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[missile]

Oh shit! That's awesome, man. Congrats! I wish you the best. Gonna be even crazier from here on.

I haven't been posting here as much as I should, but I figured I'd give an update on how things are going with my game. I want to say things are moving fast, but alas. The last couple of weeks have been tough since I haven't been sleeping well, so most of my time is spent lying around and being tired. I think it's about time to solve this job issue or it's gonna kill me.

Still, progress hasn't stopped and I've managed to get the first part of the game working nicely. Cutscenes and the like aren't there yet, but the actual structure and flow is there. I have my wife run through the early story and quests to give some feedback and it's been pretty good. She doesn't like action RPGs, but seems to be enjoying herself when she plays. That's pretty encouraging, to be honest. Having a lot of fun crafting the main story and mapping out the dialogue. Took a lot of time planning the story over the years and it's been through a few revisions, but I think what I have now is pretty engaging and works well as a game. I guess the proof will be in the playing.

I posted this screen on Twitter, but for those who don't follow me there, I've posted it here to kinda join in with others who are showing their stuff. The game has come a long way from where it was, yet it still needs a bit of love. I hope to have it done this year, too. We'll see about that. I'm hopeful, though.

Thx for the kind words! Well, I'm not that much into RPGs these days but for
some others reasons, they are simply too time consuming on my end. xD However,
all the best with your job and the game. I love some of the fine details you
have put in there, but, indeed, the game needs a bit more love esp. in the
lighting department. Btw; I also think you should post in here much more, it
keeps you pushing!

LOVE it :-D I won't pretend I understand how you got there, but I like where you end up :-D

Yeah. Nothing too special so far, but the coole things happen when combining
many simple ones together. About that.

 

[EDarkness]

Thx for the kind words! Well, I'm not that much into RPGs these days but for
some others reasons, they are simply too time consuming on my end. xD However,
all the best with your job and the game. I love some of the fine details you
have put in there, but, indeed, the game needs a bit more love esp. in the
lighting department. Btw; I also think you should post in here much more, it
keeps you pushing!

Thanks, man. I try to post more, but generally when I post on GAF I'm trying to get away from doing dev stuff. Heh, heh.

I appreciate the feedback on the lighting. It's one of those things I personally don't know much about so I think I've played with it so many times I've lost count. I have to make sure that I don't get too crazy because my game has to run well enough on the Wii U, so I could turn on a lot more stuff, but there's a limitation there. Still getting that dark, yet fairly realistic look is hard. Heh, if anyone has any ideas about how to go about this without hurting my performance, I'm all ears. Though, in this scene some of those lights will be off since it's daytime and I haven't added them to my night light script.

How do you guys do when you plan your controller support?

I am trying to find stats about what controller PC gamers are using the most because I'd like my button layout to be the less wierd possible. (lets say I don't make a button configuration for gamepad). Those stats seems impossible to find, nobody gives a shit. Do you design your layout with a 360 / XboxOne controller in mind? I know there's alot of third party controller modeled around that standard.
How do you guys do?

If you're using Unity, then I would recommend using InControl. I was originally looking up each setup for the controllers I wanted to support on each platform and adding profiles for each one. Unfortunately, Mac, Linux, PC, Wii U all have different controller profiles and it was getting hard to manage all of them. What I ended up doing was asking a friend of mine who is also an indie dev what the best way to handle this was and he told me that for their game they just purchased InControl and called it a day. Once I did that, I haven't had any real problems...except with the Dual Shock 4. The Wii U still needs it's own controller profile, but at least I only have to deal with one on one platform and not a bunch of them. Makes things a lot simpler overall. This way you don't have to worry about what controller the player is using.

 

[Dascu]

How do you guys do when you plan your controller support?

I am trying to find stats about what controller PC gamers are using the most because I'd like my button layout to be the less wierd possible. (lets say I don't make a button configuration for gamepad). Those stats seems impossible to find, nobody gives a shit. Do you design your layout with a 360 / XboxOne controller in mind? I know there's alot of third party controller modeled around that standard.
How do you guys do?


Oh and, its still saturday so...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v299/wyzdom/ControllerSupport_zpslxmsum88.png[IMG][/QUOTE]

I base my layout on a 360 controller. I think it's the most common one for PC gamers.

 

[Pehesse]

How do you guys do when you plan your controller support?

Same as Dascu, I worked off a 360 controller (since that's all I had to test, and most layouts are similar to this one). Had feedback from Steam Controller users demanding specific support, though, so you might want to consider that one as well?

 

[Ranger X]

hmmm.....
This makes we want to not care about other gamepads...

360 controller it is then.

 

[DrNeroCF]

Looking for feedback for an .io game made with some fellas:

http://slaim.io

2d arena shooter with slimes + katanas + AK-47

Noooo! I have so much game left to make!

Really great, my only advice would be more feedback on getting shot / sliced, some big juicy splats for getting hit.

 

[missile]

Thanks, man. I try to post more, but generally when I post on GAF I'm trying to get away from doing dev stuff. Heh, heh.

I appreciate the feedback on the lighting. It's one of those things I personally don't know much about so I think I've played with it so many times I've lost count. I have to make sure that I don't get too crazy because my game has to run well enough on the Wii U, so I could turn on a lot more stuff, but there's a limitation there. Still getting that dark, yet fairly realistic look is hard. Heh, if anyone has any ideas about how to go about this without hurting my performance, I'm all ears. Though, in this scene some of those lights will be off since it's daytime and I haven't added them to my night light script. ...

Ah, ok, if you turn off daytime it may look better then.

I have an algorithm in the works for dark/night rendering. And indeed, it's
a bit harder than daylight because you have to adjust the colors and their
brightness, i.e. the luminance seen by a human under night (rod) vision which
is different from daylight vision. For example, blue gets brighter and red
much darker with the special effect that red doesn't turn to any gray like all
other colors do when it gets really dark. That is to say, if it gets really
dark all the colors fade to gray but red goes to black straight, like; bright
red -> red -> dark red -> much darker red -> black. And this has a lot of
consequences for how the colors will be perceived if it's getting darker. And
it's not so much the darkness itself which is the problem here, it's the
transition zone between day/bright and night/dark where both effects (those
from day and from night vision) do combine. That means, for example, that in
your game it is dark but not too dark, but also not too bright. Hence, you
basically need to model this transition zone to get the rendering right for
such scenes. But mind you, I have seen only a few AAA games doing it
to some degree.

On top of all of it you could also add accommodation of the eye to the current
lighting condition in the scene with respect to the current adaption state of
the eye. That is to say, for example, going from a bright lit room into a
dark one will take a couple of secs for the eye to get adapted to the low
light levels. On the other hand, seeing a bright light while being dark
adapted makes you blindfolded. Going from a dark room into a bright lit one
also takes a moment to adapt to. And so on.

Yeah, it gets pretty complex quickly, but if I would develop a more or less
dark game, where the darkness is a key-point (which may not be the case for
your game), I would put much more emphasis on it, because it will create a
much, much better atmosphere. And this is way different from just turning
down the lights low, as many games do, to make the game look dark. It never
works for the player, but (s)he can't really tell why, it just feels wrong
somehow. The effect is most seen when putting a just darkened scene next to
one rendered with respect to human vision at night. The later would look
natural and the former pretty odd.

However, it, as always, depends on the game in question. But if darkness is a
key element of the game (to build up atmosphere whatever), then there is no
way around proper dark rendering.

I do develop such rendering for a game of mine. It's not a dark game, but
there will be dark (low-light) sections you will run through and I want the
"player" to adapt to the darkness esp. if (s)he stays for longer. The cool
thing happens when leaving said section with the eye adapting from low to
bright daylight and full colors. I think these transitions will be pretty
cool.

 

[HP_Wuvcraft]

Introducing one of the first summons for helvetii, Cernnunos ! Still some tweaks to do but i'm pretty happy so far

That's..... really good.

 

[superNESjoe]

Sounds like you might be moving or affecting the Transform of the object with a Rigidbody2D attached to instead of using the Rigidbody2D to move it.
1.) Don't manipulate Transform.position directly if using a rigidbody
2.) Do use AddForce or Velocity to move things around

And keep in mind, if you want to do precise, platform like controls, you're probably better off doing your own approach than Unity's physics based stuff. I use Prime31's platformer controller for the basis of my movement in ShellStorm: https://github.com/prime31/CharacterController2D

Yes, I was using transform.position. I'll take a look at what you're using.

 

[snarge]

Yes, I was using transform.position. I'll take a look at what you're using.

I wouldn't jump directly to the Prime31 controller, unless you really want to or have the need for rapid / platformer style movement. You've probably already got some movement code going on, just try converting it to this:

void FixedUpdate()
 {
        rigidbodyComponent.MovePosition(rigidbodyComponent.position + velocity * Time.fixedDeltaTime);
 }

Also, on converting to Unity:

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Herm...and_Best_Practices_for_Unity_2016_Edition.php

^^ This is a great, long ass post about best practices. There's a lot there, heh. Some of it is directly Unity, some of it is general programming, and some is even up for debate, but it's at least a great guideline for someone diving in.

 

[Makai]

Those are pretty good.

 

[LordRaptor]

Yes, I was using transform.position. I'll take a look at what you're using.

If you haven't, go through some of the official Unity tutorials - I know it feels like Babbys First How To Computer, but they're genuinely useful in figuring it out, especially coming from another envornment you're familiar with, rather than the abstractified background of 'pure' computer programming.

You can use transform.position for movement, you just need to 'roll your own' solution for collisions prior to the collision occurring using something like raycasts, and for a 2D game not trying to use actual physics for momentum / velocity, you'll probably get nicer results (because thats how games used to do it).
If its any help here's the pastebin source for a 2D gamejam I did a while back - it was top down, but you can extract the movement code out and uncomment the debug code to see how it works if thats helpful

 

[superNESjoe]

If you haven't, go through some of the official Unity tutorials - I know it feels like Babbys First How To Computer, but they're genuinely useful in figuring it out, especially coming from another envornment you're familiar with, rather than the abstractified background of 'pure' computer programming.

You can use transform.position for movement, you just need to 'roll your own' solution for collisions prior to the collision occurring using something like raycasts, and for a 2D game not trying to use actual physics for momentum / velocity, you'll probably get nicer results (because thats how games used to do it).
If its any help here's the pastebin source for a 2D gamejam I did a while back - it was top down, but you can extract the movement code out and uncomment the debug code to see how it works if thats helpful

I'll check it out. Yeah, this is similar to how I did my code in Game Maker. I didn't use any of the built in stuff, I coded my own collision and physics, and that's the way I liked it. I'm just currently struggling to get something in Unity that feels as good as what I had before. It's certainly more complex than I feel it needs to be, but that could be due to my 3 years of professional work in GMS.

 

[LordRaptor]

I'll check it out. Yeah, this is similar to how I did my code in Game Maker. I didn't use any of the built in stuff, I coded my own collision and physics, and that's the way I liked it. I'm just currently struggling to get something in Unity that feels as good as what I had before. It's certainly more complex than I feel it needs to be, but that could be due to my 3 years of professional work in GMS.

I mean, bear in mind the actual 2D stuff for Unity is relatively new, so there's a lot of somewhat outdated info out there from when to make a 2D game you made a 3D game, and then locked the camera and pretended it wasn't.
It also doesn't help that the terminology for physics is used interchangeably for "triggers, colliders, raycasts and rigidbodies" physics, and "momentum, force, gravity, velocity" physics; the first you're gonna need, the second, probably not so much.

Honestly, its worth giving their tutorials a runthrough, set aside a week or so to familiarise yourself and run through them.

 

[Ranger X]

I'll check it out. Yeah, this is similar to how I did my code in Game Maker. I didn't use any of the built in stuff, I coded my own collision and physics, and that's the way I liked it. I'm just currently struggling to get something in Unity that feels as good as what I had before. It's certainly more complex than I feel it needs to be, but that could be due to my 3 years of professional work in GMS.

If you're doing a 2D game anyways, why not continue in GameMaker Studio? Its better suited for that in my opinion + you're saying you're used to it....

 

[superNESjoe]

I mean, bear in mind the actual 2D stuff for Unity is relatively new, so there's a lot of somewhat outdated info out there from when to make a 2D game you made a 3D game, and then locked the camera and pretended it wasn't.
It also doesn't help that the terminology for physics is used interchangeably for "triggers, colliders, raycasts and rigidbodies" physics, and "momentum, force, gravity, velocity" physics; the first you're gonna need, the second, probably not so much.

Honestly, its worth giving their tutorials a runthrough, set aside a week or so to familiarise yourself and run through them.

I've run through maybe half the tutorials, my issue with them so far is they aren't that informative despite following them allowing you to replicate them well. After doing about half I started digging into the documentation to learn as much about functions and scripts as I could. I'm currently doing a course for Unity beginners focused on 2D Platformers using Unity 2D and it's actually quite good. It's very descriptive about how things work, which is what I need as opposed to someone just feeding me code to copy/paste.

If you're doing a 2D game anyways, why not continue in GameMaker Studio? Its better suited for that in my opinion + you're saying you're used to it....

My main project is a 2D game, but I'm also working on a VR game in Unity with my team (my role on that game thus far has just been as Design Lead, so I haven't needed to script or create anything personally for it).

While I'm super familiar with Game Maker Studio (I've released three console games using it) the rest of my team wants to move forward in both VR and 3D games as well, so we figured that it's best to make the jump to Unity now and build a 2D game in it while exploring 3D.

 

[LordRaptor]

I've run through maybe half the tutorials, my issue with them so far is they aren't that informative despite following them allowing you to replicate them well. After doing about half I started digging into the documentation to learn as much about functions and scripts as I could. I'm currently doing a course for Unity beginners focused on 2D Platformers using Unity 2D and it's actually quite good. It's very descriptive about how things work, which is what I need as opposed to someone just feeding me code to copy/paste.

Unitys tutorials setup is a bit weird, because it has the "Here's a game, now copy and paste the below to make it" ones, which aren't particularly useful, but it also has the "live training" archive ones which usually are and drill a bit further down into why they're doing what they're doing - this one on 2d character controllers or this one on 2dplatformers for example I'd imagine covers a lot you'd like to know to get up and running.
Basically, the "topics" section of the Unity "learn" page is waaaaaaaaaay more useful than the "tutorials" part is

 

[BlazeHedgehog]

How do you guys do when you plan your controller support?

I am trying to find stats about what controller PC gamers are using the most because I'd like my button layout to be the less wierd possible. (lets say I don't make a button configuration for gamepad). Those stats seems impossible to find, nobody gives a shit. Do you design your layout with a 360 / XboxOne controller in mind? I know there's alot of third party controller modeled around that standard.
How do you guys do?

With OverBite I basically made the entire game playing it with a Dualshock 2 connected through an old USB adapter I bought from Lik-sang. I tested it a few times on an official wired Xbox 360 controller and made the game auto-detect and configure for it (hard coded). Near the end of development I bought a Dualshock 4 (my DS2 is very worn out) and modified my 360 controller detection code to similarly auto-detect the DS4 and rebind the controls.

The auto-detection pulls the controller's device name and determines what it is from that. So, for example, in Windows, a Dualshock 4's device name is usually "WIRELESS CONTROLLER" (even when connected via USB), and the Xbox 360 is usually something like "XBOX 360 Controller for Windows". In the case of the Xbox, since I figure the Xbox One controller isn't going to self-identify as a 360 controller, I just look for the word "Xbox" in the device name and hope for the best.

I treat the Dualshock 2 layout as the "Default" that the game falls back on when it can't detect a DS4 or an Xbox controller.

For the version of OverBite I'm planning on releasing on Steam, I'm thinking of just doing an options menu and let the user freely rebind controls as they see fit.

 

[MrHoot]

I'm starting to really enjoy the stuff that's coming together

 

[Lork]

I wouldn't jump directly to the Prime31 controller, unless you really want to or have the need for rapid / platformer style movement. You've probably already got some movement code going on, just try converting it to this:

void FixedUpdate()
 {
        rigidbodyComponent.MovePosition(rigidbodyComponent.position + velocity * Time.fixedDeltaTime);
 }

Also, on converting to Unity:

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Herm...and_Best_Practices_for_Unity_2016_Edition.php

^^ This is a great, long ass post about best practices. There's a lot there, heh. Some of it is directly Unity, some of it is general programming, and some is even up for debate, but it's at least a great guideline for someone diving in.

Keep in mind that using Rigidbody.MovePosition() to move an object will still end up making it phase through other objects. If you want to play nice with the physics engine, you have to move objects using acceleration or forces.

How do you guys do when you plan your controller support?

I am trying to find stats about what controller PC gamers are using the most because I'd like my button layout to be the less wierd possible. (lets say I don't make a button configuration for gamepad). Those stats seems impossible to find, nobody gives a shit. Do you design your layout with a 360 / XboxOne controller in mind? I know there's alot of third party controller modeled around that standard.
How do you guys do?

XInput / Xbox Controllers are the universal standard that games and controllers are expected to conform to. Any sufficiently popular alternative that doesn't conform by default inevitably gets a fan made XInput wrapper, which is how people use them to play games (Dual Shocks, Wii U Pro controller, etc.)

 

[Minamu]

hmmm.....
This makes we want to not care about other gamepads...

360 controller it is then.

It is the de facto pc standard for a reason The ps4 controller is similar in composition as well, most controllers are. I *think*, that with Unity's system, you could make the system controller agnostic.

Edit: BlazeHedgehog's system seems alright!

 

[LordRaptor]

Its probably worth mentioning while discussing 2D character controllers that it looks like Unity 5.6 has some fairly big changes specifically relating to that, so it might be worth doing experimental work in the beta build, as its somewhat likely when it gets a 'full' release in March it will be doing things that you might want

 

[LuffyZoro]

I'm starting to really enjoy the stuff that's coming together

This looks really JoJo and I love it.

 

[missile]

Some more progress on texture mapping.
In OT1 I posted that 2d rotorzoom of old (as some of you may remember), which
was simply done via rotating the bitmap while scaling it. Now here is the 3d
version I did in passing. This time the bitmap isn't touch but the whole
texture space is rotated and scaled in 3d space. That's not too special either
if the rotation happens in the plane of the square as is done here. Hence, 2d,
basically. But since the whole setup is in 3d, it should allow me to finally
rotate the texture (space) in 3d with the texture's UVs adjusting to it. That
is what I'm working on right now. The animation below shows said "3d" rotation
in the plane of the square. More to come.

 

[Fou-Lu]

I can write, I can design, I can program (though I am working on transferring those skills to the gaming space), but how does one go about completing a game when they lack animation, art or sound skills? I mean on the one hand I could just do it myself and have it look and sound bad, on the other hand I could gather and use free materials but run the risk of looking generic or having thing not fit together. It seems best to work with artists, but I doubt I'll be able to afford to hire anyone any time soon.

 

[_Rob_]

I can write, I can design, I can program (though I am working on transferring those skills to the gaming space), but how does one go about completing a game when they lack animation, art or sound skills? I mean on the one hand I could just do it myself and have it look and sound bad, on the other hand I could gather and use free materials but run the risk of looking generic or having thing not fit together. It seems best to work with artists, but I doubt I'll be able to afford to hire anyone any time soon.

Find people passionate about their work and collaborate. Either that or try and learn those disciplines yourself, whilst playing to your strengths regarding the type of game you start development on.

 

[LordRaptor]

I can write, I can design, I can program (though I am working on transferring those skills to the gaming space), but how does one go about completing a game when they lack animation, art or sound skills? I mean on the one hand I could just do it myself and have it look and sound bad, on the other hand I could gather and use free materials but run the risk of looking generic or having thing not fit together. It seems best to work with artists, but I doubt I'll be able to afford to hire anyone any time soon.

There's plenty of options, it just depends on what you specifically want to do.
Thomas Was Alone is a game mostly about coloured rectangles.
Aviary Attorney mostly uses out-of-copyright scanned art from a public domain author.
Geometry Wars uses basic shapes, and heavy use of particles.
Jeff Minters career nowadays is basically endlessly iterating on classic Atari games with gratuitous shader-porn.
Minecraft and VVVVVV both managed to be successful on what can be fairly described as developer art.

These are all proven options in the "not even pretending to do art things" category.

For reusing other peoples freeware art, AI War: Fleet Command almost entirely uses (minor, mostly just to allow recolours) sprite edits from Lost Garden, and in turn released their versions for free in the spirit of paying it forward.
Kenneys art sets are pretty ubiquitous because the dude is so prolific, consistent in style, and in so many genres and for so many purposes - browse a game engine asset store and you'll spot his stuff showing up very quickly.

For magpieing assets from multiple sources, its just a question of aesthetic consistency; don't mix clipart / vectorial with pixelart, don't mix photo-realistic textures with hand painted / painterly, don't mix high poly textured sculpts with low poly flat shaded textureless, etc etc etc

 

[missile]

I can write, I can design, I can program (though I am working on transferring those skills to the gaming space), but how does one go about completing a game when they lack animation, art or sound skills? I mean on the one hand I could just do it myself and have it look and sound bad, on the other hand I could gather and use free materials but run the risk of looking generic or having thing not fit together. It seems best to work with artists, but I doubt I'll be able to afford to hire anyone any time soon.

First, make a simple game. And then make a simpler one.

... Jeff Minters career nowadays is basically endlessly iterating on classic Atari games with gratuitous shader-porn. ...

lol xD Yeah, pretty much. Not saying he shouldn't. I have an idea for a game I
would be please to be able to iterate on for a lifetime.



Meanwhile; I think I got it...

Texture space now able to rotate around any axis. The projection is a parallel
one, may add others (perspective or a fish-eye whatever) at another time.

 

[whiteape]

Construct 3 is coming:
https://www.facebook.com/ScirraOffi...477053653991/1216650955036590/?type=3&theater

Edit: Btw. a few years back when they said Construct 2 isn't the way to go for the future, they said the next major version of Construct will be not Windows-only anymore. Can't find the source atm, too long ago. Hopefully that's true about C3.

 

[Ianan]

Construct 3 is coming:
https://www.facebook.com/ScirraOffi...477053653991/1216650955036590/?type=3&theater

Yes! I was holding off on jumping into Construct 2 since I had a feeling this was coming soon.

 

[missile]

So, textures can now also be perspective projected onto objects. May not
be that useful for standard stuff, but I think there are a couple of cool
effects lurking behind.

 

[Minamu]

I can write, I can design, I can program (though I am working on transferring those skills to the gaming space), but how does one go about completing a game when they lack animation, art or sound skills? I mean on the one hand I could just do it myself and have it look and sound bad, on the other hand I could gather and use free materials but run the risk of looking generic or having thing not fit together. It seems best to work with artists, but I doubt I'll be able to afford to hire anyone any time soon.

I've been working on my Global Game Jam 2016 project with some friends for over a year now and it looks like this: https://alexmorath.wordpress.com/portfolio/holy-sheep/

Yeah it's just colored cubes moving around without animations and the characters are no more than 8 vertices, with the entire levels not having more than maybe 200. I either found the audio online or made them in 8-bit sound generators. Textures are simply made in Unity itself and is just one blob of color, nothing fancy at all. But as a designer, my focus is on theme, feel and having really great gameplay first and foremost. It might look like hot garbage to most, but you forget that stuff real fast when you're sneaking around trying to get the upper hand over your friends by teleporting or becoming invisible so you can get that really good special weapon you need to chase down your enemies. That's what important imho.

 

[GAMETA]

I'm not currently working on any game like you guys, but I was the main and only artist (graphic design, illustration, 2D and 3D assets, texturing, animation) on this indie game named Sprout's Tale.

I had to quit tho, working on it without any money investment was hard on me. I had to work on the game on my spare time after my "real" work and then divide myself between the game and my son and wife... It was a great experience but man, game development is HARD. (I still dream of working full time on games tho, as long as I get payed hahahaha).


I'll post some images of the stuff I did for the game:

I also have some old 3D models of the game in my sketchfab, here's the main character with run, jump and double jump animations:

https://sketchfab.com/models/a5d9e3527f8a4e62b0f112ebe3a3bbee


Thanks for your time!

 

[Popstar]

If anyone needs some pixel fonts there are a lot in this Itch bundle.
https://itch.io/b/159/play-for-peru

 

[EDarkness]

Ah, ok, if you turn off daytime it may look better then.

I have an algorithm in the works for dark/night rendering. And indeed, it's
a bit harder than daylight because you have to adjust the colors and their
brightness, i.e. the luminance seen by a human under night (rod) vision which
is different from daylight vision. For example, blue gets brighter and red
much darker with the special effect that red doesn't turn to any gray like all
other colors do when it gets really dark. That is to say, if it gets really
dark all the colors fade to gray but red goes to black straight, like; bright
red -> red -> dark red -> much darker red -> black. And this has a lot of
consequences for how the colors will be perceived if it's getting darker. And
it's not so much the darkness itself which is the problem here, it's the
transition zone between day/bright and night/dark where both effects (those
from day and from night vision) do combine. That means, for example, that in
your game it is dark but not too dark, but also not too bright. Hence, you
basically need to model this transition zone to get the rendering right for
such scenes. But mind you, I have seen only a few AAA games doing it
to some degree.

On top of all of it you could also add accommodation of the eye to the current
lighting condition in the scene with respect to the current adaption state of
the eye. That is to say, for example, going from a bright lit room into a
dark one will take a couple of secs for the eye to get adapted to the low
light levels. On the other hand, seeing a bright light while being dark
adapted makes you blindfolded. Going from a dark room into a bright lit one
also takes a moment to adapt to. And so on.

Yeah, it gets pretty complex quickly, but if I would develop a more or less
dark game, where the darkness is a key-point (which may not be the case for
your game), I would put much more emphasis on it, because it will create a
much, much better atmosphere. And this is way different from just turning
down the lights low, as many games do, to make the game look dark. It never
works for the player, but (s)he can't really tell why, it just feels wrong
somehow. The effect is most seen when putting a just darkened scene next to
one rendered with respect to human vision at night. The later would look
natural and the former pretty odd.

However, it, as always, depends on the game in question. But if darkness is a
key element of the game (to build up atmosphere whatever), then there is no
way around proper dark rendering.

I do develop such rendering for a game of mine. It's not a dark game, but
there will be dark (low-light) sections you will run through and I want the
"player" to adapt to the darkness esp. if (s)he stays for longer. The cool
thing happens when leaving said section with the eye adapting from low to
bright daylight and full colors. I think these transitions will be pretty
cool.

That's a lot to digest, but I understand where you're coming from. A system like that would be pretty nice and I think would really enhance the lighting in different areas of my game.

One of the key problems I have is when roaming around in a dark dungeon or being inside of a building. Right now in dungeons, it's just dark with the ambient light not being very bright. It makes areas seem REALLY dark and it's hard to see anything. I originally liked this since it kinda gives that scary feel to areas, but testers say it's too dark to see anything (which is the point). I understand the need to see what's going on, yet I don't want to make it bright since I feel like it just doesn't capture that feel of being in some dank dungeon with crappy lighting.

Here's a pic of one of the areas that I'm talking about (it's an old pic, but I haven't adjusted the lighting in this area since this screen was taken):

As you can see it's crazy dark and honestly, I like it like that, but I can understand where others are coming from. I want to find some middle ground that doesn't impact performance. This is the key point. I could get crazy with the lighting, but performance is more important to me than effects.

I think daylight comes across better as you can see in this pic:

Even then, I feel like it's missing something to really give it that vibrant look. I'm not sure if having a shader or script for this would be better in making the lighting come across better.

 

[LordRaptor]

Even then, I feel like it's missing something to really give it that vibrant look. I'm not sure if having a shader or script for this would be better in making the lighting come across better.

What film and TV tend to do (or used to when cameras weren't as good, certainly) when doing "night time" scenes is shoot during the daytime but underexpose and use filters - nowadays cameras are better and can handle low light better, but you still see "night" scenes that are just digitally edited in post-production.

You can probably use some sort of tone mapping to get a 'cinematic' night time / darkness without changing your 'daylight' light settings too dramatically, and it will probably be as palatable to an audience as the same cheating done in film is

 

[GAMETA]

That's a lot to digest, but I understand where you're coming from. A system like that would be pretty nice and I think would really enhance the lighting in different areas of my game.

One of the key problems I have is when roaming around in a dark dungeon or being inside of a building. Right now in dungeons, it's just dark with the ambient light not being very bright. It makes areas seem REALLY dark and it's hard to see anything. I originally liked this since it kinda gives that scary feel to areas, but testers say it's too dark to see anything (which is the point). I understand the need to see what's going on, yet I don't want to make it bright since I feel like it just doesn't capture that feel of being in some dank dungeon with crappy lighting.

Here's a pic of one of the areas that I'm talking about (it's an old pic, but I haven't adjusted the lighting in this area since this screen was taken):

As you can see it's crazy dark and honestly, I like it like that, but I can understand where others are coming from. I want to find some middle ground that doesn't impact performance. This is the key point. I could get crazy with the lighting, but performance is more important to me than effects.

I think daylight comes across better as you can see in this pic:

Even then, I feel like it's missing something to really give it that vibrant look. I'm not sure if having a shader or script for this would be better in making the lighting come across better.

What if the you add some light attached to the character? (could be via a lantern or simply an invisible source like many games do). That way you can keep the claustrophobic sense of the darkness surrounding the player and yet be able to see things that are closer to the char... it even adds some "anxiety factor"...

Dark Souls does that really well. If you're not familiar with the series you can take a look at Tomb of the Giants to see what I mean.

 

[Ranger X]

XInput / Xbox Controllers are the universal standard that games and controllers are expected to conform to. Any sufficiently popular alternative that doesn't conform by default inevitably gets a fan made XInput wrapper, which is how people use them to play games (Dual Shocks, Wii U Pro controller, etc.)

Thanks, am learning all this stuff. I really didn't know that tidbit.
That makes me much more confident to go the Xinput route. Do Xinput controllers also tend to mimic the button naming of an Xbox controller? (like face button being same letters and colors)

 

[JulianImp]

Regarding advice for migrating from Game Maker to Unity, I'd be inclined to agree that it's going to take you a while before getting used to how Unity wants you to make modular components for game objects rather than whole objects with, say, a character's full functionality.

Another bad (in my mind) quirk coming from GML is that the language there doesn't have explicit variable types, wereas Unity code is often a lot clearner (at least when coding in C#) because you just have to declare variable types, and misusing them will throw you compiler errors rather than blowing your game up mid-execution.

Thanks, am learning all this stuff. I really didn't know that tidbit.
That makes me much more confident to go the Xinput route. Do Xinput controllers also tend to mimic the button naming of an Xbox controller? (like face button being same letters and colors)

If anybody ever needs to use XInput in Unity, I can recommend this dll. It doesn't appear to be maintained anymore, but it worked fine for the Global Game Jam game I coded a couple weeks ago using Unity 5.4.1: https://github.com/speps/XInputDotNet/releases. You can probably use the dll with other languages, but then again it's probably Windows-only.

I don't know much about it myself, but isn't XInput (or, at the very least, controllers such as the X360 ones) kind of a hassle on MacOS? Like, AFAIK there're no official X360 drivers on Mac, and the homebew ones I found dated back from 2013, which could be an issue with how Apple loves requiring updated signatures for some things to work on newer version of MacOS.

 

[Pasedo]

Hey guys. I wanted to ask this question and it's probably suitable to do so in here. According to Steam Survey a massive portion of users are on crappy old hardware. Is it cos many are just playing basic Indie games. Maybe it's cos they are playing MMOs like Dota 2 which doesn't need much power to run. What are the opinions here?

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

 

[LordRaptor]

On the subject of controllers, has anyone used the Steamworks controller APIs?
They would seem to be a solution for all sorts of headaches relating to controller type detection / showing the right button icons / user runtime rebinding etc but I haven't done much with controllers at all

Hey guys. I wanted to ask this question and it's probably suitable to do so in here. According to Steam Survey a massive portion of users are on crappy old hardware.

Intel integrated graphics being fuckawful has long been the absolute bane of PC gaming - you almost have to immediately buy additional hardware and install it yourself to have "a gaming PC" since... well, pretty much the advent of hardware T&L, and its only been very recently that integrated has been even partially usable (which is good news for developers).
If its at all possible to make a game that can run using software only rendering, it has historically been a very good idea to do so.

I mean, in many ways mobile is a stronger platform for gaming from the get go as mobiles tend to have OGL supporting GPUs from the get go

 

[correojon]

I´m very happy after testing the new collision and movement system with 10 enemies on screen and moving platforms. No frame drops in editor mode, which puts some extra strain on the game, so it should work even better in story mode The player and enemies use the same system, so this should help a lot when adding new enemy types as the basic behaviour is already done and I will onyl need to add the new behaviours in separate states.
I also added some extra functions to draw the enemy sprites manually so I can manipulate the sprite scaling without it affecting the collision masks (using GMS here), which allows me to add some squash and stretch to the enemy animations when landing, hitting a wall or being stepped on. This also puts more strain on the game but again, framerate is kept high enough so there´s no impact in gameplay The game´s starting to look like what I had in my mind, it´s great!

This looks really JoJo and I love it.

I thought the same thing!

 

[dude]

Anyone here have any books on game design they'd recommend? I read and really liked The Art of Game Design be Jesse Schell, but I find conflicting recommendations on other books and thought I'd ask here as well to see what the talented people of this thread think.

 

[snarge]

Anyone here have any books on game design they'd recommend? I read and really liked The Art of Game Design be Jesse Schell, but I find conflicting recommendations on other books and thought I'd ask here as well to see what the talented people of this thread think.

Does it have to be a book? One of the best recent resources I think of is Game Maker's Toolkit

And start with this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBmIkEvEBtA

That and Extra Credits are great for game design.

 

[KOCMOHABT]

If you are using Monogame:

I've built a 3d model viewer to quickly see how models and their animations behave when imported. It also supports albedo/normal/roughness/metallic textures.

Find more info and download here
http://community.monogame.net/t/3d-model-viewer-for-monogame-early-release/8696/6

 

[dude]

Does it have to be a book? One of the best recent resources I think of is Game Maker's Toolkit

And start with this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBmIkEvEBtA

That and Extra Credits are great for game design.

Well, I rather listening to music on my commute than podcasts or youtube videos, so books are simply much more convenient for me.
I already watch Extra Credits and Game Maker's Toolkit, I just wanted some books I could read on the go and maybe go more in depth.

Thanks though

 

[missile]

That's a lot to digest, but I understand where you're coming from. A system like that would be pretty nice and I think would really enhance the lighting in different areas of my game. ...

What engine are you working with? Don't know, but if I got may stuff working,
I may make an assets and sell in some stores. Who knows?

... One of the key problems I have is when roaming around in a dark dungeon or being inside of a building. Right now in dungeons, it's just dark with the ambient light not being very bright. It makes areas seem REALLY dark and it's hard to see anything. I originally liked this since it kinda gives that scary feel to areas, but testers say it's too dark to see anything (which is the point). I understand the need to see what's going on, yet I don't want to make it bright since I feel like it just doesn't capture that feel of being in some dank dungeon with crappy lighting. ...

One misunderstanding of dark scenes is that people think the scene needs to
be dark on a perceptual basis as well, which is not the case. For, in a dark
scene the eyes adapt to the low light making it to appear bright as well. So
for example, if you sit in a dark room without any other light but the light
from the moon shining through the window, the room will appear bright to you
with your eyes fully dark adapted. So there is a sensation of brightness even
at night, which is what the rods are for. From memory you can tell that a
daylight lit scene is brighter than when being in that dark room with the moon
shining in, but that is relative, the relation isn't even linear because of
the receptors auto-gain control amplifying the signal. Roughly speaking, the
rods, i.e. receptors making vision at night possible, amplify the signal
(photons) via gain control. But there are limits. What makes the sensation of
brightness go away at night is that the receptors gain control operate more
and more towards their maximum trying to amplifying these few photon, i.e. a
weak signal, which, as every engineer knows, amplifies the noise as well. That
is to say, before the scene goes pitch black the perception of it becomes
noisy.

Summing up; you can have a scene appearing bright and even communicate the
scene as being dark.

However, to realize this a couple if things are needed like modelling the
adaptation rates between day and night vision, modelling of the colors and
brightness of objects esp. at (day+night)/2 vision, modelling of chromatic
adaptation (dominant light source), etc..

This sounds all a bit too complicated, but you may produce a simple variant by
interpolating the colors to gray or to any dominate color present at night
(bluish for moonlight scene for example) depending on the average scene
luminance. Won't produce the best results, but you still get sort of an effect
depending on the average scene luminance. About that.

...

As you can see it's crazy dark and honestly, I like it like that, but I can understand where others are coming from. I want to find some middle ground that doesn't impact performance. This is the key point. I could get crazy with the lighting, but performance is more important to me than effects. ...

You can't really make the scene dark to simulate darkness. Sure, it's a
rude approximation, but won't hold up that well. There is another problem
with this sort of things. People need to have their TV adjusted rightfully to
see your intended dark shades. If the setting is off, the dark shades may
crush to black. Banding may also become a big problem.

... I think daylight comes across better as you can see in this pic:

Even then, I feel like it's missing something to really give it that vibrant look. I'm not sure if having a shader or script for this would be better in making the lighting come across better. ...

Yeah, looks desaturated. Either the textures are that way, or it could be a
tonemapper problem. Are you using HDR?

What film and TV tend to do (or used to when cameras weren't as good, certainly) when doing "night time" scenes is shoot during the daytime but underexpose and use filters - ...

For some reasons I like these faked nighties. Wasn't it done by shooting at
daylight on tungsten film producing these blueish-greenish tan?

... You can probably use some sort of tone mapping to get a 'cinematic' night time / darkness without changing your 'daylight' light settings too dramatically, and it will probably be as palatable to an audience as the same cheating done in film is

Yeah, I also think this may suffice from what he posted about his game,
getting some good night filters and go with it. I mean, I don't think the
WiiU gamers will put such an emphasis on it. Other elements of the game may
weigh in much more important. Don't know.

 

[correojon]

Well, I rather listening to music on my commute than podcasts or youtube videos, so books are simply much more convenient for me.
I already watch Extra Credits and Game Maker's Toolkit, I just wanted some books I could read on the go and maybe go more in depth.

Thanks though

Check Reverse Design: http://thegamedesignforum.com/books/books.html
I´ve only checked the SMW one and it was excelent, analyzing every level with a lot of detail and explaining the logic behind the simplest mechanics like Mario´s jump. Lots of pictures and diagrams to make it very illustrative and easy to read through in short bursts (I also read it during commuting to work). Oh and if you find any other recommendable book please share it!

 

[MrHoot]

This looks really JoJo and I love it.

[C E R N N U N O S] has no weakness !

 

[Timeaisis]

Anyone here have any books on game design they'd recommend? I read and really liked The Art of Game Design be Jesse Schell, but I find conflicting recommendations on other books and thought I'd ask here as well to see what the talented people of this thread think.

A Theory of Fun by Raph Koster.

Additionally, anything written by Chris Crawford. He's kind of a genius. Most of his stuff is old, but it still applies.