#kestrelgames

[kestrelgames]

our Ludum Dare jam entry for LD35!

Pluto’s been wallowing in humiliation ever since the Earthlings decreed him a mere dwarf planet. Help him regain his fragile ego!

[kestrelgames]

Smoothing brush strokes in Photoshop (and other apps) with LazyNezumi

I've been using this lazynezumi tool to achieve similar brush smoothing to Paint Tool Sai. Since Photoshop doesn't have brush stabilization built in, making a smooth stroke is pretty annoying depending on your tablet. Almost all digitizers are prone to some pen wobble, meaning you usually have to force a very fast pen stroke to get a smooth line or curve.

Particularly useful for anyone who has unsteady hands, or needs to have a more controlled stroke, or those of you who bought a Surface Pro 3, lol.

Works really well for reducing cleanup and getting smoother lines without having to draw superfast/undo/superfast/undo etc... I've developed a nicely-pronounced Ctrl-Z claw hand over the years.

I've cut down on the amount of clean-up with this tool, so I'll be purchasing the full version when the 30-day trial (fully-featured) ends. There's quite a lot you can do with the tool, including adding extra cursors -- I quite like the mega cursor, which overlays a huge cross that comes in handy for eyeballing the position of stuff.

Also, I had to enable eraser smoothing in Settings > Edit Photoshop Options > eraserTool should have a cross marked next to it.

-goldsheep

[kestrelgames]

Purchasing sounds and other assets for your indie game

We were originally planning to create some sounds but rapidly realised how much time it would take to record clean, crisp versions of all the sounds we thought we would want.

I spent some time sifting through loads of free sites, but most of the interfaces were terrible and it took forever just to preview a sound. The biggest worry I had with those sites was that sounds on there might not be properly attributed or worse still, completely ripped-off.

In the end, after tearing my hair out going through ad-infested sites, I came across Soundsnap. Sounds were really easy to preview and sound professional, plus $99 for 100 sounds (downloadable within a 3-year period) seemed more than reasonable after slogging through subpar sounds for hours.

With an upsurgence in the amount of pre-created, extremely-affordable assets available for games, I think tiny developers might do well to consider purchasing assets that do not fit in your base skill sets -- ie we have art design and code (and music) covered, but no sound design. Just browse through the assets available on the Unity Store, for example -- many are completely free or cost under $5. There are some outstanding examples from the likes of Bitgem (not affiliated with them in any way, I just think their art is really nice for low poly. Good reference too).

YMMV as some 3D art assets that I've looked at are a bit of a mess under the surface and may need a lot of optimization or clean-up for your game to run smoothly.

Note: this is just my personal opinion and we receive no benefit at all from linking to them.

Always remember to check the licensing policies!

- goldsheep

[kestrelgames]

An inspirational ride with Sally and my three amazing teammates

Though the development time of Flip Hair Sally was very short, it was packed with priceless experiences.

I would like to note 3 points to explain why:

  Agile team of three

Yes, we are a team of 4 people. Even though everybody’s role was obvious (Sean = SE, goldsheep = Environment & Character, Tomo= UI/UX & Presentation, danheff = Music), we were not limited to each discipline. We had to be flexible and able to tackle things without boundaries. Flexibility is difficult to replicate in larger dev teams and I think we were successful at that. Trying different ideas and having a rapid turnaround time really helped us to maintain our focus, as well as having no ego problems! We were all really open to each others' ideas, but also not afraid to respectfully suggest improvements or changes. This atmosphere is really conducive to creativity -- I'm sure we've all been in situations where you don't want to make a suggestion for fear of offending someone. It's been amazing being on a team where everyone's purpose is simply to make the game the best that it can possibly be.

  Our goal: To make something simple quickly

The entire dev process took only a little over one calendar month. Two of us were working on it as a side project in the evenings and weekends -- since the amount of time we had was limited, we had to be extremely focused on our goal.

From our experience in games dev, making a simple game is very hard. You really need to try hard to make it simple. Otherwise, being full of fun ideas (hehe), you will end up with a design so humongous that you will require much longer dev time and it’ll be too easy to lose focus. We actually experienced that in our previous game idea and ended up shelving it once we realized it had become too large to tackle at that moment.

  Creative minds

It sounds simple, but it’s sometimes hard to be inspired and be creative. I’ve experienced that in the past. I felt stuck and I felt like the creative side of my brain had turned into a piece of stone. It felt like only time was progressing. Well, this project was the complete opposite of that. From the initial stage of bouncing ideas back and forth, it was tonnes of fun. And because it was fun, new ideas kept coming from everybody, and I enjoyed every bit of it. Also, creativity wasn’t limited to gameplay and art. Even though the gameplay is simple, we came up with the storyline around Sally; who she is, why she is running, what is the goal for her, etc.

  All in all, it was a fun ride involving lots of learning. I'm honoured to be part of this small but talented group of people and am looking forward to continuing on our many projects to come!

- Tomoko