Unpopular Opinion - Unity/Unreal are not Newbie-Friendly Engines. They are engines reserved for Professional & Semi-Professional developers. |
- Unpopular Opinion - Unity/Unreal are not Newbie-Friendly Engines. They are engines reserved for Professional & Semi-Professional developers.
- Gamescom Booth: Indie Version - No Money? No Problem!
- Game proportions
- Unreal vs Unity - Detailed comparison
- New demo of our isometric game engine, Qiso, which is a plugin for Corona SDK, a 2D engine for mobile game dev. Among other things Qiso now does character triggered layer transparency and quirky map shapes!
- A few technical questions for my next DIY rendering project
- Work as "LiveOps"
- Check out the VR game my friend and I have been working on for more than a year and a half
- Fluid System in Enter The Gungeon
- I could not find Sequelitis posted on this sub, and I think everyone interested in game design & game dev should watch this and the other two videos in this mini-series.
- Afraid to come to the industry
- Making 2d games
- Hello, this might be an uncommon topic: Studying game design abroad
- Whatever Happened to the GameStart Engine?
- Rendered Animation vs Real Time for cut scenes?
- I know exactly what I want to do now.
- What sort of programming is required of a Level Designer?
- Unity 3D Game Kit Tutorial : Vegetation & Rocks
- Genome for Genetic Algorithm
- According to you all, what would be the fundamentals of a good sim game and the sins of horrible ones
- Game Developer/Programmer Portfolio hosting websites
- I would like to work as a tools developer in the game industry, I have a few questions
- Engaging with your Steam community prior to release
- challenges pattern: ideas on how to implement?
| Posted: 01 Sep 2018 10:11 PM PDT I wish someone would properly Review Unity & Unreal as what they truly are: Less-intuitive mid-level game engines for semi-professional to professional game developers - NOT for beginners, newbies, or hobbyists (who would be much better served with a high level engine or low level skill development). Now before you downvote or dismiss me as a lunatic, let me explain why I think 99% of users referring newbies to Unity/Unreal is bad advice. I honestly don't really understand why people think to advise total newbie 'game developers' to use Unity or Unreal. Even with Unity/Unreal, it still takes an enormous amount of time, dedication, skill, and talent to release an actual game. Even a small game is not a simple or easy task. Although I don't understand, I think I know why - we've created a culture of belief that Unity/Unreal makes things easier to make games, when in reality it is simply easier to make Rapid Prototypes or to skip reinventing some of the lower level wheels. Prototypes are the illusion of a real, completed game. When one hobbyist uses Unity to make a character run around in a pre-loaded environment, it gives the illusion of significant progress in game development. So of course they will refer others to it even if they're still years away from completing their game and they've never released any game themselves. From my own experience, Unity & Unreal are actually more along the lines of professional engines which cater best towards semi-professional & low-budget professional game companies. Development teams with enough resources or past experience to pretty much build a project from scratch, but by using Unity they can skip past reinventing some of those lower level wheels so they can focus most of their effort on gameplay & content, with enough professional programming experience to patch any holes in said wheels (which Unity developers nearly always have to do, Unity being so imperfect and all). IMO it is better advice to say newbies should begin by either using an even higher level (programming-free) engine like Game Maker, Construct 2, RPG Maker, or by simply learning low level programming and starting their own engine from scratch. The former for those who are artists or content creators, but not programmers. The latter for anyone who even wants to dabble in coding games or want to eventually use Unity to complete a game. By learning game programming , one could then be much more empowered to use Unity/Unreal. It could be argued that Unity & Unreal, in the hands of a total newbie, are about as worthless as giving them source access to Frostbite without any documentation & then telling them to make their own complex 3D engines. Sure they could eventually release, but they will have to learn a lot about game development at a stunted rate than if they were to simply dive in at a lower level and then return to Unity/Unreal after achieving significant competence in a tangible skill. I believe this is why we see so many Unity/Unreal developers in /r/gamedev but few actual games. It's why 4chan's AGDG is always insulting each other by asking "Where is your game anon"? This is why despite Unity/Unreal being so incredibly popular, we still see a ridiculously large number of releases from developers (Hobbyist to Indie to AAA) creating their own engines (ex. Anything by Klei, Redhook, Chucklefish, Bluebottle, etc.) It's also why we see so many Platformers. Unity may be a high enough level engine to make platformers much easier than any other genre which would require more professional skills. So this post may be false for platformers, but true for more complicated genres. The endless shallow tutorials also do not help. There are literally thousands of tutorials on the absolute basics of gamedev in Unity, but it's rare to find a more in-depth tutorial which teaches newbies what they actually need to know to see their dream features come to life. If 99% of Resources are shallow, then those resources are great for professionals to quickly get caught up on the nuances because they won't need the same assistance as newbies to do the real programming required to see innovative or complex features come to life. Newbies go into Unity/Unreal with this illusion that it will be easy to make their dream video game, or in the absence of a dream - ANY video game! But it is NOT their fault! Amateur GameDev culture, such as /r/gamedev community, has this incredibly pressurized culture which drills into every newbie's head that Unity/Unreal is the golden key to game development. It makes it so easy! It's possible! Unity/Unreal does almost everything for you! Then newbies dive in, spend months with little progress, and a little too late realize "Oh shit... making a game is really difficult." About as difficult as creating your own game engine from scratch, because at the end of the day you still have to know how to program, how to create art, how to design, how to engineer software, and how to manage projects. At the end of the day, you realize that blitting some sprites to a screen or some animating some bones and meshes isn't that big of a deal in gamedev compared to the enormous task of creating an actual video game, with all its content and gameplay. Some realize this, while others fail to learn that Unity/Unreal don't do as much as you originally thought. They aren't as great and effortless as what the gamedev culture made you think. Game Development is a serious task, and Unity/Unreal don't give you what you need to actually make the majority of a game. They give you some core systems like rendering, input handling, and a strong API for Vector math or Color structs. You still have to do 99% of the game development in Unity/Unreal just like you would in any other engine, or from scratch. There is no game logic, no item databases, no simulated world, no A.I., no functions to call to create interesting gameplay. RPG Maker, Construct 2, and Text-Based novel engines, as well as any other higher level engines actually give you non-programmer friendly tools to create video games. This is a big reason we see hundreds of text novels with no graphics and popular games made in Game Maker, but Unity successes are usually from serious developers with professional teams and/or a few million dollars backing them (Ori, Shadowrun Returns, Wasteland, Shroud of Avatar, etc.) Although I will admit this last paragraph may be a weak point, a lot of successful Unity games are from teams who are already highly skilled and incredibly talented prior to even attempting game development with Unity. Although you could say that is true of any engine or from scratch, but at least other engines don't give this illusion of superiority that we give Unity/Unreal. [link] [comments]  |
| Gamescom Booth: Indie Version - No Money? No Problem! Posted: 02 Sep 2018 11:33 AM PDT Hello guys! Last week was Gamescom and we had no money for a booth - so we built our own mobile cosplay booth and the reactions where amazing! Here is a link to show off prototype to final booth: https://imgur.com/gallery/hx9A8WA Maybe this is inspiring other devs to make even crazier things :D [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 02 Sep 2018 10:44 AM PDT I've been stuck trying to figure out my game proportions, I'm making a topdown 2D A/J-RPG using 32x tiles and I'm wondering how many tiles characters, enemies etc should be? I want my character to have semi-realistic/realistic proportions to the point where he can fluently swing his sword and use his arms, whilst it not looking akward. I'm hardstuck on this and it's bugging me to death. Grateful for any ideas! [link] [comments]  |
| Unreal vs Unity - Detailed comparison Posted: 01 Sep 2018 01:55 PM PDT |
| Posted: 02 Sep 2018 08:44 AM PDT |
| A few technical questions for my next DIY rendering project Posted: 02 Sep 2018 07:05 AM PDT So this was my last project I posted here, based around getting normal maps from pictures. That was cool and all, it even got put up on Hacker News, which I didn't even know was a site. Except, I got a better idea than that afterwards. This is an email from Matt Pharr, one of the people who made Physically Based Rendering, basically saying there hasn't been something like my project for all the other PBR parameters (specular, roughness, etc.). So I had an idea to find all those, except the concept needs a lot of things in software that I don't quite know how to do yet, so I thought this would be a good community to ask. Here is a laundry list of those things:
A lot of these involve UE4, but UE4 is not necessary for the project. If these things are doable with another renderer that's PBR based, I would use that instead. I'll be posting this in the UE4 community as well. Any thoughts / leads on any of these would be appreciated. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 02 Sep 2018 10:50 AM PDT Hey there. I was wondering if someone can explain me a bit what is it to work as LiveOps as I can't find much info about this role, if someone who works, who has worked, or who knows someone who works as "LiveOps" in a studio. What I know is that is a position (mostly in mobile video games companies) you care about the live updates or somehting like that if I am not wrong. I am getting introduced to the industry, and was looking to entry level positions or jobs as QA, and I recieved an email from a mobile games company to work on this role. I passed the first interview and they told me that next week they'll call me to do test, which represents the work I would be doing daily... but the fact is that I have no idea what it can be, so if someone can give me a hand is really appreciated [link] [comments]  |
| Check out the VR game my friend and I have been working on for more than a year and a half Posted: 02 Sep 2018 11:21 AM PDT |
| Fluid System in Enter The Gungeon Posted: 02 Sep 2018 04:29 AM PDT How did they do it? I can't sleep for days without thinking about it. I am talking about this. I get the fire part, its a cellular automata system, but fluid part? Is it shader or game objects that stuck on top of each other? (By the way Enter the gungeon made by unity 3D) If somebody can enlighten me i would be so happy. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 02 Sep 2018 12:15 PM PDT |
| Afraid to come to the industry Posted: 02 Sep 2018 03:31 AM PDT Hey Im a third year student of game development at our school. I have really enjoyed studying the art of coding (c#, unity, unreal engine) and i have taken part of global game jam last year. But i am scared to get a real job. I am just afraid of the crunching and overall disrespect of the workers. I am afraid that i have wasted 3 years for nothing and i dont have a backup plan. Currently i am going trough a internship which doesnt involve crunch, but it doesnt pay either. What should i do?? Edit: and sorry for my english. It is not my first language. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 02 Sep 2018 11:45 AM PDT Hi! My friend and I decided to make a 2d game, however, as the person who is taking care of the artistic part of it, im having trouble finding 2d games that aren't boring platform games to use as inspiration... The game we're thinking of making relies heavy on story telling/dialogue. Can anyone give me any suggestions? [link] [comments]  |
| Hello, this might be an uncommon topic: Studying game design abroad Posted: 02 Sep 2018 10:40 AM PDT I'm from Argentina and I was planning to step into multimedial design next year to become a game designer some day, here college is free but because of the current government 57 universities can no longer operate (they literally said free universities is a waste of money because poor people don't get to go to college). I want a future in an industry that's very far from being relevant in a broken country, so we get to my main concern: Where should I start to look for a university with a game designer degree that would accept an Argentinian student? My english is pretty much on point and I don't mind cleaning bathrooms for a living. But my knowledge about game development is scarce and I don't know a thing about programming. Thank you for your time and attention. [link] [comments]  |
| Whatever Happened to the GameStart Engine? Posted: 02 Sep 2018 06:54 AM PDT I was following the production and development of the GameStart Engine on and off for a few years, the primary site used to be found here: http://www.gamestart3d.com/ The engine showed real promise, boasting features like unlimited shadow-casting point lights, physical materials before everyone else was doing it, etc. etc. I wanted to check in on their progress recently and was chagrined to find the project has disappeared entirely. The main site is not just down, it looks like all the source code has been wiped clean from the Earth without a trace. Was anyone else following their development and know what happened? It's a shame, the creators spent years on it and to see it just vanish without so much as a landing page explaining why is odd. [link] [comments]  |
| Rendered Animation vs Real Time for cut scenes? Posted: 02 Sep 2018 04:09 AM PDT I was wondering what was the reason some game devs use real time animation over rendered animation for in game cut-scenes? https://youtu.be/_pxPq0JoMsA?t=32s These are all real time animation right? Why not do rendered animation on cut scenes to capture a more realistic look? [link] [comments]  |
| I know exactly what I want to do now. Posted: 02 Sep 2018 09:39 AM PDT I don't necessarily want to make my own games, so much as I want to be a tool-builder, for lack of a better term. People can't make fan games of N series? Okay. I'll just make open source, highly customizable yet also accessible engines that allow people to make not only fan games, but their own games as well. I am aware that this is a goal that is probably more ambitious than I can possibly imagine. At the same time, I think this is what I want. Where should I start? What is step 1? I have no coding experience and pretty much no experience at all in game development. [link] [comments]  |
| What sort of programming is required of a Level Designer? Posted: 02 Sep 2018 08:59 AM PDT Hello everyone, So my day job is Game Designer, but I'm not of the programming type. It's not really my strong point. I do some stuff in my spare time, but I really wouldn't know how to create my own gameplay system or something. I'm looking to transitioning into Level Design, I've always felt that is where I belonged and I believe it's something that would put myself under a little bit less stress. So, I'm just wondering what sort of programming is required? I'm decent at sketches, block outs, testing, metrics, the principles and techniques etc, and I guess I'm also OK at some basic stuff like keys and doors, triggers and that sort of thing through blueprints. But, when it comes to "real" programming is that the sort of thing that's expected? The company I'm at now, we don't really have Level Designers as such, due to the games we work on, but for a studio which develops 1st/3rd person games, I'd just like to know what would be expected. I imagine most of the systems and and gameplay elements would have been created by others, and it would just be up to the LD to add enemies here, add pick ups there, add a key and door sequence there, initiate a cut scene here etc, which is all sort of "basic" blueprint /visual scripting stuff. Any help would be fantastic :) [link] [comments]  |
| Unity 3D Game Kit Tutorial : Vegetation & Rocks Posted: 02 Sep 2018 05:05 AM PDT |
| Posted: 02 Sep 2018 04:53 AM PDT Hello everyone ! I have a project to develop a little game where the player if fighting in some way AIs whose controlled by a certain genome. AIs evolution will be controlled by a Genetic Algorithm in real time (when a AI dies, the Algorithm replaces it immediately with a new one made by hybridation of 2 selected genomes). I already develop something similar with the NEAT algorithm that train neural networks controlled creatures. I was giving my creatures a "vision of their environnement" in inputs, and it was choosing the action to do into the outputs by propagating the signal through the NN. What i want to do here is using a way simpler genome and GA. but instead of NN, what kind of genome could i use ? I want to give it information, and it tells me what action to do in return. Thanks in advance for your suggestions ! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 01 Sep 2018 02:38 PM PDT I tend to mostly design sim games when I get inspiration and, while I do play a lot of games, it is a genre that not a lot of people close to me enjoys. I'd love to get the opinion of various people in case such sins were obvious yet I missed them. [link] [comments]  |
| Game Developer/Programmer Portfolio hosting websites Posted: 02 Sep 2018 07:50 AM PDT Hi guys, I'm now entering my third year of my game dev major in college, which means it's time for me to start looking for an internship. I want to start putting my stuff online so I can start sending it around, but I don't know where I should put it. I'm looking for somewhere I can place several entries with accompanying tech demo's or trailers, descriptions of what it is and how it works, and potentially put updates for WIP stuff. From my artist friends I understand artstation is a great site, but of course it is very art focused. I think I saw a couple of them on Tumblr or Blogspot as well? In any case, I would love to hear any recommendations or experiences you guys have! [link] [comments]  |
| I would like to work as a tools developer in the game industry, I have a few questions Posted: 02 Sep 2018 06:03 AM PDT So I really love the game development industry, I'm really making it my goal to get internships at places like Blizzard, Rockstar, and smaller game development companies while studying Computer Science. However game development itself isn't what really interests me. Truth is I'm not the most creative or artistic mind in the world and I struggle with actually making games. Maybe its lack of practice, maybe I just don't have the type of mind to be a good game creator/designer. What really interests me is just being surrounded by the same nerds that like games and the process as making them as much as I do. I noticed many game development studios have positions specifically for "tools" developers which from a general understanding involves maintaining the tools the game programmer,designers, etc use to make the game (and I assume make plugins for those tools etc) If it was my goal to have a position like this in the future would a game portfolio still be almost a requirement, or could I just start making plugins for these popular tools and use that to break through. This question could be very naive to some, I don't know a ton about the game development industry however I am aware of its reputations as being volatile, low waged, and not the best place for a software engineer. As of right now I'm okay with that; I'm from a *very low wage family so while the wages of a game developer may be small in comparison to a software engineer they're still probably making more than my household did in a year growing up so the money doesn't matter to me. [link] [comments]  |
| Engaging with your Steam community prior to release Posted: 02 Sep 2018 02:10 AM PDT I'm currently 9 months into development of my latest game and I'm managing to build up a decent small community through Discord and using reddit and IndieDB. I'm also aware of the interest building on Steam via wishlisters. I keep hearing about how important it is to engage my community on Steam and I'm actively posting news updates, however I feel like I'm missing something. Is there a more direct way to engage my Steam community or is the primary way news posts and responding to discussions? Thanks for any help! [link] [comments]  |
| challenges pattern: ideas on how to implement? Posted: 01 Sep 2018 10:11 PM PDT Just a quick post asking on whether anyone has some kind of idea as to what sort of psuedo-code/structure/design-pattern one would use to implement "challenges" mechanism in their game(s)? I'm having a kind of writers block atm cause I can't seem to think of a nice way where I could 'map' a players current game assets/resources to avaliable challenges? [link] [comments]  |
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