The  "Toon Ramp" section of this page might help you:
http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/Components/SL-SurfaceShaderLightingExamples

I have only implemented this type of shader in the Source engine (reference), but the technique looks similar.

You may need to implement something like the previously linked shader, and play around with the exact balance of the albedo texture and the light warp texture.

I'm guessing that the UI, for the most part, started as a vector shape in Illustrator. Then copy those shapes over to Photoshop to add/paint textures and basic lighting on top.

Some of the edge lighting/shadows or other generic lighting can also be done with layer styles inside of Photoshop (bevel&emboss, inner shadows, gradient overlays, etc).

On good wat to learn, is see if you can find a .psd out there with at least ONE of the graphical effects you are going for (edge lighting, texture overlay, etc). Dissect the .psd to see how it was assembled, and what layer styles were used.

who cares about writing and plot in a game like dork messiah? i can't even remember what the story was about and who the characters were. what i do remember is the excellent first person melee system.

I brought it up because the game had a lot of negative reviews, but considering the awesomeness of the gameplay, the story/characters/etc were the only things that were actually "that bad". But even in the cheesy-badness, it's entertaining in the way that many cheesy B-movies are.

Ha, I've been playing through Dark Messiah as well. It seems like it's known for it's terrible plot, writing and voice acting, but it's actually a pretty awesome game.

solaris is great yeah. it's absolutely above and beyond all other books about alien life i've read. i always wondered whether snaut's (called "snow" in the english translation i think) monolog about how humans don't actually want to see other worlds but essentially want to see the earth in slightly different form was lem taking a jab at other sci fi authors who mostly depict aliens as humanoid. aside from probably being a true statement lol.

the tarkovsky movie is worth seeing as well (forget the soderbergh version).

I agree (and actually, in the new audiobook translation, they do call him "Snout", which surprised me). I never thought about his monologue as referring to other sci-fi books, but it makes perfect sense, especially considering how vocal Lem was with his criticism of other (mostly American) sci-fi authors.

I just ordered the Tarkovsky film, actually.

Sinclair: That would be interesting to check out, though I would imagine that there is still some "Earth chauvinism" going on in the author's proposition. But, to go in line with that hypothesis, it's worth noting that Solaris was not the traveler, we humans were. (of course, apparently it can affect it's own orbit, so perhaps it could also possess (or evolve to possess) the ability to escape the gravity well of its solar system and travel that way.

That's why I started by providing examples of small "bits" he might need

My problem now is, while learning C# and Unity, I'm finding myself writing and re-writing various chunks of code as I learn more. It is a good learning exercise, however.

Speaking of classic sci-fi, I'm currently reading through Lem's Solaris again. I think this may be my favorite novel. It is certainly one of the most impactful novels that I have read.

Recently, a new English translation was released, but only in audiobook form. The translation was great, but I'm not much into audiobooks, and the reader was pretty cheesy (particularly when he tried to "act out" the voice of each character). I hope they print this new translation soon!

Either way, I'd say the book is a worthy read, but certain parts that felt a little boring before seemed to have been improved upon in the new translation.

I would say try to keep the gameplay quality consistent

I think this goes right along with the point of "don't make the game too long". No filler content.

If a part of the game isn't fun, see if you can make it fun, and verify that it actually feels good in the overall flow of the game. If it doesn't meet these two criteria, then cut it out.

I feel that "filler content" is one of the biggest problems many modern games (particularly the bigger-budget or larger-scale games: developers end up chucking in more content just to give the player "more stuff to do" or "more gameplay hours", but the focus should be on overall quality above all else).

I don't like to be a pessimist... but I think you need to start smaller, if this is your first game.

The best course of action would probably be to just work with the UDK for a bit, make a level, see if you can get the third-person cam working the way you like, etc.

Reminds me of this blog I just read:

http://www.dinofarmgames.com/?p=872

Weirdly written by this thread's OP!

the joke

Ha! I just saw it posted on reddit. I wasn't trying to make a funny :|

Reminds me of this blog I just read:

http://www.dinofarmgames.com/?p=872

Over the past couple of weeks, I played though (or finally got around to finishing) Journey, Braid and Dear Esther. I also tried to play thechineseroom's previous mod, Korsakovia (though some crashing has prevented completion).

It has been a good couple of weeks. I'm also currently working on some atmospheric/narrative projects, and particularly thanks to these recent games, I'm starting to feel as though I am finding the right niche for me.

I've also played a fair bit of Natural Selection 2, and I am very excited to come across a good, strategic, competitive multiplayer game that does not have unlocks!

There's a lot of nitpicking one can get into about what makes "good art", but it isn't always beneficial to debate the details, unless you bear in mind that the details may differ on a project-by-project basis.

However, I think the most important thing when creating anything worthwhile, is not to sit down and thing "I want to create an art." There should be a drive behind what you do, a sense of a goal or purpose, and you should merely do whatever it is that you need to do to reach this goal. And along the way, hopefully make your judgements based on "good" taste (or at least "relevant" taste).

If you are successful, you may wind up with something great.

My goals are to make something that is in some way important, something that may benefit another person's life, or at least encourage a degree of discussion or thought.

There are plenty of kinds of "art" that negatively impact the world. Music is especially riddled with these problems. It seems like an industry that is mostly fueled by negative human drama. Sometimes these songs can be a cathartic or healing experience, but often times they glamorize drama, and empower people to remain in an immature emotional state (that then distracts them from many positive opportunities).

So, I guess my post dodges the question. I'm less concerned with "what is art?" and more concerned with "why is what I am doing important?" Sometimes this comes from emotional/philosophical expression, but not always.

Thanks for all of this in-depth discussion! I know have a better grasp on how to plan all this stuff out.

For now, I think I'm going to lean to the simpler side of things, and use an object-oriented approach. But there is a lot of subtlety in the details that these posts are really shedding some light on.

PompiPompi: Sage advice. That's more or less how I have been going about development, and I definitely hit that 'ugly' milestone last night! I don't even have a ton of code right now, but the series of events started to get a little out of hand, to the point where I am getting confused about where and when to do things.


Netsu: Thanks for the specifics.

I definitely need to do more research on descendant or sub classes. I looked at the flixel source code a while back to try and get a a grip around how a game's logic could be divided up, but it was too complicated for me to really grasp. So I wanted to build something simple from the ground up to understand the pieces.

My idea was to divide it up into separate classes, but subclasses/dependents makes a lot more sense.

I do like the SoundManager class idea you had. I was thinking of something along those lines, and hoped that it wasn't too hackish of an idea. It would really add to my personal readability of the code. With Processing, using Minim, I'd imagine that it would need a few functions for various types of sound effects - like playing background loop sound, player sounds, etc. But now that I think of it, there is another positive benefit: it would be easy to code in certain sounds that "cut off" others - like a "parry" or "block" sound could cancel the attacking "swoosh" sound of another player without having to talk between objects.

Doing sound effects based on states might be a little more complicated, like turning on/off a footstep loop, but it would be easy to incorporate behaviors, like random footstep clomps on every step, or perhaps an extra function that monitors the player speed, and chooses a different sound based on speed.

Of course, then timing animations and sound could become an indirect process. I suppose the Player class should handle all of the timing.

I could really use some high-level advice on how to break down my game's code, so that it stays somewhat organized (particularly if I add features, use the code as a base for my next project, etc). Technically, I need basic functions from a 2D sidescroller. Maybe with interactive objects put in later. I am working in Processing, for what it's worth.

Currently, my code is laid out as so:

Code:

draw() {
  // basic loop that calls all other functions
}
keyPressed() {
  // determines keyboard input, fires outputs like:
  // PlayerOne.isPressingRight = true;   PlayerOne.attack();  etc.
}

class Player {
 
  move() // moves player according to booleans set in the above-mentioned keyPressed() function. might play footstep sound?
  attack() // manages attacking/damage dealing. Hooks in with display to perform the right animation. plays attack sound
  display() // displays character image. image changes based on variables set in move() and attack()
  update()  // call all of the above. afterward, it resets any extra variables (turn off attacking states, jumping states, etc)
}

However, now that I am planning the implementation of simple transition animations and matching sound effects – like the "warm up" of the melee attack animation, the raising-of-the-shield-to-block animation, etc – the code seems to get very messy, with different functions taking turns doing the enabling and disabling different things.

One idea I had was to split up the player class into multiple classes, like:

Code:

class Player() {
  // handles player variables, position, attack state, damage, etc
  // handles initial timing and triggers Sprite class
}

class Sprite() {
  // takes inputs from Player() to display the appropriate artwork/animation in the right spot on the screen
}

//unsure about this next one
class PlayerSounds() {
  // should a "sound manager" have its own function?
  // or should all sounds be triggered by Player()?
}

I am getting very confused over all of this, so any insight would be very helpful! Especially if there is a way to reuse any code for NPCs.


I tried to search for another thread on this with no luck. But if this information is elsewhere on the forums, a simple link will do. Thank you!

http://www.erasmatazz.com/TheLibrary/Library2.html

particularly http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0052QA5WU which used to be a free download but is now $3

but most of his writings are on his site for free and can be read first

There's actually a .pdf up here. Came up as one of the first results on Google.

I only have a kindle mobile app, which isn't the best for reading. I should probably get a hard copy though, as I haven't even read through this .pdf yet :p

Thanks for the info! It's always hard for me to make meetups, but I'll definitely make it out to one soon!

Wish that I would have found out about this competition before today! Now I'll just have to dig through the submissions   

yo, are you in Austin?  There's a bunch of cool video game meetups around town, they have Juegos Rancheros once a month and there is Game Dev Beer Night like every other week.

Yeah, I went to Fantastic Arcade last year and it was pretty awesome.  I'll prolly be there for a day or two

Sorry about the necro, but I haven't heard of these meetups! Now I need to find these meetups.