Making Games Megathread: The Normals are Stored in the Balls

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anothergod: Apr 11, 2016

InevitableCheese posted:

Yeah I would do this.

Is Clickteam Fusion even worth messing with? I've seen a couple of game that look decent with it, but I'm not sure if I'm better off with GameMaker.

I'd learn Game Maker or Construct 2 if I could do it all over again. I love it, but Fusion is a legacy product w/ a lot of history and annoying baggage.

# ? Oct 3, 2016 21:13

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# ? Jun 12, 2024 22:57

Mercury_Storm: Jun 12, 2003; *chomp chomp chomp*

swamp waste posted:

I'm working on a new trailer for pitching to publishers. What do you think about this guy here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ha-j0ZfBD1M

older one for comparison

It's a lot more up front about how the game works and what's supposed to be fun about it, although i think it sacrifices some of the drama and mystery of the older one

Looks good! I liked the first one too, but I also like these kinds of games in general. And yeah I wouldn't have known very much about the game from previous trailers either.

# ? Oct 3, 2016 21:28

D34THROW: Jan 29, 2012; RETAIL RETAIL LISTEN TO ME BITCH ABOUT RETAIL

This may be the wrong place to ask, or maybe it'll be welcome here.

Is there a thread for developing traditional pen-and-paper RPGs? Doesn't seem to be anything in the PnP subforum and I can't turn anything up on the forums search.

# ? Oct 3, 2016 21:29

Airspace: Nov 5, 2010

D34THROW posted:

This may be the wrong place to ask, or maybe it'll be welcome here.

Is there a thread for developing traditional pen-and-paper RPGs? Doesn't seem to be anything in the PnP subforum and I can't turn anything up on the forums search.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3581530?

I haven't read further than the first page but the OP has a few released Goon-developed PnP projects on it, and the rest of the page generally seems discussiony.

# ? Oct 3, 2016 21:35

spider wisdom: Nov 4, 2011; og data bandit

Could anyone point me to an interactive Lua tutorial? I've enjoyed learning Python in Codeacademy but they don't offer Lua.

Actually, if any of y'all have ever fooled with making modules for the T-engine (what Tales of Maj'Eyal runs on), that would be even more helpful. I'm not a programmer and I'm not sure where to start, besides the wiki and starter module, which admittedly I haven't poked yet because of the aforementioned Lua stuff.

# ? Oct 3, 2016 22:10

everythingWasBees: Jan 9, 2013

swamp waste posted:

I'm working on a new trailer for pitching to publishers. What do you think about this guy here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ha-j0ZfBD1M

older one for comparison

It's a lot more up front about how the game works and what's supposed to be fun about it, although i think it sacrifices some of the drama and mystery of the older one

"Make Magic from Corn" is still the best line.
What did you make the game in, by the way?

# ? Oct 3, 2016 22:22

Surprise T Rex: Apr 9, 2008; Dinosaur Gum

So it's super late and I'm wrapping up work on my GBJam game for the night, the concept has completely changed since my top-down picture before: I'm now doing a card game-y thing.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3K3c44uRC-9bkt1WWduVXBHRDg is a standalone .exe build of it, for anyone who wants to have a try. There's no main menu or win condition yet, but it's a 'game', loosely speaking.

WASD to move cursor, K to pick your card.

E: I should probably also add that the ratio of cards is terrible, you get shields all the time.

Surprise T Rex fucked around with this message at 22:40 on Oct 3, 2016

# ? Oct 3, 2016 22:36

Sigma-X: Jun 17, 2005

swamp waste posted:

I'm working on a new trailer for pitching to publishers. What do you think about this guy here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ha-j0ZfBD1M

older one for comparison

It's a lot more up front about how the game works and what's supposed to be fun about it, although i think it sacrifices some of the drama and mystery of the older one

This is so many levels better than the previous media you've put out for the game and has me way more hyped for it.

# ? Oct 3, 2016 22:46

OtspIII: Sep 22, 2002

Sigma-X posted:

This is so many levels better than the previous media you've put out for the game and has me way more hyped for it.

Agreed! I'm a little too familiar with this game at this point to give really good advice on how it reads to a totally new player, but it does seem waaaaaay more clear while also avoiding meaningless stuff like "use strategy to win combats" that could fit almost any game. Every part of that trailer does exactly what it feels like it needs to do.

The only tiny thing I've got is that being pursued by a cloud (the very first thing you see) might be a really intense moment in game, but doesn't really mean much to a first-time watcher, especially since it doesn't show any of the consequences.

# ? Oct 4, 2016 01:02

Klades: Sep 8, 2011

swamp waste posted:

I'm working on a new trailer for pitching to publishers. What do you think about this guy here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ha-j0ZfBD1M

I don't think I've ever seen/paid attention to this game before, but I watched this and am already prepared to hand over money when it becomes available.

# ? Oct 4, 2016 01:28

Segmentation Fault: Jun 7, 2012

I'm working with Noyemi K on Sugar Bunny and Friends, going to be doing game design, mapping, and basic programming tasks that Noyemi can't be bothered with. Here's a tenement hall I banged out today.

# ? Oct 4, 2016 04:02

McGiggins: Apr 4, 2014; by R. Guyovich; Lipstick Apathy

swamp waste posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ha-j0ZfBD1M

Did I see a guy fisting a bison in your video?

# ? Oct 4, 2016 05:50

everythingWasBees: Jan 9, 2013

McGiggins posted:

Did I see a guy fisting a bison in your video?

I assumed he was helping it give birth.

# ? Oct 4, 2016 05:52

Shoehead: Sep 28, 2005; Wassup, Choom?
Ya need sumthin'?

I'm glad I'm not the only one who saw that.

# ? Oct 4, 2016 08:15

Imaginary Friend: Jan 27, 2010; Your Best Friend

I started fooling around with arrays in Game Maker and found out that you can save a whole 2d array in one line by just writing out the name of the array.
"{ { bg_for1,0,tiled,1,0,1,0 }, { 9999 }, }"

{ bg_for1,0,tiled,1,0,1,0 } was all the entries in the first line of the array and { 9999 } is from the second line.

Now, is there a function I haven't found to extract these values back into an array automatically or do I have to do it manually?

# ? Oct 4, 2016 10:49

HMS Boromir: Jul 16, 2011; by Lowtax

Could you rephrase that explanation? I haven't seen that notation before and have no idea where to look for it in the documentation so that just looks like gibberish to me.

# ? Oct 4, 2016 11:33

Imaginary Friend: Jan 27, 2010; Your Best Friend

Sorry, haha. When saving a whole array into a variable, it saves the entries as a string like that.

So if a 2d array with these values:

code:

myArray[0,0] = bg_for1;
myArray[0,1] = 0;
myArray[0,2] = tiled;
myArray[1,0] = 9999;

is saved into a new variable like this:

code:

myVariable = myArray;

myVariable becomes a string that looks like
"{ { bg_for1,0,tiled }, { 9999 }, }"

I'm wondering if I can reverse that so the string becomes an array again without writing a whole script for it.

# ? Oct 4, 2016 11:45

Fangz: Jul 5, 2007; Oh I see! This must be the Bad Opinion Zone!

When you did the 'save into a new variable' that you hadn't defined as an array, it did a type transformation to convert your array into a string. I forget the syntax, but declaring the new variable as an array would be way preferable to trying to parse the string result.

# ? Oct 4, 2016 11:50

Imaginary Friend: Jan 27, 2010; Your Best Friend

Fangz posted:

When you did the 'save into a new variable' that you hadn't defined as an array, it did a type transformation to convert your array into a string. I forget the syntax, but declaring the new variable as an array would be way preferable to trying to parse the string result.

Yeah, the plan was to save the array into a line in an ini-file and hoped that GM had some function for knowing if the string is an array since it added all those brackets and stuff when converting it into a string.

edit
Oh! So if I declare that variable as an array it should convert back?

Imaginary Friend fucked around with this message at 11:58 on Oct 4, 2016

# ? Oct 4, 2016 11:54

Fangz: Jul 5, 2007; Oh I see! This must be the Bad Opinion Zone!

Uh, I would be very surprised if that works.

Edit: try this instead https://docs.yoyogames.com/source/dadiospice/002_reference/file%20handling/json_decode.html

Fangz fucked around with this message at 12:07 on Oct 4, 2016

# ? Oct 4, 2016 12:03

Imaginary Friend: Jan 27, 2010; Your Best Friend

Thanks, that seems to do pretty much what I want. Sorry if it was a stupid question, I'm pretty clueless when it comes to programming and even more when trying to do it efficiently >_>

# ? Oct 4, 2016 12:32

D34THROW: Jan 29, 2012; RETAIL RETAIL LISTEN TO ME BITCH ABOUT RETAIL

Airspace posted:

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3581530?

I haven't read further than the first page but the OP has a few released Goon-developed PnP projects on it, and the rest of the page generally seems discussiony.

Little late but thank you, goon sir. I am blind and can't read, apparently. :tipshat:

# ? Oct 4, 2016 13:53

DatonKallandor: Aug 21, 2009; "I can no longer sit back and allow nationalist shitposting, nationalist indoctrination, nationalist subversion, and the German nationalist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious game balance."

Triarii posted:

Windraiders

It's really fantastic already. It feels like ships are a little too fragile for boarding to be worthwhile, but that might just be early game ships. The grappling hook is fun, the flying is quite tactical already. The looting feels good, but I imagine might get tedious with slower less nimble ships (which some kind of ranged looting via plane or chopper would probably solve).

# ? Oct 4, 2016 14:41

Surprise T Rex: Apr 9, 2008; Dinosaur Gum

My Gameboy card game is coming along! You can now toggle an info panel that shows off what a card does, as well as actually being able to win/lose.

TODO: Replace that font completely, better win/lose screens, main menu, animations(?)

32-bit Windows version (with all the required files this time!):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3K3c44uRC-9aS0yenNnRTAtMWM/view?usp=sharing

WASD to move cursor.
J to toggle info panel.
K to play card.

# ? Oct 4, 2016 15:33

Serenade: Nov 5, 2011; "I should really learn to fucking read"

swamp waste posted:

I'm working on a new trailer for pitching to publishers. What do you think about this guy here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ha-j0ZfBD1M

older one for comparison

It's a lot more up front about how the game works and what's supposed to be fun about it, although i think it sacrifices some of the drama and mystery of the older one

I was interested in this game before, now I'm closer to excited for it. The hand coming out of the ground was the moment that made me think there's more to this than on the surface.

Further, I'm the type of person who skips to the middle of a trailer to get to when it's actually 'started', but this one managed to grab my interest before I managed to do that. I suspect it was the music in the first 10 or 20 seconds.

# ? Oct 4, 2016 15:35

Luminaflare: Sep 23, 2010; No one man
should have all that
POWER BEYOND MEASURE

Triarii posted:

I'm hoping for feedback on what doesn't feel good, what's confusing, what the game could use more of, any bugs you can find, whether the game works at all or runs like crap on your computer, and that sort of thing.

I jumped off my ship, grappled an enemy ship and reeled in really fast into the back of their ship. Now I'm inside their cabin and can't get out.

# ? Oct 4, 2016 15:50

Triarii: Jun 14, 2003

DatonKallandor posted:

The looting feels good, but I imagine might get tedious with slower less nimble ships (which some kind of ranged looting via plane or chopper would probably solve).

You'll never guess what unlocks the very level after you get access to medium-size ships.

Luminaflare posted:

I jumped off my ship, grappled an enemy ship and reeled in really fast into the back of their ship. Now I'm inside their cabin and can't get out.

Well, the issue with getting stuck definitely won't happen when I have proper ship models, because they'll be a mesh instead of a bunch of dumb primitives mashed together like they are now. It may still be possible to clip into a ship if you're moving fast enough (you'd pass through the other side) but I'm hoping to wait until I actually have those ship models before I try to tackle that issue. For now, if you quit and reload it should put you back on your ship.

# ? Oct 4, 2016 18:14

Seven Force: Nov 9, 2005; WARNING!

BOSS IS APPROACHING!!!

SEVEN FORCE

--ACTIONS--

SHITPOSTING

LOVE LOVE DANCING

Shoehead's screenshots are always a great motivator for me.

That and he/she is also working on Game Maker (I assume).

# ? Oct 4, 2016 20:15

swamp waste: Nov 4, 2009; There is some very sensual touching going on in the cutscene there. i don't actually think it means anything sexual but it's cool how it contrasts with modern ideas of what bad ass stuff should be like. It even seems authentic to some kind of chivalric masculine touching from a tyme longe gone

Klades posted:

I don't think I've ever seen/paid attention to this game before, but I watched this and am already prepared to hand over money when it becomes available.

Sigma-X posted:

This is so many levels better than the previous media you've put out for the game and has me way more hyped for it.

Mercury_Storm posted:

Looks good! I liked the first one too, but I also like these kinds of games in general. And yeah I wouldn't have known very much about the game from previous trailers either.

Shalinor posted:

Please pitch that to Adult Swim and Devolver (in that order) ASAP. That's straight up their alley.

Also yes that is a much better trailer.

Serenade posted:

I was interested in this game before, now I'm closer to excited for it. The hand coming out of the ground was the moment that made me think there's more to this than on the surface.

Further, I'm the type of person who skips to the middle of a trailer to get to when it's actually 'started', but this one managed to grab my interest before I managed to do that. I suspect it was the music in the first 10 or 20 seconds.

Thanks! Glad it looks good. Re: that last comment in particular, yeah I wanted to be super up front with what's appealing about the game and not dump a ton of exposition on you before it shows any actual gameplay

Shoehead posted:

Was that...a man with his hand in an ox's rear end???

This looks so weird and also so rad

everythingWasBees posted:

I assumed he was helping it give birth.

I may have aimed a little too high with the guy's arm on the animation, but yes it is the birth of (spoilers in link) a cool guy

everythingWasBees posted:

"Make Magic from Corn" is still the best line.
What did you make the game in, by the way?

Game Maker! It has its weird bugs and idiosyncracies but there is no better way I've seen to make a 2D game on your own. I would give it the highest possible recommendation for something that frustrates the poo poo out of me so often

# ? Oct 4, 2016 21:29

LordSaturn: Aug 12, 2007; sadly unfunny

There's something disconnected between the clean-ness of the floating text and the artifactual weirdness of your art style. I'm hype to play your game, but I was hype before that trailer.

# ? Oct 4, 2016 21:36

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

LordSaturn posted:

There's something disconnected between the clean-ness of the floating text and the artifactual weirdness of your art style. I'm hype to play your game, but I was hype before that trailer.

I would also agree with this. If you do any refinement, leave the trailer base video/audio alone, and just work on getting the text to be less... weird. It's verging on "lazy Powerpoint text overlay."

I just have zero feedback on how to fix that :geno:

# ? Oct 4, 2016 22:29

Shoehead: Sep 28, 2005; Wassup, Choom?
Ya need sumthin'?

Seven Force posted:

Shoehead's screenshots are always a great motivator for me. That and he/she is also working on Game Maker (I assume).

Yaaay. I do my best. Every single prototype has helped me get better and better at GML. Which is weird when you consider I only started making games so my art had a place to go

swamp waste posted:

Game Maker! It has its weird bugs and idiosyncracies but there is no better way I've seen to make a 2D game on your own. I would give it the highest possible recommendation for something that frustrates the poo poo out of me so often

This is pretty much exactly my relationship with Game Maker. It is my best friend and my greatest foe, and it can flip in a matter of minutes.

Shoehead fucked around with this message at 22:36 on Oct 4, 2016

# ? Oct 4, 2016 22:32

Mercury_Storm: Jun 12, 2003; *chomp chomp chomp*

Shalinor posted:

I would also agree with this. If you do any refinement, leave the trailer base video/audio alone, and just work on getting the text to be less... weird. It's verging on "lazy Powerpoint text overlay."

I just have zero feedback on how to fix that

If the text had a very quick fade in along with a drop shadow I think that would help a bit.

# ? Oct 4, 2016 23:04

Grace Baiting: Jul 20, 2012; Audi famam illius;
Cucurrit quaeque
Tetigit destruens.

Shalinor posted:

I would also agree with this. If you do any refinement, leave the trailer base video/audio alone, and just work on getting the text to be less... weird. It's verging on "lazy Powerpoint text overlay."

I just have zero feedback on how to fix that

I'm getting the "lazy PowerPoint" vibes too. The trailer text ends up looking like a quick-n-dirty approximation of the LONELY STAR logo: the textovers are in an italic all-caps serif font with narrow kerning so the letters do touch each other... But the logo's letters connect vertically, and are sans serif. The serifs also clash with the in-game text in some of the gameplay segments.

I recognize you need something easily legible for e.g. your URL, as well as probably something that's quicker than drawing all those textovers to match the logo. I might try a sans serif font, and maybe even just use the in-game font for the trailer's text.

Good luck because the trailer really does look cool af!!

Fake edit: ^^^ yeah a quick fade-in might help too. Also possibly having the text drift slightly while visible? (I bet it's pretty easy to go overboard on this sort of thing but on the other hand JUICE IT)

Later actual edit: I rewatched the new trailer on my computer and liked the textovers much more than when I was watching it on my phone earlier. Maybe that's made a difference for others as well?
(Also what about just pixelating the current trailer textover so that it's at the same resolution as the game itself? That might help phone watching perchance, if that does in fact make a difference for others as well.)

Grace Baiting fucked around with this message at 03:16 on Oct 5, 2016

# ? Oct 4, 2016 23:12

Music Theory: Aug 7, 2013; Avatar by Garden Walker

I actually really liked the Lonely Star text. :shrug:

# ? Oct 5, 2016 00:14

DatonKallandor: Aug 21, 2009; "I can no longer sit back and allow nationalist shitposting, nationalist indoctrination, nationalist subversion, and the German nationalist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious game balance."

Music Theory posted:

I actually really liked the Lonely Star text.

Same here the whole game has a sort of low-fi-but-not-really vibe and the text in the trailer just fits (compare to the equally fitting and low-fi title cover for Caves of Qud).

And I hope you take this as a compliment, but after playing the demo I can say that your game creeps me the gently caress out swamp waste. The gas station bit, the whole clearly-a-cult-and-not-in-a-fun-way angle, the sound and art style - it just combines into uncomfortable weird that I'm sure a lot of people are going to love. Your game honestly seems like it should be right up Devolvers or Adult Swims wheelhouse.

Also you've got the prettiest inventory screen I've ever seen.

# ? Oct 5, 2016 00:22

zolthorg: May 26, 2009

when i think of lonely star i think of almost a picket-line-sign font

https://www.fonts.com/font/monotype/aldous/vertical

something that could be handdrawn with a thick brush onto a piece of scrap wood that's more tall then wide and is done by someone trying to fit too much text onto a small board (with imperfections like a rounded top of the A and things like R and P having the line cross over the vertical bar), saying stuff like "BETTER WAGES" or "NO FOOD HERE, GO AWAY" or "YOUR WELCOME IF U HAVE CIGS"
not necessarily on picket-line-signs in the game, but as warnings / explicitly telling the player to buzz off

a tight font like that would also probably look good being layered close to itself at different sizes like you do in the trailer, and you could see how it looks at a bitmap-font-resolution to use in textboxes in game,

i also imagined the font to be dripping like the person used a bit too much paint on the paintbrush, some strokes descending a little too low, small imperfections. but i don't have that font so i can't illustrate it for you

# ? Oct 5, 2016 00:50

Flex Mentallo: Mar 14, 2001; BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

swamp waste posted:

I'm working on a new trailer for pitching to publishers. What do you think about this guy here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ha-j0ZfBD1M

older one for comparison

It's a lot more up front about how the game works and what's supposed to be fun about it, although i think it sacrifices some of the drama and mystery of the older one

This is so good that I just don't know what to how to words seriously.

I kinda both agree and disagree about the comments on the font. Yeah at first it stands out in a bad way, so from a "okay let's make a good normal game trailer" point of view it might benefit from being changed.
But it also does kind of keep the "marketing aspects" out of the actual game-world in a sense that i myself like, and when the powerpointnes clashes with how cool everything else looks it makes your brain itch, which makes it more memorable (you couldn't have pulled this off if the game itself looked bad).

And since everything else visually is so loving on point in that video it feels like you probably know what you're doing with the font choice (in the same way that you keep cropping the logo).
But yeah, if you want to catch attention of publishers they will probably "get it more" with a font more similar to the graphical style/game-world, and it might make them trust your marketing chops better.

# ? Oct 5, 2016 03:08

Bert of the Forest: Apr 27, 2013; Shucks folks, I'm speechless. Hawf Hawf Hawf!

swamp waste posted:

I'm working on a new trailer for pitching to publishers. What do you think about this guy here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ha-j0ZfBD1M

older one for comparison

It's a lot more up front about how the game works and what's supposed to be fun about it, although i think it sacrifices some of the drama and mystery of the older one

I may be a bit late to the party here, but I gotta say that I really think your old trailer is the stronger of the two as of right now. What your new trailer lacks that your old trailer had was in a sense, a story. A build up. Your old trailer starts off with this weird old man at a campfire, with some soft music and the immediate hook of the art style and theme via the text and visuals alone. The old trailer then starts to build up a bit with combat, exploration, and then the absolute insane poo poo that finishes the trailer off. It's shorter and sweeter, and to my mind gets more to the SELLING point of your game (the uniquely gritty and strange world you've created) than your new trailer. The new trailer actually bored me a little towards the middle/end portions, with the text feeling less informative and more like a series of bullet points. By removing some of that mystery and strangeness, it also manages to give me a lot less reason to see more, I almost felt like I saw everything there was to see in the game through the doubly-long second trailer.

I'd say, ESPECIALLY if you want to pitch to publishers, that it needs to really sell them on the things that are going to make the game stand out in the market, which is mainly the world and the insanity surrounding it less than , say, the combat mechanics. For comparison, the launch trailer for Dropsy (published by Devolver of course) pretty much ONLY focused on the strange world that game inhabits.

That's my two cents anyway. I'm really excited for Lonely Star, so I just want to see y'all make the best impression if you're going to shop it around.

# ? Oct 5, 2016 03:13

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# ? Jun 12, 2024 22:57

anothergod: Apr 11, 2016

This is my second attempt at a sludge/slime effect. It's not as successful as I want. Any of ya'll got tips to make this work better?

# ? Oct 5, 2016 07:25

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Making Games Megathread: The Normals are Stored in the Balls

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