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[FINISHED] Akiro the squid <3

Discussion in 'Works In Progress - Archive' started by Mothil, May 5, 2015.

  1. Mothil

    Mothil

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    I have no idea how to draw a background effectively. I've always had Great Barrier Reef in the back of my head, but there's a big chance it might disturb the player.


    Image 1, solid blue: This is about as basic as we get it. As we can see, this doesn't disturb gameplay at all, but it also removes any feeling of depth and adventure.



    Image 2, deep blue (2 colors): This is basically what I had before, and this is honestly what has worked best until now. it gives a slight depth, and it doesn't disturb gameplay.



    Image 3, Great Barrier Reef colors: Sort of but not really an attempt at barrier reef colors. I picked some colors from there just to quickly test how it feels in game. It wasn't as noisy in game as I thought it would be, and it's probably going to be less noisy when I actually draw something, not just... blobs.




    Super Mario Bros 3 uses a clear blue background, and a darker blue + almost black as background elements. This works like a charm, but I don't know how I can effectively use this in Akiro.



    Another game I'd like to draw inspiration from is Braid. Somehow, with all those colors, they still managed to separate the background from the foreground. That should be my goal. Maybe I could draw great barrier reef inspired background, and put a blue 50% layer over and see how it works out.
     
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  2. MoonJellyGames

    MoonJellyGames

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    Let me know if/when you figure this one out because it's something I've been stuck at for a long time. It doesn't help that I don't have much for digital drawing talent, but even making a simple background is difficult when you need to consider that the play could mistake elements of it for interact-able terrain.

    I know that you probably want to make your background a little more interesting, but honestly, the one you're currently using with two shades of blue looks pretty decent to me. Also, one (maybe obvious) observation about the Braid screenshot: The entire background has a very distinct yellow hue. I wonder if you could pick some colour or range of colours that would only be used for background elements.
     
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  3. QFSW

    QFSW

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    I think you need to do image 2 but with parallaxed layers. So just different shades of blue that are very similar on different layers, to create a real sense of depth but no clutter
     
  4. Mothil

    Mothil

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    jester: The more I've been trying to draw the background, the more stuck I get. I sort of have a new idea that I want to try, which is a lot more like image 2 and parallaxing, like qfsw mentioned.

    This is a tough one. It never occurred to me that the background is really, really important. :eek:
     
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  5. Mothil

    Mothil

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    I was trying to convince myself that the first one works, but after putting an opacity filter on it, it felt much more like ocean and adventure. I'd very much like to explore that kind of art style more.
     
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  6. poler300

    poler300

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  7. QFSW

    QFSW

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    I think that could be a good starting point, keep at it
     
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  8. poler300

    poler300

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    Can I purchase this game?
     
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  9. Mothil

    Mothil

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    Hey poler, it's going to be free on... ehm.

    First Android, and then probably some websites. I'd also like to get it on apple store shortly after android. Bottom line, it's going to be free with ads. :)
     
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  10. poler300

    poler300

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    Can I Purchase a non-ads version in development - aka now?
     
  11. Mothil

    Mothil

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    I'm honored you're this interested in it, poler, but I'm not sure exactly how I could do that. I don't even know if I will have a purchase-to-remove-ads option.

    I can upload the newest playable build on itch.io if you'd like? :)
     
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  12. poler300

    poler300

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    If you could send me a link that would be GREATLY apreacialted
     
  13. Mothil

    Mothil

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  14. poler300

    poler300

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    It is FUN!
     
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  15. Mothil

    Mothil

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    I'm happy to hear you like it! :D
     
  16. QFSW

    QFSW

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    Btw when you're doing the parallax you could make the layers darker based on how far away they are, that should really give a nice ocean depth volumetric look and don't bother hand painting it but have your parallax script do it
     
  17. Mothil

    Mothil

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    I'll have to try that, thank you qfsw. I got so caught up in ui and animations, I have to wait a bit with the background. Actually animating the user interface was waaaaaaaay more fun than I thought. It makes the game feel so much more lively! It even has a small fade-in now.

     
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  18. QFSW

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    Okay ill be honest, I am digging them animations!
    just the light bobbing of the wood gives it a really nice floaty feel
     
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  19. poler300

    poler300

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    Dont forget too update the itch ;P
     
  20. Mothil

    Mothil

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    Thank you qfsw! :)

    poler; I'll see if I can get to it by the end of the day. I'd love to fix fade out and color selection "wobble" before I upload it. :D
     
  21. Mothil

    Mothil

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    https://mothil.itch.io/akiro?secret=ni8mz3YkdyUMFyYtTRiVsraNY

    Here's the newest build. You'll have to tell me if it loads slowly or not, cause it does on mine. It can be by internet (cause it was just screwing up as I uploaded it), it could be because the unity web player is deprecated, or there could be something that slows down the speed. I don't know. But there it is!
     
  22. QFSW

    QFSW

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    loading slowly for me
    Also, any chance you get get a WebGL build now?
     
  23. QFSW

    QFSW

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    Yo
    found a glitch you might want to check
    Die
    click on the play again button
    now dont click anywhere on the screen and click space bar to play
     
  24. QFSW

    QFSW

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    Also try it again but click a then spacebar
     
  25. QFSW

    QFSW

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    Basically a bunch of random stuff can happen if you dont click anywhere on the screen after using a button
     
  26. Mothil

    Mothil

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    I probably can, but it seems like I need a web server and stuff to upload it.
    I can certainly get around to it, but it's not going to be my main focus. :)
     
  27. Mothil

    Mothil

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    Yeah, I totally forgot about that bug. Somehow my space bar restarts the game after play again has been pressed. Good catch, I've encountered that as well and I have no idea why it does that.

    Woah, a + spacebar... loads main menu? What is this...
     
    Last edited: Jun 20, 2016
  28. MoonJellyGames

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    Just a shot in the dark: maybe check out your input manager and see what kind of alternate buttons might have been pre-set.
     
  29. Mothil

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    I switched it over so it loads the game scene instead, but that's not something I want to keep. That bug opened my eyes... I need to refactor a lot. I think that's the biggest problem with going into a "big" project as a first project... It isn't organized at all.

    I should probably clean up the project before I move further, but it's going to take hours... :(

    EDIT: jester, I've never really touched the input manager. As far as I can tell, there's nothing fishy going on in there.
     
  30. Mothil

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    I've yet to find it, but I'm refactoring my duct tape code as wel speak. It's a real mess, and if there's one thing I'm looking forward to by finishing this, it is to open a brand new project and be tidy from the very start. Just to bring something visual, here's my current example of a cleanup. Before / After.

     
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  31. GhulamJewel

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    I believe a animated background art would make the game more aesthetically pleasing. Something like below.

     
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  32. QFSW

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    could have coral and such waving in the water as well as occasional bubbles
    could also have really big fish lurking in the far deep dark layers so they are obviously part of the background
     
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  33. Mothil

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    I agree! I really wanted to make something like that image, G.Jewel, but because of the gameplay I have to have it more open. or actually...

    Could I make it so enemies only can come from the sides? And the player has a set height he can swim on? Oh my, this could actually work. You have to stop giving me cool ideas like these right before bedtime, there's no way I'm going to get to sleep now! :p
     
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  34. Mothil

    Mothil

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    Just some experimentation with buttons designs. I don't like the "font", and I'm skeptical about the colors.
    "Play" has orange text, and I'm not sure if i liked that.
    "Colors" has a more... broken wood-piece and light font.
    "Quit" has the first wood-sketch i did, nothing changed here.

     
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  35. RavenOfCode

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    I still like quit the best. :)
     
  36. QFSW

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    I really wanna see the ink font come back
     
  37. Mothil

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    I did a slight variation and put the akiro/quit font on the upper plank. It's... decent.

    And QFSW, what did you have in mind? Ink as buttons, or ink on the planks? I'm quite sure I'm sticking to these types of buttons at least until release. I did want to have those ink splats in corners, but it's a bit more advanced than I hoped for. :)
     
  38. QFSW

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    The ink style font that you used in earlier builds. I honestly think they really worked well
    I wanna see if that font plus youre really nice plank idea work together
     
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  39. Mothil

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    It's time for a performance related post, regarding background.
    It came to my attention an hour ago, after watching some tutorials on animation and such, that my background files are massive in comparison to what I actually need. Let's just take the background I currently use as an example:



    Those are two different images. They are both 1500 pixels wide/tall.
    The first one is the pure dark blue, and the second one is the lighter blue as a layer over. Those two together are almost 20MB. I'm not sure if that's a crazy high number, but I have a feeling it is because all my UI elements together are 341KB. That's less than 1/10.

    I have to do something about this, but first I have to explain what is actually happening with the background.



    This is a paint representation of how my background works. In PyxelEdit, I have a 3*3 tileset with the exact same image, resulting in 9 copies of the same image laid out like the paint image there. My script is then applied to that image, and the script takes the camera position and jumps the image up after a certain point.

    Let's say that the image is 2 units tall and wide. When the camera reaches 2 on either the x or y axis, the image shifts in that direction, creating the illusion that the background is infinite. I find it very handy, but I really have to do something about the size issue. I reduced each tile to 200px (which is 2 units), and the size on both of them together are now 3.5MB or so, which is a lot better. The issue now is:



    The player sees the end of the image before it moves. I can, of course, make either the image bigger, or move it more often, but my gut says there must be a very efficient way of scrolling the background without taking too much space.
    This background issue, as well as death screen are my highest priorities at the moment.
     
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  40. Mothil

    Mothil

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    I've fixed a ton of stuff, but the easiest changes to spot are the in game Ui animations.
    Here's youtube development log #2 showing the current state:

     
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  41. QFSW

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    You could have the image only make be one copy, but then have your code create multiple physical gameobjects which it moves around
    Would take more coding but could work out better
     
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  42. Mothil

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    Indeed! I tried doing it, but I failed. :eek:
     
  43. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    Why aren't you just using shader to scroll?
     
  44. Mothil

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    ... What? *Googling*
     
  45. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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  46. Mothil

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    Sounds interesting, hippo. I've tried for 10 minutes to make it work now, but I'm failing pretty hard cause I haven't played around with materials and textures yet. It's all sprites.

    But by the looks of it, it seems like it's very easy to fix.
     
  47. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    Yeah just use either a single quad parented to camera (if you move camera) and scroll tex instead, or some other scheme, but its very easy to do this and have multiple layers etc, worth playing with anyway!
     
  48. Mothil

    Mothil

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    Today I'm trying out what hippocoder suggested, scrolling texture. I would have it working already, if it wasn't for the fact that my movement script is different than other ones. Whenever the player turns position, it actually jumps to the opposite side of itself, so that makes the texture scrolling skippy.

    I've made the texture Follow(); the camera, and offset based on distance from camera, but as you can see... It needs 'some' tuning. :eek:

     
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  49. Mothil

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    AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

    I'm so hyped now. I finally got it to work, and it was waaaaaay less advanced than all the stuff I was fiddling with. It's just 24 lines of code and it works. basically just setting x and y texture offset to cam position... !!!

    Thank you so much hippocoder, this just solved one of the larger problems I had in my game. I feel equally stupid and smart for solving this, I just have to take a walk and clear my mind. I'm so excited.

     
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  50. Mothil

    Mothil

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    Quick art update.

     
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