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Indie Game Development |OT 2018| Come, help, learn, show and tell!
- Thread starter Popstar
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I'm working on learning how to code a game from scratch using SDL2. I don't want to make a career out of it, but it'll be a cool hobby to pursue while I work on my ComSci and Engineering degree. I feel that learning to make a game from some libraries rather than an engine like Unity teaches you a bit more about what's going on under the hood, and will make you a more flexible developer in the long run.
Thank you both! I think I might go the PC route then...
OP
OP
Don't mind me, just wondering if syntax highlighting works on the new board.
And if
EDIT: guess not
Code:
function isElementVisible(el) {
var rect = el.getBoundingClientRect();
var docEl = document.documentElement;
var vWidth = window.innerWidth || docEl.clientWidth;
var vHeight = window.innerHeight || docEl.clientHeight;
// Return false if it's not in the viewport
if( rect.right < 0 || rect.bottom < 0 || rect.left > vWidth || rect.top > vHeight )
return false;
return true;
}And if
inline code works.EDIT: guess not
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It's all about what desktop and workflow you are comfortable with, and what your target platforms are. I'm developing on a 2012 Macbook Pro and, while it's showing its age and I'm actively eyeing the newer models (stupid expensive though), I can do stuff ten times faster than on Windows because of my Unix background. There's also the advantage of having at least one person on the team testing on Mac, as we're aiming for multiple platforms. But if you're fine with Windows and not considering other OSes, of course it's better to go with a PC.
a little off topic, but have you tried the Windows Subsystem for Linux?
No, I haven't. I've heard some good things about it, but I seem to be so fundamentally incompatible with Windows (and my Windows PC is pretty much only set up for gaming) that I haven't bothered. I might end up kicking its tires at some point for testing reasons. Can't be much worse than dealing with Cygwin.
I think that's because a lot of the regular posters released their work. It was great watching their development over the previous two OTs.
I'm currently pondering falling back to RPG Maker, just to get back into the swing of things and make a game for my friends for Christmas. I know that's nowhere near on the same level as what other people or doing (or what even I've done in the past), but I thought I'd share. I remember Dusk Golem had an RPG Maker OT, hopefully there's another one one day.
2018 is either going to be me getting back into GameMaker Studio 2, or taking the plunge into Unity. I'm strictly 2D though, so probably just GMS2.
I'm currently pondering falling back to RPG Maker, just to get back into the swing of things and make a game for my friends for Christmas. I know that's nowhere near on the same level as what other people or doing (or what even I've done in the past), but I thought I'd share. I remember Dusk Golem had an RPG Maker OT, hopefully there's another one one day.
2018 is either going to be me getting back into GameMaker Studio 2, or taking the plunge into Unity. I'm strictly 2D though, so probably just GMS2.
Started getting back into it recently but I've been struggling to make a custom cat animation rig (largely because I do not know what I am doing yet). After learning what the hell quaternions and Euler angles are, and how to calculate yaw, pitch, and roll from XYZ coordinates, I finally got a follow control for the cat's tail to work in 3D space.
It looks like such a simple thing, but it was such a pain in the ass to figure out (should have paid attention in math class). The code for it eats up like %10-15 of my CPU when I move it around, which is probably more evidence that I do not know what I am doing. Very satisfying to finally figure out though. I am also going to use this control scheme for the cat's neck and torso, so it should make animation so much easier.
It looks like such a simple thing, but it was such a pain in the ass to figure out (should have paid attention in math class). The code for it eats up like %10-15 of my CPU when I move it around, which is probably more evidence that I do not know what I am doing. Very satisfying to finally figure out though. I am also going to use this control scheme for the cat's neck and torso, so it should make animation so much easier.
i asked this on reddit, but i figure someone on here might have been in this situation before.
has going into launch day with 0 traction ever worked out okay for someone here?
so I foolishly left my marketing push until the last minute and I'm blasting out emails with just over a week before I launch my game. Assuming I get 0 press coverage. Is there still a possibility of maybe making a couple thousand bucks, or am I most definitely looking at something like 0-100? Give it to me straight doc, I can take it.
if it helps the asssessment I'm launching on PC, Mac, Android, and iOS and this is the game's website:
http://www.ragequestgame.com
also, if anyone has advice about what to do in this situation it would be much appreciated. thanks!
has going into launch day with 0 traction ever worked out okay for someone here?
so I foolishly left my marketing push until the last minute and I'm blasting out emails with just over a week before I launch my game. Assuming I get 0 press coverage. Is there still a possibility of maybe making a couple thousand bucks, or am I most definitely looking at something like 0-100? Give it to me straight doc, I can take it.
if it helps the asssessment I'm launching on PC, Mac, Android, and iOS and this is the game's website:
http://www.ragequestgame.com
also, if anyone has advice about what to do in this situation it would be much appreciated. thanks!
I've been meaning to ask you this for a while, but are you a solo dev? And if so how are you building what looks like a AAA game? Either asset stores have really stepped up their game or you're working with at least a half-dozen or so very capable artists.
I think this thread might best answer your question: https://twitter.com/pixeljamgames/status/925084660807454721
But in short, yeah, no, sorry. Every day, anywhere between 20 to 30 games come out on Steam alone. Without any prior marketing or community following, you're essentially screaming in the crowd during a loud concert. Even if you have a top tier project, your chances to get noticed are astronomically low these days, and that's with marketing, so... my advice would be not to wait until it's too late next time!
To expand a bit, many of us dream of being "the next surprise hit", but most of the time, the "unexpected underdogs" actually had previous followings from elsewhere/other communities, or a favorable convergence of events (say, huge demand for a specific genre that's not present on the platform). At this point you're better off assuming there's no such thing as a surprise hit, even though luck is still somewhat of a factor - you'll simply be better served trying to make your own luck before the fact, and that takes work and time... lots of it :-D
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"11/ If you answered NO to most of those questions, you better hope for the 1 in 1000 viral success, else you are in for a nasty wake up call"
So you're saying there's a chance...
I hear you though, good advice.
Pehesse basically said what i was going to say. It will be quite difficult to get anything unless your stars align and a miracle happens. I won't say its too late as you can still get traction later but when something is new ont he front page, it was obviously be an easier ride :)
Yep, solo dev here and do everything in the game. I've just had lots of time to myself to work on it the past year :)
Hooray! The Indie Game Dev thread is back! I'm still hammering away on my point & click adventure: "Arkhangel: The House of the Seven Stars"...getting PRETTY close. Working with the composer (Chad Seiter, composer of ReCore), finalizing the dialogue script (no VO at this point...going to go old school point & click and have everything text based), wrapping up cinematics, and cranking through the sound design.
What techniques are most commonly used for visibility optimization in modern game engines instead of Quake-style PVS and portals?
OP
OP
Those and occlusion culling are still used. There hasn't really been anything new in awhile. There is more bias towards occlusion culling and anti-portals nowadays I guess.
A few weeks ago I wrote in the old GAF thread that I was going to try some
bokeh esp. trying to develop some pixelized bokeh effect. Here is my first
result now! After many attempts, I think I have something working. :) Bear
with me, it's literally the first version which actually runs at all and has
something to do with, well, bokeh! xD Whatever, I'm pretty proud of it
nevertheless;
At a distance of 100 meter there is a very tiny but bright light source. Now
if the background blurs out, the light goes up in a bokeh.
Unfortunately I can't compute bokeh with my pixelized defocus method, for, the
resolution is just too low. So I inverted the problem in the sense that I'm
looking for bright spots in the scene and do a convolution, which is nothing
new. However, the special stuff I did is to properly compute the blur spot
with regards to my DOF computation and doing a variable pixelized convolution
to merge the bokeh with the pixelized defocus. ;) Works for now! But don't ask
me to do this for thousands of bright spots, not at the moment at least.
Well, I don't know if I can use this reliable for proper 3d stuff, but
considering the 2d defocus stuff I showed a couple of weeks ago using those
sprites, I can imagine to use it on them, for I could tag certain pixel of
such sprites and use these to compute some bokeh when the sprite gets
defocused in the distance. Hmm.
bokeh esp. trying to develop some pixelized bokeh effect. Here is my first
result now! After many attempts, I think I have something working. :) Bear
with me, it's literally the first version which actually runs at all and has
something to do with, well, bokeh! xD Whatever, I'm pretty proud of it
nevertheless;
At a distance of 100 meter there is a very tiny but bright light source. Now
if the background blurs out, the light goes up in a bokeh.
Unfortunately I can't compute bokeh with my pixelized defocus method, for, the
resolution is just too low. So I inverted the problem in the sense that I'm
looking for bright spots in the scene and do a convolution, which is nothing
new. However, the special stuff I did is to properly compute the blur spot
with regards to my DOF computation and doing a variable pixelized convolution
to merge the bokeh with the pixelized defocus. ;) Works for now! But don't ask
me to do this for thousands of bright spots, not at the moment at least.
Well, I don't know if I can use this reliable for proper 3d stuff, but
considering the 2d defocus stuff I showed a couple of weeks ago using those
sprites, I can imagine to use it on them, for I could tag certain pixel of
such sprites and use these to compute some bokeh when the sprite gets
defocused in the distance. Hmm.
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I just saw the annual Epic Unreal jam is happening on November 2:
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/announcing-the-2017-epic-megajam
Unfortunately it almost PRECISELY lines up with a prior commitment so I can't use this as an excuse to dive into UE4. I'm a little bummed about this.
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/announcing-the-2017-epic-megajam
Unfortunately it almost PRECISELY lines up with a prior commitment so I can't use this as an excuse to dive into UE4. I'm a little bummed about this.
Anyways, here's a GIF of my game...
Hey, what's this game? Looking good.
That's still enough reason for some to... BELIEVE
Hey, thanks! :)
It's an RPG I am creating with a story heavily relying on morality and survival. Its combat system is front-based + traditional turn-based, but with a heavy focus on weaponry (different enemies are vulnerable to different weapon types).
Here's another battle shot:
And here's a map shot:
I recently finished coding a perk system, I'll share after I'm done tweaking it :)
always like to see your stuff but i think this is one of the only times that I'm finding it tough to imagine it working at that resolution
^ And I'm happy it works at all. xD
Part of the reason that the resolution is so low is simply because it's the
lowest possible approximation (piecewise constant) to the effect at all,
relying on eye integration to hold the pieces together somehow. Additionally,
for the situation given in the animation, the red object is pretty far away
which doesn't help either. But anything closer will look better. I can always
increase the resolution of the effect(s) itself making it more smooth, but not
without any performance hit, or use a more sophisticated approximation. But
I for one want to keep it that low and try to fixed it by other means, because
the performance of this approximation to the physical effects will always be
the fastest because it's already of the lowest possible order (piecewise
constant) ascertain some good computational performance for computing the
raw effect.
So I have a couple of ideas to counter the low resolution.
(a) Spatial eye integration, which is something I already rely on and which
is also the key factor for the entire method to work. If the eye wouldn't do
it, I would need to compute a much higher resolution of the effect itself.
However, whatever hits the eye in a Poisson-Disc fashion looks pleasing (look
at any examples on the web, you can't help it looks pleasing) because it's
literally the sampling pattern of the eye (rods and cones distribution). So
the rational is that when rendering at say 1080p with you sitting at normal
viewing distance (living room) you will have a hard time trying to discern the
pixels of the effect, they get integrated by the eye.
(b) Temporal eye integration is something I want to employ as well.
(c) Adaptive/incremental rendering to increase the resolution where needed or
adapt on rendering budget.
(d) Denoising. From a given perspective my approximation looks a bit
like noise and indeed it get's noisy if things mix up. Well, there were some
recent improvements in denoising images. Since Pixar renders everything with
MC there was/is a need to develop some denoisers to remove the noise from MC
renderings. Their specific denoiser is an advertised feature. And let me tell
you, it looks unbelievable, they literally can kill any noise from MC without
making the image blurry. So there are now a couple of papers out there for
denoising images. I may try one and see if I can remove my pseudo noise.
Yet I also have my own denoising idea which also draws from what the eye does.
The idea is to decompose the image into subsets of well distributed pixels
having an empty intersection with each other and compute for each subset sort
of an inverse distance weighting interpolation. Composing all image together
should lead to less noise. That's sort of what the eye does, recording
multiple images from micro movements of the eye to increase the perceived
resolution (which translates to less noise). Hmm. Don't know if that works,
but sound cool at least. xD
Part of the reason that the resolution is so low is simply because it's the
lowest possible approximation (piecewise constant) to the effect at all,
relying on eye integration to hold the pieces together somehow. Additionally,
for the situation given in the animation, the red object is pretty far away
which doesn't help either. But anything closer will look better. I can always
increase the resolution of the effect(s) itself making it more smooth, but not
without any performance hit, or use a more sophisticated approximation. But
I for one want to keep it that low and try to fixed it by other means, because
the performance of this approximation to the physical effects will always be
the fastest because it's already of the lowest possible order (piecewise
constant) ascertain some good computational performance for computing the
raw effect.
So I have a couple of ideas to counter the low resolution.
(a) Spatial eye integration, which is something I already rely on and which
is also the key factor for the entire method to work. If the eye wouldn't do
it, I would need to compute a much higher resolution of the effect itself.
However, whatever hits the eye in a Poisson-Disc fashion looks pleasing (look
at any examples on the web, you can't help it looks pleasing) because it's
literally the sampling pattern of the eye (rods and cones distribution). So
the rational is that when rendering at say 1080p with you sitting at normal
viewing distance (living room) you will have a hard time trying to discern the
pixels of the effect, they get integrated by the eye.
(b) Temporal eye integration is something I want to employ as well.
(c) Adaptive/incremental rendering to increase the resolution where needed or
adapt on rendering budget.
(d) Denoising. From a given perspective my approximation looks a bit
like noise and indeed it get's noisy if things mix up. Well, there were some
recent improvements in denoising images. Since Pixar renders everything with
MC there was/is a need to develop some denoisers to remove the noise from MC
renderings. Their specific denoiser is an advertised feature. And let me tell
you, it looks unbelievable, they literally can kill any noise from MC without
making the image blurry. So there are now a couple of papers out there for
denoising images. I may try one and see if I can remove my pseudo noise.
Yet I also have my own denoising idea which also draws from what the eye does.
The idea is to decompose the image into subsets of well distributed pixels
having an empty intersection with each other and compute for each subset sort
of an inverse distance weighting interpolation. Composing all image together
should lead to less noise. That's sort of what the eye does, recording
multiple images from micro movements of the eye to increase the perceived
resolution (which translates to less noise). Hmm. Don't know if that works,
but sound cool at least. xD
Yeah it's really tough but I want to start properly next year in ramping up my project's awareness. I've always wondered what would be considered unrealistic goal though. Honestly, breaking even is probably what I'm hoping for and looking at projects I consider in the same demograph as mine, it seems a good pessimistic goal to have. But with all these horror stories I sometimes wonder if perhaps I might still be too optimistic!
Some further improvements.
Messed a bit with the scale and such. So here you can see how the bokeh behaves
in 3d while moving along and also how it changes when increasing/decreasing the
aperture. It pretty much aligns with the defocus. Sure, there is a lot missing
from a real bokeh, like blending and such, but I wanted to get the geometric
proportion right at first.
What you say? Plausible?
Messed a bit with the scale and such. So here you can see how the bokeh behaves
in 3d while moving along and also how it changes when increasing/decreasing the
aperture. It pretty much aligns with the defocus. Sure, there is a lot missing
from a real bokeh, like blending and such, but I wanted to get the geometric
proportion right at first.
What you say? Plausible?
Yes, Manafinder, which is both the game's title and the protagonist's job.
This is our current logo, which we're trying to keep old school:
I'm loving what I'm seeing and the logo Too, not a big RPG player but I like what I've seen of the art so far! (And your attack partner being a dog heh)
Yay. Just won a GTX 1080 for our World War 2 survival project on Unreal.
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/nvidia-edge-program-winners---october-2017
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/nvidia-edge-program-winners---october-2017
Thanks :)
Doggo will be AI controlled, but you can set his AI style (Follow, Defensive, or Offensive) , and do special commands such as setting a target.
Yay. Just won a GTX 1080 for our World War 2 survival project on Unreal.
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/nvidia-edge-program-winners---october-2017
Grats!!! :)
Hey who's got experience with Unity 2D? I'm trying to see if I can apply 2D physics to anything but a sprite. Got 2D characters that are made of skinned meshes, I want to try and hook up a ragdoll skeleton (already have Anima2d bones but you seemingly can't use those at runtime, really), but seems like unity 2d physics only wants sprites.
Tried a couple of bokeh shapes in combination each reflecting the computation
of the dof. As one can see, the blur spots increases away from focus in
both directions, which is nice. While tinkering around I realized that these
spots can be used to visualize the dof in 3d and can also be used as a
measure. They also tell at what rate the defocus happens, visually, when
line-up that way.
yeah i thought i might get away with that. doesn't seem to like my setup though. i'm gonna fiddle with it. thanks.
It looks pretty good, Is it on game maker studio?First of all, me too! I'll try participating more too. Secondly, what a lovely gif :D
Is it zoomed-in though? (or only showing a fraction of the screen?)
Anyways, here's a GIF of my game...
Such an amazing thread and community, wish you all the best of luck.
Wrote a blog post about my contributions towards the #Blocktober hashtag: http://noonan.design/devlogs/blocktober-star-citizen-echo-11/
Not Game Maker Studio, I am using RPG Maker MV. I'm using a lot of custom scripts, that's why it doesn't look like the default RPG Maker MV layout.
I think it is a good clear homepage.
You still have week!
Do not give up, send as many e-mails as you have time to and make them as personal and professional as you can. Always include a review code or copy. do not make them have to ask for a review copy. Make sure to tell them why your game is special. Include a lot of good pictures and videos to make it as easy as possible for them to review you game.
Also, send to as many YouTubers as you can find.
Make sure that you have a release discount.
Do not waste your time on twitter it is too late at this time anyway.
Also, the release is not everything for an indie game you can build up a community after the game is released.
If you really have 0 traction just because you have spent no time marketing delay the game and start working on marketing. If nobody knows about the game yet it does not matter if you delay the game.
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