Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length

 
Advanced search

1411283 Posts in 69325 Topics- by 58380 Members - Latest Member: bob1029

March 29, 2024, 05:33:39 AM

Need hosting? Check out Digital Ocean
(more details in this thread)
TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsNegspace
Pages: 1 ... 9 10 [11] 12 13 14
Print
Author Topic: Negspace  (Read 67193 times)
pnch
Level 1
*



View Profile WWW
« Reply #200 on: May 28, 2015, 08:50:38 AM »

@bauer: Thank you!
@TheWing: Thanks! That´s not needed right now, it would eventually be needed to implement the optimization YM suggested (that´s how the mesh would decide whether a vertex needs to be updated).

It happened a couple days ago, but I really really want to celebrate...

#50: FIRST BIRTHDAY!

Negspace´s devlog is now one year old!


I brought presents, CLICK on the image for 5 crisp backgrounds!
-To prevent Windows from compressing them, download them, drag them into Internet Explorer (!) and right click/set as background.-

I can´t believe how many opportunities were hurled at me during this time, how many of you chimed in and helped me stay focused and motivated with your nice words, help and even job offers! (yes, it seems a punk DIY approach to making your game can make yourself employable Smiley ). For all that, I want to thank each and every one of you (yes, you too, the lurker on the corner!).

Coming from another background, this project and devlog also allowed me to meet and make a lot of new friends, both among the local gamedev community, and the worldwide one too! It's nice to see that a tightly knit industry such as this one can be so welcoming of newcomers. If you´re starting a project, I highly recommend sharing the process!

On a rash of nostalgia, I read the whole log again. Besides feeling proud (phew, I let that out), I realized how many already implemented systems were left untouched for a LONG time! The newly born programmer in me was very happy to realize that, and took it for a serious sign of progress.

We´re now closing in into 30k readers, and that's only on Tigsource (there's also twitter, fb, indieDB, etc!). It's still NOTHING by game industry volumes, but not having reached out to the press yet, I know most of it it´s word of mouth!
Imagine making any kind of personal project and having each and every person of a whole city this size interested in reading a bit about it:


In short, thanks SO much everyone! Looking forward to keep working on this. Spread the word, and let's conquer this planet! Beer!
« Last Edit: May 28, 2015, 09:35:58 AM by pnch » Logged

BomberTREE
Level 9
****



View Profile
« Reply #201 on: May 28, 2015, 01:24:26 PM »

Happy birthday!  Toast Left Mock AngerHand Joystick


Waita get this far man, keep it up!
Logged
jamesprimate
Level 10
*****


wave emoji


View Profile WWW
« Reply #202 on: May 28, 2015, 10:52:07 PM »

congrats! keep it up!  Beer!
Logged

pnch
Level 1
*



View Profile WWW
« Reply #203 on: May 29, 2015, 07:24:29 AM »

Thanks kitheif and james!

For those in Buenos Aires, Argentina, I´ll bring Negspace here today! https://eventioz.com.ar/e/nanoeva
Logged

BomberTREE
Level 9
****



View Profile
« Reply #204 on: May 29, 2015, 02:53:12 PM »

Oh jeese more than 6000 miles away. Tell me when you're in nor-cal!
Logged
pnch
Level 1
*



View Profile WWW
« Reply #205 on: May 30, 2015, 10:59:47 AM »

@kitheif: will do!

#51: Procgen palettes

Remember the palette generator that I´m using for the background of the hint screen?
Revamped it a little, and threw the ship in, say hello to an infinite amount of infinitely scrolling empty environments Evil


And here´s a more agressive version not embedded due to heavy flashes --> seizure warning!
Logged

IconicGames
Level 0
**



View Profile WWW
« Reply #206 on: May 30, 2015, 01:34:49 PM »

This screams indie to me and I love it. I love the 3D esque effects and how the game reminds me of asteroids. Its something completely unique while still having some retro influences. Keep up the good work!
Logged

<br /><br />
pnch
Level 1
*



View Profile WWW
« Reply #207 on: July 05, 2015, 08:50:12 AM »

@IconicGames: Thank you!
 
It´s been a long radio silence! Sorry about that, things have been hectic!
After many years of hard work my last short film held its world premiere in Annecy, the most important animation festival  Kiss
There, I met lots of seriously talented people, and I now find myself in beautiful Paris, baguettes and all, where I also was lucky enough to meet a bunch of local devs (feel free to PM me if you´re around!).

On the Negspace side, I managed to get a bit of development done on the TGV, - recommended experience!
Will be back to my south american cocoon next week, already looking forward to keep churning updates.
Best!

PS: Those of you that speak french can see me struggling with it in an interview here: http://www.facebook.com/bypencha
Logged

pnch
Level 1
*



View Profile WWW
« Reply #208 on: July 28, 2015, 11:57:32 AM »

Back at home, finally!
While I was away, my friends from Okhlos won best gameplay at BIG, Kudos to them!
Also, in my last days in France, I got a super nice tour of Amplitude Studios (Endless games, anyone? Do check them out!).

#52: Node Editor V
Let´s continue with some more behind the scenes tech stuff.
The node editor kept evolving, it´s now looking like this:


Note the small "C","A" or "I" in each node? Now I can pause the game anytime, pop a quest tree window, and check exactly how´s the quest going. "C" goes for Completed, "A" for Active, and "I" for Inactive. Therefore, you can quickly grasp that you´re supposed to complete the "A" Kill node to continue with the mission.
The specific details of each node are still shown one (selected) node at a time, as demonstrated on the following gif, and now each node type has a particular interface associated to it in the details panel:


One extra benefit out of that is: I can now easily support drag and drop! Want to make the player destroy a specific object? Just drag said object to the "target" field of a kill node, same goes for a waypoint and a goal field.

Back to game dev. As always, C&C welcome!
« Last Edit: August 05, 2015, 06:25:09 AM by pnch » Logged

pnch
Level 1
*



View Profile WWW
« Reply #209 on: July 30, 2015, 07:53:53 AM »

#53: Flick a switch



Ever wanted to flick a building sized switch with a spaceship?

Another simple addition with plenty of use cases.
They can manipulate specific machines (in this case the door right next to it) and are super easy to set up.
« Last Edit: August 05, 2015, 06:25:27 AM by pnch » Logged

pnch
Level 1
*



View Profile WWW
« Reply #210 on: July 31, 2015, 08:44:33 AM »

#54: Notifications

I´m lagging behind in the devlogging side! This also means there´s stuff being done.
Noticed how each node held messages that were supposed to be read by the players?
A while ago I coded a simple notifications stack, that receives messages and serves them to the user through a simple UI.
You may have noticed it already in this gif:


A description message from an empty first node, and a completion message for a kill node

The UI decides how long each message will stay on screen depending on its number of characters, and once it´s done, it gets the next message from the stack. The stack is now being populated by the nodes themselves, one message sent as soon as a node becomes active (description), and again once the node is marked as completed - as long as the message fields aren´t empty (duh, but useful).

I can now, for example, use a chain of "And" nodes to send series of ordered sequential messages to the player as soon as the quest gets to them, fire messages based on exploration putting messages into "reach area", etc.



The previous gif´s action, under the hood:

There´s still a LOT of things to do, but I´m happy to see basic single player quests starting to emerge from all that abstract dev Coffee. Hope you´re still tuned, and don´t hesitate to ask if my techno gibberish isn´t clear enough!

PS: Yes, I funkied up the colors on this level a bit.
« Last Edit: August 05, 2015, 06:25:59 AM by pnch » Logged

pnch
Level 1
*



View Profile WWW
« Reply #211 on: August 01, 2015, 07:45:14 AM »


Epic win feat. laser turret (#screenshotsaturday Smiley )
Logged

TheWing
Level 1
*



View Profile WWW
« Reply #212 on: August 03, 2015, 09:04:28 AM »

Can't wait for a playable thingle of this, is there one anywhere?! :D


On a more serious side, I'm loving that node-editor for missions, especially how it's showed in game (those messages are great)
I'd love to get my hands on both it and the game, so keep up the development!
Logged

- - - -
pnch
Level 1
*



View Profile WWW
« Reply #213 on: August 04, 2015, 09:17:15 AM »

@TheWing:  Beer! Thanks for the encouragement!

On a logical step after switches, say hi to...
#55: Pressure plates

They will probably end up looking a bit more handsome...
You can catch a glimpse of next update´s gifs in twitterland, since it seems it´ll be a long post Smiley
« Last Edit: August 05, 2015, 06:26:13 AM by pnch » Logged

pnch
Level 1
*



View Profile WWW
« Reply #214 on: August 05, 2015, 09:18:32 AM »

#56: Crushing spaceships


As soon as I introduced the behemoth ships, I knew I wanted to be able to crush ships. It just didn´t feel right that pressing a much smaller ship against a wall did not have any major consequences, killing the whole "scale contrast" idea. Crushing seemed just natural due to the claustrophobic nature of the internal sections and feeling of "physicality" that I´m aiming for. Plus, knowing that one´s ship can be crushed introduces an extra layer of strategy while piloting.

On a technical level, not being able to crush ships was troublesome. Doors needed "safety sensors" at the tips to prevent them from pushing indestructible ships literally into wall colliders. The code to prevent that from happening resulted in quite complex logic (for a door...). Also, on an intuitive level... everyone is afraid of elevator doors, shouldn´t players be afraid of their giant, space-faring cousins?

What was the catch? Unity 2D physics port does not have access to the amount of stress an object is enduring, and I couldn´t find a viable alternative. Most games rely on cheats to emulate that, but being on a zero gravity / zero friction / zero orientation world, I couldn´t even find a cheat that applied. Crushing was sent to the huge bin of "Negspace II" ideas (coming soon provided I ever get filthy rich and/or able to hire people who actually know how to do stuff Smiley).

These days, playing with springs and joints on the switches, I imagined that, if I were to split ships in half, add a hinge at the bow and put a strong spring between the sides of the stern, I could get "stress" from the difference in orientation between both halves of the ship, simulating (in a very minimal way) structural resistance.


left: old collider, right: new colliders, held together

Changing the physics of your "main character" is A BAD THING. Plenty of weird stuff cropped up:
-Self crushing, accidental explosions, and springing yourself to outer space on spring decompression.
-General wobblyness and unexpected momentum.

Weird ´n´ wobbly

-Enemies not seeing ships through the right wing and friction chargers not charging the right side of the ship.
-The playable menu being completely broken, etc...

BUT door logic became WAY simpler, and now, after some fine tuning, you can be properly afraid of them:

FEARSOME

And small ships feel more fragile than ever from a behemoth´s point of view.
I´m sure I´ll be fixing plenty of bugs on the days to come, but the feeling of crushing spaceships...  Kiss
Logged

jctwood
Level 10
*****



View Profile WWW
« Reply #215 on: August 06, 2015, 01:23:00 AM »

Really wonderful to see this devlog still powering on! I love your approach to the ship crushing, I can imagine you are able to crush one ship between two others as well which sounds epic.
Logged

pnch
Level 1
*



View Profile WWW
« Reply #216 on: August 07, 2015, 06:13:22 AM »

@JctWood Glad you´re still tuned Smiley Yes, in theory that would be possible (It would need two friends with solid behemoth piloting skills).
In truth, basic ships can outmaneuver behemoths easily, unless they hit a wall or get into a corner.  Being crushed by one of these is a fringe case, but it´s nice to know it´s possible.

There´s a new deb sum-up at indieDB, in case you´d rather skip these walls of text:
http://www.indiedb.com/games/negspace/news/negspace-on-crushing-spaceships
Logged

pnch
Level 1
*



View Profile WWW
« Reply #217 on: August 11, 2015, 10:24:12 AM »

#57: Magnets revisited

I want to introduce a few elements that modify the environments in some ways, but using such a restricted graphic universe makes me be extremely picky when representing them.

Remember magnets? Most of the time magnetized objects behave weirdly, have other objects stuck to them, and makes maneuvering around them quite hard, and real life magnets doesn´t have "visual feedback", but I had an idea about how to represent the "pull", and decided to give it a go. Everything is made in-shader, no textures used.

Rev 1: Grab pass distortion using radial waves formula + time displacement + attenuation





I feel like I´ve seen this effect thousands of times in games with completely different aesthetics...
Also, I hate how the texture filtering softens every edge.
Side note: shooting a container resulted in crushing the pink ship!
Also note the magnets preventing the parts of the ship from spreading after the explosion.

Rev2: Add posterized angular direction and displacement amount.



Sharp edges are more in tune with the general aesthetics and give a more futuristic look, looks way better to me.

Rev3: Add posterized texture lookup



Conceptually more correct, since the sharp circles that the previous iteration gave are nowhere else to be seen in the game, but maybe it´s now a bit more generic looking? Here´s how it looks like in a more colorful setting:


Staying with Rev3, for now but still tempted by Rev2, what do you think?

By the way, I´m giving a free talk at the Universidad de Buenos Aires tomorrow, PM me if around and interested!
Logged

pnch
Level 1
*



View Profile WWW
« Reply #218 on: August 13, 2015, 03:41:07 PM »

For those who came to the talk, thanks for coming! I hope you had a good time  Coffee. For the 99.9% of you that didn´t happen to be in that time-space slot, we sort of ranted about the relationship between film studies, academia, and game development.
I talked side to side with Antipirina - whose work I recommend - and gave a panorama of local games development.
After the talk I had the chance to actually play the game with friends, something I haven´t done for a while now.
I believe it´s feeling better, but the new crushing mechanic is still resulting in some unexpected deaths, gone to fix that!
« Last Edit: August 13, 2015, 03:55:22 PM by pnch » Logged

pnch
Level 1
*



View Profile WWW
« Reply #219 on: August 18, 2015, 07:37:46 AM »

#58: The shredder

Here´s a singular design problem:

I want to add a "killer wall".

1-Regular Negspace walls are black, usually solid-black, but they can have patterns too. Ships can bounce and hit them quite hard and stay prefectly healthy, in fact, grinding walls is encouraged.

2-Friction chargers are like walls, but solid white, and as soon as a ship touches them, they turn into the ship´s color. Ships can be any color. Grinding chargers is especially encouraged.

The killer walls, then, had to be neither solid black, nor white, nor colored with any color... weird!

3-Grinding a friction charger at high speed makes charging more effective and produces lightning, therefore, lightning is "a good thing". So... using lightning, at least in the same color as the player, is not allowed either.

What have other games been using as killer walls?
Traditionally, spikes. Having 8 pixels for tile makes it hard to convey the idea of "sharp spikes", since 1px wide looks thick already. Also, spikes in space, seriously?

After quite a bit of iterations and head-scratching, here´s what I came up with:


Why?
-1 All the other "safe" walls are static, therefore an animated pattern ought to at least catch the player´s curiosity, making them expect something particular out of that wall.
-2 Small lighting in a random color helps with catching the player´s eye, while being a random color each time conveys that it´s not necessarily "safe" as the lighthning from the charger (which is always the same color as your ship).

How?
Having lots of animated tiled teeths would be cumbersome, therefore, I coded a shader that procedurally generates the pattern in the GPU, allowing for kilometer-wide shredders with a single static quad, allocating for as many individual teeths as needed.

TL;DR?
Whenever you end up playing Negspace, this pattern will make you sweat Smiley
« Last Edit: August 18, 2015, 08:43:22 AM by pnch » Logged

Pages: 1 ... 9 10 [11] 12 13 14
Print
Jump to:  

Theme orange-lt created by panic