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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsforma.8 [New video, new images, revamped first post!]
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Skyrise
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« Reply #20 on: September 24, 2012, 03:50:00 AM »

Two iPhone screenshots:

iPhone 4 AA2X:



iPhone 4 no AA:



On the small retina you see almost no aliasing with antialiasing off.
Just save the image on the phone and you can see how the game looks on mobile. Wink
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caou
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« Reply #21 on: September 24, 2012, 07:02:07 AM »

It reminds me so much of 'Another world', but more colorfull.
Nice job guys !
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Skyrise
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« Reply #22 on: September 25, 2012, 02:44:48 AM »

It reminds me so much of 'Another world', but more colorfull.
Nice job guys !

Thank you! Smiley
All the screens are from an old version of the game, everything is work in progress. We are adding a lot of details and revising some design choices, the look will remain very clean (Another World-like Wink), but with a lot more on screen.
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Skyrise
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« Reply #23 on: October 05, 2012, 06:34:54 AM »

Ok, new, final screenshots of the first area coming later today. Wink

We used a kind of unusual approach, we tried to polish it a lot early, to understand what's best for the overall visual style, and for the performance on older iOS devices, of the game. Since the beginnig of the project we iterated a lot on the same material, trying lots of different things visually. It changed a lot, and we are pleased with the result, hope you enjoy it too.  Smiley

It's like a really well polished alpha, which is kinda weird... but we learned a lot doing it this way. Wink
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« Reply #24 on: October 05, 2012, 02:44:11 PM »

Well, as my friend Mauro said, we finished polishing the demo: the map design is lot more consistent, and we have fixed down effects, enemies and the core game mechanics. The first area is pretty much complete, and we are working on the (short) tutorial, the intro and the first boss fight. The hardest part could be teach the basic commands to the players, especially because we are trying to fit it into the flow of the narration.

Now, some screenshot of what to expect from the first area of the game

dark and mysterious conduits


Doors and locks


Dangerous foes and energy sources


Caves and shields


puzzles and annoying jumping creatures


Big gear wheels and bombs
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JeffWeber
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« Reply #25 on: October 05, 2012, 03:54:26 PM »

Hey Guys,

Great stuff. 

I'm interested in your performance research. I know you guys are using the RageSpline Asset from the Unity3D asset store.

So am I understanding this correctly: For your splines, you set the AntiAliasing width to 0 and instead turn on aliasing in the Quality settings of Unity?

Was the Spline "fake"-aliasing actually affecting perf more than the built in aliasing? 

Have you guys settled on your quality settings yet across the different devices or are you still experimenting?

Keep up the great work.  Looks awesome.

-Jeff Weber
www.farseergames.com
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Skyrise
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« Reply #26 on: October 05, 2012, 04:17:48 PM »

Hey Guys,

Great stuff. 

I'm interested in your performance research. I know you guys are using the RageSpline Asset from the Unity3D asset store.

So am I understanding this correctly: For your splines, you set the AntiAliasing width to 0 and instead turn on aliasing in the Quality settings of Unity?

Was the Spline "fake"-aliasing actually affecting perf more than the built in aliasing? 

Have you guys settled on your quality settings yet across the different devices or are you still experimenting?

Keep up the great work.  Looks awesome.

-Jeff Weber
www.farseergames.com

Hi Jeff, thank you very much! Smiley

Yes, basically we are turning off the 'fake' AA on the splines in RageSpline and using true antialiasing in the Unity Quality settings, based on the device. But it's a bit more complex, let me explain, since we've done a lot of testing on the different iOS devices before drawing conclusions.

Our main target is the iPad, and the first generation iPad's GPU has terrible fillrate: it's the same GPU of the iPhone 3GS but with four more times the pixels to move. The same for the iPhone 4: same GPU, a lot more pixels to draw. So you need to avoid overdraw and alpha at all costs. The RageSpline shader is a vertex coloured alpha blended: basically any shape you draw is a huge alpha polygon. The prolem is not the little 'fake' AA border, all the shape is alpha, always. You can push a lot of vertices and drawcall on the first generation iPad, so you can draw a lot of complex spline, but the basic RageSpline shader is not good on it if you draw lots of very big splines on screen like us. Also, keep in mind that we absolutely want to have 60fps on all platform.
So in the end, after a lot of experiments, we simply use an opaque shader on almost all our spline. Doing so the spline is always opaque, so we can't use the 'fake' AA border, but we have zero overdraw. When we need to use a transparent or semi-transparent spline (like for the water, or for some special effects), we use the basic RageSpline shader.

For the sake of performance, we ditched the AA, real or fake, on iPad 1: we run at constant 60fps in very busy scene. It's a bit jaggy, maybe we'll give the option to enable true AA but it has an hit.

On iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 we enable AA2X. On iPad 2/iPad 3/4S/5: true AA8X.
And since we are using lots of other polygonal shape, having true AA enabled on all the scene give a lot more coherent look to the game.

Hope it helps! Smiley
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JeffWeber
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« Reply #27 on: October 09, 2012, 06:20:43 PM »

Thanks for the info guys. Very helpful.

I have another question regarding your RageSpline setup.

For your large landscapes, are you using "MeshCollider" or "Boxed" for your collision? 

Almost everything you read about Unity says to use primitives (boxes or spheres) for collision on mobile.  However, I think there are some exceptions. If you have a RageSpline with many verts, this equates to a LOT of boxes for collision.  I ran some informal tests and found that a single large MeshCollider often out performs many smaller box colliders.

Curious what you guys have found regarding RageSpline collision performance.

-Jeff
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Bandreus
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« Reply #28 on: October 10, 2012, 02:20:38 AM »

Hey! Nice to see other fellow indie developers from Italy!

I totally dig going for 60fps on all platforms, as it enhances the game experience by an order of magnitude (even if the casual player doesn't really realize this, most of the times).

Other than that, forma.8 just looks plain great. It kinda reminds me of Pixel Junk Shooter, although I know it plays very differently.

Cia raga in bocca al lupo, continuate così Wink
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Skyrise
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« Reply #29 on: October 11, 2012, 08:48:59 AM »

Thanks for the info guys. Very helpful.

I have another question regarding your RageSpline setup.

For your large landscapes, are you using "MeshCollider" or "Boxed" for your collision? 

Almost everything you read about Unity says to use primitives (boxes or spheres) for collision on mobile.  However, I think there are some exceptions. If you have a RageSpline with many verts, this equates to a LOT of boxes for collision.  I ran some informal tests and found that a single large MeshCollider often out performs many smaller box colliders.

Curious what you guys have found regarding RageSpline collision performance.

-Jeff

Hi Jeff, sorry for the delay in replying.

We are using mesh colliders for all the level splines. They are huge and pretty complex as you can see from the screenshots, like hundreds (and in some case over a thousend) vertices per shape. We use primitive colliders for everything else (mainly sphere colliders).

We were amazed from the performance, we've done a lot of stress testing to see what the limits are, but I can assure you that it's not a problem having a lots (like over 50) physics object moving on screen and colliding with the background, the player and so on.
I've been working with Unity iPhone since the beginning, and I think a lot of the documentation was written for the older (and slower) ARM6 devices. From iPhone 3GS and up there is a lot more horsepower. Wink

BTW, following your blog, very good numbers on Windows Phone, congratulations! We're looking at WP8 with a lot of interests... Smiley
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Skyrise
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« Reply #30 on: October 11, 2012, 08:56:52 AM »

Hey! Nice to see other fellow indie developers from Italy!

I totally dig going for 60fps on all platforms, as it enhances the game experience by an order of magnitude (even if the casual player doesn't really realize this, most of the times).

Other than that, forma.8 just looks plain great. It kinda reminds me of Pixel Junk Shooter, although I know it plays very differently.

Cia raga in bocca al lupo, continuate così Wink

Hi Bandreus! I think italian indie developer are finally coming out! That's good! Smiley

Yeah, 60fps are a must, it was our priority from the beginning. We struggled a bit on the iPad 1, we tried switching to 30fps to have the AA also on that platform, but in the end the difference was like night and day so... 60fps all the way. Smiley

PixelJunk Shooter was one of the main graphic inspiration along with Another World. I love all the Q-Games works and I played Shooter a lot. First version of forma.8, with my ugly programmer graphics was a lot more similiar to Shooter. Then after a lot of iteration we changed to the current form. I think we'll post some of the original tests and artwork soon. Wink

Crepi il lupo ovviamente! Su cosa stai lavorando? Smiley
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Bandreus
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« Reply #31 on: October 11, 2012, 09:08:35 AM »

Thanks for the reply!

I do hope the Italian indie scen can grow quickly and strong, although I'll be honest and say I'm not entirely optimistic about it. I hope I'll end up being catastrophically wrong ofc!

I love the visual style of forma.8, really digging it! Cannot wait to see more.

I've been mainly doing preliminary stuff (mainly concepting stuff) for a yet undisclosed project. This has been floating my mind for quite some time now, on top of a couple more concepts I've been thinking about for the last couple years, so I've quite a bit of game making related stuff going on, but no tangible work to show off or talk about just as of yet.

Keep in mind this is going to be my very first indie game project (no other experience in the industry), so do not build high hopes about this Tongue
I hope I can start early prototyping soon. That's if I can afford the spare time at all. We shall see.
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Skyrise
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« Reply #32 on: October 11, 2012, 12:35:54 PM »

Teaser screenshots from our realtime intro. Very early... Smiley



Huge spaceship here... Wink
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Skyrise
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« Reply #33 on: October 12, 2012, 05:19:35 AM »

I do hope the Italian indie scen can grow quickly and strong, although I'll be honest and say I'm not entirely optimistic about it. I hope I'll end up being catastrophically wrong ofc!

Let's say that Italy is not the best place to be an indie developer now... hope things get better! Wink

I love the visual style of forma.8, really digging it! Cannot wait to see more.

Thank you! Smiley
We'll show something new soon, we are flashing out our demo area (with a big boss obviously!), then we'll post the first official trailer.

I've been mainly doing preliminary stuff (mainly concepting stuff) for a yet undisclosed project. This has been floating my mind for quite some time now, on top of a couple more concepts I've been thinking about for the last couple years, so I've quite a bit of game making related stuff going on, but no tangible work to show off or talk about just as of yet.

Keep in mind this is going to be my very first indie game project (no other experience in the industry), so do not build high hopes about this Tongue
I hope I can start early prototyping soon. That's if I can afford the spare time at all. We shall see.

What do you plan to develop with? Unity, custom angine, etc...? Smiley
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Bandreus
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« Reply #34 on: October 12, 2012, 05:26:11 AM »

What do you plan to develop with? Unity, custom angine, etc...? Smiley

Nothing I've thoroughly been thinking about just yet.

I definitely want to target desktop and the web as the main platforms for this first game-making venture, mainly because of the controls scheme (mouse + possibly a couple keyboard keys).

So unity isn't entirely out, but I might end up going for plain air/flash, haxe or something like that.
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« Reply #35 on: October 12, 2012, 07:18:26 AM »

Speaking of italian developers... Beer!
I'm loving the art style here, especially the palette. Any chance to see this on desktop? Else I'll wait to have an iThing to try it Smiley

Anyway, I'm following your progress here and on twitter. Good luck and keep up guys!
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Skyrise
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« Reply #36 on: October 12, 2012, 07:51:21 AM »

Speaking of italian developers... Beer!

Yay!  Beer!


I'm loving the art style here, especially the palette. Any chance to see this on desktop? Else I'll wait to have an iThing to try it Smiley

Thank you very much! Smiley
We started with iOS in mind and the control system is thought up for touch screen input, but it's not touch to go nor virtual joystick on screen. We are now testing the game with a joypad on Mac/Pc and it works very well, so I think we'll try to port the game on all the platform Unity support. Windows/Mac/Linux version are a given... Wink

Anyway, I'm following your progress here and on twitter. Good luck and keep up guys!

 Following you too! Wink
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Skyrise
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« Reply #37 on: October 16, 2012, 02:48:34 AM »

Just a little news... we have a page on IndieDB now! Smiley

http://www.indiedb.com/games/forma8
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« Reply #38 on: October 22, 2012, 02:23:01 PM »

Hello everyone,
I know that this devlog is discontinuous, we have started it with the best intentions, but intentions are not enough to do it properly.
But, today is a good day for a new start, because -following claw example (thanks pal!   Beer!) - I've decided to quit my day job to dedicate all my energies to Forma.8 (and I hope many other games, after Wink).

Night and Weekends are not enough, and I think the quality of my work (and the work of my pal Mauro, that was suffering that bottleneck) was affected by that.

So, I'm scared like a cat in a washing machine now, but I think is for the best. Crazy

Before leaving, I want you to meet a new friend


Or maybe a lot of them!  Big Laff
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« Reply #39 on: October 22, 2012, 11:50:00 PM »

aaaand another one in the Big Indie Arena! best of luck! Smiley (nice and creepy new friends, btw)
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