How a free demo got our game funded - lessons from a successful Kickstarter |
- How a free demo got our game funded - lessons from a successful Kickstarter
- EpicGames – Postmortem of Service Outage at 3.4M Concurrent Users
- Reflections on indie game development in 2018 - did I just waste 3 years?
- Increase Interactivity by “Shrinking” Your Game
- What types of documentation do I need to have ready before I start to look for collaborators on my RPG project? Also, secondarily, I'm looking for insights on what to look for in good partners.
- Text Based Games?
- Text-Based RPG Games
- Does anyone have any info on what backends or databases popular MMOs use?
- Our indie multiplayer jetpack shooter is really coming together and I wanted to share some progress and a bit of our 4-year story
- Significance of using smaller numbers instead of larger numbers for game mechanics?
- How overboard should I go with complexity?
- After many sleepless nights and countless tutorials I can finally check one thing off my bucket list: publish my own game! Here is two things I learned.
- Miegakure Blog: The state of the Miegakure, Feb 2018
- Modeling AI Perception and Awareness in Splinter Cell: Blacklist
- How to promote a visual novel with a completed story but no visuals?
- Feedback Friday #275 - New Features
- NineWitches - A tiny sneak peek of the game!
- What does a professional marketing plan and a cost-outline for an indie game look like?
- A Couple Updates and Datas From Steam About the World of Indie Development and the Market situation
- 2018 Comparing Unreal Engine 4.18, Unity 2017 and CryEngine 5.4 Terrain ...
- YouTube Course- Your First Game Model (3Ds Max)
- Godot Tutorials?
- Need help choosing a game engine
- My experience today with launching Cubiques in Steam.
| How a free demo got our game funded - lessons from a successful Kickstarter Posted: 09 Feb 2018 02:48 AM PST |
| EpicGames – Postmortem of Service Outage at 3.4M Concurrent Users Posted: 09 Feb 2018 07:24 AM PST |
| Reflections on indie game development in 2018 - did I just waste 3 years? Posted: 09 Feb 2018 09:56 AM PST |
| Increase Interactivity by “Shrinking” Your Game Posted: 09 Feb 2018 10:02 AM PST |
| Posted: 09 Feb 2018 09:09 AM PST What's up /r/gamedev! Like many people browsing this subreddit, I'm looking to create my first game soon. "First game" in this context really means my first "real" game. Over the years I've done many tutorials in various engines, mucked around in GMS2 creating little fun projects, and done my research. I've been noodling on the game's idea for a while now (1.5 years) and after a lot of thought on the various aspects of the game, I think I'm ready to start in earnest on my GMS2 RPG project. However, I'm a bit of "Jack of All Trades" myself, so I'm thinking that I'd probably like a partner or two to assist with some of the more heavy coding (I'm okay at it in GMS2. Like, I can create a finite state machine but beyond that it makes my head hurt a bit) and some of the art assets. The good thing is I've got a little cash on hand, and I think the idea has some legs, so I'm willing to do a % of the games rev to further sweeten the deal for collaborators. Given all of this, I was wondering what I should have ready before I start looking for collaborators. At my my day job, I'm in a project manager-ish type role, so I'd like to ensure everyone has everything they need before we get started. As of right now, this is what I have on hand in terms of docs built out in Google Docs: Specific Design Game Layers: Outlines the different screens within the game and breaks down the structure of gameplay and overworld at a macro level. Master Character List: Lists all characters that appear in the game and organizes them into NPC, Enemy, and Playable categories. Enemy Team Attributes & PC Powers: Lists the different enemy types and powers. Also lists the player powers based on the enemy abilities. PC Card, Abilities, and Items: Breakdown of how playable characters stats are generated and shows all possible options for players by listing abilities and items. General Design Overworld Design: Collection of thoughts regarding how the overworld should be structured, lists sources of inspiration and breaks down aspects of the gameplay. Game "Flavor" Document: General "flavor" document with links to music, pixel art, and games that the game draws inspiration from. Mechanics Mechanics Scenario Builder: Completely breaks down battle gameplay in excel. Allows you to input different actions and it spits out what happens based on different settings. Writing Game Script: First act of the script written w/ second and third act spec'ed out. Battle "Phrases": Collection of about 100 phrases for enemies to say before, during, and after battle. Documentation Game Design Document: General GDD that outlines everything listed here at a very high level. Mechanics Breakdown: Paired with the "Mechanics Scenario Builder" to outline how the calculations work at a granular level. Game Glossary: Defines terms within the GDD and other documents. I know this is a lot, but I just want to be prepped before I start working with anyone. Is this too much? Are there specific documents that an programmer wants to see? Specifics documents that an artist wants to see? Lastly, as the title says, any other pointers you could give me about what to look for in a good partner would be appreciated! Thanks! KJ [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 08 Feb 2018 09:08 PM PST I created one this past year, because I've always been fascinated by text based games for some reason. My playtesters loved it and 100%'d it, but others who I gave it to (classmates, etc.) really just didn't want to take the time to read all the text. 2D and 3D games give you so much more information all at once and without the hassle of reading. This got me wondering: what are the odds that a text based game would survive in today's market? Would it be more worthwhile to start on 2D games right off the bat for an upcoming developer, rather than starting off with a text-based? Does anyone have experience with this? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 09 Feb 2018 07:39 AM PST Heya all! Do any of you know a good software with which you may make a text-based RPG? I don't really care if it's hard to use, learning only needs time and I'm determined. As long as it's reliable, I'm up for it. Thanks in advance! [link] [comments]  |
| Does anyone have any info on what backends or databases popular MMOs use? Posted: 09 Feb 2018 07:27 AM PST I do non-game sql database work for a living, I'm wondering what % of my skills would be transferable to the game industry. My first thought was MMOs for having large databases, but I can't find any details about what the popular ones (WoW, ESO, Eve, etc) are using on the backend (noSql, Sql, custom solutions)? I imagine game companies probably don't broadcast this info for security or trade secret reasons, but does anyone know any technical specs for major mmos? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 08 Feb 2018 02:59 PM PST We've been building a jetpack shooter called Midair for 4 years now. The game went through Steam Greenlight, had a successful Kickstarter, and now we're a few months away from release. A lot of the polish we've had to wait to add is finally getting in-game and I'm so proud of our almost entirely volunteer team that worked so hard to get to this point. I thought I'd come here to share a few examples of the team's hard work showing where we've been and some of our most recent progress in order to encourage devs who are in early or mid-stages of their projects. If you want to skip the story and check out the pretty things, scroll to the last few sections at the bottom. 2014: The beginnings We all start somewhere. As an example, just a few of us had worked on the game for the first year and while we couldn't/shouldn't have attend PAX West 2014 at the time, we wanted to get some user testing going so we used the event hype to run a test session only a couple blocks away from the venue. We rented a hot sweaty apartment in Seattle for the summer to try and focus on getting ready for the test event. We had some college-age team members, people established in architecture and banking, and other people in various stages of their career and from different parts of the planet showing up at the apartment and helping with this (we even had someone from Finland fly out!). This was the first anyone had seen of the game, the first time the team had met in person, and as you can see, it was very rudimentary. We also wanted to show players what we had in mind for our art style and vision for the game's future, so we presented some slides and collected feedback from roughly 40 participants we had found at PAX or invited beforehand. We paid them in beer and food. :) 2015: A year later... We did the exact same thing in 2015 except our vision was finally becoming tangible. We doubled attendance this year and had roughly 80 attendees try out the latest version of the game. We also had a community member record a stream that we later uploaded for the world to see. As you can see, everything is coming together but there are still very placeholder assets, animations, and gameplay. Greenlight We used this momentum to launch a successful Greenlight campaign at the end of 2015 that was approved within a week of launch. The trailer shows some progress from the PAX 2015 event, but also some missteps like regular game hitching and the "Haul Serious Ass" tagline that, in retrospect, was always terrible. Again, many placeholder assets were used at this point but things are clearly getting better than before. 2016: Kickstarter Using that momentum we rolled into our Kickstarter in June of 2016. We raised $128 (ended up being about $118k after all was said and done) on a $100k goal, which meant we were able to staff up a bit and get more regular work done. You can see from the trailer on the page that again, progress continued and things were looking better. We had more secondary features like base assets that could be destroyed, deployable turrets and inventory stations, and more that started to round out the games features. We even did a play-by-play casted showmatch with some very skilled testers we had brought in to do gameplay testing. Up until this point our team was entirely volunteer based (or nearly volunteer). We had grown from 4-5 of us to a team of 20-25 volunteers (depending on when you check) and a few paid folks. We continued to self-invest into the game as well to continue to expand the regular paid work and also continued raising money through our website. It was really encouraging to start seeing players who had got in through Kickstarter start making great montages of some amazing gameplay. 2017: Steam Early Access and PAX West Indie Megabooth We then went through each milestone making more and more updates and changes, listening to feedback, and implementing features we had promised during our campaign. In late August of 2017 we launched into Steam Early Access. So far the reviews have been positive and sales have helped us continue development at a solid rate. Merely days later we went to PAX 2017 in the Indie Megabooth. It was AWESOME and we met a lot of great people. We even did an interview with PC Gamer which was a lot of fun. 2018: New content and polish We've continued to move on since then and have released several new features this week that really illustrate how far we've come since the beginning. Jetpacks and skating - it's the fine details In Midair you can use both a jetpack AND boots that can become frictionless in order to build momentum and quickly move across the environment. One of the pieces of polish we added a while back that I'm absolutely in love with is the way the feet lock to the ground in a way that follows terrain. Better interfaces for customizing loadouts/classes You can also suit up in whatever armor/weapon/augment/item configuration you'd like through our Loadout menu. We recently added a live, interactive background which really brings the menu to life. We've been updating our in-game art We reworked a popular prototype map that had minimal art and re-released it with brand new artwork. I'll let the images do the talking: Progression and Unlocks We also added the first iteration on our progression/unlock system that lets you unlock different weapons and items as you progress through the game. If you've seen games like this before (like the Tribes series or Legions), Midair is absolutely inspired by them. We wanted to recreate the feeling of freedom and excitement that you can't really get anywhere else while also adding in our own vision. There's a lot more to the game but I just wanted to share some of our recent progress and encourage anyone pursuing game dev to keep at it. We've had our fair share of obstacles but we've kept at it and things are really coming together as we head into release. [link] [comments]  |
| Significance of using smaller numbers instead of larger numbers for game mechanics? Posted: 09 Feb 2018 06:20 AM PST I'll start off by giving some examples. For the TCG world, we have:
What sort of effects do higher numbers have on the game, and on the player? (I think they give a higher sense of power, i.e: players feel like their cards are powerful with 9000 power, rather than 3/3). e.g:
Which of these is simplest to comprehend? What is ideal in regards to calculating combat in your mind? What does each tier of ATK elicit in your mind? Is it better to use smaller numbers or larger numbers for dealing with game mechanics? Is using smaller numbers that much easier for the brain to handle? [link] [comments]  |
| How overboard should I go with complexity? Posted: 09 Feb 2018 04:38 AM PST So, I've been working on a project for 2 months, and the general framework is already done. It's a different kind of game than most of the ones talked about here. It's a browser based MMO strategy game, OGame/Travian/Grepolis style, so it's technically a web-app more than a game in a traditional sense. I have designed the systems to handle building/research/production queues and have load tested them, and I think the app can handle a couple of thousands of players without issue. I have done this project using tech I use at work mostly for learning purposes, as I'm a self taught junior developer with my first dev job (started about 3 months ago) and where usually juniors in big companies usually do stuff like documentation and bug fixing I've been constantly assigned rather complex and varied tasks and sometimes it's a bit overwhelming (but I always get help and been able to finish my tasks!). Anyway, now I'm at the point I have to actually design the game and not just the underlying tech, and I'm not sure how complex or abstract I should do it. Most of the games of this kind are very abstracted, but I kind of want to make it a bit "grand-strategy"-like. But I'm not sure if this would work on a browser game where you have to play for months :) and if showing basically spreadsheets (with pretty css) would create a good enough user experience. Some of the things I want to implement: 1) actually mobile armies. In ALL but one game of this kind I know of, you attack a base by clicking "attack", your army takes x hours to get there, the battle resolves, and they return to your base automatically. I do not like this approach, as makes me feel the map of the game less "real". AstroEmpires, a game I used to play, gives you the liberty to move a fleet to any planet/moon, and you attack by manually selecting the fleet to attack in the same place. I like this approach and I want to implement it. 2) Resources. I want the game to have a real tactical element, where "geography" matters, so right now resources are generated locally to each base you own, and if you need resources in another place, you have to manually transport them. This has some conflict with the next point. 3) I want the fleet to require a maintenance fee to be paid daily, however the issue with point 2 is where would the resources be taken out of, if each base has its resources stored locally, and fleets are not owned by a specific base? Of the player has many bases/fleets this could become a micromanagement nightmare. Some idea I have is to have a special unique building called bank/vault whatever that's used for this kind of purposes. But then ferrying resources to it would also be a chore. 4) I plan on adding a "Npc police" similar to Eve online, where in a part of the map, unlawful attacks are punished by an automated attack by the Npc empire or whatever. Outside of it's territory everything is fair game though. 5) I want bases to being able to be conquered, destroyed, etc. And I want fleets to not take forever to arrive from A to B. But then... Going offline for the night and coming back totally destroyed wouldn't be very fun, presumably. 6) I'm unsure if players should be able to design their own "species" with different stats to pick. I find it would give more depth to the game, but balancing would be hard, and as it's all basically a spreadsheet with nice presentation, isn't it too much? So far I have done account creation, management, recovers, etc. An empty galaxy generator (map of the game), the systems to manage building, research, and production tasks in a timely manner (with the precision of a second), and a very barebones battle system. Also the queues and the battle system run in different threads than the web servrt to avoid it getting blocked. I'd appreciate any kind of input :)) [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 08 Feb 2018 12:04 PM PST Dear r/gamedev, Today is a big day: my first game is finally published! Although it is a quite simple game, I would like to share a few things I learned in the process. It's never too late to learn Science tells us that the brain is not fully developed until we're about 25 years old. For many years, I was afraid this would also entail the end of my ability to learn new things. Nothing could be more false. In the beginning of 2017 (I was 25 at the time), I decided to learn how to code. For a few weeks I followed some internet courses and learned how to make lists, loop functions, principles of boolean logic, etc. But it seemed both useless and boring to learn the functions and rules of a coding language without any sort of practical implication. So I started to look for a way to learn coding while actually DOING or BUILDING something. Everything seemed to point towards making games in Unity. I had already given gamedev a small try in my mid-teens, but was scared away by the amount of C++ skills needed to simply get a ball moving from left to right. However, making games with Unity seemed super easy in comparison to how difficult I thought it was going to be. So I started to mess around with it, followed a bunch of tutorials, tried a few experiments on my own, and quite early on found out that it was possible to learn something WHILE doing something specific, instead of just learning general things without any idea of what to do with them. After all, this was similar to my approach to music production: I would not "learn" how a music program works, but rather using it for the purpose of doing music. Learning specific things for the purpose of creating something I had in mind. This process kept me motivated, and today I can throw together a sort-of-decent prototype in an afternoon, something that a year earlier would take me a couple of weeks. And there are many other things that will take me months to get a grip on, but perhaps similar-level things will one day take me an afternoon to master. Be realistic, be small I found that one of my major flaws— not just in making games, but for all of my other creative endeavors — is that I get more excitement from turning small ideas into REALLY BIG ONES (known as the "thrill of blowing something out of proportion"), rather being excited about actually realizing them. For many reasons it is important to dream big, but it is obvious that dreaming more than doing heavily damages productivity. Getting a good idea, I would often be tremendously exhilarated and with 100% confidence think "I will definitely do this all the way!", only to see it blown out of proportion within a few hours. The better the idea, the longer the excitement. Sometimes I would work on something for a whole month before realizing it would take me 2-3 years to actually finish it. There are many projects I'll probably never finish — 3-4 novels, a script for a full-length movie, a psychedelic rock album, a decent Music Generator AI — and occasionally i feel like i'm wandering around, hangover from ambition, in the dump of my own unrealized potential and broken dreams. To avoid this dread: be realistic, be small. Write a script for a short movie that CAN be made. Write and FINISH 10 short stories before even considering taking on a 500-page book project. Believe me, having actually finished something that is pretty shitty is TEN TIMES as rewarding as having a million grand ideas that'll never see the light of day. To a large extent, talent is a myth: there is only practice, trial-and-error, and doing. If you find any sort of joy in doing or creating — whatever you're doing or creating — cherish this as your true talent, as it will make it easier to practice and progress. If you like me, start with gamedev from scratch, do a big bunch of really really REALLY simple games before even attempting something bigger. In each new game you can experiment with a new mechanic, a new control, a new graphic, and therefore keep adding new things to the list of things you can do, gathering more and more confidence in your development and technology. This will not only make you aware of what you are able to do, but also about what you can realistically achieve in a certain amount of time, and set/lower/raise the bar according to the amount of time you are willing to invest. Thanks My love and thanks goes to everything that made this possible: all the great development tools out there (such as Unity), people doing YouTube tutorials (seriously, people teaching other people how to do stuff on the internet makes me believe in humanity), people not afraid of asking the stupid questions on StackOverflow and other forums, and finally, this great community. Making a game can certainly be a lonesome endeavor, but you internet people takes away some of the loneliness. I have enjoyed reading so many of your stories, the gamedev-challenges you've encountered and the lessons you've shared. May you all develop with peace and great success. The Game I'm excited to hear what you think of it. What improvements can i do for the next update? For the next game? This is just the beginning. Cheers! [link] [comments]  |
| Miegakure Blog: The state of the Miegakure, Feb 2018 Posted: 08 Feb 2018 07:17 PM PST |
| Modeling AI Perception and Awareness in Splinter Cell: Blacklist Posted: 09 Feb 2018 08:30 AM PST |
| How to promote a visual novel with a completed story but no visuals? Posted: 09 Feb 2018 05:56 AM PST |
| Feedback Friday #275 - New Features Posted: 08 Feb 2018 08:01 PM PST FEEDBACK FRIDAY #275 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) and Indie Insights (livestream feedback) Promotional services: Alpha Beta Gamer (All platforms) [link] [comments]  |
| NineWitches - A tiny sneak peek of the game! Posted: 09 Feb 2018 11:34 AM PST |
| What does a professional marketing plan and a cost-outline for an indie game look like? Posted: 09 Feb 2018 11:29 AM PST How does one start outlining all this information concisely in a document? Talking about similar successful titles? Pie Graphs? I would like to know how I can visualize my planned fund usage to potential investors. [link] [comments]  |
| A Couple Updates and Datas From Steam About the World of Indie Development and the Market situation Posted: 09 Feb 2018 12:01 AM PST |
| 2018 Comparing Unreal Engine 4.18, Unity 2017 and CryEngine 5.4 Terrain ... Posted: 09 Feb 2018 10:56 AM PST |
| YouTube Course- Your First Game Model (3Ds Max) Posted: 09 Feb 2018 06:59 AM PST |
| Posted: 08 Feb 2018 08:39 PM PST Does anyone know any good tutorials for the godot engine? I know how to code already so gdscript makes sense. However, tutorials that walk me through making basic games would help me get more comfortable with engine. [link] [comments]  |
| Need help choosing a game engine Posted: 09 Feb 2018 09:17 AM PST Hi, I am someone interested in developing games. Specifically 2D games as I have some great ideas. I am quite new to this so I am not sure which engine to use. Some engines that I have already decided against is Game maker studio 2 because I don't like the subscription model and the overprices export modules especially for console and mobile. It is ridiculously expensive considering that mostly indie gamers use it. I wish they still supported GMS1 because that seemed better. I have tried Godot for over a month now. It has absolutely terrible documentation and I have really struggled with it. It seems like a decent engine but it worries me that there has never been a big game made with it. I know Python and Java. Are there any other good engines out there for 2D games. (Like platformers or Space shooters). I am more interested in engines that are free to use (open source is great as well). [link] [comments]  |
| My experience today with launching Cubiques in Steam. Posted: 08 Feb 2018 09:07 PM PST Hi all good evening from Salt Lake City ! Today I launched Cubiques in Steam and it was the first time I had released to Steam. The entire day was full of awesome feedback good and bad but in the end it was all a great learning experience. I had also the opportunity to review few videos released by the community and also few that indie game sites created including the one below that took me for surprise. Anyhow, I wanted to share this to inspire other people to finish their games and even if you are a solo developer or dad or husband or all of those things together, I have to say that it is possible and I live it everyday, every single release is a success not just the monetary value but also what I have learned is something that nobody can ever take from me. Cheers and my best wishes to all of you in your projects. [link] [comments]  |
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