Indie Game Development |OT 2018| Come, help, learn, show and tell!

Kae · Aug 20, 2018

Weltall Zero said:
I love the look of your game, it reminds me of Toriel's house from Undertale, which felt so cozy. The sleeping animation is great; for some reason these are among my favorite animations (particularly loved the one in Monster Hunter Tri).

Thank you so much!! That's just what I was hoping for! I'm also a huge fan of the sleeping anim in Monster Hunter Tri. That game generally has a bunch of great expressive stuff!

Hoot said:
Just to point that dev for Helvetii is going well. Been active on twitter posting different stuff like these:

It's my first time seeing this and looks great! Gave you a follow and can't wait to see more.

Minamu · Aug 21, 2018

Does anyone know of any audio tricks in Unity? I got to thinking about audio source placements and how the spherical dropoff can easily clip through walls and such. It's usually not a problem with lights but it's not the same for audio, is it? Can it be resolved somehow? For example, I theoretically want to place an alarm or speaker on a wall up near the ceiling but I don't want it be heard through walls up through the floor. I don't think the spherical dropoff can be switched to a cube, can it?

Weltall Zero · Aug 21, 2018

Minamu said:
Does anyone know of any audio tricks in Unity? I got to thinking about audio source placements and how the spherical dropoff can easily clip through walls and such. It's usually not a problem with lights but it's not the same for audio, is it? Can it be resolved somehow? For example, I theoretically want to place an alarm or speaker on a wall up near the ceiling but I don't want it be heard through walls up through the floor. I don't think the spherical dropoff can be switched to a cube, can it?

I've never had to do anything like that, but a quick google came up with this which seems pretty promising:
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/AudioSpatializerSDK.html

Edit: Or perhaps not; the "occlusion" it mentions seems to be a modulation of the sound as it hits walls, rather than actual blocking.

Both of these threads suggest the same solution, which seems simple enough:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/prevent-sound-from-playing-through-walls.295417/
https://answers.unity.com/questions/483565/disabling-sound-coming-through-walls.html
Basically raycast from the audiosource to the player and turn down the audiosource volume if the ray hits a wall. Shouldn't be terribly costly unless you have a lot of these audiosources.

Deleted member 5167 · Aug 21, 2018

Minamu said:
Does anyone know of any audio tricks in Unity? I got to thinking about audio source placements and how the spherical dropoff can easily clip through walls and such. It's usually not a problem with lights but it's not the same for audio, is it? Can it be resolved somehow? For example, I theoretically want to place an alarm or speaker on a wall up near the ceiling but I don't want it be heard through walls up through the floor. I don't think the spherical dropoff can be switched to a cube, can it?

You can use trigger volumes to enable / disable audiosources and / or raycast from the audiosource to the listener to see if they're obstructed

Hoot · Aug 21, 2018

Thanks for the kind comments people !

Weltall Zero said:
Oh my, this is beautiful. Reminds me a lot of Muramasa, which is probably about as high praise as one can give!

Also don't worry about twitter shilling, we all do it every Saturday. :D

Muramasa (and vanillaware in general) has been a massive inspiration so that means a lot :p I think in general I just really wanted to challenge myself in doing 2D art closer to illustration, because pixel art/low res art is still comprises a big chunk of indie aesthetic

Jintor said:
oh man that's a satisfying juggle combo

Thanks ! Honestly i'm glad that it mostly works, it's been the biggest mechanic we had to nail. There's still some bugs and quirks (sometimes the enemy doesn't bounce back from a ground slam or gets pushed away accordingly) but overall it's super funcitonal and i'm happy that I can discover stuff myself sometimes

Minamu · Aug 21, 2018

Dr Wily said:
You can use trigger volumes to enable / disable audiosources and / or raycast from the audiosource to the listener to see if they're obstructed

Weltall Zero said:
I've never had to do anything like that, but a quick google came up with this which seems pretty promising:
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/AudioSpatializerSDK.html

Edit: Or perhaps not; the "occlusion" it mentions seems to be a modulation of the sound as it hits walls, rather than actual blocking.

Both of these threads suggest the same solution, which seems simple enough:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/prevent-sound-from-playing-through-walls.295417/
https://answers.unity.com/questions/483565/disabling-sound-coming-through-walls.html
Basically raycast from the audiosource to the player and turn down the audiosource volume if the ray hits a wall. Shouldn't be terribly costly unless you have a lot of these audiosources.

Thanks for the assist. I wonder if other devs do it like this too. I can't be the first person who wants to make an in-doors game in Unity :) Well either way, good to have an inkling for future projects. Another "solution" is to adjust the level design so rooms and corridors are more modular than real life, with higher ceiling and floor layouts, but it feels a bit hacky.

Deleted member 5167 · Aug 21, 2018

Minamu said:
Thanks for the assist. I wonder if other devs do it like this too.

People use trigger volumes for eeeeeeeeeeverything because its a really easy way to make sure things only activate when a player is nearby.

Minamu · Aug 21, 2018

Dr Wily said:
People use trigger volumes for eeeeeeeeeeverything because its a really easy way to make sure things only activate when a player is nearby.

Sure, I've done similar things for other things than audio before :) I'm trying to wrap my head around how I'd implement this in multiplayer right now. For syncing purposes, I think simply letting audio sources continue to play at 0 volume is the best and then gradually increase the local volume when entering a trigger.

Deleted member 5167 · Aug 21, 2018

Minamu said:
Sure, I've done similar things for other things than audio before :) I'm trying to wrap my head around how I'd implement this in multiplayer right now. For syncing purposes, I think simply letting audio sources continue to play at 0 volume is the best and then gradually increase the local volume when entering a trigger.

for multiplayer you probably want to look into mixergroups playback volume rather than messing with the source volume, because potentially youre gonna get conflicts if 2 people are within range of hearing a noise, but at different distances

Mike Armbrust · Aug 21, 2018

Minamu said:
Sure, I've done similar things for other things than audio before :) I'm trying to wrap my head around how I'd implement this in multiplayer right now. For syncing purposes, I think simply letting audio sources continue to play at 0 volume is the best and then gradually increase the local volume when entering a trigger.

Unity audio doesn't work with splitscreen so you'd need to do something custom/hacky anyway. Or do you mean online multiplayer?

I made my own audio system and got splitscreen working but decided against having walls block sound since I couldn't use triggers.

Speaking of sound, anyone have any advice on making effects sound better or finding good ones? The ones I have currently just sound so meh.

Minamu · Aug 21, 2018

Dr Wily said:
for multiplayer you probably want to look into mixergroups playback volume rather than messing with the source volume, because potentially youre gonna get conflicts if 2 people are within range of hearing a noise, but at different distances

I think this is a good idea in general, and I should've done this in my now next-to-dormant project. I think it's relatively fine to change the source volume directly too though, it's been working quite alright for us so far. We rely a lot on isLocalPlayer to make changes so I think that would minimize the kind of conflicts you talk about, yes? I bet an audio designer would balk at my setup though xD

Mike Armbrust said:
Unity audio doesn't work with splitscreen so you'd need to do something custom/hacky anyway. Or do you mean online multiplayer?

I made my own audio system and got splitscreen working but decided against having walls block sound since I couldn't use triggers.

Yeah I'm talking about online or at the very least LAN multiplayer. The issue would exist in a single player game too though. It's a bit weird that audio sources must be uniform in their shape, when we can have squares, points, and cones when it comes to light sources. A cone shaped audio source would help tremendously and would kinda make sense too in a lot of situations.

Edit: I found a asset store plugin for about 17 dollars that adds volumetric audio based on mesh shapes etc, seems pretty nifty if you're into that kind of thing. I probably wouldn't buy a plugin unless it was absolutely integral to the game though I think.

Ark Heiral · Aug 22, 2018

Hey guys,

I'm currently updating older assets for the fields area.

I tried to go for a more natural formed landscape, more vibrant colors, better readability and a zoomed in camera. Which one do you prefer?

MrMysterio · Aug 22, 2018

Really like the new look! Gives enough space for the great looking character designs to be visible. The highlighted grass in the old screenshot was quite distracting, as it stood out a bit too much.

Asa · Aug 22, 2018

Back from summer holiday! Started working on Best Rally update, new levels cars and challenge mode. We created this homage level today as one of the new tracks. :)

Best rally has been downloaded nearly 900k times! Apple featuring has been amazing once again. Looks like we can continue producing games for the time being.

faerith · Aug 22, 2018

Hi guys&gals
since I'm somewhat healthy and have a working PC again, I can finally haunt this place I mean participate here.Hopefully I can make&show you something in the coming months/years/eternity and not freeze up in indecisioness. =)

But first I cometh with the bag of holding... questions (which I try to keep short and snappy (and a person with a healthy concentration probably wouldn't need to ask)). Also mea culpa if what I asked was actually in on of the OP-links.

Algorithm: a long time ago, when researching more modern pathfinding-algos for a Growlanser-like, I came about general explanations of Navi-maps (where your maps are dissected into submaps for a faster A*) and Influence/Heat-maps (so when moving to a waypoint paths through/near enemies are lower priority and you don't end up like with characters engaging the enemies like in Grow), but no Algorithms (especially on auto-generating former).
Does anyone of you know of a good book on this topic. While recreating such things on your own can be a nice brain-tease, a proven algo would indeed be better, Especially since Influence-maps sound costly (...when badly implemented).

RPG/Event-Systems: are there good writeups about creating the mechanics/blueprint of Event-Systems (sidequests, NPC-shedules, well I guess basically state-changing Objects) or should I use f.i. the RPGMaker XP&co as basic inspiration on how to approach this? Because when I stare at my general to-do list to organize on how to procede this seems to be the big scary stumbling block? (maybe I got too insecure due to shit happening in life and me being totaly out of practice, but I feel like I used to do babies first programming and this is like true programming(tm) x_x )

Ark Heiral said:
Hey guys,

I'm currently updating older assets for the fields area.
I tried to go for a more natural formed landscape, more vibrant colors, better readability and a zoomed in camera. Which one do you prefer?

*amused laugh* I see someone has been playing Seiken Densetsu 2&3 (inspired games).
Which is absolutly not a bad thing and not an attack, because those two (especially later) teach a lot about proper colour use, but the hill-tiles are pretty obvious/specific. (and doesn't only happen to you) ;D
And yes, it looks better.

Alastor3 · Aug 22, 2018

Ark Heiral said:
Hey guys,

I'm currently updating older assets for the fields area.

I tried to go for a more natural formed landscape, more vibrant colors, better readability and a zoomed in camera. Which one do you prefer?

wow much better! Less depressing!

Deleted member 5167 · Aug 22, 2018

Mike Armbrust said:
Speaking of sound, anyone have any advice on making effects sound better or finding good ones? The ones I have currently just sound so meh.

Outside of foley work, its mostly just fucking about with synth stuff in audio programs - like an explosion would be a white noise input and then a bunch of filters to distort it, add echo and reverb, etc.
A lot of foley work goes that way too, so that sprinkling drops of water into a toilet sounds like rain on a beach.

Sonnis gave away some free indie audio grabbags for GDC - 2016 , 2017 , 2018 - which is a "hope for the best" type of scenario that something there is what you need, but they're under a non-attribution free to remix commercial licence, so anything that is sort of close enough (or just fear of someone spotting a repeat use) you can still modify for your own purposes

Weltall Zero · Aug 22, 2018

Ark Heiral said:
Hey guys,

I'm currently updating older assets for the fields area.

I tried to go for a more natural formed landscape, more vibrant colors, better readability and a zoomed in camera. Which one do you prefer?

It would be easier to compare if they were at the same zoom level, but I much, much prefer the new ones. That's even though the old ones were already beautiful, but the new ones are straight up top tier SNES Square stuff. Standing ovation, man.

Asa said:
Back from summer holiday! Started working on Best Rally update, new levels cars and challenge mode. We created this homage level today as one of the new tracks. :)

Best rally has been downloaded nearly 900k times! Apple featuring has been amazing once again. Looks like we can continue producing games for the time being.

It's great news that the game was successful and you'll be able to keep making them! Is this Best Rally update free or paid DLC?

faerith said:
Hi guys&gals
since I'm somewhat healthy and have a working PC again, I can finally haunt this place I mean participate here.Hopefully I can make&show you something in the coming months/years/eternity and not freeze up in indecisioness. =)

But first I cometh with the bag of holding... questions (which I try to keep short and snappy (and a person with a healthy concentration probably wouldn't need to ask)). Also mea culpa if what I asked was actually in on of the OP-links.

Algorithm: a long time ago, when researching more modern pathfinding-algos for a Growlanser-like, I came about general explanations of Navi-maps (where your maps are dissected into submaps for a faster A*) and Influence/Heat-maps (so when moving to a waypoint paths through/near enemies are lower priority and you don't end up like with characters engaging the enemies like in Grow), but no Algorithms (especially on auto-generating former).
Does anyone of you know of a good book on this topic. While recreating such things on your own can be a nice brain-tease, a proven algo would indeed be better, Especially since Influence-maps sound costly (...when badly implemented).

RPG/Event-Systems: are there good writeups about creating the mechanics/blueprint of Event-Systems (sidequests, NPC-shedules, well I guess basically state-changing Objects) or should I use f.i. the RPGMaker XP&co as basic inspiration on how to approach this? Because when I stare at my general to-do list to organize on how to procede this seems to be the big scary stumbling block? (maybe I got too insecure due to shit happening in life and me being totaly out of practice, but I feel like I used to do babies first programming and this is like true programming(tm) x_x )

*amused laugh* I see someone has been playing Seiken Densetsu 2&3 (inspired games).
Which is absolutly not a bad thing and not an attack, because those two (especially later) teach a lot about proper colour use, but the hill-tiles are pretty obvious/specific. (and doesn't only happen to you) ;D
And yes, it looks better.

I don't know enough about either of these topics to feel confident in giving advice (I use a straightforward A* map in my game, and no events), but I just wanted to express support since you seem to be going through hard stuff. Hopefully someone can help you better, but in any case, welcome to the thread!

DanteRavenkin · Aug 22, 2018

Hey everyone, I'm SUPER new to game development even though I've wanted to get into it for a long time, I just have never been able to wrap my head around programming. I recently downloaded the trial version of GameMaker Studio 2 and have had fun working through the tutorials and stuff. I'm curious though, does anyone know if it ever goes on sale via Steam or anything? I'd like to get the basic paid version so I can make my executables and tinker with free store assets, but I just don't have the extra money at the moment.
I find the drag and drop aspect of GMS2 has made it much easier for me to understand how games work. To the point now where I play a game, and think "Oh yeah, so this might have been programmed in this way..." which I find fascinating. Anyway, scrolling through this thread and seeing some of the work you've all done is amazing! and very inspiring!

Weltall Zero · Aug 22, 2018

DanteRavenkin said:
Hey everyone, I'm SUPER new to game development even though I've wanted to get into it for a long time, I just have never been able to wrap my head around programming. I recently downloaded the trial version of GameMaker Studio 2 and have had fun working through the tutorials and stuff. I'm curious though, does anyone know if it ever goes on sale via Steam or anything? I'd like to get the basic paid version so I can make my executables and tinker with free store assets, but I just don't have the extra money at the moment.
I find the drag and drop aspect of GMS2 has made it much easier for me to understand how games work. To the point now where I play a game, and think "Oh yeah, so this might have been programmed in this way..." which I find fascinating. Anyway, scrolling through this thread and seeing some of the work you've all done is amazing! and very inspiring!

Welcome! You might want to give Unity a try, as the personal version is free, and allows you to do pretty much everything, even create executables. See if it clicks for you; otherwise GameMaker is also a good choice. :)

DanteRavenkin · Aug 22, 2018

Weltall Zero said:
Welcome! You might want to give Unity a try, as the personal version is free, and allows you to do pretty much everything, even create executables. See if it clicks for you; otherwise GameMaker is also a good choice. :)

I'll give Unity a shot! Thanks!

RazorbackDB · Aug 22, 2018

So last time I wrote about trying to make a character to experiment with rigging and importing it into UE4, but I went way over my head, I tried doing this character from a TCG as inspiration.

The model itself isn't super high poly it's just smooth for the render but I'm adding too much detail, it would be a couple of days before I finished it and don't even think of trying to animate it.

Anyone got any tips or resources for translating a character design into a game model? I'm just starting with modelling but I'm pretty sure if I was trying to make a game by myself I wouldn't make something like this, for a start I know I should not make clothes as a separate object or use geometry to put in small details.

I'm sorry if I fail to explain myself but I'm kinda lost here, I think the problem is that a lot of the tutorials for blender focus on realism and getting the best render possible and not on something for a game.

Popstar · Aug 22, 2018

RazorbackDB said:
So last time I wrote about trying to make a character to experiment with rigging and importing it into UE4, but I went way over my head, I tried doing this character from a TCG as inspiration.

The model itself isn't super high poly it's just smooth for the render but I'm adding too much detail, it would be a couple of days before I finished it and don't even think of trying to animate it.

Anyone got any tips or resources for translating a character design into a game model? I'm just starting with modelling but I'm pretty sure if I was trying to make a game by myself I wouldn't make something like this, for a start I know I should not make clothes as a separate object or use geometry to put in small details.

I'm sorry if I fail to explain myself but I'm kinda lost here, I think the problem is that a lot of the tutorials for blender focus on realism and getting the best render possible and not on something for a game.

Making your initial model high-poly and then reducing down with the high-freqeuency detail baked to a normal map is pretty common for creating models for games.

Reducing down from the high-poly version to the game-ready version is called retopology. Searching for something like "retopology for games" should give you a few links so you can get a sense of what the pipeline is like.

(Here's a Blender specific one that came up on the first page: https://www.blendernation.com/2018/06/14/retopology-of-a-game-asset/ )

Ark Heiral · Aug 23, 2018

MrMysterio said:
Really like the new look! Gives enough space for the great looking character designs to be visible. The highlighted grass in the old screenshot was quite distracting, as it stood out a bit too much.

Yeah, I think so, too. Thank you!

faerith said:
*amused laugh* I see someone has been playing Seiken Densetsu 2&3 (inspired games).
Which is absolutly not a bad thing and not an attack, because those two (especially later) teach a lot about proper colour use, but the hill-tiles are pretty obvious/specific. (and doesn't only happen to you) ;D
And yes, it looks better.

Great! Yeah, those games (3 especially) have great pixel art. The SD3 tree must be the most famous pixel art tree in existence.

Alastor3 said:
wow much better! Less depressing!

Haha "depressing". Thats good to hear!

Weltall Zero said:
It would be easier to compare if they were at the same zoom level, but I much, much prefer the new ones. That's even though the old ones were already beautiful, but the new ones are straight up top tier SNES Square stuff. Standing ovation, man.

Whoa, thanks for the feedback!

CritiestBunny · Aug 23, 2018

Hey guys, as previously mentioned I think I'm finally at a place where I can take a quick break before focusing on the rest of the game, but for the last month I've been reworking our UI and thought I'd share here. Right now, my biggest limitation is in the overlay colors for the main tactical layer, because of the way we're using a white mask on black that is overlayed the environment. The biggest implemented change right now is the shift from the traditional square tiled UI to to the dotted look.

Here's a quick look at the evolution in the last two years:

And here's our implementation of the design so far:

Asa · Aug 23, 2018

Weltall Zero said:
It's great news that the game was successful and you'll be able to keep making them! Is this Best Rally update free or paid DLC?

Free as usual :)

Weltall Zero · Aug 23, 2018

Asa said:
Free as usual :)

That's awesome. :) This is on iOS only, right? Are you considering porting it to other platforms? I think you mentioned this already, but I can't remember the specifics.

AbysmallyTall · Aug 23, 2018

Ark Heiral said:
I'm currently updating older assets for the fields area.

The old ones were good, the new ones are better. Much more vibrant in appearance. I appreciate the extra details in the characters.

DocSeuss · Aug 23, 2018

Been head down in the sand working, but uh, we announced our steam release today:

SweetSark · Aug 23, 2018

CritiestBunny said:
Hey guys, as previously mentioned I think I'm finally at a place where I can take a quick break before focusing on the rest of the game, but for the last month I've been reworking our UI and thought I'd share here. Right now, my biggest limitation is in the overlay colors for the main tactical layer, because of the way we're using a white mask on black that is overlayed the environment. The biggest implemented change right now is the shift from the traditional square tiled UI to to the dotted look.

Here's a quick look at the evolution in the last two years:

And here's our implementation of the design so far:

Quick question: Does it have a name? I have a Thread which post upcoming indie titles.

AbysmallyTall · Aug 23, 2018

DocSeuss said:
Been head down in the sand working, but uh, we announced our steam release today:

Nice! I've been watching this pop up all over the place for a while. Best of luck with the release, I'm digging the lo-fi look!

Kalentan · Aug 23, 2018

Ark Heiral said:
Hey guys,

I'm currently updating older assets for the fields area.

I tried to go for a more natural formed landscape, more vibrant colors, better readability and a zoomed in camera. Which one do you prefer?

Wow can I just say that art is super good? Hm... I do like the new version.

Veidt · Aug 23, 2018

CritiestBunny said:
Hey guys, as previously mentioned I think I'm finally at a place where I can take a quick break before focusing on the rest of the game, but for the last month I've been reworking our UI and thought I'd share here. Right now, my biggest limitation is in the overlay colors for the main tactical layer, because of the way we're using a white mask on black that is overlayed the environment. The biggest implemented change right now is the shift from the traditional square tiled UI to to the dotted look.

Here's a quick look at the evolution in the last two years:
And here's our implementation of the design so far:

I'm assuming the image on the left represents the current dotted look? Or are both images representative of the UI, just different overlays depending on the tactical view? Because the way the squares are represented on the right image doesn't work well; the union between 4 vertices is visually confusing since it looks just like a crosshair, which may lead people to think that's the center of each tile. The tiles being misaligned in certain areas (not sure if that's an intentional design decision) also contributes to poor visual feedback imo.

The dots centered in the middle of the tile work better, although I would still add outlines around active characters, just like you had in the 1st event build.

CritiestBunny · Aug 23, 2018

SweetSark said:
Quick question: Does it have a name? I have a Thread which post upcoming indie titles.

Oh yeah, the game is called Forged of Blood. It's a turn-based tactical RPG in the vein X-Com but in a fantasy world with magic and stuff. Edit: Here's is our website for a bit more info: http://forgedofblood.com/

Veidt said:
I'm assuming the image on the left represents the current dotted look? Or are both images representative of the UI, just different overlays depending on the tactical view? Because the way the squares are represented on the right image doesn't work well; the union between 4 vertices is visually confusing since it looks just like a crosshair, which may lead people to think that's the center of each tile. The tiles being misaligned in certain areas (not sure if that's an intentional design decision) also contributes to poor visual feedback imo.

The dots centered in the middle of the tile work better, although I would still add outlines around active characters, just like you had in the 1st event build.

Yeah! You're absolutely right, the left is supposed to be movement and right is the attack range. I just tested a couple iterations in-engine and I think the simple red works better, but the corner design is easier to work with when overlayed with other designs (spell casting, overpower, nullify).

Square tile:

Inset design:

nofxboy1234 · Aug 24, 2018

After watching a ton of Sekiro gameplay from Gamescom, I've been fascinated with the grappling hook. What technique do you think From is using for the actual rope? I wonder if it's a physics based rope system, an animated rope or something else?

Weltall Zero · Aug 24, 2018

So there's a game design decision I'm kind of struggling with and I was wondering of some of you might have some insights. Basically, my game has some stages like Rampage, where you're tasked with destroying some buildings, while being attacked by enemies. The problem here is modulating enemy presence so that it doesn't feel neither overwhelming nor boring, nor force the player into an optimal path that feels conterintuitive or unexciting. Here's the different approaches I have thought of (numbered for easier reference):

Spawn enemies once, at the stage's start. Issue: Once you destroy them, the stage becomes trivial and boring.
Spawn enemies in waves, at fixed time intervals, independent of currently existing enemies (current solution). Issue: it easily snowballs in either direction: if you can't destroy enemies quickly enough, you get swamped with enemies, making the stage progressively harder and not giving you any time to destroy the buildings and complete the stage. Conversely, if you destroy enemies too quickly, the stage becomes trivial, or they become an infrequent annoyance at best rather than an actual threat. All of this makes earlier stages boring and later stages stressing.
Spawn enemies in waves a certain time after the previous wave has been destroyed. Issue: optimal path is to leave a single, weak enemy alive to prevent further waves from spawning.
Spawn enemies from buildings themselves, so that as you destroy buildings, less enemies spawn. This gives the player an additional reason to priorize buildings, which is nice. Issue: stages start out hard and become easier, which is kind of the reverse of what you normally want.
Spawn enemies if the player hasn't destroyed any enemies in a while. This forces the player not to ignore enemies, while giving them a break when they destroy all of them. Issue: makes no intuitive sense, confusing for the player, optimal path is to pace destruction of enemies rather than eradicating them.

Thoughts?

Veidt · Aug 24, 2018

CritiestBunny said:
Yeah! You're absolutely right, the left is supposed to be movement and right is the attack range. I just tested a couple iterations in-engine and I think the simple red works better, but the corner design is easier to work with when overlayed with other designs (spell casting, overpower, nullify).

Personally I would go with the squared tiles or any sort of design where the bounds of each tile are fully outlined. The inset design makes the scene appear too crowded and noisy, since your brain is going to end up reading all the dots and corners as separate objects when overviewing the environment, making it harder to parse the information on display.

Adding some translucency to the squared titles and playing around with a less aggressive color (white, grey or blue for example) would probably help make them blend better with the environment. It would also let the remaining UI elements 'pop out' more when they're overlayed.

Have you taken a look at Invisible, Inc? I think they absolutely nail the UI and interface, so it might be a good point of reference.

Hampig · Aug 24, 2018

DocSeuss said:
Been head down in the sand working, but uh, we announced our steam release today:

This looks like something I'd enjoy. Will wishlist!

wwm0nkey · Aug 24, 2018

Have you guys heard of Live Normal? It's super legit and can help make seamless textures super fast. Free and AMAZING for non-artists like me.

Link

DocSeuss · Aug 24, 2018

Hampig said:
This looks like something I'd enjoy. Will wishlist!

Really appreciated. The more wishlists we have, the more kindly GabeN looks down on us

Deleted member 2620 · Aug 24, 2018

wwm0nkey said:
Have you guys heard of Live Normal? It's super legit and can help make seamless textures super fast. Free and AMAZING for non-artists like me.

Link

This is really sick, thanks for pointing it out!

wwm0nkey · Aug 24, 2018

Tain said:
This is really sick, thanks for pointing it out!

It's super nice

Here is a quick block out I started working on to block out my basement, texture quality is super nice and it was sooooooooooooo quick to make. Obviously A LOT more work needs to be done on the scene, but for a 5min test I am already liking the results

Mikachu · Aug 24, 2018

I finally finished the mechanics prototype for one of my games :) am very proud with how fun it feels to play even if its ugly and has some quirks still!

Weltall Zero · Aug 24, 2018

Mikachu said:
I finally finished the mechanics prototype for one of my games :) am very proud with how fun it feels to play even if its ugly and has some quirks still!

Wow, it looks very fun. I was a bit skeptical at first since it looked pretty conventional but the grapple into wall run sold me!

Sean Noonan · Aug 24, 2018

I might not have been able to get any reviews or coverage, but hey, at least the game ended up on Kotaku :)

https://kotaku.com/people-keep-trying-to-scam-their-way-into-free-video-ga-1828488205

SaberVS7 · Aug 24, 2018

Ark Heiral said:
Hey guys,

I'm currently updating older assets for the fields area.

I tried to go for a more natural formed landscape, more vibrant colors, better readability and a zoomed in camera. Which one do you prefer?

Maybe this is just because of GIF compression, but I can't help but feel that some of the pixels look slightly blurred in the New screenshot. I'd be mindful of the camera's exact "distance" in relation to the target-resolution of the pixel-art.

DanteRavenkin said:
I'll give Unity a shot! Thanks!

As a GameMaker user... I think my biggest regret is not going with literally anything but GameMaker for serious development. So yeah, I'd highly recommend going with Unity if you are competent with C# or can learn it effectively - Because honestly the biggest hurdles I've had developing JAEGER (formerly "Azure Jaegers, Red Foxes") have all been a matter of fighting with GameMaker itself. Be it an Mandatory Periodic DRM Check-In server that was getting DDOSed regularly (so badly they've lengthened the check-in period because of it) preventing doing any work whatsoever, the IDE corrupting Maps and Scripts that had the string "\n" (Line-Break) in them, and just recently the audio-engine almost completely breaking in the latest version. Among various other gripes. With future projects I am more than likely moving on to a different engine (Probably Unreal, but I'm not ruling out Unity yet if it makes more sense for whatever I do next) unless things start getting better.

Anyway... Some more and beefier JAEGER content coming Soon™.

Rogue Agent · Aug 24, 2018

Sean Noonan said:
I might not have been able to get any reviews or coverage, but hey, at least the game ended up on Kotaku :)

https://kotaku.com/people-keep-trying-to-scam-their-way-into-free-video-ga-1828488205

It's a relief that you didn't fall for this scam. Also, a really helpful article. Thank you!

Billy Palmer · Aug 24, 2018

Ark Heiral said:
Hey guys,

I'm currently updating older assets for the fields area.

I tried to go for a more natural formed landscape, more vibrant colors, better readability and a zoomed in camera. Which one do you prefer?

Definitely prefer the new - as you say, easier to read and just so much interesting to look at!

Weltall Zero · Aug 24, 2018

SaberVS7 said:
As a GameMaker user... I think my biggest regret is not going with literally anything but GameMaker for serious development. So yeah, I'd highly recommend going with Unity if you are competent with C# or can learn it effectively - Because honestly the biggest hurdles I've had developing JAEGER (formerly "Azure Jaegers, Red Foxes") have all been a matter of fighting with GameMaker itself. Be it an Mandatory Periodic DRM Check-In server that was getting DDOSed regularly (so badly they've lengthened the check-in period because of it) preventing doing any work whatsoever, the IDE corrupting Maps and Scripts that had the string "\n" (Line-Break) in them, and just recently the audio-engine almost completely breaking in the latest version. Among various other gripes. With future projects I am more than likely moving on to a different engine (Probably Unreal, but I'm not ruling out Unity yet if it makes more sense for whatever I do next) unless things start getting better.

This is very interesting to read, especially because, as a Unity user, I've often wondered if GameMaker wouldn't have been more fitting for a 2D pixel art game like mine (after all, Derek Yu, pretty much my patron saint, uses GameMaker even today). But then I remember of the times I've heard about the convoluted ways that even relatively basic things need to be done in, and yeah, Unity seems like the lesser evil.

Noogy · Aug 25, 2018

DocSeuss said:
Been head down in the sand working, but uh, we announced our steam release today:

Wow, this immediately shot up to the top of my most wanted list! That looks fantastic :)

Indie Game Development |OT 2018| Come, help, learn, show and tell!

Game Developer

User requested account closure

User requested account closure

User requested account closure

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account

User requested account closure

Game Developer

Game Developer

Game Developer

Game Developer

User requested account closure

Game Developer

Lead Level Designer at Splash Damage

Game Developer

Soloist