He is not tall. He is a robot.
The Unity engine allows you to have hierarchies of objects, wherein if you change the position of a parent object, all the child objects move with it. It turns out that while this is easy, it's not particularly performance friendly, especially when you're moving ~20,000 child objects every frame. I had to change my parallax algorithm to ignore the hierarchy and just update the ones that would be on screen (~600) at any given time.
Some of this stuff looks quite nice! Spriter Pro and Sprite Lamp caught my eye. Anyone use any of this stuff before?
Conspiracies, 500 feet in the air...
Preparing whole slew of new beta screenshots and videos for impeding marketing push
Well, it's very different from my Dark Mod levels, but my brother and I have just finished up an edutainment game:
Not quite as gritty as the Thief world, but I had fun with it :-P.
Here's the game's website and itch.io page:
http://adlibs.kaziragames.com/
http://kaziragames.itch.io/adlib-adventures
-Gelo
haha looks pretty cool, but I would much rather you replace the annoying voiceover with "angry and excited late night used car salesman".
Heh, thanks Piglick :-P.
That game looks pretty damn awesome. If I was under 10 I would definitely have wanted to play that.
FIIIIIIIRE!
Glade Raid is on fire. Or at least it has fire. Fire is complicated. In Glade Raid... Grass, ferns, bushes, and trees can be set on fire. That fire can be small, or large. It produces smoke and sparks - more if it's large. Smoke and sparks drift on the wind - normal or magical. Smoke blocks LoS. Sparks occasionally set new fires. Over time, fires turn grass to burnt grass, to ash, ferns to burnt ferns to ash, bushes to burnt bushes to ash, and trees to burnt trees. Large fires occasionally subside, small fires occasionally go out. If the terrain has been reduced to ash, this happens quickly. Any magical berries or flowers in the burning hex are destroyed when fires change terrain types. Even thorns are destroyed when it becomes ash. Soaked terrain resists being set on fire, but dries out instead, creating fog. Various ways of dumping water on a hex (flood, cloudburst) instantly put out fires and soak the hex, creating fog (two fog if it's a large fire). Units in a fire, catch on fire (or dry out if they're soaked). They can put the fire out by rolling on non-burning ground or by moving into a water or deep mud hex, or by getting rained on. If they don't put the fire out, it will grow larger, and then start inflicting damage.
This is a lot of programming.
Don't even ask me about ice.
Hey, any advice on what I should put in a Glade Raid trailer? Here's the features I'm thinking of highlighting:
- Procedural overmap (displays an example of navigating the somewhat FTL-esque map of sites)
- Extensive tutorial (short video of how the game walks you through learning how to play)
- Simultaneous turns (shows how each unit performs two orders each turn, trying to outplay each other)
- Tactical hit/defense system (shows and explains how reducing and overwhelming defenses is used instead of to-hit percentages for a more tactical gameplay)
- Spells (show a series of spell effects - maybe winds and tremors, flames and plant growth)
- Extensive environmental simulation (show how fires spread, fog and smoke blows, ice entraps or causes dodging units to slip)
- Leveling up (show the unit upgrade screens and how they work)
- Special attacks (puissant blow knocking enemies flat, whirlwind hitting multiple foes, rapid javelin throwing, fiery arrows)
- Special defenses (Kern dashing through a group of enemies with extra dodges, berserker using his shield and parry to hold off 5 attacks)
- Story (show screen where a situation is described and three characters make conflicting suggestions about how to handle it, then the player picks a choice and a corresponding encounter appears)
- A.I. (Show AI behaviors like defending themselves when hurt, focusing attacks on wounded party members or those that hurt them, going to water when on fire, hungry badgers eating your magic plants)
Making a good trailer for a strategy game is no easy task. Even games I love, like FTL, have managed to have some boring ass trailers. Those games I've always picked up and started playing because I've read good things about them, not because of trailers.
What I'd do is try to make it either personal or funny. Do something like following one unit's journey through the battlefield, make it a war-journal thing. Tell a short story in the first half of the trailer, then pull out the camera for a full view of the battlefield and tell about the game's mechanics in broad strokes in the second half. Don't get too specific, and I'd strongly advice against including anything like a tutorial, that's bound to be boring as hell and everyone will have forgotten it by the time they play the game anyway. Only include a tutorial if you can make it as funny as the old Portal trailer.
The one strategy game to actually have a really good trailer - so good it actually made me buy the game despite lukewarm reviews - was Leviathan Warships. If you can make something like that, you're golden.
Some Paradox Interactive trailers for grand strategy games:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_856-REYn3k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzkVTDfxIUI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y53_GV2aAg8
Henke, if only you were as good looking as pewdiepie, you could be rich!
Alas, we can't all make a living by being handsome and annoying on youtube.
I hadn't seen those, but they're all quite good! Between those and Leviathan, I feel like Paradox has really nailed the art of making good strategy game trailers. Study these, Pyrian!Originally Posted by WingedKagouti
Last edited by henke; 12th Sep 2015 at 13:43.
But just think, you could be the anti-pewdiepie. Not quite as handsome, but a hell of a lot less annoying.
I was imagining something like "Finnish Fellow Finishes Games"
So I haven't been working on Thing 2/Apex City Ransom because reasons, but I have made and been gradually improving a Blender add-on for modding Homeworld Remastered, along with a tutorial series that goes with it:
Pyrian definitely research trailers of similar games and see how they're formatted and what they focus on, if you're not already. I even heard a good tip of taking your favortire trailer and literally overlaying your own footage/text/music over it to get the "pacing" right.
As for features:
* Procedural overmap (displays an example of navigating the somewhat FTL-esque map of sites)
Yes!
* Extensive tutorial (short video of how the game walks you through learning how to play)
No! A tutorial should be a standard feature in a strategy game these days, not something to boast about imho. Unless it does something truly unique like aforementioned Portal (which I don't think it does).
* Simultaneous turns (shows how each unit performs two orders each turn, trying to outplay each other)
Yes, I think it's important to explain how the system works and stands out from other games. But don't over-sell it.
* Tactical hit/defense system (shows and explains how reducing and overwhelming defenses is used instead of to-hit percentages for a more tactical gameplay)
This could be a good way to distinguish from competition
* Spells (show a series of spell effects - maybe winds and tremors, flames and plant growth)
Yea, a quick showcase of different effects could be nice
* Extensive environmental simulation (show how fires spread, fog and smoke blows, ice entraps or causes dodging units to slip)
I think this could be a Biggie. I remember Maya trailer coming out and shown spreading lava and lots of people commented/liked that
* Leveling up (show the unit upgrade screens and how they work)
Maybe, if it's something really different. Otherwise, dont spend too much time on it. Again, a pretty standard feature of most strategies
* Special attacks (puissant blow knocking enemies flat, whirlwind hitting multiple foes, rapid javelin throwing, fiery arrows)
* Special defenses (Kern dashing through a group of enemies with extra dodges, berserker using his shield and parry to hold off 5 attacks)
This could be interesting/unqiue!
* Story (show screen where a situation is described and three characters make conflicting suggestions about how to handle it, then the player picks a choice and a corresponding encounter appears)
Reminds me a bit of banner saga, didn't they do something like that in trailer? Check out what theirs looks like
* A.I. (Show AI behaviors like defending themselves when hurt, focusing attacks on wounded party members or those that hurt them, going to water when on fire, hungry badgers eating your magic plants)
Hmm are you trying to claim it has some fresh team-oriented AI or something? I like the hungry badgers and going to water. Otherwise, AI is again a pretty standard feature in strats, so only showcase a few unique bits.
my 2c. I dont play many strats so may not be your target audience and as my other thread shows I'm not exactly good at making trailers either ;p So take my thoughts with grain of salt!
Last edited by Yakoob; 12th Sep 2015 at 18:54.
Pixel Art!
This has been digging at me for about forever now. Instead of going extra fancy to learn the craft, I've decided to work within NES limitations. No more than 4 colors per sprite, 16 colors per screen, 1-bit alphas, and all tiles 32x32. The only thing I'm not doing is limiting myself to the NES palette.
I think I've done pretty alright so far. Got my bridge struts going on, and just 5 colors used. Once I get the sprite sheet done (the example is there just to see how well they come together), I'll import it into Unity, steal a few character and enemy sprites from another game (until I can make my own), and see if I can make a rough level out of it.
That is an excellent palette. Nice tiles!
Oooh very nice, reminds me a bit of Fez! I've actually been researching pixel art stuff last night for a new project, but settling for 3D instead since it's actually easier than making it in 2D!
I've discovered that no matter how easy you think something'll be, it's not really easy. :P
Hell, I still want to do something with that robot I made for Henke, but man, baking high poly down to low poly is damn evil to do.
I've been wondering where that robot ended up.But I haven't prodded you about it since, honestly, I haven't done any game developing in a long time now. I'll get back to it after MGSV, promise.
This project is basically dead from overambition, but I'm still super happy with all the pixel art:
I remember that. It seems like you got a pretty good ways along. Why didn't you finish it?
And Henke, I'd love to start it again, but I've come to realize one thing. My skill set? It's all over the place. I want to make something, but I always end up going way overambitious, and getting burnt out because I only really have the bases down pat. I figured for now, I'll do something simple. Learn my way around, build up some pixel art by learning around some extreme constraints, and see how far I can take it. Tyre was getting pretty ambitious. It's something I'd want to build up to, rather than aiming for the stars, and stumbling every step of the way up.
Because if there's one problem I have, it's working through a setback. I'm hoping having something that a little more manageable will help me with that. See, I'll be flying along and having the time of my life when things are going my way, but the moment I hit a roadblock, I get frustrated, do the whiny self doubt thing, then drop it. That's a habit I want to break.
...cuz I wanna make something, damnit.
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