Hi krides,

About the Unity integration of Bink, you need to contact Bink by mail, it's the only way to get it.
I did it, and we got an evaluation of the Bink SDK and it work like a charm.
What I don't know is the price of the license. I'm still in touch with them to see if we can afford it...

Oh, I see! You know what? I'll shoot them an email right now. If price info isn't confidential, please post it here.

UPD: Okay, I got the license agreement, and the extended trial is $1000, so I'm guessing the full license costs even more than that.

I think that the whole skull/toilet situation got blown out of proportion. You can't really make a general rule out of it. In some cases, some things work better, in some other cases, some other things do. But the main point that I would like to make is that the fact that someone does corny graffitis that scream "exposition! look at this exposition!" is important, because it's an opportunity for making new cool things and, as such, moves us forward as an industry.

Take Undertale, for instance: it has this fantastic joke where you have the option to sell your crap to a vendor, but the vendor goes all "what am I, a pawn shop?" on you and refuses to buy the crap. This is a joke that works so great only because you have just spent 20 years playing RPGs where it's standard practice to dump all the loot you don't need on poor blacksmiths and tailors.

My point is, I don't know what's best. It depends on the game you're making. What I know is that people have done all of these things in the past, and it's really cool, because I can work with that.

I didn't want to make a new topic, but people are warning me about releasing during steam summersale now. That would mean that I would need to postpone the game even further. My game will will be prices below $5 on launch tho so I'm thinking it would be fine myself. What do you guys think?

If you look at SteamSpy history, nothing that releases during Steam Summer Sales ever sells. People are blind to the $5 price tag, all they see is 90% discounts, no matter how low (or high) the original price was. Also, there's evidence that games that are more expensive, sell better (within reasonable margins). It seems to go against the basic logic of the markets, but it makes sense when you think about it. When I see a $20 price tag, I think to myself: "hey, if this game is so expensive, it must be pretty cool," etc. I'm not giving you any advice, just some food for thought :-)

Good luck!

I thinks it's related to what everybody else has been saying, but for me, the scariest part is releasing the game. Mostly because I believe that finishing a video game is impossible: you can keep polishing and adding things forever. But the money and the time tend run out, and, even if you're doing the game alone on your free time, it still makes sense to force a deadline on yourself. So, yeah. Abandoning a game is a tricky one. Always gets me..

I would be surprised if there were no gathering at Paris, and if this is the case somebody should do something about it....

Switching back to English in case other people are reading us :-) In Paris, there's the Paris Dev Night, but it's more of a AAA thing, so you just run into Ubisoft people all the time. If enough people from TIG were interested, maybe we could figure out some kind of a contre-soirée ;-)

Also, I've just dug this thread from 2013 up: https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=33721.0
And – what do you know? – their meet up seems to still be alive today: http://www.meetup.com/Paris-Game-Development-Meetup-Group/

Welcome krides! C'est une invasion en fin de compte :D

Thank you! :-) Il y a un real world gathering à Paris ou quelque part en France ? J'en ai pas vu ici : https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=13903.0

Hi Gerrard,

MovieTexture is a total joke, we have the same problem in our game. I have just noticed this Unity Feedback thread, so it would appear that Unity does not support Bink video natively. https://feedback.unity3d.com/suggestions/bink-video-support

On the other hand, I can't seem to find the Asset Store page of the plugin. How exactly would you go about integrating Bink Video into Unity? Doesn't seem like an option to me. What am I not seeing?

You can't tell from the trailer, but at least I hope this thing has a plot.

Also, jokes aside, I think they are doing an interesting thing with teal & orange here: all the modern things are teal while the Spanish Inquisition things are orange. It's not unlike AC the game, but I bet whoever did the post-processing for the film must've felt really clever.

[For example:]

I like to work on narrative-based games, and (at least for those kinds of games) I found it to be critical to have a timeline of events in place before, during, and after the general story of the game. What happened in this world 10, 20, 100 years before the game begins? How did the cute little creatures living there develop pointy ears? Do they use glass for windows? Who is at war with whom and since when?

It's important to know the facts, but it's also important to know the dates because a game usually has a certain (linear or non-linear — it doesn't matter) structure. Events happen, and you advance. If you want to keep things consistent, it's generally a good idea to keep a little timeline where you write times and dates of all the important events. Otherwise, you might find yourself in an awkward situation that breaks the narrative.

For example: if a character has died, they should not appear alive until they are resurrected, and you want to know when the resurrection happens to know when you can show the character again. You can decide this as you go, but it may have other implications. Whoever resurrects the character should be there to do it. If they are there at 10 am on Thursday, this means that they could not conceivably be at another distant planet 30 seconds after this, so they can't save somebody else. It gets really complicated really quickly, and you want to keep it manageable. A timeline can help you keep things clear and straightforward.

If your game is linear, draw a straight line with an arrowhead on the right and put a little dot on it for every single event in your game's universe. Write the names of these events. Put dates near the dots. Make sure that everything makes sense like it did in your head. Have you noticed any plot holes that need to be addressed? Make sure that the timeline works before you start writing details of each event down. You can come back to it and change it later, but I found this approach to be really helpful (most of all for my own sanity's sake).

If your game has a branched story, you still need a timeline! In fact, you might need several parallel ones to keep track of all the possibilities that emerge from player's choices.

Also, I really recommend you this book: http://www.amazon.com/Save-Last-Book-Screenwriting-Youll/dp/1932907009

It's about movies, but the method described in it can easily be used in games as well with some adjustments. It will give you a better idea of how to structure your story and suggest a working methodology for writing stories. I know it helped me :-)

Good luck!

Hi, everyone, I'm Sergey.

I have been reading this forum for a while (actually, pretty much ever since I discovered indiegames.com around 2008), but I haven't posted anything yet. I think that the time has come to do it :-)

I really like pretty, meaningful and story-rich games and strive to make them. I'm also into all kinds of weird games that turn things on their heads. I believe that playing and making these is what moves the whole industry forward.

Over the years, I have made a bunch of indie games. My first commercial one is a butterfly-based puzzler called Dédale, released in 2012 on mobile as well as PC/Mac. Then I worked on things like Paradis Perdus and Lune which were a bit more ambitious. Afterward, I was part of the Rime team at Tequila Works. You can check all of that out on my website/portfolio: http://sergeymohov.com.











There are also some game jam games and unfinished projects there, as well as a blog mostly filled with random scribbles and improvised tutorials (and also a rant about Hamilton for some reason).

Now I'm a co-founder at a Paris-based indie studio called Ocelot Society. We're working on our first project called Event[0]. It started off as a student project four years ago and got out of control :-)



I decided to join the forum because I saw some fascinating discussions that I really wanted to participate in. I look forward to exchanging opinions and knowledge with this community.

P.S. Maybe you've seen me on Twitter or Unity/Unreal forums, I'm @krides on both.