Ah I appreciate it. haha, I think I'm just rambling out loud while I tinker with things but I for real appreciate it! haha.

So I've tried using World and Local Space, and both looked liked ass, but I think a Custom Simulation Space linked to the camera itself, -might- work. But in addition to a suitable missile animation, I need to set up a system to modulate the trail and the tail end needs to get off-screen fast.

I really need to come up with a better missile trail system. What I have is passable right now, but it's just not quite where it should be with how we have things moving through the environment. I'm working on a few ideas for improvements though.

hey thanks so much!

VISEGUNNE on Steam VISEGUNNE is a single-player shoot 'em up featuring explosive, narrative-driven missions, a vast arsenal of weapons, and over-the-top visual effects. Pilot a soul-powered combat mech as you protect th...

And if you're into mech based narrative shoot 'em up, you can wishlist VISEGUNNE here:
store.steampowered.com/app/2882040/...

This enemy's blowing up pretty good in these tests! How it crashes depends on what you take out. I hand animated the all interactions here to guarantee the pieces go where I want them to (so no physics).
#indiedev #pixelart #gamedev #shmup #VISEGUNNE

hey thanks. Hand-drawn cel animation is my inspiration, like all day, haha. For smoke, using only 2 colors (like a cel, highlight+shadow) changed my life. When they're stacked, you can't tell where one texture begins or ends, so it feels complex even though it's just basic particles being particles.

A damaged chunk of a sci-fi battleship with damage drawn in using the technique described above.

In-game shot of the destroyed sprite with improved detailing and fx added in.

And here's a sprite from the nose of a battleship I posted a couple weeks ago w/ extra details (internals, outer panels, bullet holes, paint scuffs). It feels more complicated than it really is. And once you throw on some fire and smoke FX, it looks really cool in-game.

The best workflow I've found for creating destroyed machinery is to kitbash all the destroyed internals, leave plenty of empty space, then just just erase the outer body away. It's fun, too. Just needs a final detailing pass.
#gamedev #pixelart #indiedev #shmup

And to bookend this, I think what makes VISEGUNNE's dialogue system different from other games isn't earning rapport points or unlocking new scenes, but that information travels. The game isn't tracking how much you like someone, it's tracking what you know, and who knows you know it.

And again, it's all optional, but the search for an enlightened point of view is central to the game's theme. You're a team on an impossible mission, stuck in an entrenched political situation, trying to make sense of multiple agendas and conspiracies.

A good example of this is when a character tells you hearsay. There's are mysteries, rumors are spreading, and its left to the player to either accept it as true or find out what's really going on, which has implications to the wider story. Sorry I'm being so vague to avoid spoilers.

What's cool about it is that interactions feels natural and reactive to your experience. The main character learns things, and he'll use that info to argue for what he's learned. This could be defending a teammate from an accusation or even quietly confirming a suspicion.

It's not a branching storyline per se, the main events are linear, but how you interact with people diverges quite extensively based on the breadth of your relationships. How our characters make sense of it all leads to a new understanding or context of those events.

The narrative in VISEGUNNE is super interconnected and I wanted share how it works. If the main character talks to his squad between missions, the game is highly reactive to what you've learned & experienced.

Here's what my doc looks like to track it all, with all the links.

haha

DLSS 5 is pure hubris to me. The sheer premise of going to an artwork, made by an artist with intent, and you'll slather AI over it to "improve" it, is in its very premise insulting. Where does it end? I guess we can fix Van Gogh and Monet next.

Congrats on the release!!

Had to rewire a few animation scripts to make them easier to trigger from dialogue. But to keep my spirits up I gave myself permission for precisely one new frame of animation for a cigarette tap on this guy. Kinda lovin the idgaf energy.
#pixelart #indiedev #VISEGUNNE #gamedev

I'm at the point where I think the inclination to classify games into strict, narrow genre "orthodoxy" is hurting game discourse. It's fine in passing probably, but it often turns into mindless group-think that robs audiences of their own thoughts. Games are designed with unique goals and aims.

My old ass version of FLStudio is like ~10 years old. I want to upgrade it but I also don't want to risk breaking some weird VST configuration. I do need to investigate migration to a new machine one day, though.

So in our first stage, I've tried to have the music -mostly- sync up with the in-game action, but I forgot I added a new enemy battleship sequence and it messed up the timing, so I'm trying to add 35 seconds to it... somehow... without messing up the ending. Looping tracks are so much easier.

And I wholeheartedly believe my own accumulated imperfections make my art and music interesting, tangible, and meaningful. It took my whole lifetime to reach that conclusion. But when I consider how "perfect" AI art/music seems, or how blandly corporate its writing is, I'm glad to have rough edges.

And that imperfect process is what makes any project have a soul that people give a damn about, rough edges and all. It's an expression of your lived experience. In my case, to reproduce it with a machine would be to accept my lifetime of accumulated imperfection. Good luck living that ChatGPT.

I mean, shit, the number of times I face limitation when writing dialogue, having anxiety, wondering if VISEGUNNE will succeed? Did I animate this character well enough? Do we need an NPC there? Do we even need NPCs?! And it's my imperfect humanity that tries to compensate and smush it all together.

The project I'm working on is what it is because of the sleepless nights, the planning, the sweating over 1 pixel's position, the frustration at picking a DX7 bass sample to make my music sound funkier, or when I just said this part of the piece is good enough and moving on to the next task.

They say perfectionism is a killer and it's true. It's not to say quality standards don't matter, but I've started to reconsider the idea of more fully embracing the art I make and just... letting it be. I think there's a kind of grace (and utility) in letting yourself authentically express "you."

And speaking for myself, I'm a perfectionist, not because my art is perfect (hell, far from it!), but I want my art to be as good as it can. If you've followed VISEGUNNE's development for any stretch, I can be a bit obsessive over some aspects. But I'm starting to learn perfection ain't that great.

Now that AI generated art and music are showing up everywhere, I've personally begun to kind of embrace how human made art has very intangible but very perceptible rough edges, that you can't see but you that can feel. That make the end product tangible, raw, and real. AI can't replicate that yet.

I don't want to be someone that says hardship makes things valuable, but I think there's a kind of grit that creates tangibility in the products we consume. Vapid, corporate, bubble-gum pop culture has existed well before AI's genesis, but it does feel like we've turned on a faucet to pump it out.