Support NeoGAF

[Jacksinthe]

Started a new Show and Tell series on MAINFRAME ONE:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUctb-CXoQE

Go into minor detail about the two types of animation we use in our game.

Kept it as easy to understand as possible but the nuance that went into even this simple enemy in regards to it's leg movement is pretty cool even though you'll probably never notice it in game - but I like making sure stuff looks good even if it goes unnoticed.

 

[Deleted member 10571]

If you want to use joint animations you have to draw the entire part of the body, not just the visible part(like you did for a leg), also can i suggest to put the front leg behind the leg on the background?

I don't use unity so i don't know if you have some specific needs but for joint animations i suggest spriter that has a good free version.

Yeah about that, I thought it over and I think I'll try my luck with actual hand drawn stuff instead, no idea if I'll manage but since I've never done any of them I might as well try. Joint animations I think very rarely look really good, and I can't imagine I'll be the exception here

Man, the more I think about it the more I'm sure I'll never get anything done heh. Don't even know where to start, really.

 

[Jacksinthe]

Yeah about that, I thought it over and I think I'll try my luck with actual hand drawn stuff instead, no idea if I'll manage but since I've never done any of them I might as well try. Joint animations I think very rarely look really good, and I can't imagine I'll be the exception here

Man, the more I think about it the more I'm sure I'll never get anything done heh. Don't even know where to start, really.

My vid linked above your post shows both types of animation done in Unity and only Unity (no spine/Spriter). Instead of joint/bone, we call this tweening. I use both at the same time.

And BLEH to them not looking good. Plenty of games use joint/bone animation and look great. What you need to understand is that you're not only animating via bones, but you can swap those sprites out at any keyframe to further customize the animation with nuance like a torso turning. You're not just left with a paper cutout the entire time like the original Rag Doll Kung Fu... which was awesome, btw!

 

[Deleted member 10571]

My vid linked above your post shows both types of animation done in Unity and only Unity (no spine/Spriter). Instead of joint/bone, we call this tweening. I use both at the same time.

And BLEH to them not looking good. Plenty of games use joint/bone animation and look great. What you need to understand is that you're not only animating via bones, but you can swap those sprites out at any keyframe to further customize the animation with nuance like a torso turning. You're not just left with a paper cutout the entire time like the original Rag Doll Kung Fu... which was awesome, btw!

Oh I'm sorry, what I meant was that real cheap joint moving rarely looks great, which would be what's to be expected from my skill level. Like, QWAP style. Also please take into account that I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about

 

[Jacksinthe]

Oh I'm sorry, what I meant was that real cheap joint moving rarely looks great, which would be what's to be expected from my skill level. Like, QWAP style. Also please take into account that I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about

All good duder!

Everyone has to start somewhere. I started with a box that shot boxes at other boxes XD

Just take it slow and TRY NEW THINGS ALL THE TIME! No learning without taking chances and experimenting!

 

[Deleted member 10571]

Played around a bit by just trying to sketch a somewhat consistent walking loop, layered it and put it together as a gif to check. This is officially the farthest I ever got in creating a game all by myself lol.

 

[Jobbs]

Played around a bit by just trying to sketch a somewhat consistent walking loop, layered it and put it together as a gif to check. This is officially the farthest I ever got in creating a game all by myself lol.

nice! I'm glad you're still committed to this.

if that's your first walk cycle for a game I can say it's probably much better than mine was. I probably still have my attempts on some HDD somewhere, not that I'm in a hurry to show them. XD

 

[Lautaro]

I got this e-mail recently:

Hello
Share please steam key Nomad Fleet. I really liked this game, I voted for it in the greenlight, I can not afford it, I would like to play this game.
I'll leave a good review. Thank you!

Haha is like people are not even trying anymore.

 

[Jobbs]

I got this e-mail recently:



Haha is like people are not even trying anymore.

Honestly.. I don't see the big deal. He's not trying to trick you. He's just asking for a key.

Sometimes I ask random companies for things (not so much lately, but I used to do this). One time I asked sharpie for markers and they just sent me a bunch. Sometimes you get things if you ask.

 

[Lautaro]

Honestly.. I don't see the big deal. He's not trying to trick you. He's just asking for a key.

Sometimes I ask random companies for things (not so much lately, but I used to do this). One time I asked sharpie for markers and they just sent me a bunch. Sometimes you get things if you ask.

Is not a big deal, I just find it funny. Giving a key in exchange of a promise of a good review would be bad though.

 

[planckpixels]

Wow, what a gorgeous looking game! Character designs are beautiful - Congratulations on such beautiful work, i'll look forward to seeing more of this...

So dev on Hollow Knight is still going slowly but well - the end is coming into sight now at least. We thought it was time to release a new trailer too, so we spent some time over the weekend setting one up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8lbFP8i730

It's call the 'Hollow Knight Beneath & Beyond' trailer and this time it's a more atmospheric one, focuses on some locations and characters. It's not going to get the same traction as the previous trailer I think but it was fun to make and should let people know we're still alive (even though we've blown wayyy past all of our projected release dates hahaha)

 

[mabec]

Is not a big deal, I just find it funny. Giving a key in exchange of a promise of a good review would be bad though.

It is a bad thing if the devs says they want a positive review if they hand out keys, not sure if its the same the other way around. I know Steam have rules about that sort of thing

 

[Jacksinthe]

It is a bad thing if the devs says they want a positive review if they hand out keys, not sure if its the same the other way around. I know Steam have rules about that sort of thing

Sounds like a quid pro quo.

"I voted for you on Greenlight. Give me a key"

Or he's just trying to warm him up.

 

[Chaos]

If you're using unity for 2D or gamemaker, consider using Godot Engine.
It even has a 2D animator ala Spriter/Spine

and it's 100% free.

Mozilla just donated 20k to Godot, wonder if this will be an engine to keep an eye on.

 

[AusRoachman]

Would love to get people's opinions on how best to proceed with release of my game . So my current status is

- I feel i have a fairly polished game , well within my skill ability , it would improve with better artists etc
- the game has quick 1 v 1 gameplay with randomised levels , so infinite replayable which makes it hard to put a demo out
- it has lan / hotseat play and I'm close to getting online multiplayer also working

I am at the stage where I would like to release , but I feel there a ton of improvements i could do with a bit of money

- a proper single player campaign / cutscenes etc
- obviously just more polished all round
- game pad support
- Vr support

I feel like if I just dumped it to green light I wouldn't get far , Kickstarter is an option (with some kind of limited demo ) , but generally 1 man teams don't get far with Kickstarter (though a demo may help)

Partnering with some kind of publisher could also be the way to go but who are good publishers for small indie teams ?

Would love to hear what everyone's plans are when they are essentially "early access" . Hollow knight had a fantastic Kickstarter by t also has amazing art / concepts in its pitch which I feel is a large part of a successful pitch .

I feel like just hyping your game is 80 percent of a games release these days , beyond Twitter / reddit I have not done a lot of media .

 

[Xane]

Only 7 hours left on our Kickstarter!

It has been a truly wild ride so far and we're super excited to see so many new people joining our community! A big thank you to everyone who supported us! <3

 

[LordRaptor]

Would love to hear what everyone's plans are when they are essentially "early access" .

I was very intrigued by the itch.io Refinery program when I heard about it - I think when I have a playable prototype of a standard I would feel comfortable showing publically and potentially charging "early access" money for to fund further development, it offers a better value proposition for me and for potential customers than actual Steam Early Access does

 

[AusRoachman]

I was very intrigued by the itch.io Refinery program when I heard about it - I think when I have a playable prototype of a standard I would feel comfortable showing publically and potentially charging "early access" money for to fund further development, it offers a better value proposition for me and for potential customers than actual Steam Early Access does

Thanks for that , I have never heard of t before but it sound interesting, will definitely read into it more . It's amazing what's out there , you just have to find it

 

[2+2=5]

Yeah about that, I thought it over and I think I'll try my luck with actual hand drawn stuff instead, no idea if I'll manage but since I've never done any of them I might as well try. Joint animations I think very rarely look really good, and I can't imagine I'll be the exception here

Man, the more I think about it the more I'm sure I'll never get anything done heh. Don't even know where to start, really.

Joint animations can look awesome

Played around a bit by just trying to sketch a somewhat consistent walking loop, layered it and put it together as a gif to check. This is officially the farthest I ever got in creating a game all by myself lol.

It needs some refinements but it's a good start.

 

[JulianImp]

Played around a bit by just trying to sketch a somewhat consistent walking loop, layered it and put it together as a gif to check. This is officially the farthest I ever got in creating a game all by myself lol.

My only issue is that there seems to be a mismatch between some things being drawn from a profile perspective and others being drawn from a 3/4 perspective, mostly the head on the walk cycle, but I think I remember the legs on the idle image when looking to the side were also drawn that way, which clashes with the torso and arms being drawn at 3/4.

 

[Deleted member 10571]

My only issue is that there seems to be a mismatch between some things being drawn from a profile perspective and others being drawn from a 3/4 perspective, mostly the head on the walk cycle, but I think I remember the legs on the idle image when looking to the side were also drawn that way, which clashes with the torso and arms being drawn at 3/4.

Yup, noticed this a lot as well. I guess this is because originally I just did draw webcomics with the characters being drawn exactly like this all the time - it looked fine on stills (well, "fine" being a relative here) but yeah it's not ideal in motion.

edit that said, the knight above kinda does the same thing.

 

[TheKroge]

Working on the different flight modes. The game tries to balance space travel with 3 different speeds currently. You have your typical engine drives, which you use when you're flying at a slower pace, battling other people, or otherwise need tight control.

You also have warp drives which have a limited amount of energy but allow you to accelerate to light speed extremely quick.

Last you have wormholes, where you can pull up an integrated 3D map and select which wormhole you want to go through. This is particularly cool because every place you travel has completely new planets, scenery, space stations, enemies, etc.

There is a lot of realism in the game, but also a mix of features that keep with the sandbox feel. Of course... there's just something fun about travelling through wormholes too

 

[Deleted member 10571]

PSA: Spriter is 50% off in the current steam sale. Will probably get it when I have a grasp on my financial situation at the end of the month

 

[HP_Wuvcraft]

So, for all the Steamworks vets:

How do your sales fare during an Official Steam Sale? I'm assuming that the majority of our sales will be next week when things have died down a bit with the bigger games.

 

[mStudios]

Thoughts?
New vs Old

 

[FullMetaltech]

Thoughts?
New vs Old

Which is new and which is old? I really like the image on the right if it's the new one.

 

[mStudios]

Which is new and which is old? I really like the image on the right if it's the new one.

Left new, right old

 

[McFadge]

Thoughts?
New vs Old

I like the new one more, especially considering the background art you've placed it on. Looks great!

 

[ThePhotoshop]

I like the facial expression on the left but the art style on the right.

 

[belushy]

I like the facial expression on the left but the art style on the right.

Same

 

[liliththepale]

everything about the left is better

 

[mStudios]

Thank you all for the replies!

 

[EDarkness]

Thoughts?
New vs Old

I like the old version better.

Good to see everyone still chuggin' along with their projects. My project is also still going on. It's taking forever, but I think it'll be fun once it is finished. Just a lot of refinement needs to happen.

Here's a screen from the game.

I'll try to jump in here more often to see what everyone is up to.

 

[Insolitus]

Thoughts?
New vs Old

The new one fits the style of the background better.

 

[mooooose]

new is better!

 

[Blizzard]

Thoughts?
New vs Old

I like the older one as cleaner and more interesting. The new one is oddly blue and muted, though I can understand the blue coloring given the background.

 

[Loginius]

Im not really posting in here much but Im always lurking and you guys are doing some amazing work!
Yesterday we reached a milestone with our student project, we now have a feature complete prototype and the first chapter of our game can be played from start to finish.

Feel free to take a look at our brand new unreal forums thread

Since we focused on gameplay first we havent done any art, this is something thats going to change now!
I will probably start posting way more now to get some feedback from you veterans

Thoughts?
New vs Old

The left one is obviously the more fleshed out render but I prefer the eye area of the right one, maybe keep some more hard edges?

 

[Deleted member 10571]

everything about the left is better

Agreed. Left wins.

 

[Pehesse]

I'm so happy... I had kind of given up hope any reporter would answer my mails, but out of the blue pops an article from someone I didn't contact.

https://killscreen.com/articles/honey-rose-puts-another-kick-ass-woman-videogames/

Doesn't fix the wrongs of the world, of course, and it does feels a bit silly to be so glad of something so trivial when everything is seemingly crumbling outside the window, but... there it is. Back to coloring frames, now.

 

[2+2=5]

I'm so happy... I had kind of given up hope any reporter would answer my mails, but out of the blue pops an article from someone I didn't contact.

https://killscreen.com/articles/honey-rose-puts-another-kick-ass-woman-videogames/

Doesn't fix the wrongs of the world, of course, and it does feels a bit silly to be so glad of something so trivial when everything is seemingly crumbling outside the window, but... there it is. Back to coloring frames, now.

Man that's super awesome!
The punch in particular is incredible but also the rotation, well the kick too!

 

[Pehesse]

Man that's super awesome!
The punch in particular is incredible but also the rotation, well the kick too!

Thanks a lot :-D Since day one I wanted to do this character last (even though she's the very first opponent of the game) to apply everything I'd have learned in animation to her stuff. It turned out to be both a good and a bad idea, since I had run out of ideas for moves a bit (honestly, I didn't think it'd be this hard to give them all distinct move palettes! I can't imagine how actual fighting games with loads of characters and complete palettes do it, even taking into account "recycled moves") - so I sketched for quite a long while before setting on these few attacks, hoping they'd be fun enough to watch... really glad they apparently are!

 

[GuitarAtomik]

Hey guys. After getting a Vive, I've finally decided to learn Unity and C# so I can make my own VR game. I'm coming from zero programming knowledge though so you can imagine I have a lot of questions.

What are some good resources for finding out how to make specific actions, or ask those questions? Is here an ok place to ask that type of thing? For example, right now I'm trying to find out how to make a Scorpion hook style mechanic that can be used on enemies (from the first person in VR) and how I can trigger the pull back action with a gesture instead of a button press.

 

[Voyevoda]

Thoughts?
New vs Old

Left is awesome.

 

[Minamu]

Hey guys. After getting a Vive, I've finally decided to learn Unity and C# so I can make my own VR game. I'm coming from zero programming knowledge though so you can imagine I have a lot of questions.

What are some good resources for finding out how to make specific actions, or ask those questions? Is here an ok place to ask that type of thing? For example, right now I'm trying to find out how to make a Scorpion hook style mechanic that can be used on enemies (from the first person in VR) and how I can trigger the pull back action with a gesture instead of a button press.

Unity's own site and forums are great tools for this, as well as this thread of course. You can google just about any problems you might have by typing "Unity my problem is X" and it will probably show up. Unity also have a massive documentation site that explain every single feature and button in the UI etc, as well as all the code features, with examples. Keep in mind though, Unity's scripting is pretty special and in my opinion, especially if you're a beginner, a big hindrance in getting things done quickly and correctly. But it gets better with time In my experience though, Unity is not very newbie-friendly beyond creating rudimentary level designs. Unreal might seem more daunting but in reality it's the opposite, in my experience. Unity has a built-in asset store, called asset store, but so do Unreal these days kind of, and Unreal has visual scripting built-in which might help for beginners. Both have VR support, as far as I know. Just a heads up

 

[bumpkin]

I'm currently working on building a game with a buddy of mine based around his indie comic book series "Johnny Raygun." I'm doing the coding, he's doing the art and we have music and sound guys on standby. We're still super early in the project, but the other day I got a bunch of sprites (ink only) loaded into the engine. Here's a GIF of the work-in-progress...

And yes, it does look very Mega Man right now. He's using MM sprites as a reference for animations, but once we get farther along, we might be overhauling them to be more consistent with the source material.

 

[Jobbs]

I'm currently working on building a game with a buddy of mine based around his indie comic book series "Johnny Raygun." I'm doing the coding, he's doing the art and we have music and sound guys on standby. We're still super early in the project, but the other day I got a bunch of sprites (ink only) loaded into the engine. Here's a GIF of the work-in-progress...

And yes, it does look very Mega Man right now. He's using MM sprites as a reference for animations, but once we get farther along, we might be overhauling them to be more consistent with the source material.

The Mega Man resemblance is too strong to ignore and I'm talking mainly about the outline/silhouette which is the most important thing here. Either lean into it somehow or change it IMO.

 

[GuitarAtomik]

Unity's own site and forums are great tools for this, as well as this thread of course. You can google just about any problems you might have by typing "Unity my problem is X" and it will probably show up. Unity also have a massive documentation site that explain every single feature and button in the UI etc, as well as all the code features, with examples. Keep in mind though, Unity's scripting is pretty special and in my opinion, especially if you're a beginner, a big hindrance in getting things done quickly and correctly. But it gets better with time In my experience though, Unity is not very newbie-friendly beyond creating rudimentary level designs. Unreal might seem more daunting but in reality it's the opposite, in my experience. Unity has a built-in asset store, called asset store, but so do Unreal these days kind of, and Unreal has visual scripting built-in which might help for beginners. Both have VR support, as far as I know. Just a heads up

Cool. Thanks for the info.

 

[Comfort Jones]

Thoughts?
New vs Old

I vastly prefer the new. Feels more subtle and a bit less "flat" if that makes sense.

 

[bumpkin]

The Mega Man resemblance is too strong to ignore and I'm talking mainly about the outline/silhouette which is the most important thing here. Either lean into it somehow or change it IMO.

I was hoping more for a "Wow, that's freaking cool! Looking good! What engine are you using? What's your buddy's comic?"

My artist is just using the MM sprites as a reference for the time being (AFAIK) so I have something to move forward with development wise and make sure that the animation system is working correctly. We have a lot of states we plan to incorporate - hence some of my questions via PM - and it's way more interesting and encouraging to see "real" stuff in place instead of blocks and programmer art placeholders, you know?

 

[electroflame]

I'm currently working on building a game with a buddy of mine based around his indie comic book series "Johnny Raygun." I'm doing the coding, he's doing the art and we have music and sound guys on standby. We're still super early in the project, but the other day I got a bunch of sprites (ink only) loaded into the engine. Here's a GIF of the work-in-progress...

And yes, it does look very Mega Man right now. He's using MM sprites as a reference for animations, but once we get farther along, we might be overhauling them to be more consistent with the source material.

Wow, that's freaking cool! Looking good!
What engine are you using?

Spoiler

It actually does look good, by the way. The resemblance is a bit strong, but I don't mind it.