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Could I make a living being an Indie Game Dev?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by MrSanfrinsisco, Sep 28, 2018.

  1. GarBenjamin

    GarBenjamin

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    Here's a couple tower defense games I thought looked kinda interesting both visually and in the gameplay.





    and I finished the end of day story snippets tonight. :)
     
    Last edited: Nov 22, 2018
  2. Zahidylin_Marat

    Zahidylin_Marat

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    Me to. If the goal is only money - then with probability 80% game will be crap, developer will spam, etc. Good product and enjoyment from development - should be always on first place.
     
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  3. deliquescator

    deliquescator

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    Your goal can also be both. So you want to make a profit badly but not so badly that you will flood the game with ads and IAPs. For example, I will be honest, one of my main goals is money. Is it a realistic goal? Perhaps not, as the probability is low. But with the right creative ideas and clever marketing it's possible. Now I am not a 100% money oriented, I enjoy making games and I want them to be fun. But I would also like them to be quite profitable. The key is to find the right middle ground. Will I find it? Time will tell.

    If your goal is 100% money though and you don't care about the creative process or the enjoyment aspect, I would mostly agree that it's likely to be a crappy game. The thing is though, it's an implementation problem and not exactly a goal problem. You can still focus on making the game profitable as long as you understand that making the volume of ads cancerous is not the right way to make money as it will put off the person before making any profit. The game needs to be somewhat enjoyable for it to make a profit so as long as you don't pull off an EA type game, and get people to enjoy your game enough to earn you money, then that's pretty successful if you ask me. But then again, success is subjective isn't it?
     
  4. zenGarden

    zenGarden

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    The template graphics are quite good, and lot more engaging than cubes or simple shapes.
    The graphics define some context , while cubes won't define any context.
    For a casual game, such game will get lot more attraction than the same game with cubes or squares, it will sell lot more.
    Stop beeing so much minimalist :D

    Gameplay is tower defense, like many triple A games that are always the same formula, or most fps games are all the same with some twists.
    You don't change something that works, the most sold games on consoles are GTA and COD, the same games concepts that didn't changed a lot.

    When it's about money, many indies will do the same, they just use some game template and perhaps modify some assets or some gameplay, but it's the fastest way to get quickly a game released and start making money. There is lot of players for those games (paid or freee with ads).
    Sometimes it's better to sue game kits instead of making non coherent graphics with bad color palette, contrast issues when the guy does not have graphic skills.
    This is why you'll see lot of people asking some more assets or some gameplay change on those kits, they just want to release the fuc***g game lol

    It depends where you browse games and what genre.
    For sure if you search "tower defense" games on Steam or mobile you'll get thousand same games, because they share the same concept. But there is always some that have twisted gameplay, this is the ones you must search.
    It's like saying all store make the same cakes, indeed this is what most people like, you want some special cake so you must seek a special store making those special cakes.

    Because you are not selective enough about quality and originality.
    Take a look at twiiter indie news and you'll see there is lot of very unique games, this is one of many places where you can find special games that stand out from other games (instead or browsing on Steam or Mobile store).

    This is the one i would play , not knowing the other is made by you, why ?
    It has lot more appeal and lot more readability.
    Clear graphics, well defined shapes and colors, lot lot more readable and it has a context (medieval).
    While your game is too much ultra low rez, for some particle effect should be small and not hide what is going on around the map.

    Many gamers just don't like ultra low rez games, successful pixel games are not ultra low rez , they have minimum rez, and great readability.





    I made this one in some minutes with Aseprite using the Select and Fill tool only.

    Or this one using simple 3D primitives, it's quickly made i did not tweak black outline or remove specular.
    This is faster to make this way, instead of trying to paint directly some perspective, lighting and details when you are not pixel artist.
    You make assets lot more quicker, so you get your game release lot more faster.


    The other advantage is you can do some quick paint over to bring more details.



    Anyway, it's sad you don't use modern hardware more until you want to make a game for C64.
    Because let's say get 2 or 3 times rez up, and i think your game will be lot more readable and more appealing.
    Your sprites could have been vector graphics or some top down baked image of some 3D voxel model.
     
    Last edited: Nov 22, 2018
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  5. zenGarden

    zenGarden

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    Yeah, the best is to find the middle ground.
     
  6. GarBenjamin

    GarBenjamin

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    Lol it's a matter of how you are looking at it. You say I am not selective enough and I think I am just as selective if not more so. I just don't care how nice the art in a game is as far as fidelity or showcasing artistic talent I want the game to be engaging, interesting. Action, depth, movement, interaction, gameplay does that.

    The art can be great and the game still not look as interesting to me as a another game done with much lower fidelity or lower artistic level of graphics. I don't see a game as automatically engaging or interesting just because the graphics are more complex or look more like a pro artist made them. So in that way it is a more selective view. But really we just have different views we are looking for different things in a game.

    Like I said I this tower defense game looks kinda interesting. Certainly it looks much more interesting than that one made from UAS assets imo. I just found this one last night seems to even have bosses in it. Since that is an idea I had and the rest of it looks quite good from what I can see I think I might like this defense game. May have to try it out.


    And yes I agree about getting the game done. That is super important. I just mean so is making a good game. But I get it that different people like different things. For you that defense game looks like it would be fun to play because of the graphics. For me my own or the one I posted above look a lot more interesting to play because of everything else (game structure, design, theme, gameplay with faster action, some innovation beyond Bloons 1, etc).

    I do give them credit for some very creative animation and making a simplistic defense game that does look good visually. They have a great foundation. Basically all I am saying is now if they took what they have at this point and then started adding their own ideas make something cool. Not just the minimal.
     
    Last edited: Nov 22, 2018
  7. GarBenjamin

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    I guess that is another difference in how people look at things. I think this is it!

    To some people minimalist or non artist graphics stand out and they think of it as lazy or whatever. To me minimalist as in lack of any innovation and minimal / poor programming and minimalist playtesting & balancing, etc all of these stand out and may cause me to skip games no matter how good the art is. I realize they may in fact have spent a huge effort on all of those things and just aren't good at it. These other things are simply of more importance to me.

    I think to me the entire game is artistic in a way. The entire game every aspect is an opportunity to be creative.

    Anyway it would be cool if that dev would revisit the game and take it to the next level. Like I said it looks solid. And I think they could take what they have... take this solid minimal foundation and build on it. Now if it was done in a weekend game jam that is different. I just think people can use the asset store to make some great stuff that goes beyond just the bare minimum. That's all I mean really. I completely get people using assets but not so much to just make bare minimum stuff that is all.

    I definitely agree on readability. I had that concern when adding the fog which is very visible in the last videos I produced. But it starts out so thin and is a very gradual process of thickening with each day the player should completely get it yet barely notice it increasing since it is so gradual.

    Ah well as long as you're making progress on your own game that is the important thing! :)
     
  8. GarBenjamin

    GarBenjamin

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    It could be an interesting experiment...

    I went to Steam and checked out the games on sale. Below are two lists of games I think pages 2 and 3.



    If I had to choose 3 from each list...
    The game icons that stand out to me on the left are EXE:Mainframe, Evidence of Life and Time Splatter.
    The game icons that stand out to me on the right are Warpzone Drifter, Super Jet Juck and Doctor Tsunami.
    These are the ones I would click on for a closer look based on the information available from their thumbnails and their names.

    Odds are high I would think that other icons would stand out more to other people even though to me they all look kind of the same as each other as well as to other icons I have seen thousands of time. Of course once I click to look at them most I will skip in a few seconds. Steam is not a good place for such an experiment I think. Itch.io is a place where I personally find many more interesting games.
     
    Last edited: Nov 22, 2018
  9. BonneCW

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    Talking about tower defense games, I released mine (https://store.steampowered.com/app/917850/Elemental_War/) five weeks ago into early access. I think it has some nice features like:
    - randomly generated maps (if you like, you can also play with predefined paths)
    - three different game modes, two more classic tower defense, one with really unique features (every wave has an ability like more HP, possibility to sprint for a while, getting invisible for a while, being immune against status changes..., quests to unlock items that can be of different kinds like active items (similar to spells), passive items changing some global stats and tower equipment changing stats and behavior of towers like possibility to shrink enemies)
    - detailed leaderboards
    - and now we start to go into multiplayer direction, we added an alliance system (so far you can found and join them), next update will contain challenges for the alliances, so you can compete with others in a game specification (mode, difficulty, map) and the alliance with the best score at the end of the challenge wins the challenge and gains score for the alliance leaderboard and gold for the alliance (which will be useful in a later update)
    - we plan for next year add direct multiplayer (coop and competitive)

    So, I'm new to the world of indiedevs, worked some years on it (and other projects beside that) next to a full time day job and finally reached the quality and content level I wanted for the EA release. It sells well so far, we need much more to get back the invested money and especially time, but all running expenses can be paid easily with the current sales and it's just five weeks since release.

    So maybe that's good to know for those that think about releasing a game theirselves. We spend no money for marketing yet and still need to build up a following, if we would've spend more time on this, maybe we would've done even better (I was alone on the project except of my 2D artist freelancer until March and I couldn't stem 70-80 hours dev work + marketing). But so far no negative reviews, everything is fine and we got some good feedback where to improve Elemental War in the future.
     
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  10. zenGarden

    zenGarden

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    I would choose some others instead, because i know minimalist icon means most of the time minimalist graphics and game.It's all a matter of preferences.

    Graphics is the main thing you see about a game, it tells you what you can expect.
    RDR2 game has amazing graphics, but the gameplay is not the best, it has lot of inertia, combat is slow as player doesn't move lot more faster like reality or run faster. It's intended, but the game got lot of 10/10 reviews.
    I think graphics have an importance when you want to reach a larger audience, not only retro niche players.

    Anyway, your pixel game has some good design, i wonder how it would look if you would push graphics further.
    As i shown above drawing with shapes or baking 3D is easy and gives good results and it's fast in some minutes.
    But i can understand the interest in C64 or Pico graphics, while i find them too much low rez and this make them lack lot of readability.
    I consider acceptable and readable retro pixel games, those with Nes rez minimum.
    As you can see it's very readable level and character shape with readable font.





    In those screenshots, you can see sprites have lot of space to move around, they can dash in some distance without getting off screen.
    Unlike pico 8 games

    This is the other issue with ultra low rez,you don't have enough pixel space to move some sprites around; it's like playing games in super zoom, it can be disturbing and not very comfortable.

    Anyway, another graphic style, cardbox.
    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dsn_RCiXoAAQbi1.jpg:large
     
    Last edited: Nov 22, 2018
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  11. zenGarden

    zenGarden

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    The 3D graphics, HUD and portrait sprites , particle effects, all look good with good gameplay.
    Polishing will be useful to get more appeal.
     
  12. GarBenjamin

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    Yeah it's a matter of preference for the main part. It is interesting though how deep it goes. Some people see games with "less" graphics as being an indication the game is probably inferior. Some see games with "less" graphics as an indication the developer may have put more focus on gameplay and other aspects.

    Oh yeah I immediately recognized those games. Kabuki Quantum Fighter I think and one of probably the first TMNT games. Those are in 256x240 resolution so have a lot of pixels to work with.

    I am increasing the resolution on my next 2D game. Not that crazy high but going to bump it up from 128x90 to 160x120. I think it would have been an ideal resolution for this defense game but I am happy with it overall. I actually started out at 80x72 for this game and had to make a choice of either going completely abstract super simple shapes or increase the resolution so I could do a better job on creating recognizable images. I chose tha latter and increased it to 128x90 which made a huge difference. Like I said overall I think it looks fine. I could have gone with less detail which would have saved some time and looked a little cleaner. Anyway all of this thought on graphics is crazy. Lol It'll be fine for this one. The 3D game I will probably just keep high resolution screen but models will be super simple.
     
    Last edited: Nov 22, 2018
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  13. zenGarden

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    This makes a huge difference about the space, it's no more like playing a game on super zoom, and the player have lot more free space to have fun.

    Nes graphics are not crazy lol
    It's still really low rez, and anyone not 2D skilled can make such games, or use simple 3D models shapes baked to make sprites even more faster lol
    A character could be some simple shapes you rotate and move around to bake animations, without needing to create real animation and without rigging.
    About fonts, yeah, Snes rez is the minimum to get good readability.
     
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  14. GarBenjamin

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    I'm not an actual fan of tower defense games just wanted to make one different more to my liking. But yours sounds interesting. I will check it out.

    And yes that's the problem when you spend years of time plus paying freelancers you get in debt quickly. Not literally debt (although that does happen often too) but what I mean is if I worked say 10 hours per week on a game for 2.5 years that is 1,300 hours of dev time. So I'd see it like I am in the hole 1,300 hours worth of my time because that is the development cost. It isn't free. Cost the most valuable thing any of us have the only thing we can never get back.

    Anyway for me I would need to make about $65,000 which is $92,000 before Steam takes their cut. And if I had hired people and / or bought assets that is extra on top of that. Then I would be able to say okay I made as much from this as a job.

    Saying that it is cool you are seeing great success and I will check it out.
     
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  15. zenGarden

    zenGarden

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    This games is said C64, but the graphics are not ultra low rez, there is enough detail to have good readability like Nes games.
    And the font is also very readable, i think the CRT filter helps also a lot to smooth hard edges pixels and make graphics more appealing.
    I think rez was a dev choice, some could go ultra low rez, while other could push to Nes rez.
     
  16. GarBenjamin

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    That last game is not a pico-8 that is legend of xenia or something like that from the 64x64 lowrez game jam. I remember playing that. Yeah this a good example of focusing too much on graphics at the expense of the game. They made a very superb looking game for such a low resolution but it would probably have been much better to have reduced the size of everything and provided a larger play area even though it wouldn't look nearly as good. It is quite a great job overall though for such a tiny resolution. Pico-8 games have 4 times that at 128x128.
     
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  17. zenGarden

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    Someone should create a Voxel 3D engine like Dreams on PS4.
    You sculpt as you want, no retopology , no seams uv to do, you can use predefined materials and there is a character automatic animation system. This is not good to make huge games, but amazing workflow for small game levels.
    It's very intuitive to sculpt. I think we would see lot of new games looking good made by people not good at 3d art.

     
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  18. GarBenjamin

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    C64 multi-color mode had resolution of 160x200 or I think maybe 216 or 224 but that was in overscan/pal. But yeah simple thing is that is a big canvas but I will do 160x120 but that is the limit I am pretty sure. I've used 256x144 before and found that was a bit too high for me.

    If I make a game that is zoomed out more needs to show a large area at one time then I'd go higher for those. Basically sprites beyond 16x16 are just too much to draw and animate in a reasonable amount of time. For 128x90 a 16x16 sprite is huge. For 256x240 it is small. It's basically that simple.

    If I wanted to make a game with characters 2/3 or 3/4 size of the screen the lower the rez the better for workload. If I am drawing and animating everything by hand. I have done 32x32 but that increases the development cost so much to me it is not worth it. I have hired artists though so could do that again as well

    But again we seem to be fixated on graphics in this thread. LOL! I don't mind talking about graphics but we should give just as much thought and discussion to game design and audio and such I think.
     
    Last edited: Nov 22, 2018
  19. neoshaman

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    graphics is what takes the most time, unsurprising that most of the talk is about balancing art and time
     
  20. zenGarden

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    Try 3D, it's really fast, you slap 3D models together and press render.


    You do same for the level, use bezier curve to make path and press render with top down camera. It's also very fast.
    The best is you can edit the path to make new maps quickly.
    Some 2D map made in some minutes.


    Just saying there is ways to make detailed sprites fast that looks good. Anyway better rez means more space and better readability it's a win win situation.
     
    Last edited: Nov 22, 2018
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  21. GarBenjamin

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    I don't think that is really true though. I mean yea it is true that people make it the most time consuming thing. But that is because they must consider it to be the most important thing. And that implies that every game should be a very well designed well balanced gameplay experience with the only concern being art quality (if everything else is so much easier than the graphics). We know that isn't true. In fact there are many games that look very nice on Steam and elsewhere that are rated terribly because they fail on the more important things. I think the reason this happens is probably directly due to some people putting graphics importance above all else.

    The bottom line no sane person is going to highly rate a game simply because it has awesome graphics and yet plays like crap. Some people will sure. I said no sane person. Lol But people have and will highly rate a game that looks simple or even bad if it actually is a great gameplay experience.

    So I think the answer is obvious... do what you can for graphics and focus on the most important things the gameplay experience. If anything has to be given less attention or be done half ass let it be the graphics not the gameplay.
     
    Last edited: Nov 22, 2018
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  22. Antypodish

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    Is not true in my case. I am not going to put much effort on graphics, as I put in mechanics, which is more important.
    I have seen plenty Fancy graphic yet boring games. So for me what a waste of time, if not executed correctly.

    Just as an example, I doubt that minecraft graphics took any significant chunk of dev time, withing its production period.
     
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  23. zenGarden

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    I don't like Minecraft blocky cubes and pixel textures, while i would play some Minecfrat game with upgraded graphics.
     
  24. Antypodish

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    While it has own charm, probably still writing core of modded, or spin off of minecraft, will be far more time consuming, that adding few fancy models.

    But I liked play mc with shaders and alternative textures too.

     
  25. zenGarden

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    You keep gameplay, but change models and animations.
    When you're good at 3D , flat low poly can be fast, its' not so much work considering you can make a model in some hours, in some days you would have many different characters and monsters instead of same character cubes.
     
  26. Antypodish

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    Yes you can. But that is a bit besides my point.

    And I think still holds true, even if it was modded from start and released as vanilla.
     
  27. GarBenjamin

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    I do agree there is value in focusing on the visuals as far as how to produce something interesting and readable for the player while keeping the workload down to a reasonable amount so it doesn't overshadow every other aspect of the game development.

    Usually I refer to it as visuals and not so much graphics because graphics concerns are where I think the big issue is. Graphics are basically the technical side such as resolution, frames of animation, shader fx, lighting, etc. Visuals sure they rely on graphics but the most important thing is the aesthetic. I am not saying by any means my defense game is a superb example of visuals but what I mean I used as low of graphics as I could as a means to an end of getting decent visuals without creating a massive amount of work.

    And they could be better. I think as monochrome they would look better but I intentionally didn't want to go with monochrome and wanted colorful visuals. But I mentioned somewhere in here (I think or maybe it was in the dev log at the other forum) I considered adding an option for choosing grayscale and monochrome color palettes. Maybe if I do one final round of polish I will do that. I probably can just write another shader to handle it.

    Anyway I don't think the visuals don't matter at all I am just saying they also are nowhere near as important as many people make them out to be. At least not in terms of fidelity, lighting, resolution, super smooth animation, etc. Certainly not worth the amount of work and time many people seem to be pouring into just this one aspect.

    All I am getting at it is why make game development even harder more time consuming than it needs to be? Instead of modeling AAA or popular Indie games with superb graphics why not model popular games like Undertale, Minecraft or the many other games that are great great games enjoyed by millions of people that don't create such a massive workload just to get the visual content completed?

    I also think maybe a lot of people focus on this so much just because they love making art more than making a game. Nothing wrong with that at all other than they shouldn't talk about in the context of people making games if they aren't actually making games themselves and instead are only making graphics. Because these are two completely different scenarios.

    The one case sure spend a week making an image or a month making an awesome animated character. Great your done if that is all you are focused on. For a game after spending all of that time making graphics you haven't even started actual development yet. There is no game. Nothing to play. Need all of the game design. Need all of the logic whether typed in or visual. Need all of the audio. Need to playtest and balance. It is just a completely different case.
     
  28. Antypodish

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    I mentioned before, specially AAA games hit the wall of how far they can go, specially with game play. Not that they can not make games better, but seams they don't want to. Even going backwards.
    From marketing point of view, they can not sell ideal product, because they won't be able to sell another one.
    Hence focusing on graphics and small improvements over iterations.

    See for example GTA V. Specially past few months events, when mass players has been banned for modding. You can see steam reviews. It is significant % of unsatisfactory reviews. This movement suppose to prevent breaking multiplayer. Or make game any better, so players can purchase content? Not sure how true is, but apparently economy is already broken anyway.

    From that point, maybe will be worth keep killing now game, so they can release GTA VI then VII etc.

    Full respect to Blizard and its World of Warcraft.
    If I had time, perhaps I would consider play again, even most of graphics is outdated for this days.
     
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  29. sngdan

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    @zenGarden great feedback

    @GarBenjamin what exactly is the sales pitch for your tower defense game? How do you think it delivers against it (from a customer perspective)?
     
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  30. GarBenjamin

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    Sales pitch? ...

    Here's a game... you might want to play it.

    And then some tiny percentage of people may indeed play it. LOL!

    Honestly, my mind is not there yet. I kind of work in modes. Right now I am in development mode. Soon I hope to be able to switch over to marketing mode and then I will work on the game's landing page and my head will be in that mode. It's hard to explain any differently than that.

    I can say it won't be any major thing though. Basically, I plan on just talking to the people that come to the landing page explaining what my design goals were, why they may want to play the game and that's about it. Basically just a very informal down to earth one human talking to another approach. Nothing fancy. Nothing formal. Nothing business like. Not here at Super Mega Awesome Games Company etc. But hey I am Gar here is a game I made let me tell you a little about it. Not overselling it. Setting realistic expectations. I will try to help people to see the uniqueness in it. If they see it and give it a go then cool. If they can't see it that is fine too.

    That's been a big part of the discussion in here... there is so much work involved in this stuff. Making the game is just part of it. I am not even done with the game yet but I have started a little marketing of it primarily on Twitter over the past few weeks maybe 1 month or so.

    But basically I hope to finish the development by the end of this weekend so I can get on to focusing on the release. But the release itself is another big project. Then it is working on the landing page at itch.io and packaging up the game for deployment. And then its doing the same thing over at GameJolt. Then after I actually have the pages done to send people to then I can think about marketing campaigns for it. But right now my head is still into development. I just do a tiny bit of marketing think I have spent maybe 7 hours or something like that total on marketing now just capturing screenshots and video clips and releasing on Twitter. Maintaining a dev log on another forum.
     
    Last edited: Nov 23, 2018
  31. GarBenjamin

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    @zenGarden I thought you might like these. I remembered an rpg someone was working on many years ago in either DarkBasic or Blitz3D (I am sure there were several in each). I finished up my dev sessions for tonight so went searching.

    Quite good I think as far as the looks go especially for the tech available at that time. I think DarkBasic used Direct X 9.




    Seems to have worked on it for 4 to 5 years then abandoned it I guess. Probably just burned but but a couple years later they were working on this... still an rpg but completely different from the previous one.


    I think the town especially that second still looks great. Very well designed it seems. Of course no people walking around or anything basically a walking simulator. It used to drive me near crazy to see this kind of thing happen time and again. People would post screenshots and videos of cool game projects sometimes for years even and then just drop it all. I've noticed that a lot here too in Work In Progress. I guess they just take on more than they can do and burn out after a number of years.

    Anyway... I think if a person made something like that looked like this and was an actual completed playable game it would be quite impressive probably be well received.

    Also I was thinking it might actually be worthwhile to go back and develop a game in Blitz3D or DarkBasic. I mean advantage today's machines faster than 10 years ago and it would look like an older game without actually trying to make it look it that way. Be "authentic" in a way. lol
     
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  32. sngdan

    sngdan

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    I did not mean a formal sales pitch, just some bullet points on what you think the key differentiators are, the unique points you mention, etc. There was so much focus on gfx and boring gameplay, etc. I felt it would be interesting to describe what exactly is special about the game and what niche you try to attract (a bit back to thread title)
     
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  33. GarBenjamin

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    Ah okay I see what you are saying. Basically I just wanted to make a defense game that I would enjoy playing. One that feels more balanced on strategy & what I view as "arcade action". The main thing that guided my decisions was thinking if I came across such a game (other than Rampart) in the arcade years back (or someone like Apogee had created such a game for DOS) what would that have been like. It's kind of a blend of "old school" and "new school".

    I wanted it to feel more active more exciting yet still have strategy but the interface should be very streamlined and easy to work with no continual clicking on buttons or menus no keyboard required all controlled only with a mouse. Once you play a little bit it feels very natural and super easy to interact with the game. Those are part of what I view as the arcade influence on the game's design.

    So I wanted to make a game that had a decent amount of complexity yet everything is implemented in such a way the game comes across very simplistic in play.

    This stuff is presented to the player as part of the 20 screens worth of information available from the Learn menu should they want to take the time to learn more about the game. Although playtesters have told me they generally never even clicked on that and just started playing and it was very easy to figure out. Which is great... I mean sure it would be nice having taken the time to write all of that for more people to actually read it... LOL... but at the same time the fact they didn't need to and without any tips and such popping up still easily "got it" I think means I hit that goal.

    Anywhere here are the relevant screens from the info available in game (which should remind people of old DOS games from Apogee)...
     
  34. GarBenjamin

    GarBenjamin

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    Aha! This is a good example of what I mean by I have seen this kind of stuff so many times.

    Granted video quality is very low and of course there were limits due to the tech of the time but basically this is the same as a lot of what I see Indies making now in these modern game engines. Actually a lot more ambitious than many solo Indies today I would say. This is more like stuff today we would see a fairly large team doing.

    This was written in Blitz3D


    There is an rpg but haven't found it yet. I remember someone working on a quite impressive rpg in Blitz3D. Probably never finished it but it seemed promising.

    I did come across this someone used Blitz3D for some 1-month game competition and worked on a Dungeon Delver game.




    Anyway it was cool checking out that stuff again. And maybe give ideas to someone here as well.
     
    Last edited: Nov 23, 2018
  35. zenGarden

    zenGarden

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    This is exactly what indies are doing , don't you think ?
    Lot of style variety, graphics from complex to super simple.
    For a niche you can keep ultra low rez , not easy to read graphics.
    For mass market you'll need to work on better graphics, and make them the first thing player gets attention before he plays the game and test the gameplay and content.

    Coder and artists lol

    About your RTS game, how many units do you have ? I would say some 5 different units ? they are not characters, they are simple to make.
    Why should you not use 3D and simple primitives with a paint over to make them in higher rez ?
    It would not take more than one hour per unit with paint over, after one or two weeks work you would have your high rez sprites.

    It's again a choice you do about the amount of work you consider minimal , you choose the less time possible, like some minutes painting a sprite unit.
    Perhaps it's too minimalist, not enough love on the graphics side, too much focused on content and gameplay ?
    It's like you don't like making the graphics, you are avoiding the graphics going the ultra low rez and spend more time on code you like more.
    Would better solution be to put more attention and love to graphics, without going crazy indeed, pay some freelancer to make sprites graphics you design or buy some sprites ?

    Someone else that will care a bit more about graphics, will consider one hour okay to create a higher rez sprite, and will care about giving the sprite more details, more context and making it a bit more appealing than the very minimalist version.


    It's old lighting, no contrast.
    It was some sort of standard lighting , everyone used the same techniques as lightmaps or directional lights, when there was no normal maps. the town looks very clean and very flat.
    I'm not fan of the old flat diffuse lighting :D, i would remake it using toon shading, flat models with simple colors, or some textures toon filter (like Zelda BOT) ; it would look less flat and more stylized and more appealing.
    The level design is more important.


    Towns is very specific level design; it can be fast with modular assets, once done making the town is really quick and can be modified any time.


    Better when you have a building generator, you'll get your town even faster, before tweaking it.


    The rpg video is cool, sprites look good.






    I remember that game lol
    The game has amazing design about characters, stylized lighting colors palette, and lot of cool particles effects, it looks enjoyable.
    As you can see the graphics and video show a game that is already very appealing, even without testing it's gameplay.
    So yeah, graphics are the first thing that can appeal players first.

    Clean textures , only two , stone and wood, very detailed creature and textures.
    The simple design, with good ligthing and texture choice is what makes it look good, there is some coherent graphics.

    You'll miss a real 3D world editor, a particle editor and some other cool tools. Until you are ready to spend lot more time than necessary creating simple things for the game.
    And it's a slow 3D engine, a same game will run faster on modern 3D engine compared to a Blitz3D version. It is not designed to use GPU power or instancing.

    Anyway some Blitz 3D game with good lighting ( but too much bloom )
     
    Last edited: Nov 23, 2018
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  36. GarBenjamin

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    Well I think a lot of Indies are definitely using a variety of visual styles and various levels of graphics tech but it still seems like the bulk of time is being poured into that aspect in many cases. Which is fine other people can do what ever they want to do. I am not doing it though.

    I actually have spent probably as much time on the visuals in my defense game as I spent on each of the other aspects. Title screen art. Making images for all of the learn screens that show step by step how to play. The art for the game itself from playfield, units, GUI, the art for the lost game screen and for the won game sequence.

    It's not like I just sat down and immediately created what I have now. It's an iterative process. Originally less detailed. Different colors. Through iterations the colors were adjusted and then more iterations to add more detail. Then writing a shader to give a subtle retro scanline fx and tweaking that several times. Then the focus on the visual feedback.

    Overall I'd say it is quite balanced with time spent on visuals perhaps being a little more than the others. It's just not a case where I put 2 or 3 or 4 or 10 times the focus on visuals as I did everything else.

    I think that's about spot on. I didn't bother tracking detailed what I spent time on this time. I used to do that but didn't see the need because having done that I have a good feel for it now. I'd guess about 30% of the time was spent on playtesting, balancing, tweaking things. And the remaining 70% was pretty equally split across game design work, art work, audio work, and programming work. So yes of course I put more emphasis on gameplay and having solid quality across the game on the whole than I did specifically in any one of the other areas. It's something I don't hear people mention much but the playtesting & balancing is so important. That's how you make a game feel right. Feel good. Playtest the hell out of it check the difficulty progression tweak accordingly, look for opportunities to strengthen feedback and implement those, etc.
     
    Last edited: Nov 23, 2018
  37. zenGarden

    zenGarden

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    Sure it's very important to balance difficulty, progression or game flow.
     
  38. GarBenjamin

    GarBenjamin

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    I don't want to have all of this focus here on my game specifically but in the interest of giving some more insight into the amount of focus and iterations on visuals here are some gifs I made for my dev log during the development of the game.

    It started out with this... originally a placeholder tank


    Then at this time was still considering doing something more military based so this iteration changed the colors and made a more readable tank and blocked out the GUI at the bottom. The game was still at 80x72 resolution.


    Increased resolution to 128x90. First work on making the GUI icons for the units.


    Much later and more iterations on the gameplay specific images and GUI images and colors. Of course this gif shows what happens when you lose the game as well. More graphics work.


    After a couple rounds focused on polish, color changes, working more detail into everything, fades and so forth.


    So that should give an idea of the amount of iterations just on the visuals over the course of the project. But again I approach it all as a whole. To any one aspect is just as important as anything else and the most important is to focus on the game as a whole through continual playtesting and balancing and tweaking.

    Alright and now it is time for our Thanksgiving celebration. Most folks did theirs yesterday but scheduling didn't work for that for us so we are doing ours today.
     
    Last edited: Nov 23, 2018
  39. zenGarden

    zenGarden

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    Last edited: Nov 23, 2018
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  40. neoshaman

    neoshaman

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    BEWARE, beware, a lot of these blitz3D example don't use vanilla blitz3d, but are extended with long dead now .dll
    That screen reflection and water droplet and these physics bounce are definitely extension.
     
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  41. zenGarden

    zenGarden

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  42. GarBenjamin

    GarBenjamin

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    Perhaps so but you can program anything you want maybe find creative ways to do things. I don't know if I would really do a game in DarkBasic or Blitz3D because I already have a similar but more powerful environment with AGK2. But I don't think there is anything wrong about using such things. For a programmer I think they could probably do a better job have more creative freedom working in such an environment. Well some of them anyway. Sometimes there is a lot of freedom to just work "in the code".
     
    Last edited: Nov 23, 2018
  43. neoshaman

    neoshaman

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    I def still use blitz3D I was just saying that they cheated a bit there, but that's okay given the topic, just don't expect to jump in blitz3D and get that out of the box easily.
     
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  44. zenGarden

    zenGarden

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    It's better use a more complete 3D engine with integrated physics and particles.
    Why re inventing the wheel for such fundamentals things ? It's a waste of time when it's available and you could work on the game instead.
     
  45. neoshaman

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    That's the point IF you need those element, but that's a balance, what's easier. The setup is faster in blitz for experiment, so I stay in it for some prototyping, it also have native 2d drawing support, which is invaluable when testing visually some algorithm I tend to do.
     
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  46. GarBenjamin

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    Yeah that's true I get that. I still have Blitz3D and BlitzMax and occasionally mess around with them just for fun. Like you mentioned above it is just so much faster to jump in and get right to work.

    It's not really reinventing anything so much as it is (for me anyway) just not even needing most of the things in a full blown game engine to begin with. It's hard to explain really and I know that many people who also programmed for decades like me in other things do find engines like Unity easier but for others (and this includes me) these game engines take something that I always saw as easy & straightforward (although a good amount of work) and make it more complicated. That's what I ran into repeatedly. Like everything I would knock out in a few lines or few dozen lines of code seemed to be something that was now offered in a more complex more dependent on having set up other things first dependent on other components, etc manner or rigid in how it was implemented or something.

    Usually it's just overkill but again a lot of that I think is because I just don't care about the majority of the things modern game engines are offering. Like blends for animations for example. To me that's a waste of time. If I am playing a game and a character is walking along and then they stop I expect I will see an abrupt flip from a walking animation to an idle animation, etc. Again because I see it like it is not a cgi movie it is a game. There's just many things this that I am sure are very important to a lot of developers but I see as just as a waste of time that could be spent on more important things in a game.

    Actual "real" physics are rarely ever needed imo. Interaction is very important of course but that can all be done through simple game world physics as part of the control of an object. For me I just have a Force property for an object and if I want to apply a force to an object such another object hitting it I just set that force property to a certain value. Then when that object is updated it does its own processing and then applies any forces that have been applied to it.

    That's how I am able to easily knock back the enemies here and in turn the knocked back enemy knocks back other enemies. Here the player's speed is used as the force applied to the enemy and stored in its Force property and will be processed in its next update. This was just a little experiment project I made testing out an idea for some simple but nice visuals. But anyway yeah that is an example though. Most game programming is just very simple stuff really and I think many times people or even engines are making it more complicated than it is. Unless you are really trying to do something like a true simulation and need those in depth physics simulation calculations of course.


    I definitely get people using game engines like Unity though. I am not saying I don't. Just saying it is not a case of they are always the absolute best way just because they have so much stuff crammed in them. It's like anything. Like my old tv could connect to the Internet. I never connected it to the wifi because I never had any use for it. Didn't need it. Just got a new tv last Saturday. Has even more bells n whistles on it. I won't use any of it. Have no need in it. I stream videos, etc through my PS3 which is on the wifi. All of this other crap that came with the tv is just "there". lol

    BUT for people who use this stuff then it is a very big deal very important. Many people probably rely heavily on the built-in physics or animator, etc. Maybe their games need that stuff or maybe using these things actually does save them time & work. Not everyone is the same, right? For me (and I am sure many others as well) it is so much easier & faster to just program what I need myself in most cases.
     
    Last edited: Nov 24, 2018
  47. neoshaman

    neoshaman

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    I don't think the problem with unity is the overstuff you can easily ignore, it's more the stuff you can't ignore AND most notably that core of game, behavior therefore code, is not in unity and is outsource to other thing BUT to use it you still need to set up unity's stuff.

    Consider starting a 3d game in blitz3d:
    1 - open the super fast light weight ide,
    2 - create a new file tab,
    3 - type in the tab the code (create plane, create cube at xyz, create camera at xyz of cube, movecube, done),
    4 - press play,
    5 - save to disk with a name

    while in unity
    1 - open unity laucher,
    2 - set up the name and option,
    3 - wait for unity start and compile random shot
    4 - create new game objects from the menu
    5 - create a new script
    6 - drag and drop the script on the game object
    7 - set the parameter of the game objects
    8 - dispose objects on the scene
    9 - open the script which lauch another software with their own set up and needs
    10 - save the scripts
    11 - shuffle the windows back to unity
    12 - wait for the script to compile
    13 - press play
    14 - save the scene

    So of course you start resenting the bloated stuff, but in truth it's not the bloat, it's the workflow, and most notably the number of step and need to wait until you start adding behavior. This workflow create a feeling of bloat because you are never sure when you start, and are code oriented, if you really have to set up all these thing (because of importing asset steps, each tutorial will have you go there).

    The pro is that all the extra stuff hard to do in code are super fast and convenient like level design and level building. It build confidence to non coder, as you can start with the visual and figure behavior after.

    BUT I don't feel it's incompatible, all it need for blitz to match is to add a tab with scene building like unity, and bake the result into code (asset declaration) you would call from the code tab. Which basically I have always tempted to use unity as, ie a ide to blitz lol.

    I solved unity partially by buying script inspector and never leaving the soft again except for 3d modeling. But now there is probuilder FRAKING UNITY JUST BUY SCRIPT INSPECTOR ALREADY
     


  48. This problem isn't unique to Unity. It's the same all of the lightweight, more dumb and feature-rich more complex applications.
    Like Notepad++ and Visual Studio, Wings3D vs. 3D Studio Max or Maya.

    But once you set up your project properly, you get a ton of features which you can use and enjoy (or hate if they contain bugs).
    This is the trade off. Unity less and less a quick fire up and do something application, it becomes more professional, more feature rich one.

    Also most of the time when you start working the actual start time becomes quickly irrelevant. Unless you spend 5 minutes to put together two boxes which are doing nothing. The tools always outweigh the startup time here unless you "just quickly change something and I'm done". (As usual: IMHO)
     
  49. GarBenjamin

    GarBenjamin

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    Well that is part of it for me I do see what you are saying. But I guess I see it like it all goes hand in hand. I didn't mean for turn into focusing on Unity weaknesses though mainly I was showing some cool stuff in Blitz3D and then thought might be cool to actually make a 3D game in Blitz3D.

    Unity... I definitely see where it has a lot of stuff in it that people can use and the Asset Store has even more stuff. It's just that for me personally (and I guess you as well to some degree) I felt like I was really held back like I knew how to make the games I want to make but felt like I had one arm tied behind my back or something. I enjoy checking out the games made in Unity by completely new devs and I usually just think "way to go! You get it. It really works for you!"

    I don't why exactly and this is something that has been discussed many times because people just don't believe it don't understand how I can develop easier and quicker with nothing but a text editor programming (of course using graphics and audio and other tools as needed lol) but I just can. I can make a game faster writing in C code with a solid api than I can working in Unity. It's just the way it is for me personally. And that's not an exaggeration. When I was doing that little game jam a few of us did here and made that 3D Mutant Invaders game I started out for the first 2/3 developing two versions of the game simultaneously. One in BASIC and the other in C. Because that kind of thing to me is all the same basically. Just a different language. Syntax changes here there. Semicolons or not.

    But yeah I think it is cool when a new person never having done any development before comes in and makes a little game in Unity in a fairly short time. That is awesome. I sometimes think if I was in that same scenario it would be different for me too.

    Ah well as long as we are able to complete games it doesn't matter what we are using.
     
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  50. Antypodish

    Antypodish

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    I can make idle clicker on a calculator, in fraction of minute. Does it count?
     
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