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Indie Game Development |OT 2018| Come, help, learn, show and tell!
- Thread starter Popstar
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I see, that's interesting! My intuition is that all of these are bound to be much more performance impactful than function calls, unless said function call is performed many thousands of time per frame. Most of these aren't really that obscure: foreach loops are notoriously inefficient (they instantiate an iterator, which generates garbage when collected); Unity documentation repeatedly warns that GetComponent calls are quite expensive; and array lookups are O(1) while lists' are O(n) (that said, I wouldn't have expected it to have a huge performance impact unless the arrays are really large and/or checked every frame). Good call on following those guidelines from the start, though!
When you say "reordering the order of conjunctions in the collision check", I'm assuming you mean checking first the conditions that are more likely to yield false and least expensive to check, to take advantage of short circuit evaluation, right? I'm probably going to state the obvious but it also helps enormously to use layers aggressively and disable collision for all layer pairs except for what you strictly need.
Edit: Just for fun, my own layer collision matrix (edited from four screen captures because Unity won't display the full damn thing without a scrollbar within a scrollbar, does this happen to anyone else?):
this makes me feel okay. i'm not being a weirdo with my collision code
Does anyone have experience with a standalone terrain/foliage tool? Ideally, I'd be able to export terrain and grass and import it into my own engine.
I'm exploring World Machine atm, but currently unsure if it does more than terrain.
I'm exploring World Machine atm, but currently unsure if it does more than terrain.
Our team is just 2 people, we also have an artist friend helping out during his spare time and we've previously hired a few freelancers for stuff beyond our skill sets.
We've started releasing some media (mainly on gamedev groups and a few days ago on twitter) but we still haven't officially announced the game to the public. We're working on getting our first trailer ready soon.
To keep it short, it's a Steampunk Action RPG with a strong focus on narrative and sandbox gameplay, set in an alternate history, early 20th century world where monsters have been a part of society for generations. We're developing it on UE4.
If anyone's interested I can share some more details, just don't want this looking like some sort of self-promotional post :)
Thanks to everyone for the kind comments!
It's about sharing our development experience and ideas, so I would not worry about it being unjust advertisment. I think many of us would like to hear more.
So you want to make a game like Bioshock, but in a Steampunk setting.
Now that I think of it, the last game of Bioshock series IS Steampunk Theme.
I guess if the world is an open sandbox, your character could take jobs to hunt down monsters for a bounty.
Been fiddling about with my game this evening rather than doing some boring tasks - improved Jack's sprite for the no hat skin...
I really need to get those last few tasks finished and push a build to Valve :p
I really need to get those last few tasks finished and push a build to Valve :p
Been fiddling about with my game this evening rather than doing some boring tasks - improved Jack's sprite for the no hat skin...
I really need to get those last few tasks finished and push a build to Valve :p
They say the last 20% of a game takes the 80% of the time, which outright terrifies me being almost a year and a half in, and probably not halfway done.
Yeah, I mean I shipped the first version of the game on iOS around 4 years ago now. It's basically been 4 years of polish and revisions to get the Steam version ready. I talk more about that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01D2hMrcJ1U
Long story short, the last 5% has been taking me forever.
In that case, I'll try to cover some different aspects of the game so you can get a better idea of what it's about.
In terms of structure, players are free to explore the world on their own right from the start. It's not a typical open world, but rather a large sandbox with a central hub and a lot of interconnected areas; think Pripyat in STALKER: Call of Pripyat or, for a more recent example, Prague in Mankind Divided.
The core gameplay revolves around investigating supernatural events, dealing with conflicts - involving both creatures and humans -, uncovering secrets and handling new situations as they arise, making deliberate use of the tools and limited resources at your disposal.
A key feature in the game is time progression; it's a major driving force in how things play out. The world does not revolve around the players, which is to say NPCs aren't gonna stand idly by waiting to give you quests. New events develop each in-game day and the narrative continues to unfold throughout the game, even if you're not around to witness them.
Another relevant aspect is game providing absolutely no outside information you can trust. Everything you read, hear or believe to know about this world is revealed by characters that are a part of it. And those characters are driven by their own motivations; they may obscure, manipulate and lie if that helps them achieve their goals.
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In that case, I'll try to cover some different aspects of the game so you can get a better idea of what it's about.
In terms of structure, players are free to explore the world on their own right from the start. It's not a typical open world, but rather a large sandbox with a central hub and a lot of interconnected areas; think Pripyat in STALKER: Call of Pripyat or, for a more recent example, Prague in Mankind Divided.
The core gameplay revolves around investigating supernatural events, dealing with conflicts - involving both creatures and humans -, uncovering secrets and handling new situations as they arise, making deliberate use of the tools and limited resources at your disposal.
A key feature in the game is time progression; it's a major driving force in how things play out. The world does not revolve around the players, which is to say NPCs aren't gonna stand idly by waiting to give you quests. New events develop each in-game day and the narrative continues to unfold throughout the game, even if you're not around to witness them.
Another relevant aspect is game providing absolutely no outside information you can trust. Everything you read, hear or believe to know about this world is revealed by characters that are a part of it. And those characters are driven by their own motivations; they may obscure, manipulate and lie if that helps them achieve their goals.
As far as the story goes, you play the role of Ayodele, a scavenger hired to handle supernatural threats and all matters of the occult, so that's basically his line of work. I'll leave some artwork here depicting the protagonist:
Glad to hear it :)
This seems incredibly ambitious for a two-person team, yet you clearly know what you're doing from those AAA-level screenshots and character designs! Do you guys have prior experience developing games?
We have some experience in gamedev, but nothing at the scale of this project. It's the first time we're attempting something like this, which in itself has been a great learning experience.
We don't intend to move into full scale development as a two-person team though. We started by developing a working prototype, then we built a vertical slice and nowadays we're slowly building the game, but as we're moving forward we're also aiming to scale up our team, so that we're able to tackle this project with the resources it requires.
Well, at some point in time you have to say enough is enough and ship it. There comes a time when the work you're putting in isn't gonna make the end product better in the eyes of the consumer.
I'd say it already looks fairly polished and you can always do some improvements later on, based on the feedback you receive from your Steam audience. How well did the iOS version do for you?
Oh, I see! Well, best of luck with it, it looks amazing!
As a perfectionist myself, I'm not looking forward to the inevitable future fight with myself over this. One of the many, many things I've learned by being a dev is that game devs don't ask their players about flaws in their games because they see them as flawless; they do so because they want to know which ones of the thousands of flaws they themselves see are most noticeable from outside! :D
Which is a cue as good as any to post this video of my finally complete third character, Isis / Phoenix:
Thoughts?
Yeah, I mean the biggest problem for me is that I don't need to ship it. This is technically for fun - I'm only selling it to cover the Steam Greenlight fee. So I've just been polishing whenever I get the chance. Unfortunately because the core game code is so awful I wasn't really able to expand the game a great deal (outside of content).
The iOS version? It did okay. It obviously didn't cover the time involved to build it (or Adobe bills) but it covered the yearly iOS fees, which was the goal. So that's cool. And I'll be honest, I'm hoping that the Steam version gets enough sales to cover the yearly cost of keeping the iOS version on the App Store. I'm just happy for the game to exist :)
I finally watched your video above, that was really informative and interesting, thanks for sharing! I've also wishlisted Jack B. Nimble. Do you have any plans to port it to other platforms? It seems like a great game to play in short bursts, i.e. a good candidate for Vita and "perfect for Switch (TM)".
I'm not your target audience so I can't tell you how well it sells the Rampage formula. The core gameplay loop looks solid but I'd look into adding more enemies to the levels, so you're not spending most of your time destroying structures with little opposition.
You're probably at the stage where you should be trying to get the game into more people's hands. Look into packaging a little demo with the characters you already have, see what they think about it.
If you're working on it just for fun, then fair enough :)
Just don't forget there might be other projects you could develop on your spare time, that would also be fun to work on and present new and interesting challenges.
This is my first time posting to this thread!
I'm chipping away at a spooky adventure game in my spare time (spookiness yet to be seen). I've got a couple gifs, but I'm still pretty early in development. Very excited about all the games I'm seeing here. Hopefully we'll all make great progress together!
(Sam(they/them) is the one with burgundy hair and Nora(she/her) has purple hair!)
I'm chipping away at a spooky adventure game in my spare time (spookiness yet to be seen). I've got a couple gifs, but I'm still pretty early in development. Very excited about all the games I'm seeing here. Hopefully we'll all make great progress together!
(Sam(they/them) is the one with burgundy hair and Nora(she/her) has purple hair!)
Hahah, I need more enemies period. Well, I need more of everything, but enemy variety is one of the most sorely needed things.
Enemy presence is quite a hard balancing act; put too few and the game indeed becomes dull "player vs buildings" stuff; put too many, and it becomes incredibly frustrating as there's not enough time between waves to destroy the buildings within the time limit. However, enemy presence does ramp up later on, and quite a lot at that; I just didn't want this video to be too long (especially so that the lack of enemy variety doesn't make it a chore).
A free open demo might not be a bad idea indeed. I still want to nail a few things down first, which hopefully won't take long now that the third character is complete. "The characters I already have" might be all that the entire game has in the end, I really need to start scoping down and the game needs a lot of everything else, plus each character takes like 3 months of full-time work to make.
Thanks for watching the video!
This is my first time posting to this thread!
I'm chipping away at a spooky adventure game in my spare time (spookiness yet to be seen). I've got a couple gifs, but I'm still pretty early in development. Very excited about all the games I'm seeing here.
Hopefully we'll all make great progress together!
(Sam(they/them) is the one with burgundy hair and Nora(she/her) has purple hair!)
Loving the look, for some reason it reminds me of Maniac Mansion, and also of older PC games (probably the purple-heavy palette reminds me of CGA). The flashlight effect is great and has me wondering how you did it!
Thanks for watching and wishlisting :)
Regarding other platforms, I'm a little limited by the engine I use. There's currently an iOS port out there, which I plan to patch with some updates that I made to the game for the Steam version. Other than that though I don't have many options that won't cost me a bunch of cash as there aren't native exporters for suitable platforms (see: Vita and Switch).
So for now PC & Mac will have to do. Speaking of which - I finally added the last of the required features to the game!
My main menu shenanigans were a complete success with my colleague, that feels good :D I also managed to expand our options menu to accept changes to Unity's quality settings, real-time changes to the game's resolution and whether or not the game is windowed or fullscreen. I'll post some screenshots tomorrow when we jam for a few hours.
Nice to make some progress, because another job I was hoping for gave me a negative response today :/ I was sooo darn close too, seriously competing for the position with designers from Ubisoft among others who had several years of experience, while I have none (apart from hobby projects and education). I seem to be making good progress in my job hunting endeavours, getting ever closer, but never quite getting there is very disheartening :(
Nice to make some progress, because another job I was hoping for gave me a negative response today :/ I was sooo darn close too, seriously competing for the position with designers from Ubisoft among others who had several years of experience, while I have none (apart from hobby projects and education). I seem to be making good progress in my job hunting endeavours, getting ever closer, but never quite getting there is very disheartening :(
Wanted more non biped creatures in the game, so I created this Thing :) This one likes to keep an eye on you to alert others on your whereabouts. Also can remove any buffs u may have plus a temporary nerf
Jesus that eyeball monstrosity is creepy. (I love it)
Thank you so much!! I'm a huge fan of point and click adventures and CGA has the two best colours, so I'm very flattered lol
The flashlight effect actually took me a really long time, since I didn't know anything about shaders or surfaces before attempting to do this. I'm glad people seem to be interested in it! Basically I put a night time shader on top of the application surface but I cut out where I want light to go. The dithering is done in another shader, but I'm sure it could also be easily achieved with sprites!
I LOVE this monster!!! Giant floating eyeballs are always a good idea and I love the screen effects you use in your game. Atmosphere gets a 10/10 from me!
Wanted more non biped creatures in the game, so I created this Thing :) This one likes to keep an eye on you to alert others on your whereabouts. Also can remove any buffs u may have plus a temporary nerf
this is gross as hell, it's perfect
This is my first time posting to this thread!
I'm chipping away at a spooky adventure game in my spare time (spookiness yet to be seen). I've got a couple gifs, but I'm still pretty early in development. Very excited about all the games I'm seeing here. Hopefully we'll all make great progress together!
(Sam(they/them) is the one with burgundy hair and Nora(she/her) has purple hair!)
I think I posted in a Thread of mine another game you make. Whippa Stitcha.
Does this game have a name?
Whippa Stitcha is my partner's game! We put our updates on the same twitter account. I was really excited to see someone post about his game haha Mine's under the working title Project Harvest for now.
oh hey! I feel like I see your stuff a bunch on #screenshotsaturday. Nice to see you in here!
Interesting! Putting a shader on top of everywhere but where is light seems to be a pretty common technique in days of old, I believe A Link to the Past does the exact same. How did you calculate where it should be removed? Seems like there should be some interesting geometry involved!
In any case I love the spritework, it reminds me a bit of Undertale (Toriel's house specifically), but in a way looks more "professional" (not that I don't love Undertale, but part of its look is a sort of naivety / almost childlike quality to its sprites).
The one thing is that you've made the same choice as I did with regard to the font, and that is to use a monospace one for authenticity and retro feel... and eventually I realized it might not be the best choice, as it makes reading harder and less pleasant. In my game there's very little text, as it's meant to emulate arcade games, but since yours is an adventure that's bound to have quite a bit of text, you might want to reconsider using a variable width (if still pixel / retro) font. Hell, that same font would work great just with variable width. But of course, it's up to you.
Starting to populate the town and design some unique buildings, this one is for the weapon's shop :P
Wanted more non biped creatures in the game, so I created this Thing :) This one likes to keep an eye on you to alert others on your whereabouts. Also can remove any buffs u may have plus a temporary nerf
I have missed your freaky and disgusting creatures, glad to see you back in here posting this stuff :D
This is my first time posting to this thread!
I'm chipping away at a spooky adventure game in my spare time (spookiness yet to be seen). I've got a couple gifs, but I'm still pretty early in development. Very excited about all the games I'm seeing here. Hopefully we'll all make great progress together!
(Sam(they/them) is the one with burgundy hair and Nora(she/her) has purple hair!)
I'm really loving how you did the torchlight here, I'm guessing it's going to be used to locate some spooky stuff, the shadows from the objects is a nice effect!
I do not like that quit animation because it would make me sad everytime I have to quit haha!
Lovely! It feels very Megaman, especially reminiscent of the Zero / ZX games.
I would assume that's the whole point... :D
That's awesome!! I've been putting in an effort to participate in #screenshotsaturday to meet and follow other devs. It's been really fun getting into the different dev communities! Very glad to be here <3
I tie the "cut out light" to the object I want to omit light, so it uses the same x and y coordinates! I have a couple different other lights working as well, but I see none of those have made it into these gifs. I'll have to make one in the future with them! Thank you so much for the sprite compliments and as for the monospace, I have to admit that it's due to my limitations as a programmer that I chose monospace. If anyone had any tips on how to have a typewriter effect like I do but with variable font, I'm always eager to learn! My dialogue system is a bit monstrous, so I'm intimidated by it even though I was able to get it working haha
Thank you!! I'm definitely hoping it'll make the player feel like they're up when they aren't supposed to be. Would be fun to have some things hidden or revealed by light! I'm still coming up with ideas at this point lol
Oh, sorry for the misundestanding.
I thought it was yours cause you have for Avatar a witch.
But yeah, I hope the best for your projects
Btw, here is where I put your's partner's game:
https://www.resetera.com/threads/up...deogames-or-not-ot.28092/page-19#post-7885411
I will put your games at some point, or if you like you can put your game yourself in my Thread.
Cheers!!!
Thank you very much!! It's my first game, so I'm not very confident at estimating how far along I am haha. Could be anywhere between 5% and 30% lol
No problem at all! We've definitely made it confusing for people haha Thank you so much for rooting for us!
working on a new playable class for Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos, the Pirate!
The Pirate's special move uses a parrot to fly for a short time (fly over spikes/pits and get a little speed boost)
I'm thinking the Pirate class will also have boosted swimming stamina...
The Pirate's special move uses a parrot to fly for a short time (fly over spikes/pits and get a little speed boost)
I'm thinking the Pirate class will also have boosted swimming stamina...
So cute!! Great job :Dworking on a new playable class for Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos, the Pirate!
The Pirate's special move uses a parrot to fly for a short time (fly over spikes/pits and get a little speed boost)
I'm thinking the Pirate class will also have boosted swimming stamina...
Heads up GameMaker 2 users who might want a publisher:
https://www.yoyogames.com/blog/471/yoyo-games-indie-game-publishing
I might shoot them some of my older work and see if they bite.
https://www.yoyogames.com/blog/471/yoyo-games-indie-game-publishing
I might shoot them some of my older work and see if they bite.
Hi all!
After reading this thread quite a lot and admiring the work shown off here I decided to join the discussion and show something as well :)
I've been working on a test game to test my engine development and decided to actually make a game with this, so I'd like to show you some screenshots of it - I'd love to hear what you guys think of it
Also, thanks for the helpful tools and info collection on the first page!
After reading this thread quite a lot and admiring the work shown off here I decided to join the discussion and show something as well :)
I've been working on a test game to test my engine development and decided to actually make a game with this, so I'd like to show you some screenshots of it - I'd love to hear what you guys think of it
Also, thanks for the helpful tools and info collection on the first page!
I LOVE that you're getting flown around by a parrot!! Great job on the cape blowing too!working on a new playable class for Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos, the Pirate!
The Pirate's special move uses a parrot to fly for a short time (fly over spikes/pits and get a little speed boost)
I'm thinking the Pirate class will also have boosted swimming stamina...
Thank you so much!
This is looking so great! Very excited to see more of this.Hi all!
After reading this thread quite a lot and admiring the work shown off here I decided to join the discussion and show something as well :)
I've been working on a test game to test my engine development and decided to actually make a game with this, so I'd like to show you some screenshots of it - I'd love to hear what you guys think of it
Also, thanks for the helpful tools and info collection on the first page!
I thought that said Ruins of Tacos for a second - making me hungry :P
This week been getting back into the mood of indiegamedev. Did some reworking of the lighting although you probably cant see it but something that bugged me for ages :)
So it is possible to be turned down by Nintnedo for Switch development! Everyone made it out like they're doors were pretty wide open, to the point of the market already being oversaturated. Was hoping to be part of that.
I'm always filled with a mixture of excitement and dread after big business talks involving huge to do lists, big numbers and people I've never talked to before, but ultimately, I hope it's for the best of the project. Fingers crossed the one I just had was one of these! A friend of mine just offered to help with the whole business management of the project, an aspect I admittedly suck hard at, so hopefully they'll be able to do a good job and turn this game into a "real" thing. Wait, it was going to be a real thing before, wasn't it? Gah, it's hard to reconcile artistic intent and economic viability sometimes.
Either way, since I won't have a proper screenshot saturday this week because of Reasons, here's the end of the Acrobat for now. The Warrior will come soon, I swear!
Either way, since I won't have a proper screenshot saturday this week because of Reasons, here's the end of the Acrobat for now. The Warrior will come soon, I swear!
not as wide as lets say Microsoft is but yeah I would still say that if you have something to show, it seems quite open.
Either way, since I won't have a proper screenshot saturday this week because of Reasons, here's the end of the Acrobat for now. The Warrior will come soon, I swear!
that looks fantastic - i've not kept upto date recently and good to see it improve so much
I'm always filled with a mixture of excitement and dread after big business talks involving huge to do lists, big numbers and people I've never talked to before, but ultimately, I hope it's for the best of the project. Fingers crossed the one I just had was one of these! A friend of mine just offered to help with the whole business management of the project, an aspect I admittedly suck hard at, so hopefully they'll be able to do a good job and turn this game into a "real" thing. Wait, it was going to be a real thing before, wasn't it? Gah, it's hard to reconcile artistic intent and economic viability sometimes.
Either way, since I won't have a proper screenshot saturday this week because of Reasons, here's the end of the Acrobat for now. The Warrior will come soon, I swear!
Really loving the glow on that flame! Don't stop!
I got a question I am unsure anyone here would be able to figure out:
I'm using the Vive trackers for an object but wanted to use the POGO pins on the underside to create some interactions. Does anyone have good resources on these pins? I'm using Unreal and support for the POGO pins on the Vive trackers is surprisingly near non-existent. I do have some very basic info, but even then it's not well explained.
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