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, 06:20:05 AM

Need hosting? Check out Digital Ocean
(more details in this thread)
TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsUnto The End - Cinematic combat platformer
Pages: 1 2 [3] 4
Print
Author Topic: Unto The End - Cinematic combat platformer  (Read 14971 times)
DanBarr
Level 0
**



View Profile WWW
« Reply #40 on: January 09, 2018, 04:35:27 AM »

Very interesting stuff, We owe Mr. Dijkstra a lot.

Each node could have a variable that indicates the degree of comfort of the grid, calculate the longest path and the most comfortable way, if the most comfortable path is not much longer than the shortest way, take that path, this could allow to make decide to an NPC if he must cross a river by swimming or by a bridge according to how far it is from it. on the other hand, this multiplies the number of calculations.
Maybe this is totally unnecessary for your game, but it's the first thing that came to mind when watching the video.

good job!
Logged

Danton
Level 0
***



View Profile WWW
« Reply #41 on: January 09, 2018, 11:24:50 AM »

Comfort is an interesting idea. I do have a "effort" cost at the moment. For instance, it takes more effort to climb a ledge than walk up a ramp. If everything else is equal, the actor will take the path with the ramp.

Comfort is interesting in that we could have creatures that dislike water (similar to cats) and choose a path without it because has a higher comfort value.

I'll think about that a bit more, might lead to some interesting scenarios.

Cheers!
Logged

Unto The End - Wishlist on Steam
Danton
Level 0
***



View Profile WWW
« Reply #42 on: January 18, 2018, 08:50:59 AM »

Staying focused - overreacting to feedback


Back in 2015, we had this idea for a Dark Souls side scroller, shit it might even have been 2014. Holy god that’s a long time ago. Anyways, the idea was to take the dodging of Dark Souls which is left or right relative to your enemy (3d over the shoulder camera and all), not just a horizontal roll (which you’d normally get in 2d), and realise that in a 2d world -- so the hero could dodge to the “back” or “front” from the “middle” plane. And, enemies can attack with their “back” or “front” hand.

The idea was interesting, but the execution sucked, it was just too hard to read back and front in a flat 2d style… maybe in a 2.5d presentation with 3d models?

For that concept we built all sorts of gameplay, combat, various enemy AI, a simple crafting and upgrade system, doors w keys, and bosses. We'd already been accepted to Xbox ID, but we were trying to get featured by them so we sent them a build to get their thots on it. They liked the mechanics but felt the visuals weren’t strong enough. But honestly, the mechanics weren’t good enough either. So we binned the idea and started fresh.

Maybe that was a mistake. Maybe we were really close to having something interesting, but because it was our first big game we over compensated trying to do something that was so “anti-game” we’ve made things much harder for ourselves then we needed to?

When we designed levels and concepts back then they were all about combat, interesting fights with interesting sets of enemies. Much like Dark Souls. What if we just got back to that for Unto?

Does it now look good enough? Are the mechanics much better?
Logged

Unto The End - Wishlist on Steam
Valar05
Level 0
***



View Profile
« Reply #43 on: January 18, 2018, 01:44:24 PM »

I'm a bit curious what you're designing the areas based around now, if not combat.  From my perspective looking at the trailer, the game is all about combat and careful exploration - with an emphasis on combat.  I see nothing wrong with that either, it's certainly captured my interest based on that angle.
Logged
ashtonmorris
Level 2
**


View Profile WWW
« Reply #44 on: January 18, 2018, 02:08:01 PM »

This looks great. I like the amount of space and the camera choices you have made!
Logged

Ashton Morris - Composer & Sound Designer

Roah * Bomblsinger * Goliath * Wings of Vi * Lemma * Bit Heroes * Star Command Galaxies


http://www.ashtonmorris.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ashtonmorris
Danton
Level 0
***



View Profile WWW
« Reply #45 on: January 18, 2018, 03:08:31 PM »

@Valar05 Sorry for making things confusing Smiley. The point of noting this was to remind ourselves and maybe others how important it is to stay focused.

A while back (2+ years ago) we got some so-so feedback from Xbox ID. Rather than figure out how to incrementally improve things, we started from scratch. We felt the way to fix things was to do more, make a game with more things, more ideas, more innovation.

In retrospect that's nut. Especially b/c they didn't say the idea sucked, or that we should start something new, they actually liked what we were doing. But we interpreted it as some big failure.

After lots of effort we've finally gotten back to where we started. On the upside, the time trying to do more has meant our mechanics are more refined and we've gotten better at nearly all aspects of making games, but it would be fair to say we wasted a good amount of time simply worrying and overthinking things.

If I can share a bit of hard won wisdom with others, it's to take a breath and really understand what people are saying when they give you feedback. Ask follow up questions. Get other opinions. Remind yourself what you're trying to accomplish and see how their feedback actually matches up with those goals. Definitely don't throw everything out and start again Smiley.

Anyways, hope that makes things a bit more clear.

You're read on what the game is about is totally on point. It's an experience about careful / meaningful combat and exploration -- great to see that comes across in the trailer. Today, that seems obvious, but it wasn't always clear.

@ashtonmorris Thanks! We spend a lot of time on the camera and I'm sure we'll be fiddling with it right until launch. The hardest thing to get right has been the balance between great scene composition and readability in combat. When studying games like INSIDE, they do all this fantastic environment / scene focused camera positioning, but that doesn't always work for us. So we spend a lot of time making tradeoffs between having the scene look great or making the combat feel fair and readable.  
« Last Edit: January 18, 2018, 03:18:38 PM by Danton » Logged

Unto The End - Wishlist on Steam
DGSpitzer
Level 0
**


DGSpitzer


View Profile WWW
« Reply #46 on: January 18, 2018, 06:59:49 PM »

Hi Danton,
Just want to say thanks for the valuable advice given!  Smiley
The game looks pretty damn cool!
Logged

Game designer. Also a composer/coder/artist. No й┓litches included
Twitter
My Drawings
My Music
My Website
Danton
Level 0
***



View Profile WWW
« Reply #47 on: January 20, 2018, 03:14:49 PM »

@DGSpitzer Heya thanks... glad it was of some help and you're liking the game. Cheers!
« Last Edit: February 01, 2018, 09:14:26 AM by Danton » Logged

Unto The End - Wishlist on Steam
Danton
Level 0
***



View Profile WWW
« Reply #48 on: July 06, 2019, 01:30:58 PM »

Wow... been over a year since we posted. Going to try and post weekly from here to ship. Just updated the first post, but he's a link to a recent Steam post we did, breaks down some gameplay across a number of screenshots.



https://steamcommunity.com/games/600080/announcements/detail/1587997910828352345
Logged

Unto The End - Wishlist on Steam
Thaumaturge
Level 10
*****



View Profile WWW
« Reply #49 on: July 08, 2019, 09:29:15 AM »

This looks rather interesting, and rather pretty. Posting to follow! ^_^
Logged

Danton
Level 0
***



View Profile WWW
« Reply #50 on: July 08, 2019, 12:49:29 PM »

Thanks! Two "rathers", nice :D
« Last Edit: July 08, 2019, 01:26:27 PM by Danton » Logged

Unto The End - Wishlist on Steam
Danton
Level 0
***



View Profile WWW
« Reply #51 on: July 08, 2019, 12:51:31 PM »

High level overview of how we build the world in Unto. If anyone wants more details let me know, happy to dig in.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/600080/announcements/detail/1587997910857236819


Logged

Unto The End - Wishlist on Steam
bryku
Level 3
***


View Profile WWW
« Reply #52 on: July 10, 2019, 04:49:09 AM »

I can't believe I haven't seen this thread until now.

Stephen, Sara: you game looks amazing. Good luck!
Logged

Busy working on xcom-like, steampunk/vermintide pixel art strategy game called "Shardpunk".

Devlog | Twitter | Webpage
RealScaniX
Level 6
*


Scanix (ignore the "Real", Scanix was taken)


View Profile WWW
« Reply #53 on: July 10, 2019, 06:19:12 AM »

This looks really awesome. I admire that you where able to keep going and improving it to what it is now.
Also this is a nice thread with some great infos.
Logged

Danton
Level 0
***



View Profile WWW
« Reply #54 on: July 10, 2019, 06:58:50 AM »

Thanks guys... it's been a long journey... but lots of fun Smiley.
Logged

Unto The End - Wishlist on Steam
Superb Joe
Level 10
*****



View Profile
« Reply #55 on: July 10, 2019, 12:08:49 PM »

Staying focused - overreacting to feedback


Back in 2015, we had this idea for a Dark Souls side scroller, shit it might even have been 2014. Holy god that’s a long time ago. Anyways, the idea was to take the dodging of Dark Souls which is left or right relative to your enemy (3d over the shoulder camera and all), not just a horizontal roll (which you’d normally get in 2d), and realise that in a 2d world -- so the hero could dodge to the “back” or “front” from the “middle” plane. And, enemies can attack with their “back” or “front” hand.

The idea was interesting, but the execution sucked, it was just too hard to read back and front in a flat 2d style… maybe in a 2.5d presentation with 3d models?

For that concept we built all sorts of gameplay, combat, various enemy AI, a simple crafting and upgrade system, doors w keys, and bosses. We'd already been accepted to Xbox ID, but we were trying to get featured by them so we sent them a build to get their thots on it. They liked the mechanics but felt the visuals weren’t strong enough. But honestly, the mechanics weren’t good enough either. So we binned the idea and started fresh.

Maybe that was a mistake. Maybe we were really close to having something interesting, but because it was our first big game we over compensated trying to do something that was so “anti-game” we’ve made things much harder for ourselves then we needed to?

When we designed levels and concepts back then they were all about combat, interesting fights with interesting sets of enemies. Much like Dark Souls. What if we just got back to that for Unto?

Does it now look good enough? Are the mechanics much better?

another young life irreversibly damaged by guardian heroes and the sega saturn not being more popular. praying for you op
Logged
Danton
Level 0
***



View Profile WWW
« Reply #56 on: July 10, 2019, 02:15:31 PM »


Hahah, actually forgot I wrote that... Smiley.

Ultimately it was the right decision to start anew. Things are much tighter now and we've landed in a place that I'm very proud of... a good ways away from 2D dark souls.

The time redoing things also allowed us to get back to why I started making games in the first place: telling stories through player-interactions with the world and its creatures. I'm not a big fan of the "interactive movie" direction games (especially AAA titles) have gone and think there are richer, more game-centric ways to tell stories. To that end there are several key encounters in Unto when you can (and really should) proceed without killing and story-consequences for the choices you make.

I guess I'd say to my former self that if things don't feel great, then they probably aren't AND if you have the time and energy it's okay (even a good thing) to throw stuff away and start again.

Two caveats to that (1) it's super important to eventually pick a path and stick with it, and (2) redoing things takes a tremendous amount of energy, fair warning... there's a very good chance you'll burn out and have to battle depression more than once.

Knowing when to "stick" is of course the hardest thing to do. For anyone starting out I'd recommend picking an idea and going with it regardless of how good or bad it is. Just take it and finish it. Before Unto, I shipped 5 smaller titles and before that I did a dozen or so small games that I only shared with friends and family.

When you feel ready to do something bigger I find it best to seek out people you respect (but don't know personally) and get them to play the earliest version of the game which you feel represents the core experience, and then get them to record their screen and voice while playing. Don't ask them if they like it or what they think. That shit doesn't matter. Watch what they do, listen to how they react emotionally. If they're into it, then there's a good chance your on to something so keep going.

Logged

Unto The End - Wishlist on Steam
daviddevman
TIGBaby
*


View Profile
« Reply #57 on: July 11, 2019, 05:20:50 AM »

Looks really awesome.. the combat system looks cool.
Logged
Danton
Level 0
***



View Profile WWW
« Reply #58 on: July 11, 2019, 03:28:31 PM »



Here's a silly little editor tool that some of you might find useful.

(We have thousands of animation in Unto, 50+ for each character... and because there are no trash enemies all characters are basically the same as the hero... so we use animator override controller to ensure that each character can roughly do the same thing.)

The tool goes through all the clips in an animator and replaces the empty / null ones with a specific clip. I use a clip called "_placeholder".

If you don't do this Unity automatically "passes through" the master clip to the override controller. This is a problem for two reasons.

(1) It clutters your list of clips up. Sure we have no trash enemies, but that doesn't mean every enemy is the same. Some definitely have richer move sets than others, more emotes, etc. Ideally we want the simpler characters to just show their specific animations in the animation editor list.

(2) If you're tired and overworked... Smiley... you might accidently edit the master animation clip and not realise it. Hopefully source control saves you, but it still sucks to waste time animating something and then have to throw that away.

Anyways... this little bit of code helps with that. I might extend it later and if I do I'll share.


Code:
using System.Collections.Generic;
using UnityEditor;
using UnityEngine;

public class AnimHelper : EditorWindow
{
public AnimatorOverrideController _overrideController;
public AnimationClip _placeholderClip;
    public string _suffix;

    List<KeyValuePair<AnimationClip, AnimationClip>> overrides;

// Add menu item named "My Window" to the Window menu
[MenuItem("Window/Animator Helper")]
public static void ShowWindow()
{
//Show existing window instance. If one doesn't exist, make one.
EditorWindow.GetWindow(typeof(AnimHelper));
}

void OnGUI()
{
GUILayout.Label ("Base Settings", EditorStyles.boldLabel);

EditorGUILayout.BeginHorizontal();
GUILayout.Label ("Target Animator");
        _overrideController = EditorGUILayout.ObjectField (_overrideController, typeof (AnimatorOverrideController), true) as AnimatorOverrideController;
EditorGUILayout.EndHorizontal();

EditorGUILayout.BeginHorizontal();
        _placeholderClip = EditorGUILayout.ObjectField(_placeholderClip, typeof(AnimationClip), true) as AnimationClip;
EditorGUILayout.EndHorizontal();

if (GUILayout.Button("Replace Empty Fields"))
{
int canRun = 0;

if (_overrideController == null)
{
ShowNotification(new GUIContent("Assign an AnimatorOverrideController"));
}
else
{
canRun++;
}

if (_placeholderClip == null)
{
ShowNotification(new GUIContent("Assign a Placeholder Animation"));
}
else
{
canRun++;
}    

if (canRun == 2)
{
                overrides = new List<KeyValuePair<AnimationClip, AnimationClip>>(_overrideController.overridesCount);
                _overrideController.GetOverrides(overrides);

                for (int i = 0; i < overrides.Count; i++)
                {
                    if (overrides[i].Value == null)
                    {
                        overrides[i] = new KeyValuePair<AnimationClip, AnimationClip>(overrides[i].Key, _placeholderClip);
                    }
                }

                _overrideController.ApplyOverrides(overrides);
}
}
}
}
« Last Edit: July 11, 2019, 06:19:33 PM by Danton » Logged

Unto The End - Wishlist on Steam
Danton
Level 0
***



View Profile WWW
« Reply #59 on: July 13, 2019, 12:35:28 PM »


The father can drop his sword in Unto, sometimes opponents pick it up, others you have to fight defensively until you can grab it.

It's been a fun one to balance. At first it happened at lot, any mistake and you'd drop your sword, but that was too frustrating. So we balanced it to only happen on specific attacks or mistakes. I'm sure we'll tune it some more Smiley.

The biggest thing we wanted to add with it was emergent / dynamic moments. Times when the player basically feels like they're fucked, but then takes a moment recovers and turns things back in their favour, but now with an earned feeling of revenge.




« Last Edit: July 13, 2019, 01:51:31 PM by Danton » Logged

Unto The End - Wishlist on Steam
Pages: 1 2 [3] 4
Print
Jump to:  

Theme orange-lt created by panic