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So I'm Making a Gaem

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polycounter lvl 14
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Isaiah Sherman polycounter lvl 14
Hey everyone! I am making an indie game. Check out the info below :)

Gaemoria

About the team:
Isaiah (me)- I'm the artist, designer, and the one that got the three of us interested. I've been playing video games and making art all my life and thought AAA game development was the right path. I have learned I love indie games and want to make my own!

Adam- Brainchild of the group. He's been coding small game projects since his teens and worked full time has a programmer at Microsoft. He now works as a full time programmer at Wizards of the Coast.

Josiah aka Buddy Ross- My brother is a musical genius. While I was making art and playing games, he was creating music. He currently plays for Frank Ocean (who wants to make Josiah his director of music) and if you watch Saturday Night Live you could see him high-five Psy during the credits when Frank played on SNL!

About our game:
Like the title says, imagine an open environment and combat system like Secret of Mana with a pet system like Pokemon. We want to make an adventure game that focuses on your pets!

It's way too early to say what we want to release on, but PC (Steam) is an obvious choice. We're developing with the use of the Xbox 360 controller in mind.

Where do I follow?
Here at Polycount, of course! But I am going to try really hard to update the following sites weekly:
-Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gaemoria
-Twitter: https://twitter.com/Gaemoria
-TIGsource: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=35959.0
-Deviant-Art: http://shermanCG.deviantart.com/


Since I am the artist the best I can currently do is show you some sketches so far.

Stay tuned for more updates :)!

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cKuLXhA.jpg

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yhophYM.jpg

RCO8cPG.jpg

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Replies

  • Hayden Zammit
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    Hayden Zammit polycounter lvl 12
    Bring it on man. Sounds awesome.
  • Valcrist
  • Torch
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    Torch interpolator
  • Stefan_Martens
    That's a very recognizable story, I too am leaning more towards game design every day.

    I think putting it all out there isn't such a bad idea, indie developers do it all the time. Ideas will get stolen sure, but there's ideas and then there's execution. Exposing your ideas on the internet might also be a good way of keeping yourself motivated.

    The inspirations you've mentioned are all very solid games. However countless people are making top down action RPGs, so I would start thinking of ways to modernize and expand on those classic game play elements.

    Anyways good luck!
  • crazyfingers
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    crazyfingers polycounter lvl 10
    Rock on dude! I'm in a very similar position, been smashing my head against the wall trying to make this sort of dream happen myself over the past couple years with nothing really tangible to show for it, just learned hard lessons and developed actual practices for indie development. Haven't shown my face in places like these for a while because my situation was embarrassing. But at long last since my initial naive optimism, I've finally got a doable game going on that i'm excited about. I have a more than competent hard working programmer on board, and we're working on what could be a pretty friggin' bad ass game with a feasible turn around time.

    I did up a long ass reply just the other day explicitly covering this topic: how a purely 3d artist can get on track to having their game idea realized, but the thread got eaten so i'll try to do a recap while trying to give some direct criticism about your plans.

    DO NOT plan on a game that's going to take 4-5 years off the bat. This is a death sentence. The best game ideas for small teams and those just starting out creating their own project is to think of something remarkably fun and a bit innovative, but remarkably DOABLE. I cannot stress this enough.

    Here's an article I did that touches on this a bit, admittedly it's geared more towards people pursuing programming, but anyone wanting to start their own project I hope can get something out of it:

    http://gamedev.tutsplus.com/articles/game-design-articles/cubes-vs-space-marines-making-a-great-game-in-your-basement/

    Second important part of all this: You're straight up underestimating how important it is to have a programmer on board from the start. If you haven't made a few shitty games already, you're going to have a hard time coming up with a game idea that's scope is doable, and wont be able to design this in tandem to anyone's strength. The best games are a reflection of the capabilities of those working on the project.

    In your position, beggars can't be choosers, you're going to want to keep things in the air a bit, create a good body of work for a game, and then get a committed and talented programmer on board by poking around the internet and recruiting. Once this is done you guys can come to an agreement on the type of game you want to create with these assets that you both think would be not only fun to play, but fun to work on. Trust me when I say this, good, hardworking programmers are hard to come by. Finding the right programmer is honestly about 50% of the battle. Art is a much smaller %.

    I don't have any successful games under my belt, but I've had years of failure that I'm more than willing to talk about if you have any questions. Reply or PM's work, whatever's clever if you're interested.

    I really cannot stress enough how easy it is to fail at this indie thing (particularly when you're not the lead programmer), and NOTHING is ever certain. The only thing you can hope to do is minimize that uncertainty. The hardest and most important first goal you need to have, is learning to change your hopes from making your dream game, to making something that will fund that game at some point in the future.
  • PogoP
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    PogoP polycounter lvl 10
    Image isn't working!
  • Roepetoepa
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    Roepetoepa polycounter lvl 12
    sounds cool, good luck man :)
  • LANKUS MAXIMUS
    I look forward to seeing this progress.

    All the best of luck! :)


    ...Great article crazyfingers. Very inspiring. Thanks :)
  • Isaiah Sherman
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    Isaiah Sherman polycounter lvl 14
    Thanks for the advice Jeff! I'll be reading through that article today.

    I have considered looking for a programmer up front and making a few smaller games just to get into the flow of making games.

    A recent awesome game that is a testament to this is Rogue Legacy. I've never heard of Cellar Door Games, but once I started playing Rogue Legacy they talk about all the games they've made. I was amazed to see they put out like 5-6 games before Rogue Legacy!

    I kind of know a few friend-of-friend programmers that are mildly interested, I'll have to talk to them about all this.

    I'll be posting more art, story, and design stuff myself on a semi-regular basis.

    Thanks again!
  • R3D
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    R3D interpolator
    Here's a list of post mortems i've been slowly compiling, some good reading material

    http://vidyadev.com/wiki/List_of_Post_Mortems
  • Isaiah Sherman
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    Isaiah Sherman polycounter lvl 14
    Jeff- Seems like that article covers most of what I'm hoping to achieve. Too many people want to have large-scale games with a AAA studio art quality bar. That bullet point list was also good, because I only hit like 1 bullet point on it (indigenous creatures).

    I've been studying games like Zelda and Pokemon and while they were big successes for their time, if you really analyze them they are incredibly simple relatively to today's AAA work. Secret of Mana starts to get pretty complex with leveling systems, weapons leveling, balancing character vs enemy levels, etc etc. I'm not planning on doing too much of that.

    I like Zelda's system of basic hit points and enemies do mostly the same amount of damage throughout the entire game. Progression is controlled through mechanic rather than character power. Link never gets stronger except through more hearts and the player learns how to play better.

    Megaman was the same too. Your HP increases but your overall damage remains level. It is your ability to play that makes you better.


    Ryswick- Thanks for the link! I'm reading through them now.
  • Isaiah Sherman
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    Isaiah Sherman polycounter lvl 14
    This article was frickin' fantastic: 12 games in 12 months.

    No, I don't plan on doing that, but it pretty much lays out a step-by-step of what you need to do to make a game.

    Reading this actually helped me more than the first one Crazyfingers posted. This will help me trim my game down considerably to hit "save points" as he described.
    http://gamedev.tutsplus.com/articles/business-articles/1gam-how-to-succeed-at-making-one-game-a-month/

    It was also awesome to see he's wasted literally thousands of hours of art creation due to doing art too soon. I think it's safe to be doing drawings and paintings, but not actual asset creation, at this stage.

    Part of me really wants to do the coding too. I've never done any coding but the thought of it excites me. I like learning new things and I have a mind for logical thought processes. I was good in math growing up but just focused more on art once I hit college.

    I think it'd be fun to make super early prototypes that just respond to button presses.
  • DanielSnd
    This article was frickin' fantastic: 12 games in 12 months.

    No, I don't plan on doing that, but it pretty much lays out a step-by-step of what you need to do to make a game.

    Reading this actually helped me more than the first one Crazyfingers posted. This will help me trim my game down considerably to hit "save points" as he described.
    http://gamedev.tutsplus.com/articles/business-articles/1gam-how-to-succeed-at-making-one-game-a-month/

    It was also awesome to see he's wasted literally thousands of hours of art creation due to doing art too soon. I think it's safe to be doing drawings and paintings, but not actual asset creation, at this stage.

    Part of me really wants to do the coding too. I've never done any coding but the thought of it excites me. I like learning new things and I have a mind for logical thought processes. I was good in math growing up but just focused more on art once I hit college.

    I think it'd be fun to make super early prototypes that just respond to button presses.

    Great find, that article is really helpful ^^
    I'm also trying to learn Gamedev and creating a "simple prototype game" and I saw lots of the "keep it simple" ideas I already had in mind described in the article, so I guess I'm going the right way ^^

    I'm also an artist (more towards animation, and nowhere near as experienced as you) and I'm struggling trying to learn programming to bring my idea to existence. In some aspects, it's easier than I thought it would be, fun at times, frustrating at others, I would say give it a go :D you might enjoy it. I'm currently using UDK and learned the basics by reading a book called "Unreal Development Kit Game Programming with UnrealScript: Beginner's Guide".

    Your thread was already a inspiration to me :) And now I'm excited to share what I've been experimenting with, so thank you \o hope to see more stuff over here soon
  • Cheez
    Awesome, Isaiah !
    I look forward to your progress :)
  • Alismuffin
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    Alismuffin polycounter lvl 7
    YESSS Mana series has the best art ever >D
    Go for it man!!!
  • crazyfingers
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    crazyfingers polycounter lvl 10
    I dunno man, I think doing art right now could actually be a really good idea. Obviously you want to have a solid artistic style and some concepts done before starting, but focusing purely on concept, game design and programming is something more for a programmer/ designer to do. You gotta realize that as a 3d artist starting a project, you're in a bit of a unique position that most tutorials aren't going to touch on.

    If you have an idea of the perspective you want the game to be viewed from, and a general idea of how play is going to work, you can absolutely get to work on tangible art assets at any time. This guys' time was wasted because he's primarily a coder and could have spent his time doing that since art wasn't his strong suit.

    I mean a huge part of the reason i was able to get a programmer on board without having any actual funds to throw at him was because i had a lot of assets done and some crappy preliminary code that made the whole prototype not just playable, but hinted that this would be a good looking, polished game at some point while demonstrating I was committed to finishing the project. The game was a tangible "thing" with ready to use assets before he even jumped on board, that's incredibly exciting for a programmer who's used to having to use boring placeholder assets. Anyone can have reference art they grabbed from google, and a game design doc that sounds fun in theory, but with your skills you're in a unique position to have a body of work just begging to be made into a game. And don't underestimate the ammount of system concepting required when making these assets. Well made game content is going to take into account whether the game is turn based, which angle they will be viewed from, what sort of platform inputs will be viable during play, what hardware can run these assets, etc. Not saying focusing on art is isolated from play design by any means, it's quite the contrary!

    In terms of learning to code, it's an invaluable skill for anyone wanting to jump start a project or just work on games in general, and if you have a mind for complex systems it can really help you help your coder to piece together fluid, FUN systems. But it can take several months before that knowledge begins to help you out even from a conceptual standpoint. I mean i'm not trying to be a buzzkill, it's that initial "I'm gonna take on the world!" fervor that gives someone the energy to move forward with indie dev and get better at it, but you gotta try to be at least a little grounded! If you're taking on this attack angle of learning to program, only doing conceptual work, etc. I just fear you may end up at a point where you never reach a true level of development on your first project that will help you grow as an indie developer should the project fall through for whatever reason... And on that point, if you're developing tangible usable art from the get go, you will always have that stuff done and ready to go if the scope of the game radically changes, or you switch programmers or whatever. Art is never wasted if it's solid and can be recycled, code and design, not so much.

    Just a thought though! This is your project, you can attack it any way you choose. I'll stop Bogarting the thread but had to get that off my chest. Excited to see where this project goes!

    Quick edit: Also wanted to point out a lot of indie project's focus on dynamic progression systems are what makes them sell. Minecraft, terraria, rogue legacy, and COUNTLESS indie games all had a really solid and unique progression system, that helped them transcend their modest indie roots to inject a unique element of fun into the game. It's a hell of a lot easier to get a fun and fresh take on advancement systems, than to say create the next revolutionary and polished movement scheme! Ok, i'm done, i'll shut up now :D
  • sziada
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    sziada polycounter lvl 11
    you making gaem aye, mate
  • Isaiah Sherman
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    Isaiah Sherman polycounter lvl 14
    Jeff- Thanks again for the input. I don't mean to say I will be programming everything. That's like saying I will paint and do art as good as I can now if I had never done art in my life. I understand people have code in their blood and I don't. I want to get a foundation though so I can make prototypes.

    Also, my 5-10 year statement wasn't aimed at me making a massive game, but rather I am willing to learn brand new things to get this accomplished.


    I'm also not saying I won't be doing any art at all, because that is completely wrong. I love art, it's what I do, and will be an integral part of every step I take.


    I know I have a knack for design as well as I've made abut 5 board games, one of which was pretty well liked amongst friends. I love the number crunching and statistics of design just like min-maxing in games.


    The first several months of this thread iwll mostly be art as I slowly dabble in basic code.
  • s6
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    s6 polycounter lvl 10
    Killer idea man. Looking forward to see how this progresses.
  • LoTekK
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    LoTekK polycounter lvl 17
    I'd agree to an extent about not doing art assets too early, but part of the process is building up not only your ideas, but how your assets will look, come together, behave. What Jeff said about having assets to show off to attract help is also a big thing. This is likely doubly important if you're not going to be doing the bulk of the actual programming, since you can put together what effectively is a target render, as they say.

    As for programming, if you can get your head around it, it can be an absolute joy to be able to get things actually working in an interactive setting. Any ideas on engines/frameworks yet?

    Either way, I'm really looking forward to what your crazy imagination comes up with.
  • Isaiah Sherman
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    Isaiah Sherman polycounter lvl 14
    I read that learning C# may be unnecessary but I do understand it is the most versatile. I would probably do my prototyping in Unity because I've seen some sweet indie games come from there. My biggest fear is the large cut Unity would take from sales.

    I'd like to find a programmer who could essentially emulate what I was trying to do in Unity with C#.
  • LoTekK
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    LoTekK polycounter lvl 17
    Unity doesn't actually take a cut from sales, per se. If you go free, you literally go free. If you go pro, the only money Unity takes from you is the cost of the license.

    (also, one of Unity's supported languages is in fact C#. It's a pretty sweet engine for the most part)
  • Fenyce
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    Fenyce polycounter lvl 11
    Wow, I just had a look at your folio... and it's freakin' awesome! So... I'm really looking forward to your process!
  • dtschultz
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    dtschultz polycounter lvl 12
    Those are cool articles. I hope you succeed, but even if you don't, the amount you will learn will be invaluable. Good luck!
  • gsokol
    Sounds like a pretty radical idea. Weather you can realistically complete this or not....seeing progress on polycount would be very cool.

    I'm all for unity, so prototyping in there would be cool, but why reinvent the wheel afterwards? If your planning on having a very small team, utilizing tools that already exist will make your goal that much more achievable.

    Sounds like you aren't going to be that focused on those things for a while anyways...

    looking forward to seeing more design ideas and art for this. Good luck dude.
  • Isaiah Sherman
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    Isaiah Sherman polycounter lvl 14
    LoTekK wrote: »
    Unity doesn't actually take a cut from sales, per se. If you go free, you literally go free. If you go pro, the only money Unity takes from you is the cost of the license.

    (also, one of Unity's supported languages is in fact C#. It's a pretty sweet engine for the most part)

    Ah, I was misinformed, then. I was talking to a few people here and they said most engines take a % cut from you.

    If it's juts a flat $1500 for Pro and they ask no more, then I'd be happy to just do it straight in Unity. Looking at their list of games makes me excited about it. UDK, Cryengine, and Frostbite just purely focus on FPS for the most part...
  • Mo3g
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    Mo3g polycounter lvl 5
    Very inspiring, man!

    Unity is a good choice. I had a bit experience scripting on it. Quite convenient at least for prototyping.
  • Isaiah Sherman
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    Isaiah Sherman polycounter lvl 14
    This was an awesome GDC talk about key design theories and execution with ARPGs with Diablo 3.

    Good notes:
    -Managing health and damage intake are the same
    -Tight controls is king
    -3-5 second windows of danger is a sweet spot
    -Skills are more important than skill systems

    Sorry to anyone that is interested in actually hearing about my game. I will get around to making a huge post soon. Mostly just reading a lot of design articles at the moment.
  • Isaiah Sherman
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    Isaiah Sherman polycounter lvl 14
    So! I have managed to find a programmer! My cousin's husband is a full-time programmer at Wizards of the Coast, and was full-time at Microsoft before that. He's an awesome dude, we love the same things / games, and we started meeting weekly.

    He's already started prototyping some basic stuff in Unity and we're going to start making a tiny demo world of the game. It's super exciting to see him just throwing together random things and seeing them work. It just makes me think "Well we could just replace your cubes and spheres with my art and do some design and we got a game!" Very exciting :)

    My brother also started doing some music as well. It's so awesome to see the other two guys so interested and we're all working on our stuff at the same time.

    It'll be cool to see how or project is in like 2-3 months when we are able to start pulling things together for the demo island!


    Here is some info about our game:
    -Pokemon-like, capture and fight lots of creatures
    -Diablo-like, no random battles, open world, randomization/modularity/reuseability of sorts
    -Capture creatures to unlock abilities and chance at having rarer creatures appear on map
    -Fight creatures to get money to buy items?
    -Summon up to 4 pets simultaneously, pets are elemental
    -Summoning a pet is a "spell" with an aiming reticle: summoning the fire pet calls it forth in a meteor to do damage as it is summoned
    -Summoning several pets at once allows for them to work together in an interesting manner
    -Tentative title "Gaemoria"
    -I want to start a FB page and a Twitter account for Gaemoria to start gathering a fanbase and do good ol' PR and marketing


    Here are some screenshots of some rough stuff I threw together in a few hours tonight:

    ZwnUMgm.jpg

    GM7t3SJ.jpg
  • Isaiah Sherman
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    Isaiah Sherman polycounter lvl 14
    I created a FB page! I will probably create a Twitter page/account/whateveritscalled soon too. Trying to connect the game with all sorts of fancy social networking to spread the word.


    Check it out and like it!
    https://www.facebook.com/gaemoria
  • Fenyce
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    Fenyce polycounter lvl 11
    Wow. Sweet art here!
    Will you do this game in 2D or 3D? Because right now the sprite looks kinda 2D to me.
  • tottot
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    tottot polycounter lvl 10
    Very excited about this
  • Isaiah Sherman
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    Isaiah Sherman polycounter lvl 14
    Fenyce- not sure yet, right now they are all just cards with alpha textures. These are mostly just junk assets to give to my programmer so he can look at prettier things than cubes and spheres :)

    The biggest concerns are iteration time and modularity. It is easy to use 3d for things like copying rigs and animations to models, but you lose that classic feel of 2d. It's tough, and something we will probably try over several variants until we find what weeks best for us.


    Tottot- thanks!
  • Fenyce
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    Fenyce polycounter lvl 11
    Fenyce- not sure yet, right now they are all just cards with alpha textures. These are mostly just junk assets to give to my programmer so he can look at prettier things than cubes and spheres :)

    The biggest concerns are iteration time and modularity. It is easy to use 3d for things like copying rigs and animations to models, but you lose that classic feel of 2d. It's tough, and something we will probably try over several variants until we find what weeks best for us.


    Tottot- thanks!


    I'm looking forward to see this progress, hopefully you'll post some of that stuff here.

    Beside that, maybe take a look around there are many 3D project, that catch a really nice painterly feel. (with different styles)


    Not a game, but an low poly animation short: http://vimeo.com/17914974 (Backwater Gospel)
    Plus the Breakdown/Making of: http://vimeo.com/19954543

    Also there's awesome handpainted stuff:
    http://jessicadinh.blogspot.de/
    http://jordtron5000.tumblr.com/
    http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=105369&highlight=approach+hand+painted
    http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=104992&page=7

    Or look at the newest pokemon x&y to see that classic game translated to 3D.
    Or Borderlands 2, for a style with outlines.

    Beside that, there's nothing wrong about 2D games, there are tons of great ones. Old and new.

    Just to give you some more input, ha ha.
  • Isaiah Sherman
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    Isaiah Sherman polycounter lvl 14
    I'm going to a lot of indie dev seminars at PAX.

    I'm excited for talks about Kickstarter and marketing!

    Here is what I'm going to:
    Saturday:
    10-11am Serpent Theater - Teaming Up For Indie Game Dev
    Noon-1pm Kraken Theater - Wildstar: Journey to Nexus
    1pm-2pm Serpent Theater - 10 Questions for Supergiant Games (Bastion)

    Sunday:
    10-11am Serpent Theater - Behind the Scenes With Indie Megabooth
    11am-Noon Unicorn Theater - Six Second Game Picth: Elevator Pitches in the Age of Vine
    1-2pm Raven Theater - Modernizing Fantasy RPGs
    3-4pm Kraken Theater - More Transparency for Better Games (by Double Fine)
    5-6pm Unicorn Theater - Kickstarter Trials, Tribulations, and Triumphs

    Monday:
    11am-Noon Pegasus Theater - Benefits of Players Writing Their Own Stories (immersion)
    12:30-1:30pm Unicorn Theater - 7 Steps to Becomming a Game Designer
    1:30-2:30pm Wolfman Theater - Three Decades of Video Game Music
    3-4pm Wolfman Theater - Marketing and Promoting Your Indie Game
  • Isaiah Sherman
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    Isaiah Sherman polycounter lvl 14
    Another awesome weekly meeting!

    I hope you guys are as excited about this game as we are!


    Things we covered this week:
    -camera angle & control
    -going full 2d for environments, characters not sure
    -auto targeting systems
    -basic character movement speeds and scale
    -establish main elements: fire, water, earth (rock+grass), storm (wind+electric), and neutral
    -limit to 4 elements for full controller usage (A, B, X, Y)
    -control schemes for pet summoning and combat
    -self-learning progression
    -pet combo spells
    -pet cool down mechanic
    -ambient life with pets able to follow you when out of combat, graze on grass, chase butterflies, etc
    -hero combat mechanics are very simple, directs focus largely on pet usage
    -hero has basic elemental abilities that focus on CC or defense while certain pets are on cool down
    -limiting pets to 4, each evolve twice for 12 variants
    -focus is more on pet spell combo combat rather than battling using tons of different creatures that don't combo
    -killing enemy creature vs capturing/collecting reaps different rewards
    -player can collect their summonable pets in any order


    What's next?
    -prototype some map layouts and UI
    -get flat cards of pets, hero, reticles, enemies somewhat functional
    -combat functionality
    -importing meshes into unity
  • Isaiah Sherman
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    Isaiah Sherman polycounter lvl 14
    This thread is far from dead, just been busy with PAX (and crunching at work) meeting a bunch of awesome indie devs to get lots of feedback on smart things to do when making an indie game!

    Here is some art!
    ttXTT4Q.jpgdzIzwVX.jpg

    cKuLXhA.jpg

    wdgl7vY.jpg

    yhophYM.jpg
  • teaandcigarettes
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    teaandcigarettes polycounter lvl 12
    Keep this up dude!

    I've been also trying to get out of my comfort zone and create a small game in my spare time. Seeing your progress is very encouraging.
  • Isaiah Sherman
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    Isaiah Sherman polycounter lvl 14
    Did another pass on her. I like this'n because her clothing is a bit more subdued, but her hair is still explosive. When combat erupts it will be important you can always see the girl (her hair).

    1NP0Lw7.jpg
  • Isaiah Sherman
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    Isaiah Sherman polycounter lvl 14
    We added two more people to the team! Two good, long-time friends of mine. It was apparent we needed two more people when we assessed the scope of our game and realized we would rather get help to make what we love than cut tons just so 2 people could make it.


    Boyd:

    He is taking over design. He made tons of Starcraft, Warcraft, and Neverwinter Nights levels and maps. He also loves changing board game rules to create his own spin offs based on the original rule sets. He also has a brilliant mind for finding patterns in math and design.

    Here is a short story about Boyd for you:
    Back in vanilla World of Warcaft, he played a hunter since release. After playing for a long time and doing raids, he started to notice the trend in itemization with hunters. He said that by his math, agility would become overpowered for hunters with their current gear arc and that they would have to split between agility and attack power.

    When Burning Crusade came out, he was 100% correct. He called it out ~2 years in advance.


    Christian:

    He is coming in to take over writing for us. He is another long-time friend of mine and has been writing short stories, movie scripts, and dissecting movie and TV plots. What is also important is he and I kind of have the same vision for what we would like to make, which is powerful when combining story, art, and music with my brother.


    With the addition of these two guys, that means I will be focusing more on art (yay!) and business/networking/marketing/direction/production. I will probably get some help with some of that as we go as well.

    Stay tuned!
  • Isaiah Sherman
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    Isaiah Sherman polycounter lvl 14
    Our writer has a rough draft up of the story so far. I can promise you it is awesome :D

    Some sketches :)

    RCO8cPG.jpg

    lK4KfNv.jpg
  • serialkiler
    you starting your game from the final stages, advertising..

    iv done my share of indie projects and ill give u one advice, advertising a model is a waste of time, put your effort in the game itself and leave advertising for last.

    like think about it yourself, you spent several hours creating twiter + fb + bunch of things, and how many time did u spent in the game engine itself ? althought the comunity feedback is always awsome it wont help u finish the game.

    PS: not meant to sound arsh or anything on that matter, just sharing some advice on a mistake i did myself sometimes :)
  • Isaiah Sherman
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    Isaiah Sherman polycounter lvl 14
    Thanks for the feedback! What indie games have you made? I would like to see them :)

    How many hours did I waste making them? None. I disagree with the notion that showing off what we are doing is a waste of any time.

    We are a 4 man dev team and have made considerable progress so far.

    I am doing the art and business of the project, par of business is marketing and keeping people interested and informed.

    Plus I would hardly call forum posts marketing.

    Real marketing is sending your demo to press, reviewers, and YouTube gamers with millions of followers for them to do an early peek at your product. So yes, that will come after we have a playable game.
  • almighty_gir
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    almighty_gir ngon master
    well, the other point that hasn't been said when it comes to making twitter/facebook/webpage etc. for something that is in the extremes of it's infancy, is that there will be times when you literally can't update for a while, because all of the stuff you're doing is behind the scenes.

    there are plenty of projects out there that drum up huge interest in the first couple of weeks or months due to having this kind of... full speed ahead kind of energy to them, due to the fact that everyone is pumping out artwork and it's all going great! but then the interest dies off, and it dies off really sharply, because everything has been concepted out, the artwork is done, the rest is behind the scenes stuff that you really can't show off anymore.

    the opposite of that, is to get as much done as you can, so you have a backlog of stuff to gradually drip out and keep the interest coming.



    /endramble, your shit looks awesome man, can't wait to see more.
  • Fenyce
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    Fenyce polycounter lvl 11
    That bird sage characters really look damn sweet! I like those shapes.
  • Isaiah Sherman
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    Isaiah Sherman polycounter lvl 14
    Gir: Hmm... actually that is a good point. Perhaps instead of showing all the concepts I've done over the week I'll time it out so that I create a backlog of stuff to show.

    What you describe is a reality, eventually pre-pro ends and you just need to produce it.

    I do plan on showing in-game art, screenshots, WIPs, and even simple stuff like animations along the way, though.

    Better to have more art to show over a long duration than none at all one week!


    Fenyce: Thanks :)
  • almighty_gir
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    almighty_gir ngon master
    oh for sure man, look i wasn't trying to imply that you're not going to show anything. it's more like... if people get used to seeing piece after piece in a short space of time, they will see anything less as "slowed development", and then extended gaps as "game is dead".

    i understand entirely how the process really works, but gamers don't.

    anyway, aside from this though, all the stuff you've shown has been stellar, i love it :D
  • Fenyce
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    Fenyce polycounter lvl 11
    I think you guys might be right, maybe do a weekly update or something like that, with showing 1-2 pieces, while keeping the rest as backup for more updates.
    You could also show progress while creating levels and stuff like that.
    (Same goes for music)

    Did you think about doing a tumblr or another blog? So that there's all that sweet art at one place? (Beside this thread, ya know)

    I'm looking forward for the first mock-ups!
  • Isaiah Sherman
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    Isaiah Sherman polycounter lvl 14
    Fenyce wrote: »
    I think you guys might be right, maybe do a weekly update or something like that, with showing 1-2 pieces, while keeping the rest as backup for more updates.
    You could also show progress while creating levels and stuff like that.
    (Same goes for music)

    Did you think about doing a tumblr or another blog? So that there's all that sweet art at one place? (Beside this thread, ya know)

    I'm looking forward for the first mock-ups!

    A weekly update with 1-2 pieces is exactly what I do now, and yes, we have several pages :)

    -Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gaemoria
    -Twitter: https://twitter.com/Gaemoria
    -TIGsource: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=35959.0
    -Deviant-Art: http://shermanCG.deviantart.com/
  • Isaiah Sherman
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    Isaiah Sherman polycounter lvl 14
    Sad news!

    I lost my notebook :(:(:(:(:(!!! I carry a small black notebook around with me everywhere in my hoodie pocket, but it is missing. I have my contact info on the inside of the book, I just hope someone finds it :(



    Over the past few weeks we have slowly put togeteher a list of songs from video games that we feel represent the world of Gaemoria.

    Here are links to two albums we have so far! One is of general music for the game, the other is for the potential temples and boss fights.

    Enjoy!
    http://grooveshark.com/playlist/Gaemoria/89060507

    http://grooveshark.com/playlist/Gaemoria+Temples+and+Boss+Fights/89582407


    Music from:
    Final Fantasy 8, 9, 10
    Zelda: A Link to the Past
    Zelda: Wind Waker
    Secret of Mana
    Seiken Densetsu 3
    Donkey Kong Country 1&2
    Yoshi's Island
    Chrono Trigger
    Saga Frontier
    Diablo 2
    Bastion
    Skyrim
    The Cure
    Cowboy Beebop
    Mario 64
    Pilot Wings 64
    Blast Corps
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