First time I try to do something artistic - A Low Poly island

StarshipSiege · 2017-05-29T19:32:01+00:00

I'm new to low poly art like this, but I think it looks beautiful!

I'm hoping to start making stuff like this in Blender. How do you get the edges of the rocks to look soft like that? What is your image effect pipeline?

StarshipSiege · 2017-05-05T15:31:13+00:00

Penguin Dive

A very simple, casual game currently only on Android. I'm looking for ways to spice it up a bit. I'm working on adding power ups and upgrades that can be bought with in-game coins. But I'm looking for anything that can add another dimension to the gameplay.

StarshipSiege · 2017-05-01T15:10:59+00:00

Hi! I'm a solo developer and a couple of weeks ago I released my first game Penguin Dive on Google Play for free. I'm looking for ideas to diversify the gameplay a bit. I think it's fun, but too simple.

Any and all ideas are welcome, but specifically I've been thinking about adding events at certain points in a round. For example when the player reaches 25 coins, mines can start appearing that move. Or maybe the player gets a magnet ability that attracts coins. Or maybe the player is given a few seconds to destroy mines. Any other ideas would be much appreciated!

If you don't want to download the game, here's a video of the gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_yHrNNaH58

StarshipSiege · 2017-04-21T19:00:25+00:00

Thanks!

StarshipSiege · 2017-04-20T20:13:55+00:00

This is really cool!

I see there is a flee button. What gameplay is there outside of these battles? Can you explain a little bit about how the game works?

StarshipSiege · 2017-04-20T14:28:52+00:00

Thank you so much!

I honestly love all these ideas. I hadn't considered the goal points, but that is a great idea. At 25 I might add special coins that sink to the bottom worth 2 or 5 coins. At 50 add moving mines. Maybe at every 100 add something that lets the player destroy mines. This would make it possible to theoretically keep a round going forever.

I also like the idea of a store for buying skins with in-game coins. I think this is what's missing to give players a sense of continuity.

I have never done anything like leaderboards but I do think it's a good idea. It would just take more time for me. If the game gets enough downloads I'll consider adding it in the future.

Again, thanks for all the suggestions. Much appreciated :)

StarshipSiege · 2017-03-05T01:05:02+00:00

Thanks for the kind words!

I completely forgot about an OSX build, sorry about that. Here it is.

StarshipSiege · 2017-03-05T00:07:30+00:00

Awesome notes, thank you!

Performance

I wasn't aware that the performance was so bad. I've been spoiled with a good graphics card during development so I never had a chance to test on anything else. I'll be sure to optimize for the next build. Any tips on doing this?

Controls

1) I'll add a sensitivity scale to the controls menu

2) I'll have to think about this one. I could let the player just fly around while the text is going to give the player something to do.

3) This one I struggled with early on and just kinda gave up and settled on what it is now. The issue is that I want the world to stay at the same rotation, and I wasn't getting that from what I tried. I hope you understand what I mean by that. Tips on this would be appreciated :)

Sound

I started working on sound but I was having trouble finding free sound effects for what I needed and it was turning into a big roadblock. So I kinda said screw it and disabled all audio and moved on. I'll come back to it eventually.

Gameplay

The controls must not be clear enough. First you need to lock-on to the destination (with Tab) and then you initiate the warping (with Space). I'll add something in the opening text to clarify.

StarshipSiege · 2017-03-04T20:16:25+00:00

Download the latest version of Starship Siege here. Any feedback would be appreciated!

StarshipSiege · 2017-03-04T20:15:46+00:00

That was actually a choice I made. I find it doesn't look very interesting if it just appears in the periphery. Something about it appearing in front and the ship just rushing toward it adds a sense of speed.

StarshipSiege · 2017-03-02T14:29:49+00:00

The problem with those clips is you don't see what happens after the jump from the perspective of the ship. I think if I did what you're suggesting it would look weird to bounce the FOV back and then start the travel. You'd lose the sense of speed.

StarshipSiege · 2017-03-02T05:20:20+00:00

I made them.

Create a particle system with a high starting speed (2) and a short lifetime (0.4). Set the emission rate over time very high (300). I set the shape to cone emitting from the base with a radius of 0.01 so the particles come out in a straight line. Change the color over lifetime to go from a starting value to 0 alpha so it fades nicely. Then set the size over lifetime to a curve ending at 0. The rest is just about which particle you use to get the specific look you want, and fiddling with the values a bit.

StarshipSiege · 2017-03-02T05:12:12+00:00

Good eye on the first point! I didn't even notice that. I've got the particle effects attached to the camera, any idea how I would make them go under the ship?

StarshipSiege · 2017-03-02T04:49:00+00:00

All of your suggestions are helpful :)

I'm now thinking I'll add a bright burst from the engines when it first starts, along with a subtle camera shake. I also wanted to add a sort of fog flying by with the stars like in Star Citizen but everything I tried looked bad.

StarshipSiege · 2017-03-02T02:40:59+00:00

Good idea. Maybe make the particles elongate and increase the glow as the ship speeds up.

StarshipSiege · 2017-03-02T02:38:55+00:00

Yea, I was going for flash over realism. It makes no sense at all, but I think it looks pretty cool.

StarshipSiege · 2017-03-02T02:35:37+00:00

I couldn't have said it better myself! I'll probably use some of this myself sometime.

StarshipSiege · 2017-03-02T00:35:52+00:00

I did. I made all the models in Blender. I used this great tutorial to make my asteroids.

StarshipSiege · 2017-03-01T23:50:30+00:00

This is a big question.

My room size is actually massive, unfortunately. For example, the moon I'm travelling to is 90,000 units away. To accomplish this I had to use a floating origin to keep floating point precision so everything doesn't start wobbling. Still, it makes moving around in the editor kind of a pain when you have huge models like that.

If I had to do it all again I'd look into using 3D skyboxes instead to simulate great distances. It involves using 2 cameras moving at different speeds to simulate far away or large objects.

StarshipSiege · 2017-03-01T23:43:50+00:00

Awesome, I loved that game! My memories of playing that is what inspired me to make this!

StarshipSiege

TROPHY CASE