| Feedback Friday #417 - Making Changes Posted: 05 Nov 2020 08:17 PM PST FEEDBACK FRIDAY #417 Well it's Friday here so lets play each others games, be nice and constructive and have fun! keep up with devs on twitter and get involved! Post your games/demos/builds and give each other feedback! Feedback Friday Rules: Suggestion: As a generally courtesy, you should try to check out a person's game if they have left feedback on your game. If you are leaving feedback on another person's game, it may be helpful to leave a link to your post (if you have posted your game for feedback) at the end of your comment so they can easily find your game. -Post a link to a playable version of your game or demo -Do NOT link to screenshots or videos! The emphasis of FF is on testing and feedback, not on graphics! Screenshot Saturday is the better choice for your awesome screenshots and videos! -Promote good feedback! Try to avoid posting one line responses like "I liked it!" because that is NOT feedback! -Upvote those who provide good feedback! -Comments using URL shorteners may get auto-removed by reddit, so we recommend not using them. Previous Weeks: All Testing services: Roast My Game (Web and Computer Games, feedback from developers and players) iBetaTest (iOS) Promotional services: Alpha Beta Gamer (All platforms) submitted by /u/Sexual_Lettuce [link] [comments] |
| Fire animation tutorial: Shading and Animation basics Posted: 05 Nov 2020 08:29 PM PST |
| The 7 Most Obvious UI UX Mistakes on your Project - from a UI UX Art Director Posted: 06 Nov 2020 05:59 AM PST  | Speculative work on a console control scheme on a mobile device Hey all! I wanted to put together a very quick survival-guide for super-duper beginners who are trying to learn on their own in this day and age. Quick social proof: I'm John- a 20-year veteran UI UX Designer, Art Director and UI UX remote Mentor in app and game design (Midway, EA, Id Software, Activision, Microsoft to name a few in-house jobs and gigs). Slide into my DMs if you're curious about anything you don't want to write a thread about. And... we're... o- 1 BAD TYPOGRAPHY We'll start with the obvious. Oh beloved fledgling designer, your choice and use of the written word is stupid-bad. Some Graphic Designers spend the better part of their careers studying Typography, so there is little shame in being hot garbage when put to task. Nevertheless, your typographic sensibilities truly add or rob a project of its luster. Here are a few easy typography lessons to remember: - Pick a Sans Serif (fonts without the "fiddly bits"). They read better, especially on mobile
- Work around 2 fonts: a Title font and a Body font. A title font should be showy and used sparingly as (unsurprisingly) titles and subheadings. Your body font should be comparatively boring, and read well small and in dense paragraphs
- Pick 2 font sizes at most and stay consistent on all your screens. Optimally pick two sizes exclusively for your body font and one size exclusively for the title font. Determine an appropriate font size based on your worst-case text field on your worst-case medium!
- Solve for long text fields by making sure most of them are double-lined. It's a simpler solution than something programmatic. Translating? German is often twice as long as any English equivalent, so work around the idea of things inflating at least by double.
- When in doubt, left justify. Right justifying will get you killed in Art School, or worse…
2 HORRIBLE HUDS HUD design, like typography, is an ocean unto itself complete with pearlescent beauty and abyssal frights. Like I tell every mentee and dev team, "we'll be working on the HUD all the way up until we ship". And we do. Always. Every. Single. Time. Thus, having an awed appreciation (and primal terror) of game HUDs, there are a few things you can fix that'll make you read like a designer well beyond your years: - No thin lines! These are easily lost when the action heats up, and turn damn-near translucent on mobile
- No red HUDs! Red reads as invalid or conditional, and you'll have a Sisyphean-ass time trying to create a visual language without using red as a cautionary.
- Try not to have floating text, support it with a shape or design behind it to help separate vital information from screen noise. Can't do that? Add a subtle stroke or shadow around floating text fields to draw it out from the background. You are using a thick sans serif, right?
- Take a video of the game in action and superimpose your HUD on top of it as early as possible (especially the wireframe!). Get a sense of how your HUD works in motion and in hectic, colorful action. No HUD will ever exist statically, so video helps you prototype under realistic conditions that much faster.
3 INFORMATION OVERLOAD I love my designers, love 'em to death – but I absolutely believe they think their job is to put as much stuff on the screen as humanly possible (The Great Kitchen Sink School of Applied Design). UI/UX's job is to shred a Designer's mobius-long wishlist to comparative ribbons. Absent a finger-wagging UX Designer by your side, you've probably fallen into the "100% of this information is relevant and needed, dammit!" trap a few times yourself. A few ways to avoid that: - Write down everything you want to display on the screen and assign it a number value from most to least important. That's your Hierarchy, a critical concept in UX design. Place the items on your list in order, with the highest value getting more real-estate and prominence than the lower values. Build on top of your numerical importance. Trees never start with the leaves – and neither should you. Start with the root, vital priorities of your design, and build on top of your foundations.
- Have "opt-in" information. This can be: displays that only come out when the information is relevant (updates or experience gained). Info that fades away after X amount of time (HUD without action, achievement milestones). You can even tuck tertiary-level functions away under a single option button (ellipsis or hamburger menu buttons).
- Start removing huge portions of your Interface and test it out. Or turn around and start with only the most basic 3 elements on the HUD and build from that. You'll be genuinely surprised how little you need on the screen to play. You'll also discover that the less there is on screen, the less chance you have to mess it all up, either aesthetically or logistically. Minimalism saves lives and projects.
4 NO GRID SYSTEM A consistent grid system helps the eye parse information cleanly and swiftly. Non-designers tend to place things by eye, and this is, of course, wildfire dumb. Placing elements on a tight grid with comfortable margins will make any screen read with crystalline clarity. In general: - When in doubt, space things in Golden Ratio 3rds. Pairing ⅓ with ⅔ has been an attractive rule since long before the Renaissance; no reason to think it'll get stale now.
- Make sure that if your text is in a container or shape that it has a comfortable margin of space around it. If you don't have the visual chops for this, just make sure the text doesn't run all the way to the edges of a shape or past it. You'd think this'd be obvious, but… here we are.
- Conceptualize your screen in terms of horizontal slices, like a hamburger. This isn't just good practice for responsive design, it also helps to compartmentalize the information for both the audience and the poor designer / coder.
5 IMPORTED SOLUTIONS Tell me if you've heard this one. You're on Pinterest or Google grabbing whatever you can find UI-wise. In this hydra-handed snatchfest, you find an interface you like and exclaim, "Why, this interface is perfect for my needs, I'll just copy-paste this and my troubles will be over!" Except they won't. Them troubles are going to go through cellular mitosis. When you copy and paste UI, you're not taking into account the months, possibly years of refinement it took several Talents to solve a very specific problem. You're grabbing somebody else's answer to a visual question only obliquely related to yours. And this is the classic, possibly classical mistake of focusing on technique first. It always fails you because your copying something contextless and without insight. For reasons that are difficult to fully articulate here, let's just say copying somebody else's interface verbatim always leads to problems, most especially when you don't know what rules to bend and which to snap like wet celery. Instead of committing grand-theft-design, try to start with a better process - Sketch out your ideas first. This is known as the Conceptualization phase of my job, where I figure out what all the "low-hanging fruit"-level problems are. Sketch roughly until you have the basic "scaffolding" around the project's basic issues, quirks, and challenges
- Wireframe. There's lots of ways to do it, mostly because it's an intermediary between sketches and final art. For this phase, place things on a grid, and move elements in gigantic zones. Think of the wireframe as a TV-dinner: each section is meant for a different part of the meal, compartmentalized and specially sized for the meat, the veggies, the cobbler…
- Art pass. If the wireframe phase was done with respectable vigilance, you can simply paint-over your Wires with pixel-perfect art in the Art Pass (this rarely happens). So make sure when you wireframe, set it up as close to the final dimensions as possible and throw it in the game in as early a form as possible. Real testing doesn't happen in a lab – it happens in the field.
6 YOU'RE NOT TESTING Speaking of testing, this last one is near and dear to my heart as a man who, by necessity, can't do his job without doing a little of everyone else's. And here's the dirty secret I know about being the man "who wears many hats". If your UI guy/gal is reasonably good and they're struggling with your design – it's a bad design. Full stop. Here's how to fix gameplay issues from the UI/UX on backwards: - If your inventory system requires a massive space, ask yourself just how much loot the player is receiving every 5 minutes, every hour, and by endgame. Nobody has fun with inventory management – make sure you're balancing the game to mitigate the player's annoyance first!
- If you're showing a variable number of elements on screen like status effects, how many are there on average? How many can there be max? Fun fact: I had to make a blackjack minigame back at Midway Games. The average Blackjack hand is around 2-3 cards… but you can absolutely get 4 aces, 4 twos, 4 threes… now try to make a single system that accounts for 99% 2-3 cards in a hand and also accounts for the 1% design-flaying exceptions!
- If your players or testers end up dying a lot, it might not be the difficulty. It might be poor feedback. Do you have potent signals for low health and ammo? Are there audio as well as visual cues, for example, the sound of a clip becoming hollower with lower bullets? Did the player suffer a debilitating effect and not know about it? Are you showing too much information and as a result, nobody's reading it?
7 YOU'RE WORKING HARD Hustle-culture is stupid. There, I said it. Post-Industrial Revolution, the need for craftspeople went down and the need for assembly-line workers skyrocketed. Process (and imagination) were largely gutted from a worker's responsibilities – meaning if the job was hard, well, sucks to be you. But that's not what UI UX Design is. We have a process that directly effects the project, the team and ourselves. If you are working to the bone on every screen, that's not a spectacular work ethic. That's a spectacular failing on your part. The artwork is supposed to work for you – never the other way around. But how to start? - Make templates. Don't go screen by screen by screen – see how many elements overlap and repeat, and start there.
- Research better. It's easy to look up games or apps similar to yours on Google or Pinterest… and you should. But don't just stop there. Look at programs that have similar problems in the abstract. Explore unrelated genres and artforms. Prioritize the modern, but don't ever neglect amazing ideas that have withstood the tests of time.
- Be process oriented. Always fixate on how you're doing things and the why. The more streamlined things are for you, the better they are for the project. The happier you are doing what you do… well… that's the ultimate prize, now isn't it?
[link] [comments] |  |
| First footage of my upcoming simple game! Posted: 06 Nov 2020 08:57 AM PST |
| I made a quick guide on how I like to ensure my games are juiced up and have the right game feel! Posted: 06 Nov 2020 11:58 AM PST |
| Question about shaders Posted: 06 Nov 2020 11:29 AM PST I'm learning directx 11 for fun and I have a question about shaders. So things like shadows, fog, normal mapping etc.. are all done through making a shader for it and then rendering a mesh with that shader. As far as I know you cant render a mesh with more than one shader. But what if I want one object to be affected by all of those things at once? Do I have to write a shader that combines all of those effects one by one? Isn't that inefficient especially if I later decide that I want one specific mesh to not be affected by say normal mapping. Is there any information anywhere that describes how modern game engines deal with this? thanks submitted by /u/H3XAGON_ [link] [comments] |
| I'm not an artist... so I made shapes do stuff Posted: 06 Nov 2020 12:26 PM PST |
| Proper place to advertise game release? Posted: 06 Nov 2020 12:03 PM PST My boyfriend is currently developing a game and we're both wondering if there is a specific subreddit that allows such advertisement. If not, that's totally okay too. Anything helps! submitted by /u/No-Combination-8957 [link] [comments] |
| Vulkan ray tracer sandbox. A project where you can create and test your shaders. There is a lot of to explore and I am looking for enthusiasts ready to share a passion for Vulkan. Please take a look https://github.com/Zielon/PBRVulkan Posted: 06 Nov 2020 03:02 AM PST |
| what are you're opinions of construct 3 and clickteam fusion. Posted: 06 Nov 2020 10:49 AM PST So I want to start developing 2d games using one of those engines. Im playing to make mostly turn-based rpg type games and just normal rpg. I own a license of construct 3 and the standard version of clickteam fusion (paid version, not dev version. Window export only). Honestly, Im not into programming/developing 3d games and never will. My prediction is that in 2021, clickteam fusion 3 and construct 4 will be out (construct 2 last update was R278 and construct 3 is in R223, most likely will stop before R300 to release construct 4 (my opinion)). Clickteam: Pro: - I love the event system - offline working - I prefer this UI over construct. (Will be switching to fusion 3 as simon did confirm that we can import our project straight to fusion 3 from fusion 2.5) Cons: - if i choose clickteam then i wont be able to export my project into fusion 3 when it comes out. so i will have to learn fusion 3 from the very beginning. (but i absolutely love the new UI on fusion 3 and the new event system) (Simon confirmed that we can export our project straight too fusion 3 and the skills too) - Making your own extensions is complicated seems intimidated for some people. - I dont like how everything is sold separate. E.g Exports sold separate, paying extra for more performance boots (fusion 2.5+ DLC), etc. (Need to have alot of investment done into this) - cannot be used in mobile. (need a laptop to use it on the go) Construct: Pro: - Very easy to make your own extensions - everything sold in one pack. (Different exports, every features, etc.) (I have no problem paying monthly) - weekly beta update. monthly stable update. - Offline use. - Can be used on mobile. - With construct, it will be no problem exporting my project right over to construct 4 cons: - not a big fan of the event system but it gets the job done pretty easily and quicker than clickteam - Cannot open project if the plugins aren't updated to construct 4. What do you think i should choose for based turn rpg submitted by /u/Psychological_Slice8 [link] [comments] |
| I'm working on to flesh out Disc Us core mechanics. The game is a social deduction game like Among Us with infinite lives and cell for suspects. The models here are from Mixamo. Are there 3D artist and animator here who'd like to collab? 3D characters for both humans and masked killers and maps Posted: 06 Nov 2020 05:47 AM PST |
| Unity3D C# for complete beginners, more content next Friday! Posted: 06 Nov 2020 10:32 AM PST |
| I need to make my game actually fun. Here is one level of gameplay and it just is not fun so I need constructive feedback and where I can go and what I can change, I am really open to anything at this point I just want this to actually be thoroughly enjoyable to play for once. Posted: 06 Nov 2020 01:03 PM PST |
| online game development/programming certificates Posted: 06 Nov 2020 12:39 PM PST I am looking for some advice for online game development/programming certificates? If anyone has completed any certificate for game dev/programming online? I am just looking to see where people went and reviews of their experiences. I know many people learn off Udemy and YouTube but I prefer a structured academic experience and I am not banking on a job with the certificate but as a hobby on my own. I am also mostly interested in 2d sports and arcade type racing games and these types of games there is a scarcity of information and tend to be more complex. submitted by /u/Easy-Counter-2834 [link] [comments] |
| Are games with network capabilities (online multiplayer specifically) made around a pre-existing network connection structure or is the network capabilities added after the rest of the game is made? Is the opposite of whichever is correct realistic or even possible? Posted: 06 Nov 2020 12:31 PM PST |
| Creating a Parallax Effect in Unity - YouTube Tutorial Part 04 - Fixing Fragments & Horizontal Movement Posted: 06 Nov 2020 08:39 AM PST |
| Restless Lands now have a main character, what do you think? Posted: 06 Nov 2020 12:24 PM PST |
| Multithreading Handbook For Simulation Developers Posted: 06 Nov 2020 06:22 AM PST |
| Why I chose to develop a game in Electron (javascript) Posted: 06 Nov 2020 04:42 AM PST |
| how to make tailable trails texture using substance designer Posted: 06 Nov 2020 11:48 AM PST |
| 2D Platformer Resolution? Posted: 06 Nov 2020 07:46 AM PST Hi all, I'm in process of creating my first 2D platformer. I have some high-level goals: - 2D with a retro feel and pixel art, but not your typical 32x32. I also don't want 4K or HD. Just something in between. The idea is to give a retro feel, but also take advantage of modern processing and spice things up visually. No palette or color limitations; no sprite limitations, etc.
- I want to take advantage of modern wide screen displays and natively support 16:9 aspect ratios
- In general, I like the way Mega Man 11 feels in terms of character size and world size ratio. A lot of room to move, jump, and platform without feeling constrained.
I've already created my first sprite of the main character with an idle animation. He's currently 189 pixels tall. I think I jumped the gun and started the art before I thought about and set the game boundaries and limitations in terms of my above goals. I have some problems that I tried to think through: - What's the typical dimensions for a good platformer? I took a look at Mega Man 11 and tried to measure things in a relative fashion using aspect ratios.
- How big are the characters? How big are the tile sets and maps? How big is the level and size of the screen?
- Finally, how do they all relate to each other?
I took a screenshot of Mega Man 11 and tried to answer the above questions. Here is the screenshot: I noticed the following: - It appears that Mega Man 11 has a native resolution of 1280x720 @ 60FPS, which is 720P. However, I seen some talk about 4K, but no specifics.
- I measured the screen in units of Mega Man. The screen is 23 Mega Mans wide and 7.5 Mega Mans tall.
- I seen that tiles are roughly the same width as Mega Man and about half of his height. That means Mega Man is roughly 2x1 tiles.
- That means the screen is roughly 23x15 tiles in resolution.
- Assuming the native resolution is 1280x720, that means that each tile is approximately 50x50 pixels.
- That means that Mega Man is approximately 100x50 pixels.
Using the same math, I took a look at the character I have already drawn, which is 189 pixels tall. Obviously this is more pixels than Mega Man, according to my tough math based on a game screenshot. If I want to run at 720P, my character needs to be about 100 pixels tall. For my 189 pixel tall character, I would need a screen resolution of 1360x2418 to have the same aspect ratio of my character, tiles, and world. However, I don't think a 1360x2418 resolution makes sense, because it's a very, very odd size. It doesn't scale at all; whereas 720P can scale to 1080P, 2880P, and 4K. But then again, this is my first 2D game, and I don't even know if I need to scale it up at all. I know a little bit about pixel perfect games. Meaning that pixel art stays in a square when rendered, to represent a pixel. I know that you can scale it up, but only in squares, such as 1X, 2X, 4X, 16X, 32X, etc. Otherwise you have to use anti-aliasing, which I think I want to stay away from. One topic I don't know much about is how cameras work in games. I know that I can move cameras and use scaling, but I think that defeats the purpose of pixel perfect. But then again, maybe I want to move away from pixel perfect to take advantage of scaling, so that I can zoom in and out dynamically to help the perspective as you move through the platform or in a boss fight. Ultimately I need to answer the following questions: - What game/screen resolution do I need?
- What will be the pixel size of my main character?
- What will be the pixel size of tiles?
- How many tiles in the screen?
- Do I need to worry about scaling vs. staying pixel perfect?
I hope that someone with much more experience than I do can chime and and provide some guidance. Thanks! submitted by /u/netproz [link] [comments] |
| A developer's monologue about Red Rope release Posted: 06 Nov 2020 05:27 AM PST  | Hi, my name is Francesca, art director for Yonder and pixel artist of Red Rope: Don't Fall Behind+, the first of our released games and the one that I care the most. I consider Red Rope as a child, a prodigy child, the one that's always silent and introverted but a remarkable one. And today it's taking an important step: it's landed on consoles. I must confess, I'm not comfortable with promoting this game and with convincing someone to have a look at it. I've never felt uncomfortable with writing a press release for one of my games before. But I wouldn't feel like hiring another person to do the job for me. Not with Red Rope. There's nothing I can say, no short and clever description can easily describe how deep Red Rope is. I'm an indie game developer and, together with my teammates, I work on games in which I deeply believe since 2013. Before choosing this path in my life, I have been an art student and I graduated in Anthropology. I'm a mediocre singer but music has never failed to give me great existential satisfaction. I love my friends, my family, good food and I don't mind getting lost in my thoughts. I like to feel involved in major projects. My favorite thing about making video games is the brainstorming, the moment when we can imagine new worlds, with their own rules, their aesthetics, and their lore. I love this job and I enjoy my life. But if I were to die tomorrow, the thing that would make me most proud of myself is to have been part of the team that created Red Rope. A game that awaits those who want to discover it. https://preview.redd.it/deww2ettfmx51.jpg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dff3bb5431e4c29a25729307dbbc7716f79a0223
[link] [comments] |  |
| Book Reports for Gamedevs: Rebel Without A Crew. Hi devs! I'm starting a new YouTube series. Feedback appreciated. Posted: 06 Nov 2020 11:15 AM PST |
| Does anyone know about CGSpectrum? If you've gotten a certificate from there do you consider it worth it in helping you to get a job/start a new career as a game dev/programmer? Posted: 06 Nov 2020 11:06 AM PST |
| Carmageddon needs a Reboot Posted: 06 Nov 2020 11:00 AM PST I bet this will rot in new or be downvoted into oblivion but I really needed to say it. Just watched a few BeamNG vids and thought to myself that running over screaming ragdoll pedestrians while getting bonus points for "artistic impression" would feel pretty rewarding in this physics engine. Carmageddon was epic back in the days. A goat simulator crammed into a postal apocalyptic stunt racing game full of pointless gore and violence. I'd so shredd this on a modern day console. submitted by /u/KarlKlebstoff [link] [comments] |
![[link]](https://i.redd.it/ji5bemexrjx51.gif){kind=link}
![[link]](https://i.redd.it/hef86ggn7nx51.png){kind=link}
No comments:
Post a Comment