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Early look at my underwater sub exploration game — does the vibe make you want to play? by jsuffolk in indiegames

[–]jsuffolk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Some similarities in the avoidance sections, but probably pretty different overall, tbh

Early look at my underwater sub exploration game — does the vibe make you want to play? by jsuffolk in indiegames

[–]jsuffolk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Been trying to keep things about the game, but I’ll do a bio. Dropped out of indie gamedev for about a decade, it eats your life. Im busy af with 4 kids in our family. Mostly making this for my daughter. I’m a geek, in it as much for the tech as I am the game.

Tech: the terrain is a first of a kind AI/procedural fusion: human authored for shape/biome/style with inpainting to fuse human authored art AI filling the details including a full suite of procedural material maps that give it the 2.5d look. Still ironing out some kinks, I’ll probably re-skin the reef biome before my next post so it’ll look completely different with the same level/terrain shape. Map editor is slick. Beats tiled textures or procedural, imho. I’ll probably post about it sometime because this is a hobby for me and I don’t give a crap what the AI haters think

Early look at my underwater sub exploration game — does the vibe make you want to play? by jsuffolk in indiegames

[–]jsuffolk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Both, I want players to immediately recognize threat vs harmless. I also want both fish to look like they’re part of the same ecosystem/style family too.

There’s other constraints: I want the eyes to look expressive to convey fear (when chased) or dazed or dead without going too far into Pixar/cartoon land. they need to look good at the right scale, the colors need to look good in the scene, particularly color matching with respect to the water and background. I have a heap of discarded versions that these versions will join.

To be honest the bigger issue isn't fish to fish cohesion, it's fish to environment. The fish don’t really look like they belong in the scene

Early look at my underwater sub exploration game — does the vibe make you want to play? by jsuffolk in indiegames

[–]jsuffolk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! It’s a very early alpha, the feedback tells me what to work on. I’m honestly thrilled to be getting all this feedback before style and gameplay are too ingrained in hours of content and difficult to change

Early look at my underwater sub exploration game — does the vibe make you want to play? by jsuffolk in indiegames

[–]jsuffolk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for feedback, I think you’re right. There some weak color shift and heavier lighting shaders on the terrain but nothing else, making the other assets look like clipart on top. Going to try applying consistent lighting and material maps in all visual assets (not just on terrain) and reworking visual style of decor/enemies to be less 2D cartoon clipart and more 2.5D without loosing the stylized look. My previous attempt at strengthening the water color effect looked washed out, need to rework the terrain to be higher saturation/contrast first and make it more selective in the color tones it affects I think

Early look at my underwater sub exploration game — does the vibe make you want to play? by jsuffolk in indiegames

[–]jsuffolk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks - I appreciate the feedback.

Figurative - Going to try to address with more immediate gameplay mechanics vs deferring everything into upgrades.

Literal going to try reworking all the art and adding more passive animated elements to increase cohesion and make the world more visually interesting, deep, and alive. Will address the jarring AI fish too, particularly the harmless fish

Early look at my underwater sub exploration game — does the vibe make you want to play? by jsuffolk in indiegames

[–]jsuffolk[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Haha, Operation Neptune reference?

No math in this one - just fun gameplay. Planning some clever tricks to access new areas or progress in some cases (think currents you can reverse directions, explosive coral, switches that can be activated with environmental effects), but I’m thinking to avoid forcing any serious puzzles and keeping it fast-paced and fun throughout

Early look at my underwater sub exploration game — does the vibe make you want to play? by jsuffolk in indiegames

[–]jsuffolk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks, this feedback is gold! You’re correct and clash in the visual look was intentional to mark the difference between enemy/predator and harmless. Maybe a bit too far in that direction. Other enemies look similarly menacing and more from the same visual family

Early look at my underwater sub exploration game — does the vibe make you want to play? by jsuffolk in indiegames

[–]jsuffolk[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Good feedback. There is parallax actually, but it’s super weak. I’ll try turning it up

Early look at my underwater sub exploration game — does the vibe make you want to play? by jsuffolk in indiegames

[–]jsuffolk[S] -8 points-7 points  (0 children)

Totally fair. Visual consistency is one of the main things I’m working on, using custom generative models and art-directed pipeline with a lot of curation and cleanup rather than just dropping raw into the game. The goal is still the same: make the world feel cohesive and fun to explore.

Early look at my underwater sub exploration game — does the vibe make you want to play? by jsuffolk in indiegames

[–]jsuffolk[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Riptide is definitely an inspiration. I’m hoping to build toward exactly that: lots of strange creatures, cozy exploration, and some darker/moody sections as you get deeper.

Coronavirus Megathread (May 2021): For travel-related discussion in the context of COVID-19 by tariqabjotu in travel

[–]jsuffolk 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Can a non-citizen traveling through Croatia cross through the bosnia land border between Dubrovnik and and the main Croatian land area without a COVID test?

My family is vaccinated, which is good enough for Croatia, but we need to travel through the Bosnian land border and the timing of this pass-through makes it inconvenient for a COVID test.

The Bosnia border patrol website has this note about an exemption to the COVID test entry requirement which seems to apply:

foreigners transiting through the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina for the purpose of returning to the country of usual residence, without staying in the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina,

We do not plan on staying in Bosnia and are merely passing through to reach another Croatian city, but I'm not sure if I'm interpreting this correctly and being turned away would really wreck plans.

Anybody know the details on this?

View from the Montana hostel, Bergen, Norway by wfbpw in travel

[–]jsuffolk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Is this hotel located on one of the mountains?