" component (you can also make your own constraints). I recommend just checking the conference videos here: 1, 2. I ended up giving up on it for now but I did get something out of it. (Ignore the extra arm I used it for comparison)
CYjlVqgHOr.gif


Now onto creating my placeholder model for my game. Yaaaay!
 

Haxik

Member
Oct 27, 2017
632
Hi everyone!

My one and only new year resolution is to learn how to make video games. My long-term idea is to make a classic Megaman style game and, with that in mind, I've a question: do you recommend starting with Unity from scratch (with the heavy programming side and all that) or mayby Game Maker Studio 2 is suitable for that kind of game?

I'm not aiming to get rich in the game industry (poor of me if that would be the case), only to have one game made and check that essential item from my bucket list. And I'll be learning and making in the spare time that my dayjob lefts me, that's why I'm thinking in the most friendly and fast to master engine. Which would it be?

Thank you so much!
 

Wikzo

Member
Oct 27, 2017
265
Denmark
Unity used to be a poor choice when it came to 2D games, but these days it's actually pretty alright. I would say that the most important aspect for a Mega Man-styled game is to find some good level design tools that can be used in a modular way.
 

Weltall Zero

Game Developer
Banned
Oct 26, 2017
19,343
Madrid
Hi everyone!

My one and only new year resolution is to learn how to make video games. My long-term idea is to make a classic Megaman style game and, with that in mind, I've a question: do you recommend starting with Unity from scratch (with the heavy programming side and all that) or mayby Game Maker Studio 2 is suitable for that kind of game?

I'm not aiming to get rich in the game industry (poor of me if that would be the case), only to have one game made and check that essential item from my bucket list. And I'll be learning and making in the spare time that my dayjob lefts me, that's why I'm thinking in the most friendly and fast to master engine. Which would it be?

Thank you so much!

I only have experience with Unity but the gist of what people who have worked with both tell is that Game Maker is easier to begin with, but many things are harder or convoluted, especially if you want to do stuff outside the bread and butter. If you want to start at the very basic level, don't know programming (and don't have a particular interest in learning to, outside game making), don't intend to make money out of it, and don't intend to coerce the engine to do atypical things, Game Maker might actually be the easiest and better option for you.

That said: I keep recommending these free online university courses for Unity, they're fantastic and assume zero prior experience, including in coding:
https://www.resetera.com/threads/in...ome-help-learn-show-and-tell.463/post-5908836
 

SaberVS7

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,235
Well it was a hard choice to make, but it had to be made sooner rather than later - I've firmly decided now to abandon pixel-art and go full 3D (Still from an Isometric perspective) for JAEGER. Had a lot of factors that made sticking with the original Pixel-Art artstyle untenable for the development timeline I gave for myself, so here I begin.

A basic Female Mesh for testing next to Renne's original 2D sprite for scale comparison. Hopefully the next time I'm showing models it'll be a proper artstyle comparison between Renne's new Model and her old Sprite.

unknown.png
 

Kazooie

Member
Jul 17, 2019
5,013
That's kind of the opposite of how credits work, don't they? How would that work with headers with multiple people in it, like testers or special thanks?
What we did was: Thre was a core team who did most of the work, they get credited as
<Name>
----
<List of things that <Name> did>

Then afterwards the next credit card is "sound effects licensed as CC-0/ CC-By by: "

And then "Special thanks"

Basically: Names of people in the header for the actual team, then grouped named lists for people outside of the main team.

EDIT: To better illustrate, here are two screenshots from the credits:

iM5emDg.jpg


wRYTtGi.jpg
 
Last edited:

Weltall Zero

Game Developer
Banned
Oct 26, 2017
19,343
Madrid
What we did was: Thre was a core team who did most of the work, they get credited as
<Name>
----
<List of things that <Name> did>

Then afterwards the next credit card is "sound effects licensed as CC-0/ CC-By by: "

And then "Special thanks"

Basically: Names of people in the header for the actual team, then grouped named lists for people outside of the main team.

EDIT: To better illustrate, here are two screenshots from the credits:

iM5emDg.jpg


wRYTtGi.jpg

Ah, I see, you put the name or the role on the header depending on whether it's 1-to-many or many-to-1. That works, too!
 

sabrina

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
5,174
newport beach, CA
What we did was: Thre was a core team who did most of the work, they get credited as
<Name>
----
<List of things that <Name> did>

Then afterwards the next credit card is "sound effects licensed as CC-0/ CC-By by: "

And then "Special thanks"

Basically: Names of people in the header for the actual team, then grouped named lists for people outside of the main team.

EDIT: To better illustrate, here are two screenshots from the credits:

iM5emDg.jpg


wRYTtGi.jpg
Oh, that works really well. Nice job.
 

Mike Armbrust

Member
Oct 25, 2017
528
Well it was a hard choice to make, but it had to be made sooner rather than later - I've firmly decided now to abandon pixel-art and go full 3D (Still from an Isometric perspective) for JAEGER. Had a lot of factors that made sticking with the original Pixel-Art artstyle untenable for the development timeline I gave for myself, so here I begin.

A basic Female Mesh for testing next to Renne's original 2D sprite for scale comparison. Hopefully the next time I'm showing models it'll be a proper artstyle comparison between Renne's new Model and her old Sprite.

unknown.png
If you're more comfortable with the workflow, that makes sense. I did the same thing a few months ago and it saved time while vastly increasing the perceived "budget" of the game.

Are you going to recreate the pixel look and hide the fact it's a 3D model or embrace a 3D style?
 

SaberVS7

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,235
If you're more comfortable with the workflow, that makes sense. I did the same thing a few months ago and it saved time while vastly increasing the perceived "budget" of the game.

Are you going to recreate the pixel look and hide the fact it's a 3D model or embrace a 3D style?

Well it wasn't my workflow producing the pixel-art prior, I had someone else producing sprites, and well... Not going to get into that too deep here for a variety of reasons. For now, I'll be producing all in-game visual assets myself.

And no, I'm completely abandoning Pixel-Art as a whole for JAEGER. Just going to double-down on the anime/shaded artstyle of the character art going forward.

(Model still very WIP)
duelxy.png


Models will be kept relatively minimalist in terms of detail (Albeit a bit more detailed than this so far) - Since the camera is zoomed out 10+ meters and Isometric/Top-Down in nature too much detail would be a waste of labor, so a standard slightly ahead of 2007-Runescape or various 2000's 3D RTSes is a decent bar to adhere to.
 

Mike Armbrust

Member
Oct 25, 2017
528


I jumped down the rabbit hole and I'm doing AI powered animations. Definitely needs some stronger legs to counteract gravity!


Well it wasn't my workflow producing the pixel-art prior, I had someone else producing sprites, and well... Not going to get into that too deep here for a variety of reasons. For now, I'll be producing all in-game visual assets myself.

And no, I'm completely abandoning Pixel-Art as a whole for JAEGER. Just going to double-down on the anime/shaded artstyle of the character art going forward.

(Model still very WIP)
duelxy.png


Models will be kept relatively minimalist in terms of detail (Albeit a bit more detailed than this so far) - Since the camera is zoomed out 10+ meters and Isometric/Top-Down in nature too much detail would be a waste of labor, so a standard slightly ahead of 2007-Runescape or various 2000's 3D RTSes is a decent bar to adhere to.

That looks like a good start. I look forward to seeing the new look of your game.
 

Bufbaf

Don't F5!
Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,642
Hamburg, Germany
So in preperation to finish an actual demo, I'm now officially an animator as well. Old school, layer by layer and feeling like a Disney reject.

animation_new.gif
 

Jintor

Saw the truth behind the copied door
Member
Oct 25, 2017
32,404
oooh so you can change directional input during animation and it swaps when the next move comes out? I'm sure it's just good var management but I need to completely rethink my 'facing' and 'moving' dir values...
 

Benz On Dubz

Member
Oct 27, 2017
763
Massachusetts
oooh so you can change directional input during animation and it swaps when the next move comes out? I'm sure it's just good var management but I need to completely rethink my 'facing' and 'moving' dir values...

Not quite. I'm using a generic state machine to model Sheep's behavior, so I'm just checking for directional input change during the attack's begin state.

However, you can queue up your next attack during the current one's animation which facilitated a need to add additional input checking.
 

chironex

Member
Oct 27, 2017
504
Yesterday about an hour before I finished for the day I discovered I'd introduced a gnarly skinning bug when adding a forward render path for alpha transparencies. Came in this morning and fixed it with the first line of code I wrote. Pleased, but also I feel now that the rest of the day can only go downhill haha.

Anyhow, my glass surfaces are now rendered much more efficiently and can have colour tints, opaque sections and emissive textures attached.

62iJaid.png
 

Mike Armbrust

Member
Oct 25, 2017
528


When the system works, it's starting to work pretty well. Legs give a good push now and can keep the player above ground. Stopping however is completely broken. I think I'll just make the legs disproportionally stronger when counteracting gravity to fix that.
 
Oct 26, 2017
3,915
Pre post edit: Sorry, this ended up quite like a blogpost!

My productivity has been bad lately. A few months ago I hit a sort of mental block and just stopped all together. I think I'm back on the horse now though. I have three weeks off work and want to dedicate a significant portion of that time to making my game look the way I want it to. So here are my updates:

I did something very brave (at least, I think it's brave) and abandoned my colour palette. I had to be honest with myself and say that it just wasn't working. I don't think I have the "eye" for it in terms of collating shades that really make things "pop", and so I decided to go with a palette that someone else had created. I saw some works created with it that I felt gave off the right vibe, so although it isn't precisely what I wanted I think it's for the best that I go forward with something that I can be confident actually "works".

Perhaps having a prolonged exposure to this new palette will "train" me to know what is right and what is wrong. I had to make a few changes from the "base" palette already (to add a few shades that I required) and I don't think I made a complete mess of it, so that's a good sign.

Additionally, I have known for a while that I was not happy with the perspective of my game (specifically the "terrain"), but I didn't really know how to "fix" it. I didn't want to take pseudo-isometric approach or start incorporating realistic depth because I just don't think I'm at the level where I could pull that off yet. That said, whilst I was doodling on some paper I had a thought:

"What if I try an "orthographic" style?"

And so, I decided to draw a bus:
am a good drawer lul

After I had finished sketching that out, it sort of felt like a piece had fallen into place! It feels like now I can add some depth to my game world without having to make drastic changes to my level geometry!

I sketched up some more things in this style (Getting rid of the slight bit of perspective I had "accidentally" added to the top of the bus) and then decided that I was going to re-draw one of my buildings in this style, with the new palette! (Buildings are what compose the level geometry in my game)

I'll likely revisit it again at some point in the not too distant future, but right now I'm quite satisfied with how it looks for a "first pass" using this new perspective, and these new colours. Here's the comparison:
Old said:

New said:

As always, feedback is appreciated! I'm going to spend the rest of the night sketching up some more things and perhaps looking for design inspiration on twitter n' stuff.
 

Weltall Zero

Game Developer
Banned
Oct 26, 2017
19,343
Madrid
Pre post edit: Sorry, this ended up quite like a blogpost!

My productivity has been bad lately. A few months ago I hit a sort of mental block and just stopped all together. I think I'm back on the horse now though. I have three weeks off work and want to dedicate a significant portion of that time to making my game look the way I want it to. So here are my updates:

I did something very brave (at least, I think it's brave) and abandoned my colour palette. I had to be honest with myself and say that it just wasn't working. I don't think I have the "eye" for it in terms of collating shades that really make things "pop", and so I decided to go with a palette that someone else had created. I saw some works created with it that I felt gave off the right vibe, so although it isn't precisely what I wanted I think it's for the best that I go forward with something that I can be confident actually "works".

Perhaps having a prolonged exposure to this new palette will "train" me to know what is right and what is wrong. I had to make a few changes from the "base" palette already (to add a few shades that I required) and I don't think I made a complete mess of it, so that's a good sign.

Additionally, I have known for a while that I was not happy with the perspective of my game (specifically the "terrain"), but I didn't really know how to "fix" it. I didn't want to take pseudo-isometric approach or start incorporating realistic depth because I just don't think I'm at the level where I could pull that off yet. That said, whilst I was doodling on some paper I had a thought:

"What if I try an "orthographic" style?"

And so, I decided to draw a bus:

am a good drawer lul

After I had finished sketching that out, it sort of felt like a piece had fallen into place! It feels like now I can add some depth to my game world without having to make drastic changes to my level geometry!

I sketched up some more things in this style (Getting rid of the slight bit of perspective I had "accidentally" added to the top of the bus) and then decided that I was going to re-draw one of my buildings in this style, with the new palette! (Buildings are what compose the level geometry in my game)

I'll likely revisit it again at some point in the not too distant future, but right now I'm quite satisfied with how it looks for a "first pass" using this new perspective, and these new colours. Here's the comparison:




As always, feedback is appreciated! I'm going to spend the rest of the night sketching up some more things and perhaps looking for design inspiration on twitter n' stuff.

Wow, the new style looks fantastic! I love it! The only thing is that the main character now looks a bit flat in comparison, but that's nothing that can be fixed with a little shadowing.

Mini-rant: don't you hate it how, every time you improve something about your game, it makes the "old" version immediately and obviously wrong in comparison? Like, you show these two styles to someone and they will immediately think "well, surely it was obvious that what was wrong with the old style is that it's so flat and the perspective in the new style was the way to go?". Yet having seen the old style first, it didn't click that this was what was missing until now. It happens over and over with my game too.

Aside about the palette: I changed my game's paletter two times and a half, but it was worth it because the last time, just recently in fact, I migrated to the Endesga 64 palette which I find absolutely lovely. If you're not using that one, and you still haven't done the bulk of palette-swapping, give it a go because it's delightful to use and has such well defined yet beautiful color curves.

DbxFFD8VwAE27fi.png


 
Oct 26, 2017
3,915
Thanks very much! :)

Haha, yea that's just the way Game Dev works really! I just treat everything as a learning experience but It's always hard to shake that feeling of "Oh, If I'd just known or done this from the start I could be so much further ahead!"

Thanks for that palette! I had a wee look on lospec but I didn't find any that I was instantly enthusiastic about, but seeing that one scaled up looks quite nice. I haven't really done any recolouring other than what I posted before, so I might give it a go and just see how it looks! I'm not sure if the one I'm using has a name, I just found it attached to some nice pixel art pictures I found whilst browsing the web.
 

elLOaSTy

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,843
Mini-rant: don't you hate it how, every time you improve something about your game, it makes the "old" version immediately and obviously wrong in comparison? Like, you show these two styles to someone and they will immediately think "well, surely it was obvious that what was wrong with the old style is that it's so flat and the perspective in the new style was the way to go?". Yet having seen the old style first, it didn't click that this was what was missing until now. It happens over and over with my game too.

This has been one of the most costly parts of this experince. In both time, emotional energy, mental health and money. Especially since I'm developing a physical card game, I have like 400+ cards now from various printed prototypes and now Im finally on the final final really actually final version of them. The expense of new cards, reformatting each on for fixes, and the time in-between waiting for them to arrive and then make adjustments and do it all over again is wild yall.
 

ZServ

Banned
Oct 29, 2017
228
People in the Discord already have seen this, but I figured I'd share it here as well.



What was once referred to as "Project Micro" is now known as Ephemeral Tale. It's coming out on Steam next month. I'm happy to report that I'm running a giveaway w/ Destructoid for 5 copies of the game! If you're crazy enough to want to follow me on Twitter, that's over ZServ and @DawdlingDogltd. Enjoy your holidays, everyone. Saber, good to see you haven't given up Jaeger, man. Keep it up, brother.
 
Oct 26, 2017
3,915
This has been one of the most costly parts of this experince. In both time, emotional energy, mental health and money. Especially since I'm developing a physical card game, I have like 400+ cards now from various printed prototypes and now Im finally on the final final really actually final version of them. The expense of new cards, reformatting each on for fixes, and the time in-between waiting for them to arrive and then make adjustments and do it all over again is wild yall.

Ooft, the monetary cost of making and developing a real card game must be eye-watering! My heart goes out to you <3

People in the Discord already have seen this, but I figured I'd share it here as well.



What was once referred to as "Project Micro" is now known as Ephemeral Tale. It's coming out on Steam next month.


Looks cool! Good luck with your launch and hope all goes well!
 

elLOaSTy

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,843
What was once referred to as "Project Micro" is now known as Ephemeral Tale. It's coming out on Steam next month. I'm happy to report that I'm running a giveaway w/ Destructoid for 5 copies of the game! If you're crazy enough to want to follow me on Twitter, that's over ZServ and @DawdlingDogltd. Enjoy your holidays, everyone. Saber, good to see you haven't given up Jaeger, man. Keep it up, brother.

Unreal, this looks great. I can't imagine the amount of work that went into this! I'll absolutely give you a follow, keep up the good work.

Ooft, the monetary cost of making and developing a real card game must be eye-watering! My heart goes out to you <3

It's not as terrible as you'd think but it's not cheap either. If I wanted to drag the process out to be twice of what it has been during these last 3 months of heading for a near final product then I would have saved a bunch, but the time lost is just as costly in many ways.

uDIPBG5.png


If anyone is interested in playing I'll be doing streams of it over the next few weeks. I need to throw together a graphic overlay but my "Scrabble Tile Rack" shown above for players cards works great. I played a whole game over twitch this week by having the person on the other end pick the card to play from their hand by telling me card 1-5. I also have it setup so I can't see your hand.
 

Bufbaf

Don't F5!
Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,642
Hamburg, Germany
testanimation2.gif


At least some animation progress :)

So far I managed to do at least something, even if it's tiny, every single day. Feels good!
Still SO much cleaning up to do lol
 

Sean Noonan

Lead Level Designer at Splash Damage
Verified
Oct 26, 2017
384
UK
Been messing about with war thing again...



And in other news, the trailer reveal of Gears Tactics went super well. Really happy with the response so far :)
 

Jintor

Saw the truth behind the copied door
Member
Oct 25, 2017
32,404
i'm doing moveset design cos i'm going to have to really churn animations soon... very slow and depressing work but vital lol
 

Deleted member 49319

Account closed at user request
Banned
Nov 4, 2018
3,672
InTOX6K.gif


Been working on conceptualizing some walking sim ideas since the holiday began.
Making things is always more fun than school.
 

Jintor

Saw the truth behind the copied door
Member
Oct 25, 2017
32,404
im trying to learn to pixel again


u1TdjUr.gif


i really have to learn more subtlety... and also how the legs should bend properly. i can kind of visualise it in my head but translating it to pixels and making it look nice is a total other matter lol.
 

Deleted member 62221

User requested account closure
Banned
Dec 17, 2019
1,140
Nice to come back to this thread after so much time, I think my nickname in the old forum was Kondor0 and I used to post the progress for my Unity games there. I've been lurking here for a few months but I have no one to talk about game dev so I decided to register.

I've been doing a lot of freelance work but I also made some time to work on my own ideas.
Here's my latest project, a sci fi city management game:



I also learned to make 3D models and I even put some stuff in the asset store. I'm still a novice but is good to be more than just a programmer now (and it's kinda necessary to survive in the long term, I think)

SGx9Nh3.jpg
 

Raonak

Banned
Oct 29, 2017
2,170
Boss battles are quite tedious to make....

Pre post edit: Sorry, this ended up quite like a blogpost!

My productivity has been bad lately. A few months ago I hit a sort of mental block and just stopped all together. I think I'm back on the horse now though. I have three weeks off work and want to dedicate a significant portion of that time to making my game look the way I want it to. So here are my updates:

I did something very brave (at least, I think it's brave) and abandoned my colour palette. I had to be honest with myself and say that it just wasn't working. I don't think I have the "eye" for it in terms of collating shades that really make things "pop", and so I decided to go with a palette that someone else had created. I saw some works created with it that I felt gave off the right vibe, so although it isn't precisely what I wanted I think it's for the best that I go forward with something that I can be confident actually "works".

Perhaps having a prolonged exposure to this new palette will "train" me to know what is right and what is wrong. I had to make a few changes from the "base" palette already (to add a few shades that I required) and I don't think I made a complete mess of it, so that's a good sign.

Additionally, I have known for a while that I was not happy with the perspective of my game (specifically the "terrain"), but I didn't really know how to "fix" it. I didn't want to take pseudo-isometric approach or start incorporating realistic depth because I just don't think I'm at the level where I could pull that off yet. That said, whilst I was doodling on some paper I had a thought:

"What if I try an "orthographic" style?"

And so, I decided to draw a bus:

am a good drawer lul

After I had finished sketching that out, it sort of felt like a piece had fallen into place! It feels like now I can add some depth to my game world without having to make drastic changes to my level geometry!

I sketched up some more things in this style (Getting rid of the slight bit of perspective I had "accidentally" added to the top of the bus) and then decided that I was going to re-draw one of my buildings in this style, with the new palette! (Buildings are what compose the level geometry in my game)

I'll likely revisit it again at some point in the not too distant future, but right now I'm quite satisfied with how it looks for a "first pass" using this new perspective, and these new colours. Here's the comparison:




As always, feedback is appreciated! I'm going to spend the rest of the night sketching up some more things and perhaps looking for design inspiration on twitter n' stuff.

That is a SUBSTANTIAL upgrade. Your artstyle has gotten a lot better.
Good work!
 

Padnik

Member
Oct 27, 2017
28
London, UK
I'm trying to get back into developing games, and I recently made this entirely text-based game in Twine for a couple of jams on itch.io: https://jessicapadkin.itch.io/i-told-you-this-was-a-bad-idea

It's short and simple, but I'm kind of happy with the storytelling; at least, most players seem to get what I was going for. Not sure how I feel about the 'good' ending though. I think I prefer the downer endings...

The file is available to be downloaded and imported into Twine too, if anyone feels like scrutinising my terrible code!
 

Weltall Zero

Game Developer
Banned
Oct 26, 2017
19,343
Madrid
I'm trying to get back into developing games, and I recently made this entirely text-based game in Twine for a couple of jams on itch.io: https://jessicapadkin.itch.io/i-told-you-this-was-a-bad-idea

It's short and simple, but I'm kind of happy with the storytelling; at least, most players seem to get what I was going for. Not sure how I feel about the 'good' ending though. I think I prefer the downer endings...

The file is available to be downloaded and imported into Twine too, if anyone feels like scrutinising my terrible code!

Is there a good ending? I've been trying for a bit and can't figure out how to get to it. :D
 

Padnik

Member
Oct 27, 2017
28
London, UK
Is there a good ending? I've been trying for a bit and can't figure out how to get to it. :D
I tried not to make it too easy to get the good(-ish) ending, but it probably is too hard now...

You have to:
  1. Answer 'Yes' to the "do you like me?" question.
  2. Answer 'no' to "do you regret it".
  3. Answer 'yes' to "will you do me a favour".
  4. When the AI tells you about the code, enter "I'll miss you" or something similar (there should be an extra bit of text hinting for you to do so).
I think the last step is too difficult to figure out, tho', so I might go back and tweak it. And... even the good ending isn't that cheerful, haha.
 

Sean Noonan

Lead Level Designer at Splash Damage
Verified
Oct 26, 2017
384
UK
Tried to get this ready to release as a wee Christmas present, but there are one or two things left unfinished, so it's going to have to wait :(

 
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