The FCK DRM initiative |
- The FCK DRM initiative
- Free music for any project!
- Kickstarter and/or Publisher: Why not both?
- How to achieve a balance of looking good and being flexible in an animation pipeline for a 2D game?
- Blender Low Poly Knife Tool : Damages & Cracks
- Recovering from a bad launch
- Hey all! We decided to try recording the sounds of scooters in Vietnam with the help of a jacket, and a belt. We hope you all can learn something :)
- What's the most fun you had with gamedev?
- Should I feel guilty for taking breaks?
- Overview of Inverse Dynamics
- Completely UI/Menus based games.
- Indie Calendar Buddy - Festivals and Game Submissions
- Looking For Some Info Regarding Boss Designs and Player Damage
- I need advice on development software
- Disturbed Creature & Monster Sounds: 30 horrifying voices and sounds to add to your disturbed creatures - Available on Unity Asset Store & Unreal Marketplace
- Let DLL use EXE functions wthout exports?
- I just made the first 100 units of my mobile puzzle game (Shapeuku - iOS)!
- Methods of creating sound FX and music as a solo dev?
- Confused about graphics vs. art design and cinematography
- What to do to land a job as a producer?
- Can't find any articles on game promotion with hard numbers
- Foreign diploma
- Asymmetry in Card Games - how deep has it gone so far?
- Balancing Game-Dev Time
- Should I invest in a texturing tool?
| Posted: 21 Aug 2018 05:25 AM PDT |
| Posted: 21 Aug 2018 04:46 AM PDT Hello my friends! It's been a while since I posted here: 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. Feel free to use this music in any project you're working on! I really hope it helps! :) 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! [link] [comments]  |
| Kickstarter and/or Publisher: Why not both? Posted: 21 Aug 2018 09:16 AM PDT I'm working in a small team of 3, and currently in the early stages of a new game and have been thinking about marketing, PR and so forth, the topic of Kickstarter and publisher are often mentioned in indie games marketing, and I got thinking; why not both?
I suppose to kick this off I'll give my own thoughts: if I backed a game on Kickstarter, and then that game got picked up by a publisher later, personally in general I would not be upset. I will still receive the backer rewards that I paid for, and the game will be more likely to be finished (hopefully) and the end product should be even better. On the publisher's point of view, I feel like a game that has gone through a successful Kickstarter could only be viewed as positive - it's concrete proof that the game is resonating with people, and it's proof that the team has their shit together considering a Kickstarter campaign is no easy feat. [link] [comments]  |
| How to achieve a balance of looking good and being flexible in an animation pipeline for a 2D game? Posted: 21 Aug 2018 04:39 AM PDT My team is working on our first 2D game prototype. This game will be combat-heavy, which means that there will be a lot of animations that may require tweaks in timing, choreography, and other small changes. We were thinking of using a 2D sprite-sheet animation pipeline, which would involve drawing each frame manually, but I'm thinking that while it may look good and give good control over a 2D sprite and its animation, it won't be flexible if changes need to be made. I've been making and using 2D skeletal animations for the stand-in assets while the real sprites and animations are being developed by our artists. I'm not an artist, so skeletal animation was a good choice for me because it's relatively simple to rig up and animate, and its fast too. The main reason why our creative director doesn't want to do 2D skeletal animation is because he believes that they won't look as good as spritesheet animations. The problem I have with this is that I'm not completely convinced that spritesheet animations will look the best out of all animation styles available, and I'm pretty sure that spritesheets are one of the least flexible animation styles. Since this is our first game, I want to make sure that we have the ability to easily fix errors in all of our departments, including art, so that we can fix our mistakes instead of own them, even if that means decreasing the animation quality slightly. I've done a bit of research, and I know that Dead Cells, a recently popular metroidvania rogue-lite, used 3D animation and converted it into 2D for their game. They only had 1 guy doing all of the art, and they say that this method was very flexible and fast. I'd say the result looks pretty good too. 3D animation also brings in flexibility in reusing animations for similar models. This can be applied to another human character or to the same character wearing different equipment. This can also be achieved with 2D skeletal animation, but to a lesser degree. The main concern with 2D skeletal is that it's difficult to do any choreography that involves the character rotating their body, as that will require a separate sprite to show the parts that the original sprite didn't show. So I was wondering, what are our options for a 2D game to have good looking AND easy-to-change animations? [link] [comments]  |
| Blender Low Poly Knife Tool : Damages & Cracks Posted: 21 Aug 2018 09:35 AM PDT |
| Posted: 21 Aug 2018 07:20 AM PDT Hey, so I'm wondering if it's possible to recover from a bad launch. And specifically, if there are known cases of it happening due to selling well. We released a game in April that sold poorly. Over time, the number of visits dropped lower and lower, and now we're at very few visits per day. At first we thought it was the build of the game and worked on improving it, but after a while realized it was the trailer and the page. So we changed things up, made a new trailer, and now the conversion on the page is significantly higher (at around 1%). And we know from sources that this is a fair conversion amount that many successful games have So I reason - while the specifics about Steams algorithm are unknown, a big part of it surely looks at the ratio of people sent to the page / money they spent on it. So, in theory, once enough time passes, the algorithm should send more people to the page. This all makes perfect sense in theory, but are there known cases of this happening? or - tl;dr - are there known cases of games selling poorly at launch, getting to a low point in impressions/visits, improving the game/page, and then steams algorithm increasingly sending larger and larger amounts of people their way? PS: As a lesson for future generations, especially ones about to launch a game and thinking about a trailer - make it a *gameplay* one. If I could go back and change one thing, it would be this. There's a certain allure to cinematic ones, they're gorgeous and hide UI or game aspects that aren't perfect... but avoid it. There's a difference between a trailer that looks good, and a trailer that sells well. Don't make the same mistake we did. This is our new page/trailer, which sells well https://store.steampowered.com/app/612570/Fort_Triumph/ This is the trailer we launched with, *avoid this* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXojhaPQ07Y Thanks for any replies :) [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 21 Aug 2018 10:06 AM PDT |
| What's the most fun you had with gamedev? Posted: 21 Aug 2018 09:11 AM PDT I've only made two small project games in college, but it was really fun to watch peoples' reactions. Back in college, I stayed up all night to make a 2D space shooter in Java/libgdx. It was a backup plan for a team project. I thought it was pretty lame. My s/o, who was studying CS too, thought it was great. He made me show his nephew, and I was kind of embarrassed and didn't want to show it. But once he saw it, he said "Woah, you made that? That's not lame, that's awesome". It made me feel great. What's the most fun you had with gamedev? [link] [comments]  |
| Should I feel guilty for taking breaks? Posted: 20 Aug 2018 08:11 PM PDT I've been working on my Payday meets The Escapists like game for about 7 months now by my self, and it's coming along pretty well. But I recently decided to take a break from development for about 2 weeks. I was burnt out from a busy summer + game dev, and I'm gearing up for my sophomore year of high school, so I wanted a bit of a recharge period. But, over the last couple days, I've started feeling guilty about this break. I feel like I'm just shooting myself in the foot with this break, like I'm wasting precious time, although I have no hard set date for release. Should I feel guilty for taking a break from a passion project? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 21 Aug 2018 12:04 PM PDT |
| Completely UI/Menus based games. Posted: 21 Aug 2018 12:01 PM PDT I just started brainstorming on a new project resembling a much smaller version of the game Football Manager. In short, it's basically 100% text/menus/UI with very little graphical input. I figured it was a good experiment to hone my skills in menu systems and UI elements, but I had a few questions.
Most of my research is lazy googling where I try to find other devs' work or videos of people working on this type of stuff, but the large majority of what I run into are topics that are covered many times over like basic settings, or main menus as stated before. Open to PM conversations in further detail if anyone wants to help out! Thanks everyone. Enjoy your day. [link] [comments]  |
| Indie Calendar Buddy - Festivals and Game Submissions Posted: 21 Aug 2018 11:53 AM PDT Hi everyone! If you're looking for places to submit your games to and miss PromoterApp's calendar, we created this Indie Calendar Buddy to help out! If you know about a convention or competition, but don't see it on the list please submit it! [link] [comments]  |
| Looking For Some Info Regarding Boss Designs and Player Damage Posted: 21 Aug 2018 11:50 AM PDT Hi, I was looking on the internet to find proper ways/terms used in game development when designing bosses that prevent "instant phasing", but my search proved a bit difficult for what I actually was looking for. To elaborate: When you design a game boss, for example in an ARPG, without having multiple "phases" where it becomes invulnerable, what do you call it when you implement a method that reduces the damage it takes when it reaches a certain threshold within a certain time frame? For example, the boss has 10 million health and the player deals 1 million damage per second, and you want to prevent that the boss dies within 10 seconds, so you introduce a method that reduces the damage it takes for [x time] after [x damage] was dealt within [x time]. I've heard about some form of "entropy counter", but not sure if that applies here. Basically, to prevent the player from doing too much burst damage. Do you guys know anything about such methods or where I can find out more? Some help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks :) [link] [comments]  |
| I need advice on development software Posted: 21 Aug 2018 11:33 AM PDT I am getting ready to start coding for a personal project. I have several requirements for which I can't really evaluate software. I like the unreal engine for a few reasons but can't tell if I can use it for this project. Please feel free to make suggestions based on the following: An open world consisting of voxels or similar which consist of varied amounts of a wide variety of solids, liquids, and gasses. For example: digging a hole at a particular spot would create a hole in the landscape and yield an amount of sand/silicon/clay, organic matter, various minerals and moisture while digging 5 feet away would have a slightly different composition. EDIT: I'm ok if I need to use a few generic types of voxels and can add editable tags to them to track specific variations like Iron-rich sand vs Sulfur-rich sand. An ability to create a system which changes the composition of the environment (solid, liquid, gas voxels or whatever) based on weather, player or animal interaction, and physics (like landslides or flooding). This is to allow both accidental and intentional environmental changes. For example: spreading lime on a tilled field to change the composition of the soil or wildfire spreading ash over a large area. Plants and Animals which have unique genetic tags if not unique appearances. I'd like a long string to store actual and potential variations. The ability to create a system which allows plant breeding and growth. For example: wildflowers dropping seeds which will sprout into more flowers or fail to sprout based on the environment. This is in conjunction with genetic tags for either individual or groups of seeds (ideally individual seeds). Complicated NPC AI. For example: I'd like an NPC to be able to notice if an item is missing from their home. If a player were the only one they saw in their house since the last time they saw the item, I'd like a chance the NPC can pin the loss on the player. There are tons of things like this for NPCs to be processing. Feel free to tell me if I'm an idiot. The endgame for this project is a kind of reality simulation, I guess. Likewise, if someone knows there's an off-the-shelf EA suite that already does everything I need with checkboxes (LOL) let me know, please. Thanks for looking! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 21 Aug 2018 11:15 AM PDT |
| Let DLL use EXE functions wthout exports? Posted: 21 Aug 2018 10:45 AM PDT I want to know if it's possible to have a program with functions that the dll also can use, and that if I e.g. need to instantiate something on the EXE, the dll can also access it without exporting a pointer to it. So an example: EXE has a function called Now the DLL wants to know the player name, but it would need access to the player object, which is in the EXE. Now one way is to export a ptr to the object, but if I have A LOT OF (different)OBJECTS, then what would be better way then exporting them all and having to import em all? If there is another way? How does UE4 do it for example? Thx! [link] [comments]  |
| I just made the first 100 units of my mobile puzzle game (Shapeuku - iOS)! Posted: 21 Aug 2018 10:29 AM PDT Does anybody have some specific tips for marketing a small unique mobile puzzler? I posted around on Reddit a bit and had some really positive feedback so far so I'd like to step it up a bit. My thoughts so far are: - paid advertising - contacting Youtubers (probably require payment) - contacting game review websites (most require payment) I haven't released a game like this before so I don't know what the best avenues are for finding puzzle fans really! Have any of you guys had success marketing a game like this before? [link] [comments]  |
| Methods of creating sound FX and music as a solo dev? Posted: 21 Aug 2018 09:51 AM PDT So I'm a beginner solo dev, just getting started and really embracing the coding and art creation of my projects. I'm using Unity and it's been a lot of fun learning so much lately. But the question of sound and music design puzzles me a bit. What I would like to do is create music and sound FX for my game using computer software and as little (preferably none) extra hardware as possible. I've heard of some software for this, like FL Studio, and Propellerhead Reason, but do I need hardware to use these to make music or can I make it entirely just using my computer and the software? What about sound FX? Would one of those software I mentioned work for both music and sound FX? If not, what are my options? Also, is it even possible to create sound FX like this or do I absolutely need a microphone to record real sounds and then manipulate them digitally? Like, could I create a dog barking sound effect with just software? Sorry if this isn't clear, but I know almost nothing about music and sound design for games and most of the stuff I find expects me to have synthesizers or microphones and stuff and I'm just wondering if what I want to do if possible. Thank you in advance! [link] [comments]  |
| Confused about graphics vs. art design and cinematography Posted: 21 Aug 2018 09:10 AM PDT Hi guys, noob here. Something's always puzzled me about the graphics and art design of games. Alot of the time when I see amateur demonstrations of the Unreal Engine, there's a certain blandness and uglyiness to visuals. Can someone explain to me why a game like Metal Gear Solid 3 or 4 still looks so much better aesthetically than a lot of amateur stuff despite the improvements in graphics - is it art design? cinematography? Compare these two videos for example. I find this ugly as hell - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLXqkwwOsKc Where as this, is stunning - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lO2Zp4nwsFA [link] [comments]  |
| What to do to land a job as a producer? Posted: 21 Aug 2018 04:54 AM PDT Hi everyone, I have a big problem I am unable to find a solution for and definitely would love if you guys could help me out here. A few disclaimers before I begin the tale; I am using a throwaway because I don't want it used by companies (specially those that I signed up with their social media when I applied to jobs with them) or any other crap because of what I am about to say. The second reason for that is that I am really an introvert so I don't like to post personal stuff on the internet unless absolutely necessary and this post will have a few of those. Finally this is going to be a long post, I do apologize but I just wanted to create a full picture as much as possible. With that said on to the meat of the subject: Basically like the majority of people I wanted to be a game dev from a young age. Unfortunately where I live there is this issue with parents controlling which university you can go to sometimes (depending on the parent). So I was coerced and forced into Engineering and then I picked Architecture because it was the least studying. In any case, during my time in university I spent my free time learning how to write (I loved writing) and how to create 3D art so I could be a writer and/or 3D artist in games. Things worked out a bit towards the writer side which made me quit my 3D art endeavor along with other problems related to 3D art workflow and my "talent" (more like lack there of). After that I branched from art into level design (after all architecture is related to level design) but didn't find that I like it very much. At the end I bit the bullet and stopped running around and learned programming (was at the time when I wanted to make my own game). I took up C# and learned Unity. Fast forward a few years and now I am a full time freelance game developer that has been doing this for 2 years so far full time. I have worked as a programmer, "manager"/producer (in pretty lax setups), level designer, writer and game designer for various clients. The work I enjoyed the most was the producer work. This is what I want to pursue further however freelancing as a producer -- that is like 1 job in 5+ years of freelancing. Literally. Even then I can't say I am 100% a producer as there are no deadlines (clients doesn't want them), no budget (client has VERY tight budget, never reveals but I have to be mindful so no "management" in the real sense). That said, I already have 1.5 years experience as an IT Manager + 1.5 years as a teaching leader in a subject from when I worked at a local IB school. Naturally though since I liked the producer role and freelancing for it is almost non-existent I started looking into getting hired by game companies and here is the heart of the problem: My country doesn't have a game industry. It isn't even on the radar in terms of development. Yes, we do have a few game companies but they are at best a level higher than hobby projects. Most of the people working in there don't really know what they are doing, they haven't released anything (company wide not employee specific) and they have really out of proportion expectations. An example is a local company just starting out, have 0 games released, have 0 work done, they are still fresh into games. They put up an ad for a Unity developer with at least 2-3 years of AAA experience and at least 1 shipped game in a AAA environment -- this is a junior programmer description though. The senior is the same but has 5-7 years experience and more shipped titles. Moreover you would be lead (both senior and junior) by a local "game developer" who never saw any AAA experience or even AA. The pay is 1/11 of what a junior developer would get in his first year working in AAA without a shipped game (for the senior position). So you can see the type of crazy and disillusional people you'd meet here; since we have no game development industry and thus no AAA or even a small "a" in the country. But to be fair we only have ONE studio that does freelance work for other companies outside of the country. It is mostly hiring "friends and whoever we know" regardless of competency. They reformed under a different name after shutting down 10+ years ago and more over they advertise they co-created a very successful AAA survival game when in reality they were just doing some small stuff for hire for the main developer (like inventory setup for example or some art work). To my knowledge beyond that one game... they aren't working on anything else. Moreover I am neither an EU or a NA citizen or even on the same continent of either groups. So getting out of the country isn't easy because of visa issues + nearby countries suffer from the same thing more or less. Everyday I wake up, I apply left and right to jobs in the gaming industry and I receive rejections left and right. Rejections range from (and in order):
Now I know the first one, no one can really help out in and I long gave up trying to resolve it. It is what it is. But the last 2 are the ones that make me frustrated and at my wits end. I mean, how am I supposed to get experience in a field in the industry when I have no industry locally and I can't land job because of lack of experience or visa issues? I even tried to apply for a producer role in the "amateur companies" I mentioned. Guess what? They don't even know what a producer is, they think it is related to film industry or rather art production (i.e. an artist). This is how sad and ignorant people are here and more over they act as if they know it all and know what they are doing. But I digress. So basically this is my dilemma, I have been in it for the past 2 years. I don't know what to do.I don't know how I can get this role and I definitely don't know what else I could do other than what I am doing but what I am doing (applying for anything related to producer role or otherwise) isn't working out so far -- been at it for years now. So anyway, any ideas what I can do? EDIT: Note I am applying to associate/junior level positions not a senior or top of the chain producer position. Thanks in advance and sorry again for the long post. [link] [comments]  |
| Can't find any articles on game promotion with hard numbers Posted: 21 Aug 2018 08:24 AM PDT Im trying to figure out how much of a marketing effort it would be to drive traffic to my future game page / store listing but I can not find any articles on the topic with hard numbers. Example 1: I had this game, this game review site featured it in this article, I got this much traffic. Example 2: I had this game, I advertised on social media like this, I got this much traffic. Does anyone have an example like this or know of a good article? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 21 Aug 2018 07:39 AM PDT Ok so from what I've gathered to land a job in a video game company you should have some kind of portfolio, but the employer might also wanna seena diploma. In the US, do they still care about foreign diplomas (high school I mean), at least when it comes to the video game industry (I plan to become a game designer). [link] [comments]  |
| Asymmetry in Card Games - how deep has it gone so far? Posted: 21 Aug 2018 07:32 AM PDT So this is just as much a brainstorming session as it also is a request for help in terms of research material for me to contrast and compare around. I'm decided to draft onto this idea of a game with space for extreme disparity between factions and their gameplay, coming from the idea: what if i was playing with a MTG deck against a Yu-Gi-Oh player, yet the cards could communicate one against the other properly? As of now i guess it is safe to say we're all familiar to the class-based approach to CCGs that Hearthstone brought us as a baseline for this discussion, but i feel it as somehow insufficient. Too often i feel in the few games of the genre i'm playing that your leader unit/face is little more than a homogeneous peg with hitpoints and a hint for the enemy of what is to come, but nothing so unique - Hero Powers (and BBSs, for Duelyst) are basically limited-use spells on top of an otherwise plain 0/25 minion, and unique class mechanics in Shadowverse are strongly more tied to the decks themselves than your avatar (see how neutral decks can almost completely ignore those). Core engines are also an design point i might want to tackle on. Thinking here of, in limited fashions, twisting the resource system for very specific character fantasies. Sure we have all seen decks dedicated in casting from hitpoints as an alternative resource, but what if their health bar was their only resource and they adapt the standard mana costs of all cards to it? What if in other faction someone tore down the generic mana system to play around colored mana somehow? What measures should one take to keep this chaos in order, and how much mixing up is acceptable? These are questions i know i have to find answer by myself, but seems an interesting topic to try a hand at. I need to seek out on how much dissonance between playstyles the CCGs around took attempts to carve, and trimming through the list of generic names around the web will be tiresome alone. So i ask you guys in experiences i should seek out to better think it out. Thanks for any insight on the matter. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 20 Aug 2018 11:49 PM PDT So, I'm entering my senior year of high school. I currently have a part/full time job, I am working on a game with someone (I have never met someone I've game-dev-wise meshed with so well before), and school is starting up again (during which I'll be teaching an introductory course on game design to middle-schoolers). This is quite a lot... And juggling too much in someone's life can be draining, and just unhealthy in general (especially considering my age). I'm considering dropping the job, when school starts, to work on the game more, but the income is useful because I'm hoping to go to college for music/computer science. I'm also unsure that I'll use my extra free time gained to actually work on the game. (procrastination is a b****). Any feedback or comments would be appreciated - thanks for reading. [link] [comments]  |
| Should I invest in a texturing tool? Posted: 21 Aug 2018 06:59 AM PDT Hi, just a quick question. I'm currently using Unity as an engine and Blender as a 3D package. The game I'm currently working on is going for a realistic look, however I have some projects in mind that could utilize other styles. Now, I'm a terrible 2D artist. I can't draw to save my life, so for textures (especially for the current project) I'm relying on buying photo textures online and applying them to my Unity PBR materials. However, I recently did a Udemy course to refresh my pipeline knowledge, and the guy doing it is using 3D Coat to handpaint some details; it looks quite nice, although after some research I have my eyes set on Substance's packages. What I want to ask is, are these tools the right ones for someone who'd like to automate the texturing process, or will I still have to use GIMP? I have a better budget now, so in general, is it worth investing the 20$/month for the Substance suite, and if yes, what are my limitations? Thank you for reading! [link] [comments]  |
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