Development Info Them Indie Developer Blues

[majestik12]

Gareth, at what point will you be ready to admit that you are really biting off more than you can chew? Is there anything that will make you start from scratch with
1. Much simpler game mechanics
2. Graphical presentation that requires way less expensive assets and engine programming
3. Really modest general scope?

 

[EvilIndie]

Gareth, at what point will you be ready to admit that you are really biting off more than you can chew? Is there anything that will make you start from scratch with
1. Much simpler game mechanics

How much simpler can they be? And if they are simple what's the point?

2. Graphical presentation that requires way less expensive assets and engine programming

There's no such thing. 2D is harder than 3D in many ways and is even more hopeless when it comes to getting good results if you are not a good artist.

3. Really modest general scope?

[/quote]

Well his artwork is now focused on torque packs, how much more modest can it be?

Making a first person game is about ten times easier than making a party based game with 3rd person perspective.

Scars of war could currently be called Demo Game: The Walkening as far as I can tell.

 

[EvilIndie]

Noooooooo!

Banalia, Shitton and Borington are cut and all that's left is Genericasia and Samplepackton? You prick!

And I thought Jay Bramson himself was the enemy of good games, amirite? No fear of perfection of any kind from anything he makes.

I know it makes me a dick but I find this very amusing since it follows on the heels of looking into hiring some artwork. So what can I get for 2200 dolla? What, some packs and 2 custom houses and a tree? What about for fully rigged animated character? Holy fuck! Er, uh, hay guise there's gonna be one character model and all the scenes will be outdoors or persian themed now mmkay?

So in other words, you'll allow your game to get significantly streamlined, cut down, and simplified in order for it to be first person because you "like it." Okay.

I did like ultima underworld. Too bad instead of high profile studio with awesome production values and a living world created by high profile programmers this game will have writing and gameplay and AI by Ninja Cartographer and art by Turbosquid.

 

[Lomm Cuz]

Gareth, at what point will you be ready to admit that you are really biting off more than you can chew? Is there anything that will make you start from scratch with
1. Much simpler game mechanics
2. Graphical presentation that requires way less expensive assets and engine programming
3. Really modest general scope?

All those wouldn't be so much of a problem if he wasn't trying to finish the game against time.

I did like ultima underworld. Too bad instead of high profile studio with awesome production values and a living world created by high profile programmers this game will have writing and gameplay and AI by Ninja Cartographer and art by Turbosquid.

Pretty soon to tell anything about their art or gameplay when NOTHING has been released, in my opinion.

 

[majestik12]

EvilIndie, you are obviously trolling but I still care to elaborate because the world needs to behold my awesome gamedev wisdom.

How much simpler can they be? And if they are simple what's the point?

Simple as in Lands of Lore, for example. Less stats, less skills, less of everything. Ditch the twitch aspects. Keep the number of subsystems at minimum. The point: well designed and properly implemented mechanics are more fun then a bloated mess. And can be done by one person in less then 20 years.

There's no such thing.

how much more modest can it be?

Less locations, less NPCs, less quests, less items, less content in general. A game that can be beaten in two or three evenings. A Tribunal-sized game, perhaps.

 

[Roguey]

I was hoping that nice programmer would pop into this thread, the holidays came early.

So in other words, you'll allow your game to get significantly streamlined, cut down, and simplified in order for it to be first person because you "like it." Okay.

Funny thing (or maybe not), when ME2 came out he wrote a blog entry that was all like "I never even considered that I didn't have to put an inventory in my game!" So expect that to get cut. And he put up a poll on his forum asking people if they were all right with him switching to an over-the-shoulder third person perspective, even though that seems like it's one of the hardest cameras to get right (fortunately for him they voted him down). And don't forget that at one point he was going to have a diplomatic path, but then suddenly realized that writing all that text to support it would be too much work so he "streamlined" it into the stealth path. Cut cut cut, SoW may very well end up being FPP Pong: The RPG eventually.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Noooooooo!

Banalia, Shitton and Borington are cut and all that's left is Genericasia and Samplepackton? You prick!

And I thought Jay Bramson himself was the enemy of good games, amirite? No fear of perfection of any kind from anything he makes.

I know it makes me a dick but I find this very amusing since it follows on the heels of looking into hiring some artwork. So what can I get for 2200 dolla? What, some packs and 2 custom houses and a tree? What about for fully rigged animated character? Holy fuck! Er, uh, hay guise there's gonna be one character model and all the scenes will be outdoors or persian themed now mmkay?

Hmmm, do I sense the smell of Sick Bum in the air? Dunno lol

Because I like first person and I'm the one spending his free time and money on making it.

I hate first-person. One sale less for you I presume.

 

[Forest Dweller]

No, cutting down the game had nothing to do with the first person perspective.

Well maybe not directly, but indirectly it sure seems like it. I don't know that much about game development, but I know at least enough to know that having something in first person versus isometric is going to require a lot more art wise. And you were complaining about art assets so...

 

[PorkaMorka]

There's no such thing. 2D is harder than 3D in many ways and is even more hopeless when it comes to getting good results if you are not a good artist.

Nope.

2d is really only hard if you try to do isometric faux 3d with lots of animations in each facing direction.

Tile based 2d for example is pretty easy (in comparison to other forms of game art).

 

[lisac2k]

I hate first-person. One sale less for you I presume.

You know it makes sense. Nowadays 3rd person sells way better. /joke, irony

Too bad to hear another indie blues being played around. Well, maybe times will change for them.

 

[EvilIndie]

EvilIndie, you are obviously trolling but I still care to elaborate because the world needs to behold my awesome gamedev wisdom.

How much simpler can they be? And if they are simple what's the point?

Simple as in Lands of Lore, for example. Less stats, less skills, less of everything. Ditch the twitch aspects. Keep the number of subsystems at minimum. The point: well designed and properly implemented mechanics are more fun then a bloated mess. And can be done by one person in less then 20 years.

There's no such thing.

how much more modest can it be?

Less locations, less NPCs, less quests, less items, less content in general. A game that can be beaten in two or three evenings. A Tribunal-sized game, perhaps.

The 2D is harder than you think. The easiest way to make it is to make 3D models then render them. Then you have to keep track of a billion tiles and it's pretty much a nightmare. If you are not a great draftsman than even wasteland level graphics are just impossible to do freehand without countless hours of work.

You can have all the skills in the universe and it's very easy, so long as they don't do actually anything. I don't remember what combat mechanics he has but from everything else he says I can't imagine they are that deep in the first place.

But you are right you could move to a LOL/wizardry interface and ditch the player character model completely, which is a smart move if your player character looks like a joke and you don't have money or skill to fix that.

But even then you have to make an interface of some kind and put the world into a grid and implement stepped movement. You also need to make a game system interesting enough to play in that mode and that is not easy. The reason people have a game in the style of a guy walking around is that's what all the engines have for their demo game and takes the least work.

 

[majestik12]

On the topic of graphics. Check this:
http://war.q1.ru/art/
You still get to pay for the non-animated sprites and textures, but the meshes are dirt cheap either in cash or man-hours. Looks pretty.

 

[EvilIndie]

On the topic of graphics. Check this:
http://war.q1.ru/art/
You still get to pay for the non-animated sprites and textures, but the meshes are dirt cheap either in cash or man-hours. Looks pretty.

Looks very nice, actually.

 

[zeitgeist]

I don't know that much about game development, but I know at least enough to know that having something in first person versus isometric is going to require a lot more art wise. And you were complaining about art assets so...

Not necessarily. It's relatively easy to get a basic 3D FPS (Oblivionesque) combat engine working, due to the abundance of stock models and animations, as well as various cheap model and animation packs. Whereas for 2D, even if you use something as basis for your tiles and sprites (there are packs available for that too), you're still going to have to find an animator who can actually animate. Unless you're going to leave everything as-is or do the "resize 3D model renders and turn them into sprites" thing of course. And, unlike 3D where, for example, a tree is a tree (it just needs to be retextured to fit your gameworld, sometimes not even that), in 2D a tree from one generic 2D art pack, most likely won't fit the style of your specific 2D gameworld.

One very well known exception to this are RPGMaker games which mostly use a generic SNES visual style, where art assets are almost totally interchangeable, and it's easier to produce something that doesn't look absolutely horrible even without being a decent artist (although the sprites and tiles usually come from questionable sources, legally speaking - it's often hard to discern if a particular sprite pack has been "too inspired" by sprite rips from an existing game or not).

Anyway, it's perhaps a generalization with other notable exceptions, but to create an average looking tile engine and tileset + a set of fully animated sprites more often than not requires more artistic skill and knowledge about animation than creating an average 3D FPS engine and model animations. And more time and effort too.

 

[Lomm Cuz]

I don't know that much about game development, but I know at least enough to know that having something in first person versus isometric is going to require a lot more art wise. And you were complaining about art assets so...

Not necessarily. It's relatively easy to get a basic 3D FPS (Oblivionesque) combat engine working, due to the abundance of stock models and animations, as well as various cheap model and animation packs. Whereas for 2D, even if you use something as basis for your tiles and sprites (there are packs available for that too), you're still going to have to find an animator who can actually animate. Unless you're going to leave everything as-is or do the "resize 3D model renders and turn them into sprites" thing of course. And, unlike 3D where, for example, a tree is a tree (it just needs to be retextured to fit your gameworld, sometimes not even that), in 2D a tree from one generic 2D art pack, most likely won't fit the style of your specific 2D gameworld.

One very well known exception to this are RPGMaker games which mostly use a generic SNES visual style, where art assets are almost totally interchangeable, and it's easier to produce something that doesn't look absolutely horrible even without being a decent artist (although the sprites and tiles usually come from questionable sources, legally speaking - it's often hard to discern if a particular sprite pack has been "too inspired" by sprite rips from an existing game or not).

Anyway, it's perhaps a generalization with other notable exceptions, but to create an average looking tile engine and tileset + a set of fully animated sprites more often than not requires more artistic skill and knowledge about animation than creating an average 3D FPS engine and model animations. And more time and effort too.

 

[EvilIndie]

Pretty soon to tell anything about their art or gameplay when NOTHING has been released, in my opinion.

Well we get a blog post from him twice a week and there's thousands of old forum posts you can read to find out how unbearably retarded he is, and he has posted all kinds of ingame images. Anyone who can make the post he did about playing Ninja Cartographer in oblivion has to be about the least likely imaginable person to develop an RPG up to codexia standards. At least when big company names say stupid shit in their cryptomarketing development diaries they usually don't actually believe it.

 

[Naked Ninja]

Less locations, less NPCs, less quests, less items, less content in general. A game that can be beaten in two or three evenings. A Tribunal-sized game, perhaps.

That isn't the type of game I want to make, sorry. I'll cut things to make they type of game I want to make, but I won't switch to a completely different game.

Funny thing (or maybe not), when ME2 came out he wrote a blog entry that was all like "I never even considered that I didn't have to put an inventory in my game!" So expect that to get cut. And he put up a poll on his forum asking people if they were all right with him switching to an over-the-shoulder third person perspective, even though that seems like it's one of the hardest cameras to get right (fortunately for him they voted him down). And don't forget that at one point he was going to have a diplomatic path, but then suddenly realized that writing all that text to support it would be too much work so he "streamlined" it into the stealth path. Cut cut cut, SoW may very well end up being FPP Pong: The RPG eventually.

I liked ME2 a lot but I've never considered removing the inventory system.I put up a poll about which people preferred, 3rd or 1st person, but ended up sticking with FP despite most people preferring 3rd. And I had always said I'd try make a pure diplomacy path (unlike, you know, 99.9% of RPGs ever) but eventually said there wouldn't be a pure (note the word pure, as in you can complete the game with diplomacy alone) diplomacy path. There are of course still diplomacy options and speech checks, many of them. But you will need to mix it with other skills to complete the game. Diplomacy skills have been folded into the 'Agent' skill set, which means they fall in with anything else related to trickery and manipulation like stealth, opening locks and picking pockets. You could think of the 3 'pure' paths as Warrior/Spy/Mage, though that is just how the skills are grouped, you can mix and match as you prefer. Something like System Shock 2, yes.

I hate first-person. One sale less for you I presume.

Oh dear, can't have that. Let me immediately change style to making the type of games you prefer.

Well maybe not directly, but indirectly it sure seems like it. I don't know that much about game development

Yeah, ok.

Anyone who can make the post he did about playing Ninja Cartographer in oblivion has to be about the least likely imaginable person to develop an RPG up to codexia standards.

I believe it was Jay Barnson who made the posts about Oblivion. I'm sure he finds it quite distressing that you don't like a game he did. You should post angry emoticons to display the full extent of your rage.

 

[EvilIndie]

I got you mixed up with EvoG Sorry.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Oh dear, can't have that. Let me immediately change style to making the type of games you prefer.

Hehe I never suggested that. Of course you can do whatever the fuck you like with your game. Your *I made a poll and found out most gamers interested in Indie RPGs prefer 3rd person or isometric so I decided to stick to first person instead (for teh immershun!) *-approach sounds like a pretty smart move btw. I'd say it's pretty much on par with *After all these years I found out that I was actually going to need artwort for all the locations/creatures I had designed so I cut that shit*.

 

[Naked Ninja]

Lol, don't be an idiot. A small poll on ITS or the Codex is hardly representative of what 'most gamers interested in Indie RPGs' prefer, and I decided to stick with first person because the reasons for doing so made more sense, even though ideally (if I had the resources) I'd implement both, as both have their pros and cons.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Maybe you should do a large poll, or maybe not since you already decided anyway. Obsidian had such a poll on their site btw, isometric did win iirc. So, I'm afraid you do err if you think RPG gamers prefer first person. Otoh you never said that, just that you prefer it. Whatever floats your boat.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Generally I find water and solid wood construction float my boat.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Generally I find water and solid wood construction float my boat.

Why not make a poll about it?

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

Wood is last gen

 

[Raghar]

I have art assets. Just not enough of them

Yes, that's quite common, developers finish part of the work, and then say and now the only thing remains art assets. Then they discover the problem. 3D models, or 2D reasonable drawings. It's not only the table, it's about chair, chest, door, walls... ...and all of them should use the same art style.

Well problems with AI are worse, art assets are merely time consuming, when they create proper tools.