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Indie Game Development |OT 2018| Come, help, learn, show and tell!
- Thread starter Popstar
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Game Maker, Unity, and the Unreal Engine are all free. Do not buy a license to create your first game. Learn using the free engines and only worry about purchasing or licensing after you have a finished product and you're looking at a commercial release.
That is how the engines above want you to work and it is a pretty awesome position to be in.
Congratulations! The lo-fi aesthetic is immediately appealing, so I'm definitely going to pick this up tomorrow as soon as I get paid.
I started my road into indie game development with Game Maker Studio. It's totally a great way to learn because there's many built in , easy to use functions without having to know actual programming language. Truth be told though, you'll have to learn to write scripts eventually if you want to really delve in. But for starting out, it was fantastic. Play along with some of the tutorials and make the simple tutorial games.
Currently developing a tamigotchi like app for Android during my quiet time in work (which is quite a bit atm).
Got the Data Binding plugin to work yesterday which makes updating UI much easier now that it's is done real time automatically. Works with progress bars too which is awesome! Now to get animations from sprite sheets to work...
Got the Data Binding plugin to work yesterday which makes updating UI much easier now that it's is done real time automatically. Works with progress bars too which is awesome! Now to get animations from sprite sheets to work...
Yeah, Im just starting out. It helps as Im also starting college on Information Systems, and learning object oriented programming, so GML is also helping me at school, haha. Im really impressed with how easy it is to start doing something. Currently im following Friendly Cosmonaut tutorials, shes really good.
Awesome! I wasnt aware of these :)
I'll check em out. If they can output to vector animations that GameMaker can use, then perfect :D
Had to redo the fireballs and optimise it to run on the Xbox One better (that is direct footage). I may revisit it later since missile has some nice suggestions. But its time to move on from this character and get back to the other stuff!
Those are some amazing particles. Goddam.
Looking pretty good! As that other person mentioned on Twitter, it seems like it should be "buy a big sword", though.
Thanks :)
"Maybe I'll buy a Big Sword" - looks good though :) I've always like your character designs
Dyslexic I'm always missing stuff like that
Maybe its just me.. but all I see is 'Loading tweet...' Is there some setting I need to enable or what?
My first screenshot saturday! Yay!
Not a big progress since the last time, i have just added random things to the test scene(the monsters are from Splatterhouse 3) and changed the tone map, now the whole image is more contrasted and saturated, to be honest i'm not completely sold on it because i would prefer a little less pronounced effect so i'll keep testing tone maps.
Not a big progress since the last time, i have just added random things to the test scene(the monsters are from Splatterhouse 3) and changed the tone map, now the whole image is more contrasted and saturated, to be honest i'm not completely sold on it because i would prefer a little less pronounced effect so i'll keep testing tone maps.
Had to redo the fireballs and optimise it to run on the Xbox One better (that is direct footage). I may revisit it later since missile has some nice suggestions. But its time to move on from this character and get back to the other stuff!
I love how filthy and atmospheric it looks, the particles are really pleasing to look at!
I've been doing some more work on Baroness Samedice's boss battle over the last couple of days! Still gotta get the next few waves done though, a fairly long road left to go on it.
My first screenshot saturday! Yay!
Not a big progress since the last time, i have just added random things to the test scene(the monsters are from Splatterhouse 3) and changed the tone map, now the whole image is more contrasted and saturated, to be honest i'm not completely sold on it because i would prefer a little less pronounced effect so i'll keep testing tone maps.
Looking nice! Have you considered going for a pixelated look for your environment textures, like Octopath Traveler?
OP
OP
They have a free deal going until the end of the month for GDC.
https://www.yoyogames.com/blog/463/desktop-licence-for-everyone-during-gdc-game-jams
Oh fuck, that is amazing, indeed. Thanks a lot Popstar! You are amazing also!
I'm happy that you like it! About your question...look at this comparison, everything is 1:1
As you can see, my game may not "look" pixelart, but is 100% pixelart, my character's size is roughly the same size of Cody of Final Fight and all the textures have the same scale.
So i'm already doing something similar to OT, but there are many reasons why my game doesn't look like OT, the biggest are probably these 2:
1)different genres and inspirations, OT is inspired to 2d Final Fantasy while my game is inspired to... well lots of things but let's focus on beat'em ups.
Beat'em ups look a lot less pixelated than 2d Final Fantasy games because the camera is closer, hence objects are bigger and have more details, while in FF everything is tiny and drawn with few pixels
2)OT wants to faithfully recreate 2d jrpgs look and for this reason the light most of the time comes from the same direction(except during flashy attacks in fights) and the diffuse/albedo textures(=color textures) are made like if they were 2d tiles with most of the light and shadow shading already in the texture, this lets them use and keep few colors, on the other hand i want to take advantage of different lights and for this reason i have to leave most of the light and shadow shading to the normal maps(=textures that give the illusion of 3d), even if i used few colors the result wouldn't have looked pixelated.
In the end if you look at the wall of my game it isn't that far from a more "3d" version of the wall you can see here imo.
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Can't run 'cause I hurt my foot. Can't work 'cause the weather is shit. Can't play games 'cause I got burned out on my backlog (and kinda addicted to Marvel Puzzle Quest). So what else is there to do but make endless runners for the Atari Jaguar, right?! No? Nobody else gets the urge? Oh well... here's Bexagon, inspired by a Game&Watch demakeof Terry Cavanagh's amazing Super Hexagon (it effectively works the same way as the G&W game):
Also working on a couple of others, one that I suppose people would say is sorta like flappy bird meets the copter game and another that's far more parallax-laden and sorta medieval Moon Patrolish.
Also working on a couple of others, one that I suppose people would say is sorta like flappy bird meets the copter game and another that's far more parallax-laden and sorta medieval Moon Patrolish.
If your background tiles are pixel art as well, then you have some strange filtering going onI'm happy that you like it! About your question...look at this comparison, everything is 1:1
As you can see, my game may not "look" pixelart, but is 100% pixelart, my character's size is roughly the same size of Cody of Final Fight and all the textures have the same scale.
So i'm already doing something similar to OT, but there are many reasons why my game doesn't look like OT, the biggest are probably these 2:
1)different genres and inspirations, OT is inspired to 2d Final Fantasy while my game is inspired to... well lots of things but let's focus on beat'em ups.
Beat'em ups look a lot less pixelated than 2d Final Fantasy games because the camera is closer, hence objects are bigger and have more details, while in FF everything is tiny and drawn with few pixels
2)OT wants to faithfully recreate 2d jrpgs look and for this reason the light most of the time comes from the same direction(except during flashy attacks in fights) and the diffuse/albedo textures(=color textures) are made like if they were 2d tiles with most of the light and shadow shading already in the texture, this lets them use and keep few colors, on the other hand i want to take advantage of different lights and for this reason i have to leave most of the light and shadow shading to the normal maps(=textures that give the illusion of 3d), even if i used few colors the result wouldn't have looked pixelated.
In the end if you look at the wall of my game it isn't that far from a more "3d" version of the wall you can see here imo.
It's not a strange filter, it's a tecnique called normal mapping
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_mapping
here's an example:
-on the left the flat geometry alone
-on the top center the geometry + normal map
-on the bottom center the geometry + diffuse map
-on the right the geometry + normal map + diffuse map
normal mapping isn't anything new or strange, all modern 3d games use it, look at uncharted 4 for example
the colored texture is the diffuse map, the blue one is the normal map, the black & white ones are probably roughness and displacement maps, if you look close none of them look particularly good, but when used together the result is amazing.
i'm just doing something similar but on a way smaller scale.
I didn't mean the normal mapping, I meant the texture filtering. If your bricks are pixel art they are very blurred there.
Yeah pixel art with normal maps can lead to some really odd results. While possible, it's not an easy process.
Currently I'd say that the character sprite and background art are completely different art styles.
Am i really that bad at explaining things? :(
What you see here
is the final result that you see here at the right side
it's the result of diffuse map + normal map, so yes you are talking about normal mapping, the result of normal map + diffuse map doesn't look like pixel art, look at this image from the last night
we agree that in general the last night looks like pixel art, right? But look at the illuminated portion of the ground, unlike other elements the ground clearly uses normal map, doesn't it also look blurred/filtered/whatever? That's the effect of normal mapping(well that and a ton of bloom)
I'm not trying to imitate the look of old pixel art games, i want my game to be pixel art but at the same time to look as modern as possible so i'm using everything that modern development has to offer, without any of the old hardware constraints.
Please tell me that i was clear this time because otherwise i give up :(
The character is unfinished and doesn't use normal map, so yes it's inevitable that it looks different, if i can i would like to use normal mapping on characters too but that would be probably too much so probably i won't do that.
Take into account that i'm still in the process of deciding of how the game should look like so it's all an experiment for now.
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That Epic Games / Paragon announcement is awesome.
What a great way to bootstrap your development if you have no art skills.
What a great way to bootstrap your development if you have no art skills.
I guess it's because even if the brick's outline is made in pixel-art (the technique AND the result), both the texture and normal map don't look like they were made with pixel-art methods but rather with color-mixing tools because of the uncontrolled blurring between the different levels/colors. So it's not the usage of the normal map, but its construction and on what texture it gets applied.Am i really that bad at explaining things? :(
What you see here
is the final result that you see here at the right side
it's the result of diffuse map + normal map, so yes you are talking about normal mapping, the result of normal map + diffuse map doesn't look like pixel art, look at this image from the last night
we agree that in general the last night looks like pixel art, right? But look at the illuminated portion of the ground, unlike other elements the ground clearly uses normal map, doesn't it also look blurred/filtered/whatever? That's the effect of normal mapping(well that and a ton of bloom)
I'm not trying to imitate the look of old pixel art games, i want my game to be pixel art but at the same time to look as modern as possible so i'm using everything that modern development has to offer, without any of the old hardware constraints.
Please tell me that i was clear this time because otherwise i give up :(
The character is unfinished and doesn't use normal map, so yes it's inevitable that it looks different, if i can i would like to use normal mapping on characters too but that would be probably too much so probably i won't do that.
Take into account that i'm still in the process of deciding of how the game should look like so it's all an experiment for now.
The Last Night is in a different case since they use pixelated "style" (the scaling and rough edges) in addition to using pixel-art, while you are working in 1x, but even then it seems like the normal textures are still made in a per-pixel basis. (Looking at the stones on the ground, they shimmer on the basis of a pixel rather than a blob).
I might be wrong though, but even looking at the bottom version of your image the brick's texture is definitely not pixel-art (while the character obviously is). Depends on the style you want to achieve of course!
Looking at the top image I also wonder if the shader you use for the normals automatically blurs the value between different texels, or if the normal texture was like that from the beginning.
We are getting our wires crossed here. Don't worry about itAm i really that bad at explaining things? :(
What you see here
is the final result that you see here at the right side
it's the result of diffuse map + normal map, so yes you are talking about normal mapping, the result of normal map + diffuse map doesn't look like pixel art, look at this image from the last night
we agree that in general the last night looks like pixel art, right? But look at the illuminated portion of the ground, unlike other elements the ground clearly uses normal map, doesn't it also look blurred/filtered/whatever? That's the effect of normal mapping(well that and a ton of bloom)
I'm not trying to imitate the look of old pixel art games, i want my game to be pixel art but at the same time to look as modern as possible so i'm using everything that modern development has to offer, without any of the old hardware constraints.
Please tell me that i was clear this time because otherwise i give up :(
The character is unfinished and doesn't use normal map, so yes it's inevitable that it looks different, if i can i would like to use normal mapping on characters too but that would be probably too much so probably i won't do that.
Take into account that i'm still in the process of deciding of how the game should look like so it's all an experiment for now.
I was just coming here to post that. It's pretty crazy, $12 million spent to develop the assets, so you'd hope there is stuff to learn from: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/paragon
They claim "no strings attached", but I haven't downloaded yet to try to find if there's actually a license agreement of some sort.
New UE4 version as well: https://forums.unrealengine.com/unr...-releases/1442375-unreal-engine-4-19-released
It looks like there are some Blueprint debugging improvements.
These assets are "Licensed for use with the Unreal Engine only.", so you can only use them in your UE4 projects, which still have the "5% rev share if rev > 3k$/quarter". But if you're working with UE4 anyway, they are basically free, yeah :)
Very nice indeed.
The only criticism I have is the way some items look very "artificial" lined up in the shop. Specifically the bombs look very floaty if you know what I mean.
Yes, because being hit by shrapnel from a nail bomb but it's pineapple pieces instead seems the most PG I can go with the idea!
Thanks! Hm yeah I think I can see what you mean, we might fiddle around with it some more tomorrow and see how it goes.
I have to thank you guys, i have finally realized how pointless(a gentle way to say totally dumb and stupid) was my way of doing things, when something is so hard to explain and generates this kind of discussion it's clear that something is wrong but i didn't understand what, then while writing this reply to nipticker_red i understood, i was trying to make non pixel art looking things with some restrictions similar to what pixel artists do... Why? Lol i dunno, but i'll change this.
I want my game to look rather dark/horror so i'll stick with the current aesthetic but from now on without tools restrictions.
I know what's the general consensus on the definition of pixelart but let's make a quick reality check, do people really think that these:
or even older and simpler looking things like this:
were made with just the pixel and bucket tool of a ms paint-level program?
At that time there were already advanced painting programs, the most famous one was probably Deluxe Paint by Electronic Arts, yes that EA that at the time was already a big name in the videogame industry, so you can imagine how game developing friendly it was
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deluxe_Paint
here's some original videos showing what they could do(i'm not even sure current programs can do all those things, my mind was blown at the metamorph tool you can see around minute 53 of the second video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO7JURHm_jk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJSZTJliLwM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KybIkyilCQI
Is it known that it was used to make games, there's even a well known fun fact:
"Dpaint was used by LucasArts to make graphics for their adventure games such as Monkey Island, and is the source of the name of the main character in the Monkey Island series, Guybrush Threepwood[1] - the character's name derived from a particular filename used to store his image data, which was named "guybrush.bbm""
Now do you still think that the developers of the awesome pixel art games we all love used only the pixel and bucket tool?
In the 90s people used such advanced programs for the awesome graphics of their games, and now in 2018, almost 30 years later, people should be limited to what ms paint can do to make games? Sorry but i disagree.
We agree that pixel art should have a certain aesthetic, but the limit to pixel and bucket tool is an arbitrary rule with no foundation, if you want to stick to those rules then ok, but true 16bit pixel art games were made using that kind of advanced painting programs.
Now one would think that i would make pixel art looking things with all the modern tools at my disposal... instead i do the exact opposite, i'm trying to make things to not look like pixelart but limiting myself to a range of tools like some pixel artists do(well not just pixel and bucket tool, but i don't use anything that automatically generate or modify pixels, everything in the final image was put by me)... why? I dunno lol, but from now on i'll change my way of doing things.
-about the normal map:
That's the whole point of everything here, i mean what would even be the reason of using normal maps if they don't react dynamically to lights? ;)
I want my game to look rather dark/horror so i'll stick with the current aesthetic but from now on without tools restrictions.
-about pixel art definition:
I know what's the general consensus on the definition of pixelart but let's make a quick reality check, do people really think that these:
or even older and simpler looking things like this:
were made with just the pixel and bucket tool of a ms paint-level program?
At that time there were already advanced painting programs, the most famous one was probably Deluxe Paint by Electronic Arts, yes that EA that at the time was already a big name in the videogame industry, so you can imagine how game developing friendly it was
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deluxe_Paint
here's some original videos showing what they could do(i'm not even sure current programs can do all those things, my mind was blown at the metamorph tool you can see around minute 53 of the second video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO7JURHm_jk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJSZTJliLwM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KybIkyilCQI
Is it known that it was used to make games, there's even a well known fun fact:
"Dpaint was used by LucasArts to make graphics for their adventure games such as Monkey Island, and is the source of the name of the main character in the Monkey Island series, Guybrush Threepwood[1] - the character's name derived from a particular filename used to store his image data, which was named "guybrush.bbm""
Now do you still think that the developers of the awesome pixel art games we all love used only the pixel and bucket tool?
In the 90s people used such advanced programs for the awesome graphics of their games, and now in 2018, almost 30 years later, people should be limited to what ms paint can do to make games? Sorry but i disagree.
We agree that pixel art should have a certain aesthetic, but the limit to pixel and bucket tool is an arbitrary rule with no foundation, if you want to stick to those rules then ok, but true 16bit pixel art games were made using that kind of advanced painting programs.
Now one would think that i would make pixel art looking things with all the modern tools at my disposal... instead i do the exact opposite, i'm trying to make things to not look like pixelart but limiting myself to a range of tools like some pixel artists do(well not just pixel and bucket tool, but i don't use anything that automatically generate or modify pixels, everything in the final image was put by me)... why? I dunno lol, but from now on i'll change my way of doing things.
-about the normal map:
That's the whole point of everything here, i mean what would even be the reason of using normal maps if they don't react dynamically to lights? ;)
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