combat part
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You are falling into some traps of ronry indie dev. I can see it because i also have fallen into many of them and multiple times.
Traps i see:
- you are making nice level before you have anything else. Yes i understand this, having nice looking level is nice, raises morale, and making levels is great, and feels great. But level means textures, models, much more data, all that you upload/download to version coltrol/backup system. Takes time, makes backup unnecessary big etc. You could do perfectly fine with TINY level that is polished and you use it to work on artstyle and movement.
- yes you coded some basic movement, probably just coded it. This is kind of like first trap, having some gameplay raises morale in dev team. But now you have something to play with, its time to plan your battle system, to decide if its combo based or something like mindless slashing from skyrim, etc.
- make some decent debug gui/system, start making backbone of your game. Things like communication/event bus or whatever, ie some standard (for your game) way to communicate between actors. Yes, do that hard boring work on basics. Keep fun aspects of game as a reward, when you achive some milestone in rest of systems you are allowed to make level or code fun stuff. Solo indie dev is long project, alternate fun and boring things. If you code now all fun things, then you either end with messy code (really hard to maintain in blueprints), or you rewrite it all again, or worst: in few months you forget how old code works, then you give up.
I am not sure if you can animate and make characters yourself, but if you cannot see what move you have animated and try to make some battle system out of things you have. Sadly most of anim packs on marketplace are done by animators without any experience in making games, so they have missing “connecting” animations, like strafing or standing up etc.
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Hello, Nawrot
Thanks for your feedback
I don’t have the ability to make animations and characters for the time being. If I can’t find suitable animations in the later stage, I need a full-time animator to make a full set of animations according to the project, and the same is true for characters.
There are about 400 animation packages in the market that have the problem you mentioned. It is very important to be too much. This solution is within the scope of consideration.
I have read a lot of documents, and the file system and communication pipeline are indeed the most important thing. It is related to the core operation. I will consider the work again and again. Thank you very much for your reminder.
The current combat part is the frame, and the movement and combat are at the core. It needs to be pulled up first to provide an input and output platform for the periphery. The combat part is more complicated.
There is still a long way to go.
May I ask what are you in?
(machine translation, hope the meaning is achieved)
I am programmer. I know (basic level) multiple art applications like 3d max, some Houdini, Affinity suite, multiple small tools. However my artistic side is on “programmer art” level, i can do (IMO) pretty levels for unreal, but my characters or 3d models lack that something (yes more practice needed).
My previous post in short:
- focus on important things
- have list of fun things to do, but do them as a reward for job well done, or for when you are tired, felling down or so.
- do design document, something small for each system of game right before you dig in that system. Like that combat system, plan it before you try to code that.
ps.
I bought several animation packs (about 10) and i could not create list of animations that could fully cover any fighting system. There was always something missing, some transition done wrong, something needed edit.
Same goes for many asset packs, different socket names in weapon packs (one author same pack), different logic behind where they are locate, like assets done on different grid sizes, not aligned to grid, or differently rotated (like not all walls in same direction, etc). It is apparent that most of those marketplace artists never done assets for real game.
I do not want to name those bad packs, but about 90% of marketplace stuff needs editing.
It takes a lot of tools and knowledge to support the work. This is a difficult thing in itself. It’s hard work.
Yes, in such a complex it does require planning ahead, having a roadmap, one problem at a time in the general direction.
When I get tired or fall, I switch to other fronts and keep fighting.
Yes, market documents are also divided into various levels, some of which cannot be used at all, some can be used, and some are excellent. Animation belongs to a relatively small category, probably because there are fewer animators. Sometimes files need to be set twice to achieve what we need, things are complex, and there are many branches of problems at all levels.
Hi @sheepsleep, the Battle Part is Looking Real Good. I think its critical to get a basic core combat/gameplay working firstly to keep yourself engaged and motivated during development. You can continuously improve/refactor it as more gameplay elements are added.
Disclaimer: I’m the worst at offering suggestions because I tend to convolute my own projects with features. LOL
With that said, If I was to offer suggestions, it would be these:
- Incorporate Multiplayer upfront, even for a Single Player Game. It takes a little more time planning and organizing the code, but Significantly saves time with iterating during testing with others remotely and solo with two or more clients on the same machine.
- If You are Developing Solo, Leverage Procedural Generation, User Generation, and Player-driven Construction/Customization wherever you can to build a large game world and content within. The cost is development time for such subsystems, but you can enlist the machine and players to help you build the game world/content.
- Add unique FUN elements to the combat so it can standout amongst the plethora of ARPGs.
Keep up the great work.
Thanks for your reply.
you are right. Continuous iteration and continuous improvement.
- Multiplayer is a good suggestion, and I’ll add features later as I see fit.
- Procedural generation is easy to understand. What do you mean by user generation and player construction? It should not simply refer to local construction participation.
- Fun and fun is an important issue to consider.
What do you mean by user generation and player construction?
I use those name synonymously, but, if I was to give them a distinction it would be…
User Generation is content created by Users/Players prior to In-game Play, typically with External Content Creation Tools. The Game has facilities to upload to a repository for use by the game. Mods are examples of this.
Player Construction/Customization is content created by Players during in-game Play typically with games construction systems, modular and parameterized assets.
I’m developing a run-time multi-user construction system for in-game semi-procedural and manual construction/customization.
By providing the Player base these Tools, they can implicitly assist me in developing larger game worlds and content, then I could solo. Even with Procedurally Generated content, more users can perform more modifications faster then I could solo.
Oh, great work.
I know your second meaning, but I haven’t gotten to your first meaning yet.
For the content created before, whether to use mature modules or build rules by yourself in the program, use external creation tools, similar to DCC tools!
Are you also developing your own game?
(then I could solo), you are responsible for the main body of the game, and the player is responsible for the models they want or whatever.
Play! Play! Play!
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W O W. Rapid Progress!
I’ve been working on a couple of Characters for my own game for two years now. LOL.
Keep up the fantastic work.
Bought an environment to lay the foundation for future work.
I also want a bunch of characters and enemies, and then I’ll figure out how to deal with this part of the problem.
keep going, friend
I’m doing the same. I’m a firm believer in using Marketplace Assets to accelerate Game Dev. Faster to mod an existing asset than to start from scratch. If it had not been for Marketplace Assets, working on my characters would have taken 4 years, haha.
Yes, the market can solve a lot of problems, but the amount of art resources is relatively small.
I acquire modular art sets and customize the non-modular art to add some uniqueness. I’m no artist, so I use various procedural generation techniques in the Art Department. I’m constructing Kaiju Monsters procedurally with OSMIUM and MP Assets. Heres the Monster in action.
Great work
generated by that program. How to solve the skeleton and animation problems, is it similar to the general process?
By the way, which country are you friends with. See you all the time online.
The Program is UnrealEngine Blueprints. Sorry, I’m not certain of what skeleton and animation problems you are referring too.
Attached to the model generated by the skeleton.
Action against enemies.
Or is it how animation is implemented? A set of skeletons, animations, montages, animation blueprints, and character blueprints.
(machine translation, hope the meaning is achieved)
Inventory system 01
Looking Good. Do you have a plan for Inventory Icons? I’m too lazy to create icons, so I’m going integrating a Icon Creator similar to this in which players create their own.