Jeez, the stuff you folks are putting out makes me really insecure.
Jeez, the stuff you folks are putting out makes me really insecure.
Well, on the flip side at least now I don't feel like I'm the only one!
To be fair, your work looks really good and unique too, Weltall Zero! You're much further ahead, and have something cohesive and well done, I feel. :)
Thanks a lot, but there's also the fact that I've been working on it full time for a year and a half. A lot of people here have been working in their games in their free time while also working full time jobs. For the amount of hours I've put into my game, I feel my game isn't exactly impressive-looking... which is to be expected from a programmer that can't draw shit, I guess. :D
Wow, you never rest, do you? Juggling a day job, developing solo games like Jack B Nimble and the one you're making now, and also tackling challenges like this...
I only just started out, so take my advice with a grain of salt. But I think gamemaker would be a good or at least serviceable engine, if you want to keep it 2D. One can easily create game objects and instances of that object for e.g. different building types and have them behave independently or dependently. Plus: it's rather easy to use, but also allows for more complex development.What would ba good engine for a management/simulation type game?
I thought Game Maker was paid though. I should have specified I am looking for a free engine.I only just started out, so take my advice with a grain of salt. But I think gamemaker would be a good or at least serviceable engine, if you want to keep it 2D. One can easily create game objects and instances of that object for e.g. different building types and have them behave independently or dependently. Plus: it's rather easy to use, but also allows for more complex development.
You could try the free trial, though it has some limitations in regards to how many objects you can have and you obviously can't publish.I thought Game Maker was paid though. I should have specified I am looking for a free engine.
I'll rest when I'm dead ;)
Here's the game; would be super appreciative if people could give it a go, share and leave feedback, etc.
What would ba good engine for a management/simulation type game?
Also are there any good free game engines for making Adventure Games on a Mac?
You could try the free trial, though it has some limitations in regards to how many objects you can have and you obviously can't publish.
Godot seems worth a shot, though I never got it to work on my computer.
Another option may be Clickteam Fusion 2: https://www.clickteam.com/clickteam-fusion-2-5-free-edition
"What would be a good engine" questions for most modern engines would just be what engine do you like working with the most - even the paid ones like GameMaker have limited trials you can download to play around with and get a feel for.
FWIW, stuff like City Skylines, Parkitect, Two Point Hospital and Fallout Shelter were all made in Unity.
Unity also has a specific tutorial on making adventure games, which will obviously give you a skeletal framework to build from.
Thanks a lot. I had no clue adventure games could be made with Unity.
Thanks a lot. I had no clue adventure games could be made with Unity.
I'm not in the best position to talk about this because I am a complete beginner in game dev but dude, it looks f-ing amazing. The art is so good. The spells look great, love the summons (?). Maybe add some info about the game in the end ?I don't post in here as often as I should, but I figure this is probably the place to go so, anyone up for providing some trailer feedback?
https://youtu.be/znEK00mZuoA
I'm kinda noseblind to the whole thing at this point and haven't really gotten any general impressions yet, so any feedback/pointers/suggestions would be super appreciated.
Thanks! Re: How Long I've Been Working on it --I'm not in the best position to talk about this because I am a complete beginner in game dev but dude, it looks f-ing amazing. The art is so good. The spells look great, love the summons (?). Maybe add some info about the game in the end ?
How long have you been working on it if you don't mind me asking ?
This looks insanely good. My inclination would be to have more and more rapid cuts during that ~1:00-1:30 climax stretch that starts with the angel summon, I suppose. Fantastic-looking regardless.I don't post in here as often as I should, but I figure this is probably the place to go so, anyone up for providing some trailer feedback?
https://youtu.be/znEK00mZuoA
I'm kinda noseblind to the whole thing at this point and haven't really gotten any general impressions yet, so any feedback/pointers/suggestions would be super appreciated.
Thanks. And yeah, that's probably a good idea. The tail end of that in particular does start to lag a bit relative to the tempo.This looks insanely good. My inclination would be to have more and more rapid cuts during that ~1:00-1:30 climax stretch that starts with the angel summon, I suppose. Fantastic-looking regardless.
Looks great. I like the way you framed the trailer. It tells a story and shows what the game is about. I assume that the last 20 seconds are left blank intentionally for logo and release info?I don't post in here as often as I should, but I figure this is probably the place to go so, anyone up for providing some trailer feedback?
https://youtu.be/znEK00mZuoA
I'm kinda noseblind to the whole thing at this point and haven't really gotten any general impressions yet, so any feedback/pointers/suggestions would be super appreciated.
I don't post in here as often as I should, but I figure this is probably the place to go so, anyone up for providing some trailer feedback?
https://youtu.be/znEK00mZuoA
I'm kinda noseblind to the whole thing at this point and haven't really gotten any general impressions yet, so any feedback/pointers/suggestions would be super appreciated.
Looks great. I like the way you framed the trailer. It tells a story and shows what the game is about. I assume that the last 20 seconds are left blank intentionally for logo and release info?
Thanks -- and yeah, that's exactly what's going in that last 20 seconds.The trailer is good.
Good length, nice pixel art, show no tell approach, enough interesting cast of characters.
The only suggestion I have is to cut the black screen at the end.
However I know at this point it would be the title, so I don't know.
Yeah, it was called Chronicle of Ruin, it's still called Chronicle of Ruin, but I'm really thinking about ditching it for something else.... which I probably should've done way before this point.On a different note, I think I remember I posted this game in a Thread of mine, but I don't remember it's name.
Do you have plans to name it differently?
Jeez, the stuff you folks are putting out makes me really insecure.
I would start with moment aka panning down right away they a bit of a pause at the startI don't post in here as often as I should, but I figure this is probably the place to go so, anyone up for providing some trailer feedback?
https://youtu.be/znEK00mZuoA
I'm kinda noseblind to the whole thing at this point and haven't really gotten any general impressions yet, so any feedback/pointers/suggestions would be super appreciated.
Yeah, that's definitely one of the first things I was thinking about doing, it does seem like it's hanging there a little long.I would start with moment aka panning down right away they a bit of a pause at the start
I like the first one more -- although I'm kind of partial to busier stuff myself - but you're right about the readability of the sprites against the background. Adding some outlines helps a lot, if that's something you'd be interested inDisregard fringe elements like the UI and stuff in the corners. Which looks better. I think i'm more partial to the second myself. It just seems like it's less busy. Though maybe the first would be okay with different colors.
He has a ton of other excellent tutorials on his Deviantart
Yeah, it was called Chronicle of Ruin, it's still called Chronicle of Ruin, but I'm really thinking about ditching it for something else.... which I probably should've done way before this point.
Yeah, that's definitely one of the first things I was thinking about doing, it does seem like it's hanging there a little long.
I like the first one more -- although I'm kind of partial to busier stuff myself - but you're right about the readability of the sprites against the background. Adding some outlines helps a lot, if that's something you'd be interested in
Here's a pretty great concise tutorial on some of your options by Cyangmou, one of the best pixel artists out there
He has a ton of other excellent tutorials on his Deviantart
Ah yeah, from the way way back. The old dude was always there, he just didn't make the poster cut last time. Character art/composition was a bit iffy.Ah, yes, I just saw my entry. It seems you delete the old trailer as well.
At least I found the old Poster you created:
From the look of it, the first old person in the trailer, is a new addition in the roster of characters.
Brackeys videos are pretty goodFinally going to sit down and start to learn Unity. Downloaded all the in-game tutorials but wondering if there are any better sources out there for an utter begginner?
Quite often when I was younger :oDid anyone ever told you look like Tom Cruise with this Sunglasses?
Well, even if you're not a lawyer you are right on the plagiarizing stuff, I was fearful because on some horror stories I heard when I was studying but I think with having a private record with all the important stuff of our game and having both the domain and the social account we can avoid any kind of stealing.I read somewhere (for whatever "something someone in a forum read once" is worth) that if you can estabilish that you were using the name before them, you can estabilish that you came up with the name and it makes harder for people to patent-troll you. Personally I don't think anyone would ever try to plagiarize a random indie game like mine, so what I've done is register a domain with the name of my game, and a twitter account with the same. The first is cheap (I used GoDaddy) and the second is free.
In general I don't think most indie studios actually trademark anything; plagiarizers go for stuff like Pokemon or Mario or the odd indie game that's a breakaway success, not our humble indie games. Plus I have no clue how much trademarking your stuff in Mexico protects you from plagiarizers from other contries.
That said, take what I'm saying with copious amounts of salt, as I'm neither a lawyer nor anyone who's done any remotely extensive research on copyright laws.
Well, even if you're not a lawyer you are right on the plagiarizing stuff, I was fearful because on some horror stories I heard when I was studying but I think with having a private record with all the important stuff of our game and having both the domain and the social account we can avoid any kind of stealing.
Thanks for your help, I'm gonna try to be more active on this place and post part of our progress eventually, in the meantime I'll leave a sketch from one of the protagonist of the game
If you're looking for paid tutorials/courses, then I was recommended the Udemy ones with Ben Tristem and Rick Davidson, specifically 'Learn to Code Making Games'. I think you can do both the 2D and 3D versions of these courses.Finally going to sit down and start to learn Unity. Downloaded all the in-game tutorials but wondering if there are any better sources out there for an utter begginner?
Anybody have good pixel art environment (especially from a top-down perspective) tutorials like in the above screenshots?
Still looks great. The only minor nitpick I have is with the logo. What is the thing that the sword is stuck in? It might only be me being hypercritical, but at first glance I thought there is a flaming e-guitar next to logo, which kind of put me out of the otherwise great trailer.Okay so, sorry to spam the thread again, but this is probably the final trailer that I'm looking at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrplK0v4CC0&feature=youtu.be
I'm gonna submit to the Square-Enix Collective tomorrow and still have a bunch of crap to get together so there probably isn't that much I can add at this point, but if there's anything horribly wrong with it that I missed, it'd be a huge help if someone could give me a heads up so I can get any issues ironed out
I just want to say that beyond having worked on the game for 84years.gif, something pops up every day that gives me that feeling, and it'll keep happening every day forever. Like, what's my trailer next to that Chrono Break trailer that just came out, even if it isn't a game? Just the other day I saw this pop up on Pixeljoint --
Which is fundamentally the same shot as the opening of my trailer, except it uses a quarter the pixels, looks twice as good, and they probably did it in about an eighth the time it took me to make and remake and remake and remake that first shot. And, it's part of an asset pack so anyone can use it for a nominal fee.
So yeah, there's always going to be stuff like that, that makes you think that. You just gotta push through it and use it as motivation to make your stuff better, whether it's graphics or gameplay or whatever.
Hah, it's funny, because sometimes I'll catch that logo first thing in the morning and think the exact same thing. It's just fire at the bottom, but now it seems pretty clear that I need to add some contours or something to clear things up. The logo is actually super old and just something I golded over the other day because I couldn't think of anything else, so it makes sense that it needs an update.Still looks great. The only minor nitpick I have is with the logo. What is the thing that the sword is stuck in? It might only be me being hypercritical, but at first glance I thought there is a flaming e-guitar next to logo, which kind of put me out of the otherwise great trailer.
Wow, thanks. That's like, the nicest thing I've ever heard about anything I've dev'd. And I hjaven't even thrown out a tweet about the game in like 18 months, so y'know, not surprising you hadn't heard of it.I don't know how or why but I missed your first trailer and all the discussion about it. I only just watched the second and...
...
I really have no words. I welled up watching it, actually. I didn't know about your game, and it feels like it's a game I should know about not just because you're a ResetEra member, but because it looks fucking batshit incredible. I paused it to make my SO watch it and she was shocked as well. She asked me "is this the work of a single person" and I answered "I hope not because I should quit mine if so :)".
The Chrono Break stuff is beautiful, but I actually prefer your game by far. Chrono Break (besides obviously not being a full game) is very derivative of Chrono Trigger; your game isn't, it's entirely fresh. The sweeping vistas and huge cities is not something I've seen in a pixel art game often (if ever). The combination of tactical and classic JRPG is also something very unique. It makes me super excited to play it when it releases. I feel like with proper marketing, it could set the world on fire.
I'm feeling exactly like Machachan right now; the quality level in this thread is freaking incredible and it's hard not to feel self-conscious about it. It's about the only part that I dislike about making my own game; the paradoxical negative feeling when you discover an amazing indie game, when it used to be such a high. :/
You're making the game entirely solo? The music as well?
Both are probably connected. If more people saw your game, you'd be getting a lot of comments like, I can guarantee it. The game looks so evocative. It's extremelly hard to hint at a greater world or even at actual huge cities beyond the bits that we can show in games, but your trailer does that so well it's breathtaking. It feels like that into in FFVI where you see the imperial capital and think "wow, that's an actual, sprawling, industrial city, not like the smal rural towns of previous FF games".Wow, thanks. That's like, the nicest thing I've ever heard about anything I've dev'd. And I hjaven't even thrown out a tweet about the game in like 18 months, so y'know, not surprising you hadn't heard of it.
Well, I'll be frank: for what's shown in the trailer, and a solo project, I'd be shocked if it took anyone less than 5 full time years to get a complete game. I'm super excited that CrossCode finally got released, and I played that game's demo in 2012 (and it's multiple people working on it). I see your kickstarter was in 2016, that's like yesterday in terms of game dev times, even if you started a few years before that. This is especially true if you've not been working on the game full time. I've been working on my game for 20 months now entirelly "full time", and it's... well, I won't do a disservice to your game by comparing it to mine. :DThe music isn't me (it's this excellent dude), but 98% of the rest is. But those 18 months of Twitter silence aren't even the entire dev time on the game. Here's the failed Kickstarter campaign from so long ago it legitimately makes me very uncomfortable to think about. I only worked on things when I could between then and now, but still, it's been way too long. Granted, I don't think I was ready for what I was aiming for before and am now, but at this point it's basically been like taking night courses at college for multiple years to make a game in a niche of a niche that most people will say looks like something that came out twenty years ago, if they don't say "Wow, people are doing crazy things with RPGMaker nowadays!".
Too true and kind of terrifying. There's games with even simpler art that are very successful. I think the issue here is that you need to make art to learn art, so while it really pays to spend some time learning the basics like shading and antialiasing, in the end I'd almost say it's OK to just do stuff for your game and then replace when you get better.If someone ever said that they wanted to do what I did, I would straight up
Find another person (or more) to work with, cut down on the scope, if you can't art, get an artist and focus on learning to art yourself before wasting your time on mountains of iterative work that's going to take a gross amount of time to sort through and replace, etc. Not that art is always that big of a deal. For instance, Stardew Valley doesn't have particularly noteworthy pixel art, whereas games like Chasm and The Mummy Demastered are probably two of the best pixel art games to be released ever, and neither really lit the world on fire.
Are you considering getting a publisher? Frankly at this point I think a publisher can give you far better exposure than trying to be one of the thousands of games trying to capture the public's attention. Your game is spectacular enough that I think you should have no issue pitching it to a publisher; in your particular case, I think Chucklefish would be a very good fit.I don't really have any deadlines or limits for this project until post-crowdfunding, but if you do (and you should), know your limits (if only so that you know an appropriate degree to push them to), and gameplay first.
Ha, c'mon now, don't dump your own game like that. There's a ton of great stuff going on in there. I don't have too much to say that anyone else hasn't already, but something that occurred to me while watching it - that I think you have an opportunity to utilize that I really kinda didn't - is that you have a lot of clear aesthetic models in indie gaming to aim for. The vibrant, cartoon-ish style - as opposed to my dumb ass pixel painting at 640x360 - is a prevalent one, and along with the trailer edits that people recommended, there really isn't any reason why your trailer wouldn't be just as good as mine if you tightened up the aesthetic.There's so much to reply to here. Hopefully the rest of the thread doesn't mind, otherwise we can take it to PMs I guess.
Both are probably connected. If more people saw your game, you'd be getting a lot of comments like, I can guarantee it. The game looks so evocative. It's extremelly hard to hint at a greater world or even at actual huge cities beyond the bits that we can show in games, but your trailer does that so well it's breathtaking. It feels like that into in FFVI where you see the imperial capital and think "wow, that's an actual, sprawling, industrial city, not like the smal rural towns of previous FF games".
Well, I'll be frank: for what's shown in the trailer, and a solo project, I'd be shocked if it took anyone less than 5 full time years to get a complete game. I'm super excited that CrossCode finally got released, and I played that game's demo in 2012 (and it's multiple people working on it). I see your kickstarter was in 2016, that's like yesterday in terms of game dev times, even if you started a few years before that. This is especially true if you've not been working on the game full time. I've been working on my game for 20 months now entirelly "full time", and it's... well, I won't do a disservice to your game by comparing it to mine. :D
Too true and kind of terrifying. There's games with even simpler art that are very successful. I think the issue here is that you need to make art to learn art, so while it really pays to spend some time learning the basics like shading and antialiasing, in the end I'd almost say it's OK to just do stuff for your game and then replace when you get better.
The Dunnig-Kruger is twice as deep and four times as long as I ever thought it would be, so that's been ... fun.Are you considering getting a publisher? Frankly at this point I think a publisher can give you far better exposure than trying to be one of the thousands of games trying to capture the public's attention. Your game is spectacular enough that I think you should have no issue pitching it to a publisher; in your particular case, I think Chucklefish would be a very good fit.
As I was writing this reply I told my SO "It's amazing how, no matter how talented and good someone is and how awesome their work looks, they're always going to be insecure". It's kind of like a reverse Dunning-Kruger (or a general case of Imposter Syndrome, I guess).
Ha, c'mon now, don't dump your own game like that. There's a ton of great stuff going on in there. I don't have too much to say that anyone else hasn't already, but something that occurred to me while watching it - that I think you have an opportunity to utilize that I really kinda didn't - is that you have a lot of clear aesthetic models in indie gaming to aim for. The vibrant, cartoon-ish style - as opposed to my dumb ass pixel painting at 640x360 - is a prevalent one, and along with the trailer edits that people recommended, there really isn't any reason why your trailer wouldn't be just as good as mine if you tightened up the aesthetic.
If I were you, I'd write the Rivals of Aether devs, show them your game, and ask if they would be willing to send some of their game's art your way for you to study and improve the art in your own. Obviously, don't copy it, but use it learn how they did shading, and outlining, and squash and stretch, and anticipation and impact and frame timings/count and so on and so forth. And if they're not cool with that, y'know whatever, it's kind of a big ask, but you can still just buy the game, open up gifcam, and do a frame by frame. Divinoids would get a meteoric boost from a little bit tighter of an artstyle and especially from some snappy, reflexive animation, and RoA has all of that plus an aesthetic that doesn't seem too far off from your own. It's true that you learn art by making art, but you learn art much faster when you have a clear goal, compatible style, and definite references to aim for.
The Dunnig-Kruger is twice as deep and four times as long as I ever thought it would be, so that's been ... fun.
Anyway, I'm not really looking for a publisher yet, but I might look into it down the line, once I'm a little more comfortable with the release window. It still feels a little early for it and I don't think that if it even were an option now it would be in either party's interest to lock things in before some more progress was made.
Pixelart looks great. Colours could perhaps be a bit more interesting in the fight scene.I don't post in here as often as I should, but I figure this is probably the place to go so, anyone up for providing some trailer feedback?
https://youtu.be/znEK00mZuoA
I'm kinda noseblind to the whole thing at this point and haven't really gotten any general impressions yet, so any feedback/pointers/suggestions would be super appreciated.