Strangers in a Strange Land - Released

  • #20, by brut69Monday, 03. July 2017, 18:56 7 years ago
    Steam replied. They did not like my EULA so I have to make changes to it and re-submit it , plus I had the game set as Early Access and they said that I can't do that just yet.
    Luckily for me my godfather is a lawyer so he is helping me fix the EULA...
    News again in 2-3 business days


    Early Access is more for games you want to release immediately in current state for beta testing while still in development. Mostly multiplayer games made by indie devs release games in that state & it's rarely very pretty. Not possible to release in development games with VS as the save files would be void more or less each time you push a new update.
    Actually that is what I thought too , since the game was (not anymore) in Beta when I first posted it 10 days ago.
    Their remark was that "Early Access" are for games that the consumers can have an effect on the game. Since my game outline is pretty much done , then it does not qualify as "Early Access" but as "Coming Soon" release. 
    I fixed that part and resubmitted. I am also done with the gameplay trailer , posting it there first so it will be on the store and shortly after I will post it here on via youtube

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  • #21, by brut69Monday, 03. July 2017, 19:10 7 years ago
    I have a work around that btw :
    If you set 100 conditions as false at the first version of the game , then all you have to do is to use those as you go along. This way , the save will include those conditions so they won't "break" the game incase you use them later on in an update.

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  • #22, by afrlmeMonday, 03. July 2017, 19:10 7 years ago
    Yep. i.e: Blackwake. DayZ. The Long Dark. PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. etc. Majority of these games are multiplayer or co-op based or first person survival games.

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  • #23, by brut69Monday, 03. July 2017, 21:21 7 years ago
    Added the Gameplay Trailer if you guys wanna check it out. It's on the initial post

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  • #24, by sebastianTuesday, 04. July 2017, 00:50 7 years ago
    Here some tips i can give you by analysing your showed images/trailer:

    • You should definitely overwork the inventory bar at the top of the screen. It looks a bit messy and just weird/distracting with this background image.
    • Also all the showed rooms and scenes are quite empty ( maybe because of the current early state of the game ). You should put more objects in them. Everything seems so empty ( cleanest kitchen in the world grin ). Your cartoon game you presented a while back is way more better in creating a more believable game -even if was still freaky.
    • For the walk animation: It should start with the legs closed and not fully spreaded. Currently it looks weird when the main char starts walking.
    • The character in your trailer seem to float because the shadow is placed way below their feet.
    • Its hard to make ground areas like the grass in your trailer look believable because its still a flat texture where the blades of grass doesn't stick out and overlay e.g. the feed of a moving character. In 2D "non 3D rendered" games this is not that much obvisous but still present. Where 3D comes in place it stands much more out... You could improve it a bit by adding blades of grass at least in front of the background/static objects like the white wood porch or some places in the forest scene. That should improve the flat looking grass a bit.
    • bewbs :3


    Also some overall opinion:

    These adult games seem to service mostly an audience which may don't look as much on the quality of graphics and how the overall game looks in a technical way. 

    Independantly from the genre these (moving) 3D chars in a 3D-rendered 2D scene doesn't look that good at all. The animations will look clunky when changing direction or just the animation because there are no in-between-frames.
    This is clearly a matter of the engine you are using. VS is maybe good regarding P&C, but is not that well in putting all these (well designed) 3D objects together and blend them in in a believable way right now unless putting much affort and tinkering in it. It's still a 2D engine with its limited rules of a 2D world.

    The lighting will only affect a character completely and the shadows of the chars are sometimes not the same quality/directions like the shadows in the 2D background. And I will not start talking about dynamic light and shadows which are quite not present in VS. 
    All in all these kind of games look like some enhanced version of these fmv games from the 90s -just with 3D chars and a higher resolution: mostly cheesy ^_^. 


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  • #25, by brut69Tuesday, 04. July 2017, 02:45 7 years ago
    Here some tips i can give you by analysing your showed images/trailer:

    • You should definitely overwork the inventory bar at the top of the screen. It looks a bit messy and just weird/distracting with this background image.
    • Also all the showed rooms and scenes are quite empty ( maybe because of the current early state of the game ). You should put more objects in them. Everything seems so empty ( cleanest kitchen in the world grin ). Your cartoon game you presented a while back is way more better in creating a more believable game -even if was still freaky.
    • For the walk animation: It should start with the legs closed and not fully spreaded. Currently it looks weird when the main char starts walking.
    • The character in your trailer seem to float because the shadow is placed way below their feet.
    • Its hard to make ground areas like the grass in your trailer look believable because its still a flat texture where the blades of grass doesn't stick out and overlay e.g. the feed of a moving character. In 2D "non 3D rendered" games this is not that much obvisous but still present. Where 3D comes in place it stands much more out... You could improve it a bit by adding blades of grass at least in front of the background/static objects like the white wood porch or some places in the forest scene. That should improve the flat looking grass a bit.
    • bewbs :3


    Also some overall opinion:

    These adult games seem to service mostly an audience which may don't look as much on the quality of graphics and how the overall game looks in a technical way. 

    Independantly from the genre these (moving) 3D chars in a 3D-rendered 2D scene doesn't look that good at all. The animations will look clunky when changing direction or just the animation because there are no in-between-frames.
    This is clearly a matter of the engine you are using. VS is maybe good regarding P&C, but is not that well in putting all these (well designed) 3D objects together and blend them in in a believable way right now unless putting much affort and tinkering in it. It's still a 2D engine with its limited rules of a 2D world.

    The lighting will only affect a character completely and the shadows of the chars are sometimes not the same quality/directions like the shadows in the 2D background. And I will not start talking about dynamic light and shadows which are quite not present in VS. 
    All in all these kind of games look like some enhanced version of these fmv games from the 90s -just with 3D chars and a higher resolution: mostly cheesy ^_^. 



    Thank you for your feedback. I really appreciate honest ones ^^

    I made the inventory dissapear when pressing the Space bar so it won't be in the way and I quite like it so I prefer not to change it
    The rooms do need a make-over but I am contemplating if I should do it or not since supposedly the heroes just moved into the house since it is freshly bought. It won't look as "new" if the house has a dirty kitchen per say but I will add more things in it
    Thanks on the tip for the walking. I was doing it "fully spreaded" like you said so I will change it to standing-still and see if it will look better. This should also fix the shadow thingy
    I added some blades of grass on other locations (not in the ones in the trailer) , I guess I can add some more ^^ on the others as well


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  • #26, by marvelTuesday, 04. July 2017, 10:03 7 years ago
    I made the inventory dissapear when pressing the Space bar so it won't be in the way and I quite like it so I prefer not to change it
    But Sebastian is right. The inventory looks pretty weird. The graphics (especially the upper right one) is very stretched. And it's just hardly possible to see the items lying on the distorted background.

    What we can see is that your game needs MUCH more polishing. Also I would recommend to find some guys for intense betatesting. wink


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  • #27, by dionousTuesday, 04. July 2017, 11:48 7 years ago
    Good effort, but still needs some work judging from the video only:

    - Inventory panel (items not very clear)
    - Walking out of syncro; it is also very slow, need to speed it up.
    - Text font is very small. Also cursors could be a bit bigger.

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  • #28, by afrlmeTuesday, 04. July 2017, 11:59 7 years ago
    What we can see is that your game needs MUCH more polishing. Also I would recommend to find some guys for intense betatesting. wink
    Aisus! Thomas mate! You made me laugh. "find some GUYS for intense betatesting." What, to check on fappability or something? Oh dear...

    As for inventory... I wasn't keen on that either. Looks strange, actually visible inventories always look strange in modern games to me, but that's maybe because I hate clutter on the screen & prefer minimal UI or none, where possible in most games so I get to see all the details.

    About the house... you mentioned that it's haunted or something & that they've just bought it, but looking at the house, it looks brand new as opposed to an house that was built years ago & has had time to get a reputation for being haunted/creepy. Typical affair for haunted houses would be at least 100 years old with old fashioned wooden interiors & out of date flowery wallpaper, dimly lit rooms, dust & cobwebs, overgrown garden - well, just rundown I guess. I don't know much about your game to know whether a modern, clean house fits with your story, which is why I'm going off of the cinematic trailer you shared first as it mentioned horror. If you want to creep people out, then rundown would be better as would most of the game taking place while it's dark out, when seedy things happen & things go bump in the dark. wink

    Anyway, that's my opinion based on your new trailer.

    P.S: Sebastian is right about the walk starting frame. The best thing to do is find a frame where it almost looks like the idle animation, but has one foot just starting to move forwards. In that way, you also create a basic begin walk animation too.

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  • #29, by NigecTuesday, 04. July 2017, 16:39 7 years ago
    Daz can do walk on animation for you with AniMate?, I'm pretty sure it can do it as walk in place
    Look at Truebones  BVH files those my help smile

    I suck at character animation , Daz and Poser always looks wooden to me I think you are far better off using BVH files to get them moving more realistic

    I recently tested a game that went on Steam and it  could of done with a lot more testing, little things quickly mount up, dicky way points, and funky animation become really distracting, often 6 months testing  and fixing is way better than hoping you get away with it, and get testers who tell the truth and brutally honest

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  • #30, by NigecTuesday, 04. July 2017, 17:04 7 years ago
    This was done entirely with Animate2 exported to 3D Studio Max.. it was supposed to have more animation but I ran out of memory :/
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCE6CV18aK8


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