UnionVGF Indie Game developers (or thinking about becoming one) corner

Looks like my last post is getting a bit out of date. Here is a more recent screenshot.

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Godsmack the game looks amazing. You are planning to go the early access route ?

Great to see a bunch of devs here. I am a dev too. Been in the industry for almost 8 years now. Started with Disney where i worked on some of their online games. Moved over to Gameloft and worked on some mobile games. Once they shutdown the NYC studio i joined 5TH Cell and was working on the next Scribblenauts games before 5TH Cell also shut down(yeah i have been through a few studio shutdowns :)). Went indie and started a studio with some 5TH Cell folks called Digital Continue based out of Queens. Right now working on our first original IP called Next Up Hero which is out in early access right now on Steam and comes out on May 31st for all consoles and PC.

 
Godsmack the game looks amazing. You are planning to go the early access route ?

Maybe. I still have a few months before I even think of releasing, so I have a bit of time to make some decisions. I may try a kickstarter as well now that the game is getting some attention. I've even had offers from a couple publishers.

I set up a facebook group for the game and already have 44 members, so I am getting a decent following even with the tiny amount of marketing I've done so far. I haven't really started promotion all that much yet. I've been too busy. I am working solo except for the guy I hired to do my music. I'll be ramping up promotion more over the next few months.

I post the latest demo on the FB group for the game here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/861006687412156/

Your game looks cool too. It's nice to see a few indies here.
 
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Nice. I would also suggest posting the demo on itch.io unless you want to limit the demo to a smaller player base.

Kickstarter is a good way to go especially if you are not asking for too much. Fig also a good idea purely because of the coverage you get within the industry. There are a ton of small publishers who are perfect for 1-2 man devs since their budgets are usually small too. A great time to be an indie dev really.

Also if anybody is going to PAX come check out the game the Nintendo booth :)
 
Nice. I would also suggest posting the demo on itch.io unless you want to limit the demo to a smaller player base.

Kickstarter is a good way to go especially if you are not asking for too much. Fig also a good idea purely because of the coverage you get within the industry. There are a ton of small publishers who are perfect for 1-2 man devs since their budgets are usually small too. A great time to be an indie dev really.

Also if anybody is going to PAX come check out the game the Nintendo booth :)

Cool, I'll keep that in mind.

The demo right now is mainly for feedback so I can fine tune the game. I'm sure I'll release a more public version as I get closer to finished.
 
Been very busy, a lot of failed tests, then I managed to make this, now this looks like it can be going somewhere. Left mouse button to walk and right does attack.

 
Working on new weapon, Assassin claws, did take me most time drawing up how they was going to look, then about 5 hours in Blender and Substance painter, may have put in too much details there as not able to see it from the top down view:

6VtQZAa.jpg
 
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Looking great Godmack! I will sign up first for your game when it has gone early access. Also DLC, your work is looking better. I have a deeper look at them but let me post what I have done so far.

Yes, I am alive! Been a while since I posted here. My game is in the fridge for a while, but after playing Life is strange, which you guys totally need to play if you have not, I think through a lot of my game development hurdles. I release I was trying to create something too big, too complex to put them together. It's like trying to solve a 5000 piece Jigsaw puzzle, while never played jigsaw puzzle before. It overwhelmed me.

So I decided to trim the fat, & dump the inventory system, & make every "level" self-contained, & you will only pick up items (which will be 3 max, & shown at top right side of screen) & interact with what you need to advance the level, like in Life is strange. With that in mind, I set a target by end of the year to finish a self-contained level that incorporates most of the core elements of the gameplay.
So here I am.

The infiltration scene


The protagonist. She only appears in short videos normally at start/end of levels & key story moments. Even though it's a FP game, I feel it is important for the player to be able to visualize the player they are playing. It's something I learned from a game design book.


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And Raycast works, took some hours to figure it out how to best deal with walls, however think I got it:


The animation looks sick! I think the walk animations need to be adjusted so the area she covers, matches her footsteps. Otherwise, it's good.
 
Here's an earlier build from June so you kinda get the gist, but the pre-alpha build is from mid-December.


is "Like" like your favorite word of all time. :grin:
Kinda jealous everyone like has such nice voice. I try like recording my voice, & I sound like Mickey Mouse, like with a sore throat :smash:

Jokes aside, I am the last person who should comment on others, given how horrifying my grammar & spellings are. but I do have a terrible voice.

The game is looking good.:bang:
 
Kinda jealous everyone like has such nice voice. I try like recording my voice, & I sound like Mickey Mouse, like with a sore throat :smash:

Well, I've actually taken voice lessons online since I toyed with the idea of doing voice overs for games or game trailers. Who knows, maybe I'll pursue that again. A good mic and proper placement does help.

Anyway, good to see you are back. For a while there, I didn't expect to see you again. Sometimes it's good to re-scope a game and make it more manageable. I've had to do it many times as the scope creeped up in my game.

I'll post a new screenshot or video soon.
 
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Well, I've actually taken voice lessons online since I toyed with the idea of doing voice overs for games or game trailers. Who knows, maybe I'll pursue that again. A good mic and proper placement does help.

Anyway, good to see you are back. For a while there, I didn't expect to see you again. Sometimes it's good to re-scope a game and make it more manageable. I've had to do it many times as the scope creeped up in my game.

I'll post a new screenshot or video soon.
Looking forward to your new updates
 
Starseeker, where you been bro? Busy on your game I guess. Looks great.
My game was in the fridge for a while actually. before I revive it again in April this year. I did cover quite a bit of mileage within the last 2 months.

I do have a near target to finish a gameplay video (a mini level that highlights most of the core gameplay) by end of the year. I am ahead of schedule so its good news, hopefully, a demo by next summer.

Good to see you around as well.
 
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Think may have found just what needs to get animations work better, going to do some testing
 
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Update for the week. Considering I am learning while working, & have 2 evening of Edison moments, meaning that I found 100s ways what do not work, I think it has been a pretty good week.

 
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By the way, I am looking for voice over female (British Accent) for my demo video, if anyone knows of one, or an affordable site to find one, let me know, I google a little but the ones that show the rate, the price are extortionary.

I visit a German site, & they are charging like 89€ for 3mins! That's almost 30€ a min!!! But to be fair, they are advertised for Professional voiceover, I guess I need someone less professional. LOL.

I expect the total dialog to be within 5mins, mainly of our antagonist commenting on what she sees & observe (when you click interactable objects) typical of an adventure game. The whole game is expected to have maybe 20mins-40mins of total dialog. SO I need someone that not that expensive but decent enough.

I google & found this site, maybe its cheaper, any one has feedback.
https://www.fiverr.com/categories/music-audio/voice-overs

I think I can get a more decent one for $5 for 200 words, roughly about 20 sentences worth of dialog. I can live with this. I have to give up a happy meal here & there I suppose.
 
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Well, I've actually taken voice lessons online since I toyed with the idea of doing voice overs for games or game trailers. Who knows, maybe I'll pursue that again. A good mic and proper placement does help.

Anyway, good to see you are back. For a while there, I didn't expect to see you again. Sometimes it's good to re-scope a game and make it more manageable. I've had to do it many times as the scope creeped up in my game.

I'll post a new screenshot or video soon.

Anyway, I visited your facebook page. Great work. Other than discovering you are one handsome bastard (I am not gay, no worry), I notice you listed yourself as a game developer, while I think it is to be expected. I am wondering if you are doing this full time. If so, how do you manage it?

I would love to go full time, if not for my job paying too well, too comfy, & I have bills to pay. But its very exhausting, working 2 jobs every weekday, & the obvious, it hindered the speed of game development.
 
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Anyway, I visited your facebook page. Great work. Other than discovering you are one handsome bastard (I am not gay, no worry), I notice you listed yourself as a game developer, while I think it is to be expected. I am wondering if you are doing this full time. If so, how do you manage it?

I would love to go full time, if not for my job paying too well, too comfy, & I have bills to pay. But its very exhausting, working 2 jobs every weekday, & the obvious, it hindered the speed of game development.

Well, I'm in a position now to make use of my time and money to pursue game dev full time.

My father was recently put in a nursing home, and is not coming back. So, since I was taking care of him previously, I was living with him. That means I am pretty much in charge of taking care of the house (though he is still paying for it). As such, this gives me the opportunity to take some risks and try getting a career going. I have enough in savings in case anything happens to live off of for a while.

If this game does at least decently, I plan on making series of games like this in different time periods. After this game, I will have my workflow set up, and can reuse base character models, have a starting point for animations, and lots of code I can reuse. So, the next game will be MUCH less time consuming.

I am also taking my time and studying while building this game. I am usually reading a book of some kind, either about game making, gamification, writing with emotion, marketing, or anything I feel like studying.

I am about to post a new demo to my facebook group here within a few days. So stay tuned.
 
Well, I'm in a position now to make use of my time and money to pursue game dev full time.

My father was recently put in a nursing home, and is not coming back. So, since I was taking care of him previously, I was living with him. That means I am pretty much in charge of taking care of the house (though he is still paying for it). As such, this gives me the opportunity to take some risks and try getting a career going. I have enough in savings in case anything happens to live off of for a while.

If this game does at least decently, I plan on making series of games like this in different time periods. After this game, I will have my workflow set up, and can reuse base character models, have a starting point for animations, and lots of code I can reuse. So, the next game will be MUCH less time consuming.

I am also taking my time and studying while building this game. I am usually reading a book of some kind, either about game making, gamification, writing with emotion, marketing, or anything I feel like studying.

I am about to post a new demo to my facebook group here within a few days. So stay tuned.
I hope your dad get well. I am lucky that my parents have been healthy throughout their lives. They live rather charm lives, my dad was a life long govenment employee, & my mum is a sort of librarian . He recently retired & part-time as some form of security guard. Even so, I need to have savings in case my parents need any financial help.

What I will do, is considering no pay leave for 1-2 months on the finishing stretch. If the game do well, I may consider full time.. I agree it will be much easier, in the 2nd game, as we will already have a full game engine already in place, which we can build upon.

I am doing alot of studying & learning as well. I guess it is inevitable as a Captain America (one man Army). Its fun though,. I always enjoy learning, which may explained my relative sucess in acedemic. Though it can be exhausting.

If you are okay, do you mind sharing links or books on emotional writing, game making, marketing etc.

Looking forward to your demo.
 
I hope your dad get well. I am lucky that my parents have been healthy throughout their lives. They live rather charm lives, my dad was a life long govenment employee, & my mum is a sort of librarian . He recently retired & part-time as some form of security guard. Even so, I need to have savings in case my parents need any financial help.

What I will do, is considering no pay leave for 1-2 months on the finishing stretch. If the game do well, I may consider full time.. I agree it will be much easier, in the 2nd game, as we will already have a full game engine already in place, which we can build upon.

I am doing alot of studying & learning as well. I guess it is inevitable as a Captain America (one man Army). Its fun though,. I always enjoy learning, which may explained my relative sucess in acedemic. Though it can be exhausting.

If you are okay, do you mind sharing links or books on emotional writing, game making, marketing etc.

Looking forward to your demo.

Here is a picture of some of my books. I have more, but too many to post.

dXtivyP.jpg


Not all of these are directly related to game design, but I have found that studying game design books alone is very limiting. Many of the same concepts of other hobbies such as writing can be applied to game design as well.

I got all of these on Amazon. It can add up in price getting everything, so feel free to ask which I'd recommend over the others. There are a couple books in that photo that I just bought recently and haven't had a chance to read yet.

Take a look and see if any of these catch your eye, and I'll answer any questions about them that I can.
 
That's a lot of books to read. Which one do you recommend suitable for Adventure game, on game design? The book, show don't tell seems interesting as well. How would you rate it?

By the way, I need some help. I made a dialog (flashback) that will be made into a slideshow cutscene, which I intended to add after level end in the gameplay video I am working on.

Tell me what you think.

The basic idea is the gameplay video, which is the snow level I posted early, will not show much of the plot/story/theme of the game, so I want a simple cutscene to get people excited/curious to know more about the story of the game. What do you guys think?

X12tw2J.jpg
 
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That's a lot of books to read. Which one do you recommend suitable for Adventure game, on game design? The book, show don't tell seems interesting as well. How would you rate it?

By the way, I need some help. I made a dialog (flashback) that will be made into a slideshow cutscene, which I intended to add after level end in the gameplay video I am working on.

Tell me what you think.

The basic idea is the gameplay video, which is the snow level I posted early, will not show much of the plot/story/theme of the game, so I want a simple cutscene to get people excited/curious to know more about the story of the game. What do you guys think?

X12tw2J.jpg

I actually haven't read "Show Don't Tell" yet, but it looked good enough for me to buy it, so I think it will be pretty good.

If your game is going to be story driven with lots of cutscenes or writing, then I recommend all 3 of the writing books I have, Show Don't Tell, Writing with Emotion, and Master Lists for Writers.

As far as game design goes, either Game Design Workshop or Designing Games would be good.

Now, I also recommend Actionable Gamification just because it does a good job of explaining what motivates people do things, and it uses games as an example. So, I think it is a good read for game makers.

All of these are on Amazon, so make use of their sneak previews and read through some of the books, and just pick one or two that appeal to you.

Game design is about a lot of things. Player motivation and player experience being the most important things. Players need to be motivated to do things, and you need to decide how to make them feel engaged and get into the game.

That cutscene looks okay (I assume you will proofread and fix typos before doing the cutscene), however it is difficult to judge without seeing more of the game. It does a good job of getting us to feel the characters are human, and that we should care about them. Judging it here on its own is difficult, but seeing where it fits in, and how much we know about the characters, and where the story is at that point will make all the difference.

You may wish to read "Writing with Emotion, Tension, Conflict" before you write too much of the story/cutscenes. It may give you a better perspective on writing that you can use when writing these scenes.
 
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Using Navmesh to move, and have managed to be able to get it to stop moving when release the mouse, instead of clicking with mouse where want to go now just hold mouse and move mouse in what direction want to go, found it a lot easier.
Got to however do something about that rotation, got to see if able to get it to play a rotation animation when rotates using mouse, as now are able to rotate when idle, found that this is best to do as going to be enemies attacking from all sides.

 
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Using Navmesh to move, and have managed to be able to get it to stop moving when release the mouse, instead of clicking with mouse where want to go now just hold mouse and move mouse in what direction want to go, found it a lot easier.
Got to however do something about that rotation, got to see if able to get it to play a rotation animation when rotates using mouse, as now are able to rotate when idle, found that this is best to do as going to be enemies attacking from all sides.


Character animation is tough, but can see it is its rewarding. I made the decision early not to have characters (except for a few animation shots) in my game to aviod the complexity & time consumpting characters & AI animation, even though I was mainly a character artist (hobbyist) before I decided to make my game.

Kudos to you for taking the challenge head on
I can see improvement from last time you shown your char. I think polishing the "moonwalk", & the character is good to go, IMO.
 
Ah yeah it is better to make it simple in the start then work on it from there on, thinking that are going to use raycast for ranged attack enemies, so they will check if got player in their range and if not will move closer before stopping up when they do, then from there will go into attack mode.
 
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In my game, none of the characters are using raycast. I set up the AI to do simple distance checks to determine their state. Of course, I also set it up so they can shoot over walls, so take that into account as well. I'd probably have to use raycast if I wanted an actual line of sight around walls.
 
I presume ray cast is some kind of line tracing to see if an actor (or whatever it is called in unity) is within a predetermine range.
I think it’s good to have enemies react only when within range, or we don’t have off screen attack that plague some games like PoE.
It make sense also from a performance sense. Any game resource that need to be calculated via the per frame basis should have a check to make sure they are activated only when needed.

Anyway, I wanted to have regular update here, but thee is no video or picture, but maybe I post some when I get home. I have spend a lot of time on interface and cleaning/ optimizing the codes. I ah e not out a lot of Mileage into the programming part for a while, and once I started again, after a snow start, I manage to get up to speed very fast. Flow charts helps a lot, & making notes. I have a excel file that make screenshots and details many key aspect of the unreal blueprint script and methodology. It’s faster and more easily understand by me than to read pages of documents.

What surprise me, when making interface is that there is a lot of thinking process involve in making intriutive Interface that has good player feedbacks: even subtitle have a lot of consideration, from fonts size, readability, how to space them , where to place them & pacing required some thinking. Something I never thought about.

Also read an article about player feedback, by that i am talking about what the players feel when pressing an icon, fire a weapon, perform an action etc that was often afterthoughts by developers, but are more critical than they thought.
 
UI, & interaction work. Feel free to comments. By the way, the game will have voice narration, at least for the protagonist, that's why the info that pop up when you interact (Use the look via LMB) is in the 'subtitle area'.

The classic unreal " low texture pop in" of the UI elements are an eyesore but will see how I can fix that.

 
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