Hobby and Indie Game Dev |OT 2020| Discussion, Help and Show-off

RazorbackDB · May 6, 2020

Hello everyone, nice to see so many cool looking projects, especially on the art side everyone seems to be killing it. I crashed pretty hard on my last project, didn't even want to look at an editor for a while. Anyway I made an ocean material from scratch and I think it came out looking ok.

Midramble · May 6, 2020

RazorbackDB said:
Hello everyone, nice to see so many cool looking projects, especially on the art side everyone seems to be killing it. I crashed pretty hard on my last project, didn't even want to look at an editor for a while. Anyway I made an ocean material from scratch and I think it came out looking ok.

Lookin goood

Deleted member 5876 · May 6, 2020

Qwark said:
What exactly is DAIN? Some kind of automatic animation software?

An app that uses machine learning to figure out how to take an existing animation and reanimate it with improved frame rate.

_Rob_ · May 6, 2020

~~I believe it's an AI frame interpolator for pixel art. So it takes existing frames of an animation and intelligently works out extra inbetweens to create a super smooth looking final result.~~ Nevermind haha, I didn't realise we'd turned a new page!

I'm finished with CnW's main worlds now, so I'm finishing off the bosses one-by-one, the last couple of days have been spend on Annie Oaktree's runaway train! Ended up settling for having the traversable train stay static while the background whizzes by, much less room for physics errors this way, and I don't think most players will be able to tell... (at least I hope not!)

Jump_Button · May 6, 2020

Qwark said:
What exactly is DAIN? Some kind of automatic animation software?

Adds animation frames for betweens best use for, Take 15 key Frames and make it 30, In animation it someone only job to do Betweens so useing AI to make it easy for someone likeme on my own is a help still best to clean up yourself but and something the AI will not get

Qwark · May 6, 2020

xgalaxy said:
An app that uses machine learning to figure out how to take an existing animation and reanimate it with improved frame rate.

Jump_Button said:
Adds animation frames for betweens best use for, Take 15 key Frames and make it 30, In animation it someone only job to do Betweens so useing AI to make it easy for someone likeme on my own is a help still best to clean up yourself but and something the AI will not get

Thanks for the info! I've been struggling with animation so I will check this out!

Jintor · May 6, 2020

tbh it probably wont help if you dont already have fundamentals + key frames. Also I personally think it only fits a certain style of animation, but hey

Weltall Zero · May 6, 2020

Jintor said:
tbh it probably wont help if you dont already have fundamentals + key frames. Also I personally think it only fits a certain style of animation, but hey

Yeah, Jump_Button's animation was perfectly animated already, and the AI messed even that up. I've also noticed it screws up the outlines no matter what, so I guess you still have to redo these by hand. I guess it might have some value for animations that check many of these boxes:
- Few colors or even monochrome.
- No outlines.
- Large sprites where individual off pixels won't matter much.
- Already very smooth so the AIcan't get confused (but then using it on top may be pointless).
Traditional pixel art in general seems to be a pretty poor fit for it unless a huge leap in the AI behind it is made down the line.

It's kind of funny, because Arc System Works are trying to do the exact opposite; emulating traditional animation look by actively eschewing the "natural" interpolation of 3D models and treating each animation as a series of keyframes.

HandsomeCharles · May 7, 2020

RazorbackDB said:
Hello everyone, nice to see so many cool looking projects, especially on the art side everyone seems to be killing it. I crashed pretty hard on my last project, didn't even want to look at an editor for a while. Anyway I made an ocean material from scratch and I think it came out looking ok.

Don't worry about crashing out, it happens to us all at one point or another :) Just take it all as a learning experience and use it to plan your next venture! Your material looks really good btw!

_Rob_ Looking snazzy as always! You must be pretty close to being done soon, right?

My updates:

This week I have been doing the fairly boring job of setting up collision for my level geometry, so not much in terms of visual updates this week. Unfortunately this is a fairly arduous process because whilst 2d Toolkit's polygon collider tool is really good, the optimisation stage often produces bugs which can be a pain to resolve. Thankfully I believe I have managed to sort most of them out for the level I have been working on recently, which means that the level is question is.... "Done!" (Hard for me to admit! Certainly can go back and add polish later, but I think its time to move on for now)

Next on the agenda is re-colouring my character and some of the universal level elements (Spawn point, goal point etc) to use my new palette. Here's a quick bit I did on the character this morning. (Before/After). If you guys have feedback or recommendations about bits that either look too light/dark or un-natural then I'd appreciate it!

Also as an aside, we often post screenshots and gifs in this thread, but I was wondering if anyone would be interested in sharing sketches and rough designs (either digital or pen+paper)? I was thinking seeing all the rough working around how we draw might be interesting and also beneficial to learn each others techniques etc.

HandsomeCharles · May 7, 2020

Sorry for the double folks!

Vini256 and also anyone else wondering about character sprite sheets.

let this be a warning to the perils of making tiles on your character sheets too small! My character is represented in 64x64 tiles, up from the original 32x32. For a while I thought this would be enough, and, for a while it was enough based on the restricted and limited moveset that my character carried out. The majority of the animations involved "squashing" (Making the character smaller than it is by default) or just a simple bob/sway, so I felt that I could contain this all within a 64x64 tile no problem.

However, I decided to go back and re-do one of the animations that I've never been happy with (It's supposed to be an animation that plays if you attempt to move left/right whilst grounded, showing that the jetpack is too heavy to move). I sketched out something (on paper) that I was happy with, but when it came to drawing this out within my animation sheet, I realised there was no way I could get the target quality I was looking for within those pre-set dimensions.

here's a comparison of the old/new animations (Just a frame reference)

So as you can see, Im going outside the boundaries fairly significantly, but there isn't really any way that I can squash it down whilst still maintaining the "stretch" of the animation, else the torso and legs would just end up roughly the same size as the idle pose.

I'm going to have to redo the tilemap now, much larger than before (I'm going to do 128x128 to ensure I have enough room for whatever I need). It's going to be a bit annoying having to re-export and setup the animations again in Unity, but I think its definitely necessary. Just thought I'd share my experience and hopefully prevent anyone else from falling afoul of a similar situation!

Weltall Zero · May 7, 2020

HandsomeCharles said:
Next on the agenda is re-colouring my character and some of the universal level elements (Spawn point, goal point etc) to use my new palette. Here's a quick bit I did on the character this morning. (Before/After). If you guys have feedback or recommendations about bits that either look too light/dark or un-natural then I'd appreciate it!

I think the new palette looks so much better than the old one (also the hands look much better now, you obviously tweaked these too). Much more natural looking and "healthier", hahah. The one thing that perhaps draws a lot of attention are the two light pixels on each shoe. Are they shoe buckles, reflections or socks? They feel like they're a bit too bright and distracting, especially because stray pixels already catch the eye.

HandsomeCharles said:
Also as an aside, we often post screenshots and gifs in this thread, but I was wondering if anyone would be interested in sharing sketches and rough designs (either digital or pen+paper)? I was thinking seeing all the rough working around how we draw might be interesting and also beneficial to learn each others techniques etc.

I personally would be elated to see everyone's sketches and such. I myself don't have much to post in that area; I don't sketch anything, since, well, I can't draw for shit :D; I construct every sprite pixel by pixel like a Lego set. :P

HandsomeCharles said:
It's going to be a bit annoying having to re-export and setup the animations again in Unity, but I think its definitely necessary. Just thought I'd share my experience and hopefully prevent anyone else from falling afoul of a similar situation!

What's your sprite creation workflow? I use Aseprite, and since it exports spritesheets as large pngs that you then slice in Unity, changing a sprite's dimensions is trivial (simply change canvas size in Aseprite, export, then re-slice in Unity with the new dimensions). Individual sprite frame references and numbers are kept so there's no need to even touch the animations.

HandsomeCharles · May 7, 2020

Weltall Zero said:
I think the new palette looks so much better than the old one (also the hands look much better now, you obviously tweaked these too). Much more natural looking and "healthier", hahah. The one thing that perhaps draws a lot of attention are the two light pixels on each shoe. Are they shoe buckles, reflections or socks? They feel like they're a bit too bright and distracting, especially because stray pixels already catch the eye.

I think originally it was supposed to be just a generic "boot tongue", some ambiguous additional detail that could fit any of the above. I think I'll try and rework the shoes. They look pretty flat compared to the rest of it now. Might not be that noticeable at the "proper" size though.

I personally would be elated to see everyone's sketches and such. I myself don't have much to post in that area; I don't sketch anything, since, well, I can't draw for shit :D; I construct every sprite pixel by pixel like a Lego set. :P

I'll post some stuff a little later on then :)

What's your sprite creation workflow? I use Aseprite, and since it exports spritesheets as large pngs that you then slice in Unity, changing a sprite's dimensions is trivial (simply change canvas size in Aseprite, export, then re-slice in Unity with the new dimensions). Individual sprite frame references and numbers are kept so there's no need to even touch the animations.

My workflow isn't great to be honest. Im not sure how difficult this transition is going to be. Luckily I dont have that many animations authored as of yet, so at most It'll probably take a day to move them over. I use Pyxel Edit for my assets, but then I use 2D Toolkit in unity for my sprite implementation (Because I started this game prior to Unity having proper 2D support.... long time...)

Updating the "animations" within Unity may be a bit more difficult. We shall see how it goes, and I'll report back.

Biestmann · May 7, 2020

With the upcoming Steam release (So excited!), I currently am debating what pricing model to go with for my game, Eternal Dreamers. I am proud of what I have created, but it is an RPG Maker game in the end, meaning I won't ask for much. Given the stigma of the engine, my main concern is with getting people to play in the first place. I have determined three payment models I find interesting, but I also am a novice with no sales statistics to draw from. The below prices are vaguely what I might ask, but by no means final.

A.
Early Access: $2.50
Full release: $4.99

The game consists of two story episodes, the first completed, the second still in development. If I released the game now, players would get a discount and in exchange help me developing episode 2 (and fixing episode 1) with their feedback. Both episodes would be part of one pack.

B.
Episode 1: $0
Episode 1+2: $3.99

Inspired by the RPG Maker success Eternal Senia, the first story episode of the game would release for free. Once episode 2 is ready for release and you liked what you've played, you can graciously pay me for more. Quite the gamble, as people might not even like what they get to play for free, and even if they did, decide not to pay for more. One plus of this approach is that it would definitely have a lot more people playing my game, which would be satisfying in its own right.

C.
Episode 1: $2.50
Episode 2: $2.50

Episode 1 releases now and Episode 2 later, equal pricing. Pretty straightforward.

Weltall Zero · May 7, 2020

Biestmann said:
With the upcoming Steam release (So excited!), I currently am debating what pricing model to go with for my game, Eternal Dreamers. I am proud of what I have created, but it is an RPG Maker game in the end, meaning I won't ask for much. Given the stigma of the engine, my main concern is with getting people to play in the first place. I have determined three payment models I find interesting, but I also am a novice with no sales statistics to draw from. The below prices are vaguely what I might ask, but by no means final.

A.
Early Access: $2.50
Full release: $4.99

The game consists of two story episodes, the first completed, the second still in development. If I released the game now, players would get a discount and in exchange help me developing episode 2 (and fixing episode 1) with their feedback. Both episodes would be part of one pack.

B.
Episode 1: $0
Episode 1+2: $3.99

Inspired by the RPG Maker success Eternal Senia, the first story episode of the game would release for free. Once episode 2 is ready for release and you liked what you've played, you can graciously pay me for more. Quite the gamble, as people might not even like what they get to play for free, and even if they did, decide not to pay for more. One plus of this approach is that it would definitely have a lot more people playing my game, which would be satisfying in its own right.

C.
Episode 1: $2.50
Episode 2: $2.50

Episode 1 releases now and Episode 2 later, equal pricing. Pretty straightforward.

I would try to avoid the race to the bottom with prices. Value is extremely subjective; some time ago I read that to decide your game's price, you should flip a coin: if it lands heads, you price it at $15; tails, $20. Apparently these are the price points of the indie games that sell the most, independently of the game's content or quality itself. This is particularly important for "anchoring"; a game that released at $15 and is now $8 psychologically feels like a much better deal than a game that's always been $5.

In particular I would avoid giving away the first episode for free if you intend to make any money at all, unless your story is an absolute world-class masterpiece of suspense with a cliffhanger that will leave them sleepless until the conclusion. People into indie games usually only bite a bit of each plate; the first episode will often be enough for them, even if they like it, before they move on to other things.

Weltall Zero · May 7, 2020

HandsomeCharles said:
Something important to note in regards to this is legal liability.

If you register as an LLC, then should you run into any legal issues (say, for example someone wants to sue you for plagiarism/copyright infringement) then the LLC is liable, not you. However, if you are the one that is selling the product, then you are liable. Basically, if you "lost" any legal issues you personally would have to bare the costs, which could include someone seizing your assets (Like a home, for example).

LLC obviously is more complicated, costs money, more difficult to get your sales revenue into your pocket etc (Which will vary depending on where you are based) but it should give you more legal protection.

I think its probably unlikely that you would get sued or run into legal issues, but there's always a chance, particularly with patent trolls and the like.

I forgot to reply to this. I didn't know any of this and it's indeed rather worrying! Do you have an LLC yourself?

Qwark · May 7, 2020

Weltall Zero said:
I would try to avoid the race to the bottom with prices. Value is extremely subjective; some time ago I read that to decide your game's price, you should flip a coin: if it lands heads, you price it at $15; tails, $20. Apparently these are the price points of the indie games that sell the most, independently of the game's content or quality itself. This is particularly important for "anchoring"; a game that released at $15 and is now $8 psychologically feels like a much better deal than a game that's always been $5.

In particular I would avoid giving away the first episode for free if you intend to make any money at all, unless your story is an absolute world-class masterpiece of suspense with a cliffhanger that will leave them sleepless until the conclusion. People into indie games usually only bite a bit of each plate; the first episode will often be enough for them, even if they like it, before they move on to other things.

Hmm, I was considering offering a prologue for free, and then $5 for the whole thing... but I'm also aiming for a mobile release and that pricing is quite a bit different.

But now I'm reconsidering things. I'm still a long way off from that part though so I still have some time to think it through.

Thank you for the insight though.

Biestmann · May 7, 2020

Weltall Zero said:
I would try to avoid the race to the bottom with prices. Value is extremely subjective; some time ago I read that to decide your game's price, you should flip a coin: if it lands heads, you price it at $15; tails, $20. Apparently these are the price points of the indie games that sell the most, independently of the game's content or quality itself. This is particularly important for "anchoring"; a game that released at $15 and is now $8 psychologically feels like a much better deal than a game that's always been $5.

In particular I would avoid giving away the first episode for free if you intend to make any money at all, unless your story is an absolute world-class masterpiece of suspense with a cliffhanger that will leave them sleepless until the conclusion. People into indie games usually only bite a bit of each plate; the first episode will often be enough for them, even if they like it, before they move on to other things.

Everything you say is sound, but knowing that you can get much higher quality games in that price range has me nervous to try compete. I have some thinking to do. Price aside, how do you feel about discounted early access?

HandsomeCharles · May 7, 2020

Weltall Zero said:
I forgot to reply to this. I didn't know any of this and it's indeed rather worrying! Do you have an LLC yourself?

Not yet, but Im nowhere near close to releasing

Qwark said:
Hmm, I was considering offering a prologue for free, and then $5 for the whole thing... but I'm also aiming for a mobile release and that pricing is quite a bit different.

Relating to this, I think that is a bad idea. There has been a good example of this backfiring spectacularly this week with a game called Warriorb

r/gamedev - Over 16k Wishlists, we were listed in popular upcoming... how could the release go this bad?

3,156 votes and 784 comments so far on Reddit

www.reddit.com

Basically, the prologue is a demo. Lots of people might download it, but then decide they dont want to buy the full thing. This has long been a problem in the games industry, that people get "enough" from the demo and never follow through with the purchase. On the other hand, if you price appropriately you may attract fewer eyes overall (due to it not being free), but have a larger number of purchases. You'll probably have a few refunds, as all games do, but if someone has only dropped a couple of dollars on your game even if they dont like it, they may feel as though its "worth" the money, or that they cant be bothered sorting out a refund.

Weltall Zero · May 7, 2020

Biestmann said:
Everything you say is sound, but knowing that you can get much higher quality games in that price range has me nervous to try compete.

I empathize with that anxiety more than you could possibly imagine, but at some point we have to abandon that "logic", otherwise everything should be free since Maldita Castilla, Hydorah, the original Spelunky, etc. exist.

A decision everyone has to make for themselves is how important it is for them to make money vs having more people playing their game. We all want to maximize both, but they will always be at odds. Make your game free, and a lot more people will play it, but you won't be able to live off it (or even recoup the costs of making it).

If you priorize making money (and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it at all, then If you think pricing your game at $5 will get you thrice as many sales as pricing it at $15, you should go for it; otherwise, you should do the opposite. Remember sales are a thing and you can reach the $5 price point audience later on with them.

Biestmann said:
I have some thinking to do. Price aside, how do you feel about discounted early access?

Qwark said:
Hmm, I was considering offering a prologue for free, and then $5 for the whole thing... but I'm also aiming for a mobile release and that pricing is quite a bit different.

But now I'm reconsidering things. I'm still a long way off from that part though so I still have some time to think it through.

Thank you for the insight though.

I grouped both posts because I want to give a very important caveat that applies to both: I'm most likely not the person you should be listening to with regards to pricing, marketing, etc. I'm just one more dev trying to figure things out and repeating what I've heard elsewhere in the internet. There are a lot of resources about these things, but frankly I find this aspect of game development rather unexciting and even unpleasant, so being the lazy fuck I am, I always neglect it. :/

With regards to the discounted early access, that sounds like a solid strategy, yes. But again, I'm no expert, just some dude taking blind shots in the dark. :)

benj · May 7, 2020

Does anyone have experience with cheap mocap (a la this Disco Elysium devblog) using Kinects or some other cheap, available technology? I'm a solo dev, I have a reasonable grasp on modeling/rigging/animating but am still pretty limited by what I have experience with and how much time it takes me to do it—I think being able to reliably extract even keyframes from mocap data would radically change what I could do and how long it would take me to do it.

Biestmann · May 7, 2020

Weltall Zero Sorry to give you such a headache. Know your advice is greatly appreciated. <3

Weltall Zero · May 7, 2020

Biestmann said:
Weltall Zero Sorry to give you such a headache. Know your advice is greatly appreciated. <3

Oh no no, I didn't mean it like that; I'm always absolutely delighted to help in whichever way I can. I just feel uneasy when I feel that people are taking my opinion as having more weight than it really should and even changing their plans, especially on matters like this where I don't really have any experience and am still pretty much figuring things out myself.

Qwark · May 7, 2020

HandsomeCharles said:
Not yet, but Im nowhere near close to releasing

Relating to this, I think that is a bad idea. (snip)

😂

Weltall Zero said:
I empathize with that anxiety more than you could possibly imagine, but at some point we have to abandon that "logic", otherwise everything should be free since Maldita Castilla, Hydorah, the original Spelunky, etc. exist.

A decision everyone has to make for themselves is how important it is for them to make money vs having more people playing their game. We all want to maximize both, but they will always be at odds. Make your game free, and a lot more people will play it, but you won't be able to live off it (or even recoup the costs of making it).

If you priorize making money (and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it at all, then If you think pricing your game at $5 will get you thrice as many sales as pricing it at $15, you should go for it; otherwise, you should do the opposite. Remember sales are a thing and you can reach the $5 price point audience later on with them.

I grouped both posts because I want to give a very important caveat that applies to both: I'm most likely not the person you should be listening to with regards to pricing, marketing, etc. I'm just one more dev trying to figure things out and repeating what I've heard elsewhere in the internet. There are a lot of resources about these things, but frankly I find this aspect of game development rather unexciting and even unpleasant, so being the lazy fuck I am, I always neglect it. :/

With regards to the discounted early access, that sounds like a solid strategy, yes. But again, I'm no expert, just some dude taking blind shots in the dark. :)

Thank you both, really. You've given me a lot to think about. Still a long ways away, but will probably steer away from prologue now.

Are there any opinions on mobile pricing? I want to put my game pretty much everywhere possible, but the divide in perceived value is so wide, I don't want people to feel ripped off if the mobile version is cheaper or avoid the mobile version if it's priced high for the mobile market.

HandsomeCharles · May 7, 2020

Qwark said:
😂

Thank you both, really. You've given me a lot to think about. Still a long ways away, but will probably steer away from prologue now.

Are there any opinions on mobile pricing? I want to put my game pretty much everywhere possible, but the divide in perceived value is so wide, I don't want people to feel ripped off if the mobile version is cheaper or avoid the mobile version if it's priced high for the mobile market.

No problem! In my experience from when I worked on mobile games (that were also available on consoles/steam) we found that having a lower price on mobile for what is essentially exactly the same product was the norm. In our case it was actually the other way round (Mobile first, PC/Console after and more expensive).

The big issue with mobile is visibility and that users are much, much less inclined to pay any money at all.

Weltall Zero · May 7, 2020

Qwark said:
😂

Thank you both, really. You've given me a lot to think about. Still a long ways away, but will probably steer away from prologue now.

Are there any opinions on mobile pricing? I want to put my game pretty much everywhere possible, but the divide in perceived value is so wide, I don't want people to feel ripped off if the mobile version is cheaper or avoid the mobile version if it's priced high for the mobile market.

Mobile in general seems like a bad place to make money unless you're a corporation making freemium gacha games. Very few mobile users pay for games upfront. You have nailed the issue with dual mobile / non-mobile releases too, how do you price them? Even that aside, the very existence of a "mobile version" makes a lot of people think your game is cheap and simple, even on PC.

That said, I'm again kind of talking out of my ass :D. We've had people here releasing games on both PC and mobile, they probably have a lot of actual experience to share.

RazorbackDB · May 7, 2020

Midramble said:
Lookin goood

HandsomeCharles said:
Don't worry about crashing out, it happens to us all at one point or another :) Just take it all as a learning experience and use it to plan your next venture! Your material looks really good btw!

_Rob_ Looking snazzy as always! You must be pretty close to being done soon, right?

My updates:

This week I have been doing the fairly boring job of setting up collision for my level geometry, so not much in terms of visual updates this week. Unfortunately this is a fairly arduous process because whilst 2d Toolkit's polygon collider tool is really good, the optimisation stage often produces bugs which can be a pain to resolve. Thankfully I believe I have managed to sort most of them out for the level I have been working on recently, which means that the level is question is.... "Done!" (Hard for me to admit! Certainly can go back and add polish later, but I think its time to move on for now)

Next on the agenda is re-colouring my character and some of the universal level elements (Spawn point, goal point etc) to use my new palette. Here's a quick bit I did on the character this morning. (Before/After). If you guys have feedback or recommendations about bits that either look too light/dark or un-natural then I'd appreciate it!

Also as an aside, we often post screenshots and gifs in this thread, but I was wondering if anyone would be interested in sharing sketches and rough designs (either digital or pen+paper)? I was thinking seeing all the rough working around how we draw might be interesting and also beneficial to learn each others techniques etc.

Thanks for the kind words. HandsomeCharles I do think the green looks a bit "radioactive" there, kinda jumps out from the rest, maybe is my monitor? haha. I would definetly like to see some sketches too btw it's always interesting to see the transition to the in game asset.

On my side I started doing some landscaping again, taking advantage of the whole Quixel deal but I mainly just wanted to take screenshot with these new UE4 volumetric clouds haha, they look soooo good and they are soooooo expensive, thankfully they are just a prototype.

HandsomeCharles · May 8, 2020

RazorbackDB said:
Thanks for the kind words. HandsomeCharles I do think the green looks a bit "radioactive" there, kinda jumps out from the rest, maybe is my monitor? haha. I would definetly like to see some sketches too btw it's always interesting to see the transition to the in game asset.

On my side I started doing some landscaping again, taking advantage of the whole Quixel deal but I mainly just wanted to take screenshot with these new UE4 volumetric clouds haha, they look soooo good and they are soooooo expensive, thankfully they are just a prototype.

Haha yea, the green is a bit bright, especially compared with the old one. Im just going to try and have faith and hope it looks fine in context! Those clouds look very interesting. They actually look quite stylised to me rather than realistic, certainly good though!

I've uploaded some sketches vs the in-game asset. Right now it's just buildings but I'll do some others for other objects when I actually get round to making the assets!

Small detail design sketch for a building and then perspective for how I would "Double it up"

Final asset

Sketch for a tall building designed to be an "end cap" for a level, plus perspective sketching for a billboard style thing.

Final asset

Sketches for "far away" background buildings. These were designed to be simple and easy to repeat/tile

Final asse

Hope you all find it interesting!

Weltall Zero · May 8, 2020

HandsomeCharles said:
Haha yea, the green is a bit bright, especially compared with the old one. Im just going to try and have faith and hope it looks fine in context! Those clouds look very interesting. They actually look quite stylised to me rather than realistic, certainly good though!

I've uploaded some sketches vs the in-game asset. Right now it's just buildings but I'll do some others for other objects when I actually get round to making the assets!

Small detail design sketch for a building and then perspective for how I would "Double it up"

Final asset

Sketch for a tall building designed to be an "end cap" for a level, plus perspective sketching for a billboard style thing.

Final asset

Sketches for "far away" background buildings. These were designed to be simple and easy to repeat/tile

Final asse

Hope you all find it interesting!

This is all super interesting, yes! Thanks for sharing.

How do you go from sketches to assets? You simply start over with a blank image and draw lines using the sketch as a model? Or do you use the photo of the sketch as a starting point that you clean up?

HandsomeCharles · May 8, 2020

Weltall Zero said:
This is all super interesting, yes! Thanks for sharing.

How do you go from sketches to assets? You simply start over with a blank image and draw lines using the sketch as a model? Or do you use the photo of the sketch as a starting point that you clean up?

In the vast majority of cases, I just look at what I sketch on paper and then try to replicate it on the PC. I dont really import and trace or anything. Quite often I find it significantly easier to work out various shapes freehand on paper, so Ill use that to get the general structure of what I want to draw, before attempting to pixel it up.

In the case of buildings, I tend to start with the outlines, get the whole basic shape done, then work at the detailing. Ill start off with cubes and then chip away adding in diagonals or details etc.

Dogui · May 8, 2020

jarekx said:
Some small progress. I think i'm liking the current layout. Still need to add AP for the player if I keep a resource cost but i'm having second thoughts on it.I'm not seeing it adding anything, but it may just be necessary .

I added a turn counter and a delay counter for the current turn. So when it hits 0, effects that trigger on a turns end happen such as poison, regen, etc. I actually had a crisis today where I was thinking of switching it to a party based, small scale Strategy RPG. The idea was you would basically have like 3 units on a small map and each time you engaged combat with an enemy it would go into this combat scenario and you would have one round to do / avoid as much damage as possible. I still think that would be fun, and maybe more interesting...but I think it might just be too much for me at the moment. Keep it simple for now, and when I finish this maybe I could take what I've learned and adapt it into that game.

I'm still looking at ways to make comparing stats and delay easier. I thought about instead of putting the damage/ defense a skill does. Maybe but it's actual damage after enemy defense. The main problem i see with that is if your attack is happening after the enemies and then a different action is chosen, it would update and change that. Not really a huge deal though. I also thought about coloring the delay green if your action was going to occur first and red if it was after...but with shields you want them to last until after the enemies next action which would reverse the "green is good and red is bad" idea.

Not sure since i didn't saw it running, but the combat system of your game kinda reminds me of Helen's Mysterious Castle.

Helen's Mysterious Castle: Gameplay (PC HD)

Helen's Mysterious Castle Gameplay walkthrough part 1 Helens Mysterious Castle PC Gameplay Helens Mysterious Castle Let's Play Helen's Mysterious Castle Game...

www.youtube.com

Assuming you didn't played it, maybe watching some videos could help you with the delay comparing problem.

Weltall Zero said:
I just wanted to say that I didn't get "cheap and ugly" from the trailer, what I got is "postmodern and artsy". It reminds me of the more experimental, collage-like PC games of the 90s, many of which received critical acclaim.

The only thing I would perhaps consider a bit jarring and yeah, slightly "cheap-looking" as you say, especially in contrast with the rest of the game, is the player character's walk speed and the fact that they don't have a shadow. Simply making their animation a run, rather than a sped-up walk, and adding a shadow beneath them, would make it look a lot more in-line with the rest of the game's visuals and tone. Your game looks like a veritable visual and mental trip!

Most mini gameplay clips in the trailer has 2x the normal speed. I'm using OBS studio for recording and my pc is kinda on the slow side nowadays, which means the game feels laggy in the normal speed when recording haha That said, the walking animation is kinda awkward, sorta inspired in the way C-3PO walks but faster. The idea that makes more sense with the setting would be it just walking at normal speed all the time, but this equals a really slow game, so the character just "racewalks". It's kind of weird but it makes sense with the character, i guess. I can't imagine it running tbh.

So, i never actually considered working with shadows in the game, but you're 100% right. The game uses a real showy lighting plugin and i just forgot all about the shadows. Using RPG Maker is really great at moments like these because there's already lots of free plugins that deals with shadows, so i tried to use some. The one i'm using right now is really great and easy to use but it's not very realistic in the sense it doesn't really detect walls and stuff like that. Also, i decided to only use it on the playable character, while every other object uses the default blocky shadow.

The playable character's shadow feels really good with the angle of the lamp but i had to make its affected radius smaller so it doesn't feel like "clipping" the walls below, not mentioning all the lamps replaced for the same reason. Also, the angle of shadow is actually wrong for every other object but i think it does make the scene interesting aesthetically. I could make them more realistic with the plugin but then everything would run at 3 fps here haha

Smaller radius for the lamps means the shadows will only appears when the character is pretty near the lamp. I could increase it, but then the "wall clipping" would make everything pretty ugly.

The second gif shows the shadow passing through the containers. It's really ugly but dunno if people will care that much haha I could just made every "ceiling" tile black on last case, but dunno.

But any way or another, the shadows are making the visuals a lot more interesting. I didn't considered it at first but the feedback was really valuable, thanks!

BlastProcessing · May 8, 2020

Biestmann said:
Everything you say is sound, but knowing that you can get much higher quality games in that price range has me nervous to try compete. I have some thinking to do. Price aside, how do you feel about discounted early access?

Just to piggyback on the good advice Weltall is giving, price is one of the strongest signals you can give your audience about the quality of your game. You have to think about it that way. Your price is as much a part of your marketing as your trailer.

jarekx · May 8, 2020

Dogui said:
Not sure since i didn't saw it running, but the combat system of your game kinda reminds me of Helen's Mysterious Castle.

Oh wow, just watched a video and that's really similar. I was inspired by Grandia's combat to make this...but this is similar down to blocking and defense on active actions.

I mean, it's not entirely the same. I'm working on classes and they each get extra actions that are instant but have a cool down, and passives upon leveling up. As well as strengths and weaknesses to different damage types...but the base is pretty darn similar.

Thats kind of disheartening. The closest I had actually found myself was Kingsway. It had active attacking and blocking but it was real-time.

Edit: Well, I suppose I'll just count it as an inspiration now. Looks like they compare it vertically which is probably easier on the eyes. Not as much distance to cover. I'm gonna try a couple of things. I'll try just showing the plus or minus delay. So you could see positive or negative. I think I will adda small graphical line below the turn counter as well. So you can see the exact number in the information panels and just an at a glance of whether you will be faster / slower up top

Thank you for pointing that out, btw. I'd rather know now then be blindsided by the similarities later. I'll actually probably pick it up.

Dogui · May 8, 2020

jarekx said:
Oh wow, just watched a video and that's really similar. I was inspired by Grandia's combat to make this...but this is similar down to blocking and defense on active actions.

I mean, it's not entirely the same. I'm working on classes and they each get extra actions that are instant but have a cool down, and passives upon leveling up. As well as strengths and weaknesses to different damage types...but the base is pretty darn similar.

Thats kind of disheartening. The closest I had actually found myself was Kingsway. It had active attacking and blocking but it was real-time.

Edit: Well, I suppose I'll just count it as an inspiration now. Looks like they compare it vertically which is probably easier on the eyes. Not as much distance to cover. I'm gonna try a couple of things. I'll try just showing the plus or minus delay. So you could see positive or negative. I think I will adda small graphical line below the turn counter as well. So you can see the exact number in the information panels and just an at a glance of whether you will be faster / slower up top

Thank you for pointing that out, btw. I'd rather know now then be blindsided by the similarities later. I'll actually probably pick it up.

It's a really great game, i could easily recommend.

I don't think sharing the same base is that much of a problem, it's pretty much what Final Fantasy did after Dragon Quest. Tho it's better to study the game to know what elements you can do better.

As someone that really likes HMC, your game is a lot more interesting to me (Compared to before) due to the similarities tbh. A class system would be enough to make a unique spin on this kind of combat.

Rolento · May 8, 2020

Random hardware input needed:

I need to setup one of my older Unity projects in a gallery space by the end of this month and was hoping to get a Windows 10 mini-pc to run it? (preferably around or below $300)

The game I'm running dosn't use any intense graphical shaders/post effects/etc. It's pretty simple and I think was built using Unity 2018 or 2019.

Would anyone have good input on this? Been asking around as there aren't great resources on mini-pcs for games.

Popstar · May 8, 2020

Weltall Zero · May 8, 2020

Dogui said:
Most mini gameplay clips in the trailer has 2x the normal speed. I'm using OBS studio for recording and my pc is kinda on the slow side nowadays, which means the game feels laggy in the normal speed when recording haha That said, the walking animation is kinda awkward, sorta inspired in the way C-3PO walks but faster. The idea that makes more sense with the setting would be it just walking at normal speed all the time, but this equals a really slow game, so the character just "racewalks". It's kind of weird but it makes sense with the character, i guess. I can't imagine it running tbh.

This actually makes a lot of sense. :)

BlastProcessing said:
Just to piggyback on the good advice Weltall is giving, price is one of the strongest signals you can give your audience about the quality of your game. You have to think about it that way. Your price is as much a part of your marketing as your trailer.

Exactly this.

jarekx said:
Thats kind of disheartening. The closest I had actually found myself was Kingsway. It had active attacking and blocking but it was real-time.

For what it's worth:
1- I hadn't heard of Helen's Mysterious Castle before (not a knock against the game, it actually looks really neat and nails that genuine SNES RPG style that a lot of modern RPGMaker games struggle with).
2- RPGs, even mainstream ones, use mechanics from one another all the damn time.

In the end what's important is that the story is good and the gameplay is fun. If there's like one single other game that's similar to yours, then I think it's plenty worth to explore that design space a bit more.

RazorbackDB · May 8, 2020

HandsomeCharles said:
Haha yea, the green is a bit bright, especially compared with the old one. Im just going to try and have faith and hope it looks fine in context! Those clouds look very interesting. They actually look quite stylised to me rather than realistic, certainly good though!

I've uploaded some sketches vs the in-game asset. Right now it's just buildings but I'll do some others for other objects when I actually get round to making the assets!

Small detail design sketch for a building and then perspective for how I would "Double it up"

Final asset

Sketch for a tall building designed to be an "end cap" for a level, plus perspective sketching for a billboard style thing.

Final asset

Sketches for "far away" background buildings. These were designed to be simple and easy to repeat/tile

Final asse

Hope you all find it interesting!

Wow those are really cool! I love the signs specially, how do you make sure you don't go overboard with detail?, I mean I assume some stuff just wouldn't fit in pixel art form. Also do you ever do more like mockups of how you want the game to look like?

Yeah the clouds look kinda stylised but I think these fluffy clouds show their volumetric nature better, but they are actually quite customizable in their look and detail, I mean it's basically just specialized volumetric rendering you can edit them like any other material. BTW I didn't make the system, that's mostly Ryan Brucks at Epic, don't wanna take credit for his work haha

jarekx · May 8, 2020

Dogui said:
It's a really great game, i could easily recommend.

I don't think sharing the same base is that much of a problem, it's pretty much what Final Fantasy did after Dragon Quest. Tho it's better to study the game to know what elements you can do better.

As someone that really likes HMC, your game is a lot more interesting to me (Compared to before) due to the similarities tbh. A class system would be enough to make a unique spin on this kind of combat.

Weltall Zero said:
For what it's worth:
1- I hadn't heard of Helen's Mysterious Castle before (not a knock against the game, it actually looks really neat and nails that genuine SNES RPG style that a lot of modern RPGMaker games struggle with).
2- RPGs, even mainstream ones, use mechanics from one another all the damn time.

In the end what's important is that the story is good and the gameplay is fun. If there's like one single other game that's similar to yours, then I think it's plenty worth to explore that design space a bit more.

Fair points. It was just kind of shocking to see. There is definitely room to explore the mechanics..and aside from the base similarity of the combat i'm going in a different direction with just about everything else.

Midramble · May 8, 2020

Grinding out an asset diorama for screenshot Saturday. Probably going to pull an all nighter. Endlessly tweeking running water shader. Haven't even started particles. Have like 10 more assets to grind out. Then there is lighting and animations.

I should make a list...

HandsomeCharles · May 9, 2020

RazorbackDB said:
Wow those are really cool! I love the signs specially, how do you make sure you don't go overboard with detail?, I mean I assume some stuff just wouldn't fit in pixel art form. Also do you ever do more like mockups of how you want the game to look like?

Yeah the clouds look kinda stylised but I think these fluffy clouds show their volumetric nature better, but they are actually quite customizable in their look and detail, I mean it's basically just specialized volumetric rendering you can edit them like any other material. BTW I didn't make the system, that's mostly Ryan Brucks at Epic, don't wanna take credit for his work haha

Detail is actually something that I really, really struggle with. Im totally happy doing the basic geometry, but I always feel as though the buildings look "Empty" (the walls in particular). I really need to reign myself in to prevent me from really cluttering it all up. I just need to remember "less is more" (Not always true, but it is in my case).

The other thing that kinda helps me is that because of the type of game I'm making, the player will be limited in how much of a building they can see at any one time (And you only ever collide with the edges, you never pass in-front) so I think to myself "Its not worth investing too heavily in this area, because it will only be seen for a short period of time).

As for mock ups, I certainly do! I did them quite a lot when I was figuring out the style I wanted (and was never happy with any of them!) What I tend to do more now is "overpainting" where I will take a screenshot of the game, and then pixel-art on top of it to see how things feel, then go make the assets. I'll give you an example:

This is the overpaint - Note how there isn't much detail in the background

This is a screenshot of the game with "finished" assets. Changed some details, Outlines were made thinner, and I had to make some buildings taller due to parallax issues.

Jump_Button · May 9, 2020

From a early part of the game

funkygallo · May 9, 2020

we are close to release...

Midramble · May 9, 2020

Jump_Button said:
From a early part of the game

Reaaally liking this feel of neo-retro metroid. Dig the look.

funkygallo said:
we are close to release...

Liking this aesthetic quite a bit. Though I am always a sucker for the sketch look. Loved don't starve for the same reason.

Finally got my 2nd Screenshot Saturday in. Just a diorama of assets. Spent waaaaaay too much time on procedural textures, procedural animations, and particles but got a good chunk of assets done and could represent a feel of basically the hub area. I really need to start having my screenshots ready by Friday night.

My personal game dev twitter is https://twitter.com/FrostMakesGames

RazorbackDB · May 9, 2020

HandsomeCharles said:
Detail is actually something that I really, really struggle with. Im totally happy doing the basic geometry, but I always feel as though the buildings look "Empty" (the walls in particular). I really need to reign myself in to prevent me from really cluttering it all up. I just need to remember "less is more" (Not always true, but it is in my case).

The other thing that kinda helps me is that because of the type of game I'm making, the player will be limited in how much of a building they can see at any one time (And you only ever collide with the edges, you never pass in-front) so I think to myself "Its not worth investing too heavily in this area, because it will only be seen for a short period of time).

As for mock ups, I certainly do! I did them quite a lot when I was figuring out the style I wanted (and was never happy with any of them!) What I tend to do more now is "overpainting" where I will take a screenshot of the game, and then pixel-art on top of it to see how things feel, then go make the assets. I'll give you an example:

This is the overpaint - Note how there isn't much detail in the background

This is a screenshot of the game with "finished" assets. Changed some details, Outlines were made thinner, and I had to make some buildings taller due to parallax issues.

Thanks for the insight, this is all really interesting to me, for what is worth I think it's looking great, please keep posting these!

HandsomeCharles · May 10, 2020

RazorbackDB said:
Thanks for the insight, this is all really interesting to me, for what is worth I think it's looking great, please keep posting these!

Thanks! Will do :)

Jump_Button said:
From a early part of the game

This is cool! Is this using the interpolation stuff or is it hand animated?

Jump_Button · May 10, 2020

HandsomeCharles said:
Thanks! Will do :)

This is cool! Is this using the interpolation stuff or is it hand animated?

Both still some little things to clean up by hand

HandsomeCharles · May 10, 2020

Jump_Button said:
Both still some little things to clean up by hand

Seems like a handy tool, the results are looking great!

I'm just wrapping up on one of my most productive (long) weekends in quite some time!

Managed to:
* Recolour all the player animations
* Resize all the tiles in the player spritesheet, found a new and improved workflow too
* Rework or at least update all pre-existing animations
* Fix collision errors causing some frustrating bugs
* Refactor some code to make it much less error prone and more efficient (Me from 3 years ago had some intersting ideas...)
* Stream a load on twitch (To a small, but still larger than usual audience)

Here's some images! Sketches, rework and a gif showing it all in action!

Big pictures said:

God I wish this was my full-time job.

Sean Noonan · May 10, 2020

jarekx · May 10, 2020

Some progress. Finally took some time to get the basic framework of exploration down. It's a lot like FTL where you go from point to point with events happening at each that you make choices to decide how they resolve. You can gain more or less choices based on stats, items, etc. These can affect buffs / debuffs going into combat, gaining skills, gold, etc.

Other than that progress i've just been doodling and trying to nail down the size and style of my sprites. I'm pretty happy with this one. I'll have to animate them and see if it's something I could keep up for however many sprites / animations i'm going to end up needing.

Jintor · May 10, 2020

i wanted to note that i FINALLY FINALLY understand how time dilation works in the context of this brawler I'm making and implemented it. And now I have a state machine in as well (very basic but whatever).

I always end up remaking the same game every time but better and slightly more modular so I guess it's fine

Hobby and Indie Game Dev |OT 2020| Discussion, Help and Show-off

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