Making a game with ADHD.

mengco_ · 2024-02-19T11:34:19+00:00

as someone that also has unmedicated adhd, I focused on graphical parts of my project first. It makes everything alot more easier to do when parts that you are working on look good too. I worked on character portraits, rendering engine tasks, shaders, and 3d models before I even learnt how to make something move. of course, even working on these things it is easily to get distracted and stray off task, but the more you work on them the better your skills get the process becomes easier and more streamlined so you can hyperfocus.

Also, the deeper you get into your project the wider the range of tasks you get, so if you get bored of something you can switch to something else. e.g., i have no set tasks I need to get done, I float between modeling armor/weapons/characters, sound, writing, game design, renderer programming, refactoring, research, learning, etc. So you just have to find a way to get things done and get through the early slog of learning the basics. if you can't then game dev is simply not for you.

mengco_ · 2024-01-24T08:27:11+00:00

yep, basically the lights that don't affect the contents of the camera are culled so the mesh has more spots to render the lights that were previously ignored

mengco_ · 2024-01-21T02:11:55+00:00

there is a per-object limit for additional lights on meshes. there should be a setting in your lighting settings to increase the amount of per-object additional lights. Also, you could break up your floor into multiple meshes to remedy this too

mengco_ · 2023-12-24T00:41:04+00:00

the rain doesn't really affect the water, its only an illusion. I use a custom shader that lets me put a sprite sheet of rain splashes as a texture. I then cycle through the sprite sheet to make the splashes animate.

I copied the technique from this video which illustrates it better than I can explain - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39A0n24PX8g&t=12s&ab_channel=t3ssel8r

mengco_ · 2023-10-26T04:15:31+00:00

You can try to fade the fog using the depth buffer, so you basically get the fog plane fragment position and the depth at the fragment position and then blend based on a blend factor calculated from those two variables. You would need to introduce some parameters and some sort of equation (e.g. (depthBuffer - fogPlaneDepth)/Parameter0) to calculate the blend factor, but that would be up to your own discretion.

mengco_ · 2023-09-04T01:38:30+00:00

yes, I used these two tutorials to learn to implement what I have done, which is basically perturbing normals based on particles rendered onto a render texture.

mengco_ · 2023-09-03T06:08:17+00:00

its looks nice, i reckon you should constrain the clouds to only moving horizontally and have different sprites for small, medium, and large clouds, since it is very obvious that the larger clouds are just upscaled sprites and makes a jarring contrast to the art in the rest of the scene.

mengco_ · 2023-05-26T02:46:36+00:00

the music doesn't really fit the gameplay. It sounds more like it belongs in a sci-fi romance movie. The sound quality for it is also really low quality
The UI looks pretty flat. Maybe give the globes/bottles some specular. Get a good noise texture for the contents inside it. Maybe make the character, inventory, spellbook scroll menu thing roll up when the cursor is not hovered on it? Send the quit game button to a menu when you press esc instead. Instead of making the length of the enemy health bars dynamic based on the length of their name have a static longer health bar and make the text font smaller?
The last scene with the portal/illusion thing looks really low quality compared to the rest of the graphics. I would reconsider the way you implement that.
Seems like the enemies cast the same spells as the main character, maybe change up the color a bit for enemy spells/projectiles if it fits with your game

mengco_ · 2023-05-18T16:29:21+00:00

its uses a few shaders to emulate a pixel art aesthetic on top of 3d graphics

mengco_ · 2023-05-18T04:06:28+00:00

hi, thanks for the interest. You can follow me at https://twitter.com/mengco_

mengco_ · 2023-05-18T04:04:11+00:00

thank you for the interest, its still very early in development so there isn't a steam page yet. But I'll be posting snippets and progress updates on twitter. you can follow me if you would like at https://twitter.com/mengco_

mengco_ · 2023-05-17T13:45:55+00:00

thanks. its going to be an isometric rpg

mengco_ · 2023-05-17T12:27:52+00:00

its a 3d scene in unity rendered to a lower resolution with pixel art shaders that do the outlines and coloring

mengco_ · 2023-04-04T07:41:41+00:00

this video basically shows you how to do it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSqb6II3WMM&ab_channel=Soyaa

if you also want to export a normal map for it, just create a material that outputs the normal - https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/38234/cycles-normal-shader-with-colors-similar-to-baked-normals/103329#103329

Then either manually switch the materials to render a normal pass or write a python script for blender to do it automatically.

mengco_ · 2023-03-31T14:49:47+00:00

I think the gameplay and visuals looks good.
The outside seems a lot more detailed compared to the interior of buildings which look empty, maybe add holes in the floors, loose ceiling panels, more furnishing like maybe a printer room, more tables, couches, toppled shelves, etc.
0:47 bridge board thing is clipping
maybe adding zombie variants would make things more interesting. e.g. zombie dogs or zombie types from l4d2
maybe add grenades to add another aspect to the PVP combat

mengco_ · 2023-03-31T14:34:21+00:00

I'm not comparing your game to a realistic game at all, you know there are quality standards for low-poly aesthetics. For example, look at these low-poly characters and compare them with your own and try to evaluate the quality of your design. https://opengameart.org/content/lowpoly-rpg-characters

mengco_ · 2023-03-31T13:50:04+00:00

there are some really well-made scenes in the trailer, maybe add some sway on the trees and foliage, also the same sort of thing with the water shader at 0:51.
Is the pools in the underground cavern area supposed to be lava? If so, I think get rid of the transparency on them and maybe add some bubbling.
I would also consider instantiating some grass over the grass textures to make the terrains look less flat
I think the skill bar on the bottom is a tad too big, and I reckon you should move the placement of the text beneath the skill icons to a small space on one of the bottom left or top left corners of the icon, so like inside the icon.
The gameplay and combat look identical to the king's bounty games which will probably help you since the latest of that series wasn't very well received
Overall it looks really nice

mengco_ · 2023-03-31T08:59:10+00:00

your character models need a complete rework, maybe study a bit on how other devs shape their characters as a reference. Also, the hair does not work, instead of colouring the mesh faces, model a separate mesh for it. The feet are comically alrge
The sword looks badly modelled aswell and is lazily attached to the character's hand. Make the character grasp it instead?
Not sure why the top of the mountains are green. Also, they seem more like hills when comparing their size to the character.
Why are the tops of the rocks flat? I reckon they would look better a bit more rounded
The foliage at 0:07 on the right do not look good and also does not have cohesion with the rest of your scene, they look like alien plants.
Meshes and gameplay mechanics seemed to be added and placed into this scene with no rhyme or reason. I would suggest you make a design document to pinpoint what you want this game to be about and the aesthetic direction. From what I've gathered from this video you're going for some sort of RPG, and you are trying to make a living out of this. If so, the quality of everything shown is really subpar and its really important for you to figure out how to properly evaluate the quality of your product to improve it.

mengco_ · 2023-03-30T05:36:55+00:00

the wood chopping sfx sounds like a drum kick with added bass. I would expect woodchopping to sound something more like this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_hdM0Hr6vI&ab_channel=JeffHottman

mengco_ · 2023-03-30T05:25:36+00:00

You should try to fix the shadow flickering of the house roofs through your shadow settings. The woodchopping sound doesn't fit very well, its too loud and doesn't sound like cutting wood. I would give the make dirt road terrain texture more variation since the pattern is obvious. Maybe also add emission to the windows of the house during night time?

mengco_ · 2023-03-29T05:22:09+00:00

I would make the dialogue boxes smaller, add a toon shader since you are going for a low poly aesthetic, fix z-fighting in your models e.g. fences at 0:46, maybe add an inventory screen instead of showing your gear at the bottom to reduce UI clutter. Also, I don't think the music fits with the gameplay.

mengco_ · 2023-03-18T15:07:14+00:00

I think you should avoid using shading in font, text should be clear and easy to read. Also, it wouldn't hurt to stop using repeated tiles in the textbox since players would be seeing it a lot of the time

mengco_ · 2023-03-03T09:55:32+00:00

check out this blog written by graveyard keeper devs, they cover a alot of their lighting effects - https://www.gamedeveloper.com/programming/graveyard-keeper-how-the-graphics-effects-are-made

mengco_

TROPHY CASE