Also went ahead and bought the nested prefab extension (why isn't this built-in?) so I can start making a bunch more room types without duplicating a lot of work. I'm thinking of trying to aim for enough content to fill the first 4 floors reasonably well and then try to polish that into an actual self-contained game before adding more. Maybe after that I'll commission some art to at least get a real main character, but I've got to do some brainstorming about art direction etc.
I forgot to ask, what are you programming this in? If it's Unity, any suggestions on 2D stuff? Like what to get from the marketplace, if anything.
Also went ahead and bought the nested prefab extension (why isn't this built-in?) so I can start making a bunch more room types without duplicating a lot of work. I'm thinking of trying to aim for enough content to fill the first 4 floors reasonably well and then try to polish that into an actual self-contained game before adding more. Maybe after that I'll commission some art to at least get a real main character, but I've got to do some brainstorming about art direction etc.
I forgot to ask, what are you programming this in? If it's Unity, any suggestions on 2D stuff? Like what to get from the marketplace, if anything.
Yeah Unity, I didn't end up using much from the marketplace for gameplay. Prefab Evolution is good for adding nested prefabs which are a must for creating a lot of template objects/rooms/etc. The standard 2D physics libraries work pretty well, you can just directly modify the velocity each frame for the control logic.
How much C++ am I going to have to pick up to use Unreal regularly? Last time I did anything in C++ Tom Swan was writing the books so my C++ knowledge is completely useless. Those books were epic though.
None to moderate. Technically you can do almost everything with their visual scripting, but if you want speed/fancy stuff you will need C++. They don't use anything fancy though beyond their macros, so if you know how to work virtual functions you're good
My quest to find a visual style for my game continues! The old idea sucked, here's a new, better one:
Imagine your classic fantasy world for a moment -- your Game of Thrones, your Lord of the Rings, etc. They've got adventurers. Wizards. Dragons. Undead. Now imagine that this world grows up. Imagine they go through an industrial revolution, and then a technological revolution, and they arrive at something like our world in, say, 1990: Most of the world has been explored. Magic might exist but it's tame now. Dragons live only in zoos. There aren't any hidden ruins or undead any longer. Now, there's coffee shops and personal computers and office jobs. People live relatively peaceful, uneventful lives.
In this world, what remnants might exist from their past culture? One remnant might be something like the Olympics. Except, instead of track and field and swimming or whatever, they're things like "Lead a party of adventurers into a gigantic modern dungeon and slay the dragon at the end."
And imagine that in this universe, there's something like the FIFA line of video games. Except, they'd be about their version of the most popular sport in the world.
My quest to find a visual style for my game continues! The old idea sucked, here's a new, better one:
Imagine your classic fantasy world for a moment -- your Game of Thrones, your Lord of the Rings, etc. They've got adventurers. Wizards. Dragons. Undead. Now imagine that this world grows up. Imagine they go through an industrial revolution, and then a technological revolution, and they arrive at something like our world in, say, 1990: Most of the world has been explored. Magic might exist but it's tame now. Dragons live only in zoos. There aren't any hidden ruins or undead any longer. Now, there's coffee shops and personal computers and office jobs. People live relatively peaceful, uneventful lives.
In this world, what remnants might exist from their past culture? One remnant might be something like the Olympics. Except, instead of track and field and swimming or whatever, they're things like "Lead a party of adventurers into a gigantic modern dungeon and slay the dragon at the end."
And imagine that in this universe, there's something like the FIFA line of video games. Except, they'd be about their version of the most popular sport in the world.
That's this video game.
I would highly recommend checking out the art style of MegaSphere. Its the best pixel art I've ever seen and takes full advantage of Unity's lighting.
The guy also streams so you can see him working live, and its truly and awe inspiring process.
I'm sure most of you have seen this site already, but it's a great resource for simple entry-level coding concepts for many types of games. Check it out.
Need a voice actor? Hire me at bengrayVO.com
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051 Steam ID Twitch Page
I'm sure most of you have seen this site already, but it's a great resource for simple entry-level coding concepts for many types of games. Check it out.
bookmarked, will add it to my tutorial backlog and try to implement everything in Unity for practice
The wife and I got our help menu in place this weekend on our iOS game. Now we need to import BGM, SFX, settings, level tutorials, and the credits. Well, I'm sure there are other small things I'm forgetting, but that's the big stuff.
I can't believe this game I dreamed up in my color theory class is becoming a reality!
Need a voice actor? Hire me at bengrayVO.com
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051 Steam ID Twitch Page
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David_TA fashion yes-man is no good to me.Copenhagen, DenmarkRegistered Userregular
Getting back into Game Maker is like riding a bicycle with seventy odd pedals and every one of them does something different and damn it, I knew how to do this at one point.
What are the main limitations of something like Game Maker? I'm wondering if it would be smarter to work in that than Unity, given that my ambitions are limited to retro-style 2D games. I'm a developer by trade so I'm not having any trouble with Unity per se but I often find myself not in the mood to do a lot of coding in my free time. So I'm wondering how much time it saves for an experienced programmer and what the tradeoffs are.
What are the main limitations of something like Game Maker? I'm wondering if it would be smarter to work in that than Unity, given that my ambitions are limited to retro-style 2D games. I'm a developer by trade so I'm not having any trouble with Unity per se but I often find myself not in the mood to do a lot of coding in my free time. So I'm wondering how much time it saves for an experienced programmer and what the tradeoffs are.
I've used both and like both. Gamemaker doesnt have a mac native client so I don't really have a choice but to use Unity (or work in a VM).
That said Unity has lot going for it.
Unity has a much larger community and so has better support. In my limited experience the people on the gamemaker forums were kind of dicks.
The C# language is much more feature rich than GML but that doesn't matter for 99% of games programming. If you are super into "proper" programming methods the lack of typing and "modern" data structure in GML will make you all twitchy.
Gamemaker has a very focused feature set for making 2d pixel games and works very well for that purpose. And being so focused makes things easier like measuring and doing calculations in pixels which you can only do in Unity with some gymnastics.
But before you commit to gamemaker for pixel games, take a look at the gameplay vids for this Unity 2d pixel game http://www.antonkudin.me/megasphere/
I don't think you could possibly pull something like that off in Gamemaker.
My recommendation is if you aren't scared for C# then go with Unity. Over the "long term" if will prove more useful in your game development "career".
Thanks to this amazing tutorial from the guy behind MegaSphere, I now can do 3D looking sprites that respond to light! I am SO excited about this!! My space game is completely top down and I love painting my ships by hand, not to mention 2D is way faster for me to develop assets in than 3D generally. For my purposes they may as well be 3D ships really, as my test ship quite looks like one with this technique.
Here are two editor shots of a test ship I whipped up right fast after reading the tutorial. I'm pretty happy with how this is going to make my game look! That's zoomed in closer than my game will normally play at, so it will be sharper in the end.
DarkMecha on
Steam Profile | My Art | NID: DarkMecha (SW-4787-9571-8977) | PSN: DarkMecha
Yeah, Unity's shaders make 2d look really nice if you make normal maps and emissive maps (and whatever other maps) for them.
When you look at some of the nicer-looking 2d pixel art, much of the magic is in shading. But with normal maps and a lighting engine, you don't need to worry about shading your pixel art by hand. You can just let the engine handle that for you.
It's hard to find honest comparisons between Unity and Game Maker that aren't fanboy wars on one or the other's forums, but the general consensus seems to be that if you want a 3D game then Unity obviously wins, and for 2D games Game Maker is a lot easier and more streamlined with the tradeoff that you might run into limitations if you start getting really serious or want to do something weird. There are still a bunch of legit games made in GM though which I don't expect to surpass, so it's not just good for "babby's first game". From my experience with Unity 2D thus far it's clear that it can do anything you want with enough effort, but a lot of simple things are made needlessly complicated by the jack-of-all-trades nature of its toolset, plus their roots in 3D games.
I figure I'll take a stab at GM:S, I'm working through the tutorials now and kicking around some ideas for a rogue-lite platformer with gameplay inspiration from Cave Story. Lest I be called a quitter I'll upload what I built so far on my Zelda-rogue-lite for posterity if anyone is curious: https://www.dropbox.com/s/r0ymvaxhyqv5ub3/Roguelike Prototype.zip?dl=0 (Gamepad recommended)
Well folks, I'm not in a great place with regards to the game I've been posting about recently. The goal was a two player head to head multiplayer, turn based, squad-based tactical game. And even though I have a working game, and even though it's not completely unfun to play, I have some serious reservations about it making the game I'd die on a hill for.
One, turns out there's a game in development right now that is pretty much my exact original idea for the game. Duelyst is its name.
Two, I've had a few ideas for how to theme my game, but none of them have really worked for me once I stick them in and try them. I'm out of inspiration in that regards.
Three, I'm not really sure I *want* to get into the multiplayer game business. This is the real thing I find myself stuck on. Yes, that's where I have experience -- I've gotten pretty good at building stable, reliable services that live on the internet. But after another week of dealing with networking-related problems at my real job, I find myself seriously questioning if that's where I want to continue to spend my time.
Also, with a multiplayer game, you kind of make it your business to support that game for as long as it goes on. You can't develop a multiplayer game, then just let it go.
When I think deeply about the games I want to make, I find myself thinking about games like Alien: Isolation, or the Wolf Among Us, or Eyes of Ara: Single-player, more story-focused games with a clearly defined beginning, middle, and end. Games that you can make, then release and let go of. [Obviously lending some support to the game for stability issues and such.]
I think you might be expecting too much of yourself, not necessarily in terms of what you can actually produce but re the support, dying on a hill, getting-into-the-X-business stuff. You can make and ship a game, even a multiplayer one, without it needing to be a massive ongoing-forever commitment. A lot of great multiplayer games just get dumped out there and never get any support and stay functional and good pretty much forever. I'm not saying that's ideal, and it depends a lot on the type of game (I don't know much about the genre you're in) but it's a thing. And unless you've actually quit your job to do your indie dev or similar, you probably don't need the this-game-is-my-everything mentality to make something work - it might actually work against you.
I might be overstepping/projecting/reading into your posts too much, but I feel like you're in a loop of disappointed epiphanies, where you're excited about what you're working on, it's all working out better than you'd thought, and then after slogging away at the inevitable shitty parts for a while you start to question the whole thing and maybe lose sight of what you liked about it. Maybe you realise that a part of it is difficult that you didn't expect, and maybe wonder whether it's indicative of a faulty broader strategy/idea that you need to go back to the drawing board on until this stops happening (I am totally sympathetic to this, I keep doing the same thing). If any of this rings true, I think the answer is you have to at some point just thug it out and do the thing anyway. You have to risk making the mistakes you're worried about making or it's a hard limit on your learns.
@Melkster I feel you in a sense man. Initially I was like "I will make a space game! There are no space games, so I will stand out!" now there are tons of them.
Yet I still really want to make a space game, and I have no idea if anyone will buy it but I'm going to do it anyways.
Steam Profile | My Art | NID: DarkMecha (SW-4787-9571-8977) | PSN: DarkMecha
I think you might be expecting too much of yourself, not necessarily in terms of what you can actually produce but re the support, dying on a hill, getting-into-the-X-business stuff. You can make and ship a game, even a multiplayer one, without it needing to be a massive ongoing-forever commitment. A lot of great multiplayer games just get dumped out there and never get any support and stay functional and good pretty much forever. I'm not saying that's ideal, and it depends a lot on the type of game (I don't know much about the genre you're in) but it's a thing. And unless you've actually quit your job to do your indie dev or similar, you probably don't need the this-game-is-my-everything mentality to make something work - it might actually work against you.
I might be overstepping/projecting/reading into your posts too much, but I feel like you're in a loop of disappointed epiphanies, where you're excited about what you're working on, it's all working out better than you'd thought, and then after slogging away at the inevitable shitty parts for a while you start to question the whole thing and maybe lose sight of what you liked about it. Maybe you realise that a part of it is difficult that you didn't expect, and maybe wonder whether it's indicative of a faulty broader strategy/idea that you need to go back to the drawing board on until this stops happening (I am totally sympathetic to this, I keep doing the same thing). If any of this rings true, I think the answer is you have to at some point just thug it out and do the thing anyway. You have to risk making the mistakes you're worried about making or it's a hard limit on your learns.
ymmv, etc
You know, one reads a lot about successful people and their success stories, but you hear much less often about their unfinished projects. I wonder how common this experience of ours is.
For me, I don't want to be the guy who constantly starts new things and never finishes them. Then again, I also don't want to waste my time toiling on projects that I think aren't working out.
That's a paradox.
What gives me hope is that I DO finish OTHER things in life, just not games. That makes me feel less bad about not finishing games -- it suggests that I do know how to follow through with the completion of things; that I'm not fundamentally a quitter. It suggests that perhaps this creative process where I come up with an idea, prototype it, realize some things about it aren't working, and then try something else, might be working out for me. And along the way I am learning some pretty useful things that help me out in the next project.
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David_TA fashion yes-man is no good to me.Copenhagen, DenmarkRegistered Userregular
I don't think I'll ever understand the point of surfaces in GameMaker. I'm sure there is some, but every tutorial I see is either incomprehensible gibberish or ends by going "of course, you could just do this in a regular draw event, but this is a way of doing it using surfaces instead".
Nothing like the feeling of going through one of the Unreal Engine 4 tutorials (lighting quickstart) and not having any idea why theirs is so white and mine is so yellow. I can't figure out what one goddamned copy-over I missed.
Kupi on
My favorite musical instrument is the air-raid siren.
Speaking of learning Unreal Engine 4, holy smokes, this is a whole other beast than UDK.
The one thing that I thought Unity had an advantage over UDK was the gameplay programming side of things. Working with Unity's component-oriented GameObject system, in C#, was much, much better than UDK's awful awful UnrealScript.
In UE4 however, it looks like they took all the good parts from Unity's GameObject system and put it in Unreal Engine 4. And they got rid of UnrealScript, thank god.
I'm thinking I'll make this next prototype I've been cookin' up in my noggin in UE4.
Nothing like the feeling of going through one of the Unreal Engine 4 tutorials (lighting quickstart) and not having any idea why theirs is so white and mine is so yellow. I can't figure out what one goddamned copy-over I missed.
Welp, just finished this tutorial and yeah it seems to match what they have pretty closely. You're sure you've got the same light color settings as the tutorial, for all the lights in the scene?
If y'all need any help with anything unreal, poke me! I know the thing quite well by now and run the biggest UE4 Facebook group out there, where most issues have probably already come up ;-)
In other news, I've been in a terrible slump lately, ugh. What are y'all's favorite anti-slump recipes?
If y'all need any help with anything unreal, poke me! I know the thing quite well by now and run the biggest UE4 Facebook group out there, where most issues have probably already come up ;-)
In other news, I've been in a terrible slump lately, ugh. What are y'all's favorite anti-slump recipes?
Self-hatred and drill sergeant shouting at myself. (Not for everyone.)
Eliminate all distractions. Close all internet browsers and media players, deactivate all cell phones and tablets and whatever the fuck else. Creativity is fed by boredom. Make yourself as bored as possible.
Take a walk.
Do something else completely mindless, yet uninteresting, preferably beneficial and not in violation of second point. (Fold laundry, take out garbage, tidy working space.)
The most important thing to know is that starting is the most difficult part of any creative exercise. Anything that gets you to start is 90% of a solution to a slump.
My favorite musical instrument is the air-raid siren.
If y'all need any help with anything unreal, poke me! I know the thing quite well by now and run the biggest UE4 Facebook group out there, where most issues have probably already come up ;-)
In other news, I've been in a terrible slump lately, ugh. What are y'all's favorite anti-slump recipes?
My favorite kickstarter posted a pretty interesting video about how he builds each room in his game. I wonder, is this how level design is generally done at professional shops?
Melkster on
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Xavier1216Bagu is my name. Show my note to river man.Greater Boston AreaRegistered Userregular
Eliminate all distractions. Close all internet browsers and media players, deactivate all cell phones and tablets and whatever the fuck else. Creativity is fed by boredom. Make yourself as bored as possible.
Holy crap, that's why my best ideas come to me during periods of downtime at work! I don't think I ever noticed the pattern until I read that.
The treadmill at the gym is often a source of inspiration for me. Nothing to do but look in one place and run for a while. The mind quickly slips into a pretty creative state.
Posts
I forgot to ask, what are you programming this in? If it's Unity, any suggestions on 2D stuff? Like what to get from the marketplace, if anything.
Yeah Unity, I didn't end up using much from the marketplace for gameplay. Prefab Evolution is good for adding nested prefabs which are a must for creating a lot of template objects/rooms/etc. The standard 2D physics libraries work pretty well, you can just directly modify the velocity each frame for the control logic.
Imagine your classic fantasy world for a moment -- your Game of Thrones, your Lord of the Rings, etc. They've got adventurers. Wizards. Dragons. Undead. Now imagine that this world grows up. Imagine they go through an industrial revolution, and then a technological revolution, and they arrive at something like our world in, say, 1990: Most of the world has been explored. Magic might exist but it's tame now. Dragons live only in zoos. There aren't any hidden ruins or undead any longer. Now, there's coffee shops and personal computers and office jobs. People live relatively peaceful, uneventful lives.
In this world, what remnants might exist from their past culture? One remnant might be something like the Olympics. Except, instead of track and field and swimming or whatever, they're things like "Lead a party of adventurers into a gigantic modern dungeon and slay the dragon at the end."
And imagine that in this universe, there's something like the FIFA line of video games. Except, they'd be about their version of the most popular sport in the world.
That's this video game.
I would highly recommend checking out the art style of MegaSphere. Its the best pixel art I've ever seen and takes full advantage of Unity's lighting.
The guy also streams so you can see him working live, and its truly and awe inspiring process.
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
Steam ID
Twitch Page
bookmarked, will add it to my tutorial backlog and try to implement everything in Unity for practice
I can't believe this game I dreamed up in my color theory class is becoming a reality!
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
Steam ID
Twitch Page
I've used both and like both. Gamemaker doesnt have a mac native client so I don't really have a choice but to use Unity (or work in a VM).
That said Unity has lot going for it.
Unity has a much larger community and so has better support. In my limited experience the people on the gamemaker forums were kind of dicks.
The C# language is much more feature rich than GML but that doesn't matter for 99% of games programming. If you are super into "proper" programming methods the lack of typing and "modern" data structure in GML will make you all twitchy.
Gamemaker has a very focused feature set for making 2d pixel games and works very well for that purpose. And being so focused makes things easier like measuring and doing calculations in pixels which you can only do in Unity with some gymnastics.
But before you commit to gamemaker for pixel games, take a look at the gameplay vids for this Unity 2d pixel game http://www.antonkudin.me/megasphere/
I don't think you could possibly pull something like that off in Gamemaker.
My recommendation is if you aren't scared for C# then go with Unity. Over the "long term" if will prove more useful in your game development "career".
If you want to see it in action check this MegaSphere video out:
When you look at some of the nicer-looking 2d pixel art, much of the magic is in shading. But with normal maps and a lighting engine, you don't need to worry about shading your pixel art by hand. You can just let the engine handle that for you.
I figure I'll take a stab at GM:S, I'm working through the tutorials now and kicking around some ideas for a rogue-lite platformer with gameplay inspiration from Cave Story. Lest I be called a quitter I'll upload what I built so far on my Zelda-rogue-lite for posterity if anyone is curious: https://www.dropbox.com/s/r0ymvaxhyqv5ub3/Roguelike Prototype.zip?dl=0 (Gamepad recommended)
Here's an actual tryhard playthrough:
One, turns out there's a game in development right now that is pretty much my exact original idea for the game. Duelyst is its name.
Two, I've had a few ideas for how to theme my game, but none of them have really worked for me once I stick them in and try them. I'm out of inspiration in that regards.
Three, I'm not really sure I *want* to get into the multiplayer game business. This is the real thing I find myself stuck on. Yes, that's where I have experience -- I've gotten pretty good at building stable, reliable services that live on the internet. But after another week of dealing with networking-related problems at my real job, I find myself seriously questioning if that's where I want to continue to spend my time.
Also, with a multiplayer game, you kind of make it your business to support that game for as long as it goes on. You can't develop a multiplayer game, then just let it go.
When I think deeply about the games I want to make, I find myself thinking about games like Alien: Isolation, or the Wolf Among Us, or Eyes of Ara: Single-player, more story-focused games with a clearly defined beginning, middle, and end. Games that you can make, then release and let go of. [Obviously lending some support to the game for stability issues and such.]
Hmm.
I might be overstepping/projecting/reading into your posts too much, but I feel like you're in a loop of disappointed epiphanies, where you're excited about what you're working on, it's all working out better than you'd thought, and then after slogging away at the inevitable shitty parts for a while you start to question the whole thing and maybe lose sight of what you liked about it. Maybe you realise that a part of it is difficult that you didn't expect, and maybe wonder whether it's indicative of a faulty broader strategy/idea that you need to go back to the drawing board on until this stops happening (I am totally sympathetic to this, I keep doing the same thing). If any of this rings true, I think the answer is you have to at some point just thug it out and do the thing anyway. You have to risk making the mistakes you're worried about making or it's a hard limit on your learns.
ymmv, etc
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
Yet I still really want to make a space game, and I have no idea if anyone will buy it but I'm going to do it anyways.
You know, one reads a lot about successful people and their success stories, but you hear much less often about their unfinished projects. I wonder how common this experience of ours is.
For me, I don't want to be the guy who constantly starts new things and never finishes them. Then again, I also don't want to waste my time toiling on projects that I think aren't working out.
That's a paradox.
What gives me hope is that I DO finish OTHER things in life, just not games. That makes me feel less bad about not finishing games -- it suggests that I do know how to follow through with the completion of things; that I'm not fundamentally a quitter. It suggests that perhaps this creative process where I come up with an idea, prototype it, realize some things about it aren't working, and then try something else, might be working out for me. And along the way I am learning some pretty useful things that help me out in the next project.
The one thing that I thought Unity had an advantage over UDK was the gameplay programming side of things. Working with Unity's component-oriented GameObject system, in C#, was much, much better than UDK's awful awful UnrealScript.
In UE4 however, it looks like they took all the good parts from Unity's GameObject system and put it in Unreal Engine 4. And they got rid of UnrealScript, thank god.
I'm thinking I'll make this next prototype I've been cookin' up in my noggin in UE4.
Welp, just finished this tutorial and yeah it seems to match what they have pretty closely. You're sure you've got the same light color settings as the tutorial, for all the lights in the scene?
In other news, I've been in a terrible slump lately, ugh. What are y'all's favorite anti-slump recipes?
Unreal Engine 4 Developers Community.
I'm working on a cute little video game! Here's a link for you.
Self-hatred and drill sergeant shouting at myself. (Not for everyone.)
Eliminate all distractions. Close all internet browsers and media players, deactivate all cell phones and tablets and whatever the fuck else. Creativity is fed by boredom. Make yourself as bored as possible.
Take a walk.
Do something else completely mindless, yet uninteresting, preferably beneficial and not in violation of second point. (Fold laundry, take out garbage, tidy working space.)
The most important thing to know is that starting is the most difficult part of any creative exercise. Anything that gets you to start is 90% of a solution to a slump.
finish your spline hub marketplace thing
My favorite kickstarter posted a pretty interesting video about how he builds each room in his game. I wonder, is this how level design is generally done at professional shops?
Holy crap, that's why my best ideas come to me during periods of downtime at work! I don't think I ever noticed the pattern until I read that.
PSN: PLD_Xavier | NNID: Xavier1216