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, 12:00:40 AM

Need hosting? Check out Digital Ocean
(more details in this thread)
TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogs[Late Backing Now Open] Hazelnut Bastille: A Lush SNES-era Zelda-like ARPG
Pages: 1 ... 10 11 [12] 13 14 ... 20
Print
Author Topic: [Late Backing Now Open] Hazelnut Bastille: A Lush SNES-era Zelda-like ARPG  (Read 92684 times)
Aloft
Level 2
**


View Profile
« Reply #220 on: February 05, 2017, 01:41:32 AM »

So we were working on some kinks in the event system. Aloft apparently likes making death traps HAH.
Notice the empty heart containers



Yeah... sigh. I really do. This needs to be tuned down like 8 clicks XD
Logged

Aloft
Level 2
**


View Profile
« Reply #221 on: February 06, 2017, 11:59:07 PM »

Ok this is probably a lot better... probably a much gentler puzzle for demo-level play:

Logged

Joeb Rogers
Level 0
**


Professional Gameplay and Tools Engineer


View Profile WWW
« Reply #222 on: February 07, 2017, 07:14:54 AM »

Not sure if this has been answered before, but I couldn't see it when I looked through the pages. How many team members do you have and how many hours a week are each of you typically working on this?

The game looks fantastic by the way.
Logged
Aloft
Level 2
**


View Profile
« Reply #223 on: February 07, 2017, 07:27:44 AM »

Oh Hey!

There are two core members.

Mark Handles the Programming and mid-level game and editor structure scripting, as well as writing and some general design, and I handle art, general and level design, gameplay scripting, writing, sound, and community stuff.

Currently Mark works about 25 hours / week on the project, and I work about 80. Earlier in the summer, it was more like 40 hours / 60 hours. Mostly it comes down to working around other life commitments, and also the general proportions of the various kinds of work.

We just took on composers, and we will announce them soon!

You can read basic bios for Mark and I here:

http://www.aloftstudios.net/hazelnutbastille

Any particular reason you had interest in that stuff?
Logged

Aloft
Level 2
**


View Profile
« Reply #224 on: February 07, 2017, 06:27:15 PM »

Logged

Joeb Rogers
Level 0
**


Professional Gameplay and Tools Engineer


View Profile WWW
« Reply #225 on: February 08, 2017, 07:02:30 AM »

Oh Hey!

There are two core members.

Mark Handles the Programming and mid-level game and editor structure scripting, as well as writing and some general design, and I handle art, general and level design, gameplay scripting, writing, sound, and community stuff.

Currently Mark works about 25 hours / week on the project, and I work about 80. Earlier in the summer, it was more like 40 hours / 60 hours. Mostly it comes down to working around other life commitments, and also the general proportions of the various kinds of work.

We just took on composers, and we will announce them soon!

You can read basic bios for Mark and I here:

http://www.aloftstudios.net/hazelnutbastille

Any particular reason you had interest in that stuff?

Ah wow, even more impressive that this was all done by just the two of you! It's interesting that you're both covering a lot of different disciplines yourselves as well, did you have much experience in all the fields before you started, or just your specialism ( for example, the marketing and writing side )?

Well I ask because you've made a really impressive amount of progress over a short amount of time. Within the next few months I'm supposed to be working on a 2D roguelike project with 4 others ( in SFML though ) full time and so I clocked this as a good project to possibly use as a baseline for scoping the design to what we can do over a shorter period of time!

Logged
Aloft
Level 2
**


View Profile
« Reply #226 on: February 08, 2017, 08:01:46 AM »

There are a lot of factors that go into an indie project where people are working and not being paid for a long time.

I have been frequenting indie circles and prototyping groups for about 7 years or so, and am sort of a fixture on one for the last few years. What I have seen, overwhelmingly, is that large indie projects never work. Even 4 to start is large. Two seems to be the ideal number, much like with Sith. Three to four is workable, but it gets much worse above that. Part of it is that the teams that work always seem to be people with a long standing social relationship of some kind. If you are going to work with a person in an extreme situation like this, you have to know their mannerisms. You have to know how they think and behave. You have to be comfortable having disagreements, and have plans for how to resolve them. That is VERY hard with a person you have never met.

Another aspect you run into, is that the more people, the less responsibility individual people feel. The less you have, the more everyone knows their positions, and understands that if they don't do their work, nothing happens.

Another thing I will say, is that this only seems to work with people in special work-life situations. There will be times where you really need to put in 40+ hours per week, or you will get nowhere. It is near impossible to do this around a full time job and other life commitments you do year round.

Quote
It's interesting that you're both covering a lot of different disciplines yourselves as well, did you have much experience in all the fields before you started, or just your specialism ( for example, the marketing and writing side )?

I'll take my case, because it is easier for me to explain. I work in the architecture field, and that is where my education was. The background to that involves a lot of visual arts (painting, graphic design), as well as 3D modeling. That was my baseline of entry- being a good painter, and being good at modeling. Pixel art is really an extension of the principles of painting, adopted to the needs of what happens in a situation like 16x16 art. Design as it applies to games was something I understood maybe 30%-40% of getting into it. I had concepts about user experience, psychology of interaction with industrial elements, etc from my architecture background. Over the last 7 years or so, I supplemented this base by reading anything design-related that I come across, studying great games from history, and extracting what concepts recur in them, comparing my own work to those greats, and asking myself constantly where it falls short, and constantly asking myself why the user wants to experience my work, and how I can meet their goals in that work. Marketing is something I have casually studied as the need for it arose. I am not an expert, but it is a role I filled for a while, and I am constantly asking myself what works and why, and how I can improve my current performance. Sound and music is something that falls to me naturally, as I am a lifelong musician, however we are at the point where that is about to become someone else's role, as I can't focus on everything, and am not as good at all things as I am at my stronger skills.

So I guess the gist of it is: work with people you already know and trust, and who have established skillsets that apply to the work, and who have some strange reason for having this much time on their hands. Take your existing skills, and extend them into other areas as the opportunities arise. You sort of can't get by without most people having several roles .
Logged

Aloft
Level 2
**


View Profile
« Reply #227 on: February 08, 2017, 09:11:21 AM »

Logged

Joeb Rogers
Level 0
**


Professional Gameplay and Tools Engineer


View Profile WWW
« Reply #228 on: February 08, 2017, 02:16:06 PM »

Part of it is that the teams that work always seem to be people with a long standing social relationship of some kind. If you are going to work with a person in an extreme situation like this, you have to know their mannerisms. You have to know how they think and behave. You have to be comfortable having disagreements, and have plans for how to resolve them. That is VERY hard with a person you have never met.

I completely understand, which is one of my main reasons behind being rather apprehensive with joining teams from this site or Reddit etc, etc. I've tried multiple times before, but especially when you only know each other via some brief online communication, one of the team members will inevitably just give up because of whatever reason. I would say it ties in a lot with the discipline over motivation aspect of game development, since a loosely formed team will always break up at around that transition, if not way before. Of course there are some exceptions, but they are increasingly sparse to come across, more so within hobbyist or rev-share circles; obviously not so much when money gets involved.

For this reason though I'm more than confident from the team side of things, as this is actually part of our university degree ( we all study game development, some programmers, some artists ). We all work in a studio environment full time either solo and occasionally within multidiscipline teams for real clients as preparation for work. So the team we've formed is made up people we all know are competent and can pull the workload, and get along well with / have worked with multiple times in the past! Plus if they don't do the work they won't graduate hahaha. The hardest part so far ( I'm working on preproduction far in advance ) is just limiting the scope and trying to understand the level of content we'll be able to create within the time available, particularly as we're working with a c++ framework as opposed to a large engine ( for portfolio purposes ).

I guess you could consider yourself quite a special case for your skillset then, as most developers aren't quite as competent within so many disciplines and it could only really come from so many years of experience in a relevant field. The best part of that though, despite the increased workload, is that you'll probably come a lot closer to the gamedev dream of being able to make all the parts of a game, which is absolutely one of the best aspects of indie development. So in that respect, I can't wait to see how they all translate into the game in the end, with Zelda being one of my favourite games of all time, this is definitely on my watch list.
Logged
Aloft
Level 2
**


View Profile
« Reply #229 on: February 08, 2017, 03:15:35 PM »

Quote
The hardest part so far ( I'm working on preproduction far in advance ) is just limiting the scope and trying to understand the level of content we'll be able to create within the time available, particularly as we're working with a c++ framework as opposed to a large engine ( for portfolio purposes ).

I worked with a friend in 2014 on a game that required a C++ engine. He is Still working on that engine today, heheh. And this is a person who worked in a AAA studio where his job was making engines out of modules sent his way from other progammers (someone would make the physics module, the camera, the render pipeline, and he would stich them up). He quit work on it after a year or so, after family episodes, and didn't start again until 2016, but still a big stretch of time. I wouldn't try another similar proect with what I know today, unless I had already published a smaller, but still major work, but I am still hopeful about how that one will turn out at least.

Working with people who at least have some connection the the industry sounds positive for you. No guarantees, but it solves at least a few issues.

Things will always, always, ALWAYS take longer than you reason they should. Even all these years later, I am only partially accurate in how well I can predict how long things will take. Right now, however long I think, the thing will take 120% to 200%. Lots of reasons for this. The estimates I make tend to be based on idealized time. They tend to assume that future tasks will take the same amount of time as similar present tasks. They tend to underestimate the tendency of tasks to telescope in complexity as things go on. They tend to discount feature creep, even when those features are necessary, etc.

Quote
The best part of that though, despite the increased workload, is that you'll probably come a lot closer to the gamedev dream of being able to make all the parts of a game, which is absolutely one of the best aspects of indie development.

I have a personal project which I sort of paused to start this one, where I do just that! It is much simpler programming wise, so I am able to do almost the entire thing on my own! It is a good feeling, but also it is great to work with a competent person alongside you, who you know is much better at what they do than you are at what they do!
Logged

Aloft
Level 2
**


View Profile
« Reply #230 on: February 10, 2017, 03:45:10 AM »

There are about 60 things in the project that look ok to me at this point, but everytime I pass over them with my eyes on the way to looking at something else, they really bother me. One of those things I meant to spend a bit more time on was the polishing of the character portrait style template:


Changed a few subtle things:


I reduced the number of colors in a few places, that felt a bit muddy, and too subtle. I Anti-aliased the edges a bit in some places, to soften some of them , and harden others. I brought some of the contour colors closer to the local colors near them. I directed focus to the face, by really focusing on the contrast of the shadow the hair casts, and saturated the lit portion. I strengthened the contrast in a few places to really push the portrait to the foreground even more. I added a few local color distortions to describe the warmth of the lighting on some surfaces. The saturation is higher across the board; maybe too high, maybe not.

Are you guys into these changes?
Logged

breakfastbat
Level 2
**



View Profile
« Reply #231 on: February 10, 2017, 08:11:52 AM »

I like the black outlines on the text more, makes it easier to read especially since when a text box comes up, the text is even more important than the portrait. The changes to the portrait seem good!

Been keeping an eye on this project for a while now! I was going to suggest a low-opacity backing behind your items but it seems to have appeared in the latest screenshot!
Logged

♫ December, ♫
♫ December. ♫
Aloft
Level 2
**


View Profile
« Reply #232 on: February 10, 2017, 08:21:27 AM »

That's funny, because that makes two of us. I have been waiting for you to post some gameplay mock ups for your work as well!

Yeah, the opacity was definitely needed; I accidentally use the wrong GUI overlay in the engine sometimes when posting, and people always comment when it is missing!


I like the high contrast of the black lettering, but that outline feels like it needs color. It was the only thing almost on the whole plate that didn't have some kind of color content, and it sort of stuck out. The brown could definitely be a darker brown.
Logged

breakfastbat
Level 2
**



View Profile
« Reply #233 on: February 10, 2017, 08:31:14 AM »

That's funny, because that makes two of us. I have been waiting for you to post some gameplay mock ups for your work as well!

Oh god sorry! I had a rough time last year and completely redesigned my game from the ground-up twice. Only a couple of my characters and parts of my story survived. I didn't start programming the current version until last month >w<

Yeah, the opacity was definitely needed; I accidentally use the wrong GUI overlay in the engine sometimes when posting, and people always comment when it is missing!


I like the high contrast of the black lettering, but that outline feels like it needs color. It was the only thing almost on the whole plate that didn't have some kind of color content, and it sort of stuck out. The brown could definitely be a darker brown.

I know Stardew Valley uses a really dark brown but it's on an opaque light background. On a translucent background I think you naturally need more contrast to separate the text from the visual information underneath. Personally, I like the white and black, but I see how you might want color in there.
Logged

♫ December, ♫
♫ December. ♫
Aloft
Level 2
**


View Profile
« Reply #234 on: February 10, 2017, 08:48:41 AM »

Quote
Oh god sorry! I had a rough time last year and completely redesigned my game from the ground-up twice. Only a couple of my characters and parts of my story survived. I didn't start programming the current version until last month >w<


No worries! I am WELL acquainted with how much time this stuff takes!
Logged

Manaflow
Level 0
**



View Profile
« Reply #235 on: February 10, 2017, 02:51:42 PM »

Quote
Oh god sorry! I had a rough time last year and completely redesigned my game from the ground-up twice. Only a couple of my characters and parts of my story survived. I didn't start programming the current version until last month >w<

I noticed this the last time I checked out your page. Sometimes a redesign is the best course of action.
Seems like a lot of the projects I started following on here haven't updated lately. That seems pretty normal but it is always good to know a project hasn't quietly been dropped.
Logged

breakfastbat
Level 2
**



View Profile
« Reply #236 on: February 10, 2017, 07:05:36 PM »

Quote
Oh god sorry! I had a rough time last year and completely redesigned my game from the ground-up twice. Only a couple of my characters and parts of my story survived. I didn't start programming the current version until last month >w<

I noticed this the last time I checked out your page. Sometimes a redesign is the best course of action.
Seems like a lot of the projects I started following on here haven't updated lately. That seems pretty normal but it is always good to know a project hasn't quietly been dropped.

It's so reassuring to hear that people have been silently keeping an eye on my project! My current iteration is final and I'm trying to get an early private prototype by the end of the month to do early playtesting prior to the demo release to make sure my systems feel right. But I don't want to derail your thread anymore. Thanks guys!!
Logged

♫ December, ♫
♫ December. ♫
Aloft
Level 2
**


View Profile
« Reply #237 on: February 11, 2017, 01:45:03 AM »

It's ok. This thread is sort of a variety show anyhow. You just dropped in for the "When is Eidobunny gonna show us gameplay?" segment, hehe!
Logged

breakfastbat
Level 2
**



View Profile
« Reply #238 on: February 11, 2017, 06:14:47 AM »

lmao

OHHHH YEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSS!!!

Welcome to today's variety show!

Today on "Trying To Develop A Video Game Alone With A Dayjob," I tell you that actual real cohesive gameplay will start showing up in March!

(I hold up a sign that says "the crowd goes wild" (that means clap and cheer))
« Last Edit: February 11, 2017, 06:37:54 AM by eidobunny » Logged

♫ December, ♫
♫ December. ♫
Aloft
Level 2
**


View Profile
« Reply #239 on: February 11, 2017, 09:21:16 AM »

Wake up Beautiful! We have Company tonight!

Logged

Pages: 1 ... 10 11 [12] 13 14 ... 20
Print
Jump to:  

Theme orange-lt created by panic