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

Heckler456 · Feb 13, 2018

So I'm going back to university for computer science later this year, and I'll probably be buying myself a new laptop to take to school, 'cause I'll probably be spending a ton of my downtime there. I'm currently preparing by learning some programming, and doing some rudimentary "game development" to apply the stuff I've learned.

I'm wondering if it'd be worth it to buy a laptop with an integrated GPU, or if I really need to a dedicated GPU for any and all game development. My budget is ~800-1000EUR, so it's really difficult to find a great balance between battery life, great CPU, sturdiness of the laptop itself, and to then also include a dedicated GPU. Thing is also, I have a desktop at home with a GTX 970 in it.

So I'm thinking I'll just buy a 800 dollar laptop for note taking and the programming required for my classes, which won't be GPU intensive, and to then use my desktop for whenever I need to do something that requires a dedicated GPU. My question is, is this a good idea, and what WON'T I be able to do on my laptop with integrated GPU as it pertains to game dev?

K Monkey · Feb 13, 2018

Trying out different themes for the next Act. Adding more metal and a different shade away from all the browns in Act 1.

This place is the Meat Room for the Butcher you see sitting down in the background. Pretty happy with the way it looks and I think I'll go ahead and build out the levels from this.

Hampig · Feb 13, 2018

Heckler456 said:
So I'm going back to university for computer science later this year, and I'll probably be buying myself a new laptop to take to school, 'cause I'll probably be spending a ton of my downtime there. I'm currently preparing by learning some programming, and doing some rudimentary "game development" to apply the stuff I've learned.

I'm wondering if it'd be worth it to buy a laptop with an integrated GPU, or if I really need to a dedicated GPU for any and all game development. My budget is ~800-1000EUR, so it's really difficult to find a great balance between battery life, great CPU, sturdiness of the laptop itself, and to then also include a dedicated GPU. Thing is also, I have a desktop at home with a GTX 970 in it.

So I'm thinking I'll just buy a 800 dollar laptop for note taking and the programming required for my classes, which won't be GPU intensive, and to then use my desktop for whenever I need to do something that requires a dedicated GPU. My question is, is this a good idea, and what WON'T I be able to do on my laptop with integrated GPU as it pertains to game dev?

Depends on what you're doing and how good the laptop is. I think you could maybe get away with doing basic game dev stuff even on a integrated GPU, but I don't have personal experience with it.

Kickmaster Kim · Feb 13, 2018

Had a great meeting over the weekend with my team, but my artist had a question that I don't know how to answer. he wants to know about specs dimensions for our platformer game so he can put in the images. We're using Unity. What dimensions does Unity allow for their backgrounds? I think I need to look up splash art too.

sabrina · Feb 13, 2018

Kickmaster Kim said:
Had a great meeting over the weekend with my team, but my artist had a question that I don't know how to answer. he wants to know about specs dimensions for our platformer game so he can put in the images. We're using Unity. What dimensions does Unity allow for their backgrounds? I think I need to look up splash art too.

Virtually any dimensions you want. It depends on how close your camera is, FoV, and what your unity unit size is meant to represent. You can change the pixel-to-units ratio on any texture imported, but the default size is 100 px/uu and the physics system by default assumes 1 unity unity = 1 meter.

Kickmaster Kim · Feb 13, 2018

sabrina said:
Virtually any dimensions you want. It depends on how close your camera is, FoV, and what your unity unit size is meant to represent. You can change the pixel-to-units ratio on any texture imported, but the default size is 100 px/uu and the physics system by default assumes 1 unity unity = 1 meter.

Hmm a lot of stuff here I need to look up. Do you know of any of the dimensions for other games? I tried researching, but I think my google searching skills are poor. All the time when I'm looking for something specific I get vaguely related stuff. I did come across this for Super Mario Bros. 2, but I notice the dimensions are different for some levels. Not sure if these are just random images are configured to how big they are in the game's code.
http://www.nesmaps.com/maps/SuperMarioBrothers2/SuperMarioBrothers2BG.html

sabrina · Feb 13, 2018

Kickmaster Kim said:
Hmm a lot of stuff here I need to look up. Do you know of any of the dimensions for other games? I tried researching, but I think my google searching skills are poor. All the time when I'm looking for something specific I get vaguely related stuff. I did come across this for Super Mario Bros. 2, but I notice the dimensions are different for some levels. Not sure if these are just random images are configured to how big they are in the game's code.
http://www.nesmaps.com/maps/SuperMarioBrothers2/SuperMarioBrothers2BG.html

Well that depends on art style a lot. The NES was 256x240. Tiles were 8x8 or 8x16, and characters generally used one or two tiles. Modern pixel art sizes differ a lot from that, rarely keeping to any real limits. A common contemporary resolution is 640x360 because it scales perfectly to 720p/1080p/1440p. If that's what you're targeting then pixel size depends on how much of the screen space you want the character to take up. Something like Risk of Rain has tiny characters, but Street Fighter had huge character art instead because seeing the moves was more important than exploring the level design. The original Crash Bandicoot had Crash huge on the screen because they couldn't afford to pull the camera back further and render more of the level at a time (this was fixed in later games).

My game has the character 200-240 pixels tall (depending on pose) at 1080p, making her between a fifth and a quarter of the screen height. Her textures are rendered at 240px/uu because I push her model an awful lot in some poses and don't want to see texture filtering at 1080p, but most of the environment art is rendered at 120px/uu.

Kickmaster Kim · Feb 13, 2018

Thanks a bunch sabrina.

Nilaul · Feb 13, 2018

Jobbs said:
I haven't really posted here in a while because my game project reached a point late last year where I determined proceeding in the old engine wasn't going to be feasible - It just wasn't going to perform well enough for users (and there was really no reasonable way of porting to consoles from that engine).

Once I started learning Unity and Spine 2D I decided to re-examine everything about the game, visually and gameplay-wise. One of the new things is melee.

I'm going to add more FX and stuff to spruce this up, but for now it's just nice that I got it working. Sorry for the large gif size.

Your game's art belongs in the Louvre.

BlazeHedgehog · Feb 13, 2018

mikehaggar said:
Try commenting out the s0_global = s0; line of code. I'm curious to see if it then errors out on the next line, IN_global = IN;

BlazeHedgehog said:
I've tried just commenting out the line its failing on, but that just gives me a new, different "There were no techniques" error that doesn't even give me a line number.

If you want the specific, full error:

ID3DXEffectCompiler: There were no techniques
ID3DXEffectCompiler: Compilation failed

I don't know why I didn't just google that before, but it sounds like that might be letting the shader compile correctly, it's just the difference between .fx and .cg means it's not really applying the effect properly. Specifically, I found this post, which explains it as thus:

There are no techniques in your file. You just have a pixel shader. An effect contains one or more techniques, each one described by one or more passes, each one implemented by a vertex shader and a pixel shader. Your file only contains a pixel shader, and that's what the compiler is complaining about. If you use an effect file, you should have at least one pixel shader, one vertex shader, and a technique with at least one pass that makes use of your shaders.

So basically, yeah. I'm way in over my head, and this is going to take a lot more than just weeding out a few compiler errors. Hm.

Nitpicker_Red · Feb 14, 2018

There are no techniques in your file. You just have a pixel shader. An effect contains one or more techniques, each one described by one or more passes, each one implemented by a vertex shader and a pixel shader. Your file only contains a pixel shader, and that's what the compiler is complaining about. If you use an effect file, you should have at least one pixel shader, one vertex shader, and a technique with at least one pass that makes use of your shaders.

This is not your case I think? As you clearly have a vertex shader in your .cg file:

Code:

void main_vertex
(
   float4 position : POSITION,
   out float4 oPosition : POSITION,
   uniform float4x4 modelViewProj,
   float2 tex : TEXCOORD,
   out float2 oTex : TEXCOORD
)

Edit: I should have read the full thing, technique and pass are concept that are unique to .fx files (which are wrappers around the .hlsl code).

BlazeHedgehog said:
So basically, yeah. I'm way in over my head, and this is going to take a lot more than just weeding out a few compiler errors. Hm.

From what I read you should not try to convert .cg to .hlsl by hand, as they are not exactly identical. Let a tool do it for you so you can focus on building the .fx from it.

Tool: https://developer.nvidia.com/cg-toolkit
Documentation: http://developer.download.nvidia.com/cg/cgc.html

cgc is the standalone Cg compiler which translates Cg or GLSL programs into OpenGL or DirectX shader assembly code, or OpenGL or DirectX shading language code.

DirectX shading language code seems to be one step closer to what you want, since .fx is a part of DirectX.

Edit: the .fx structure seems more complicated than what I thought. The .fx file is a big text file that contains hlsl (DirectX) code, plus other informations in an xml.
General: http://keithditch.powweb.com/Games/html/effects_files.html
How to make one: https://community.clickteam.com/threads/53516-How-to-make-a-shader-Quick-documentation
So I guess the tool converts .cg to .hlsl, then you have to build your own .fx from it, so yeah, you are right, there's more than the shader's code.

Nilaul · Feb 14, 2018

I've been following a guide on how to make a flappy bird clone in Godot 3, it's pretty cool. However, I want to take it further. I don't want it to just be a flappy bird clone, I want to change into a space shooter. The tutorial basically randomises the pipes with a script. I suppose I could make it randomise whole scenes instead. Anyone knows a tutorial on how to do this?

HelloMeow · Feb 15, 2018

We are excited to announce a powerful new addition to our creative tools suite: ProBuilder (with other great tools) and its creators, have joined Unity. Please welcome Gabriel Williams & Karl Henkel to Unity!

https://blogs.unity3d.com/2018/02/1...g-integrated-in-editor-advanced-level-design/

Wow, this is great news.

Toño · Feb 15, 2018

HelloMeow said:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2018/02/1...g-integrated-in-editor-advanced-level-design/

Wow, this is great news.

Absolutely. ProBuilder was turned an essential extension of Unity a long time ago.

wwm0nkey · Feb 15, 2018

ProBuilder is amazing news! Also have you guys tried Aura yet with the post processing stack? Looks amazing!

Finjitzu · Feb 15, 2018

HelloMeow said:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2018/02/1...g-integrated-in-editor-advanced-level-design/

Wow, this is great news.

Yeah for sure. Makes me wanna get really ambitious for my next game.

sabrina · Feb 15, 2018

ProBuilder almost makes me want to work on a 3D game. Almost :P

K Monkey · Feb 15, 2018

sabrina said:
ProBuilder almost makes me want to work on a 3D game. Almost :P

U should. Pro builder makes u build like a pro.

Minamu · Feb 15, 2018

I couldn't be happier, ProBuilder, and its companion addons, have all been absolutely essential for me and my projects the last couple of years.

wwm0nkey · Feb 15, 2018

Been messing with Aura + Post Processing v2 in Unity with some basic Gaia stuff, its crazy how much volumetric lights really do help a scene look

EDIT: Link because it's a 8k pic lol

Deleted member 2620 · Feb 15, 2018

Man, cool news for Unity projects! Patiently waiting for Epic's Probuilder-style tools they talked about and showed off to hit stable...

Pooh · Feb 15, 2018

Feel like an idiot for buying PB now, but cool that it's part of Unity now

OmegaJabroni · Feb 15, 2018

sabrina said:
If somebody told me two years ago that I'd still be working on my main character today I would have laughed at them but, well, here we are.

I feel particularly clever for this trick even though it's not perfect, it gets me about 90% of the way I need to go. I wanted the player to be able to aim attacks up and down, and I wanted the animations to have good consistency, and I also wanted to not spend an hour adapting each one. So here we are, a simple transform constraint applied to nine or ten different bones in various amounts, and suddenly I can aim up or down with the torso/head/arms while still have the hair and skirt bones act like gravity goes downward.

Special thanks to Jobbs for believing in me even though he was having a hard time seeing it when I described it to him, and for not hating that I @ him in every post.

That's a fantastic looking animation! I've never used Spine before, but it looks to be a fantastic tool. Especially when you can think of clever solutions like this. Nice work.

OmegaJabroni · Feb 15, 2018

We've been working on our SP Survival Mode as of late, and finally have published some footage of it on YouTube. The video is a little borked due to a bad render, but it still gives a great idea of what the mode plays like end to end at this point.

The player controls a character who stacks groups of like colored treasure chests and matches keys of the same color to unlock them and score points. Matches done in quick succession award a combo which multiplies the score of each subsequent match.

We're showing our game Treasure Stack to the public for the very first time on March 1st of the University of Minnesota at an even called PLAY/TEST. The goal is to get eyes on your game and good feedback from not only other local devs, but also a very large group of students who meet weekly to play games together. We're pretty excited.

We're also hoping to show Treasure Stack at an upcoming local event called VGM Con March 2-4. So it could be a busy couple of weeks shoring things up prior to that.

The character select specifically is still very WIP, and I'd really appreciate any and all feedback from you all.

Minamu · Feb 15, 2018

wwm0nkey said:
Been messing with Aura + Post Processing v2 in Unity with some basic Gaia stuff, its crazy how much volumetric lights really do help a scene look

EDIT: Link because it's a 8k pic lol

Second time today I've heard of this "Aura", what is it? :) The PPv2 isn't available for 5.6, is it?

sabrina · Feb 15, 2018

OmegaJabroni said:
That's a fantastic looking animation! I've never used Spine before, but it looks to be a fantastic tool. Especially when you can think of clever solutions like this. Nice work.

Thank you! It's neat but you have to massage it a lot to get something that doesn't look like a paper puppet. If you search the #madewithspine hashtag on Twitter you'll see the full range, from the astounding to the mediocre.

Good luck with the play test! It's always mortifying unleashing your perfect child on a new audience who know just how to wreck it >:)

wwm0nkey · Feb 16, 2018

Minamu said:
Second time today I've heard of this "Aura", what is it? :) The PPv2 isn't available for 5.6, is it?

It's a free volumetric lighting tool for Unity 5.4 and above. I get really good performance with it on too

Also inI not sure about V2 of post processing working on 5.6 or not

EDIT: Download Link

Weltall Zero · Feb 16, 2018

OmegaJabroni said:
We've been working on our SP Survival Mode as of late, and finally have published some footage of it on YouTube. The video is a little borked due to a bad render, but it still gives a great idea of what the mode plays like end to end at this point.

The player controls a character who stacks groups of like colored treasure chests and matches keys of the same color to unlock them and score points. Matches done in quick succession award a combo which multiplies the score of each subsequent match.

We're showing our game Treasure Stack to the public for the very first time on March 1st of the University of Minnesota at an even called PLAY/TEST. The goal is to get eyes on your game and good feedback from not only other local devs, but also a very large group of students who meet weekly to play games together. We're pretty excited.

We're also hoping to show Treasure Stack at an upcoming local event called VGM Con March 2-4. So it could be a busy couple of weeks shoring things up prior to that.

The character select specifically is still very WIP, and I'd really appreciate any and all feedback from you all.

Things that jumped out to me:
1) The chests and especially the player character move in a very jerky fasion. I assume part of that is due to the renderer issues you mention; at first I assumed the video's framerate was screwed, but the GUI animates fluidly so it's not that. One thing I noticed by watching frame by frame is that when you climb the stack you're carrying, you teleport on top of it; perhaps a very quick traversal would help with this. I'd need a "proper" video to reassess this.
2) Differently sized / zomed pixels are a huge turnoff to me, and immediately make the game feel "cheap" and "flash-like". Originally I thought this was a personal pet peeve, but I've seen this specific complaint made by a lot of people over the years, so it's not that uncommon. To a lesser extent, the same applies to rotated pixels: it's ok in smaller things like the chest locks, but the rotating GUI cog could be redone to be entirely pixel-animated.

OmegaJabroni · Feb 16, 2018

Weltall Zero said:
Things that jumped out to me:
1) The chests and especially the player character move in a very jerky fasion. I assume part of that is due to the renderer issues you mention; at first I assumed the video's framerate was screwed, but the GUI animates fluidly so it's not that. One thing I noticed by watching frame by frame is that when you climb the stack you're carrying, you teleport on top of it; perhaps a very quick traversal would help with this. I'd need a "proper" video to reassess this.
2) Differently sized / zomed pixels are a huge turnoff to me, and immediately make the game feel "cheap" and "flash-like". Originally I thought this was a personal pet peeve, but I've seen this specific complaint made by a lot of people over the years, so it's not that uncommon. To a lesser extent, the same applies to rotated pixels: it's ok in smaller things like the chest locks, but the rotating GUI cog could be redone to be entirely pixel-animated.

Thanks for the feedback!

The character movement is really smooth, and I'm totally lost as to why the video doesn't reflect this. I'll definitely share a better video when I get another together.

In regards to the different pixel densities, can you give me an example of what doesn't look consistent? I attempted to create everything with the same size pixels, and we're using a steady 16 pixels per unit across the board. I see what you're saying about the rotating cog on our "hopper" UI element. We have some gears that are constantly animating inside the element, so we could probably do away with the external one anyways.

Again, thanks for the feedback.

Weltall Zero · Feb 16, 2018

OmegaJabroni said:
Thanks for the feedback!

The character movement is really smooth, and I'm totally lost as to why the video doesn't reflect this. I'll definitely share a better video when I get another together.

In regards to the different pixel densities, can you give me an example of what doesn't look consistent? I attempted to create everything with the same size pixels, and we're using a steady 16 pixels per unit across the board. I see what you're saying about the rotating cog on our "hopper" UI element. We have some gears that are constantly animating inside the element, so we could probably do away with the external one anyways.

Again, thanks for the feedback.

My mistake, I didn't realize you mentioned the character select is temporary, and that's what jumped at me in terms of pixel sizes (first impressions and all). The game itself is fine. Sorry for the confusion!

As for the character animation, it's so weird it's animation like that but the GUI is smooth, indeed. Waiting for a smoother video to give more in-depth impressions.

Other than that, it looks great! I don't know of any game that uses this kind of gameplay since Wario's Woods on the freaking SNES, it really deserves a modern revival.

OmegaJabroni · Feb 16, 2018

Weltall Zero said:
My mistake, I didn't realize you mentioned the character select is temporary, and that's what jumped at me in terms of pixel sizes (first impressions and all). The game itself is fine. Sorry for the confusion!

As for the character animation, it's so weird it's animation like that but the GUI is smooth, indeed. Waiting for a smoother video to give more in-depth impressions.

Other than that, it looks great! I don't know of any game that uses this kind of gameplay since Wario's Woods on the freaking SNES, it really deserves a modern revival.

Thank you! I think it's just easier to tell there's frame rate/bork issues with the character movement than with the UI elements. We're really excited to start getting our game out there for people to try!

OmegaJabroni · Feb 16, 2018

New 4-Player Versus Gameplay video!

This video actually rendered correctly, so it should be a much better representation of gameplay!

mikehaggar · Feb 16, 2018

OmegaJabroni said:
New 4-Player Versus Gameplay video!

This video actually rendered correctly, so it should be a much better representation of gameplay!

This looks pretty cool! Is there any skill involved in using the grappling hook that grabs the chests? And what about power-ups/abilities for the grappling hook? Something along the lines of an auto-target hook that automatically grabs the lowest chest out of the air without the need to be in the chest's "lane?" Things like that could add some additional depth/fun to the game. Especially the multiplayer. Not criticizing the game in any way. I just immediately had these thoughts while watching the game play video :)

Camille_ · Feb 17, 2018

Time for a good old fashioned wall o' gifs!

The Acrobat expanded moveset improves her mobility all across the board in ways I hadn't even really anticipated, like with the Air Blade giving her an extra vertical boost, making for some (hopefully) fun shenanigans. (and yes, the Air Blade is indeed not in the above gifs - it was one of the larger ones so I refrained slightly from killing even more bandwith :-D)
Regarding the Coyote animation, as it was discussed before, I set it so it only plays after sprinting for a set (long) distance, so it's far from playing every time you fall off, in fact you'll likely fall off more without seeing it than with it! So far it also doesn't do anything extra other than being there, but I'm looking into expanding the timing window for the coyote jump mechanic as an "extra bonus" and to make this whole coyote thing an actual "Tex Avery Inspired (TM)" move, but if it's too powerful, I'll simply leave it as is! Making new mechanics just to disable them is fun :v

sabrina · Feb 17, 2018

I can't remember if I mentioned it on here or on Discord but I recently decided I wanted add bandages to staunch bleeding. I could have just done what Far Cry 3 did and recycle the same bandaging animation for the arm but what's the fun in that? >:D

So here are eight different bandaging animations stuck together so you can see how good of mummy cosplay you can perform if you suck at the game lol

Pehesse said:
Time for a good old fashioned wall o' gifs!

The Acrobat expanded moveset improves her mobility all across the board in ways I hadn't even really anticipated, like with the Air Blade giving her an extra vertical boost, making for some (hopefully) fun shenanigans. (and yes, the Air Blade is indeed not in the above gifs - it was one of the larger ones so I refrained slightly from killing even more bandwith :-D)
Regarding the Coyote animation, as it was discussed before, I set it so it only plays after sprinting for a set (long) distance, so it's far from playing every time you fall off, in fact you'll likely fall off more without seeing it than with it! So far it also doesn't do anything extra other than being there, but I'm looking into expanding the timing window for the coyote jump mechanic as an "extra bonus" and to make this whole coyote thing an actual "Tex Avery Inspired (TM)" move, but if it's too powerful, I'll simply leave it as is! Making new mechanics just to disable them is fun :v

These are so good. I especially like her pressing against the wall to avoid the falling block haha. I wonder how common that will be a necessary move.

Camille_ · Feb 17, 2018

sabrina said:
I can't remember if I mentioned it on here or on Discord but I recently decided I wanted add bandages to staunch bleeding. I could have just done what Far Cry 3 did and recycle the same bandaging animation for the arm but what's the fun in that? >:D

So here are eight different bandaging animations stuck together so you can see how good of mummy cosplay you can perform if you suck at the game lol

These are so good. I especially like her pressing against the wall to avoid the falling block haha. I wonder how common that will be a necessary move.

This modular bandaging animation is pretty amazing, and is typically the kind of motion I couldn't possibly achieve with my technique, so they're a very strong sell on the potency of skeletal animation :-D Awesome job, and looking forward to how it plays out in the game - will there be localized damage, or will the bandages be at random positions when you apply them?

And thanks a ton, of course :-D I'm super glad to hear many different people have favorite moves, as I hope that means there'll be something for everyone :-D The wall flatten is one of mine as well, and I'm trying to think up more ways to use it - for now it's mostly to avoid incoming vertical fallblocks, but there has to be more that I can do with that!

sabrina · Feb 17, 2018

Pehesse said:
This modular bandaging animation is pretty amazing, and is typically the kind of motion I couldn't possibly achieve with my technique, so they're a very strong sell on the potency of skeletal animation :-D Awesome job, and looking forward to how it plays out in the game - will there be localized damage, or will the bandages be at random positions when you apply them?

And thanks a ton, of course :-D I'm super glad to hear many different people have favorite moves, as I hope that means there'll be something for everyone :-D The wall flatten is one of mine as well, and I'm trying to think up more ways to use it - for now it's mostly to avoid incoming vertical fallblocks, but there has to be more that I can do with that!

Spikes that come up from the floor, spinning blades, enemy attacks that don't quite have enough range, idk. You'll come up with something :)

I'm aiming for localized damage. I'll see if I can get it to work well enough that it makes sense to do that. Otherwise randomized positions would be the fallback plan.

Camille_ · Feb 17, 2018

sabrina said:
Spikes that come up from the floor, spinning blades, enemy attacks that don't quite have enough range, idk. You'll come up with something :)

I'm aiming for localized damage. I'll see if I can get it to work well enough that it makes sense to do that. Otherwise randomized positions would be the fallback plan.

Oh wow, okay, so it *is* for localized damage. Well, I'm even more eager to see how it plays out, then!
(and I'm taking notes of those hazard ideas! :-D)

Feral · Feb 17, 2018

does anyone here know an example for a turn-based roguelike in which you control a party? In particular, I'm curious about how do you make it mobile-friendly, fast-paced and snappy, if you have to control multiple characters at once, even outside of combat. Control one character (party) and have a seperate battle screen, aka something like Heroes of Might and Magic?

_Rob_ · Feb 17, 2018

Pehesse said:

I really like this one, I feel like I'm watching a Looney Tune!

sabrina said:
I can't remember if I mentioned it on here or on Discord but I recently decided I wanted add bandages to staunch bleeding. I could have just done what Far Cry 3 did and recycle the same bandaging animation for the arm but what's the fun in that? >:D

So here are eight different bandaging animations stuck together so you can see how good of mummy cosplay you can perform if you suck at the game lol

This worked out so well, I really like touches like this.

I've been leaving the hub world of Clive 'N' Wrench aside for quite a while, because I wanted to make sure each world's style was nailed down first. I always knew I wanted it set in space, but wasn't quite sure exactly how to tackle the "time travel" aspect. It struck me a few days a go that having literal "cracks in time" could allow for some really visually interesting melding of every era present in the game. My only real concern was that the area could feel somewhat messy, due to the sheer amount of different themes going on all at once; thankfully I think it worked out better than I'd anticipated!

Geek of Nature · Feb 17, 2018

Pehesse said:
Time for a good old fashioned wall o' gifs!

The Acrobat expanded moveset improves her mobility all across the board in ways I hadn't even really anticipated, like with the Air Blade giving her an extra vertical boost, making for some (hopefully) fun shenanigans. (and yes, the Air Blade is indeed not in the above gifs - it was one of the larger ones so I refrained slightly from killing even more bandwith :-D)
Regarding the Coyote animation, as it was discussed before, I set it so it only plays after sprinting for a set (long) distance, so it's far from playing every time you fall off, in fact you'll likely fall off more without seeing it than with it! So far it also doesn't do anything extra other than being there, but I'm looking into expanding the timing window for the coyote jump mechanic as an "extra bonus" and to make this whole coyote thing an actual "Tex Avery Inspired (TM)" move, but if it's too powerful, I'll simply leave it as is! Making new mechanics just to disable them is fun :v

This looks so good! What platform is it being developed for?

Camille_ · Feb 17, 2018

_Rob_ said:
I really like this one, I feel like I'm watching a Looney Tune!

This worked out so well, I really like touches like this.

I've been leaving the hub world of Clive 'N' Wrench aside for quite a while, because I wanted to make sure each world's style was nailed down first. I always knew I wanted it set in space, but wasn't quite sure exactly how to tackle the "time travel" aspect. It struck me a few days a go that having literal "cracks in time" could allow for some really visually interesting melding of every era present in the game. My only real concern was that the area could feel somewhat messy, due to the sheer amount of different themes going on all at once; thankfully I think it worked out better than I'd anticipated!

Nice job on this hub presentation, it's indeed tough to have visual coherency when trying to present very different worlds... I've always been partial to the "underlying single theme" hub presentation ala portraits in Mario 64/TV's in Gex, or even the brain tumblr in psychonauts that give clear framing to the visual dissonance within, but from your screenshot it seems to work quite well even with such close juxtaposition! I'll be curious to see it "for real" :-D

GRW810 said:
This looks so good! What platform is it being developed for?

Many thanks! I'm currently aiming for PC for now (and possibly Mac/Linux, assuming I can find people to test the builds). Console development is still a fantasy at this point, I have no devkits, no big 3 contacts and no publisher, no funding, and the engine doesn't even support console porting in the first place, so it'd need to be rebuilt specifically for them assuming I had all previous three. The idea is to get the game done for PC first, gain traction/attention, and see what happens from there... Ideally, I'd love to release it on consoles, but I'm very careful about making promises I don't know if I'll be able to keep. First step is still to make the game at all :-)

Also, the game will require an incredible amount of RAM to run at all, so I'm still wondering if console porting is even remotely possible :-D

Geek of Nature · Feb 17, 2018

Pehesse said:
Many thanks! I'm currently aiming for PC for now (and possibly Mac/Linux, assuming I can find people to test the builds). Console development is still a fantasy at this point, I have no devkits, no big 3 contacts and no publisher, no funding, and the engine doesn't even support console porting in the first place, so it'd need to be rebuilt specifically for them assuming I had all previous three. The idea is to get the game done for PC first, gain traction/attention, and see what happens from there... Ideally, I'd love to release it on consoles, but I'm very careful about making promises I don't know if I'll be able to keep. First step is still to make the game at all :-)

Also, the game will require an incredible amount of RAM to run at all, so I'm still wondering if console porting is even remotely possible :-D

We'll good luck, whatever happens. I know it's only a few gifs but I like what I've seen. I don't play games on PC, unfortunately, but maybe one day you'll be in a position to make the leap to consoles.

Is there any other footage or a way for me to follow the game's progress?

K Monkey · Feb 17, 2018

Pehesse said:
The idea is to get the game done for PC first, gain traction/attention, and see what happens from there... Ideally, I'd love to release it on consoles, but I'm very careful about making promises I don't know if I'll be able to keep. First step is still to make the game at all :-)

a very good approach i say :) looks great btw

Finally happy with the tone of Act II so decided to test out the existing scene. The Butcher was too big when standing up so had to make the Skull/Level even bigger! but bigger is ok in my books!

Camille_ · Feb 17, 2018

GRW810 said:
We'll good luck, whatever happens. I know it's only a few gifs but I like what I've seen. I don't play games on PC, unfortunately, but maybe one day you'll be in a position to make the leap to consoles.

Is there any other footage or a way for me to follow the game's progress?

I completely get you - and I do with I could release on consoles ASAP as I also agree platformers are best there (Switch would be a dream), but I'll take things one step at a time :-D
You can follow the game in a number of places: I post about just about everything on Twitter, there's a dedicated devlog if you want the game's news and nothing else, and I also set up a Patreon for people who want an active part in development (by directly paying my "salary" basically, and by getting access to prototypes to give me early feedback). There are a few other places, too, but you can find just about any of them from those three, so pick what you prefer :-D (and of course, there's here and our Discord!)

K Monkey said:
a very good approach i say :) looks great btw

Finally happy with the tone of Act II so decided to test out the existing scene. The Butcher was too big when standing up so had to make the Skull/Level even bigger! but bigger is ok in my books!

A Butcher, you say... does he like FRESH MEAT?! (and does he say it when seeing you? :-D)

K Monkey · Feb 17, 2018

Pehesse said:
A Butcher, you say... does he like FRESH MEAT?! (and does he say it when seeing you? :-D)

He LOVESSS fresh meat. The wife has put him on a strict diet though and we all know how that feels. (if i ever get VO for my game then he will say FRESH PRODUCE)

_Rob_ · Feb 17, 2018

Pehesse said:
Nice job on this hub presentation, it's indeed tough to have visual coherency when trying to present very different worlds... I've always been partial to the "underlying single theme" hub presentation ala portraits in Mario 64/TV's in Gex, or even the brain tumblr in psychonauts that give clear framing to the visual dissonance within, but from your screenshot it seems to work quite well even with such close juxtaposition! I'll be curious to see it "for real" :-D

Ooh, glad to hear that you think so, so far. As you wish!

K Monkey said:
a very good approach i say :) looks great btw

Finally happy with the tone of Act II so decided to test out the existing scene. The Butcher was too big when standing up so had to make the Skull/Level even bigger! but bigger is ok in my books!

The atmosphere here is awesome, just watching the video puts me on edge!

mikehaggar · Feb 17, 2018

Pehesse said:
Time for a good old fashioned wall o' gifs!

The Acrobat expanded moveset improves her mobility all across the board in ways I hadn't even really anticipated, like with the Air Blade giving her an extra vertical boost, making for some (hopefully) fun shenanigans. (and yes, the Air Blade is indeed not in the above gifs - it was one of the larger ones so I refrained slightly from killing even more bandwith :-D)
Regarding the Coyote animation, as it was discussed before, I set it so it only plays after sprinting for a set (long) distance, so it's far from playing every time you fall off, in fact you'll likely fall off more without seeing it than with it! So far it also doesn't do anything extra other than being there, but I'm looking into expanding the timing window for the coyote jump mechanic as an "extra bonus" and to make this whole coyote thing an actual "Tex Avery Inspired (TM)" move, but if it's too powerful, I'll simply leave it as is! Making new mechanics just to disable them is fun :v

sabrina said:
I can't remember if I mentioned it on here or on Discord but I recently decided I wanted add bandages to staunch bleeding. I could have just done what Far Cry 3 did and recycle the same bandaging animation for the arm but what's the fun in that? >:D

So here are eight different bandaging animations stuck together so you can see how good of mummy cosplay you can perform if you suck at the game lol

These are so good. I especially like her pressing against the wall to avoid the falling block haha. I wonder how common that will be a necessary move.

_Rob_ said:
I really like this one, I feel like I'm watching a Looney Tune!

This worked out so well, I really like touches like this.

I've been leaving the hub world of Clive 'N' Wrench aside for quite a while, because I wanted to make sure each world's style was nailed down first. I always knew I wanted it set in space, but wasn't quite sure exactly how to tackle the "time travel" aspect. It struck me a few days a go that having literal "cracks in time" could allow for some really visually interesting melding of every era present in the game. My only real concern was that the area could feel somewhat messy, due to the sheer amount of different themes going on all at once; thankfully I think it worked out better than I'd anticipated!

K Monkey said:
a very good approach i say :) looks great btw

Finally happy with the tone of Act II so decided to test out the existing scene. The Butcher was too big when standing up so had to make the Skull/Level even bigger! but bigger is ok in my books!

Fantastic looking stuff from all of you! I see what all of you are doing and it inspires me! :)

Jump_Button · Feb 17, 2018

well change just about everything about this area from last time

OmegaJabroni · Feb 17, 2018

mikehaggar said:
This looks pretty cool! Is there any skill involved in using the grappling hook that grabs the chests? And what about power-ups/abilities for the grappling hook? Something along the lines of an auto-target hook that automatically grabs the lowest chest out of the air without the need to be in the chest's "lane?" Things like that could add some additional depth/fun to the game. Especially the multiplayer. Not criticizing the game in any way. I just immediately had these thoughts while watching the game play video :)

Thanks for the ideas and feedback! As of now, the only "skill" involved with the hook is paying attention to the indicator on the UI and being in the lane where chests are dropping and quickly initiating a grapple. An auto-target power-up may be the bees knees! We have worked really hard on balancing what we currently have, and introducing something like that would definitely require going back into the muck a bit, but it may be very worth it!

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