as a 3d artist turned game dev, I love using ai to get variations on an idea that i can use for reference images before i make my art. I'll take a screencap of my game, feed it to the ai, get 10 variations and then quickly find a new inspiration on how to modify my game.
Yeah sometimes I use it in a similar way, I can't really use it to get variations because it's really bad at pixel art, but sometimes I use it as a reference for the general concept of an enemy, for example
Glad you found it helpful! Good luck with your game, you can always use these tricks for the following ones, the most important thing as a gamedev is to not stop after the first project :)
Thanks for playing my game! Unfortunately right now the demo as you said is a bit easy as that way it's easier to see how players behave, which upgrades they choose, etc. The full release will include different difficulty modes as well as permanent upgrades, so make sure to wishlist it :)
Hey, I was also in that jam and I remember your game, It's quite addictive. I still can't understand how the final list ended up being so small. It was also the first jam for me and my team and our game, Driplet, was also not approved even if we submitted the form and followed the format. As you said, what made it worth was the feedback from the other participants and training our skills.
I really appreciate you playing my game, each visit to the itch page makes me really happy 😊 I just checked your game and it's really fun, especially for a first game jam! I really like the sprite for the enemy that shoots at you and the level design, although I'd love to see some more gameplay, such as a secondary attack or a dash :) just keep working and I'm sure you'll make some amazing games! Learning is always worth your time
this seems like a really poorly managed game jam. A jam shouldn't be about rules & restrictions, and unnecessary moderation disqualifying hundreds of people that put extensive amount of effort into their projects. If they don't have enough people to judge the games privately, they should not be using a system like that in the first place. I highly recommend you participate in specifically established game jams run by big orgs that have the experience and staff to run a jam. Global Game Jam & Ludum Dare come to mind, I had great experiences participating in both.
Honestly I said I wouldn't be participating in any game jam for a while but then I saw the GMTK game jam starts in a month and I wouldn't want to miss it, so I guess I'll get to experience a proper jam :)
Thanks mate, that's so sweet, although I still have a lot to learn! I bought some equipment to shoot videos with camera + green screen so stay tuned for that 😋
Thanks!! I tried to maintain the aesthetic from the original game but with more colors and better resolution:) the cat is straight out of my main game though, I used it as a placeholder and forgot about it hahahahah
@@AidanNieve Yeah coding can get too much overwhelming and time consuming sometimes, so much so that you forget to change the main element of the game LOL. Also how in the world do you make those sprites? I Mean look at the detail!
The background was based on a stock picture so it was relatively easy, I just had to adapt it to the size of the screen, the enemies were also based on real life pics except for the cloud, which I took from a background I drew months ago. But this is not my best pixel art imo, my favorite is the one you can find on my first short, I'm really proud of those Avatar portraits 😋
that experience sounds rough, but I wish you talked more about the process making the game as opposed to the mishap submitting it. In the back of my mind I always think these ratings/reviews are kinda pointless, as opposed to the skills and lessons of developing a small game :)
To be completely honest this was gonna be a short video (maybe 5-6 minutes) talking mostly about making the game, but as I wrote the script, things kept getting worse, so that section ended up being too long and I didn't want the overall video to be over 10min. My idea as I said is to work on this game and turn it into a full release though, so there will be more technical stuff and gamedev talk. By the way thanks for the comment! You are one of my absolute favorite RU-vidrs and in my main game I tried to take some inspiration from your games for the overall aesthetic (I didn't get the best result, but I tried hahahahah)
idk, the title and intro kinda imply that the video is supposed to be about the game jam itself and overall it's pretty helpful for people considering game jams to be warned about some of the downsides and what jams they should and shouldn't work with
Your approach to this is wrong and that is why you're worried about needing to balance skills. I'm seeing this mistake more and more as devs move into rogue-likes because they don't understand the appeal of where this genre's roots. Have you played Nethack or Rouge to understand the driving force behind their appeal? If not you should but try to understand the simple fact that the players are hoping for a "Jackpot". You may wonder why I use that term. But the fact is that classic MUDs did not balance around skillsets but rather balanced around ratity. The same way a slotmachine or casino games are so popular despite their simplicity. Your skill tree approach is therefore not going to result in players being capable of achiving those seemingly gamebreaking power fantaies because there will be attainable metabuilds that are always available on each run. You need to purposely design these overpowered synergies and then balance around the odds of players getting all those parts just like a slotmachine needs all rows to allign to get that jackpot. Once that is done you then fill the game with a linear progression of progressively weaker synergese that feel satisfying as a minor "win" so that runs are satisfying even if they're not a jackpot.
I get what you mean, but at the same time I personally don't enjoy games that depend too much on those "Jackpots", for example I don't like Enter The Gungeon, because whether you win or lose will mostly depend on the weapons you get. Meanwhile I absolutely adore Nuclear Throne because if I play properly, I can win with any upgrade and different play styles. That being said, I am designing different synergies between all skills, so that players don't feel forced to "complete" a specific tree (that's why I was hesitant about adding linear trees), but my goal is for many different combos to be interesting and fun to play, like a build with lots of cool down reduction and strong individual spells, or a build with increased spell size, and AOE spells. But to be completely honest this is not an easy task, and I've been reworking every skill for so long that some don't even fit the description anymore. Hopefully with a few months of demo and valuable feedback like yours I'll be able to create a few of those "Jackpot" combos for the player to discover, while maintaining it fun if you don't get lucky. (I hope I understood what you meant)
@@AidanNieve Probably better that you don't try to make or market this as a rouge-like then because by doing that you're going to be setting player expectations for one thing but then delivering another. RPG Arena shooter or Robotron-like would be what you're making.
shouldnt you capitalize more on the cat element? none of these skills made me think of kitty, so i dont know why this is cat survivors other than to be legally not vampire survivors
Some future upgrades will be a bit related to the cat, but the cat is not really the main thing. I like cats (my pfp is the cat from the game) and I had another character before, but the idea of a cat fighting off hordes of demons sounded fun. Also vampire survivors is a copy of magic survival, I gotta eat so I need a name that's easy to remember. That doesn't mean that I'm making an asset flip of vampire survivors ofc, the game is quite different and will be even more different once I implement the events and bosses for the game, which should be ready soon :)
I would use all three systems for upgrades, personally. It would be an easy way to add diversity between weapon classes. Do I want to roll the dice on this linear item that may not even get its upgrades? Or pick this conventional item where I'm almost guaranteed to get upgrades? Or split the difference on an item that has two branches?
Yeah I agree, I wanted to know other people's opinions but I have a few skill ideas that would work amazingly with linear upgrades. Now I have to decide whether I want to indicate the type of upgrade tree in the UI, or let the player discover that by replaying the game. Thanks for sharing your opinion! 😊
@@AidanNieve Either option can be fun, but in this particular instance, it might be fun to discover the combos ourselves, but maybe have a kind of "recipe book" in the game that shows us the things we've discovered, and how to re-unlock them in future runs.
@@tristangillis7365 yeah that's what i decided to go for, magic survival has a similar menu with all the spells and I prefer that over getting too much information during the game, stopping every minute to read for 3 minutes straight doesn't sound fun
Thank you for the support! And good luck with your game as well, tell me the name if you have a playable version in the future, I'll be sure to check it out :)
my favourite ability to have in this type of game is mines (or the magical/medieval equivalent). also, another fun ability is a arrow that flies around and randomly targets enemies to fly through. (might be a bit OP so maybe as an upgrade...)
The problem with mines is that in my game there won't be as many enemies as in other Survivor's games because of the random events, so they may be a bit underwhelming, but there will definitely be many magic and medieval weapons, I'm not a big fan of guns or other modern weapons as upgrades myself. Thanks for the comments btw!
Can't wait to okay the demo. Lots of the games I've played got items like grenates or explosion like effect. I think you could easily add something similar that does explosions in a random direction. And another one would be some kind of area of effect fire. Also don't forget some effects thatgo around the player could be cool tho. Just so you do tick damage when something gets close to you
You actually read my mind hahahaha a "lava summoning" spell is already on the making, and another upgrade will be "Medusa's head" which will deal damage on a radius around you, as well as stun enemies :) those are actually the last two I wanna make for the demo. Although right now I'm working on the random events, I'd like to have 10 different ones before I release the first version
Sorry about the random subway surfers clip, it was my first video ever and I couldn't find any better footage since the game was in an early stage hahahahah, thanks for the support!
Currently I use Godot 4 for all my projects, I have a video where I go over all the software I recommend, you can check it out if you want: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ho7Yzh99arA.html but to sum it up, Godot and Aseprite are my two most used apps :)
@@AidanNieve by the part of u saying AI doesn’t steal art, it kinda does cuz it learns off other people’s art, so it’s stealing others peoples art to do an image basically
Following that logic, we steal art every time we draw something in a style that someone else has used before, because without that reference you wouldn't draw in that style, it uses references just like we do, and copyright doesn't protect that, whether it should or shouldn't is a different question, but it's not stealing
@@AidanNieve lol at least humans draw better cuz i almost vomited seeing that AI image i get sick seeing those objects getting fixed and merging into 1
Hi there, I'm Michael. I just discovered your channel through these devlogs. I like the look of the game so far. The enemies are pretty cool, and I love the idea for the game to introduce random drastic changes. This game loosely reminds me of Enter the Gungeon, a game that I enjoy. SELF-PROMOTION TIME: If you're looking for music for the game, I'm a video game composer. If you're interested, I'd love to chat!
Hahahahah thanks for the kind words! My main goal is to help others with my videos, because I learned almost everything I know thanks to RU-vid. I hope I can grow and help more people in the future 😊😊
@@AidanNieve Speaking portuguese to any Brazilian is a love letter <3 Here goes a tip: if you mention Brazil or put our flag in any thumb, you're gonna see a flood from us in your channel. We are passionate for everyone that sees us. Try it and tell me the results later.
I can come up with ideas all day but I just can't find the time to actually make the levels. I always either make them way too large or put too much detail into them or both and it runs like crap. I do it in 3D and use Unity.
I totally get you, optimization can be a pain in the ass, I'm trying to manage at least a hundred enemies in my project and... It's not going too well 😅. Have you considered breaking down the levels you wanna make into really really small pieces, rather than going all in? For example my process to create skills for my games is broken into so many small parts, first I create the idea, then the art, then I manage the spawning of the skill, then the movement, etc etc. That way sometimes I only have 20 minutes, but at least I got 10% done and it felt like I finished an entire task rather than just a part of it, which keeps me motivated
yep, it's a game similar to vampire survivors, so I need a lot of enemies, they are really simple so that's not a problem, the problem is when I kill 60 at a time, I still have to figure out how to fix that! I have a playlist where I talk about the game although I only uploaded 2 videos so far: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-iJqWXxUyOxg.html hopefully you'll notice I improved quite a lot since this video!
@@AidanNieve I watched the videos. Looks cool. But I didn't see a way for the player to kill the enemies? It looked to me like they all just follow the player and some do different kinds of attacks. It looks like all the player can do is avoid them. So what do you mean kill 60 at a time?
I'm glad that you found it helpful! I think that it's a really easy trick to make your palettes stand out and to give them more personality (if you want a dark aesthetic for example, you can tend towards blue and it will automatically look darker and scarier)
Aye mate I don't why RU-vid recommended you to me, but I'm glad it did. Quitting your job to pursue game development is a huge decision, and I wish you good luck. As a young game developer myself, I think your game looks promising and your video is well edited, so you might just pull it off. And I get the honor of being your fifth subscriber! I eagerly await your next devlog.
I really appreciate your support! It means a lot since I'm just getting started, and obviously there are many aspects to improve. Currently I'm working on a pixel art tutorial for next friday, but my second devlog will be here soon so stay tuned!
