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    11 Months of Real Time Strategy Game Engine Development Progress

    August 31, 2018

    11 Months of Real Time Strategy Game Engine Development Progress

    11 Months of Real Time Strategy Game Engine Development Progress

    Posted: 31 Aug 2018 03:10 AM PDT

    So back in October of 2017, I started going through some OpenGL tutorials, looking to learn a few things about Graphics programming. My goal was to program my own renderer in order to solidify my learnings.

    Some early progress. An untold amount of suffering was expended to get skeletal animation to work. It didn't help that I was trying to work with data exported by my own buggy Blender export script.

    This is slightly later. Here I am rendering the model normals to help me debug my lighting shaders.

    Finally! A rendered mesh, with lighting and skeletal animation.

    At this point, I had achieved what I set out to do initially: implement a simple renderer that supported skeletal animation in order to learn about OpenGL and graphics programming. This was around Christmas 2017 and I was pretty happy with my work. As the new year rolled around, I had no more programming project to keep me occupied. And although some of the bugs were incredibly frustrating, it was a stimulating challenge and it was extremely rewarding to see the progress of my work.

    It was at this time that I had the idea to make my renderer into a full-fledged Real Time Strategy game engine. RTS had always been my most favourite genre by far. I also saw it as a romantic challenge to implement a complete RTS engine. I thought about how the authors of old games like Brood War and Age of Empires would code the entire games from scratch, figuring out every detail. The end result was something complex and beautiful, where 100s of units would be interacting in a simulation. I wanted to create my own program, which would be an homage to these old classics.

    First version of the map. Blocky Minecraft-like terrain.

    Some time later, I added autotiling of cliffs (using marching squares algorithm) and setting of different textures of the top tile faces. Also, an early version of my map/scenario editor.

    It was only after seeing the work in the previous screenshot that I realized that I could put more than one texture on the top tile faces, resulting in this quite nice tiled cliff look.

    The next idea I had was blending the textures of adjacent tiles. I was quite happy with the result - the map still has the retro Age of Empires look and is evidently tile-based, but finally it's dropped the 'Minecraft' aesthetic.

    Here I was debugging the shader program responsible for blending the terrain textures.

    More progress! Minimap and bounding boxes for game entities.

    Creation of a navigation grid from arbitrary map data. Green = passable. Red = impassable. The yellow lines show \"portals\" between different chunks of the map. The map is split up into 32x32 chunks for optimization purposes.

    Unit selection + Chris Reynolds' flocking behaviours. Lot's of parameter tweaking to get the entities to behave nicely. But it was another nice moment when I got this working. For the first time, I could actually \"play\" my game for a bit instead of just looking at a rendered scene.

    Finally tackling the hardest and most interesting problem - pathfinding. The red arrows show the flow field which will guide all entities to the destination. The yellow squares show tiles which are in direct line-of-sight of the destination. When in line-of-sight, entities will seek directly to the destination for more precise movement. Also notice the lack of VSync! :p

    Dynamic generation of the required flowfield and line-of-sight chunks. Multiple entities moving to a destination as a group. A little bit 'wobbly' sometimes, however.

    Of course, the screenshots and gifs don't tell the entire story of the development process. For example, I spent time adding a scripting system. I also had to spend time fixing some performance problems and many annoying and frustrating bugs. There were times when I was learning and doing exciting things but also times when I was doing the programming equivalent of tedious housekeeping chores for the sake of seeing the project move along.

    Here is the breakdown of lines of code written over Oct 2017-Aug 2018:

    Engine Core (C) ~ 22 kLOC
    Shaders (GLSL) ~ 1.4 kLOC
    Scripts (Python) ~ 3.4 kLOC

    The engine source is available on GitHub here: https://github.com/eduard-permyakov/permafrost-engine

    ​

    At this point, I feel I have some solid foundations for an RTS engine. The engine runs without crashing and has adequate performance on my unspectacular laptop. Everything works. Of course, it has a couple of quirks. I like to think that they give character to a game in the same way that all the Brood War engine quirks (magic boxing, stacking wraiths/mutas with trapped worker, worker free-pathing) give charm and character to Brood War.

    As well, there is still lot's of work ahead before the engine can have a "1.0" milestone. Combat, different factions, line-of-sight, game saving, complete UI, worker AI, building, etc. I may have less time for the project in the future, but it it certain that I will not abandon it. I also welcome the contributions of anyone who is interested in helping.

    My dream is that one day this small project will blossom into an engine which powers many open-source mods and games. As well, I hope to one day create my own game using the engine. I do not think I will make much profit off of it but I just want to create something unique and my own work of art. Already, sometimes I just play around with a couple of units in the engine to feel how they move, or even just aimlessly browse my own source code for an hour. I love seeing my own creation and feel like an artist looking back at his own painting.

    submitted by /u/shizaep
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    Godot 3.1 alpha 1 released

    Posted: 31 Aug 2018 12:34 AM PDT

    Learning player behaviour from analytics in Tomb Raider: Underworld

    Posted: 31 Aug 2018 12:49 AM PDT

    4 Steps to Casting the Best Voice Actor for your Character

    Posted: 31 Aug 2018 01:06 PM PDT

    WebGL2 : 111 : Quaternion Cone Constraint

    Posted: 31 Aug 2018 08:32 AM PDT

    Unity Quick Tip: Snap to grid with arrow keys

    Posted: 31 Aug 2018 11:16 AM PDT

    Share game ideas that you know you won't develop anyway.

    Posted: 30 Aug 2018 08:21 PM PDT

    We all have tons of ideas for games but not nearly enough time to develop everything. For that reason, this sub loves to remind new comers that their ideas (which might be good) are not worth anything until they're turned into an actual game through time and effort.

    I made this thread to put /r/gamedev to the test. Can we selflessly put together 100 original game ideas. This thread will forever stand as a proof that good ideas are abundant.

    Here's mine : A 1v1 online game that would look like starcraft's micro tournament. Both players have a few units but instead of microing them to win. They have to preprogram them through an interface where the player can drag and drop keywords like "if" and "when", actions like "move" and "attack" and everything else to complete their statements. Then the robots simply fight eachother.

    Your turn. Elaborate as much as you want.

    submitted by /u/bienvinido
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    Do text-based RPGs still have an audience?

    Posted: 30 Aug 2018 11:56 PM PDT

    So I'm going to try to keep this short:

    Do you think that there's still a niche for these types of games?

    I'm in a group with a couple of friends learning programming (on python right now). As a sort of side project, we wanted to sit down and make a game. We're just touching up the prologue right now, but I've been having some concerns/doubts about how other's will receive what we're doing.

    ​

    We aimed for a quirky subject so that we could hit some serious notes while still being comical overall. It has all the secrets and Easter eggs that come with a small team working on a project. We were hoping to add some text art to spice up the presentation a bit, but I keep coming to one question in the end. "If we end up actually getting this out there, will anyone play it?" I don't really know, but why waste all this creative energy when we could wait a year and put it on a different engine. Thoughts?

    submitted by /u/Criseist
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    Placeholder art: Cubes or free assets?

    Posted: 31 Aug 2018 04:50 AM PDT

    Hi, as a programmer thinking of developing a hobby game, my plan is to complete the gameplay to my satisfaction, and then if there's any interest at all, think about recruiting / hiring an artist to do proper artwork.

    Just wondering, what sort of placeholder assets would give the best first impression? My options are simple "programmer art" ie. untextured cubes, or whatever free assets I can find that vaguely fit my needs.

    submitted by /u/zeddyzed
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    What are your thoughts on Masahiro Sakurai's approach to learning game design?

    Posted: 30 Aug 2018 05:06 PM PDT

    The creator and producer of Super Smash Bros. and Kirby, Masahiro Sakurai, is known for adding meticulous details to gameplay, but how does he do it?

    Well, apparently, it was revealed in a Famitsu panel that his approach to game design helps him understand what the game is about, what the game mechanics are, and what makes whatever he puts into Super Smash Bros. feel alive.

    And the approach he uses is:

    He would play all video games, however good or bad critics/reviewers would suggest.

    Not that he enjoys doing so, but he plays all of the video games in order to experience the aspects of the games themselves, and doesn't comment nor think the game is bad.

    https://sourcegaming.info/2017/05/21/fun-you-cant-find-elsewhere-sakurais-famitsu-column-vol-508/

    So that got me thinking, do any of you take Sakurai's approach to learning game design, by experiencing a video game regardless of score / 10, and finding what makes the game, "a video game"?

    submitted by /u/asperatology
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    visual novel horror jam

    Posted: 31 Aug 2018 12:37 PM PDT

    HEY GUYS THE VISUAL NOVEL HORROR JAM IS HERE. I made a game jam that is awesome you have 1 more day to prepare and it is about horror visual novels you got to make a horror visual novel in ten days and no more no less and if you would like to participate here is the site http://jams.gamejolt.io/horrorvisualnoveljam go crazy who ever is the spoopyest visual novel wins and to enter you got to submit a game with #horrorvisualnovel so go crazy guys u think it has to be in the in the description :D

    submitted by /u/Sleepingbrine
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    Networking: Send state to all clients at the same time or whenever the client requests it?

    Posted: 31 Aug 2018 08:28 AM PDT

    Currently I'm having a problem with the client having an inherent lag of up to 2x-1 the tick rate because the game only sends out the state every tick. Would it make more sense to have a separate, faster loop for sending net states that waits for a request from the client?

    submitted by /u/pielover928
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    Question regarding true size of pixel art sprites

    Posted: 31 Aug 2018 12:04 PM PDT

    I've been working on a game for a bit now and as I play other pixel art style games it seems like the sprites are not created through individual pixels but pixel blocks. You could take something like Realm of the Mad God in game sprites for example. Is this actually the case? If so what size should I be making sprites at?

    submitted by /u/TheGreazyEazy
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    Why is nintendo switch so popular for developers.

    Posted: 31 Aug 2018 11:39 AM PDT

    Almost every indie game i know wants their game to run on switch, some are even time exclusive, or console exclusive to switch.

    Powerhouse like Todd howard constanly praise the switch when it's brought up, even more than ps4.

    Weird since he practically dissed the wii u in 2015 (remember the duel screen thing)

    Square enix begin to make an entirely new division exclusively on making switch games/ports.

    Nis america, begin making all their games to be on switch.

    Blizzard finally coming back to nintendo since starcraft on the n64.

    When a developer's game flop sales wise, they blame nobody but themselves, like 2K on the wwe port, and a certain jrpg inspired indie game that didn't sell well, and the developer blame nobody but himself on twitter for the sales.

    When a game that is developed ps4 and xbox one hardware before the switch existed, when ask for any possible switch port, they either say 1 of 3 things things, "no, but i wish" "no but is not off the table" "we are looking on it" never just no straight up.

    P.s. why would i want to bring my game over to switch when given the opportunity.

    submitted by /u/TheGoldminor
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    Any idea how this 3D nebula effect is done?

    Posted: 30 Aug 2018 07:30 PM PDT

    Wondering about how this video from 2007 was done: Infinity Nebulae Any ideas?

    Nowadays, Spaceengine seems to be doing somewhat similar things via (I think) ray-marching signed distance fields: SpaceEngine Beta 0.9.9.0 - Nebulosity [1440p] I don't know if that's what was going on in 2007 though.

    submitted by /u/smcameron
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    Marketing Video Game Soundtracks

    Posted: 31 Aug 2018 10:40 AM PDT

    Feedback Friday #304 - Fascinating Finds

    Posted: 30 Aug 2018 08:35 PM PDT

    FEEDBACK FRIDAY #304

    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)

    submitted by /u/Sexual_Lettuce
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    How to add mod support to a game?

    Posted: 31 Aug 2018 04:29 AM PDT

    In my case would be an android game. How would you implement an addon option. I picture a button you press, then you can search for a "file", then the game loads this file and changes its appearance. But how would you implement all this? Also would be mandatory to start implementing it from the beginning?

    submitted by /u/ramosmarbella
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    What BaaS supports China (Tencent/WeGame)?

    Posted: 31 Aug 2018 10:08 AM PDT

    I really wanted to use GameSparks, but they aren't in China. PlayFab's too limited for our game and not a fan. Aside from these two, what BaaS supports China?

    • Must support messaging
    • Must scale well
    • Bonus points for ES6 cloud script support

    This has been a bit difficult to Google and compare.

    submitted by /u/xblade724
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    Download and use music from our channel and use it for anything you like free! :)

    Posted: 30 Aug 2018 09:13 PM PDT

    I and my brother run a YouTube channel dedicated to providing people with free music. There are download links on each video! I make music for films and games, and I want people to have a free resource they can use. If you want to use any of the music please give credit to either myself (Chan Walrus) or my brother David O'Neil if he's written one of the tracks! Each video has a download link to the music track, so it's easy to download the MP3s straight from my Google Drive.

    ​

    Licensing Terms and Conditions

    https://www.chanwalrus.com/licensing

    ​

    Game Music - Inspired by Ghost Trick

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUgbZ2BbtZU

    Donnie Darko style fluctuating

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpVLdKCjRDg

    Epic Montage Music

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRIMk5v2y98

    Orchestral Music - Uplifting/Adventure

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTmQOZRFsJY

    Synth - Retro Wave

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSg-mKPDaHs&t

    Uplifting Synth - Slight Sadness

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuRqxhC2jpg

    ​

    If you have any questions about the music, feel free to ask them and I'll try to get back to everyone! I've been working on many short films and features for a while now, and quite a few games! I hope that you find my music useful! I realise I'm not the best composer out there but I always try my best to help people!

    submitted by /u/freedomofniche
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    Looking for playtesters (Print and play version) for my solo dungeon crawler/survival board game

    Posted: 31 Aug 2018 08:48 AM PDT

    Hello,

    I am looking for playtesters (print & play) of my solo survival board game.

    ​

    https://i.redd.it/n2jwboir7gj11.png

    If anyone is interested or want to read more about the game please follow the link (Google forms): https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScgkQF3X3PEEkobOM1KSlwBwjsOy7vqY5ncx74w4fBy65oDsw/viewform

    Thanks!

    submitted by /u/juvengle
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    Irrlicht: how to convert a ISceneNode into a IMeshSceneNode?

    Posted: 31 Aug 2018 01:51 AM PDT

    I have got a complex code that is fully loaded with references to ISceneNode objects. I would like to enable shadows for these. However, the function that let us enable shadows is addShadowVolumeSceneNode(), which is only available for the class IMeshSceneNode.

    My question is, how do I convert a ISceneNode into a IMeshSceneNode in order to apply shadows to it?

    ps: I know it is not possible to apply shadows to a ISceneNode: http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=42174

    submitted by /u/reebs12
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