Game Maker, Unity, and the Unreal Engine are all free. Do not buy a license to create your first game. Learn using the free engines and only worry about purchasing or licensing after you have a finished product and you're looking at a commercial release.Is it worth it trying to learn game development using Game Maker Studio 2 with a trial version? Im kinda broke at the moment to buy a license.
Congratulations! The lo-fi aesthetic is immediately appealing, so I'm definitely going to pick this up tomorrow as soon as I get paid.I haven't talked in here much, but uh, we're going live on itch with our little horror adventure game today!
https://paratopicteam.itch.io/paratopic
I understand, thanks a lot. I will start with game studio and try to create some projects and prototypes first!
I started my road into indie game development with Game Maker Studio. It's totally a great way to learn because there's many built in , easy to use functions without having to know actual programming language. Truth be told though, you'll have to learn to write scripts eventually if you want to really delve in. But for starting out, it was fantastic. Play along with some of the tutorials and make the simple tutorial games.
Yeah, long time no read. Good to have you back! :D
Awesome! I wasnt aware of these :)There are free vector art animation tools, i don't know if they have what you want, in any case they are:
-Synfig(time ago it was SUPER slow on windows, i don't know if it's fixed now)
https://www.synfig.org
-and OpenToonz(that let's you use raster and vector, too bad it's so bloated and complicated... but Studio Ghibli used it for Princess Mononoke and successive cartoons so you may want to give it a try)
https://opentoonz.github.io/e/
There are obviously others but now i don't remember them.
Had to redo the fireballs and optimise it to run on the Xbox One better (that is direct footage). I may revisit it later since missile has some nice suggestions. But its time to move on from this character and get back to the other stuff!
Looking pretty good! As that other person mentioned on Twitter, it seems like it should be "buy a big sword", though.
Thanks :)
"Maybe I'll buy a Big Sword" - looks good though :) I've always like your character designs
Had to redo the fireballs and optimise it to run on the Xbox One better (that is direct footage). I may revisit it later since missile has some nice suggestions. But its time to move on from this character and get back to the other stuff!
I love how filthy and atmospheric it looks, the particles are really pleasing to look at!
I've been doing some more work on Baroness Samedice's boss battle over the last couple of days! Still gotta get the next few waves done though, a fairly long road left to go on it.
My first screenshot saturday! Yay!
Not a big progress since the last time, i have just added random things to the test scene(the monsters are from Splatterhouse 3) and changed the tone map, now the whole image is more contrasted and saturated, to be honest i'm not completely sold on it because i would prefer a little less pronounced effect so i'll keep testing tone maps.
They have a free deal going until the end of the month for GDC.I didnt realize there was a pixel creation limit in the trial version of Game Maker Studio 2, getting really difficult now to follow the tutorial series I'm watching. Oh well :/
https://www.yoyogames.com/blog/463/desktop-licence-for-everyone-during-gdc-game-jamsWe love game jams and believe GameMaker's super-efficient workflow is such a great tool for them. With the Game Developers Conference just around the corner, this is a great time for a game jam. We are providing free, full licenses of GameMaker Studio 2 Desktop, valid until 28th March, for developers to take part in the various game jams happening around GDC.
They have a free deal going until the end of the month for GDC.
https://www.yoyogames.com/blog/463/desktop-licence-for-everyone-during-gdc-game-jams
To add:
Every thread a GDC thread confirmed?
I'm happy that you like it! About your question...look at this comparison, everything is 1:1Looking nice! Have you considered going for a pixelated look for your environment textures, like Octopath Traveler?
If your background tiles are pixel art as well, then you have some strange filtering going onI'm happy that you like it! About your question...look at this comparison, everything is 1:1
As you can see, my game may not "look" pixelart, but is 100% pixelart, my character's size is roughly the same size of Cody of Final Fight and all the textures have the same scale.
So i'm already doing something similar to OT, but there are many reasons why my game doesn't look like OT, the biggest are probably these 2:
1)different genres and inspirations, OT is inspired to 2d Final Fantasy while my game is inspired to... well lots of things but let's focus on beat'em ups.
Beat'em ups look a lot less pixelated than 2d Final Fantasy games because the camera is closer, hence objects are bigger and have more details, while in FF everything is tiny and drawn with few pixels
2)OT wants to faithfully recreate 2d jrpgs look and for this reason the light most of the time comes from the same direction(except during flashy attacks in fights) and the diffuse/albedo textures(=color textures) are made like if they were 2d tiles with most of the light and shadow shading already in the texture, this lets them use and keep few colors, on the other hand i want to take advantage of different lights and for this reason i have to leave most of the light and shadow shading to the normal maps(=textures that give the illusion of 3d), even if i used few colors the result wouldn't have looked pixelated.
In the end if you look at the wall of my game it isn't that far from a more "3d" version of the wall you can see here imo.
It's not a strange filter, it's a tecnique called normal mappingIf your background tiles are pixel art as well, then you have some strange filtering going on
Yeah pixel art with normal maps can lead to some really odd results. While possible, it's not an easy process.I didn't mean the normal mapping, I meant the texture filtering. If your bricks are pixel art they are very blurred there.
Am i really that bad at explaining things? :(I didn't mean the normal mapping, I meant the texture filtering. If your bricks are pixel art they are very blurred there.
The character is unfinished and doesn't use normal map, so yes it's inevitable that it looks different, if i can i would like to use normal mapping on characters too but that would be probably too much so probably i won't do that.Yeah pixel art with normal maps can lead to some really odd results. While possible, it's not an easy process.
Currently I'd say that the character sprite and background art are completely different art styles.
I guess it's because even if the brick's outline is made in pixel-art (the technique AND the result), both the texture and normal map don't look like they were made with pixel-art methods but rather with color-mixing tools because of the uncontrolled blurring between the different levels/colors. So it's not the usage of the normal map, but its construction and on what texture it gets applied.Am i really that bad at explaining things? :(
What you see here
is the final result that you see here at the right side
it's the result of diffuse map + normal map, so yes you are talking about normal mapping, the result of normal map + diffuse map doesn't look like pixel art, look at this image from the last night
we agree that in general the last night looks like pixel art, right? But look at the illuminated portion of the ground, unlike other elements the ground clearly uses normal map, doesn't it also look blurred/filtered/whatever? That's the effect of normal mapping(well that and a ton of bloom)
I'm not trying to imitate the look of old pixel art games, i want my game to be pixel art but at the same time to look as modern as possible so i'm using everything that modern development has to offer, without any of the old hardware constraints.
Please tell me that i was clear this time because otherwise i give up :(
The character is unfinished and doesn't use normal map, so yes it's inevitable that it looks different, if i can i would like to use normal mapping on characters too but that would be probably too much so probably i won't do that.
Take into account that i'm still in the process of deciding of how the game should look like so it's all an experiment for now.
We are getting our wires crossed here. Don't worry about itAm i really that bad at explaining things? :(
What you see here
is the final result that you see here at the right side
it's the result of diffuse map + normal map, so yes you are talking about normal mapping, the result of normal map + diffuse map doesn't look like pixel art, look at this image from the last night
we agree that in general the last night looks like pixel art, right? But look at the illuminated portion of the ground, unlike other elements the ground clearly uses normal map, doesn't it also look blurred/filtered/whatever? That's the effect of normal mapping(well that and a ton of bloom)
I'm not trying to imitate the look of old pixel art games, i want my game to be pixel art but at the same time to look as modern as possible so i'm using everything that modern development has to offer, without any of the old hardware constraints.
Please tell me that i was clear this time because otherwise i give up :(
The character is unfinished and doesn't use normal map, so yes it's inevitable that it looks different, if i can i would like to use normal mapping on characters too but that would be probably too much so probably i won't do that.
Take into account that i'm still in the process of deciding of how the game should look like so it's all an experiment for now.
I was just coming here to post that. It's pretty crazy, $12 million spent to develop the assets, so you'd hope there is stuff to learn from: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/paragonThat Epic Games / Paragon announcement is awesome.
What a great way to bootstrap your development if you have no art skills.
These assets are "Licensed for use with the Unreal Engine only.", so you can only use them in your UE4 projects, which still have the "5% rev share if rev > 3k$/quarter". But if you're working with UE4 anyway, they are basically free, yeah :)They claim "no strings attached", but I haven't downloaded yet to try to find if there's actually a license agreement of some sort.
Took a while to finish this shop but we're done now, next up the shop keeper! :D
Very nice indeed.
The only criticism I have is the way some items look very "artificial" lined up in the shop. Specifically the bombs look very floaty if you know what I mean.
-about pixel art definition:I guess it's because even if the brick's outline is made in pixel-art (the technique AND the result), both the texture and normal map don't look like they were made with pixel-art methods but rather with color-mixing tools because of the uncontrolled blurring between the different levels/colors. So it's not the usage of the normal map, but its construction and on what texture it gets applied.
The Last Night is in a different case since they use pixelated "style" (the scaling and rough edges) in addition to using pixel-art, while you are working in 1x, but even then it seems like the normal textures are still made in a per-pixel basis. (Looking at the stones on the ground, they shimmer on the basis of a pixel rather than a blob).
I might be wrong though, but even looking at the bottom version of your image the brick's texture is definitely not pixel-art (while the character obviously is). Depends on the style you want to achieve of course!
Looking at the top image I also wonder if the shader you use for the normals automatically blurs the value between different texels, or if the normal texture was like that from the beginning.