My most played game over the past few months is FTL: Faster Than Light. Who knows what proportion they may comprise, but there's some segment of the population that doesn't care if your graphics are 2D.
Kupi on
My favorite musical instrument is the air-raid siren.
More to the point I'm pretty sure the overlap of "people who will play an indie top down tactical space combat game" and "people who will refuse to play a game with 2D art" is insignificantly small so long as your game separates itself mechanically from its 3D contemporaries.
Eh, I dunno, ScaleForm is basically a re-implementation of Flash/ActionScript. Not really sure what ScaleForm buys you now that HTML5 and EcmaScript 5 are in the wild (and things like Awsomium exists). Basically anyone who can make SWF files can make HTML5 UI's.
I won't be surprised at all when ScaleForm announces their own HTML5 product (if they haven't already) as Flash begins to wind down as a technology.
it doesn't matter how fast javascript gets nor how many jquery patches and CSS specs get released and supported, there will never be a replacement for the awesome might and convenience of Flash's drawing and animation tools.
In Flash you can draw amorphous, contoured shapes with ease and animate them in mere seconds, and a software rasterizer does the math for you
lets you very easily create interesting gui component shapes with less busy work
I have no idea if it's even possible to tie other javascript libraries into Awesomeonium or not, but HTML5/Javascript support for SVG animations and modifications are pretty much at the level of Flash now, if not better (because fuck action script). Snap SVG is absolutely amazing for example.
SVG isn't a replacement (in my opinion) for what Flash can do. Flash has a really cool raster shape sculpting tool that allows you to do highly detailed frame-by-frame animations. Premium shit.
JS is still basically in the "here's a shape, tween it" realm. Not that it's not functional, but there's a reason Flash still exists as a professional tool. I can point to animations all over Borderlands 2 that would be 60 lines of crap code in JS, and one neat artists timeline in Flash
You keep using JS in place of HTML5, and I don't think you mean to. HTML5 is what provides the programming model. JavaScript is just the language, and it's the SAME language Flash uses. Dirty secret: ActionScript is just JavaScript with a few Adobe extensions.
There is little stopping people from porting Flash's raster shape engine to HTML5, and in fact it's already being worked on from several different angles. And I was right about ScaleForm, they've been out and about talking about their eventual HTML5 change over as Flash slowly fades out and some of the tools (like a raster shapes library) in the HTML5 space mature.
sorry dude but you need more information about Flash's drawing tools. You cannot morph or path shapes in any web standard technology like you can in Flash with comparable levels of ease. Nothing in the HTML5/CSS3 suite I've seen comes close to the depth and robustness of shape tweening in Flash
Adobe's own HTML5 answer for Flash (Edge) doesn't even bother to attempt to emulate half of those features, and it has a terrible scripting interface to boot. I'd rather seppuku.
Anything they do in Flash, anything, can be done using Canvas if you're willing to code it. Nobody is debating that Flash has some neat tools, our contention is that everything Flash does can be done with HTML5 with enough work. Canvas is low enough level to emulate any possible 2D operation if you understand the math. I mean shit, someone wrote an OpenGL 2 compliant software rasterizer in JavaScript pre HTML 5. A lot of that work hasn't been done yet, and Flash has more out of the box, but people are working on these things, including ScaleForm themselves.
As a side note, if anyone wants to see a professional implementation of an Awesomium UI (from the user's point of view), look at ArcheAge. I was poking around in their bin files, and it's littered with Awesomoium stuff.
Ain't nobody gives a shit about how much Ds in their tactical space combat game.
Haha, that was funny. Thanks guys, I'll not worry about it then. Hopefully I'll have a video to show off of my alpha build towards the end of the week. Getting to where I have stuff to show finally.
Steam Profile | My Art | NID: DarkMecha (SW-4787-9571-8977) | PSN: DarkMecha
As a side note, if anyone wants to see a professional implementation of an Awesomium UI (from the user's point of view), look at ArcheAge. I was poking around in their bin files, and it's littered with Awesomoium stuff.
That's no guarantee the interface is implemented with Awesomium. Both Guild Wars 2 and The Secret World contain Awesomium stuff, but it's strictly used for the marketplace/in-game browser. The interface in both those games is handled via Scaleform.
So I'm making a top down, 2D game about tactical space combat. If you are familiar with StarSector (formerly StarFarer) or SPAZ, think that mixed with the old StarTrek Starfleet Command games, and alot of my own takes on how to do things to make it unique. I'm really excited about it and I've been trucking along pretty well for a few months, no major problems (yet).
However, after seeing what the amazing dude over at the Shallow Space built in it sees like the same time frame, I feel rather lame. I wonder, will anyone care about a game that's just 2D? I chose 2D because I'm just one guy and 2D art is far faster to do than 3D, even though I have plenty of 3D space ship design experience. Further even though it's 2D, I have alot of ideas about how to make the gameplay very tactically deep.
I guess I'm just worried that people will see that it's 2D and either not care about it because the graphics aren't super awesome 3D or assume it's not very good because it's "just a 2D game".
Don't worry about what other people are doing, just make what you want to make. Make things not because of how other people will perceive them, make them because you want to live in a world in which they exist. And just because someone might be objectively better than you at something doesn't diminish your own progress and accomplishments.
Eh, I dunno, ScaleForm is basically a re-implementation of Flash/ActionScript. Not really sure what ScaleForm buys you now that HTML5 and EcmaScript 5 are in the wild (and things like Awsomium exists). Basically anyone who can make SWF files can make HTML5 UI's.
I won't be surprised at all when ScaleForm announces their own HTML5 product (if they haven't already) as Flash begins to wind down as a technology.
it doesn't matter how fast javascript gets nor how many jquery patches and CSS specs get released and supported, there will never be a replacement for the awesome might and convenience of Flash's drawing and animation tools.
In Flash you can draw amorphous, contoured shapes with ease and animate them in mere seconds, and a software rasterizer does the math for you
lets you very easily create interesting gui component shapes with less busy work
I have no idea if it's even possible to tie other javascript libraries into Awesomeonium or not, but HTML5/Javascript support for SVG animations and modifications are pretty much at the level of Flash now, if not better (because fuck action script). Snap SVG is absolutely amazing for example.
SVG isn't a replacement (in my opinion) for what Flash can do. Flash has a really cool raster shape sculpting tool that allows you to do highly detailed frame-by-frame animations. Premium shit.
JS is still basically in the "here's a shape, tween it" realm. Not that it's not functional, but there's a reason Flash still exists as a professional tool. I can point to animations all over Borderlands 2 that would be 60 lines of crap code in JS, and one neat artists timeline in Flash
You keep using JS in place of HTML5, and I don't think you mean to. HTML5 is what provides the programming model. JavaScript is just the language, and it's the SAME language Flash uses. Dirty secret: ActionScript is just JavaScript with a few Adobe extensions.
There is little stopping people from porting Flash's raster shape engine to HTML5, and in fact it's already being worked on from several different angles. And I was right about ScaleForm, they've been out and about talking about their eventual HTML5 change over as Flash slowly fades out and some of the tools (like a raster shapes library) in the HTML5 space mature.
sorry dude but you need more information about Flash's drawing tools. You cannot morph or path shapes in any web standard technology like you can in Flash with comparable levels of ease. Nothing in the HTML5/CSS3 suite I've seen comes close to the depth and robustness of shape tweening in Flash
Adobe's own HTML5 answer for Flash (Edge) doesn't even bother to attempt to emulate half of those features, and it has a terrible scripting interface to boot. I'd rather seppuku.
Anything they do in Flash, anything, can be done using Canvas if you're willing to code it. Nobody is debating that Flash has some neat tools, our contention is that everything Flash does can be done with HTML5 with enough work. Canvas is low enough level to emulate any possible 2D operation if you understand the math. I mean shit, someone wrote an OpenGL 2 compliant software rasterizer in JavaScript pre HTML 5. A lot of that work hasn't been done yet, and Flash has more out of the box, but people are working on these things, including ScaleForm themselves.
As a side note, if anyone wants to see a professional implementation of an Awesomium UI (from the user's point of view), look at ArcheAge. I was poking around in their bin files, and it's littered with Awesomoium stuff.
i uhh.. yeah but that's not really the point. I am aware you can do anything with Canvas. That's like saying why bother with Photoshop, you can just write a C program that will generate your website design for you.
People have been banging on the CSS/Canvas war drum for basically half a decade now, and there's no serious market entrant. I take this as a sign that there are fundamental issues with the platform. Namely Canvas is every bit as slow as Flash was when the iPhone was released, and CSS3 only provides you with the essentials.
I am not intending this as argument, just as conversation.
Much like art, if you only create something because you want it to be new/unique or the best that ever was you'll never get good enough to even approach those goals.
So, Google's process for releasing apps is pretty amazingly streamlined. My app was submitted at around midnight and approved by the time I woke up in the morning, while my Apple App Store submission is still "waiting for review".
Not happy that Google Play Store doesn't really provide a means of doing promo codes, though
I'm going to be attending a game jam two weekends from now, and I am super excited. I am gonna be brushing up on my Unity in order to do so (and by brushing up, I mean I am going to be learning it at all). I've seen the tutorials and I plan to go ahead and follow them to get an idea of what's up, as well as doing some experimenting myself, however, last time I attempted this I ran into some issues I couldn't find a google answer for- primarily stuff I'm sure is dumb but that I just didn't know the answer to.
Is anyone here experienced enough in Unity 2d that they'd be willing and able to be a direct resource for questions for the next 1 week ish? I wouldn't mind posting my questions to this thread or other forums or whatever, but time is a factor here since I don't have long to gain at least basic proficiency.
streaming my stencly game development class live, I wont be able to interact with chat though but click link in sig to watch and listen if you want, starting sometime in the next 30 minutes I think
Did I thank you for mentioning Stencly? No? Thank you. I liked when google tried to do this when the very first android phone came out and was sad when it went away. So far the tutorials are far better than Gamemakers and you can get a game up in a much shorter time. The whole block building thing is just, Nice. Not having to fiddle around with braces or syntax errors while you are trying to just learn is fantastic.
I'm fiddling around with some Unity stuff and man, trying to move the player by anything more complex than simple translations is exercising mathy parts of my brain I haven't used in a long time.
Trying to get the player to accelerate and rotate, and have the sprite rotate properly, it's not as trivial as I might have hoped.
Doing a Yoshi's Cookie-style sliding puzzler in Unity has proven to be far more difficult than I had originally anticipated I thought I'd be able to knock something out super quick for the ld warmup weekend, but man, trying to get the pieces to snap into place and shift left/right is much harder than I thought.
Maybe I'll avoid a puzzle game like this for ludum dare
So I'm sorta toying with the idea of making a TRPG. That means a UI that'll be getting quite the workout...what's my best path here, working in UE4 and starting from nearly zero programming knowledge?
I'd say pick a much, much simpler project first, to get your feet wet and get familiar with the workflow, otherwise you'll just get stuck with some back end issue that'll make it feel like you're not getting anywhere and you'll abandon it; if you have some experience and reusable code under your belt that won't be nearly as much of an issue.
Since you're thinking TRPG, how about a turn based puzzle game? It'll require you to figure out UI, mouse control, how to make things interact and how to get basic AI in there, all without the complexity of a full blown RPG.
I'd say pick a much, much simpler project first, to get your feet wet and get familiar with the workflow, otherwise you'll just get stuck with some back end issue that'll make it feel like you're not getting anywhere and you'll abandon it; if you have some experience and reusable code under your belt that won't be nearly as much of an issue.
Since you're thinking TRPG, how about a turn based puzzle game? It'll require you to figure out UI, mouse control, how to make things interact and how to get basic AI in there, all without the complexity of a full blown RPG.
Yeah, the plan was to start smaller. I was just trying to get a picture of where I should be trying to go, so to speak. A turn-based puzzle game does seem like a good place to start.
Making a tactics game engine is a great way to learn a lot of game concepts like AI in a forgiving way, where things like performance are less crucial.
The problem I've always had is that you get to the point where you have this cool little prototype and then you realise that you now need a zillion sprites/3D models to flesh it out enough to make it a proper game. I think this is true for most RPG games unfortunately, the graphics work is just a much bigger task than the programming.
I'd love to make an RPG, but I just don't like drawing/3D modelling nearly as much as I like programming. Meeting a few workaholic RPG obsessed artists is probably my only chance of doing so. That, ASCII or text adventures.
So I'm sorta toying with the idea of making a TRPG. That means a UI that'll be getting quite the workout...what's my best path here, working in UE4 and starting from nearly zero programming knowledge?
I'm not sure if you meant this as a Unity vs UE4 question, but I just got UE4 after using Unity for about a year. I'd say that UE4 requires less programming then Unity does thanks to the blueprint system.
Making a tactics game engine is a great way to learn a lot of game concepts like AI in a forgiving way, where things like performance are less crucial.
The problem I've always had is that you get to the point where you have this cool little prototype and then you realise that you now need a zillion sprites/3D models to flesh it out enough to make it a proper game. I think this is true for most RPG games unfortunately, the graphics work is just a much bigger task than the programming.
I'd love to make an RPG, but I just don't like drawing/3D modelling nearly as much as I like programming. Meeting a few workaholic RPG obsessed artists is probably my only chance of doing so. That, ASCII or text adventures.
pretty much the problem of my life. although it does help to talk to an artist about these kinds of things and you learn some tricks that remove some of the grief
for example, i admire Castle Crashers for its extensive library of weapons, but it was a while until an artist pointed out to me that they actually don't animate each weapon. It's just one frame of texture and when the player swings the weapon it's just a generic slashing graphic.
little things you don't see while you're playing games go a long way toward conserving art budgets
Hmm...now the gears in my head are turning, and I'm thinking a puzzle game that looks like a simplistic TRPG might be fun. Super simplified units, with a few ways to solve whatever the goal of each stage may be, whether it's 'steal the treasure without being detected' or 'defeat all enemies within 5 rounds'.
So I'm making a top down, 2D game about tactical space combat. If you are familiar with StarSector (formerly StarFarer) or SPAZ, think that mixed with the old StarTrek Starfleet Command games, and alot of my own takes on how to do things to make it unique. I'm really excited about it and I've been trucking along pretty well for a few months, no major problems (yet).
However, after seeing what the amazing dude over at the Shallow Space built in it sees like the same time frame, I feel rather lame. I wonder, will anyone care about a game that's just 2D? I chose 2D because I'm just one guy and 2D art is far faster to do than 3D, even though I have plenty of 3D space ship design experience. Further even though it's 2D, I have alot of ideas about how to make the gameplay very tactically deep.
I guess I'm just worried that people will see that it's 2D and either not care about it because the graphics aren't super awesome 3D or assume it's not very good because it's "just a 2D game".
Easier said than done, but:
Don't get project envy. Trust that your baby will be beautiful in it's own right, and stick to your design doc.
Project envy will only scatter your focus, and can lead to project-killing things like feature bloat / disinterest / project rebooting.
UE4 question: Can you really not use Animation Composites in Blend Spaces? My animation composites show up in the asset browser when working on my blend space but it won't let me drag them onto the graph.
Don't worry about what other people are doing, just make what you want to make. Make things not because of how other people will perceive them, make them because you want to live in a world in which they exist. And just because someone might be objectively better than you at something doesn't diminish your own progress and accomplishments.
The above quote is a damn fine post and it should go into the OP. This is something very easy to lose sight of.
So I've decided that every night up until the official LD start, I'm going to try to build a prototype for a game engine before I sleep. I'm talking super simple, only placeholder graphics/sound/etc, just enough to be able to say "I can get an engine up and running and work on polish and content" ASAP.
Last night was an endless runner that I started and made some decent progress on before bedtime beckoned.
Tonight I'm deciding between tower defense and point-and-click adventure game.
The code is awful and I'm probably violating every unity best practice ever, but it's been a fun set of exercises to get my brain moving. Any suggestions for fun game engine builds that I can feasibly do in a few hours? I might try to do a racing game at some point too because I've literally never written one.
Physics based games (marble madness, stair dismount, angry birds etc.) can be really quick and easy if you are familiar with a physics engine. You just have to bung some stuff together and give people some way to affect things, and the engine (and the fact that people love mucking around with physics) does all the work.
Most physics engines have lots of quirks and unexpected behaviour though, so I wouldn't learn a new one if I was trying to develop something super quickly. As far as Unity goes Box2D is pretty solid, but the 3d physics (PhysX) can be a real hassle.
UE4 question: Can you really not use Animation Composites in Blend Spaces? My animation composites show up in the asset browser when working on my blend space but it won't let me drag them onto the graph.
Don't quote me on this but I think you have to do it in the Animation Blueprint instead of the blendspace. In the Animation Blueprint you are essentially making manual blendspaces anyway between your different parts of your animation.
Flash has the advantage of being run in a virtual machine and has better SVG/Vector support. That's really the only advantage I see at the core. ActionScript is just a crazy JS with more defined scope. Aside from that, the biggest issues fall between using a plugin and not. Native support was a big deal for a long while but most all browsers come with their own versions of the flash plugin. Soooooo... yeah.
At the end of the day, both are only as good as the user behind them.
I started following the pixel nest tutorial linked earlier and it is awesome. I ran into a little snag but I got it sorted. I could not get my sprites to show up in the game window, just the scene. I poked around a bit and took a guess that if something is on the same z position as the camera it would not show up and was correct. Felt good to do a little problem solving.
So this pixel nest tutorial is good, but I wish they explained it more. The WeaponScript section basically has you do a lot of complex/unintuitive stuff without really explaining why.
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Anything they do in Flash, anything, can be done using Canvas if you're willing to code it. Nobody is debating that Flash has some neat tools, our contention is that everything Flash does can be done with HTML5 with enough work. Canvas is low enough level to emulate any possible 2D operation if you understand the math. I mean shit, someone wrote an OpenGL 2 compliant software rasterizer in JavaScript pre HTML 5. A lot of that work hasn't been done yet, and Flash has more out of the box, but people are working on these things, including ScaleForm themselves.
As a side note, if anyone wants to see a professional implementation of an Awesomium UI (from the user's point of view), look at ArcheAge. I was poking around in their bin files, and it's littered with Awesomoium stuff.
Haha, that was funny. Thanks guys, I'll not worry about it then. Hopefully I'll have a video to show off of my alpha build towards the end of the week. Getting to where I have stuff to show finally.
seriously though here's a video of that vroom ue4 thing
Don't worry about what other people are doing, just make what you want to make. Make things not because of how other people will perceive them, make them because you want to live in a world in which they exist. And just because someone might be objectively better than you at something doesn't diminish your own progress and accomplishments.
i uhh.. yeah but that's not really the point. I am aware you can do anything with Canvas. That's like saying why bother with Photoshop, you can just write a C program that will generate your website design for you.
People have been banging on the CSS/Canvas war drum for basically half a decade now, and there's no serious market entrant. I take this as a sign that there are fundamental issues with the platform. Namely Canvas is every bit as slow as Flash was when the iPhone was released, and CSS3 only provides you with the essentials.
I am not intending this as argument, just as conversation.
Not happy that Google Play Store doesn't really provide a means of doing promo codes, though
I'm going to be attending a game jam two weekends from now, and I am super excited. I am gonna be brushing up on my Unity in order to do so (and by brushing up, I mean I am going to be learning it at all). I've seen the tutorials and I plan to go ahead and follow them to get an idea of what's up, as well as doing some experimenting myself, however, last time I attempted this I ran into some issues I couldn't find a google answer for- primarily stuff I'm sure is dumb but that I just didn't know the answer to.
Is anyone here experienced enough in Unity 2d that they'd be willing and able to be a direct resource for questions for the next 1 week ish? I wouldn't mind posting my questions to this thread or other forums or whatever, but time is a factor here since I don't have long to gain at least basic proficiency.
I added a new video explaining how my water works in my current project.
Steam: Handkor
Edit: done now
Trying to get the player to accelerate and rotate, and have the sprite rotate properly, it's not as trivial as I might have hoped.
Maybe I'll avoid a puzzle game like this for ludum dare
Since you're thinking TRPG, how about a turn based puzzle game? It'll require you to figure out UI, mouse control, how to make things interact and how to get basic AI in there, all without the complexity of a full blown RPG.
Yeah, the plan was to start smaller. I was just trying to get a picture of where I should be trying to go, so to speak. A turn-based puzzle game does seem like a good place to start.
This is one I've been playing a bit on android that seems pretty polished good
also has light rpg/town building elements
probably too complicated for a starter game but taking just the match 3 part and replicating that would be good
The problem I've always had is that you get to the point where you have this cool little prototype and then you realise that you now need a zillion sprites/3D models to flesh it out enough to make it a proper game. I think this is true for most RPG games unfortunately, the graphics work is just a much bigger task than the programming.
I'd love to make an RPG, but I just don't like drawing/3D modelling nearly as much as I like programming. Meeting a few workaholic RPG obsessed artists is probably my only chance of doing so. That, ASCII or text adventures.
I'm not sure if you meant this as a Unity vs UE4 question, but I just got UE4 after using Unity for about a year. I'd say that UE4 requires less programming then Unity does thanks to the blueprint system.
pretty much the problem of my life. although it does help to talk to an artist about these kinds of things and you learn some tricks that remove some of the grief
for example, i admire Castle Crashers for its extensive library of weapons, but it was a while until an artist pointed out to me that they actually don't animate each weapon. It's just one frame of texture and when the player swings the weapon it's just a generic slashing graphic.
little things you don't see while you're playing games go a long way toward conserving art budgets
Easier said than done, but:
Don't get project envy. Trust that your baby will be beautiful in it's own right, and stick to your design doc.
Project envy will only scatter your focus, and can lead to project-killing things like feature bloat / disinterest / project rebooting.
The above quote is a damn fine post and it should go into the OP. This is something very easy to lose sight of.
Last night was an endless runner that I started and made some decent progress on before bedtime beckoned.
Tonight I'm deciding between tower defense and point-and-click adventure game.
The code is awful and I'm probably violating every unity best practice ever, but it's been a fun set of exercises to get my brain moving. Any suggestions for fun game engine builds that I can feasibly do in a few hours? I might try to do a racing game at some point too because I've literally never written one.
Most physics engines have lots of quirks and unexpected behaviour though, so I wouldn't learn a new one if I was trying to develop something super quickly. As far as Unity goes Box2D is pretty solid, but the 3d physics (PhysX) can be a real hassle.
Don't quote me on this but I think you have to do it in the Animation Blueprint instead of the blendspace. In the Animation Blueprint you are essentially making manual blendspaces anyway between your different parts of your animation.
Steam: Handkor
Flash has the advantage of being run in a virtual machine and has better SVG/Vector support. That's really the only advantage I see at the core. ActionScript is just a crazy JS with more defined scope. Aside from that, the biggest issues fall between using a plugin and not. Native support was a big deal for a long while but most all browsers come with their own versions of the flash plugin. Soooooo... yeah.
At the end of the day, both are only as good as the user behind them.
Reminder:
Ludum Dare 30 is 3 days away!
PSN:Furlion