Vira Pogromska’s Post

The FeedTheFish game is designed in a fun cartoon style. So the gamers might escape their daily problems by immersing themselves in a bright and colourful fish realm. However, the game goal is also to provide the users with new information about the inhabitants of the undersea world, as well as to raise their consciousness of the environmental concerns caused by global ocean pollution. For the FeedTheFish game, I created all the characters, props assets, backgrounds and user interface. Working on the Cat, my task was to create a character that would be a personal assistant for FeedTheFish game users. Its purposes are to provide tips and advice, as well as to recognise and reward accomplishments. It also assigns tasks to the players. Furthermore, if the user makes a mistake, this companion gently warns him. That is why a nice, adorable, and trustworthy character was required. Also, this character is used as the "face" of the game: as the program icon, in the splash screen, and in promotional materials. I created a plenty of various Fish Characters for FeedTheFish game. For each of them, I came up with its own nature, mood and personality. Working on the Angler Fish was a true challenge for me. After all, it is most likely the ugliest creature on the planet. However, my goal was to keep the entire game in a cute cartoon aesthetic, immersing the players in a fun and colourful fish kingdom. The Cat: Based on the task at hand, I opted to create a charming, colourful kitten with wide, trusting eyes and an irresistible smile. The animation of the Cat's movements is calm and graceful. The character literally squints with delight at the prospect of interacting with the gamer! Is it even possible not to love it? The Angler Fish: It's not easy to force such a violent and repulsive being to look adorable and make the user want to feed it. But I think I handled it well. My Angler Fish appears to be a little goofy and inattentive. It can't actually survive without the player's assistance in finding food! The movement of the lantern is quite essential in this animation. Angler Fish uses it to light its way through the depths of the sea. This emphasis further brings player's attention to fish's helplessness, making its predatory and nasty nature less significant. The different emotional states of the fish (calm, angry, happy) are also further emphasised by changing the color of the lantern. The sad or angry reactions of the fish characters to the plastic rubbish in the water should raise people's attention to the environmental crisis of pollution in the world's oceans. My workflow was the same as usual: starting with a paper sketch, I went on to create vector images within Sketch app. Then, I continued my work in the Rive app in order to animate the characters' movements and emotions.

Released seven years ago, Cuphead remains a standout piece of art, with 1930s-inspired hand-drawn animation, a jazz ensemble soundtrack and amazing, though punishing, gameplay. An instant classic. Developed and published by Studio MDHR, founded by brothers Chad Moldenhauer and Jared Moldenhauer, the game underwent a lengthy development process that began in the early 2010s. The creation of Cuphead was a labor of love, taking several years to complete. The development process was notable for several reasons: ➤ Hand-drawn animation: Every frame was traditionally hand-drawn, with each taking around 25 minutes to complete. ➤ Watercolor backgrounds: The game featured real physical models and hand-painted watercolor backgrounds. ➤ Authentic soundtrack: Studio MDHR worked with composer Christopher Maddigan to craft a jazz and big band-style soundtrack that complemented the 1930s animation style. Built on Unity, Cuphead featured around 50,000 hand-drawn frames. The Moldenhauer brothers and their team made significant sacrifices to bring Cuphead to life: ➤ Financial risks: The brothers remortgaged their houses and used their savings to fund development. ➤ Career changes: After E3 2015, both brothers quit their jobs to focus entirely on the game. ➤ Delayed release: The game's release was postponed multiple times due to the complexity of the hand-drawn animation and the attention to detail required. ➤ Kickstarter campaign: The game's development was partially funded by a successful Kickstarter campaign. When released, Cuphead was a major commercial success, selling two million copies within the first two weeks of release, and six million within two years. The game received universal praise for its art style, gameplay, soundtrack, and challenging difficulty. It won several awards, including three Game Awards and three D.I.C.E. Awards. A DLC expansion titled Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course was later released. While most of the game's art was created traditionally, digital coloring was used, reportedly saving five years of development time. Game development is hard. It's not just hard. Luck also plays a factor and that is true even when you market the game as best you can. The game was released within days of Fortnite Battle Royale, and still found success.

A common issue game developers face is clipping. You’ve probably seen this in games where weapons like guns or axes pass through walls, doors, rocks, or other objects. It’s a common problem, even in AAA games. The most popular solution is to render weapons or objects on top of everything else, which works well enough and for most players won't notice. However, it’s not ideal in first-person games where the camera basically can't move as the third person can. I decided to tackle this differently and create a new (well, not entirely new) approach. In my solution, whenever an object like an axe hits another object, it immediately backs off to prevent clipping. How does it work? The system revolves around the three animation stages: Start, Break, and End. Start: The animation begins (the axe swings down near the legs). Break: If a collision is detected using raycasting during the swing, the animation transitions to this stage. The break animation essentially interrupts the motion and smoothly transitions back. End: The final stage, where the object resets to its original pose. (If break didn't play) To achieve this, you’ll need to carefully control how animation frames are rendered. For instance, in the script, you can calculate the normalized time of the animation and reverse it when transitioning to the break stage. This way, collisions feel natural and eliminate clipping entirely.

Game developers get some love in the latest tyFlow update (v1.119) with the additional of the new tyVAT modifier... Here's an example of it being used to export some destruction animation to Unity (1.7m verts across 9k particles). All animation data is compressed into a single 4096x2048 PNG VAT file and played back in a vertex shader. No more messing with giant cache files or thousands of individually animated nodes which can lead to horrible engine performance - tyFlow VATs can be used to pack deforming meshes, skinned meshes and particle meshes into tiny textures which can play back blazingly fast on all modern gaming platforms (mobile included). VATs (Vertex Animation Textures) aren't a new thing - they've been used for a few years now in game development. However, traditional VATs store position data for all vertices across all animation frames and can balloon in size when used on complex meshes (a traditional VAT for this setup would require an output resolution of 23000x23000, due to the sheer number of mesh vertices being animated over the 100 frame sequence). For my tyVAT implementation I developed some new rigid/deforming skin techniques which drastically decrease VAT size by only storing transforms/skinning data for the setup. So what you see here isn't just raw deformations being played back - it's a full GPU skinning setup running in-shader (the Unity shader being used is provided online in tyVAT's documentation). So not only is this update relevant to game developers, but this is some brand new tech that has the potential to supercharge the fidelity of baked animations that games can efficiently showcase to users in general.

This just in - In this post, the art team behind HAWKED closely looks at the techniques and influences that give the game its comic book art style, and we’ll cover exactly how these were implemented, including the challenges that needed to be overcome in the process! 🔴 Kaedim is the platform that every game developer needs. It’s a platform that lets you create 3D assets from 2D images in minutes, with no 3D skills needed. You can use any image, from drawings to screenshots, and get a 3D model that’s ready to use in your game. Kaedim is optimized for usable, production-ready 3D assets, and works with your team’s tools. 🟢 Get Started Today: Kaedim3d.com or Check out our Showcase: app.kaedim3d.com/showcase #gdc #gdc2024 #a16z #Gaming #GamingIndustry #VideoGameDevelopment #gamedev #Games

DAY 12: Progress On Development of an Endless Runner Video Game RECAP? I worked on more animations, both character and UI animations yesterday. Didn't do much of anything else, becausen those things take time apparently. PROGRESS? Player character selection. I have 3 player characters so far. But there was no way of specifying which character you wanted. So I made 2 scripts today that took care of that. And I have a confession to make. For the previous posts where I have spoken aout a Main Menu, there wasn't really a main menu in the sense of main menus. I was using the same scene, and just pausing gameplay. Then when I press the Play button, the "Main Menu" UI would be disabled and gameplay would be resumed. It wasn't really a menu in the truest sense. So I took the whole day, and have come up with a better one. This time, it is an actual main menu, with Player Character Selection! I still haven't improved the appearance yet because coming up with the player character choosing script alone took quite a lot of thinking. Which is something I do not do outside of games that much on a Saturday. Saturdays are supposed to be for the boys, not thinking. But this is a project that I have really really come to enjoy doing so I made an exception. :) And as can be seen, the new character now is Flowery, a different outfit for AyGee. Was one of the templates available in VRoid studio, looked great, so I took it. I also worked on quality settings, especially focusing on low settings so any potato PC can run this game fine at a constant FPS. PLANS? I made different plans yesterday, to get on the game over system, but I am talking about something completely different right? Yeah, my bad. Having a fake main menu, really bothered me. And it was in fact stopping me from progressing. I did start with the game over system though. I have half of the logic down, and some part of the UI too. I believe I will finish it tonight. Then I will look to maybe implementing it tomorrow IGP. But that requires new death animations, trigger collider placement, character ccontroller collider height and centre adjustment, and game manager state changing. So, yes. A LOT to do. But surely, we will get there. THOUGHTS? I am having more fun in this project than any other project that I have ever started or completed so far. I do not really know why. But I am always eager to be working on this game and sharing progress. Now that I think about it, it may be due to the amount of support that I am receiving. I am waking up to almost 2 completely new chats almost everyday asking about how to start development and stuff. Some even enqire about my health, such kind hearts! The amount of outreach is overwhelming to be honest. Thanks so much people. We move tomorrow IGP. More progress is assured. We pray for a good Sunday. I will be seeing you tomorrow. :)

Day 7: Progress On Development of an Endless Runner Video Game RECAP? I made some wall running mechanics yesterday. Took quite a while and a lot of complaining in yesterday's post now that I think about it. Will try to keep that to a minimum, doesn't seem appropriate. And a lot of obstacles. Most of which I forgot to include in today's post too. But there are a few new ones, you have to watch the video attached to this post to see them. PROGRESS? I have surprised myself with the flow that I got into today. I only had a comeuppance that lasted for 1 hour at most, the rest was smooth sailing. What did I do? I added rail grinding and swinging too. These two use the same mechanic and methods. So once I figured out one of them, I just C and P'ed. They are more simpler than the wallrunning logic, since I don't have to constantly check if we are on the left, right or middle lane. And less taxing too, given the absence of Raycastng. It took me half the work time I had today to make those 2 though, so that's something. Think the animations alone took 1 hour because it just would refuse to look right. After this, I worked on visual effects. Yes, VFX. I learned how to do some part of it a month ago, but I have completely forgotten where to start . :) So i just used Unity's templates and I've gotta say, they look pretty cool. Improved how the skybox looks too using BOXOPOBIC's Extended Cubemap Skybox. Fair to say, I did a lot of stuff today, that I am super proud of. And oh, Coins? PLANS? I have none at the moment, except for the coins system. But to do that, I am sort of pushing it to where I will do the saving and loading bit first. Those parts require such huge concentration and logic systems, leading to me always do them in the middle of the night. I was postponing the Coins system so much because of what you can clearly see in the video. The player would pick up the coins, but it would fail to register. This is entierly my PC's fault. If you can tell from the video, there is a lot of frame skipping happening, where the game looks like it freezes for a very short while. Those times, any calculations that will be done immediately on the next frame would be messed up. So the game won't recognize a trigger collision between the player and the coin just because my pc is too slow. I'm working on 512MB VRAM here, so I guess it is understandable. THOUGHTS? I did say Mondays are for aethetics and almost immediately worked on a different thing, didn't I? What can I say, the idea came to me, and I just had to put it down before I forgot. Got a lot of motivation too privately, which is always great to receive. God bless each and everyone. Wasn't long ago when I "decided" to learn Unity Game development. I honestly thought I would give up in the first 1 hour. But I think it's because I had already made video game related stuff (mods, and bots) so I had enough encouragement and expertise to pull it off. Anyways, thanks for reading, you absolute legend!! :)

This just in - Mykola Konzerovsky and Mykyta Rachkevich from indie studio 1stone Games spoke to us about their upcoming game, Unmasked: An Inner Journey, sharing in detail the level production process and outlining the animation workflow. 🔴 Kaedim is the platform that every game developer needs. It’s a platform that lets you create 3D assets from 2D images in minutes, with no 3D skills needed. You can use any image, from drawings to screenshots, and get a 3D model that’s ready to use in your game. Kaedim is optimized for usable, production-ready 3D assets, and works with your team’s tools. 🟢 Get Started Today: Kaedim3d.com or Check out our Showcase: app.kaedim3d.com/showcase #GDC #GDC2024 #a16z #GameIndustryUpdates #Kaedim #Gaming #IndieGames #GameNews

Fumi Games’ "MOUSE: P.I. FOR HIRE" – What Indie Developers Can Learn from Rubber Hose Animation Fumi Games has just dropped the official title for their old-school Disney-inspired indie FPS: "MOUSE: P.I. FOR HIRE." If you’ve been following the buzz, you know this game is all about that classic rubber hose animation style, and it’s turning heads for good reason. So, what can we as indie developers learn from this? Let’s break it down. 1. Leverage Nostalgia with a Twist Fumi Games is tapping into the charm of vintage Disney with that rubber hose animation, but they’re not just rehashing old ideas. By combining this nostalgic art style with a first-person shooter, they’re giving players something familiar yet fresh. The lesson here? Don’t be afraid to blend the old with the new. It’s a great way to stand out in a sea of indie games. 2. Let Your Art Style Do the Talking The rubber hose look isn’t just a gimmick—it’s a statement. It sets the tone for the whole game and instantly gives it personality. As indie devs, we might not always have AAA budgets, but we can certainly make our games visually unique. Think about how your art style can define your game and make it memorable. 3. Embrace the Weird An FPS with rubber hose animation? That’s not something you see every day, and that’s exactly the point. Fumi Games took a risk by combining two seemingly unrelated concepts, and it’s paying off. The takeaway? Don’t shy away from weird or unconventional ideas. The indie scene thrives on creativity and bold choices, so lean into those crazy concepts. 4. Keep Your Audience Guessing Fumi Games kept fans intrigued by slowly revealing details about "MOUSE" before dropping the full title. This kept everyone talking and guessing, which is exactly what you want when building hype for a game. For your next project, think about how you can tease your audience and keep them engaged throughout development. 5. Make Your Title Pop "MOUSE: P.I. FOR HIRE" isn’t just a catchy title; it tells you exactly what you’re in for—a detective story with a twist. A good title can grab attention and give players a taste of what’s to come. Make sure your game’s name is just as catchy and reflective of what makes it unique. Rubber hose animation might be a blast from the past, but Fumi Games is showing us that with the right spin, it can be the perfect fit for modern indie games. As you work on your own projects, think about how you can take inspiration from the past, mix it with fresh ideas, and create something that’s truly your own. What’s your favorite way to combine classic styles with new gameplay mechanics? Let’s chat in the comments! #nagarubiinovasi #gameindustry #gamedevelopment #gamedesign #gameart #indiegamedev #gamingnews #rubberhoseanimation #fumigames

Sneak peek - In this post, the art team behind HAWKED closely looks at the techniques and influences that give the game its comic book art style, and we’ll cover exactly how these were implemented, including the challenges that needed to be overcome in the process!🔴 Kaedim is the ultimate 3D asset creation platform for game developers. Upload an image and get a production-ready 3D model in seconds. 🟢 Get Started Today: Kaedim3d.com or Check out our Showcase: app.kaedim3d.com/showcase #gdc #gdc2024 #a16z #BuildingBetterGames #UnrealEngine #GameDevCommunity #Gamers #GameIndustryUpdates