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2012/02/19 (Villainmad): Needing A New Artist Again

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So, uh ... I've decided I need to actually hire someone to work on the sprites and graphics, i.e. from TIGSource or IndieGamer or something. The point is, I should get someone who is certain to get things done on a "this is your job" sort of basis, as opposed to asking one of my friends to do it in their spare time and then getting surprised when I haven't heard from them in two weeks and can't even remember the last time they got something done when they said they would.

No new updates since last time, since there isn't anything new enough that's visibly-different; I just thought I'd let everyone know that 1. I'm not dead, 2. I've scrapped the idea of a generic "score" system since there's too many different ways of doing it per game, 3. I've started work on a Replay system,1 which ... generally has fewer problems if all you're doing is a replay-system like that of the Touhou games, 4. I've been hit by another slight motivation slump which might push back the release date a little bit, and 5. I'm basically three-eighths of an inch from getting ready to make the Actual Game Itself, if I only had the graphics for it ...

1For the record, most of the effort so far has gone into implementing my own random number generator, specifically a complementary-multiply-with-carry generator, since C#'s default RNG might be implemented differently on different systems, which means that the same seed will give different results, which is not a happy happenstance as far as replays are concerned ...

8 Comments (auto-closed) (rss feed)

talchas

Rather than come up with your own constants for an rng (particularly if you're ending up with a period-1 seed), I'd suggest just using the mersenne twister, as it is reasonably easy to implement and gives good randomness for non-crypto purposes.

Dizzy H. Slightly Voided

I was just using George Marsaglia's constants for the RNG, actually. Thinks seem to be working out for the Specific Thing I'm Doing Right Now, anyway ...

Mushyrulez

I have no experience with this, but perhaps you should offer some monetary payment to the artist, if you're not already? If you want this to be somebody's job, you better pay them like the job that it is.

BTW, having luck so far?

Dizzy H. Slightly Voided

Yeah, that was the plan. I, uh, admit I haven't really asked anyone yet; I'll poke around and send "hey what are your rates" to different people when I'm, uh, feeling a little less shitty.

Silver

Personally I find that mostly completing the game with dummy art then finding an artist to do the final, polished art to be a better use of time.

Dizzy H. Slightly Voided

Oh, I wasn't going to be putting it completely on hold, notwithstanding my motivation issues, which are ... a separate problem. But yeah, I see your point.

Brickman

Wait, if your problem is *just* that different systems might have different random algorithms for a given seed, why can't you just grab one that's already out there and stick that in? I see no reason you'd need to change anything. I'm sure that noone will cry foul if you "steal" any one of those default implementations of the C# algorithm to use in your C# program.

Dizzy H. Slightly Voided

This is, in fact, what I did. The devil was really in getting the implementation right, so I gave up and used one that was easier to implement than the one I'd been using before.