I know this is an old topic, but as a developer I'm totally cool with that...especially when it comes to environmental assets, because I can mix-and-match them without having that "Franken-game" look.
It's not as big a deal with pixel art characters, but it really helps with animating vectored parts.
Level designers - a discipline that requires both artistic and programming knowledge - seem to be the ones most likely to transition into the production/direction/leadership gigs.
In my experience, programmers seem to silo a bit much to be effective game designers.
There are a lot of engines on the market now -- some free, some commercial. Do a Google search and spend about an hour or so evaluating your different options. It's really too hard for us know know your talent level, motivation, previous experience, etc.
Creating a game is difficult enough even when you have an existing engine...trying to create a new one is certainly possible, but probably not the project to start with.
If you're trying to put games on an app store then you need an engine - otherwise, you're going to have to learn everything from scratch and that can literally take years. For example, Unity includes built-in methods to track player input -- you just add a line of code. Without it, you have to build and de-bug your own player input function, which takes time.
Unity and Unreal are the most popular ones now. I also used GameMaker for a while, but found it decidedly lacking in terms of what you can do (not sure if they fixed that with GM2). If you have 10-12 hours a day and are fairly tech/code savvy you can learn an engine in about 3-5 months. Give another 5-7 months of dev time and you're looking at about 8-12 months to get published. That's the good news.
The bad news is that, even though the engine takes care of all the background operations, you still have to build a game from scratch, hence the 5-7 months of dev time. You can cut that time in half with an asset package, but that means cash out of pocket.
And, as others have noted, you're dependent on the engine remaining viable -- if a better replacement comes along, you could find yourself starting over again.
I can't speak for other developers, but I'd be hard pressed to identify a situation where I need all LPC animations for a single humanoid character -- I always end up cutting it up into frames and only using the ones I need.
For that reason, I'd suggest the option of only exporting the animations you want (either in a strip or as separate images). If that's too complicated, I'd suggest keeping them in their "standard" frame size...not much benefit in having them all in larger frames.
It would also be easier to add custom or new art to a generated sheet/character, most of which is formatted in the "standard" size.
@chasers, @medicine - thanks, those are some great ideas! I already have the mechanics in place for most of them so scripting should be pretty easy
I know this is an old topic, but as a developer I'm totally cool with that...especially when it comes to environmental assets, because I can mix-and-match them without having that "Franken-game" look.
It's not as big a deal with pixel art characters, but it really helps with animating vectored parts.
Level designers - a discipline that requires both artistic and programming knowledge - seem to be the ones most likely to transition into the production/direction/leadership gigs.
In my experience, programmers seem to silo a bit much to be effective game designers.
There are a lot of engines on the market now -- some free, some commercial. Do a Google search and spend about an hour or so evaluating your different options. It's really too hard for us know know your talent level, motivation, previous experience, etc.
Godot is a free option that seems to be gaining traction: https://godotengine.org/
Unity also offers a license - https://unity.com/
There are quite a few others. It's worth the time to research 3-5 options.
I'd have to agree with Medicine Storm - This programmer spent two years developing an engine for Unity and he has a ton of experience.
Creating a game is difficult enough even when you have an existing engine...trying to create a new one is certainly possible, but probably not the project to start with.
If you're trying to put games on an app store then you need an engine - otherwise, you're going to have to learn everything from scratch and that can literally take years. For example, Unity includes built-in methods to track player input -- you just add a line of code. Without it, you have to build and de-bug your own player input function, which takes time.
Unity and Unreal are the most popular ones now. I also used GameMaker for a while, but found it decidedly lacking in terms of what you can do (not sure if they fixed that with GM2). If you have 10-12 hours a day and are fairly tech/code savvy you can learn an engine in about 3-5 months. Give another 5-7 months of dev time and you're looking at about 8-12 months to get published. That's the good news.
The bad news is that, even though the engine takes care of all the background operations, you still have to build a game from scratch, hence the 5-7 months of dev time. You can cut that time in half with an asset package, but that means cash out of pocket.
And, as others have noted, you're dependent on the engine remaining viable -- if a better replacement comes along, you could find yourself starting over again.
Just give them more depth and spend more time on them. Easy as pie!
Finding solutions: it's what I do ;-)
I know this is an older submission, but how did you get the slopes on the examples? Imported into Unity but don't see any...do I have to use Blender?
@just -There is no dedicated idle animation for LPC. Just grab a still image. It doesn't matter which one, just pick the one that looks best to you.
My $0.02 regarding sprite sheet size:
I can't speak for other developers, but I'd be hard pressed to identify a situation where I need all LPC animations for a single humanoid character -- I always end up cutting it up into frames and only using the ones I need.
For that reason, I'd suggest the option of only exporting the animations you want (either in a strip or as separate images). If that's too complicated, I'd suggest keeping them in their "standard" frame size...not much benefit in having them all in larger frames.
It would also be easier to add custom or new art to a generated sheet/character, most of which is formatted in the "standard" size.
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