Physics simulation on GPU |
- Physics simulation on GPU
- I'm developing a game in 2D using UE4 and this is what I've managed to learn and do in two prototypes.
- How to create a video game character in ZBrush
- The cost of doing game dev business
- Is it possible to work remotely as a gamedev?
- Don't bother submitting your game to these sites for reviews
- Free LowPoly Animated Zombie
- How to make 2D game alone. Engine and coding
- Would releasing a demo of my game on Steam use up the "release boost" in terms of visibility from Steam that games get on release?
- Is GDC worth it for an indie dev mainly looking to promote their game?
- Martial arts animation by hand: can it be done?
- I live coded a game in Unity on Twitch. Here are some highlights!
- Teaching my son to code games...
- Questions about servers for large groups of players
- Infinite worlds
- Any Interest in Automatic GameMaker Studio to Unity Migration Tool?
- Using albedo to create amazing results with low poly assets in real-time environments
- How to gather attention for a niche game made by 1 person with a 0$ budget?
- On-Demand, Self-Serve, Gaming Merch Store Sites (All-In-One, like cafepress)?
- Just curious, all of you who have a career in the game dev industry, did you go to get a degree in college/university, or were you self taught?
- The Trailer Editor's role
- Quinto: Resurrecting an Abandoned Board Game
| Posted: 11 Jan 2018 09:54 AM PST I created a game that is completely a physics simulation, it runs on GPU. How it looks. People kept asking how to do that, so I wrote two tutorials. Each one has a link to the example project. The first one is easy, it's about basics of compute shader. The second one is about physics simulation. This is a gif from the example project I based this tutorial on. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 11 Jan 2018 10:10 AM PST Why I chose Unreal EngineI've been working on this for about 2-3 months. When I first decided to develop this game I was looking for a 2D engine, I've been using Unreal Engine 4 since it came out and have used Paper2D a lot in the classes I teach at the local college but I was looking for something else because I just wasn't convinced I could do much with Paper2D. That was until I saw Cardboard Sword's Siege and the Sandfox which has been made in Unreal Engine 4. I was reading this article on how the team at Cardboard Sword used Unreal to make their 2D game and it made me realize that instead of working with a new toolset I should take the tools I know best and make a 2D game with that. I had already experimented with expanded the Paper2D feature set with a free plugin I developed over the summer so I have a reasonable idea how everything works under the hood if I needed to create more tools to make the game so I got experimenting with my first prototype. As I was inspired by Siege and the Sandfox I discussed it in class and bounced a question or two over to Cardboard Sword over twitter which they happily replied too. This helped me find the solutions to some common problems I've seen discussed with Paper2D such as using Forward Rendering for lighting and a large collision thickness to take advantage of the features commonly used in 3D Unreal Engine games (Nav Meshes!) Another big factor in why I decided to use Unreal is because I'm using this project to teach myself pixel art and pixel art animation and it's easier to learn the art side of things knowing the engine already instead of trying to develop my knowledge of both at the same time. The First PrototypeI mostly used the first prototype to work out how to use unreal best with 2D this meant creating a basic dungeon with some AI to use navmeshes, using the tilemap editor and finding the best scale for everything to be. I also experimented with the camera scale (in orthographic) as-well-as the scale of the character itself but later in the second prototype found that working with a pixel per unit of about 0.25 worked best for the size of the art I was working with. I also make use of the Z axis to determine to draw order creating everything in a "top-down" way instead of side on. Another technical experiment in this prototype was the use of sockets on different frames of a flip book to control when an attack would collide with an enemy. I'd have it check if a socket existed and then do a box trace to detect enemies between the hilt of the sword and the end. I later found this a real pain in the butt to keep setting up with different animations. Something I fixed later in the second prototype. AI developed in the first prototype made use of a basic finite state machine built in the blueprint, actually, that's a point worth mentioning for ease of prototyping everything has been made in Blueprint so far in this project. As I've developed the idea further I've made a note of features that should be remade in C++ so that they are easier to maintain (big blueprints are still horrible) and more efficient. At the end of the prototype, I had a simple room system, some basic AI and navmesh usage and a bunch of ideas to test in the second prototype. Prototype 2A big part of developing the second prototype was trying to find an art style, it is still very much in development and with only some basic art skills this process has been slow and entertaining. I'm making use of the generic RPG enemy of heroes slimes as they are easy to animate and I'm playing to my strength, but as the prototype developed I tried some more complex ideas such as the mosquito and drill slime during this prototype my art has come quite a long way and I've actually made a small imgur album to keep track of that progression here. All art has been made in pyxel edit and asesprite. I prefer pyxel for tilesheets and asesprite for animations. Along with the art the bulk of the combat design has happened during this prototype with the return of the basic slime AI I found that you can use timelines to create some movement during the attacks that I could control with a simple curve asset making it easy to experiment with. Another thing I worked out during this prototype was that you can use standard collision shapes and flipbook collision together to handle movement and frame based attacks. This allowed me to do cool stuff like let the player run under the big slime and have it hurt the player on landing with relative ease. Frames you want to detect an attack onrhave a collision shape, a capsule is used in the papercharacter and I use this for all the world geometry collision. I then usually have a hitbox collision shape to go with this. The player is setup in the same way. I've also been playing with some level editing blueprints, because of construction scripts its very easy to create useful tools on the fly for managing the camera, what area the player is in and the direction light to apply to the scene at the tie time, this has let me do some basic stuff with lighting though I have not quite got the hang of the lighting yet you can see how I'm using it here. I made use of this system for the first proper build of the second prototype. This is what it looks like in editor As it stands the current version of prototype 2 has a boss, and is replayable with different difficulties and a challenge mode. A big part of this game will be the ability to give yourself a handicap for better rewards, this could be more enemies, a scrambled room order, or only having 1 hp! I've been getting my own students and friends to test the game and have been adjusting things with each piece of feedback ready to move onto the actual project proper. Closing thoughts and what's nextFirstly I recommend anyone who wants to learn to pixel art check out studio mini boss which hosts some fantastic tutorials on pixel art an animation with tons of examples! Another thing is a big part of my experience up to this point has been making unfinished prototypes but what has changed my development and work flow is finding a documentation style that suits me. Most of my game has been designed and developed through sketching, paper based idea generation and checklists. I use workflowy.com for all my TODO lists and organizing each of my sprints. Another way I document development is by recording things often and showing them to people. I've harassed my friends almost every other day since I started development on this project so that I can constantly improve it. I also wanted to say was don't be afraid to venture out into other skillsets when making a game, especially when in a solo project. Some people use asset stores, but sometimes giving something your own personal touch is what you need for a project and there's little reason you can't develop your design and art skills as long as you work at it every day. Just like anything. Last of all a big thank you to Cardboard Sword who have been a huge inspiration for me, everyone should go checkout their project! [link] [comments]  |
| How to create a video game character in ZBrush Posted: 11 Jan 2018 10:54 AM PST |
| The cost of doing game dev business Posted: 10 Jan 2018 11:17 PM PST |
| Is it possible to work remotely as a gamedev? Posted: 11 Jan 2018 10:44 AM PST So I've been looking into programming for a while (part personal interest, part interest in changing careers) and gamedev, designing games, in particular intrigues me, and it seems like something I might want to start looking into. But before I start spending money and investing in that, I wanted to know whether game development is something that can be pursued remotely, because my interest in learning programming is centered around the idea of doing it remotely. I've always heard that programming is a great field to go into if you're interested in working from home, it's regarding gamedev stuff I'm especially interested in finding out whether that's true. What do you think? [link] [comments]  |
| Don't bother submitting your game to these sites for reviews Posted: 10 Jan 2018 02:42 PM PST They reply with messages such as: "We're too busy to review your game, unless you pay us" "We're selling reviews at 100 for $3 apiece" "We're part of a conglomerate called PushYourApp that publishes on 30 different sites, pay us if you want to have your game published on any of them" If you're submitting your mobile game to review sites, ignore the following ones. Slide To Playhttp://www.slidetoplay.com/reviews-archive/ iFanzineAppFindhttps://www.youtube.com/user/AppFind/about AppStoreReviewerhttps://www.youtube.com/user/AppStoreReviewer/about FanAppic[link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 10 Jan 2018 07:31 PM PST Hey guys! As always, the packs are posted first on my twitter. Hope you like them and use them in any project! (If you use them send screenshots! i love to see it) If you want all the packs in one file or specific models for your game i've made a Patreon!, and i would love if you could support me with a dollar there, it would mean a lot! But i will always make free packs too. Here's my website if you want to check it out, all of the packs are there too. Includes: *2 Blends. *2 OBJ. *2 FBX. *1 Textures. Texture tutorial if you want to make your own *6 Animations (Idle,crawl,bite, attack, run, walk) Past Weeks: License: CC0: Public domain, completely free to use in both personal and commercial projects (no credit required but appreciated). If you have any questions or problems tell me! I'll gladly help as soon as i can. If you want you can follow me on Twitter. Thanks a lot! [link] [comments]  |
| How to make 2D game alone. Engine and coding Posted: 11 Jan 2018 06:07 AM PST This post will be devoted to my impressions about UE4 As I have already previously mentioned, a friend of mine recommended me to use this particular engine, so I didn't beat around the bush and chose this dev platform. Its quite hard for me to estimate though if my choice was right or wrong, simply because I don't know anyone who works on creating games using other engines. I don't need to use complex algorithms in my game and it doesn't have any tricky connections between classes. Each active object at any level works on its own and reacts only to player's pawn. The game consists of 4 levels and an extra bonus one, which is available only in case of getting through the main ones well. For defining the current level on startup I use GameInstance (loading the save game) which updates at the end of each level. Earlier I was also planning to save level progress and to use GameMode for more precise spawn of a player but I gave it up eventually. That would be too complicated and pointless because the levels can be gone through quickly if you know some necessary tricks. The rest of the logic is in the Character class. Thus are functions of damage, death, score and input. https://imgur.com/B3pNXKt For a long time I couldn't make up my mind about the type of input control, I used this variant first: https://forums.unrealengine.com/development-discussion/ios-development/39574-mobile-touch-swipe-tap-dbl-tap-get-it-here-for-free, but the swipe seemed too complex and was making the gameplay unreasonably challenging. I want a player to deal with difficulties of the level but not the ones of the control. So, I have made it simple. Pressing on the edge of the screen makes the character move and tapping everywhere else makes him jump. Thanks Epic Games for the template of a character by the way. I can't even image how I would program the movement physics myself. I don't have too many active elements at a level. Most of them try to push the character back, which turns out to be quite challenging for him. Some elements like branches and fly agaric mushrooms are only moving but at the same time creating natural obstacles on his way. I often use the trace and timeline functions. I need the first one to determine the type of an object below the character to turn animation on and off and the second one actually animates the character. For spawning snowflakes, leaves and other flying objects I use a special class where I define spawn period, delay and so on. Thanks to the simple 2DSideScroller template, I quickly managed to animate the character. You only need to add custom states and switch them among themselves on time. I use a few bool variables and check them every tick. Animation itself is simply created out of a few sprites. Just keep an eye open on their size and alignment while importing from the atlas. By the way, pay attention to one important thing while working on a 2D game – it's so called translucent sort priority. This variable is responsible for the sprite draw depth. The higher the value, the closer position to the camera the sprite will occupy. It is especially vital if they are located on one Y coordinate. In order to put the level road together well, I decrement this variable for every ongoing chunk. For some levels it's the major tool, especially for spring, where pseudo depth and three lines of object movement are implemented. https://imgur.com/OWNew4u Actually, mobile device development is more complicated than for PC. I understand almost nothing about the variety of settings for Android and I dread opening up the iOS tab for now. I do hope that most of the checkmarks have been placed correctly by Epic Games and as a last resort I can always rely on Answerhub and forums. I am still not really sure about the accuracy of parallax though –Y coordinate of the camera and maybe even of the background should be altered depending on the aspect ratio. This must be polished as soon as the rest of the content is ready and the gameplay is debugged. I have applied the same template to all levels. The borders of play areas, object height and depth for each layer are already calculated. However, I don't use the same principle of level construction. For instance, FallMap is rather a vertical 4X3 level, while others have 6X1 ratio. For placing objects I always use the copy function - pushing alt and dragging the object in X or Z coordinates. Thus, that's enough to customize a single object and then copy it with alignment. Overall, I can say it's quite hard to recall other specific stuff, so it's gonna be better if you guys ask questions and I will try to help you if I can :) [post gallery] https://imgur.com/a/HBJtQ [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 11 Jan 2018 12:19 AM PST Sorry if that question is confusing. I've heard that most of the visibility for your game happens on release day, as Steam pushes up your game to the front page, and if you mess up the release, you miss that opportunity. What I mean to ask is, if I release my free demo on Steam (which has already received positive responses on itch.io and 1000+ downloads on it) will it "use up" my one-per-game visibility boost through Steam? Can a game exist in the "new and trending" section twice in its lifetime - one for the demo and one for the full release? Should I keep the demo on sites like itch and gamejolt, and not bring it over to Steam, and instead only keep that for wishlisting? Or would releasing the already well received demo on Steam be good for the game's popularity, and not affect my full release? (which will happen on mid/late 2018) Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Is GDC worth it for an indie dev mainly looking to promote their game? Posted: 11 Jan 2018 09:25 AM PST I've been looking at the possibility of going to GDC this year, but I'm not too sure it will be worth the cost or time. I'm a solo indie dev right now working on a project that's a couple years in. My main goal would not be learning but instead promoting my game that I'm working on, and best case scenario, securing some funding. My other goal would be just to network, meet people from the industry and just chat with some fellow nerds. I'm curious if others have had much luck promoting their game or flat out securing funding for their game through a publisher or likewise. I have been planning on doing a kickstarter in April, so any traction gained at GDC would help I imagine. My main concern, honestly, is my social anxiety. It can be bad at times, but I also know if I really push myself I can strike up conversations with others. Would love to hear your opinions or experiences! [link] [comments]  |
| Martial arts animation by hand: can it be done? Posted: 11 Jan 2018 09:19 AM PST Hello! I've always wanted to include one of my passions in a game, martial arts. I'm a traditional Taekwondo green belt, have trained in boxing/kickboxing for a couple of years, and am currently practicing BJJ and Muay Thai. The problem is, my team's budget is pretty limited (at least not enough to cover buying mocap gear) and there are no mocap studios in my country to visit and get some data there. As it seems, it has to be done by hand. To be more precise, some of our early ideas include a game were killing isn't taken lightly by the protagonist, so they resort to non-lethal fighting (in which they are an expert, of course) and stealth, much like Batman. Unlike Batman, we hope for a sense of realism, so concussive, brain trauma-inducing direct blows to the head aren't an option. Of course, there will have to be some striking, but it mostly has to revolve around wrestling/grappling and blood chokes. Those are definitely survivable and untraumatizing when applied for a short frame of time -unless you have a serious heart issue, and even then chances you'll die are slim- and this could also be an interesting game design snippet, since in real life the time spent uncoscious is really short. I have animated some simple kicks/punches before, however, pins/chokes/guards/holds are more complex and require a lot of subtle movements and rotations. I feel that animating a single technique frame-by-frame with no reference material (I'm aware that mocap still requires cleanup) would take excruciating amounts of time that would hinder the project. Since I'm only an amateur animator and my knowledge is limited, are there other, more efficient methods to do it that don't require special equipment and can make use of sample videos? Something like rotoscoping lightsabers in After Effects, for example. [link] [comments]  |
| I live coded a game in Unity on Twitch. Here are some highlights! Posted: 11 Jan 2018 12:02 PM PST |
| Teaching my son to code games... Posted: 11 Jan 2018 11:16 AM PST My 15 year old son has expressed interest in game development. He has no coding experience. I was thinking of purchasing a beginners Unreal or Unity course on Udemy but idk if that is the right way to go. Should introduce him to programming via those languages or should we start with Python? I am well versed in Front-End Web Dev but have no experience with Game Development. This will be something that we will both do together... a sort of Father/Son project. Thanks for your help! [link] [comments]  |
| Questions about servers for large groups of players Posted: 11 Jan 2018 11:04 AM PST So I've been toying with an idea inspired by recent battle royale gameslike pubg and fortnite. It would be a similar concept, with a key difference being that it would be set in a medieval world. Not sure if I will be pursuing this idea further or not what with college work and everyday life happening, but I was wondering what I would need to look into to get servers that could host 50-100 players at a time. If there's an article on it or a tutorial somewhere that someone could link me to, that would be super helpful:) thanks in advance! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 10 Jan 2018 11:36 PM PST I'm trying to make a game where a certain portion of a world is loaded and, as you walk through it, different chunks are loaded into the game. Basically what happens in Minecraft. Maybe there's a better term for what I'm describing? There are a few issues I'm having with this that I'm not entirely sure how to address. One is the issue of when an object is unloaded from the game as you walk away from it. What if something in the portion of the world you're in is still pointing to that object that gets unloaded? There's also the issue of efficiently loading things into the game, this isn't incredibly hard to accomplish but I bet there are people out there who've developed better methods of doing it. I'm sure there are other things I haven't even thought of yet. Does anyone know of any good tutorials/resources for this sort of thing on the internet? [link] [comments]  |
| Any Interest in Automatic GameMaker Studio to Unity Migration Tool? Posted: 11 Jan 2018 10:46 AM PST Hello, I've recently been working on a tool to migrate a specific game from GMS to Unity and I have been pondering whether others may have an interest. It's a fairly generic tool that I'm using to import a few hundred rooms, plus dependent objects. So far, I'm supporting rooms, sprites, objects, sounds, backgrounds, etc, and importing either as scenes or as composite gameobjects in Unity. However, I'm getting close to doing what I need for myself so I'm not sure I'll keep working on the tool, but if there is sufficient interest, I may consider making the solution available and keep expanding it to support further features through a kickstarter, Patreon, or something. The thing I most want to consider is migrating scripts and supporting the built-in functions in GM:S with a library of similar methods in Unity. Further features might be
So... Any interest? .b [link] [comments]  |
| Using albedo to create amazing results with low poly assets in real-time environments Posted: 10 Jan 2018 03:56 PM PST |
| How to gather attention for a niche game made by 1 person with a 0$ budget? Posted: 11 Jan 2018 03:23 AM PST I'm an amateur and unknown game developer making a game in my spare time. I haven't graduated yet and my college takes a lot of ny time, and it also has nothing to do with game development. I live in Brazil, where indie game devs have zero presence. The game I'm making currently is a 2d puzzle platformer with only puzzles, so it has a really limited market appeal. I have no one else and I'm in charge of everything from making art assets to music and level design and programming; all of which I have no previous professional experience. I expect this game to take at least 7 years to make in those conditions, probably 10 years. I don't intend in hiring anyone either, nor do I intend in investing a single penny. Everything I work with is free or open source and I'm making the game on Unity and intend to release it on Steam. I mean, what a story, right? I know I should be focused on making a good game but if the game is supposed to be played by someone I should wonder how to gather a public sooner rather than later probably. I expect some comments to say something like making a blog or writing, maybe streaming and gain some recognition; but the thing is those things take time that I really don't have. Calling game magazines and websites is pretty pointless too because the game doesn't have a hook like Inside with it's gorgeous visuals, and besides, the public for a game like this probably doesn't read those for recommendations because honestly they can't be trusted. I personally look for games like these on forums. I honestly accept selling no copies if the game ends up being good in my eyes. Hope the responses help people with similar worries. [link] [comments]  |
| On-Demand, Self-Serve, Gaming Merch Store Sites (All-In-One, like cafepress)? Posted: 11 Jan 2018 09:10 AM PST Seeking a site that has a flow like...
Remember cafepress back in the day? They're still active, apparently, but allegedly evil. Also, their products are suuuuper generic (square, paper-thin mousepads, etc). Anyone know a website like this that would be good for gaming? It'd absolutely have to be self-serve with worldwide shipping. Our players are demanding merchandise and we don't have any! O_o EDIT: So far, threadless.com seems the best. BUT... I am suddenly skeptical since their landing page said "sell merchandise for your game", yet doesn't even sell mousepads O_o EDIT 2: Redbubble seems decent - sent them an email with some follow-up questions since their application was a bit strange (they asked if I ship things myself - perhaps I'm misunderstanding their shipping service?). [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 11 Jan 2018 08:47 AM PST I've been seeing a lot of people who say they taught themselves with years of practice and ended up landing careers in the game dev industry. I've also heard people say you need a degree to work in this industry. So to take a poll from all of you who have a career in this field, which path did you take. I'm curious of which is most common/recommended. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 11 Jan 2018 08:38 AM PST |
| Quinto: Resurrecting an Abandoned Board Game Posted: 11 Jan 2018 08:02 AM PST |
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