Tag: gamedev

Shaders in Semispheres

by Vivid Helix


[gfycat data_id="ElasticAcidicBorer"]

 

Semisphere is a stealth puzzle game where you control two characters which affect each other’s worlds.  It recently went through an art change (old art style here), and the developer has written a bit about the methods used to create the different effects (in Unity).

You can go through the dev log on the TIGForums, or read about the heat distortion effect here, and the portal effect here.

[gfycat data_id="MedicalSelfreliantCockerspaniel"]

via /r/gamedev

Tikotep Adventure

developed by alwex


A pixel art adventure-platformer in development for PC.  You can see more of the game

in this post by PixelArtus, or in the dev log on the TIGForums.

I’ve wanted to make some loops/cinemagraphs of the water for a while, but I’ve been having trouble doing it.  I had to speed up the gifs due to some framerate problems, so the transition is a bit harsh, and the flow isn’t as nice.  Sorry about that. :(

If you’re interested in how the water works, you can check out this post by the developer which goes through the method/code.

You can also take a look at the method used to make the water in Kingdom (gif below), if you haven’t seen the post I made about it before.

via pixelartus

All the posts in May 2015

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Well this is super late, but here’s a gif from each of the posts in May!  I was having a lot of problems with editing, so it took a while. >.<

You can see the individual posts here, and previous months are over here.

Legend of Iya and the Importance of Communication.

A pixel art platformer that had a successful $75,000 Kickstarter over a year and a half ago.  It was supposed to launch at the end of 2014, but the delivery has slipped by a bit due to personal issues that the developer ran into.

Updates on the Kickstarter page had been few and far between for most of the last year, and fans/backers seemed to be getting a bit worried about whether Legend of Iya was still in development.

image

Why are you talking about this?

While this is normally a website for showcasing indie games/art, as some of you know I source most of my games from reddit.  A couple of months ago I came across an interesting game called Mystik Belle.  I started researching it a bit to dig up screenshots/videos to make a post, and I noticed that the developer had also been making another game, Legend of Iya.

To make an extremely long story short; LoI ran into legal troubles and the developer was making Mystik Belle (a smaller game) in order to fund the completion of LoI.  At the time, he wasn’t communicating any of this to his backers (not even that backers over $10 would be getting Mystik Belle) out of fear of the backlash due to the disappointment caused by a further delay in LoI.

When he did announce all of this information to his Kickstarter backers, along with the fact that the Legend of Iya date would be pushed, they were…actually mostly OK with it.  Some of them even happy they were getting an extra game.  All of the stress of the last few months over a backlash seem mostly unwarranted.

image

I bring all this up because I know a lot of game devs follow my blog, and I think it’s important to note how crucial it is to communicate with people supporting your development (especially when it’s monetary).  A lot of people will be OK with you not delivering on time, or below par, or even completely failing, once you’ve kept them updated and been honest.

In this case, much of the initial confusion of the the backers of Legend of Iya (along with worry that it was still in development), and stressful hand-wringing by the developer, could have been avoided with an open line of communication.

The developer has promised to be better at communicating in the future, and I really hope that’s true.  Everyone makes mistakes; hopefully we can all learn from them.

Happy devving. :)

I was doing some GIF/cinemagraph practice.  Not exactly sure where these would fit in, but thought I’d share anyway.

They’re taken from evilmrfrank’s Unreal 4 videos. which are time lapses of him building environments that he usually does over a weekend.  You can see his latest one here.

The movement in the forest scene might be a little hard to see if you’re on a small screen, click to expand, or you can see the higher resolution versions on imgur.

[Higher resolution here]

Battle of Brothers, Untitled by Ryan Campbell, with art by Scott Pellico.

A medieval real time tactics game, with influences from tower defense, being developed for iOS. 

Battle of Brothers is a competition between Chris and Ryan Campbell to see who can make the most (financially) successful game in the same time frame while using the same budget, and also while learning game development.  Both games are still untitled at the moment, but are scheduled to be finished in April (after one year of development).

I have already decided the winner. ;)

You can see Chris’ game here. Which do you prefer so far?

Battle of Brothers, Untitled by Chris Campbell, with art by Scott Pellico.

A mobile turn based game strategy game, taking influences from Final Fantasy Tactics and Banner Saga.

Battle of Brothers is a competition between Chris and Ryan Campbell to see who can make the most (financially) successful game in the same time frame while using the same budget, and also while learning game development.  Both games are still untitled at the moment, but are scheduled to be finished in April (after one year of development).

I have already decided the winner. ;)

You can see Ryan’s game here. Which do you prefer so far?