Indie Game Development |OT 2018| Come, help, learn, show and tell!

Deleted member 5167 · Apr 11, 2018

nakedcosmonaut said:
If anyone can help with this it would be much appreciated. This isn't technically a game, it's made in Unity (with Adventure Creator) as more of a presentation tool but I'm having problems with memory limits. This is the entirety of the project:
All of these characters have idle animations that are playing as it starts. Clicking (or tapping) on a character gives you their name, again and you see a few text boxes giving a brief description of them. It didn't occur to me something so simple, in my limited knowledge, would be so seemingly difficult to run. As a WebGL it exceeds memory limitations, I upped it to 512 (which it recommends against) but this hasn't been enough. As an Android app it doesn't run on my older phone, it does run through Bluestacks for whatever that's worth. The WebGL file is about 90 MB, the APK. is 104 MB. If anyone has any optimization tips please let me know, frankly I barely know what I'm doing.

Are the animations done as multiple sprites? Because it sounds like you're hitting VRAM limits, and every animation frame would be loaded as a seperate image.
There's not really a 'nice' fix for that that isn't going to involve non-trivial work on your end, but on the offchance you're just using poorly optimised .PNGs, have you tried something like PNG gauntlet to really whittle those files down?

Because the alternative is going to be something a lot less appealing, like completely redesigning the sprites to reduce their size and share components, or redoing all of your animations in-engine rather than as seperate images.

Hampig · Apr 11, 2018

Mike Armbrust said:
I formed an LLC and set up a company bank account. It was pretty easy but it can vary a lot depending on your state/country.

I'm sort of scared about dealing with taxes and all that. How difficult have you found that to be?

nakedcosmonaut · Apr 11, 2018

Mike Armbrust said:
In the Unity editor under build settings click "auto connect profiler." Then click build and run. Click on the left box that says "memory" and then it should show you memory info while your program runs. Then you'd have a better idea of what is causing the problem.

From some of the other posts it sounds like I've made a mistake by using too many assets at once which is eating all the memory, would the profiler still be of use knowing this?

Weltall Zero said:
How many frames total are we talking about? At 500x500, that would add up fast, especially since the game has to keep them all in memory and (I believe) uncompressed.

There are 23 characters, on average they have idle animations from 10-14 frames which are obviously looping, some have more. They also have 'react' animation when you click them, these range from 5 to 30 frames. I'm using Clip Studio Paint to animate on twos which is exporting with duplicate frames to play at 24fps. This didn't occur to me before, but every single one of the duplicate frames is not only unnecessary but at the very least is doubling the file size of the art assets. I don't suppose solving this would be as simple as deleting every duplicate and changing the frame rate to 14fps?

Dr Wily said:
Are the animations done as multiple sprites? Because it sounds like you're hitting VRAM limits, and every animation frame would be loaded as a seperate image.
There's not really a 'nice' fix for that that isn't going to involve non-trivial work on your end, but on the offchance you're just using poorly optimised .PNGs, have you tried something like PNG gauntlet to really whittle those files down?

Because the alternative is going to be something a lot less appealing, like completely redesigning the sprites to reduce their size and share components, or redoing all of your animations in-engine rather than as seperate images.

I haven't tried PNG gauntlet, can't hurt I suppose. The only other solution I can think of is adding extra 'scenes' and splitting the characters across them, but that wouldn't fix the problem would it?

Weltall Zero · Apr 11, 2018

nakedcosmonaut said:
From some of the other posts it sounds like I've made a mistake by using too many assets at once which is eating all the memory, would the profiler still be of use knowing this?

If that is indeed the issue then I guess you won't need the profiler to pinpoint it anymore. But we'd have to be 100% sure that's the issue.

nakedcosmonaut said:
There are 23 characters, on average they have idle animations from 10-14 frames which are obviously looping, some have more. They also have 'react' animation when you click them, these range from 5 to 30 frames. I'm using Clip Studio Paint to animate on twos which is exporting with duplicate frames to play at 24fps. This didn't occur to me before, but every single one of the duplicate frames is not only unnecessary but at the very least is doubling the file size of the art assets. I don't suppose solving this would be as simple as deleting every duplicate and changing the frame rate to 14fps?

12 FPS :) But yeah, it shouldn't be much more complicated than that. Unity allows for arbitrary animation framerates, and you could even just delete the duplicate frames and it would play the same (it doesn't need a different sprite per "frame", it will simply maintain the last one if no changes are made).

nakedcosmonaut said:
I haven't tried PNG gauntlet, can't hurt I suppose.

I have no clue if that'll help a lot as my intuition is that the pngs would be uncompressed in memory when loaded anyway, making any previous compression moot, but as you say, it can't hurt. It might make the APK smaller, at least.

nakedcosmonaut said:
The only other solution I can think of is adding extra 'scenes' and splitting the characters across them, but that wouldn't fix the problem would it?

Actually it should also help, since you wouldn't have so much stuff loaded in memory at once; when a scene is loaded the previous one is unloaded from memory.

OllyOllyBennett · Apr 11, 2018

Weltall Zero said:
your channel is the first one I've joined

Well thanks for joining! Be sure to say hi when you're online. We can talk Xenogears in Off-Topic. I've just ordered the Fei figure!

I've also joined the related channels it invited me to upon joining yours like Wargroove and Witchbrook, as I'm a huge Chucklefish fan, with Starbound being my most played Steam game ever. Are you related to them?

Chucklefish are our publishing partner. So they've funded part of development and are assisting us with publishing. We (Cardboard Sword) are doing all of the development.

LightEntite said:
I look at games that I remember being shown around the same time i started showing mine that i've literally played on Steam because they're finished already, and i get even more depressed :V

As I've commented before much earlier in the thread: time is a horrible comparison metric. A team of 4 people working for 1 year is the same as 1 person working for 4 years. And then what about hours per day? Someone could have a full-time job, but a short commute home and live alone and get 5 hours per day work done on their hobby project, or someone could have a full-time job and an hour's commute each way, and two kids and a partner and only work 1 hour per day on a hobby project.

Then there is mentality; some people are just workaholics, some need to swap activities every hour or so. That's not necessarily discipline, that can be hormones, innate traits, all sorts.

If we judge ourselves based on sweeping assumptions of others, we'll never come out on top. Go easy on yourself. It doesn't matter if you take a year, 5 years, 30 years or whatever. Just making a game is pretty damn cool.

This looks great. Everyone loves an air combo! Keep up the good work.

SaberVS7 said:
Welp, thanks Big AAA for murdering Steamspy.

There goes any shot at actual market-research for AJRF.

It's gonna be interesting to see what happens... or completely uninteresting and just disappointing. I get why they did it, but there will be ramifications. I'm glad I completed my competitor analysis a couple of weeks ago.

nakedcosmonaut · Apr 11, 2018

Weltall Zero: Oh hell, yeah I meant 12. I'm no mathemagician but I worked that one out. Ok, I'll duplicate the project (just in case) and delete the offending frames. I don't want to do the multiple scenes thing, partly because I like the 'one screen' presentation but also as I've drawn all the art in this fixed resolution I can't really resize them. The other background(s) will be awfully sparsely populated in comparison, but that's a lesson learned should I have no other choice.

Deleted member 5167 · Apr 11, 2018

nakedcosmonaut said:
From some of the other posts it sounds like I've made a mistake by using too many assets at once which is eating all the memory, would the profiler still be of use knowing this?

Well, the texture memory values it returns will definitely tell you if its a VRAM issue

nakedcosmonaut said:
There are 23 characters, on average they have idle animations from 10-14 frames which are obviously looping, some have more. They also have 'react' animation when you click them, these range from 5 to 30 frames. I'm using Clip Studio Paint to animate on twos which is exporting with duplicate frames to play at 24fps. This didn't occur to me before, but every single one of the duplicate frames is not only unnecessary but at the very least is doubling the file size of the art assets. I don't suppose solving this would be as simple as deleting every duplicate and changing the frame rate to 14fps?

Every single frame is being treated by the game as a completely new image, and are all being loaded into the scene concurrently as being required as part of the animation.
Its almost certainly worth getting rid of duplicate frames.
It might also be worth resizing your images to 512x512 rather than 500x500 (just canvas size to avoid scaling) as there are some GPU efficiencies using textures that are to the power of 2.

nakedcosmonaut · Apr 11, 2018

Dr Wily said:
It might also be worth resizing your images to 512x512 rather than 500x500 (just canvas size to avoid scaling) as there are some GPU efficiencies using textures that are to the power of 2.

They're not actually 500x500, I meant to say they're all generally within that range. This character for example is 277 by 329

a lot of it is transparency of course, if that's a problem and I can fix it I'm very willing to do so.

Weltall Zero · Apr 11, 2018

OllyOllyBennett said:
Well thanks for joining! Be sure to say hi when you're online. We can talk Xenogears in Off-Topic. I've just ordered the Fei figure!

Hahah, I didn't know they were making one. I'm not much into human figures, my transformers / mecha collection takes way too much space (and money) as it is. :D

OllyOllyBennett said:
Chucklefish are our publishing partner. So they've funded part of development and are assisting us with publishing. We (Cardboard Sword) are doing all of the development.

That's amazing, man! Their games, even published ones, are great; of course yours looks incredible so I can see why they would love to work with you. :)

I've been considering pitching my own game to an indie publisher like Chucklefish or Devolver Digital myself, mostly for the marketing help and such.

OllyOllyBennett said:
As I've commented before much earlier in the thread: time is a horrible comparison metric. A team of 4 people working for 1 year is the same as 1 person working for 4 years. And then what about hours per day? Someone could have a full-time job, but a short commute home and live alone and get 5 hours per day work done on their hobby project, or someone could have a full-time job and an hour's commute each way, and two kids and a partner and only work 1 hour per day on a hobby project.

Then there is mentality; some people are just workaholics, some need to swap activities every hour or so. That's not necessarily discipline, that can be hormones, innate traits, all sorts.

If we judge ourselves based on sweeping assumptions of others, we'll never come out on top. Go easy on yourself. It doesn't matter if you take a year, 5 years, 30 years or whatever. Just making a game is pretty damn cool.

This is all great advice, and one I'm far better at imparting than I am at following. XD

nakedcosmonaut said:
Weltall Zero: Oh hell, yeah I meant 12. I'm no mathemagician but I worked that one out.

Yeah, I assumed as much. :)

nakedcosmonaut said:
Ok, I'll duplicate the project (just in case) and delete the offending frames. I don't want to do the multiple scenes thing, partly because I like the 'one screen' presentation but also as I've drawn all the art in this fixed resolution I can't really resize them. The other background(s) will be awfully sparsely populated in comparison, but that's a lesson learned should I have no other choice.

If you still have issues, and there's nothing in your project you would mind others seeing, I'm not averse to having a look at it myself if you want to upload somewhere and give me the link by PM.

nakedcosmonaut said:
They're not actually 500x500, I meant to say they're all generally within that range. This character for example is 277 by 329
a lot of it is transparency of course, if that's a problem and I can fix it I'm very willing to do so.

Yeah, you really should try to have your images have dimensions that are a power of two, or at least a multiple of 8. Although perhaps I'm kidding myself and having anything other than a power of two is equally as bad?

nakedcosmonaut · Apr 11, 2018

Weltall Zero said:
If you still have issues, and there's nothing in your project you would mind others seeing, I'm not averse to having a look at it myself if you want to upload somewhere and give me the link by PM. Yeah, you really should try to have your images have dimensions that are a power of two, or at least a multiple of 8. Although perhaps I'm kidding myself and having anything other than a power of two is equally as bad?

I don't mind someone looking at it, I assume it won't run properly without the 'Adventure Creator' toolkit, I don't suppose you have it? Could I just add transparent pixels to the .pngs to reach the proper dimensions? Sounds like a pain but if it helps it helps.

Deleted member 5167 · Apr 11, 2018

nakedcosmonaut said:
They're not actually 500x500, I meant to say they're all generally within that range. This character for example is 277 by 329
a lot of it is transparency of course, if that's a problem and I can fix it I'm very willing to do so.

If you imagine your scene is like... a square table. And all your assets are like beermats.
If all your assets are square beermats that are an exact multiple of the table size, its easy to get them all to fit, because you know you can just lay them out in a big square.
If they're all different sizes and shapes, then you're going to be doing lots of shuffling and nudging to try and get them all to fit.
And if you have more beermats than will fit on the table, then you're going to be constantly adding and removing beermats to try and get them all on as needed.
So its best to make all your assets square beermats, if that makes sense?

The ideal solution though, is to not have beermats at all, but one big tablecloth instead, which you printed with all your beermat images on, which is where stuff like texture packer comes in handy, but then you have some additional work in re-cutting all your images out of that tablecloth before using it

Mike Armbrust · Apr 11, 2018

Hampig said:
I'm sort of scared about dealing with taxes and all that. How difficult have you found that to be?

You can always use an accountant to file your taxes and make sure things are done correctly. I'm working full time on a PS4 game so my situation is a bit different than yours beyond setting up the initial LLC.

nakedcosmonaut · Apr 11, 2018

Dr Wily said:
The ideal solution though, is to not have beermats at all, but one big tablecloth instead, which you printed with all your beermat images on, which is where stuff like texture packer comes in handy, but then you have some additional work in re-cutting all your images out of that tablecloth before using it

That makes as much sense as anything else. I installed texture packer ages ago for some reason, I've never really looked into it though. I might have to depending on how this goes.

Deleted member 5167 · Apr 11, 2018

nakedcosmonaut said:
That makes as much sense as anything else. I installed texture packer ages ago for some reason, I've never really looked into it though. I might have to depending on how this goes.

You can do much the same yourself manually by creating a transparent, say, 2048x2048 image and then c+ping everything into it - your ideal scenario is one large texture per scene.
Texture Packer is mostly just an automation of that process, and unitys built in asset bundle and atlassing tools also do much the same, but if you don't want to delve into that just doing that in photoshop yourself will work.

Weltall Zero · Apr 11, 2018

nakedcosmonaut said:
I don't mind someone looking at it, I assume it won't run properly without the 'Adventure Creator' toolkit, I don't suppose you have it?

No, I don't have it. If you send me the entire unity project folder it's likely the required assets from that toolkit will be there... but I have no clue.

nakedcosmonaut said:
Could I just add transparent pixels to the .pngs to reach the proper dimensions? Sounds like a pain but if it helps it helps.

It should be very easy to do, just use the "change canvas size" option. But actually I just thought it might not be necessary, see below.

Dr Wily said:
If you imagine your scene is like... a square table. And all your assets are like beermats.
If all your assets are square beermats that are an exact multiple of the table size, its easy to get them all to fit, because you know you can just lay them out in a big square.
If they're all different sizes and shapes, then you're going to be doing lots of shuffling and nudging to try and get them all to fit.
And if you have more beermats than will fit on the table, then you're going to be constantly adding and removing beermats to try and get them all on as needed.
So its best to make all your assets square beermats, if that makes sense?

The ideal solution though, is to not have beermats at all, but one big tablecloth instead, which you printed with all your beermat images on, which is where stuff like texture packer comes in handy, but then you have some additional work in re-cutting all your images out of that tablecloth before using it

Actually I believe Unity uses sprite packing internally anyway, so it's possible that it doesn't matter at all what your sprites are as they'll be converted into a single huge atlas anyway. But just in case it's not done so by default, you can do it manually: select all of your sprites (you can just right click your art folder and select "select dependencies"; this may take a bit of processing time), then in the properties, enter anything in the "packaging tag" field (e.g. "default"), click "apply" (you will probably have to scroll down). Then from the menu bar select "window -> sprite packer", and in that window, click the "pack" button. That will take a while, but create (and show) a tapestry made out of your sprites.

BTW, tell us how many atlases pages that creates and of what size, that would help us ascertain how much space images are taking.

nakedcosmonaut · Apr 11, 2018

I'm still deleting duplicate images but I'll try these steps once I'm done.

Aki-at · Apr 11, 2018

LightEntite said:
anyway, since this is the thread to do it!

Ah man I remember this, yes I agree with everyone else, keep up the good work and don't worry about how long it takes you to finish. Take your time and enjoy the process! :D

nakedcosmonaut · Apr 11, 2018

Well it's a huge improvement, runs on my desktop browser without any noticeable issues. It's also, as to be expected, half the file size. Android version still won't run but I do have an old phone. I've passed it to some friends, should let me know when they have a chance.

Conkersbadfurday · Apr 12, 2018

Don't know how many of you guys are ready to market or have marketed your games, but when you release, you get hounded with bullshit. I've written a post for a gaming website about it, but I'll just quote the meat-n-potatoes so as not to self promote. TL/DR is that people set up fake websites to scam keys. If you've found any more sites to add to my list, I'm all ears.

Here's what they do. They make their own site, something like playzona.co, and then fill it with content that is not theirs. They use scripts to hijack articles from other websites and slap their name on 'em, meaning you'll open a website that looks not only real, but big and influential. There will be reviews, editorials, news, and opinion posts. If you go to the contact page, you'll find [email protected].

Now that's a real contact email!

However, the red flag is that plazona.co has no staff. The about page contains no writers, and articles contain no authors.

If you go to a random post, copy the first paragraph, and Google it, you'll find it originated elsewhere, on a bigger website from a different country. Often times, the feature image will even be the same.

Because this wouldn't be fun without a little payback, I'm going to list every site I've come across thus far and slap the word "SCAM" next to it. That should make for some Google-friendly results. I've also been contacting the original owners of their content so these websites can be removed. If you find others, I encourage you to do the same.

http://gamepregled.website/ SCAM (they're swiping content from http://jocuri.go4it.ro)

https://www.game4italians.com/ SCAM (every bullet point in their reviews come from Steam reviews)

http://pccult.net/ SCAM (they're swiping articles from https://www.eurogamer.pt)

juegoz.net SCAM (they're swiping articles from https://www.gamereactor.es)

http://playzona.co/ SCAM (they're swiping articles from https://www.eurogamer.es)

http://ocena-gry.pl/ SCAM (they're swiping articles from https://www.interia.pl/)

http://spiel-news.de/ SCAM (they're swiping articles from https://www.welt.de/)

http://whygaming.be/ SCAM (they're swiping articles from http://www.rpgfrance.com/)

[email protected] SCAM (not a website but pretending to be a youtuber)

[email protected] SCAM (pretending to write for kgportal.ru)

[email protected] SCAM (pretending to write for mmoingames.com

TolerLive · Apr 12, 2018

If anybody is looking for soundtracks for their games, I would happily work on them! We can discuss it further if interested.

https://m.soundcloud.com/user-82512726/sets/m-dev-tyler-klimek-variety

There is a link to a sample playlist of mine. :)

If anyone is interested we can talk;
[email protected]

Weltall Zero · Apr 12, 2018

Conkersbadfurday said:
Don't know how many of you guys are ready to market or have marketed your games, but when you release, you get hounded with bullshit. I've written a post for a gaming website about it, but I'll just quote the meat-n-potatoes so as not to self promote. TL/DR is that people set up fake websites to scam keys. If you've found any more sites to add to my list, I'm all ears.

Did you end up giving Woovit a try? If so, how did it go?

Conkersbadfurday · Apr 12, 2018

Weltall Zero said:
Did you end up giving Woovit a try? If so, how did it go?

Yes. I've given away a good handful of keys--maybe ten--and so far have only had one person follow through. IT hasn't been that long so I'm still hopeful for more. Keymailer, on the other hand, I've given away almost 30 and have only had two people bother making content. I've been using that one for a bit longer, so I'm kind of disappointed there.

It's still technically really early in all of this. I have plenty of time yet. But I'm also getting discouraged. There's a small handful of keys on G2A from scammers, or for all I know, people that got 'em off of keymailer.

It's one of the reasons I'm putting that list together. It lets me be spiteful :P

Weltall Zero · Apr 12, 2018

Conkersbadfurday said:
Yes. I've given away a good handful of keys--maybe ten--and so far have only had one person follow through. IT hasn't been that long so I'm still hopeful for more. Keymailer, on the other hand, I've given away almost 30 and have only had two people bother making content. I've been using that one for a bit longer, so I'm kind of disappointed there.

It's still technically really early in all of this. I have plenty of time yet. But I'm also getting discouraged. There's a small handful of keys on G2A from scammers, or for all I know, people that got 'em off of keymailer.

Hang in there! Three out of forty isn't that bad at all; it's almost 10%, which is more than I would expect in such short notice. How many streamers are registered on Woovit?

Also, have you successfully routed any of the people that contacted you on their own via these sites? Also, have you seen any known scammers registered there?

Sorry if I ask a lot of questions, this is all unexplored territory for me and it makes be curious, plus anything I learn now will be useful later.

Conkersbadfurday said:
It's one of the reasons I'm putting that list together. It lets me be spiteful :P

By all means, keep the spite flowing. :) I was in fact thinking this problem could be brought to the attention of Penny Arcade or similar; someone with a huge legion of fans and not shy about pointing them in the direction of evildoers to bring down sites and clog email accounts by sheer numbers.

Deleted member 5167 · Apr 12, 2018

Conkersbadfurday said:
It's still technically really early in all of this. I have plenty of time yet. But I'm also getting discouraged. There's a small handful of keys on G2A from scammers, or for all I know, people that got 'em off of keymailer.

One of the reasons valve made curator connect was so that developers can give review copies directly to 'influencers' without any of the associated baggage of actually sending keys, like listing who you've sent to, false identity claimants or worrying about them ending up at auction

Conkersbadfurday · Apr 12, 2018

Weltall Zero said:
Hang in there! Three out of forty isn't that bad at all; it's almost 10%, which is more than I would expect in such short notice. How many streamers are registered on Woovit?

Also, have you successfully routed any of the people that contacted you on their own via these sites? Also, have you seen any known scammers registered there?

Sorry if I ask a lot of questions, this is all unexplored territory for me and it makes be curious, plus anything I learn now will be useful later.

Few thousand on Woovit I believe. 6k? Maybe a bit more, but it isn't huge.

And yeah, i've directed people to keymailer/woovit/distribute(), though not many. It's nice when it works because it means some vetting occured.

I don't have concrete numbers though. Not keeping track of some of this, though I could.

Dr Wily said:
One of the reasons valve made curator connect was so that developers can give review copies directly to 'influencers' without any of the associated baggage of actually sending keys, like listing who you've sent to, false identity claimants or worrying about them ending up at auction

Curator connect is nice, though there are people pretending to be from big curator channels that ask for emailed keys. Even members of actual channels have asked for keys through email. It's not a great solution but at least it is one.

Veidt · Apr 12, 2018

OllyOllyBennett said:
Marketing: I was considering Discord for a while, but had written it off earlier in development as it better suits a more community-driven game, or a game with persistence of some kind (e.g. Descenders for community, Stardew Valley for persistence). Our game is a single-player story-driven Metroidvania...

However, I have seen more and more people talking about Discord, and figured it may make a good tool as another form of delivery platform for what we were essentially doing with Facebook and Twitter: sharing updates and screenshots.

I figured it doesn't really matter if those that join are chatting every day or not. If we can grab a few extra people, simply because it's their preferred channel for engagement, then it's been worth it, right?

So I set one up, (shameless plug incoming) which you can access here. It would be cool if any of you joined. Has anyone here set-up/ran a Discord server, or is part of one, that may be able to offer suggestions and feedback to help me keep it alive or improve it? Any thoughts on using Discord in this way?

I'll give some suggestions for marketing, maybe they'll be helpful. Discord is definitely a good way to connect with your audience, it's worth a try. In the same vein, I would also recommend setting up Twitch streams where you showcase some bits of the game and answer people's questions. It's not a tool to grab new people by itself, but it's a good way to get your community invested and receive additional feedback, which will help with word of mouth and growing your community in the long run. Make sure to inform people through your existing social media channels and schedule those streams a few days beforehand to make sure they know the time.

I would also try to contact youtubers who usually enjoy games similar to yours (not just metroidvanias, any games similar in terms of setting, mechanics or narrative), especially those with niche/smaller channels. See if you can get them playing your game and give you some feedback. A lot of developers make the mistake of seeing youtubers as 'tools' for getting exposure, when they're actually a valuable resource to get feedback which you can use to improve your game, as they're more likely to give you informed and in-depth criticism.

Focus on youtubers that will relate to your game based on their tastes and are part of your target audience. If they genuinely like your game, they'll do a good job selling it and they already have a built-in audience that trusts their recommendations. To make it clear I'm talking about youtubers that post edited videos or playthroughs, not full-time streamers. The latter have different routines that require them to spend a lot of time playing games their audience enjoys and/or are currently popular, so they just don't have time to cover other games on their own. You can look at streamers when you're ready to release.

Weltall Zero · Apr 12, 2018

Conkersbadfurday said:
Few thousand on Woovit I believe. 6k? Maybe a bit more, but it isn't huge.

Assuming an accept a rate of 10%, that is potentially 600 streamers covering your game. Of course that would mean sending a key to each and every one of the 6 thousands. :D

Speaking of which, do you incur a cost from creating and sending keys? Steam doesn't charge you for these, do they?

Veidt said:
A lot of developers make the mistake of seeing youtubers as 'tools' for getting exposure, when they're actually a valuable resource to get feedback which you can use to improve your game, as they're more likely to give you informed and in-depth criticism.

I really should do this. Feedback is valuable as gold to me, some of the best ideas in my game were suggestions from my friends. Youtubers with focused tastes that align with my game seems like an excellent idea. Only thing is that I don't think my game is yet quite enjoyable enough to play per se so I still rely on friends to play it and give feedback more as a favor.

Rolento · Apr 12, 2018

Blah... worst days are like today when the one thing you try working most of the day you have to scrap... I'll add it later but it sucks when nothing wants to work -_-

Conkersbadfurday · Apr 12, 2018

Weltall Zero said:
Assuming an accept a rate of 10%, that is potentially 600 streamers covering your game. Of course that would mean sending a key to each and every one of the 6 thousands. :D

Speaking of which, do you incur a cost from creating and sending keys? Steam doesn't charge you for these, do they?
.

No. Keys are free to request. You could technically request a thousand and sell them yourself.

nakedcosmonaut · Apr 12, 2018

Would any of you mind checking to see if this works in your browsers? It's WebGL and, as stated earlier in this thread, it's a presentation tool. It's intended to supplement a comic Kickstarter I'm putting together, the only interaction is clicking the characters. I've got it running smoother, thanks to the help here, but I can always use more input from anyone willing. Let me know what device and browser you're using to access it.

DNAbro · Apr 12, 2018

nakedcosmonaut said:
Would any of you mind checking to see if this works in your browsers? It's WebGL and, as stated earlier in this thread, it's a presentation tool. It's intended to supplement a comic Kickstarter I'm putting together, the only interaction is clicking the characters. I've got it running smoother, thanks to the help here, but I can always use more input from anyone willing. Let me know what device and browser you're using to access it.

Seems to work just fine on my Firefox laptop browser. Didn't notice it having any problems running.

also I like the art and animations

sabrina · Apr 12, 2018

nakedcosmonaut said:
Would any of you mind checking to see if this works in your browsers? It's WebGL and, as stated earlier in this thread, it's a presentation tool. It's intended to supplement a comic Kickstarter I'm putting together, the only interaction is clicking the characters. I've got it running smoother, thanks to the help here, but I can always use more input from anyone willing. Let me know what device and browser you're using to access it.

Works for me. Windows 10, Chrome.

bigbluefrontend · Apr 12, 2018

nakedcosmonaut said:
If anyone can help with this it would be much appreciated. This isn't technically a game, it's made in Unity (with Adventure Creator) as more of a presentation tool but I'm having problems with memory limits. This is the entirety of the project:
All of these characters have idle animations that are playing as it starts. Clicking (or tapping) on a character gives you their name, again and you see a few text boxes giving a brief description of them. It didn't occur to me something so simple, in my limited knowledge, would be so seemingly difficult to run. As a WebGL it exceeds memory limitations, I upped it to 512 (which it recommends against) but this hasn't been enough. As an Android app it doesn't run on my older phone, it does run through Bluestacks for whatever that's worth. The WebGL file is about 90 MB, the APK. is 104 MB. If anyone has any optimization tips please let me know, frankly I barely know what I'm doing.

Which platforms does it need to run on?

JeffG · Apr 12, 2018

nakedcosmonaut said:
Would any of you mind checking to see if this works in your browsers? It's WebGL and, as stated earlier in this thread, it's a presentation tool. It's intended to supplement a comic Kickstarter I'm putting together, the only interaction is clicking the characters. I've got it running smoother, thanks to the help here, but I can always use more input from anyone willing. Let me know what device and browser you're using to access it.

It kinda runs on my Surface Pro 2 w/Edge, but clicking on the characters doesn't do anything. I will try it on IE (nope, doesn't even start)

nakedcosmonaut · Apr 12, 2018

DNABro: Thanks, appreciate it.
sabrina: Thanks
bigbluefrontend: No particular target, I'd like anyone who's interested to be able to run it but that's probably not realistic.
JeffG: Hmm, can you run other other WebGL content?

Weltall Zero · Apr 13, 2018

nakedcosmonaut said:
Would any of you mind checking to see if this works in your browsers? It's WebGL and, as stated earlier in this thread, it's a presentation tool. It's intended to supplement a comic Kickstarter I'm putting together, the only interaction is clicking the characters. I've got it running smoother, thanks to the help here, but I can always use more input from anyone willing. Let me know what device and browser you're using to access it.

Works on both my computer and the missus' laptop, Chrome on both, Windows 7 and 10 respectively. I clicked on every character, great art and animation! I can't load simmer.io at all on Firefox or Explorer (as in, not even the front page) for some reason, but admittedly I barely use them so they might not be well configured.

Just a couple nitpicks:
- Sometimes the sound that plays when clicking on each character plays a scratching sound at the end. It doesn't happen when clicking the character again. I'm guessing a premature destruction / disabling of an AudioSource or similar.
- Try to use a longer (and perhaps slightly less peppy) audio loop, because it can drive one insane in the time it takes to read everyone's description. :D There's a lot of royalty-free audio tracks online, for example in freesound.org.

Veidt · Apr 13, 2018

Weltall Zero said:
I really should do this. Feedback is valuable as gold to me, some of the best ideas in my game were suggestions from my friends. Youtubers with focused tastes that align with my game seems like an excellent idea. Only thing is that I don't think my game is yet quite enjoyable enough to play per se so I still rely on friends to play it and give feedback more as a favor.

How early in development is it and why do you think it's not enjoyable enough yet? Is it due to the gameplay loop not being strong enough, being mechanically rough, still missing systems or something else?

Weltall Zero · Apr 13, 2018

Veidt said:
How early in development is it and why do you think it's not enjoyable enough yet? Is it due to the gameplay loop not being strong enough, being mechanically rough, still missing systems or something else?

That's an excellent question and one that merits a lot of introspection. I think it's a mix of:
- Insecurity about how fun the core gameplay loop is (although this is getting better as I add more fun mechanics).
- Not a huge lot of incentive to play / replay, namely:
--- No unlockables.
--- Lack of unique / different content beyond the first world.
--- No win condition (difficulty just keeps increasing so it's more of a challenge to see how far you make it).
- Until now, not a lot of interesting stuff to do in the outer gameplay loop (world map). I just introduced a module system (replacing the old upgrade system) that should make it more fun.

One thing that makes me extremelly insecure is the first point, being unable to gauge how actually fun the core gameplay is. I get tired quickly of playing it, but is it because I've played it for hundreds if not thousands of hours as an obligation and often in a half-broken state? Or am I actually overestimating how fun it is because it's my "kid" and it's actually even worse? A friend of mine plays the game for hours at a time, others haven't touched it. Is the former playing it so much to please me or did it truly resonate with him? Are all of my friends who play the game doing it out of obligation?

Veidt · Apr 13, 2018

Weltall Zero said:
That's an excellent question and one that merits a lot of introspection. I think it's a mix of:
- Insecurity about how fun the core gameplay loop is (although this is getting better as I add more fun mechanics).
- Not a huge lot of incentive to play / replay, namely:
--- No unlockables.
--- Lack of unique / different content beyond the first world.
--- No win condition (difficulty just keeps increasing so it's more of a challenge to see how far you make it).
- Until now, not a lot of interesting stuff to do in the outer gameplay loop (world map). I just introduced a module system (replacing the old upgrade system) that should make it more fun.

One thing that makes me extremelly insecure is the first point, being unable to gauge how actually fun the core gameplay is. I get tired quickly of playing it, but is it because I've played it for hundreds if not thousands of hours as an obligation and often in a half-broken state? Or am I actually overestimating how fun it is because it's my "kid" and it's actually even worse? A friend of mine plays the game for hours at a time, others haven't touched it. Is the former playing it so much to please me or did it truly resonate with him? Are all of my friends who play the game doing it out of obligation?

You shouldn't be insecure even if the core gameplay isn't fun yet. A lot of times that's something that only clicks in the latter stages of development, once all the systems and hooks are in place, so it really depends on the game. Some games are satisfying even in the prototype phase, others take a while to get there because they need everything (mechanics, level design, narrative and so on) to be working together properly before they feel complete. The list of developers who have worked on highly successful games and admit they thought their game sucked or wasn't any good until the last few months is pretty extensive, so don't worry about that now.

It's also fine if your friends don't enjoy the game, it might just be a matter of taste, what's important is analyzing the specifics of the feedback they provide you. Whether they like the game or not isn't the most important bit, but rather how they feel about different aspects, so you can understand what needs to be improved, what isn't working and what might be missing. Do you have any footage of your game you want to show? Would help giving you more accurate feedback, if you feel like sharing.

Deleted member 2620 · Apr 13, 2018

I was really nervous about sending an early version of Horizon Vanguard's demo out, but I wound up passing it to a small group of posters on the old forum and some other forums I post at (something like ten people). Some of the absolute best changes I've made to the game came from that feedback, and maybe I should have done it even earlier.

nakedcosmonaut · Apr 13, 2018

Weltall Zero said:
Works on both my computer and the missus' laptop, Chrome on both, Windows 7 and 10 respectively. I clicked on every character, great art and animation! I can't load simmer.io at all on Firefox or Explorer (as in, not even the front page) for some reason, but admittedly I barely use them so they might not be well configured.

Just a couple nitpicks:
- Sometimes the sound that plays when clicking on each character plays a scratching sound at the end. It doesn't happen when clicking the character again. I'm guessing a premature destruction / disabling of an AudioSource or similar.
- Try to use a longer (and perhaps slightly less peppy) audio loop, because it can drive one insane in the time it takes to read everyone's description. :D There's a lot of royalty-free audio tracks online, for example in freesound.org.

I did have to restart Firefox when I tried it just now due to 'this browser doesn't support WebGL' despite the fact that it absolutely does (and then did), maybe it has problems with the format.
-The only sound problem I can hear is on 'Oliver Tolliver', it's a bad .mp3 or something and I need to swap it. I don't hear scratching at all, if you hear it then it's definitely there I'm just not sure if the problem is in the software or only happens on other systems.
-I'm not sure what to do with the BGM, I don't expect anybody to spend more than two minutes tops in this to begin with. Maybe if it drives people insane they'll be more willing to give me money?

Aki-at · Apr 13, 2018

Yeah I really should get a larger pool of people, right now I'm just so mindful of bugs tbat I don't want to open it up from family and close friends but I'm probably getting to the stage I should ask a larger number of people.

A bit unexpected this tweet got a bit of traction, little story time when we first released the bee Princess a couple of months back, the response was a bit muted that our artist got a bit depressed. Now though it's nice to see people being more receptive of our recent works! :D

Weltall Zero · Apr 13, 2018

Veidt said:
You shouldn't be insecure even if the core gameplay isn't fun yet. A lot of times that's something that only clicks in the latter stages of development, once all the systems and hooks are in place, so it really depends on the game. Some games are satisfying even in the prototype phase, others take a while to get there because they need everything (mechanics, level design, narrative and so on) to be working together properly before they feel complete. The list of developers who have worked on highly successful games and admit they thought their game sucked or wasn't any good until the last few months is pretty extensive, so don't worry about that now.

I actually know about them (the FTL guys for example), but... one can't help but wonder about the size of the list of developers who thought their game sucked, and indeed it ended up sucking. :D I mean, nobody interviews these guys...

Veidt said:
It's also fine if your friends don't enjoy the game, it might just be a matter of taste, what's important is analyzing the specifics of the feedback they provide you. Whether they like the game or not isn't the most important bit, but rather how they feel about different aspects, so you can understand what needs to be improved, what isn't working and what might be missing. Do you have any footage of your game you want to show? Would help giving you more accurate feedback, if you feel like sharing.

It's not so much they don't enjoy it, rather than there is an understandable variation on how often they try out the versions I send them. One of them tries every one of them, for hours often. Others haven't touched the game in months, or ever. I mean, I wouldn't check every version of a game I love either, it becomes tiring. And so I find it hard to learn if they don't play out of fatigue or because they don't enjoy it, and conversely when they play I don't know if it's out of deference towards me, or they genuinely enjoy it.

That's why I value the opinions of people with less emotional attachments to me so much. I sent a version of the game to Toma and the feedback I got was great. I actually end up implementing a crazy amount of things people tell me, like 80% or 90% of all feedback I've got has eventually been implemented.

I keep putting off taking footage of the game; however, if you want to, I'd be glad to send the next version to you (hopefully that shouldn't be much farther than a few days or a week from now, I'm squashing the bugs of the latest version).

nakedcosmonaut said:
I did have to restart Firefox when I tried it just now due to 'this browser doesn't support WebGL' despite the fact that it absolutely does (and then did), maybe it has problems with the format.
-The only sound problem I can hear is on 'Oliver Tolliver', it's a bad .mp3 or something and I need to swap it. I don't hear scratching at all, if you hear it then it's definitely there I'm just not sure if the problem is in the software or only happens on other systems.

The scratching is odd because it only happens sometimes. If I click the same character again, it doesn't happen.

nakedcosmonaut said:
-I'm not sure what to do with the BGM, I don't expect anybody to spend more than two minutes tops in this to begin with. Maybe if it drives people insane they'll be more willing to give me money?

OK, I'm not the most optistic person in the world (see above), but this is a bit far too optimistic. :D

Aki-at said:
Yeah I really should get a larger pool of people, right now I'm just so mindful of bugs tbat I don't want to open it up from family and close friends but I'm probably getting to the stage I should ask a larger number of people.

A bit unexpected this tweet got a bit of traction, little story time when we first released the bee Princess a couple of months back, the response was a bit muted that our artist got a bit depressed. Now though it's nice to see people being more receptive of our recent works! :D

God it looks great.
If you're fine with it I'd be honored to give it a try and provide feedback. I'm known for my brutally honest approach to feedback (basically what I want others to do with my own work) and you can see examples of it in this thread. We could even do a "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" :D but be warned my own game is nowhere near as beautiful as yours as I'm no artist by any stretch.

Something we all could probably use when we show our game to new people is a stranger-friendly version of our to-do / known issues list, e.g. "title screen's game name sprite isn't finished yet" or "enemies can burn while underwater" (both actual examples in my case) and such, so that we don't report to each other stuff we already know.

Veidt · Apr 13, 2018

Weltall Zero said:
I actually know about them (the FTL guys for example), but... one can't help but wonder about the size of the list of developers who thought their game sucked, and indeed it ended up sucking. :D I mean, nobody interviews these guys...

Better to adopt an optimistic view though :)

It's not so much they don't enjoy it, rather than there is an understandable variation on how often they try out the versions I send them. One of them tries every one of them, for hours often. Others haven't touched the game in months, or ever. I mean, I wouldn't check every version of a game I love either, it becomes tiring. And so I find it hard to learn if they don't play out of fatigue or because they don't enjoy it, and conversely when they play I don't know if it's out of deference towards me, or they genuinely enjoy it.

That's why I value the opinions of people with less emotional attachments to me so much. I sent a version of the game to Toma and the feedback I got was great. I actually end up implementing a crazy amount of things people tell me, like 80% or 90% of all feedback I've got has eventually been implemented.

I keep putting off taking footage of the game; however, if you want to, I'd be glad to send the next version to you (hopefully that shouldn't be much farther than a few days or a week from now, I'm squashing the bugs of the latest version).

Have you tried elaborating a short questionnaire or list of questions to accompany your builds? So rather than asking them what they think about the game or if they enjoyed the new build, focus on simple, straightforward questions about specific features/aspects. That might help you get the answers you need and eliminate possible bias. I'd also reduce the amount of builds you send them, focus on major milestones with considerable improvements/additions, that way they should be more receptive to trying new builds.

Feel free to send me the next version, I'd be happy to try it out and give you some feedback.

Weltall Zero · Apr 13, 2018

Veidt said:
Better to adopt an optimistic view though :)

If only it was that easy, hahah! The other day I had a glimpse on how much of a negative thinking person I am, to the point of literal logical contradiction, when I found myself thinking in the span of a minute "nobody cares about my game" and "everyone has high expectations of my game and I'm going to disappoint them". :D

Veidt said:
Have you tried elaborating a short questionnaire or list of questions to accompany your builds? So rather than asking them what they think about the game or if they enjoyed the new build, focus on simple, straightforward questions about specific features/aspects.

This is a pretty good idea, I'll give it a try. I wonder if it won't make it more bothersome to them... I guess I can include "do you find answering these questions bothersome?" as the last one. :D

Veidt said:
That might help you get the answers you need and eliminate possible bias. I'd also reduce the amount of builds you send them, focus on major milestones with considerable improvements/additions, that way they should be more receptive to trying new builds.

This is something I've thought about too, but I feel like I need to release quicker builds for myself as well. Settling into a routine of trying to send a build every week or two forces me to focus on development and have the game in a playable and relatively bug-free state most of the time. Basically I try to have something interesting every build, but also release them regularly, and this encourages and motivates me.

There are exceptions, of course. I've recently implemented a pretty big new system and so haven't sent a new version for over a month. At least some of my friends have expressed anticipation for the next build, so that's good!

Veidt said:
Feel free to send me the next version, I'd be happy to try it out and give you some feedback.

Thanks! PM me your email and I'll send it to you when it's ready.

Edit: I guess I ended up taking some screenshots and sharing them in this thread, it seemed appropriate:
https://www.resetera.com/posts/6731975/

Deleted member 35011 · Apr 14, 2018

I just spent the last four hours making my custom editor look as pretty as humanly possible.

...It's a sole project. I'm the only one working on it. I have no earthly justification for doing that. But I keep making it as if not only other people were going to use it, but they were the dumbest people possible, even though I'm the only person meant to work on it. Wonder what that says about what I think of myself :P

"Oh, I can't have that part be done manually. Literally pressing a button is too much, what if the user forgets to do it, hits play and the changes aren't loaded? It needs to be automated."

It's like I'm idiotproofing, but I'm the idiot.

(Editor is meant to let me change dialogue in Play Mode on unity and let me keep the changes after that. I have it working perfectly, only it needs one button press once I exit out of Play Mode. I apparently deemed that unacceptable and I worked until it was fixed.)

Weltall Zero · Apr 14, 2018

Velord said:
I just spent the last four hours making my custom editor look as pretty as humanly possible.

...It's a sole project. I'm the only one working on it. I have no earthly justification for doing that. But I keep making it as if not only other people were going to use it, but they were the dumbest people possible, even though I'm the only person meant to work on it. Wonder what that says about what I think of myself :P

"Oh, I can't have that part be done manually. Literally pressing a button is too much, what if the user forgets to do it, hits play and the changes aren't loaded? It needs to be automated."

It's like I'm idiotproofing, but I'm the idiot.

(Editor is meant to let me change dialogue in Play Mode on unity and let me keep the changes after that. I have it working perfectly, only it needs one button press once I exit out of Play Mode. I apparently deemed that unacceptable and I worked until it was fixed.)

Hahah, I relate to that. It's not so much idiotproofing as it is your pride as a programmer not letting you sleep until things are perfect. I guess this is why publishers set deadlines for games!

Regarding the pics of my game I posted in the Rampage thread... the silence has been positively eardrum-splitting. Can't say it hasn't demoralized me a bit. I mean, if I make a game inspired by Rampage and fans of Rampage show zero interest, what does that say? :/

K Monkey · Apr 14, 2018

started work and the day/night cycle (sped up here but will be linked to real in-game clock)

still need to figure out a way to make the fog work with the skyboxes better without it looking bad during daytime.

Dynamite Shikoku · Apr 14, 2018

K Monkey said:
started work and the day/night cycle (sped up here but will be linked to real in-game clock)

still need to figure out a way to make the fog work with the skyboxes better without it looking bad during daytime.

I recommend using the Planckian locus to get the colour of the sun. Just off the top of my head, probably values between 1500k and 9500k would be good

K Monkey · Apr 14, 2018

Dynamite Shikoku said:
I recommend using the Planckian locus to get the colour of the sun. Just off the top of my head, probably values between 1500k and 9500k would be good

ok

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