Game Developers of Kiwi Farms

[Outer Space Traveller]

Highly recommend "You can draw in 30 days" by Mark Kistler. Was recommended in another thread on here and I'm slowly working my way through it and it's pretty good. Mind you, I can't draw a stick figure to save my life.

Interesting... I should check that out. Where did you find it? (The thread, I mean).

 

[Homocull]

It's called Girls Frontline 2. I'd play it, but I don't want Chinese spyware just to play a gotcha game. What's more, the game offers features I can't match, like individual character animations, and "individually modeled toes". I've not heard much about the gameplay itself, almost as if it's an afterthought.

And yet from what I can see, the game's story is a PNG visual novel in-between missions. I'm pretty sure a lot of gacha don't even feature 3D models.

Scooe too big. Ditch it.

2D XCOM with waifu? XCOM 2's gameplay can be broken down into something digestible, especially if you're making it in 2D. You have tilemaps and A* at your disposal. Don't bother trying to ace the AI first try, just implement a dumb cover and flank behaviors, make it good later. Figure out how to represent an example level's data (being a tilemap, starting entities and mission objectives, at least) and how to load that.
The waifu part is just carefully placed PNGs on the right parts of the screen. There's also XCOM's base management which is solely an UI number game with stats that carry over to field battles.

So which way should I go?

Regardless of what you choose, I can attest it takes about one year for good gains. A year and consistency. I will share my attestation but Pewdiepie's should do.

Spoiler

For a few years I made music using a DAW. It involved a lot of abandoned tracks, a lot of saving the same track with gradually more refinement, and a lot of listening to my own shit (danger the pitfall of making garbage you're proud of)
I was very surprised when I looked back and saw that (mostly) every day for 2 years I had done something in the DAW. There was only one month in those 2 years that had a period of inactivity.

It was a thing I'd do on the side out of enjoyment. After a year I was doing ok, and after two I was at a level where I could confidently show my shit to other people.
Also I wasn't really watching tutorials, just working off intuition. I sticked to quick tips and reading stuff online.

The biggest cancer when learning is burnout, and annoyingly that seems to show up when you're desperate to learn whatever it is you want to learn.
If you want to make games then go learn C++. Outsource final art/music to someone else. You can make a game with no assets but you can't make a game without programming (barring RPGmaker lol). Solo dev is the dream because you don't have to rely on another nigger that could end up being a pain in the ass, but yeah, if you're not a jack of all trades then you gotta.

all the tutorial content on the internet is Pirate Software-esque slop meant for absolute beginners, which I am not anymore. They all give the advice of starting with a few small projects, but once you've gotten past that point there's absolutely nothing for what to do next.

Read nigga, read
Tutorial videos are a gigantic waste of time. Faggot youtube grifters will spend 15 minutes babbling, either due to incompetence, ego, or to juice their ad rev.
Ok, not all of them are bad but in a landscape infected with jeets, you are better off getting your hands on docs, reference, and whatever else is in written form.
I'd even recommend using AI if you have to. Anything as long as you're hands-on.

I've also been considering an engine switch. I've been having issues with Godots tilemap layers system. I assume I'm doing something wrong there as having to a command to check all layers or layers in specific groups should be a thing. I think I can figure it out. I'm not completely stuck. But when combined with other issues I'm having with the engine for other projects. I don't know.

This is a really banal reason to switch engines. Go in Godot's source code and figure out whether you missed something, or add the function you need. Building the engine only involves running scons

Love2D I did some preliminary research, and I'm hesitant to use it.

Personally I would not relegate the backbone of a game to Lua (unless the game is very basic). The metatables shit for me is almost akin to a humiliation ritual. Wtf are you gonna use to debug as well? Even if there's something, it's never going to be on the level of Visual Studio.
Throw C++, SDL and LuaJIT together. In my case raylib instead of SDL, with the audio part of it thrown out for my own. Implement core stuff in C++ and use Lua for the actual scripting.
This is more of a "I know what I'm doing" setup, but it lets you do whatever the fuck you want. Also outputs a tiny exe and shit is guaranteed to run fast, which takes care of your qualm with dependencies. You say coding is your favorite part, just go with C++ honestly. You won't have to wrestle with some retard's implementation of tilemaps if you just do it yourself.

I don't know if Visual Studio has improved over the years, but that's what I see recommended.

On 2022 and I've only ever had Intellisense eating shit and the occasional hint popup getting stuck on screen. If you are on Windows it's really good for .NET and C++. You ain't gonna debug shit with Notepad++ (even if it's also my go-to text editor)

 

[Judge Dredd]

XCOM 2's gameplay can be broken down into something digestible, especially if you're making it in 2D.

This. Laser Squad was pretty basic as far as graphics go. There have also been various indie tbs games that use basic graphics. Though if anyone would play it is a question.


Even 3D doesn't have to be complex. In PS1 style, most of the game would be blocks with low res textures on them. Very quick to create individually. Just look at screenshots of Mario + Rabbids. The maps are just grass, chest high wall, head high wall.


Animations can be a problem, but they also scale. Various games get around this using paper dolls or static models like it's a tabletop game.

There's also XCOM's base management which is solely an UI number game with stats that carry over to field battles.

I've heard the strategic layer in Xenonaughts only took a few days to put together, not counting art assets.

This is a really banal reason to switch engines.

Yes, it is. It's not that specifically. I said I can deal with it. It's just I get sick of problems being something with a node or some quirk with the engine.

Here's the thing. I'm a dumb. If I do wrong, that's on me. What I don't like is when it's something outside of me that is making the mistake. That's part of what draws me to Godot so much.

Outsource final art/music to someone else.

Strong disagree here.

If you remember a bunch of indie failures back in the pre-gamergate days, they tried this. It works on paper, but not in practice.

On paper, it would take you let's say 2 years to learn how to draw. For less than 2 years worth of bills, you could hire an artist to draw for you and end up with better results. In practice, you had lots of shit tier indie games that left the creators bankrupt because they spent 20k on art, 20k on music, 20k on sound, and so on. And suddenly their indie pixel art platformer has to make 80k just to break even. Cue article on how indie games aren't viable and blah blah blah.

The other option is to exploit some young person living in a developing nation. Promise to pay them in "exposure" or maybe toss them a few dollars on fivrr. Supposedly the dev of Bolatro did this, but when his game was a hit he did the guy right by giving him a contract and selling the soundtrack on Steam.

 

[Homocull]

On paper, it would take you let's say 2 years to learn how to draw. For less than 2 years worth of bills, you could hire an artist to draw for you and end up with better results. In practice, you had lots of shit tier indie games that left the creators bankrupt because they spent 20k on art, 20k on music, 20k on sound, and so on. And suddenly their indie pixel art platformer has to make 80k just to break even. Cue article on how indie games aren't viable and blah blah blah.

The other option is to exploit some young person living in a developing nation. Promise to pay them in "exposure" or maybe toss them a few dollars on fivrr. Supposedly the dev of Bolatro did this, but when his game was a hit he did the guy right by giving him a contract and selling the soundtrack on Steam.

Eh, "outsource" might've been too strong a word, I was thinking more something along the lines of having a buddy who knows how to draw/make music and get him onboard for your project, hence the them "being a pain in the ass" part. With good friends, that's free barring royalty (provided you're not an asshole who wouldn't compensate the work)
You could spend money if you have no friends but nowhere near 20K, or at least I hope no one is spending that much because that'd be verbalase Hazbin tier.

 

[ZMOT]

And yet from what I can see, the game's story is a PNG visual novel in-between missions. I'm pretty sure a lot of gacha don't even feature 3D models.

most gatchas are phone games, you don't need 3d to animate your waifu when live2d (or simple stills) do the job just as well. there's a reason they're called jpeg collectors.

On paper, it would take you let's say 2 years to learn how to draw. For less than 2 years worth of bills, you could hire an artist to draw for you and end up with better results. In practice, you had lots of shit tier indie games that left the creators bankrupt because they spent 20k on art, 20k on music, 20k on sound, and so on. And suddenly their indie pixel art platformer has to make 80k just to break even. Cue article on how indie games aren't viable and blah blah blah.

that's just shitty business planning and not surprising indie devs fuck that up, combined with the assumption you need all that shit in the first place - like that dude that hired sting of all people as narrator for his americana pseudo walking simulator.

these days for that you can get away with AI, but for now that will generate a lot of screeching by retards and get your game flagged on most stores. art you don't have to contract someone to work from scratch, just to provide you with a coherent artstyle of existing assets (lot of AAA work that way already, cheaper and faster to get a license or outright grab a PD image and edit it).

EDIT: there's also the issue lot of artists are even more retarded, from fees to work ethic. lot of them think because it's a cReAtIvE occupation, they can ignore basic bitch shit like "get adequate compensation for your time and skill and deliver on a deadline". nigger you're supposed to rig a model or create a texture, not paint the next mona lisa.

 

[Judge Dredd]

that's just shitty business planning and not surprising indie devs fuck that up, combined with the assumption you need all that shit in the first place - like that dude that hired sting of all people as narrator for his americana pseudo walking simulator.

I don't know that one. I remember one that had a who's who of anime voice actor talen. Steve Blum, and others I forget. The assumption being their fanbases would buy the game. Nope. There was Where the Water Tastes Like Wine, which was praised to hell and back by the games press, still failed to generate a profit. There was a bunch of no name pixel art platformers too.

One that people seem to like is Brigador. I don't know if it was a success since due to word of mouth, but that was one of those games where they talk about sleeping on couches and working 40 hour days to get it done, only for it to flop.

 

[ZMOT]

Nope. There was Where the Water Tastes Like Wine, which was praised to hell and back by the games press, still failed to generate a profit. There was a bunch of no name pixel art platformers too.

that was the game I'm talking about, because he's the exact example you mentioned. just read all the cope here: https://web.archive.org/web/2021120...ater-tastes-like-wine-postmortem-211a1f9d791a

for example

So far, I have made $0 from the game. That may look like a high number, but consider that it took four years to make — that works out to approximately $0/year. Compared to the $120,000+/year salary of a 15-year veteran in a AAA studio, it begins to look a lot smaller! And then if I go into the hourly breakdown… I don’t have an actual count of hours spent making the game, but there was a lot of crunch that went into it, so I am guesstimating I made about $0/hour. That’s not a lot! And then once you factor in the ~$140,000 I spent paying my contractors and collaborators for the game, you begin to see that maybe it wasn’t, financially speaking, worth it. I guess I will have to wait a bit longer to buy that Juicero.

Joking aside — that’s dismal. And terrifying. At the end of the day it’s astounding that a game that got this much attention from the press, that won awards, that had an all-star cast of writers and performers, that had a bizarre celebrity guest appearance(!) failed this hard. It scares me.

idiot didn't understand that all that critic-cocksucking and splashing on shit doesn't translate to sales, and even if would it's not the sole factor in success. there's a reason some marketing budgets are bigger than the development cost. in the end you're selling a fucking product, whatever you tell yourself, and as such have to follow basic bitch market rules if your goal is to make money.

One that people seem to like is Brigador. I don't know if it was a success since due to word of mouth, but that was one of those games where they talk about sleeping on couches and working 40 hour days to get it done, only for it to flop.

a good game doesn't mean success, besides fucking up the business side of things you can simply be too early/late, too niche, too unknown etc. heck in videogames it easy, imagine getting your name out if you're working with something physical that's usually local (although it has become easier too with the internet, to drawback is it's a lot more crowded with people having the same idea). there are plenty of cases where something was a flop when it released but afterwards become a cult classic. fuck it happened often enough "poor artist finding success only after his death" became a trope of it's own.

there's nothing wrong with "following your dreams" and create something instead of being a wageslave, that's part of the human spirit. but if you do you need to be sensible about it and aware of the possible consequences. and not everyone is after money or fame.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Bit of a question for Kiwis. I want to make a small game for a friend. I have a couple of ideas I'd like feedback on. He likes Star Wars style sci-fi and Conan style fantasy. I've been playing UFO 50 a lot and like the pseudo retro style it has going on, so I want to do something like that.


I love the game Overbold (in UFO 50) and want to make something like it. For those that haven't played it, it's kind of like Smash TV or Vampire Survivors with a press your luck element. Enemies come into the arena. Kill them all and you get prize money, which you use to buy upgrades. After 8 rounds you fight a boss. The twist is you decide how many enemy waves you fight each round, with more waves being worth more money. So it's a balancing act. Too risky and you're likely to die. Too safe and you might not be upgraded enough to deal with the boss in the final round. The whole game can be beaten in 10 minutes, but I put an hour in before I got my first win.

It won't be a direct clone, I'll be doing my own thing with it. But the general concept would be the same. Fight waves of enemies, buy upgrades, do it again.

The game is somewhat lite on assets. A rectangle arena and some enemies with a few frames of animation. Most of which I could easily use stock assets for. I've made a top down shooter with an upgrade system before so coding shouldn't be too much of an issue.


The other option is something more tailored to his interests. I don't know what though. A side scroller with a Conan-like theme seems a bit basic. A Knights of the Round beat-em-up? Too grand in scope. A dungeon crawl RPG? Same problem, but I might be able to use stock art for most of it. A Metal Gear style stealth game? Maybe. Something like Guantlet might work, given it's similarity to the shooter idea.

 

[X Prime]

This made people mad, saying that he only got so good because he's rich, or other similar complaints.

That's part of it, the other part is constant encouragement and affirmation that most people simply don't get.

It's much easier to be motivated in such conditions.

 

[Whatevermancer]

Bit of a question for Kiwis. I want to make a small game for a friend. I have a couple of ideas I'd like feedback on. He likes Star Wars style sci-fi and Conan style fantasy. I've been playing UFO 50 a lot and like the pseudo retro style it has going on, so I want to do something like that.


I love the game Overbold (in UFO 50) and want to make something like it. For those that haven't played it, it's kind of like Smash TV or Vampire Survivors with a press your luck element. Enemies come into the arena. Kill them all and you get prize money, which you use to buy upgrades. After 8 rounds you fight a boss. The twist is you decide how many enemy waves you fight each round, with more waves being worth more money. So it's a balancing act. Too risky and you're likely to die. Too safe and you might not be upgraded enough to deal with the boss in the final round. The whole game can be beaten in 10 minutes, but I put an hour in before I got my first win.

It won't be a direct clone, I'll be doing my own thing with it. But the general concept would be the same. Fight waves of enemies, buy upgrades, do it again.

The game is somewhat lite on assets. A rectangle arena and some enemies with a few frames of animation. Most of which I could easily use stock assets for. I've made a top down shooter with an upgrade system before so coding shouldn't be too much of an issue.

Sounds good.

 

[my penis is on fire]

that was the game I'm talking about, because he's the exact example you mentioned. just read all the cope here:

In all fairness, this reads less like a standard indie dev misjudging the costs of their project, and more like an industry ghoul finding out that you can't make a successful indie game with nothing but celebrity cameos and oldtroon journos like you can with AAA games.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Does there exist dev textures for sprite based games? We all know the orange textures made popular by Valve that have been copied since.

https://kenney.nl/assets/prototype-textures

https://opengameart.org/content/prototype-textures-pack

And I came across these greybox models for 3D games.

https://opengameart.org/content/free-3d-modular-low-poly-assets-for-prototyping

But nothing really for pixel art games. Not a major problem as I can use a stock asset pack, but it's strange there's nothing made for purpose.

In all fairness, this reads less like a standard indie dev misjudging the costs of their project, and more like an industry ghoul finding out that you can't make a successful indie game with nothing but celebrity cameos and oldtroon journos like you can with AAA games.

I'm guessing it's both. GamerGate was years before, so unless it was in the works for over 6 years, the writing should've been on the wall. It would be like starting a game now and hiring SBI. It could also be a tax grift, as I want to say there were some indie games that were just farms for grant money, but I can't think of them off the top of my head.

 

[ifxztykgdnfvmsdjhfbSD]

Does there exist dev textures for sprite based games? We all know the orange textures made popular by Valve that have been copied since.
https://kenney.nl/assets/prototype-textures https://opengameart.org/content/prototype-textures-pack
And I came across these greybox models for 3D games.
https://opengameart.org/content/free-3d-modular-low-poly-assets-for-prototyping
But nothing really for pixel art games. Not a major problem as I can use a stock asset pack, but it's strange there's nothing made for purpose.

How hard is it to just draw some orange rectangles or something like that?

I'm guessing it's both. GamerGate was years before, so unless it was in the works for over 6 years, the writing should've been on the wall. It would be like starting a game now and hiring SBI. It could also be a tax grift, as I want to say there were some indie games that were just farms for grant money, but I can't think of them off the top of my head.

The companies behind Dustborn and Goodbye Volcano High were both heavily taxpayer funded if I'm remembering correctly. I don't know if they were always just grifts or if someone actually cared about either of them but I hope the people of whatever northern European country and Canada got their money's worth.

 

[Judge Dredd]

How hard is it to just draw some orange rectangles or something like that?

It's not. But I wanted some basic graphics to get the initial coding done. I used a stock generic tile set. It would be nice if there was something dedicated, but I'll make do.

 

[Lukie]

It's not. But I wanted some basic graphics to get the initial coding done. I used a stock generic tile set. It would be nice if there was something dedicated, but I'll make do.

This sounds like a little project I could do during the quiet times at work.

I'm thinking gradient slopes, shores, water, nav path, solid, trigger, emitter, spawner, teleport, destructible, collectable.

Tell me what you think would be useful.

 

[Private Tag Reporter]

Interesting... I should check that out. Where did you find it? (The thread, I mean).

Found it here, Otterly was asking about how to draw and I found the suggestions on that thread pretty good. You can find the book at your local library.

 

[Jesse Nicholas Radin]

I've made bland JRPGs in older rpg maker engines and some simple games in python and c++. Usually baseball simulations.

 

[ZMOT]

Do it daily and in a year or so you'll be thanking yourself.

people need better art teachers. mine literally said "I could have you guys paint nothing but portraits for half a year, and afterwards you'd be damn good - but you'd hate every minute of it".
same dude who always pushed the importance of "being done". at some point stop and move on, not trying to eternally fix/improve everything. ironically that also works for coding or any other "creative" endeavor.

 

[Private Tag Reporter]

people need better art teachers

I'm not sure if it's a matter of needing just better teachers, but better social circles altogether. The decay into a low trust society and internet hobby spaces becoming infested with troons/pajeets/various other low IQ individuals is really lamentable. 15~20 years ago you could have Newgrounds, DeviantArt or even early Tumblr, make friends and find people with similar interests who would provide both feedback as well as the positive affirmation that you're doing something worth a damn.

Nowadays on the small i internet where clout is the only currency, it seems harder than ever to find a peer group of fellow creatives to learn from and mentor with.

Not sure what my point is besides that this thread feels like one of those great resources, and that no matter what you're making, to keep going. History is made by those who show up.

 

[Judge Dredd]

A podcast some of you might find interesting.

In short, talks about making games, along with the usual "state of the industry" doomposting. Some interesting stuff, like hating on modern engines like Unity, Unreal, and Godot, how it's impossible to hit a smooth frame rate on modern monitors, engine and software bloat, etc. Of interest to me (and my frustrations with Godot) is he talks about how engines are great at first, but when you reach a certain point in development the engine starts getting in the way. Another part I liked was talking about old games. Back in the day, most of the work was programing to get the game working. Nowadays most of the work is graphics to get games looking nice.

This comment was interesting too. Edited

Coming from a music background, gaming is going through a similar shift that music did in the 2000s into the 2010s. The thing I hear echoed the most is, back in the day it was 1 million fans for 1 band, but today it's 1 million bands for 1 fan. All you really need to survive as a small creator is around 1 thousand people who like your stuff and want to show you support, then you'll be able to do what you like. The concept of what is "successful" has shifted dramatically, and too many people are trying to chase an idea of success that's 10–20 years out of date at this point.

On a different note. I tinkered with that game a bit. Using stock tiles, and the character sprite from UFO50 for scale. I can share my progress here until I start adding original art. So far there's not much to see.

The arrow is just for facing, I've since added shooting, but is just white rectangles currently. Haven't decided on a colour palette yet. I have a few shortlisted, but even then I'm not sure.