Extremely lucky and happy to have a big youtuber play my game!Watched it 4 times already even though i don't understand a word he say! |
- Extremely lucky and happy to have a big youtuber play my game!Watched it 4 times already even though i don't understand a word he say!
- Where to REALLY learn about shaders and graphics pipeline?
- Game studio Ready At Dawn switching to Rust for all new development
- How do you produce a game as an indie developer with zero artistic talent?
- 3 Years Of Indie, Over 4200 Hours Worked And Coding On A Bus In Tanzania: Where It Gets You
- When do I need a seizure warning?
- Free To Use Music For Game Dev
- The space 4x strategy game 'Star Ruler 2' is now open source.
- Finding Development Slow?
- Best way to create a formula to scale exp by level
- A brief history of Death's Gambit - What worked, what didn't? Greybox to first playable.
- Does using CC BY 4.0 Music prevent let's plays?
- A 30KB 360x400 JS shooter gamedev competition
- How's Linux as a Unity dev?
- RPG in C++, Somewhat like RPG Maker
- Free Indie Gaming Business Virtual Summit Starts Today
- I wrote a thing on using vertex attributes to paint a procedural landscape!
- Best solution to check for unsupported structures in a block building scenario?
- Talk - Video games as a subversive art @ AMaze 2018, Berlin
- Question about the Google Play store
- Substance Painter tutorial for beginners
- Blender Landscape Tutorial : Weight Painting
- The EnhanceMyApp Podcast Series | Episode 07 : GDPR Roundtable
| Posted: 24 Jul 2018 08:20 AM PDT |
| Where to REALLY learn about shaders and graphics pipeline? Posted: 24 Jul 2018 01:32 AM PDT So on the last couple of projects I've been messing around with effects, custom shaders, etc in Unity. I have a decent grasp on cg/shaderlab, though I tend to use Amplify for most of my development (just faster...) Overall I'm managing, but every once in a while I run into these issues that I just don't know how to fix, achieve or even what's happening. With enough googling I might come across an explanation like "ohh that's the perspective divide, you have to divide pos.xy by that or its not going to work". I can remember stuff like this, sure, but I'd really like to learn what's happening behind the scenes. Not just how to create a nifty effect, but how the separate parts of that effect work. Projection matrices and how they're created, uniform space, what all these unity_ macros are doing behind the scenes, etc. Are there any good sources that go in-depth on the inner workings of this graphics pipeline? [link] [comments]  |
| Game studio Ready At Dawn switching to Rust for all new development Posted: 24 Jul 2018 08:08 AM PDT |
| How do you produce a game as an indie developer with zero artistic talent? Posted: 23 Jul 2018 10:47 PM PDT As an aspiring game developer working on a game right now, everything in my game (unity game) is squares or circles to represent different characters an buildings. How do i make 2D art assets? Surely the free assets you can find around are not enough for an entire game? Also, which art style is easiest to product with zero artistic talent like me? [link] [comments]  |
| 3 Years Of Indie, Over 4200 Hours Worked And Coding On A Bus In Tanzania: Where It Gets You Posted: 24 Jul 2018 09:15 AM PDT It was 2015, the middle of our indie gamedev adventure. I had just managed to push the code over a patchy GPRS connection in Tanzania. All sweaty and with a sheepish smile on my face. This was going to be great. Back in the day when one could still battle other players to steal their resources my co-founder Evaldas was keen on battling me. He didn't care that I was bringing the sacred Armaldia T-shirt to the top of Kilimanjaro. In response I had just pushed the code that made his character go to jail every time he tried to attack me. Needless to say I later took a friendly beating because of this, but it was well worth it. We have since removed the ability for others to steal your resources so you can focus on building. A short prefaceAll of it began around 8 years ago when I (Arminas) and Evaldas - a friend I've been studying with, found a common passion for games. We decided to create Armaldia - at first a measly text based game. By now it has evolved to an isometric city builder MMORPG where everyone builds together on a dynamic map. As it turned out - creating games takes a load of time! We have logged over 4200 hours worked on Armaldia since its public beta launch in 2015. If you're curious what we've put most of our time into - take a look at one of the yearly Toggl reports: https://i.imgur.com/Y1INPvd.jpg During these years we had to juggle responsibilities, figure out where we're headed and avoid being distracted by every shiny thing that we thought was cool. Like the need to feed your character yoghurt and blueberry pies to keep it alive. Bad idea. There were plenty more failures and successes to learn from and I'm excited to give back to the community that has helped tremendously. It started from a text based city builder, then one with visual elements and later a game with a dynamic map where everyone builds together. In the beginning all we had was a bunch of ideas we liked and a common trait of finishing things we begin. When it started, the game didn't look too good. Quick note:The person talking in the story isn't me, the OP, but one of Armaldia's co-founders. I (OP) have joined the team recently and suggested them sharing their game development experience with the community. It ended up being a lot more than just the tech used with wisdom shooting left and right and you should find this interesting and useful. For questions, if there will be any, I will get him hooked on Reddit and answering your questions. If you want to read this post in (arguably) a more readable format - head over to our devblog. If you don't read any further, just know thisDon't do it in a vacuum. A good advisor is worth those 9000 hours of work alone. Especially so if it's your first game. We were lucky to get in touch with Jonathan D. Callis earlier this year who has since given a lot of invaluable advice. It's hard to imagine where would we be had this happened earlier. We certainly wouldn't be where we are now without him. If you are starting an interesting game and don't have years of experience in the game industry - share the pie and work with someone who has. It will save you countless hours of trial and error. More on picking the right people - later. What do you need to become a game developer?Persistence. To avoid giving you the wrong impression of everything being easy to learn I must mention that both of us had a programming background before. We met, became friends and started developing Armaldia while studying Computer Science together. Understanding the general concepts of computer science certainly helped. That said, unless you study something specifically aimed at game development/design you'll end up learning 99% of the things in the process. Just start somewhere and you'll be good, there are even harder things to deal with than programming knowledge. Like the attitude of your environment. What a waste of time...This might be different now and elsewhere, but I grew up in an environment where games were considered a waste of time. In childhood I almost felt guilty while secretly playing games while parents were asleep. Even in university developing games weren't considered a serious thing either. Meeting actual game developers changed my perspective and turned out to be a fresh gulp of air every time. You should try a meetup or two if your environment is setting you back! A few tips if you intend to go a similar routePrepare your burnout defensesThe initial hype and enthusiasm will fade. Players won't come. Code won't compile. It's vital to like the process of development and creation. A lot. Don't make a game because someone is talking you into doing it. Or because your friends are doing it. Or because it would look cool. You can always play around, but to creating something good takes a lot of work, sweat and tears and you need the passion to avoid quitting. This may sound like a cliche, but it's true. Don't forget to take care of your physical and mental health. Life will throw challenges at you either way and being in good health gives you energy to deal with it and not quit. Decide where will you focusEarly on we had the idea of more features = a better game. This can't be more wrong. If you do this you will end up with a Frankenstein - a feature monster. We've been there and were lucky to get help from Giedrius Gliozeris who helped us to sort this. Here's one of the actual mind maps from a session back then. This feature ridiculousness included energy limit and restoration speed increasing items that created a leveling up tornado. Players also had a fridge with food they needed to produce and eat all the time (or get into hospital due to starvation) and then police and gangs fighting each other so the food production and building doesn't come too easy. Luckily, with the help from Giedrius we managed to cut around 30% of game's features. 30% is a lot. That's the bloat some games carry around hoping to attract a wider range of players. In reality - this makes the game that's somewhere in the middle. Not really enjoyable for any of the groups you hoped to please. You must define what your game is. How is it good. Who is it good for. Then trim (or don't implement in the first place) everything that doesn't tie in. If you can't part with your ideas easily keep a document where all the "cool" ideas go. You will notice that some of those get a WTF?! reaction after a while and the rest just don't seem that good anymore. Notice the cupcake? Players had to take care of their eating. This advice and approach helped us make Armaldia a game that's focused on those who want to build. The features and development ideas became focused on building, creating your own custom in game content, playing together and feeling safe. E.g. the battle mechanics left in game are fun and not punishing in any way. People have a place to call their own where they can build on, decorate and most importantly - expand it further. It was a great challenge and I'm very proud that we managed to create a singular map where all players collaborate and build on at the same time. Be kindIt's hard enough to work on your spare time and bootstrap your costs as it is. Conflict with your co-founder or someone else may end up being fatal. Not just to the project, but to the friendship as well. I'm sure you know or have heard of some falling apart due to conflict in business. It's important to respect each other's opinions. Listen to what the other person has to say. Try to get their point of view and let go of your ego if you're wrong. Try to avoid people who are unable to change their opinion. Always remember it's a two way street though! A person who challenges you or your ideas is gold. You can't know everything and may easily be blind to glaring flaws in your thinking and work. Listen. Understand. Get rid of ego when making decisions. "I think I'm going to quit my job and go full time indie!"Short advice - don't. Long advice: Both of us managed to plan our life in a way where this was a side project that we dedicate a portion of our time otherwise usually spent on entertainment. I can assure you we don't have regrets of not watching those seasons of Silicon Valley. You may be able to quit if you can support yourself for at least 6 months. I would advise even more than that though. It depends on many different things. If you've already quit though - focus! Nothing to lose now! Lock yourself in, skip the nights out, do what keeps you in good health and in the rest of the time - churn the game out! A significant other that supports you is probably 50% of the success here. Life gets tricky and you have to make choicesHave you read the previous point on going full time indie? Prepare yourself for a mixture of this. My co-founder Evaldas likely has had more chainsaws to juggle with to be able to dedicate time to developing Armaldia. He's put it in a simple way: We all have the same 24 hours in a day. Not everyone has the same priorities. If you want your game or any other thing to succeed you will have to sacrifice something else to find time. Be it Youtube, Twitch, TV, forums, Reddit, even playing games. This isn't to say that the ones mentioned above are useless. No, you just pick and trade your life goals and present pleasures. This might be even harder than you think as the more you want something, the bigger things you will start to sacrifice. People are creatures of comfort and habits. This makes it hard to make big changes - say start working part time and have a smaller income. You suddenly have less choices, less comfort and less of a safety net. Then there's a limit where all of the sacrifices become too much. It's great if you have a loving and supportive spouse. Your family and close friends get your choice or at least support you regardless. Otherwise it gets hard quick. Support is important. Try to strike that balance where people you care about still think you're sane. Don't brutally overwork and burn all the mental and physical fuel you have. Don't postpone the things that require your attention now, be it kids, a leaking tap or the tsunami warning. Otherwise the wave will hit and wash you away. That's just another reason you need to think well before quitting your job and going full time indie. On the other hand - if you mentally prepare yourself for hardship - it will be easier when things go better than expected! This would be nowhere without the help of othersIt's not only about the support of your closest friends, family and loved ones. You can and will progress leaps and bounds faster when you ask others to help you. I have already pointed this out in the beginning, but it's really that important. Here are just some of the people who have helped us: We needed a lot of help in a key area neither of us knew well - game design and conceptualization. Talented designers Kotryna Ražinskaitė and Augustinas Keturakis made the game's UI, screens, buildings and decorations. Problem is - the design and initial mechanics were created on the basis of what we wanted and deemed cool. This lead to the tactic of more features = better! Wrong. Giedrius Gliozeris helped us to bring Armaldia back from being a feature monster to a game with a direction and focus yet still with the features we considered most important. He also advised us on a key aspect of having everyone play on the same map. Lately we've been getting the most invaluable insights and experience from Jonathan D. Callis who has agreed to help us earlier this year. Getting helped by others is within reach for you as well. It's by no means easy to strike up conversations and ask for help. When you love your idea strong enough - you will get over the discomfort of talking to people and it will only get easier thereafter. Then there were some resources I learned from and others that helped to keep sanity during the hard times. To mention a few:
And don't even focus on growth or monetization if you can't keep the people playing. Until you can get decent retention rates - player retention should be your biggest focus. It's a clear indicator of your game's quality. Listen to this to understand better. And of course - all the code libraries and tools used, many of which are free
And Torn City - our primary competitor that we aimed to overtake, but have since ended up with an entirely different game. Marketing - the forgotten pillar of indie game developmentCouldn't say that we've reached the scale of Torn, our initial inspiration and nemesis we wanted to beat. We didn't start to market on day one either. We should have. That happened due to the fact that Armaldia was just a hobby for us and continued to be such until 2015 when we launched our first public beta. That's when the realization came - to test a game you need players and the idea of "Build it and they will come" is wrong. Lucky for us our friend circle worked very well in the initial stages of the game. A few hundred people signed up. But don't be fooled - 90% of them were just friends with no interest in our game or games in general. Most dropped on day 2 and that's not something you should worry about either. Treat the ones that stick around like gold and talk to them often. They will find you an incredible amount of bugs, loopholes and unintended Easter eggs. Whatever you do, don't leave your game's success for a game of chance. Spread the word early and do it as regularly as you can. The small mentions accumulate over time and each of them is a lottery ticket to getting discovered by the right person. You only have to hit it big once to bring you and your game to places you've never been. Top failures and lessons learnedDespite the massive amount of information and advice available, it's still trial and error. Here are some of the things we learned the hard way: Building and managing a team is a full time job itself. We previously made the mistake of inviting 4 - 5 new people to work together during a few months period. It's incredibly hard to keep this amount of people engaged and motivated at the same time. Especially since the most we could offer was a promise of future rewards. Don't think that you can just throw a text based game to a designer and she or he will sort it out. We thought so at the end of 2012 when the game was fully operational, but had no graphics. A good designer in the initial team is a must. She or he will drive some of the key decisions in how things work. If not done from the ground up you will have to redo things later. I have already mentioned the thing with too many features. You have to focus or no one will understand what your game is and does. It wasn't all bad!After we have created the first draft describing Armaldia we started coding in our spare time using an existing CMS and plain PHP. That's a bad idea. Around one and a half year in we took a popular Zend framework we didn't know at all, threw all of the current code through the window and started learning and creating everything from scratch. This turned out to be a good decision as the new code was much better. It's not a bad idea to put a full stop on something you've been heavily invested in if the future returns are great! Talking to the players and supporting them along the way is very rewarding. The game is your baby so you have to nanny it a bit, but seeing people get excited is very rewarding. So many players are surprised that it's actually a founder, a real living game developer talking to them and it pays off in the long term. We are now known as the game where bugs can get fixed in an hour after an in game message to admin. What now?If you have any questions about creating your own game, something specific we've implemented or backpacking in Africa - I'll be glad to answer! Alternatively, go poke around in Armaldia. Build your home, craft some beer and see if you can spot some of the things described in this post in the game itself. [link] [comments]  |
| When do I need a seizure warning? Posted: 24 Jul 2018 08:24 AM PDT Is there a definitive guide to what constitutes a danger for folks who suffer from photosensitive seizures? I want to have some trippy stuff in my game but I'd rather stay away from anything that would cause people problems altogether... [link] [comments]  |
| Free To Use Music For Game Dev Posted: 23 Jul 2018 07:59 PM PDT Your friendly neighbourhood music producer is here with some free to use music for your projects. Free to use music for Game Development, Creative Commons 4. Tracks: If you are still looking for more, check out my full free to use Audio Library: https://www.youtube.com/c/GravitySound Cheers! [link] [comments]  |
| The space 4x strategy game 'Star Ruler 2' is now open source. Posted: 23 Jul 2018 03:35 PM PDT |
| Posted: 24 Jul 2018 09:59 AM PDT Going to make this post short(ish) and simple. Anyone mostly working by themselves and finding the process of development antagonizingly slow? I'm a dad that can only work on gamedev at certain times, and yes I have a full time job. Where I have found to be best times to work on dev is basically from 10:30 - 11:30 or maybe even midnight if I'm on a roll. Are you in the same situation? Do you have any advice to give as well? What are you currently doing to minimize time in production? Also, hugely open to success stories. I'd love to hear something positive and full of hope. [link] [comments]  |
| Best way to create a formula to scale exp by level Posted: 24 Jul 2018 12:29 PM PDT So my math abilities leave a lot to be desired, so I figured I'd ask here to see if anyone could push me in the right direction. I have some stats/numbers that I'll be needing to scale based on level. The one in particular I want to ask about is for EXP. The situation would be as follows: I would want to increase or decrease the amount of EXP provided when you compare the enemy level to a characters level. So if each was level 10, then you'd get 100 EXP. If the character was 1 level lower, he might get 20% more exp though. I know this could be done with if statements, but I'd rather see if there was a formula that could do this instead, especially since I could use what I learn from that formula and apply it to some other scaling systems I want to use. Thanks in advance! [link] [comments]  |
| A brief history of Death's Gambit - What worked, what didn't? Greybox to first playable. Posted: 24 Jul 2018 12:22 PM PDT |
| Does using CC BY 4.0 Music prevent let's plays? Posted: 23 Jul 2018 10:10 PM PDT It seems a lot of people have asked questions about how to properly credit the creator of a CC licensed asset, but not a lot of discussion about resulting videos/let's plays. If I use CC BY 4.0 licensed music in my game (correctly crediting the artist), is anyone creating a video/let's play of my game required to also credit the artist individually (such as in a YouTube description)? If so, is it enough for me to include a note saying this in the game's download license, leaving it up to the video creator to follow it? [link] [comments]  |
| A 30KB 360x400 JS shooter gamedev competition Posted: 24 Jul 2018 12:01 AM PDT |
| Posted: 24 Jul 2018 12:16 AM PDT I'm sure Windows is the best OS for us since our team is coding for a dominant Windows audience, but I still like to follow up every few years about Linux catching up. So, how is it? Can you use Visual Studio on Linux? I heard Unity support for Linux kinda sucked last I checked, but what about now? I'm not great at it, but I do get this warm, fuzzy feeling every time I use Linux. For game dev, if viable for C# with VS, which flavor do you like best? Ubuntu? Mint? Other? I heard SNAP apps are attracting flagship apps instead of knockoffs. For all flavors. The more I dive into w10, the more I hope Linux will catch up faster to game dev / game player environments. Let's give it a percentage. How viable would you say in a ELI5 % Linux is compared to Windows when it comes to gaming and game devving if working with C#/Unity/VS? [link] [comments]  |
| RPG in C++, Somewhat like RPG Maker Posted: 24 Jul 2018 09:50 AM PDT So, i was been working on a project for my school, a c++ project but could not decide anything to work on, so i started making an RPG in Turbo C++. Most of the stuff was pretty easy, but right now i am stuck on designing (programming) for the combat system. Last year i made it for 1v1 so it was easy, this time i want to do more, states, agility, evasion, multiple battlers, party members, targeting system, etc. I just know some stuff, just a student in grade 12, if anyone can guide, pls help. Thank You. This is my last year's project: https://www.dropbox.com/s/2llo06k5085lrfm/T-RPGW~1.CPP?dl=0 This is my new one : https://www.dropbox.com/s/1y578cn0qiw2zy9/RPT2.CPP?dl=0 Pls Don't mind the comments and extra stuff. [link] [comments]  |
| Free Indie Gaming Business Virtual Summit Starts Today Posted: 24 Jul 2018 08:33 AM PDT |
| I wrote a thing on using vertex attributes to paint a procedural landscape! Posted: 23 Jul 2018 07:51 PM PDT |
| Best solution to check for unsupported structures in a block building scenario? Posted: 24 Jul 2018 11:34 AM PDT So I have a mobile game I'm developing (in Unity, if anyone is interested) and one of the main mechanics of the game is building and adding onto a predetermined level with your own set of blocks. However (and I only thought of this after most of the major parts of the game have been designed and coded), I realized that users could build two blocks, remove the supporting block, and place it again on the nonsupporting block, effectively increasing their block inventory if the supporting block would never come into contact with the player object anyway. To put it simply, right now it works in a way nearly identical to Minecraft. Basically, my question is this: how do I effectively and without too much overhead store, record, trace back, etc. supporting blocks so that every time a block is removed or moved, now-unsupported blocks will be considered invalid and placed back into inventory. I'm not really looking for coding help so much as I am just looking for a method/algorithm/strategy. [link] [comments]  |
| Talk - Video games as a subversive art @ AMaze 2018, Berlin Posted: 24 Jul 2018 05:24 AM PDT |
| Question about the Google Play store Posted: 24 Jul 2018 07:06 AM PDT I'm trying to figure out how to use the Google Play store to find games, and everywhere I search, everyone is only interested in the 'top' games. There are millions of apps on there, and I know there must be many games that the store will NOT show me, as I only get about 50 games returned with a given search term, and they are all highly rated. How do I find games that are brand new, that don't have ratings yet or might even have low ratings? I'm finding that the store will not show you all the games that are available, and there is no way to make that happen. So one of my concerns is, after having released a game there, it will be impossible for anyone to ever find it, because it has no ratings yet. My other concern is that I like games that a lot of other people don't like, that offer something new, and Google play will NOT let me see them. Maybe there's something I'm just not understanding. Is there some secret way to access the games on Google Play? [link] [comments]  |
| Substance Painter tutorial for beginners Posted: 24 Jul 2018 10:47 AM PDT |
| Blender Landscape Tutorial : Weight Painting Posted: 24 Jul 2018 12:00 AM PDT |
| The EnhanceMyApp Podcast Series | Episode 07 : GDPR Roundtable Posted: 24 Jul 2018 10:04 AM PDT GDPR confused? What is the purpose of GDPR? On this EnhnaceMyApp podcast, sit in on our round table discussion as our panel of experts (Eldad Ben Tora, CEO of KIDOZ; Eric Dawson, Advertising and Game Analysis for Concrete Software; Zachary C. Strebeck, Attorney at Law; Bruce Gustafson, CEO of Developer's Alliance) break down everything you need to know to get on board with being GDPR compliant! This is one discussion worth checking out! Don't forget, subscribe today! https://enhance.co/podcast [link] [comments]  |
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