10 Months of Game Dev! Was it Worth It? | Devlog
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- Опубликовано: 1 июн 2024
- In this Devlog video, I cover our development journey from day 1, when we decided to make a game, to day 304 when we finally have a really solid base game with playable mechanics!
I hope you enjoy the Devlog!
// Concept Art:
Crow concept art by @KichoAFK
// MUSIC: pixabay.com
Song: Aesthetics
Author: SoulProdMusic
Song: Lo fi Hip-Hop (Soft Touch Of Autumn)
Author: Alex Kizenkov
Source: pixabay.com
Song: Cinematic Atmosphere Score 2
Author: Musictown
Source: pixabay.com
Song: Relaxing
Author: Music for Videos
Source: pixabay.com
// STOCK FOOTAGE: pixabay.com
Code - Yerson Retamal
Pencil - Coverr-Free-Footage
Silhoette - athree23
Source Code - Coverr-Free-Footage
Board - athree23
Gaming - Joshua Malic
Graduation - Mohamed Hassan
Laptop - Dayanand Garg
Library - klimkin
// MODELS
The base house: I followed this tutorial video on making a modular village set. Thank you for your amazing work!
@ALLTHEWORKS11 • Lowpoly Modular Mediev... 
Игры
Daniel (other dev) here!
One of the biggest things I've learned throughout this process is how important BASE SYSTEMS are. Keeping code clean, and following open/close principles is extremely important as your code base grows.
For example: I am super happy with our ability manager. It handles all the code when a player fires a button that is "attached" to an ability. It knows when things should cancel other abilities, fire in coherence, or simply ignore the fired ability. Its as simple as setting a single enum on our ability class!!
Our abilities end up being less than 50 lines easily. This allows us to quickly prototype and tweak an ability without getting bogged down.
Anyways, keep your code clean and create base systems that follow open/close principles!
Cheers.
Really coming together! I think the collectable items should have an edge shader that makes them stand out a bit more, as it can be difficult to see what is collectable, and what isn't. Maybe a soft white to help the cue the player visually. Nice work y'all.
Definitely! Great suggestion. I’ve actually been thinking about how I’ve needed to add an outline to collectibles for a while now, so I’ll make sure to have that by the next video! Thanks for taking the time to leave feedback!
Thanks for the suggestions! I agree 😀
What's interesting to me: I know the aesthetics is not final yet. But somehow,
i feel like humanity has made all those technological advancements throughout the years just for us to eventually make a game that looks EXACTLY like something from the late 90s to early 2000s era. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Don't get me wrong, i LOVE pixel art. 3D pixel art is dope just as well!
But if the game's aesthetics only improves a little from THAT, i mean... I just can't, ya know?
Cool! If you ever need any music for the project, I'd be happy to make some.
Thank you for your interest in working on the project! At this point we aren’t ready to do the music for the game, but we will keep you in mind.
Oh yes, some new masterpiece on the way
Fantastic looking game! I really like how immersive it already feels.
One thing i noticed was how rigid the camera system felt while following the player's movement. You might consider adding a smooth camera follow script to make things feel more fluid, especially since there is so much dashing involved in combat.
Thank you! That’s a good point. I was messing with some player camera stuff early on in the project development, but I haven’t touched it in a while. I’m definitely overdue to improve that. Thank you for taking time to leave such helpful feedback!
Thanks for the feedback!
I think this "sprint" or current focus is going to revolve a lot about camera/graphics. We have had a lot of really good feedback in these regards, and I think our code base is solid enough that it is time to dive into a good polishing before continuing with mechanics 😄
Cheers.
First off, it's really great to see your progress so far and it was nice to get an eye in to the invisible code base progress.
In regards to what some other commentors are saying, the pixel filter IS busy, but I think the actual issue comes down to contrast.necessarily
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Thanks for the feedback! As you probably noticed, neither of us are designers, so it doesn’t come as naturally to me. All of this feedback is going to hopefully improve my art a lot, so thank you!
@@BitByteBit_ seems some of my comment got cut off! Also, you sell yourself short! The art style is great and it will only get better.
I was going to suggest either adding an outline or drop shadow to enemies and projectiles could be a good idea. Alternatively just a boost in contrast.
The issue is only really bad with the character and enemies on the dirt surface, but I'm sure with some experimentation you'll get it right.
@InfiniteBoxStudios I was wondering if something had got cut off, but I wasn’t sure! That’s a good idea to add an outline/drop shadow to the enemies and player. I’ll definitely do some experimenting! I’ll probably try a few things and post some comparisons to see what people like better! Thank you again for such helpful feedback!
I love the fact that this looks like a GBA game like the old Harry Potter and Star Wars ones. Keep it up!
Thank you!
When I saw you walk along the long bridge at the end and lots of wind particles appeared I half expected you to take off and fly at the end. Just an idea but maybe after obtaining a key item (and being a crow and all) when you see strong winds gathered like that you can jump towards it and reach new areas you could not before. Blasphemous did something similar with clouds.
That’s a super cool idea! We had been discussing some functionality similar to what you are saying, but I love that idea of jumping towards the wind to reach new areas! Awesome feedback! Thank you!
We did discuss something like at one point, we should keep discussing how it can fit into our game thematically. Thanks for the feedback.
You both doing great. I´m looking forward to your game!
It has been a fun challenge and learning experience for both of us, but we couldn’t do it without all of the amazing support we have received from everyone so far. Thank you for taking the time to comment and support this project!
Thanks for the comment!
We have both learned a ton since starting out. Getting feedback from people helps keep the motivation alive.
Yes
🎉🎉🎉
Awesome progress! It's looking great!
This is just my 2 cents, so feel free to ignore it. I don't think the dash mechanic is a very good puzzle mechanic. Especially in that harder example you showed, I feel like some players will not immediately be able to pull off that maneuver, and may start trying to solve the puzzle in a more traditional way that doesn't exist.
The combat animations seem a bit floaty because the player can move while attacking. Perhaps stop their movement or adjust the animations?
Not sure if you are trying to be unique with the constant speed boost from the dash, but I think the dash/teleport mechanic might feel smoother if it was more like furi or hyper light drifter. Specifically being able to tap for an immediate dash, but also being able to hold it longer (while the player is still not moving) for a longer dash.
Not trying to be negative, all around this is looking great!
Thank you so much for the comment!
You bring up some really good points with the dash/teleport mechanic and these are actually a lot of things we have been discussing as a team to see if it is the direction we want to go.
Our current plan is to release a demo where we will have a section that showcases the dash mechanic and get some feedback on what people like/don’t like about it. We actually coded our ability system with the idea in mind that we wanted to try lots of different kinds of dash abilities to see which one works the best (and hopefully be a little more unique from other games in the genre). With that being said, you are definitely right that we might totally change its functionality in the future as development continues!
As for the attacking I totally agree that it feels floaty. we are temporarily using mixamo animations so we could prototype the game quicker. I will be making custom animations which should hopefully remove the floaty feeling. I also really need to adjust the player moving forwards a little when attacking. I added it to our task list to polish that up!
Thank you so much for taking the time to leave such helpful feedback!
Like Adam said, we have a very customizable ability system that will let us tweak a bunch of values on individual abilities and save them as separate prefabs. That way we can assign these slightly different abilities to the player and compare/contrast them against each other.
That being said, one of the things we want to empower the player with is the feeling of mastering the abilities of the character. With that, it is important to teach the player how to use these abilities in different places! Which means, it needs to be clear how the player approaches it, if there is only one solution.
We have to ensure that a solution doesnt look almost solvable by walking through, but rather it is just obvious enough that the only way to hit these switches in succession is to increase speed (dash). There are a lot of examples of scenarios in games where the player has to move faster in order to trigger multiple timed events.
Thanks for the feedback!
Cheers.
love it!
Going great.. Best of luck
Thank you!
I can't believe every blade of grass is hand placed lmao now that's dedication
Haha, yep! Lots of stuff still in progress
Great progress!
This looks excellent guys! I am usually NOT a fan of pixel art games, but I have to say the 3D pixel art mash-up is intriguing, and when you had the Cinemachine camera zoom in to the cave on that scene, it kinda blew me away. Super cool and unexpected effect.
Have you thought about music yet? I'm a games composer and I'd love to chat. I can't post links in comments, but I'd love to send you a copy of my demo reel if you let me know how to reach you.
Thank you! Glad you are liking what we have so far!
At this point we aren’t ready to bring anyone onto the project, but you are welcome to reach out to our email(should be in the channel description) for business inquiries and we will keep you in mind!
Thank you again for your comment!
Visually the game looks kinda flat in my opinion. I think I would improve the lighting or add more contrasting colors to give the scenes more depth.
Thank you for the feedback! I’ve actually already started on changing a lot of things based on comments we’ve been getting, so this is super helpful! I’ll be posting some comparisons of different designs to see what everyone likes, so I hope to hear your thoughts on the design in the future! Thanks for taking time to leave a comment!
Thanks for commenting! Stay tuned, we are working on overhauling our pallet and lighting.
Yeah it kinda looks like it is missing shadows
Loving the world building! Keep it up :D
Thank you! Will do!
This is really inspiring and an awesome project! Cant wait to see more +Sub
Thank you so much! Glad to have you here!
Thanks for your response! Glad we can be inspiring! 🎉
The game is coming along well all I will say is maybe change or turn down the dash sound because it feels like it could become really annoying in complex puzzles involving it or any boss fights if you have them
That is a very good point. I’ll make sure to improve that! Thank you for taking time to leave feedback!
Thanks for the feedback! We are slowly getting to the polishing, with most of our efforts going to getting systems setup.
We are starting to paint the world, and work on tweaking sounds and assets!
Nice work team. I thin the rock monsters could use a redesign but all in all the game art is really cool and unique.
Thank you! Yeah, the monster was a very quick 3d model I made to prototype the attack system. The enemies will hopefully be a lot more interesting and unique as the game continues development! Thank you for the feedback!
the game looks so amazing. the art style reminds me of hyperlight drifter but the animations look more fluid and natural. a little critique from my side would be about the dash. The dash feels way too fluid in my opinion, the mechanics of it are great and well executed but visually it feels too smooth. For example the direction changing while dashing is instant, maybe a slight deacceleration before changing direction will help. also camera shake during figthing would help with the overall impact and visual feedback. Overall a very good job love how the game is looking cant wait to see more of it
Thank you for the feedback! We are planning to do a lot of work in regards to game feel, so stay tuned as development continues! We are currently working on trying to polish things up and finish a few more systems in preparation to release a demo, so this feedback goes a long way in helping us improve the game! Thank you for taking the time to leave a comment!
add game feel to the combat
Thanks for the feedback! There is definitely still some work to do to get combat to where we want it, so stay tuned. It will continue to improve.
It looks great! Loving the style. My constructive criticism is I think the dash sound should be changed. Also feel like maybe the combat should be more snappy? The attack animations seems long and unclear as to where you are actually attacking. Seems like it might feel off since the rest of the movement looks so responsive. Idk though I obviously haven't played the game, just kinda what it seems like from the video
nice
I has the same game idea but with the difference that its all about death
the colors look weird to me 🤔
I appreciate the feedback, generally we like constructed criticism! However we agree, we are working on a color palette that more aligns with the tone and direction of the game.
Thanks for the feedback! We’ve been discussing changing up the color palette and a few other things regarding the style. I’ll be doing some comparisons soon to see what people like the best, so stay tuned because we would love to hear your feedback on the future style of the game! Thanks for taking time to leave a comment!
outlines are flickering
We are aware of this issue with the pixel shader and are working to get it fixed in future development. Thank you for taking time to leave feedback!
Appreciate your feedback! We are getting to the point where we are deciding if we want to write our own pixel shaders.
the pixel shader looks weird a bit
Thanks for taking the time to watch the video and leave feedback! Could you be more specific with where the pixel shader looks weird?
@@BitByteBit_ I wouldn't say it looks weird, but I do think that some of the rock and foliage textures are quite noisy, which doesn't exactly mix well with the lower resolution.
@@lain_ I can definitely see that, and thank you for the feedback! I recently added more textures to test how it looked(example: the scene with the house at the beginning of the video), but do you think it would look better with no textures on the ground and cliffs like in previous videos?
@@BitByteBit_ I totally think less is more when it comes to this stuff. With the dirt example, I think it would look better with a main color, only a handful of different shade patches and maybe a pebble or two thrown in there. As for the cliffs, I do prefer the flatter style from older videos, I also think that the geometry complexity of the newer ones , again, in the house scene, the cliff faces in the background have a bit too much detail in my opinion. For an object that is submerged in fog, not enough details are being obscured by it. Again, this is personal preference, I have no idea what the majority of people find visually appealing.
This is really helpful feedback! Thanks! I think I may have to create a few different versions and post a comparison to see what people like. Regardless though, I do think you’re right to simplify a lot of the detail.
shaping up nicely! do you guys have a twitter?
Thanks! Yes we do! We have the link to our Twitter in the links section on our main RUclips page.