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ToxicSlurpee
Nov 5, 2003

-=SEND HELP=-


Pillbug

Delamore posted:

Where's a good place online to learn more about C#, it doesn't have to be related to game programming but it would help.
I've done a few of the make a simple game tutorials for XNA but it feels like there's alot to C# I'm missing.

dot net perls is a good site with a poo poo load of information. http://www.dotnetperls.com/

If you already know at least basic programming the Microsoft documentation of C# is expansive and covers everything but will be meaningless to somebody that's extremely new to programming. How far along are you?

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Polio Vax Scene
Apr 5, 2009



Delamore posted:

Where's a good place online to learn more about C#, it doesn't have to be related to game programming but it would help.
I've done a few of the make a simple game tutorials for XNA but it feels like there's alot to C# I'm missing.

I like this site.

e: daaammnnniiiit

Vermain
Sep 5, 2006



Can anyone recommend some good animation software for spriting? I'm using Inkscape to do my actual sprite components, which will then be stitched together and animated, but Inkscape is a little cumbersome to actually do animating in. Is there something similar to Flash that could be used to do the actual animation/spritesheet part?

Fur20
Nov 14, 2007

すご▞い!
君は働か░い
フ▙▓ズなんだね!
If it's within your means, Photoshop is my preferred one. It's easy to keep all your moving parts static relative to one another and it's user-friendly for counting pixels when it comes to that.

Nition
Feb 25, 2006

You really want to know?

ToxicSlurpee posted:

dot net perls is a good site with a poo poo load of information. http://www.dotnetperls.com/

If you already know at least basic programming the Microsoft documentation of C# is expansive and covers everything but will be meaningless to somebody that's extremely new to programming. How far along are you?


Manslaughter posted:

I like this site.

e: daaammnnniiiit

Dotnetperls is an excellent site. What I find weird is that hardly anyone ever mentions it (except you guys apparently), or links to it, or anything. It just comes up in Google searches sometimes. It's like we'd be too uncool if we linked to sites and explain things clearly and simply. The plebs might learn programming!

Shalinor
Jun 10, 2002

Can I buy you a rootbeer?

The White Dragon posted:

If it's within your means, Photoshop is my preferred one. It's easy to keep all your moving parts static relative to one another and it's user-friendly for counting pixels when it comes to that.
This - and all of Adobe Cloud is currently $10/mo, and there are a few different tools in there you might like. Definitely worth at least trying 'em, see if they fit with your work style.

Vermain
Sep 5, 2006



Shalinor posted:

This - and all of Adobe Cloud is currently $10/mo, and there are a few different tools in there you might like. Definitely worth at least trying 'me, see if they fit with your work style.

Thanks! I think my school's even got some discounts running for it, so I'll take a gander. Illustrator would be great, too - the bristle brush tool looks fantastic.

deck
Jul 13, 2006

What do you use for making low-poly 2D vector shapes for games? I've been using Blender, and it works fine, but it can't do things like "stroke" or inset/outset of 2D shapes. (I'm actually not aware of anything that CAN do those operations well, outside of Illustrator, which probably doesn't work well for game models, though I've never tried it.)

Dewgy
Nov 10, 2005

~🚚special delivery~📦

deck posted:

What do you use for making low-poly 2D vector shapes for games? I've been using Blender, and it works fine, but it can't do things like "stroke" or inset/outset of 2D shapes. (I'm actually not aware of anything that CAN do those operations well, outside of Illustrator, which probably doesn't work well for game models, though I've never tried it.)

Inkscape maybe? I've been considering looking into this too, and that outputs to SVG. Dunno how hard those are to work with in a game context though.

TooMuchAbstraction
Oct 14, 2012

I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.
Fun Shoe
Blender does have Bezier curves, so you can do strokes with them (if I understand what you're talking about). I've done similar stuff with it in the past. It's not really an ideal vector-art program though since that's not what it was designed for.

Shalinor
Jun 10, 2002

Can I buy you a rootbeer?

deck posted:

What do you use for making low-poly 2D vector shapes for games? I've been using Blender, and it works fine, but it can't do things like "stroke" or inset/outset of 2D shapes. (I'm actually not aware of anything that CAN do those operations well, outside of Illustrator, which probably doesn't work well for game models, though I've never tried it.)
SketchUp, maybe?

It has a lot of 2D->3D tools, including inset/outset the edges of a surface.

Nition
Feb 25, 2006

You really want to know?
In Blender you can select a face, press I, and then drag to do an inset. But maybe that's not what you meant.

Nition fucked around with this message at 04:58 on May 14, 2014

deck
Jul 13, 2006

Nition posted:

In Blender you can select a face, press I, and then drag to do an inset. But maybe that's not what you meant.

By stroke I mean "outline". Like the stroke layer property in Photoshop. Like the black masking on the white lines in my avatar.

The problem is that Blender's Inset function works on face normals, not edges, so it's not usable for 2D. In 2D you're usually working in the X/Y plane, with the face normals pointing +Z or -Z.

EDIT: This guy gives a partial solution to the problem by extruding into 3D and then doing a "shrink". (http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?122353-Edge-Offset&p=1097124&viewfull=1#post1097124) I need to test it, but I suspect this shits itself if the shrink causes self-intersection. SketchUp's offset tool handles that case properly.


I've tried Inkscape, and it didn't feel like a good tool for 2D game shapes. Too difficult to work with individual verts and edges. Also, while it offers inset/outset operations, it doesn't use the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight_skeleton, so it ended up producing wack results. Also, since Inkscape seems primarily aimed at SVG authoring, it's got all of SVGs limitations and quirks.

So maybe I need to dig into the python for Blender and write my own 2D-specific functions.

EDIT: It looks like people have already done it, but the scripts haven't been maintained and might no longer work. Here's a video demo of the tool in action: http://vimeo.com/28147691



Shalinor posted:

SketchUp, maybe?

Ooo SketchUp does appear to have straight skeleton offset: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuzFsIyOt7o

deck fucked around with this message at 09:25 on May 14, 2014

Obsurveyor
Jan 10, 2003

Just make sure to buy a Pro license or use Sketchup 8 or lower if you're planning on selling anything. The newer versions of Sketchup Free/Indie/Maker/WhateverTheFuckoftheWeek are non-commercial only now.

StickFigs
Sep 5, 2004

"It's time to choose."
Does Unity Free allow you to do vertex shaders?

overeager overeater
Oct 16, 2011

"The cosmonauts were transfixed with wonderment as the sun set - over the Earth - there lucklessly, untethered Comrade Todd on fire."



StickFigs posted:

Does Unity Free allow you to do vertex shaders?

Yes, it does. The only shader restriction in Free is no postprocessing.

StickFigs
Sep 5, 2004

"It's time to choose."

Vlad the Retailer posted:

Yes, it does. The only shader restriction in Free is no postprocessing.

Awesome, hmm are vertex shaders viable on mobile? I don't know much about shaders in general.

Shalinor
Jun 10, 2002

Can I buy you a rootbeer?

Obsurveyor posted:

Just make sure to buy a Pro license or use Sketchup 8 or lower if you're planning on selling anything. The newer versions of Sketchup Free/Indie/Maker/WhateverTheFuckoftheWeek are non-commercial only now.
... and note that, IIRC, SketchUp 8 and below have gimped export tools to the "good luck getting your meshes out to anything else" point. Sketchup Pro/WhateverthefuckoftheWeek has honest-to-god .FBX export that "just works."

I hate working with the company. They're anal about licenses being exclusive to Windows or Mac, and their whole licensing setup is just... like, a decade out of date. But, it's quite literally the only 3D modeller I've found that I can be productive in, and it's cheaper than Maya et al, so, meh. It's also a really ideal tool for doing geometric work, if you're focusing on retro low-fi 3D.

Shalinor fucked around with this message at 18:25 on May 14, 2014

Obsurveyor
Jan 10, 2003

Shalinor posted:

... and note that, IIRC, SketchUp 8 and below have gimped export tools to the "good luck getting your meshes out to anything else" point. Sketchup Pro/WhateverthefuckoftheWeek has honest-to-god .FBX export that "just works."

Does Sketchup do usable texturing/animation these days? I guess I don't think of it as a decent tool for anything more than geometry, which means more processing in another tool anyway, so a .OBJ export has always been good enough for me.

poemdexter
Feb 18, 2005

Hooray Indie Games!

College Slice

StickFigs posted:

Awesome, hmm are vertex shaders viable on mobile? I don't know much about shaders in general.

Depends on how crazy you get with them. Same with basic Unity, once you do something that's out of bounds of free, it won't work on mobile without the pro license there.

As far as viable in tech terms, absolutely as long as you're smart about writing your shaders.

Yodzilla
Apr 29, 2005

Now who looks even dumber?

Beef Witch
I hate to double-post my question but it kinda got swallowed up in the angry custom engine talk:

Yodzilla posted:

Does anyone have recommendations for solid cross-platform advertising networks for interstitial ads? I'm working on a Unity game and I've been told Chartboost is pretty solid and that RevMob used to be but has been kinda sketchy recently. I'll be targeting iOS and Android devices.

Some of y'all have ad supported stuff so any direction you can give me would be a huge help.

Shalinor
Jun 10, 2002

Can I buy you a rootbeer?

Yodzilla posted:

Some of y'all have ad supported stuff so any direction you can give me would be a huge help.
Charboost and Vungle are your huckleberries.

Chartboost is important not just for interstitials, but also for traffic trades with other indies. Makes a HUGE difference for your launch, when you're a free game. Not so useful for paid games though, those campaigns end up with near 0 conversion.

Obsurveyor posted:

Does Sketchup do usable texturing/animation these days? I guess I don't think of it as a decent tool for anything more than geometry, which means more processing in another tool anyway, so a .OBJ export has always been good enough for me.
Nope, it's miserable :(

I never had any of the sane tools that could turn OBJ to FBX, though, and Unity is FBX-centric, so I ended up needing that.

I gather you can run it through Blender, though, which is fantastic for UV mapping. You just have to... deal with Blender, at that point.

Shalinor fucked around with this message at 20:45 on May 14, 2014

poemdexter
Feb 18, 2005

Hooray Indie Games!

College Slice
Do interstitials have higher CPM? I assume so. I've never felt a really appropriate time to show an interstitial and found them to be jarring when playing. Is there some appropriate time to show them?

I'm not trying to crap on your desire for interstitials Yodzilla. I was just curious as to your strategy for placing them in your game where they are least intrusive.

Pilchenstein
May 17, 2012

So your plan is for half of us to die?

Hot Rope Guy
I'm slightly late to the custom engine vs framework debate but as someone who almost always writes his own engine, I say don't. It's a terrible habit and I never get anything done. I really need a loving intervention or something, for everything I write that could (charitably) be called a game, I leave a trail of tear-moistened half-written engines that I got halfway through and then started over because of the most minor poo poo.

Yodzilla
Apr 29, 2005

Now who looks even dumber?

Beef Witch

Shalinor posted:

Charboost and Vungle are your huckleberries.

Chartboost is important not just for interstitials, but also for traffic trades with other indies. Makes a HUGE difference for your launch, when you're a free game. Not so useful for paid games though, those campaigns end up with near 0 conversion.

Boffo. That's exactly what I was looking for, thanks.

poemdexter posted:

Do interstitials have higher CPM? I assume so. I've never felt a really appropriate time to show an interstitial and found them to be jarring when playing. Is there some appropriate time to show them?

I'm not trying to crap on your desire for interstitials Yodzilla. I was just curious as to your strategy for placing them in your game where they are least intrusive.

The game I'm planning on using them is a super quick, high-score gameplay loop style thing. You know, kinda like Flappy Bird. I figured showing the occasional interstitial (and allowing the user to buy out of them) was better than slapping banner ads everywhere.

Surprise T Rex
Apr 9, 2008

Dinosaur Gum
Yeah, interstitials don't tend to bother me as long as they're placed on something like a 'You hosed up, retry?' screen, 'cause then it's really only one more click to get back to the game.

I'd rather no ads at all, but from a hoping-to-be-a-dev-someday standpoint, I sort of understand their necessity sometimes.

Shalinor
Jun 10, 2002

Can I buy you a rootbeer?

Surprise T Rex posted:

Yeah, interstitials don't tend to bother me as long as they're placed on something like a 'You hosed up, retry?' screen, 'cause then it's really only one more click to get back to the game.

I'd rather no ads at all, but from a hoping-to-be-a-dev-someday standpoint, I sort of understand their necessity sometimes.
If you're doing mobile, F2P of some kind is important, and if you're an indie doing F2P currency-driven... uhhhh, I hope you're NimbleBit, because without a trained/known fanbase, that's harder to make fly these days. So ads are kinda "it", and interstitials or video ads as a retry or whatevs are waaaay less bothersome than ugly ads sitting on top of the screen constantly.

They also happen to monetize better, so there's kinda no reason to do the "ad on top of everything" style anymore. Nobody ever likes it, AND it makes you less money, so lose/lose.

poemdexter posted:

Do interstitials have higher CPM? I assume so. I've never felt a really appropriate time to show an interstitial and found them to be jarring when playing. Is there some appropriate time to show them?
Like Surprise T Rex said, you want them on your "you hosed up, retry?" screens. It can also flash sometimes when you first start the game up, or when you're "between states" in general (moving back from the store, leaving a minigame, moving between zones, etc - anywhere there could conceivably be a loading screen that there isn't a "QUICK MASH DA BUTTON" immediately after that the ad could gently caress up).

Shalinor fucked around with this message at 22:23 on May 14, 2014

Yodzilla
Apr 29, 2005

Now who looks even dumber?

Beef Witch
Yeah that was my idea. I don't want to piss anyone off and I want to actually make a fun, replayable game that people actually enjoy and still make money off of it. I know those things are sometimes at odds with each other in the mobile space but I'm certainly going to give it a go!

StickFigs
Sep 5, 2004

"It's time to choose."

Shalinor posted:

...anywhere there could conceivably be a loading screen that there isn't a "QUICK MASH DA BUTTON" immediately after that the ad could gently caress up).

I've always wondered, with ads is the intent to get the user to accidentally click on them, click on them on purpose, or to just rely on revenue from impressions rather than click-throughs? As an avid FP2 mobile gamer the only time I ever click ads is when there is a direct reward for doing so but I'm probably in the minority.

retro sexual
Mar 14, 2005
My game Guild of Dungeoneering got greenlight in today's batch of 75 :dance:

Omi no Kami
Feb 19, 2014


So I'm working on teaching myself how to rig things in blender as the first step in my nefarious scheme to inflict competitive synchronized swimming on the world, and I've stumbled on makehuman as a quick and painless way to make terrifying-looking humans to populate my worlds. Where I run into problems is rigging the darn thing, as I'm hilariously ham-fisted with getting all of the damned bones in the right place in Blender. I notice that makehuman automatically generates a rig when you make the mesh, bu the only formats it exports the rig in is BVH and skel- does anyone know if a python script/black magic exists for importing the rig into blender, instead of popping a bipedal armature and spending 30 minutes fiddling with it?

Shoehead
Sep 28, 2005

Wassup, Choom?
Ya need sumthin'?

retro sexual posted:

My game Guild of Dungeoneering got greenlight in today's batch of 75 :dance:

Oh cool, I will totally check that out :3:


I need some help with game maker, I've got a punch animation set up but at the moment the entire animation only plays if I keep the punch button pressed down. Is there a way to set it up so that I press punch, have the punch animation play all 3 frames and not be able to interrupt it or have my sprite change? I've been reading poo poo online for like 2 hours without a solution so I figured I'd just ask.

code:
//KEYS
key_right = keyboard_check(vk_right);
key_left = -keyboard_check(vk_left);
key_punch = keyboard_check (vk_shift);

// MATHS WEEW
move = key_left + key_right;
hsp = move * movespeed;


//movement
if (hsp < 0) {sprite_index = pl_run_sp image_xscale = -4 }
if (hsp = 0) {sprite_index = pl_idle_sp }
if (hsp > 0) {sprite_index = pl_run_sp image_xscale = +4}

x += hsp;


//punch
if key_punch = 1  {sprite_index = pl_punch_sp }
Oh and I guess I could just change the player object to a punch object and have it revert when the animation plays but it seems messy.

Pilchenstein
May 17, 2012

So your plan is for half of us to die?

Hot Rope Guy

Shoehead posted:

Oh cool, I will totally check that out :3:


I need some help with game maker, I've got a punch animation set up but at the moment the entire animation only plays if I keep the punch button pressed down. Is there a way to set it up so that I press punch, have the punch animation play all 3 frames and not be able to interrupt it or have my sprite change? I've been reading poo poo online for like 2 hours without a solution so I figured I'd just ask.

code:
//KEYS
key_right = keyboard_check(vk_right);
key_left = -keyboard_check(vk_left);
key_punch = keyboard_check (vk_shift);

// MATHS WEEW
move = key_left + key_right;
hsp = move * movespeed;


//movement
if (hsp < 0) {sprite_index = pl_run_sp image_xscale = -4 }
if (hsp = 0) {sprite_index = pl_idle_sp }
if (hsp > 0) {sprite_index = pl_run_sp image_xscale = +4}

x += hsp;


//punch
if key_punch = 1  {sprite_index = pl_punch_sp }
Oh and I guess I could just change the player object to a punch object and have it revert when the animation plays but it seems messy.
I don't know game maker and I'm phone posting so I can't even read your code properly but set a variable if the punch key is pressed, test that to play the animation and only clear the variable once the animation is done.
code:

If (key_punch = 1) {play_punch = 1}
if play_punch = 1  {sprite_index = pl_punch_sp }
And then set "play_punch" to 0 once the animation is over (no idea of the specifics of that in game maker though, sorry).

Pilchenstein fucked around with this message at 02:11 on May 15, 2014

Omi no Kami
Feb 19, 2014


Omi no Kami posted:

So I'm working on teaching myself how to rig things in blender as the first step in my nefarious scheme to inflict competitive synchronized swimming on the world, and I've stumbled on makehuman as a quick and painless way to make terrifying-looking humans to populate my worlds. Where I run into problems is rigging the darn thing, as I'm hilariously ham-fisted with getting all of the damned bones in the right place in Blender. I notice that makehuman automatically generates a rig when you make the mesh, bu the only formats it exports the rig in is BVH and skel- does anyone know if a python script/black magic exists for importing the rig into blender, instead of popping a bipedal armature and spending 30 minutes fiddling with it?

Holy cow so I'm an idiot- I spent all afternoon trying to make this work, then immediately after posting I tried flat-out dragging the mesh into the prefab window, and the skeleton comes with it. >_<

AzMiLion
Dec 29, 2010

Truck you say?

Pilchenstein posted:

I don't know game maker and I'm phone posting so I can't even read your code properly but set a variable if the punch key is pressed, test that to play the animation and only clear the variable once the animation is done.

Pretty much this, or use a timer and a variable, you know how long the animation takes, would also allow you to decide how often or how repeatedly one can punch. I'm working on a small shmup in gamemaker at the moment after not having programmed for a couple of years. Things I remembered/learnt real quick, having your enemies die on hp = 0(use hp < 1 instead!) is a dumb idea when there are weapons that do enough damage to punch them straight to -10. they just turn into immortals then. I may however use this to have the ones you overkill explode harder and drop more loot, not sure on that yet.

Shoehead
Sep 28, 2005

Wassup, Choom?
Ya need sumthin'?
So I'd set an alarm and then when the alarm is <= 0 have key_punch=0?

Seems pretty straightforward but when I press punch key_punch changes to 1 and then immediately changes to 0

AzMiLion
Dec 29, 2010

Truck you say?

Shoehead posted:

So I'd set an alarm and then when the alarm is <= 0 have key_punch=0?

Seems pretty straightforward but when I press punch key_punch changes to 1 and then immediately changes to 0

code:
//Shooty Logic
if (f_Delay> 0)//LEAVE THIS
{ f_Delay-=1;} //LEAVE THIS//
//Shooty Controls
if (keyboard_check(ord('X')))
{
    if (f_Delay= 0)
    {
       f_Delay = f_Timetillshoot;
       //SHOOTY TIME: Put bullet and weapon spawns in here, bascally
       instance_create((x+5), (y+2) , o_PlayerShot);
       instance_create((x+5), (y-2) , o_PlayerShot);
    }
}
This is how i handled it for automatic shooting, animationis and thngs aren't in there so i can't really instantly provide you with a solution for that, you could probably use a similar countdown clock for that.
f_Timetillshoot is a fixed value, that varies per ship/core for the ship(they are made up of three components each, was fun working out how to despawn those when the ship is destroyed without GM throwing a fit)

the o_ prefix is for my own mental safekeeping since i tend to name poo poo the same, I use s_ for sprite, o_ for object,sfx_ for sound tls_, for tiles, bg_ for backgrounds and msc_ for music.


It's not saturday but have a moving screenshot anyway, I haven't quite fnished the menu for selecting ship bits yet so it randomizes at the start at the moment. All art is programmer art and terrible, going to work on that sometime this weekend.

AzMiLion fucked around with this message at 02:51 on May 15, 2014

Polio Vax Scene
Apr 5, 2009



Shoehead posted:

Oh cool, I will totally check that out :3:


I need some help with game maker, I've got a punch animation set up but at the moment the entire animation only plays if I keep the punch button pressed down. Is there a way to set it up so that I press punch, have the punch animation play all 3 frames and not be able to interrupt it or have my sprite change? I've been reading poo poo online for like 2 hours without a solution so I figured I'd just ask.

code:
//KEYS
key_right = keyboard_check(vk_right);
key_left = -keyboard_check(vk_left);
key_punch = keyboard_check (vk_shift);

// MATHS WEEW
move = key_left + key_right;
hsp = move * movespeed;


//movement
if (sprite_index != pl_punch_sp) {
  if (hsp < 0) {sprite_index = pl_run_sp image_xscale = -4 }
  if (hsp = 0) {sprite_index = pl_idle_sp }
  if (hsp > 0) {sprite_index = pl_run_sp image_xscale = +4}

  x += hsp;
}

//punch
if key_punch = 1  {sprite_index = pl_punch_sp }
Oh and I guess I could just change the player object to a punch object and have it revert when the animation plays but it seems messy.

Try my edits here, and add an animation end event (under Other) that says if sprite_index is pl_punch_sp set it to pl_idle_sp.

Shoehead
Sep 28, 2005

Wassup, Choom?
Ya need sumthin'?

Manslaughter posted:

Try my edits here, and add an animation end event (under Other) that says if sprite_index is pl_punch_sp set it to pl_idle_sp.

You are a wonderful person and I can go to bed now. I had tried setting up an animation end event before but my movement was resetting my punch. Oh man I'm so glad that's fixed.

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100 degrees Calcium
Jan 23, 2011



So I want to stretch my muscles a little bit and try some game making. I use C# at work and I would like to develop multi-platform if possible, so Unity seems like an obvious bet for me. However, I picture myself at least starting with 2D work, and I keep on hearing people trashing on Unity 2D. What's the issue with it? From my position, am I better going with a different approach?

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