I just changed my entire game (Developing 13)

[@FreyjaMentado]

for any other devs out there, another solution is to start at 360p. 2x is 720, 3x is 1080, 4x is 1440 and 6x is 2160

[@sataStrike]

Yup, 360 will also give you a much more "pixel art" feel. The higher resolution just makes things seem more like low res art, which is why it just looked better to translate it to vector graphics.

[@GameDevYal]

I agree, I've made everything 640x360 for years now and it's a really cozy resolution. Works for everything down to ancient 640x480 CRTs, gives you a lot of level design space to work with if you're using the good ol' 16x16 base grid. The only drawback is that 360 isn't divisible by 16 so you'll waste half a tile vertically (which can make things a bit tricky if you're trying to glue things together in a game with vertically connecting rooms)

[@FreshWaffles3]

That is so smart...

[@Scypek]

@@GameDevYal Sounds like a good excuse to add a 640x24 HUD! Maybe even with some fun extra stuff like names for each room, if that fits the game.

[@AverageMichaelJordans]

540p is another good one that gives a little more resolution headroom, at the expense of not working well with 1440p screens. At least kinda, since Pizza Tower ended up working on my 1440p display with that exact res

[@dogwithsunglasses4051]

Im a huge fan of Pixelart. But i think you made the right choice here. Your Game never really looked that commited to the Pixelart Style. It was basically an in between your new style and Pixelart. And thats just my 2 cents, but i think that a game that commits to its art style always looks better.

[@evertp]

Yeah it never looked like pixelart to me, just low resolution =)

[@Ten_Thousand_Locusts]

Lol nah he didn't, this new style looks bad and soulless as shit. Like a shovelware mobile game.

[@milesparker557]

I agree. I love pixel art, but I never liked styles that had super thick outlines and higher res like his old style. The vector graphics look more like the aesthetic he was going for (despite me not being the biggest fan of vector art).

@@Ten_Thousand_LocustsI can imagine you typed your comment with a good intent, but your delivery sounds not very polite to me.

[@mckinneym.2743]

​@@Ten_Thousand_Locusts I like the look

[@james.lambert]

You say that you should have spent more time planning but I would argue you actually did the right thing. If you try to perfect your plan you will be stuck spinning forever trying to solve every possible problem you may encounter. We aren't actually very good at predicting what will actually be a problem and what wont. It is better to just start building something and solve the problems when you better understand them and actually know they will be problems. I'm not saying don't ever plan or try to avoid problems early but no amount of planning will prevent the need to make large shifts mid project.

[@user-sl6gn1ss8p]

yeah, I think the caveat is just that if the game had a lot more / more complex art, it would have been way more trouble to convert now. So like, maybe don't go crazy trying to plan ahead, but do hold off on some kinds of work sometimes?

[@PhyloGenesis]

Totally agree, he learned the wrong lesson. Not that planning ahead is bad, but finding a compromise and experimenting with solutions is super important. Sounds like he did nothing wrong except maybe not testing how art relates to the camera a bit more before making ALL the art (not some, some is fine). Sometimes it happens, making games is hard.

[@LordTrashcanRulez]

The problem with having absolutely no plans is that you'll reach points where you're just staring at the computer screen without any knowledge on how to proceed forward, but planning everything from A to Z would cause a lot of your effort to go to waste. Generally, you should plan the core mechanics first and then think about changing stuff later on when you finish the fundamental parts of your game.

[@TechArtAlex]

Agreed. Art is often finalized pretty late in the development cycle. The real lesson is to treat your early art as a prototype, spend as little time as possible on it, and not to get attached to it. You can and should expect to replace large portions of it, sometimes multiple times. The less effort you spend on early drafts, the better.

[@SupremeDP]

Very, very true!

[@Sagi.Baten.Kaitos]

Can't believe Mind Over Magnet got a remake before even getting an official release. Bravo, Mark

[@omegaminoseer4539]

He's officially part of the video-gaming empire. The only thing left is to release an overpriced, buggy, mess. Even that his trailer was made up is further proof that he IS a Game Producer now.

[@Sagi.Baten.Kaitos]

​@@omegaminoseer4539Christ man, did Mark Brown of Game Maker's Toolkit spit on your or something

[@theonlyron]

I wish he would on me...

[@sinisternorimaki]

​@@Sagi.Baten.Kaitos I think they're just making a joke about the state of the industry.

[@omegaminoseer4539]

@@Sagi.Baten.Kaitos this is supposed to be a joke. It was lost in translation.

[@tetsi0815]

6:40 My experience from like 20 yrs of IT projects tells me "skipping ahead doing the real solution" will bring you in more trouble than anything else, because you'll never get finished, you'll produce a lot of "the real solutions" that are completely useless, because you didn't / couldn't know what "the real solution" needs to look like etc. It's far more productive to just accept the fact, that you are producing a "for now that works" solution as long as you're willing and able to refactor stuff, when it's not suitable anymore. Understanding when to live with the compromise and when to throw it out and build something better is the real challenge. It's hard and you need a lot of experience to do that and I have rarely met people who are good at it.... so I guess the real challenge is getting good at understanding when to live with the compromise and when to refactor.

[@Alexander.Kravchenko]

Absolutely!

[@penguinsushi8442]

Can't agree more!

[@ryuuguu01]

Yeah, young coders are notorious for over-engineering solutions to solve problems that will never occur. I don't know of any way other than experience to learn how much to do upfront and what to put off until you know what will really be needed.

[@vesk4000]

Really, really well said!

[@patrickoshea]

Mark’s Lesson Learned here was really just half a lesson. I’m kind of hoping that when he runs into the other case (taking way too much time by committing to “doing it right” at the outset) he’ll humbly refer back to this and have to end up with a less satisfying “it depends.” The engineer maxim is that the 90% solution is right 99% of the time. I think Mark hit the other 1% and overgeneralized. 😅

[@Bonelord69]

It takes courage to make a big shift like that. It's too easy to become complacent with how things are because of how much work you think it will take to change. I admire your dedication!

[@lorinatzberger3624]

I had the exact same problem with Red Dust Colony. I was dead set on having the UI be pixel art and after so many issues I decided to switch everything to 4x upscaled for the 4k resolution. It took about a week to change all of it using Figma for vector art. It looks so much more nice and crispy now. No idea why it took me so much to get it done as it was one of the best things to do.

[@Fachewachewa]

As someone who plays a ton of demos (240 last year) and loves puzzle game, my favourite kind of puzzly game demo is a selection of levels that showcase different mechanics instead of a full "arc" with introduction and more advanced puzzle. I'd still want at least one more advanced level so that I know what to expect, but I think showing different mechanics is way more effective. Neon White's demo was one of the best example imo, it had the first world (which is kind of necessary tutorial wise) and then the second world was entirely custom, it even showed late game weapons. Usually you can get away with that since intro levels aren't that difficult. The Court Of Wanderers was another nice example, at the end of the demo there was kind of a walkway above other levels, so you couldn't interact with them but you could see the kind of stuff the game would have. It doesn't have to be that involved, but I think a lot of games forget to add something that tells the player what to expect from the full game. Talos Principle 2 was kind of a bad example though. It had the intro, first world, and then another more advanced world. But the first puzzle of that world expected you to understand a mechanic that was introduced in a world that was skipped. It's nice to show more than just the start, but gotta make sure the player have everything they need in what's included!

[@soviut303]

Honestly, I've been watching these videos for quite a while and never realized this game used pixel art. I even recall thinking to myself "finally, an indie that's using vector art". So it's nice to see you fully commit to that style, since I think it sets the game apart visually.

[@Shrek_es_mi_pastor]

Majorariatto has been using vector art since forever

[@Ayoul]

wdym finally? It was especially popular with flash games.

[@gamedev_byhobby8872]

​​@@Ayoul Maybe the problem is people associated it with flash quality games, which are good, but not financial success good. After flash being killed, it seems likely to make a comeback

[@soviut303]

@@Ayoul I'm saying that virtually every indie game since then has been pixel art; it's practically a trope of indie games. Go search "indie game" and anything that isn't in 3D is almost exclusively pixel art. These include Super Meat Boy, Rogue Legacy, Undertale, Hotline Miami, Dead Cells, Celeste, Stardew Valley, Hyper Light Drifter, Terraria, Shovel Knight, The Messenger, Octopath Traveler, Axiom Verge, Binding of Isaac Rebirth, Balatro, Luck be a Landlord, Peglin, Pepper Grinder, Risk of Rain, Punch Club, Heretic's Fork, Dome Keeper, Blasphemous, etc.

[@shortcat]

I played the first public demo on a 1080p screen and I don't remember it being pixel based. Was it redone already at the time?

[@andrewdrost6786]

An important aspect of Balatro's next fest success was that it had demos for multiple next fests, with each one showcasing a different set of mechanics. It gave more time for the game's hype to snowball and allowed a wider player base to give feedback. Given Balatro's success, I'm curious to see if more indie devs will ditch early access and instead opt for next fest demos.

[@marcosm1223]

Early Access won't go away because a big part of why devs do it is to inject more cash into the games (or if you're a scammer, run away with the money). But I imagine that more established indie studios will probably do Next Fest instead, yeah

[@LordTrashcanRulez]

Next Fest is just another way for devs to gain a following, they'll never replace EA

[@ninosandlarz783]

I'm not sure to understand. How did Balatro participate in several Next Fests when according to Steam each demo can only participate in one Next Fest ?

[@wateverwill]

@@ninosandlarz783 Just looked into it, and I think they just released demos at the same time as the next fests. Then actually submitted to only the recent feb next fest. Pretty smart tbh

[@AztecCroc]

@@ninosandlarz783 They made multiple demos.

[@MrLeyr]

One thing that I think is worth noting is that while Balatro had a really successful Steam Next Fest, it's not like it sprung up overnight. The dev has been putting out demos since October at least, possibly even earlier than that, and LPers (thinking about Nothernlion) were able to play it almost half a year before it got the official 1.0 release. The previous builds were good, maybe even great versions of the game. But being able to take their time, listen to feedback, and refine what makes it good is a major reason why it's been so well received imo. Next Fest was like the icing on the cake, and while I'm sure it would have done well regardless, the game we got in the weeks after that last demo shows that you can't rush these things. Quality takes time, and since I believe you can only showcase at one Next Fest (unless I'm mistaken?), it's a real matter of getting that timing right.

[@Holgast]

Pepper Grinder has also been in development for ages

[@DerekLieu]

Thanks for the shoutout! Though by: "all the indie games" you must mean: "about 9 games a year," haha. I always love to see new Developing videos pop up. Nice work on the trailer!

[@khaki32]

Haha that's a lot of games tbf

[@DerekLieu]

@@khaki32 it is, but not compared to how many indie games come out per year 😱

[@lonestarr1490]

​@@DerekLieu So you WANT to make every trailer for all the indie games! That's some profound ambitions.

[@DerekLieu]

@@lonestarr1490 Haha oh god I'd die. I'm happy working on a handful of interesting projects per year by nice and talented developers ^_^

[@Packbat]

Honestly, I think starting with pixel art and then vectorizing it is a really good way to get clear and easy to read graphics.

[@wkuiper]

Headsup for as to how I found it; it was linked in the end cards of the Developing 12 video, don't know if you want it there already seeing as the video is unlisted but now you know.

[@xaviersavard6343]

Funny

[@zerocell2657]

bro got to the vid 20 minutes early

[@GMTK]

Sneaky ;)

[@Nate-bd8fg]

You're SUPPOSED to say "one view? Dead channel"

[@thehamakustudio7918]

Same got 30 minutes early

[@PiercingSight]

Note: You may want to run a pixel mapping process (the kind that requires the lens cap to be on) on whatever camera you're using to film yourself. There always seem to be stray bright pixels on the filmed segments.

[@thenefariousnerd7910]

Damn… now that you’ve pointed it out that’s all I can see 😅

[@HuguitodaGlr]

I thought i was the only one to have seen that. At first i thought it was my screen, but it keep moving after some edit cuts 😂 If that's a game or anything by him, we just bite the bait.

[@qwfp]

It spooked me (again). I was convinced for a second that I have a dead pixel on my beautiful display, but then I remembered it's just Mark's camera

[@BitWalker]

Also thought i had a dead pixel @@qwfp

[@OurSpaceshipEarth]

Timestamp? eg:[1:00:00]

[@superscott597]

Oh man, using Photoshop’s vector tools was probably the hardest path you could have taken in remaking the graphics. Learning Figma (my preference because you can make components and reuse elements suuuuuper easily!) or Illustrator (not super friendly to exporting final raster graphics) may have served you better since they are vector-based tools and make shapes and booleans much easier to work with. Also, I actually didn’t even notice that the graphics were pixel art previously. Maybe that’s KZbin compression, but I always assumed the art style was hi res! In any case, great job taking the plunge and remaking the assets! Definitely not an easy task, but crisp graphics are definitely worth it for the final experience.

[@whisperpone]

inkscape is pretty good too, if you're looking for free options

[@fernandoferreira5156]

@@whisperpone figma is free

[@ginemginem]

I switched over to Affinity Designer from illustrator. MUCH beter UX, lets me have a faster and more pleasant workflow for illustration. It even lets you easily mix and match vector and raster layers, if you need that. And its raster export system is top-notch. Most importantly: It's not a subscription! It also sometimes goes on sale 50% off. That's like $30.

[@foldupgames]

I haven't used Figma, but can vouch for Illustrator. If he's familiar with vector tools in Photoshop, they should translate over to Illustrator pretty well.

[@superscott597]

Yeah, good point! If you want a free, open source alternative, Penpot is the Figma alternative and Inkscape is the Illustrator alternative. You can also do month to month options for both Illustrator and Figma, and as mentioned, Figma is mostly free as well (potentially good enough for a solo dev, but I haven’t used Free in a while - it used to be!).

[@Vexmus_]

Screw it, *unpixels your art*

[@JMohawk]

The curse of spotting a dead pixel in someones camera, you can't unsee

[@mustafacanguvercin]

for a sec, i think my oled panel start to burn.. pff what a uncessary stress, dont buy oleds

[@ChristinaCreatesGames]

Waffeling on the least worst compromise instead of just sitting down and doing it right is something I struggled hard with in my own project, as well :D Almost every shortcut I took got called out by my playtesters, so I had to do better. But it's a much better game since I did! I really love your developing series, it has me nodding along a lot 😄 And your vector art looks really nice, too!

[@boium.]

A pixel is a pixel, you can't say it's only half. ~ TJ "Henry" Magnet

[@Daviloss]

nice throwback 😂

[@iantaakalla8180]

Mario games talking about “subpixels” in Mario 1 and Mario 3:

[@Pedropaulopoloni]

"Yet another generic pixel art indie game" is exactly what I say everytime I open up steam. So many game devs out there that you can notice use pixel art as a "default" art style instead of trying to have something that complements their game. The amount of times I thought "if you vectorized these graphics the game would look 10x better" is really high, glad to see you gave your game that nice upgrade.

[@TheMoney9999]

For the demo, I think having a good chunk of world 1 levels with a few later game levels also included would do a good job at showing off the variety of the game! It's pretty common for demos to be curated and not just the opening chunk of a game

[@matthewm2139]

I really appreciate videos like this. There are so many common game development issues that gamedev youtubers don't touch for some reason, and this is one of them. Maybe they think it's "too boring" or something. But you can make anything interesting. And useful!

[@TomHigson1]

It's interesting how you've changed your art style as a solution to a tech problem. I guess an advantage of solo development - if there were a team I'm sure everyone would be too scared to even suggest such a thing! Were you sad to change your original vision so much? (I much prefer the new style, by the way)

[@GMTK]

I don't think pixel art was ever part of the vision, to be honest. It was just the best I could do at the time. The new visuals still have the same feel / charm / style - just a different way of delivering it

[@Raoul1808.]

Hearing about this problem in the video reminded me of that time Tyler Glaiel (developer of The End is Nigh with Edmund McMillen) posted a GLSL shader that helped with this exact issue, though I don't know how you would go about integrating it with a Unity game (1. It's GLSL and 2. It seems like a rather low-level solution)

[@falsehero4476]

​@@GMTKSir, can you tell me the name of the music at the beginning of the video?

[@christophcookit6334]

​@@GMTK I think the non pixel art style is much cooler. I really don't like the approach of "another pixel game". Yeah These games were good but we are in the future.

[@LordTrashcanRulez]

@@christophcookit6334 This implies pixel art is an outdated style, which it's not

[@Serafiniert]

5:18 I love how happy you are with the results if the extra work you put in.

[@POwens]

Love this series, Mark! Everytime i see a new episode of "Developing" it cuts to the top of my To-Watch queue :)

[@thegreatwindmill]

I really love seeing this game develop like this and the way you share all the successes and also the trials you go through - it's both kinda sobering for anyone who wants to make their own game, and a nice way to set a realistic expectation of what it takes. Thanks for sharing, and good luck finishing the game up!

[@StarBeam500]

For a demo, I think adding a bunch of scrambled levels would work. A few levels to introduce world 1 mechanics, a level or 2 to test them, then a few levels to introduce world 2 mechanics and a few levels to test them. Maybe throw in a bit of World 3 or 4 with that process, and it could maybe work.

[@Stratelier]

Congratulations! You just learned another reason why pixel art is so often created at the lowest practical asset resolution -- it's easier to upscale (by an integer ratio) to fit different display sizes. Option #5 -- basically the opposite of option #4 -- would have been to downscale your level sizes so that the camera can be placed "closer", with more screen pixels per asset pixel. This reduces the overall effect of non-integer scaling (and anti-aliasing), but would DEFINITELY entail re-thinking basically all of your level designs (not to mention the basic parameters of your game physics).

[@gameholddb]

Watching other game game devlogs that restart from scratch after 1-2 years and throw everything out made me really scared when I saw the thumbnail. That being said the choice you took here was really good and the game will end up benefiting a lot from it. Great vid and great (so far) looking game. Can't wait for it to be out.

[@ZeusBrown]

I typically watch KZbin on one of my 1080p monitors, not fullscreen, which ends up being 720p. So it didn't even really look distinctly like pixel art to me unless it was a zoomed in shot. I think you made the right choice. Pixel perfection is hard to do in Unity at the best of times. When you have a fixed perspective on non-fixed-size screens, well you know.

[@philbertius]

Kudos on the brave transition! One thing I’ll mention is that without the perfect pixels, you can now do cool shader deformations to your art, or even animations with squash and stretch, and have it look just as crisp as before. (Especially if you’re using solid colors instead of textures!) Just one possibility to consider :)

[@trysta73]

Really good choice! It already had such a flash game vibe that it just works and some of the touches like the blurred backgrounds are very atmospheric.

[@landonj7863]

I was like: "YUUSSSSSSS!" when you revealed you were converting the game away from pixel art! Pixel art is great, but I can't tell you how many times I saw an indie game with really cool promotional art, then..."Oh. That's not what the actual game looks like...it's just another pixel art indie game 😴" There are many games coming out that do pixel art well because they have a specific aesthetic they want to reach. One delightful recent example is Arzette and the Jewel of Faramore -- VERY distinctive art style to say the least 🤣On the other hand, many games just look generic, even if the art is well-done. Your vector art is super cute, and seeing them all nice and crisp really helps boost this game's unique vibe!

[@soloshottie]

I've been watching GMTK for years Mark and as an aspiring developer, it has been massively insightful and you really do know what you're talking about... but taking this step to actually develop your own game from the ground up? you've provided the greatest treasure trove a game designer could ask for in this world. there's a video on every design topic, and soon all the videos on your development experience which has been incredibly honest and detailed. thank you Mark, for doing what you do. it's so hard ro find the morivation or inspiration to even start development, let alone continue it, and this channel is a huge boon to both. you're a legend.

[@viridisspielt]

One thing I would love to see for the future of this series, if there is any chance you can pull this of: Console releases! Once the game is finished it would be sooo interesting to see the intricacies of having to fine-tune it to fit into different ecosystems with all their own rules and quirks. Not sure if this is realistic but I'll just leave this here as an idea haha

[@GameDevYal]

From what I've seen of this process a lot of details are hidden behind NDAs, but there's probably some generic stuff that'd be allowed? (retrofitting touch controls on a game not designed for them originally, for instance)

[@GunnGuardian]

I find it interesting that making a game work for Steam Deck is now a core concern of developers from your commentary. Really shows you how much it's pushed Handheld PC gaming.

[@BetweenTheBorders]

When doing something like pixel-art, especially in Unity, you have to plan early. Resolution is important, and integer scaling is as well, but you also need to worry about image import settings, shaders, and the peculiarities of the camera (especially if you have cameras as texture generators). When come other big questions like, do you want to render low resolution fonts or use screen resolution fonts to allow better readability while having a pixel art style? Do you want to render the scene in low res and scale it, or scale objects and directly render to screen? There are major technical decisions to be made for what appears to be a purely aesthetic choice.

[@ReinOfCats]

I believe you generally did the correct thing and strongly discourage overplanning. Speaking as someone who worked on the same live game for 11 years (as well as other, shorter game projects), you just can't perfectly plan the future. Instead, try to adopt patterns, tooling, asset reuse, and - most importantly - a mindset that allows for change. You *will* learn and discover new things over time, you just need to make sure you've set yourself up enough to let that happen. With experience, your first best guess will naturally become more and more accurate to the final game. But no amount of experience - or planning - will ever let generate something that you don't want to change down the road for 100% of the things you build. It's good to embrace that idea now. :)

[@smactork]

Am I the only one who thought the game was nearly done? I'm surprised to hear he still has to make the rest of the game after World 1

[@Ghi102]

The last 20% of the game is 80% of the work, so that makes sense to me that he still has a lot of work to do.

[@fugedaboudit]

​@@Ghi102What do u mean?

[@teehundeart]

Getting a prototype running that's 80% there is something you can often "throw together" with just 20% time investment. Getting it into a 100% polished state is 80% of the work

[@denycast]

That ratio applies to a lot of projects not just Game development😀

[@koye4427]

He seems a like a bit of a perfectionist, I'd be pretty patient at this rate haha

[@mrphlip]

It's amazing how often, as a dev, we get to experience "oh, I had all of this tech debt and it was getting really annoying, so I finally got around to putting in the work to fix it, and it was a bunch of work, but now my life is so much easier. I'm sure this time I will actually learn anything from this discovery." A good developer will learn this lesson many times over their career, always for the first time.

[@shawnheatherly]

You had me worried there for a minute. The new art style works just fine by me, and now I have another reason to look forward to the Steam Next Fest.

[@SeppelSquirrel]

How do people know that Steam Next Fest is even a thing? This is the first video I've ever heard of it.

[@CatgirlCoder]

@@SeppelSquirrel It'll say so at the top of the featured store page when there's one going on, that's how I found out about it.

[@SeppelSquirrel]

@@CatgirlCoder Oh wow, I don't think I've ever looked at the store page. When I want to buy a game, I just use the search bar to find it by title.

[@roomtemperature7096]

Honestly so cool to see you goes from anylizing video game to actually making one. You're so close! Good luck on finishing MoM!

[@AlexMakesGames80]

I love every time Mark does a developing he's a bit more frazzled from development then previously

[@jbdh6510]

The new style looks way better and mush more polished. Great work!

[@ProbablyBarney]

taking a shot every time mark's head does a little wiggle when he talks, will update later

[@ProbablyBarney]

amblunce....

[@leifi76]

I'm genuinely really looking forward to seeing the finished product. Feels like it's been quite the journey. Keep it up Mark - you're nearly there! 💪

[@alienrenders]

In my game, I'm making most of the UI elements fully scalable by using shaders. I have a bunch of material functions in Unreal Engine that can do basic shapes (there are a lot of them in the free UI Material Lab sample by Epic if you want to get started) with a bunch of settings (radius, rounded boxes, antialiasing, lines, triangles, circles, etc.). You can combine them to produce any shapes you want to produce full color scalable materials. My game is a tower defense game. So the timeline bar at the top that shows the upcoming enemy groups are all icons drawn with material functions. The only drawback I've seen is when the resolution or scale gets too small, you don't want things to draw less than 1 pixel wide, then it gets blurry. That only happened once with the health bars and I've limited the scale to prevent it. Probably overkill solution, but damn does it look good. And it'll work on any future resolution like 8k, 16k, etc. or any other screen size.

[@andresmakesgames]

Sometimes there is an easier solution in there than biting the bullet on a lot of work that seems like the “right” solution. I recommend, in this scenario, doing the common exercise of “time boxing” - carving out a set amount of time (a box) for yourself to try to find a different creative way to solve the problem. If by the end of that time box you haven’t figured something else out that works, you bite the bullet on the solution you know works. This is useful also for experimenting with new features, and deciding whether to spend the time fleshing them out or just cutting them if they’re just not working.

[@CreativeSteve69]

Watching these devlogs Mark, has been a huge inspiration for me to keep learning GameDev as I plan on keeping up with it. Especially to the point where I'm comfortable with the godot engine usage as my choice. To hopefully make a fun game on my own outside of online courses and use what I learned into action by next year. These keep motivating me. I have an idea already for my first game I wanna create inspired by one of my fave classics growing up in the back of my mind. Once I am finished with the godot course I'm learning from for the engines basics. I can't wait to give it some light in the upcoming future. Thanks for these inspiring devlogs Mark.

[@GMTK]

Good luck!

[@rickyspanish4792]

I'm using a method that I rarely ever see used. Basically, it's a shader that does filtering, but with a nonlinear, sharper curve. So it's like the best of both worlds. It doesn't look very blurry, and you can scale it any size you want and it still looks kinda retro. Love it!

[@Nakker42]

the dead pixel on his camera continues to drive me nuts :D

[@ThePensiveWalrus]

He also had the focus set wrong. You haven't forgot your glasses this morning, it's the camera.

[@timdemoss]

You’re insane and I’ve got so much respect for your process, both in making the game and in documenting and explaining it. Thanks for letting us be part of it :)

[@metropolis10]

The counter argument is often also true. In fact I'd say usually more often true. Sometimes you just need to ship. Stop futzing with every little imperfect thing, let go, and call it done. Move on to the next thing. By the time you've remade your game 7 times you could have had 7 games and way more experience under your belt.

[@LordTrashcanRulez]

The problem is that if you keep releasing mediocre games, you'll never really release a finished one. The last 30% of your game is the hardest and just skipping it is a death sentence

[@metropolis10]

@@LordTrashcanRulezAlso true! It is a balance that is hard to get right. You need polish but you also need to let go at some point. Learning when to do that is likely a skill you develop after making multiple projects. They are both traps to avoid, and there is no one right answer you can follow.

[@bearwynn]

I agree, would have just given players the options for the expanded borders if they want pixel perfect, or anti aliasing if they want it more zoomed and then call it a day. If you are remaking your art assets to solve a tech problem then you're in too deep and you need to move the hell on

[@Aletdownofstate]

The updated art style looks really good. It's really clean and readable (it was before, but now even more so.)

[@ElianeGameDev]

Your game looks so great! Congrats for having the motivation to change all of your sprites.

[@janikarkkainen3904]

Solution 5: Scale the image twice - first to the nearest possible integer scale with nearest neighbour, and then again to the final resolution with linear filtering. Results in a good combination of both relatively crisp pixels, yet they aren't deformed because of final linear filtering scaling step that has a small amount of blurring. Have done this both with MonoGame and Unity. With that you can basically decide an arbitrary resolution for pixel art.

[@Churro_Douglas]

New game jam idea: you have to finish your game before the next episode of developing.

[@joekelly9332]

This has been a great series, super insightful to anyone who enjoys gaming. Great job as always

[@stevethepocket]

This was the right solution. It feels like so many indie games do just default to pixel art because it's The Done Thing, regardless of whether it's the best look for their game in particular. So you get games where sprite scaling is all over the map, or where the sprites freely rotate off-grid, or are just not the ideal look for the genre (you mentioned _Balatro_ earlier, and that's a perfect example of all three of those things). Now it looks like a playable version of those Aperture Science training videos or something.

[@AztecCroc]

Sprite scaling has always been a thing. Sprites rotating off the pixel grid has been a thing since the 32X on the Genesis.

[@lucasm20]

I'm sure you looked into it, but one way I like to "fix" pixel art when playing retro games is downsampling. You render at an integer scale larger than your monitor and then use bicubic sampling to scale it down to the actual screen size. The end result is a smooth but still crisp image. There used to be a shader for this on RetroArch called "pixellate" too.

[@Psilocervine]

So there actually is a solution that could have probably saved you a lot of "redesign everything" headache. You mentioned antialiasing, but there's a sort of twist on this known as a sharp-bilinear shader, which a LOT of emulators use for scaling nowadays where you'll see minimal perceptible blur. The very basic overview is that it scales up to the next highest integer scale and then scales back down using a simple bilinear filter I've used this in a lot of my pixel art projects because you really generally can't see the artifacts unless you actively look for them and it'd probably have worked exceptionally well for your game since your art style doesn't rely heavily on things like bayer-style dithering

[@MizunoKetsuban]

Mark has mentioned elsewhere in the comments is that the pixel art was really just a means to an end and not exactly a cornerstone to the vision of the project. That and he's happier with the final look of the new style, and he probably would have felt your suggested approach would have been yet another compromise.

[@augustdahlkvist3998]

This would only work for resolutions above 2x. For 1.5 times the resolution, this technique would be equivalent to normal AA

[@Psilocervine]

@@augustdahlkvist3998I've been using it to go from 640x400 to a whole set of arbitrary resolutions. It really isn't the same

[@AztecCroc]

The issue is that emulators are scaling up, this was trying to scale down. Scaling down is much harder.

[@Psilocervine]

@@AztecCroc He outright uses a lower resolution as his starting point, saying "720p doesn't scale nicely into 1080p." That's scaling up. What I'm saying is that if you're doing 720p, you go to 1440p, then down. When you're dealing with this sort of scaling, you can even do all this at the shader level. It's a notoriously inexpensive operation

I took the same approach with my game from the start. I love pixel art, but using it is asking for trouble. High resolution, but simple and clean shapes. Works on any screen.

[@ВадимНечунаев-л2о]

Damn it, Mark. I thought my monitor had a dead pixel.

[@Ihearvoicez]

It's making it really hard to watch his video too because it's way too distracting to concentrate on what his saying and makes me want to click off the video I wonder how many others felt the same but didn't bother to comment.

[@FEARmeify]

He's had that dead pixel in his camera sensor for a while now and it always gets me.

[@BossAttack]

Had me panicking for a minute.

[@Ihearvoicez]

@@FEARmeifyIf that's the case I might as well just block his channel from coming up on my feed. The game looks interesting but if the dude knows about the problem and is just using it to troll the audience then I don't need to keep seeing their stuff.

[@Jako3334074]

@@Ihearvoicez this is possibly the most petty thing i have ever read on youtube comments, you can't even see it unless you turn the quality up to 720p or higher

[@RamblinWom4n]

You made the right choice to pivot to this art style. Readability is so important, especially with puzzle games :) Looking forward to the release!

[@thehandler-555]

Breaking: GMTK deleted their upcoming game for a tax break.

[@MarsJenkar]

Thank you for giving us an update for what's up with the game, and good luck on your quest to get it finished.

[@tekbox7909]

Great video as always. also I think your camera may be broken or something cause there's constantly a white pixel above your right shoulder

[@NidonocuPoisonBunny]

The new art style is lovely and crisp, and matches rather well the graphics of your videos so also good in terms of 'meeting audience expectations' (even if these are very different mediums).

[@drgonzo123]

It’s been really interesting going on this journey with you, and I can’t wait to play your game! I’ve got it wishlisted and ready for Next Fest!

[@javierherrera179]

Congratulations on the new art, You added a LOT of value to your project.

[@vincenzusgaming]

This reminds of the quote 'A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add but when there is nothing left to take away". Video game development is a long and iterative process, patience and experimentation is key!

[@McCoy_Buck]

"It just works!" - Mark Howard

[@Dan_d00d]

well.. this might be... POLARIZING !!!! Hi Mark. New Prince of Persia The Lost Crown Boss Keys? It did some interesting gate keeping on metroidvania skill/map progression.

[@arvindhmani06]

Yes please bring boss keys back! (Probably unlikely till at least the launch of Mind Over Magnet, which is cool)

[@maperns]

It's so refreshing to see this acclaimed game critic going through the maddening learning steps of a freshman in game development. Thanks!

[@menhirmike]

Curious, when you redrew the art, is it now in a vector format? Or is it still bitmap/pixels, just at a 4K resolution? (It sounds like it because you used Photoshop's vector tools, but I wasn't sure if you exported it as vectors or as bitmaps)

[@GMTK]

The art is made as vectors, but exported as rasterised PNGs

[@stevethepocket]

There are no pure vector-based game engines, as far as I know. Which is weird since Flash has been around since forever, though it was also never very efficient (I used to get slowdown in _The Binding of Isaac_ running at just 1024x768 on a system with a quad-core and dedicated graphics). But hey, maybe someone could fork Ruffle and build an open-source authoring tool for it.

[@Lishtenbird]

@@stevethepocket Some years ago when I was looking up vector art solutions for a game some time after Flash died, I was shocked. This seemed like such a simple approach to perfectly scalable graphics for all the various devices, and yet. Just another reason why I'm still mad about the whole Flash thing.

[@Twisted_Code]

"But the other lesson is sometimes it feels like a good idea to try and find a compromise or a loophole or a workaround but that's kind of the lazy way out." This is why I am so critical of design decisions both others make and that I make: I know way too well from seeing way too much that if you just step back and rethink what you have in perspective, you get something way better. You can fudge it for a while, that's okay, but eventually you have to pay the piper back for your technical debt.

[@mereln5187]

Interesting journey! It's on my Steam wishlist now

[@PaulPlay]

Absolutely love the look of this now. I think your art style works better in vector form than in pixel art :)

[@MegaCuerdas]

with that title i couldn't not click on this video jajaja

[@Pontypants]

Well shit you did it man. You're finishing your first game! Excellent stuff, good job!

[@yazeed_0o0]

It's very cool to see a take on easy to make art style that is not pixel art. Don't get me wrong, I do love pixel art and love making it but it tends to give less appeal to your game as it just another indie pixel art game.

[@yazeed_0o0]

@@SimuLord Yeah, even when I really love pixel art style I started getting that first impression when I see a pixel art indie game lately. It's just became redundant.

[@Squant]

@@SimuLord This logic would work if all indie games were quirky and fun.

[@jcen_]

That's exactly why it's often recommended to draw your pixel art assets in reference to either 320x180 or 640x360(2x) canvas. It scales well to 720p(4x), 1080p(6x) and 1440p(8x). I think this new style fits your game way better. Pixel art can be awesome if executed well and aiming for the right aesthetic but oftentimes it just gives your game that indie look.

[@jcen_]

There's a cool channel called Nonsensical2D that has some videos comparing working with hand-drawn(hi-res) assets vs pixel art

[@osbornjack7]

The long short cut :D

[@manon-gfx]

I feel like the high resolution graphics fit the style of the game a lot more too! Love the change, really nice and crisp!

[@RobLang]

Great to see your progress! How much of your development pipeline is applicable to people without 1.55m subs and 30k wishlists? Is there anything we can take from your experience that doesn't rely on an inexhaustible supply of playtesters?

[@GMTK]

Hey Rob! For sure - my game dev experience is definitely not average. Aside from the playtesters, I think the schedule is useful (dedicating a specific day to bug fixing, for example), and there are also ways to get playtesters outside of YT "fame" - friends and family, Reddit, Discord communities (GMTK Discord has a playtesting channel!), and real life (see O and Co.'s video about finding playtesters at a farmer's market)! I appreciate it can be frustrating for fellow devs to watch me go through game dev on easy mode - it's not lost on me, and is something I absolutely plan to discuss in the future.

[@RobLang]

@@GMTK thanks for the recognition, Mark. Much appreciated. I'm unconvinced that your build-and-playtest weekly sprint is at all achievable for 99% of game developers. It's not possible to verify a week's worth of work if you're having to hunt for new play testers each weekend. A typical pool of friends, family and Discord followers is tiny and not refreshed. Also most disappear on Reddit. I say this is an enterprise web dev who release software fortnightly to 100k users. We get to iterate like you because we have tens of thousands of interactions every day. At home, I can't reproduce that, so a weekly turnaround would not work.

[@AlexJ1]

​@@RobLangHe never said you could replicate his schedule. Either get micro-famous or practice more patience. Geez.

[@RobLang]

​@@AlexJ1 I think I've demonstrated more patience than most! When Mark creates videos, there is an implication that it's advice that we can learn from and follow. Much of GMTK is that kind of content, I've learnt lots over the years. In this case, I think Mark has fallen into the trap of recommending a process from a starting point that only a tiny minority can copy. From re-reading his comment, I think he agrees.

[@AlexJ1]

@@RobLang Wow, you're so patient when you're complaining about free content that you've already learned a lot from.

[@Nikkiflausch]

Yep, can confirm, definitely looks better. I never felt quite sold on the visuals yet, feeling better about them after this improvement.

[@teneesh3376]

There is a fifth option to your pixel problem. There is something called interpelation. It adds a very slight blur to the pixels where it'll make the uneven scaling look great. It still looks sharp and you wont get uneven pixel shimmering. If you have watched mylifeingaming's channel, they explain it better. Retro pixel art games are infamous for uneven pixels in 1080p. The retrotink 5x, and some hdmi mods for older consoles have interpelation

[@group555_]

there is a sixth one too. double the resolution and make every pixel in the art a 2 by 2. now the 1080p will be a 3 by 3

[@SnoFitzroy]

but then the game stops working entirely with less than 1440p@@group555_

[@group555_]

@@SnoFitzroy why would it? the base resolution right now is 1 by 1. I say change it to 2 by 2. that increases what it can run on

[@Kio_Kurashi]

For the demo I would say to have 3 or 4 custom puzzles that show combinations of all of the mechanics of the game. Or at least half of them. That way people can have an indication of the game, but not have the entire game pre-played before actually getting to the game.

[@RascanThe6th]

"It just works." omg, amazing reference 😂

[@tmanook]

Good info. Appreciate you sharing this.

[@jwanikpo]

Im beginning to have Wintergatan's marble machine vibes about this game

[@Nessinby]

Thankfully this isn't him restarting over again out of perfection and losing his vision of the project. Even if he is a tiny bit nitpicky, but as an artist I can understand that.

[@jwanikpo]

​@@Nessinbyfair, i made the comment before i could have a chance to actually watch the video, im glad i was wrong.

[@StarBeam500]

You could put a setting to make all the art pixel art, with a warning that it may not look good on all moniters, maybe specifying the 1880p moniter. That way, the player could choose either. Of course, you could still set this new art as the default, but having a pixel option would be nice.

[@sploxy7705]

Someone got here while the video was unlisted 💀💀💀

[@Anthony_DeSouza]

Yeah that’s what happens if you pay for Patreon…

[@dubemonoh2745]

Ok and?

[@bh4vvy33t]

Lemme guess, bot or supporter

[@SAmaryllis]

As someone who usually plays a handful of demos every Next Fest that have ranged from 10 min to 10 hrs - imo, 20 min is probably a good amount of time for an average demo playthrough. It's okay for me if it is just a handful of levels from world 1, because the game trailer usually shows what more I can expect, even if it's not in the demo itself

[@sinom]

Alternatively you could also have downscaled (or, well, re authored the assets at half the size) everything to 360p instead of 720p instead. That would have fit any size screen

[@cambur3]

In regards to a demo, getting a vertical slice of the game is so important for me to trust that the concepts being introduced are going to pay off nicely. The new Mario Vs Donkey Kong might actually be amazing, but the few early levels in the demo were insultingly easy so I'll never know.

[@wkuiper]

It's awfully quiet in here 🤔

[@tkm7152]

I'm here!

[@FitMuffin]

I'm here x2

[@crazygames1144]

I'm here x3

[@cheesepiegreen]

For anyone looking there is another great Indie Trailer editor named Ellison Winterstein, he’s been slowly taking over a lot of indie horror trailers and could probably be easily reached for your game trailer

[@stray1239]

that release date is pretty close to... you should enter mind over magnet into the GMTK gamejam

[@jesusfreakpl]

All focus on finishing the game! so there was not enough to spare for the video shots :P just teasing, great video and effort Mark. Keep at it!