5 ms·

It seems like they meant AAA-quality game, with a budget of $75k + 6-10 people

by vimota 11y ago

robotkilla 11y ago
I think you're correct... saying that you created a AAA title means that you can compete with major game studios... I think. However, in my opinion AAA doesn't apply to scope or budget but quality of experience. Super Meat Boy is one of the best games I've played in years and it doesn't come anywhere near the scope of say GTA 5 (which is also awesome). I don't think anyone calls SMB a triple-a title though... so I'd say wikipedia's definition is correct. So then, I think the real issue here is aiming to make a game that compete with major studios who have budgets of $50m and employ hundreds of specialized team members. These devs claim it was a passion project, but then they throw in the towel on the entire concept of running an indie studio after the negative reviews come in. I understand the bankruptcy move, but if I were the founder's shoes, I would move somewhere cheap, take a side job and keep making games on the side. If I still loved the Wolfie project, I would fix it for free and I would find a way to send my KS backers whatever I owe them. I would read every negative review of my game, try to bucket the feed back (something like: legit, semi-legit, ignore) and then fix the game. I would also print my favorite positive reviews and hang them up around the house for motivation. If I no longer believed in the game, I would build something new but smaller. 13 years is a long time to wash down the drain due to one failure. Currently I'm trying to make indie games along with my gilfriend. She has no formal 3d art training but has been teaching herself via the internet. I learned Unity and have been teaching myself c# / cg and all the other shit that goes with 3d game development (I come from a python / js background). We will most likely fail hard but I don't understand the concept of quitting when you got into something for fun in the first place. edit: it also sounds like these guys tried to build their own engine... or something. If they did, that was a bad idea. If they didn't, I don't understand why they had so many issues with collision detection. Haven't played the game though... its just odd to hear that they had major collision detection issues.
- maccard 11y ago
  Collision detection is a ball ache even when you use an off the shelf solution. There's still loads of problems and edge cases to handle. There's the bullet through paper problem, where fast moving bodies will skip through thin objects. There's scale issues when dealing with large bodies colliding with small bodies. There's floating point precision if you're too far from the origin, how you handle narrow things tag can get stuck in geometry. Writing a robust character controller is difficult too. Handling jumping and crouching are both full of collision nightmares.
  - robotkilla 11y ago
    I haven't made it this far yet apparently. Good to know what to expect.
    - toliman 11y ago
      Using Unity 4 / 5... Suffice to say, it is entirely powerful and possible to create incredible games. Ori and the blind forest, Hearthstone, and plenty of AA and indie games use unity, lots of kickstarter projects. To the chagrin of gamers, Steam has greenlit several terrible unity based games, that only use free/cheap unity store assets, namely Airplane (?) and DayZ (sic) , which are quite infamously reviewed by Jim sterling on YouTube. Enough to cloud the market for games created by any future indie dev. Advice is plentiful, though you do have a lack of great sources to ask questions. IMO, devs starting with unity are almost drowned in advanced features to get started from concept to prototype. Easy to learn, hard to master, easier to edit store bought prefabs than to DIY. They can become a crutch very quickly. The unity store can be a boon and a roadblock to progress, because it doesn't always help. Starting out, it won't give you the best direction or how to code, but it will take you forward to developing a playable prototype. Sometimes within hours of starting a new project. If you have a team, unity is going to be the source of frequent anguish, but it is still more flexible than it ever was. the biggest hassle will more likely to be assets, and far down the road, dealing with rigid bodies, collision, raycasthit, and the PhysX implementation of mesh and mass collision. For most devs, the initial unity workload will be around 70-80% asset creation to 20% game coding, and about 290% of the budgeted time, debugging. A good idea is to build a prototype, get the mechanics working while the art is being developed. Once the code is in place, debug/playtesting is critical to developing assets that then can be designed, built as mesh, and imported within the prototype in a few seconds. Character controllers are generally easy, more dynamic mechanim is able to avoid some pitfalls of the capsule collision system, and there are ways to add crouch/jump use cases with pathfinding and AI,(which is a good bit of work.) Unity does excel at getting a walking mesh going, using mechanim to blend animation and mesh collision, and 3d art assets designed in Maya or 3dsmax, etc. When I started with unity in 2012, it took forever to even think about how to build a menu system, until NGUI. It's improved drastically since the store was added.

It seems like they meant AAA-quality game, with a budget of $75k + 6-10 people

by vimota 11y ago

It seems like they meant AAA-quality game, with a budget of $75k + 6-10 people

I think you're correct... saying that you created a AAA title means that you can compete with major game studios... I think. However, in my opinion AAA doesn't apply to scope or budget but quality of experience. Super Meat Boy is one of the best games I've played in years and it doesn't come anywhere near the scope of say GTA 5 (which is also awesome). I don't think anyone calls SMB a triple-a title though... so I'd say wikipedia's definition is correct. So then, I think the real issue here is aiming to make a game that compete with major studios who have budgets of $50m and employ hundreds of specialized team members. These devs claim it was a passion project, but then they throw in the towel on the entire concept of running an indie studio after the negative reviews come in. I understand the bankruptcy move, but if I were the founder's shoes, I would move somewhere cheap, take a side job and keep making games on the side. If I still loved the Wolfie project, I would fix it for free and I would find a way to send my KS backers whatever I owe them. I would read every negative review of my game, try to bucket the feed back (something like: legit, semi-legit, ignore) and then fix the game. I would also print my favorite positive reviews and hang them up around the house for motivation. If I no longer believed in the game, I would build something new but smaller. 13 years is a long time to wash down the drain due to one failure. Currently I'm trying to make indie games along with my gilfriend. She has no formal 3d art training but has been teaching herself via the internet. I learned Unity and have been teaching myself c# / cg and all the other shit that goes with 3d game development (I come from a python / js background). We will most likely fail hard but I don't understand the concept of quitting when you got into something for fun in the first place. edit: it also sounds like these guys tried to build their own engine... or something. If they did, that was a bad idea. If they didn't, I don't understand why they had so many issues with collision detection. Haven't played the game though... its just odd to hear that they had major collision detection issues.

maccard 11y ago
Collision detection is a ball ache even when you use an off the shelf solution. There's still loads of problems and edge cases to handle. There's the bullet through paper problem, where fast moving bodies will skip through thin objects. There's scale issues when dealing with large bodies colliding with small bodies. There's floating point precision if you're too far from the origin, how you handle narrow things tag can get stuck in geometry. Writing a robust character controller is difficult too. Handling jumping and crouching are both full of collision nightmares.
- robotkilla 11y ago
  I haven't made it this far yet apparently. Good to know what to expect.
  - toliman 11y ago
    Using Unity 4 / 5... Suffice to say, it is entirely powerful and possible to create incredible games. Ori and the blind forest, Hearthstone, and plenty of AA and indie games use unity, lots of kickstarter projects. To the chagrin of gamers, Steam has greenlit several terrible unity based games, that only use free/cheap unity store assets, namely Airplane (?) and DayZ (sic) , which are quite infamously reviewed by Jim sterling on YouTube. Enough to cloud the market for games created by any future indie dev. Advice is plentiful, though you do have a lack of great sources to ask questions. IMO, devs starting with unity are almost drowned in advanced features to get started from concept to prototype. Easy to learn, hard to master, easier to edit store bought prefabs than to DIY. They can become a crutch very quickly. The unity store can be a boon and a roadblock to progress, because it doesn't always help. Starting out, it won't give you the best direction or how to code, but it will take you forward to developing a playable prototype. Sometimes within hours of starting a new project. If you have a team, unity is going to be the source of frequent anguish, but it is still more flexible than it ever was. the biggest hassle will more likely to be assets, and far down the road, dealing with rigid bodies, collision, raycasthit, and the PhysX implementation of mesh and mass collision. For most devs, the initial unity workload will be around 70-80% asset creation to 20% game coding, and about 290% of the budgeted time, debugging. A good idea is to build a prototype, get the mechanics working while the art is being developed. Once the code is in place, debug/playtesting is critical to developing assets that then can be designed, built as mesh, and imported within the prototype in a few seconds. Character controllers are generally easy, more dynamic mechanim is able to avoid some pitfalls of the capsule collision system, and there are ways to add crouch/jump use cases with pathfinding and AI,(which is a good bit of work.) Unity does excel at getting a walking mesh going, using mechanim to blend animation and mesh collision, and 3d art assets designed in Maya or 3dsmax, etc. When I started with unity in 2012, it took forever to even think about how to build a menu system, until NGUI. It's improved drastically since the store was added.