220 Free SFX (Sci-fi, Horror, Foley, Soundscapes, Impacts etc) and Music Loops from a friendly sound designer. |
- 220 Free SFX (Sci-fi, Horror, Foley, Soundscapes, Impacts etc) and Music Loops from a friendly sound designer.
- Did any of you work on any of these unreleased games for the Nintendo 64 or the Disk Drive? Would you be able to speak more on what some of these games entailed, and how far they may have gotten in terms of development?
- We released an AI that enables devs with no musical skills to easily create adaptive music in realtime. Get it for free on the Unity Asset Store!
- Writing (Java) Game Engines
- Creating your own Engine Editor
- Did I just waste 3 years?
- Unity, which of these options is better performance wise?
- There are too many video games. What now ? Yup, good question.
- How to cope with people who say your game will be bad when others say it will be good.
- Is there a list of games being made by an open community? Or does anyone know of any current and past open community dev projects?
- Solo Indie with wife and a kid: two months in
- Gmod campaigns???
- Which way should I build my portfolio?
- Testing new jump mechanics. You can "load up" to jump much higher.
- How and Why to use Blender in your C# Unity Game
- How do you plan out a game?
- Working on a VR swinging game in my free time
- "Double" fresnel with physically based rendering?
- What are some of the best level editors included within a video game that is available on PC?
- Creating a Custom Diffuse Lighting Model in Unity - Tutorial
- OpenGL rendering everything to the same target, will it overlap?
- Unity Assets (from Unity Humble Bundle) Giveaway
- Getting started with marketing your own mobile game?
| Posted: 01 Oct 2018 10:36 AM PDT |
| Posted: 01 Oct 2018 02:44 AM PDT |
| Posted: 01 Oct 2018 04:41 AM PDT |
| Posted: 30 Sep 2018 08:52 PM PDT This is a topic that I'm personally very passionate about. When it comes to game development, I find myself increasingly interested in the tools that enable the designers to put the game together more so than I am about actually being one of those designers. I like building tools that make their lives easier and seeing the end result after all their work is done. In this post I want to talk about small scale engines, and I am going to limit the language to Java. This is because earlier this year I completed a small engine that was written over the course of ~5 months part time in Java exclusively. I am currently working on a new engine as a longstanding research project using C++17, but that's a post for another time! This all started back in January of this year. A small group of friends and I were designing a handful of small simulations so we could observe them and collect data, and we found ourselves in need of an engine to abstract away the common stuff between them. Very quickly we decided we did not want to use a AAA engine since it would be Mount Kilimanjaro-level overkill. Why build your own engine?This is the most important first question to ask since you really need to make sure you're not wasting your time. For us, this boiled down to the fact that we had a very straightforward list of things that we needed from the engine, while everything else was just noise. Instead of learning how to work within the framework of something like Unreal, we decided it would just be best to create an environment that was custom-tailored to exactly what we wanted but nothing more. This meant that deciding what we didn't need was just as important as deciding what we did need to avoid putting extra time into something that didn't matter for us. We also wanted it to be built exclusively in Java. Between us we all had different language preferences/specialties, but this was the common ground. We would just have to work around the garbage collector (more on this later). Here was another benefit: since we wrote the engine spec and were building it ourselves, we all knew exactly what it would support. Along with this, since engine development coincided with actual simulation development whenever possible, we all had a very clear picture of what was supported at all stages of development, and what features were in the pipeline. Wouldn't this delay development?In our case it didn't (much), but this is a very valid concern for any indie developer that is working on an in-house engine. If the technology is far out from being in a working state, the other people on the team might end up with little to nothing to do. For us, we spent time up front deciding what it would need, and then we quickly got it to a state where we could drive the car while it was still being built. The way that we handled this was to use an iterative approach. We knew that there was going to be a lot of logic involved being performed in parallel, some graphics/animation and some GUI work. What we opted to do was to design the entire core framework of the engine and get it running. This included:
With this in place, part of the team could get to work on some of the simulation logic/GUI elements while some other parts of the engine were created. After the first batch of code, the next batch included things like:
From here we went to add things like the 2D renderer, then the collision detection (we didn't end up needing built-in response so we left it out), then support for scrolling/zooming into the game world as well as for displaying text. This approach allowed our team to eventually work in parallel: partly on the engine, partly on the design. Design influenced the engine very often because they would sometimes hit a roadblock and ask about the particular state of a feature. All focus would then be put on that feature to get it out more quickly since they had expressed a need for it. If there weren't any active complaints about the state of the engine, priority would go to what seemed like the next most useful feature. What about the Java garbage collector?This is probably the biggest problem people have with Java. We actually found it to be pretty responsive, even when we had upwards of 50,000 entities active in a scene at once. The best thing you can do is to look into how the GC is structured and what options are available to you as the programmer. Here are a couple of things:
If you can tolerate whatever latency the GC imposes, Java is otherwise very easy to use. You might even find that you don't notice much slowdown at all. What about low-level graphics, audio and GPU computing?Java actually has a lot to offer in this realm. If you're looking for a graphics backend built over OpenGL but that provides a lot of existing features (GUI, image loading, audio, etc.), you can go for something like JavaFX. If you plan to write your own backend using OpenGL/Vulkan, you can look into the Lightweight Java Game Library. It provides support for OpenGL/Vulkan, OpenAL, and OpenCL. Then for physics, you can look to something similar to the C++ Bullet Physics library called JBullet. What about the Java data structures?Java's data structures, from my experience, are extremely performant. In our game engine, the most common ones we used were:
ArrayList and HashMap in particular are extremely performant, especially if you know approximately the size you would need. Both are very cache friendly. Since our engine was so heavily reliant on multithreading, we ended up needing to call in ConcurrentHashMap/ConcurrentLinkedQueue for several things. The Java ConcurrentHashMap implementation is great, and the interface is very easy to use. For ConcurrentLinkedQueue, you might want to run some benchmarks to see if it's actually worth it for your particular use case versus a simple lock + ArrayList setup. In the end, the only data structure we had to roll ourselves was one for a QuadTree. This was used extensively for collision detection/object visibility within the renderer. ProductivityWe found that the engine greatly simplified some things, especially because we had multiple projects lined up that were all going to use it. By far the most difficult one was the first one since we had to be very creative with how we structured the work since the whole engine still had to be written. By the second and third project, it was mostly just bug fixes and adding features that we hadn't thought of. Here is a pretty interesting example: the last simulation was an idea model of an immune system. Since we had all seen the tech build up from nothing, we knew exactly what it was capable of. Within the span of 3 weeks we had built around 10 small prototypes to demo certain ideas we were having… and all of them used different engine features in different ways. At the end we merged our favorite outcomes from the prototypes into one final simulation and ran it a whole bunch of times to observe it. One of the runs included 50,000 entities on the screen at once. Our framerate dropped a lot (maybe 10-20 FPS), but it wasn't unbearable considering so many of them were performing some small amount of logic each frame. It also looked really cool seeing so many things acting based on the rules of the simulation! Unit TestingThis is one area we fell short on and would definitely improve if we were to do it again. One massive, unbelievable benefit of a AAA engine is that it has had its modules tested in so many different ways so that bugs can be rooted out. Part of the difficulty in creating an engine is that if there is a bug in one of its modules, the development side of the project might run into weird errors and spend a lot of time agonizing over their own code, only to find that it was never their problem at all. To combat this I definitely recommend building up a suite of unit tests for every engine component as you go. This will basically mean that for every block of related code you write, there will be a corresponding piece of code to test it. This will hopefully allow the engine team to root out any major show stopping bugs before it gets pushed to the main codebase to be used by the rest of the team. Would I recommend it?For small indie teams working on their own games, I would really want to emphasize that you nail down all of the things you will need from the engine early on. This way you can look at the requirements and decide whether or not building a proprietary engine for yourselves will even be doable in the time frame you're working with. This will involve eliminating every non-essential component and distilling it down to a core set of features. Modern AAA engines support so many different genres of games that they're absolutely loaded with features that no one team could ever make full use of at a given time. Another thing to consider is whether or not you can quickly get to a point where part of the team can work with a working-but-incomplete version of the engine while the other continues fleshing things out and adding new features. If it's looking like the engine team will need many months to 1 year+ before it's at all ready for development, you might need to start looking into existing technologies. Also, don't be afraid to enlist the support of a legion of libraries. There might be a small set of features you want complete control over, and these will be written by you. The rest can probably be handled by existing libraries that you abstract away with a series of interfaces. And that's about all I can think of! Hopefully this was useful in some way. Feel free to add your own input, especially if you think it will help someone. [link] [comments]  |
| Creating your own Engine Editor Posted: 01 Oct 2018 11:22 AM PDT I know the general consensus of this sub is to run like hell from the creation of your own game engine. I decided to do so anyway and have thoroughly enjoyed the experience thus far. It has raised questions though and the further down the rabbit hole I go the harder it is to find answers to these questions. My most recent question is how is the editor's of most game engines handled. Unity for example as far as I can tell creates a Visual Studio solution then compiles it at run time. Though I get the idea on paper not sure how they are implementing something like this. Is this possible in other languages (namely C#). To my knowledge Unity Editor is a C++ application. I have an engine and was hoping to start tinkering around with a winform-esque editor like Unity and using reflection to do what I want but not sure really where to start. Was hoping for insight from anyone who has went against the grain and attempted to do something similar to this. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Sep 2018 05:57 PM PDT |
| Unity, which of these options is better performance wise? Posted: 01 Oct 2018 11:53 AM PDT So I have a mobile game I'm working on that's sort of tower defense, but also has spells the player can cast. One of them, "meteor storm" uses a particle effect that rains little meteors on the whole play area. I plan to make a coroutine that does damage to all the living enemies, ticking somewhere between .25 and .5 seconds throughout the duration of the spell. So I plan to fill an array with all the living enemies every time the coroutine goes through the while loop. The obvious way to do this is by using FindObjectsOfType<Enemy>(). However I realized another possibility is that I can create a prefab game object that has a trigger collider the size of the play area. Then every time through the while loop I can instantiate it and have it fill a list of enemies with OnTriggerEnter2D, and then destroy it until the next pass through the while loop. Would there be any significant performance difference between these two methods? I read that FindObjectsOfType is costly to use. Edit: The reason this concerns me is because its mobile, and there could be up to 200-250 enemies alive at a time on endgame levels. [link] [comments]  |
| There are too many video games. What now ? Yup, good question. Posted: 01 Oct 2018 11:16 AM PDT |
| How to cope with people who say your game will be bad when others say it will be good. Posted: 01 Oct 2018 01:09 AM PDT Lately, some people on discord would say my idea is bad and that the game will be bad. But then theres a whole other side who really love the story and characters of my game and said the soundtrack is very cool and unique, the idea is original, the game is creative and it will be great. I don't want to give up on my game "Nova's Adventure" but people telling me that its bad has been slowing me down on production a whole lot. The positive people outweigh the negative people but it still gets to me. Have you ever experienced this? What did you do to cope with it? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 01 Oct 2018 10:11 AM PDT |
| Solo Indie with wife and a kid: two months in Posted: 01 Oct 2018 12:28 AM PDT Pretty regularly here comes someone with questions on how to start and how is it. I did it myself. So this post is for them - what have I learned so far. I never used Reddit regularly before starting on my current project. I seriously expected to be flamed and buried alive, but actually people on here are great. Maybe I am not reading the right subreddits, but in dev oriented places you can always ask dumb questions and not get a hard time. Maybe you will not receive tons of responses, but those people, who take time and answer, usually are really polite and want to help. And if there is someone, who doesn't like you, because you are not green transhandle unicorn teapot - who cares :] WORKING MORNINGS AND NIGHTS With family and main dayjob, you won't have a lot of time to do games. There are a lot of people, who manage to wake up early in the mornings to do gamedev, others choose late evenings. You have to try both ways. I couldn't do mornings, because I wake up already really early with my kid. And in the evenings my brain already wants to shut down - the way I found to myself was actually steal three/four hours and do crash courses - they are not regular, but do work. I am the one, who is skipping the rule of touch the code every day. Also note - during the time, you cannot work on your game directly, you can always update your Game Design Document [GDD / this is a must, for your own sake], work with contractors [I outsource an artist, for example]. SCOPE If it's your first serious project with serious intentions [selling, for example], everybody is right - don't do MMO-RPG-WITH-HUNDRED-GUILDS-AND-RACES, hahah. Keep your scope in check. And again - GDD. BACKUP Use backup. Via Bitbucket and Sourcetree or by other methods - the feeling of being safe is very, mmmm, good. CONTRACTORS Don't search for people, who work for free. Even if you will get someone, you won't be able lo backup those :] Be friendly, state your ideas clearly. Share the GDD! Always look for people, who have the style you're after - the work will go more natural and you will have new ideas from people you work with. GDD I was not expecting to mention GDD so much in this post, but apparently it's pretty important :] BONUS Believe in yourself. It's actually pretty cool. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 01 Oct 2018 12:35 PM PDT I have been suggested on this sub to start out making gmod mods before making my fps campaign which i have been planning with my friends. Does anyone know where to start, or whether gmod can help me do what i want to achieve by making cool maps and fully functioning ai with missions??????????? [link] [comments]  |
| Which way should I build my portfolio? Posted: 01 Oct 2018 12:32 PM PDT So I'm about to graduate and im starting to apply to game studios both indie and AAA(I'm a game design major so I'm already on the AAA level for the design side but the programming side lololololololololol it's so bad ) Anyways I looked online and I'm not sure which is the best way to do it like some sites are saying make a website, some are saying put it all on YouTube, some are saying put it in a Dropbox file with the finished product and the file things were created in and I know a lot of people here run their own studios or are hiring managers and I was wondering from your perspective what is the best format to use for showing off your portfolio. I'm leaning towards making a website being the best but If there's another option that's better id like to do that. For reference I have a ton of concept arts, 3D models, name credits for game jams, textures, levels created in unity and unreal, music created, sound effects created, and so many animations for combat, walking, running, ETC. Any help is greatly appreciated! [link] [comments]  |
| Testing new jump mechanics. You can "load up" to jump much higher. Posted: 01 Oct 2018 12:31 PM PDT |
| How and Why to use Blender in your C# Unity Game Posted: 01 Oct 2018 12:22 PM PDT |
| Posted: 01 Oct 2018 08:22 AM PDT So lately I have noticed I have a habit of just making things for my game. Enemies, platforms, obstacles, but I can't figure out how to actually put it all together. It is a simple platformer, but I still don't even know where I should start with planning it all out as a big picture. How to I plan levels or boss fights. I was just wondering what you guys do to plan out your games. [link] [comments]  |
| Working on a VR swinging game in my free time Posted: 01 Oct 2018 11:35 AM PDT Hey all! I'm currently working on a 1-man project, trying to recreate Jamie Fristrom's web-swinging mechanic from Spider-Man 2 in VR. I'm implementing most of the mechanics from his tutorial blog post: https://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/tutorials/swinging-physics-for-player-movement-as-seen-in-spider-man-2-and-energy-hook--gamedev-8782. However I am noticing with Unity's physics engine there are complications with updating the position of the rigidbody on the VR camera rig while swinging, it seems to add velocity once the web is released in a 45 degree angle to the ground. I've decided that I wanted to try using AddForce and AddTorque methods instead of directly updating the position and velocity every frame, as suggested by Unity answers, but I'm still having issues figuring out how much force and in what direction it should go, this being a 3D game so I have to take into account z-axis movement as well. Has anyone worked on something similar to this and maybe have tips to help me out? Any help is greatly appreciated! :) [link] [comments]  |
| "Double" fresnel with physically based rendering? Posted: 01 Oct 2018 11:33 AM PDT Trying to learn the ins and outs of modern BRDF concepts, I am a bit perplexed by some of the aspects. Specifically, the scaling of the intensity that occurs when looking at a surface from a grazing angle. Fresnel of course is a culprit of the intensified specularity, but it doesn't seem to be the only one. The microfacet BRDF denominator includes an NV dot product, which when not cancelled out by rough geometry, boosts the perceived brightness of punctual lights reflecting at the edge of a sphere or a near-parallel plane. While the math makes sense, I am unsure what the real-life basis for this is. Surely, a perfect mirror reflects equally bright no matter which angle you are looking at the reflected light from. [link] [comments]  |
| What are some of the best level editors included within a video game that is available on PC? Posted: 01 Oct 2018 07:44 AM PDT Hi, I am currently looking to check out some level editors have been built in to the original game, but the game must be available to purchase/play on PC. So far I am looking in to DOOM, Batteblock Theater, Duck Game, DustForce DX and Fight The Dragon. Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Creating a Custom Diffuse Lighting Model in Unity - Tutorial Posted: 01 Oct 2018 11:11 AM PDT |
| OpenGL rendering everything to the same target, will it overlap? Posted: 01 Oct 2018 11:02 AM PDT Hi there, First, the title is probably a bit confusing, let me elaborate: My game has a GUI, 3d scene and a debug GUI(I'll call those 3 systems from now on) that all need to be rendered. Currently, I'm doing that by "just rendering them". What I mean with that is that each "system" uses it's own Now what I am worried about, is that those might overlap, so that when a 3D object is close enough, it will overlap the GUI, or that the Zbuffer might randomly decide to put my debug GUI behind the game GUI instead of in front. Now my question is, is my concern correct? Is this something I should worry about/fix? Or should I be good as long as I render my GUI after my 3d game, and debug GUI after my GUI? Now if this IS something I should worry about, would rendering each system to it's own texture and then rendering them in the correct order help? And what would the performance overhead of rendering to a texture be?(And also then rendering the texture) Thank you very much! [link] [comments]  |
| Unity Assets (from Unity Humble Bundle) Giveaway Posted: 30 Sep 2018 09:58 PM PDT I will be giving away some codes I got with the unity bundle that I do not need (I already have them, or have no use). I want to give these codes away to people who will make good use of them, and are in the most need. I know how hard it can be to not be able to buy assets and not be able to tinker much with unity to learn game development. I have the following codes: Universal Sound FX (asset) - TAKEN Discover Unity Game Development - From Zero to 12 Games (asset) - TAKEN Ultimate Game Music Collection (asset) UFPS: Ultimate FPS (asset) - TAKEN Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun (game) - TAKEN Torment: Tides of Numenera (game) Last Day of June (game) The Final Station (game) - TAKEN Wasteland 2: Director's Cut - Classic Edition (game) AER Memories of Old (game) Oxenfree (game) - TAKEN To help choose people for this, I would prefer some kind of statement/story of your goals, desires, current projects, and any other information that could be of interest as well as the item you want. I'll select people at random intervals / as I see fit based on engagement / how people respond to this. [link] [comments]  |
| Getting started with marketing your own mobile game? Posted: 01 Oct 2018 10:52 AM PDT So let's say you worked hard for a few months and made a game which hooks the player to the game. You are confident that once people start to play your game, they will play for a while and create an active user base. But you don't know how to get started with promoting and marketing your game. How to get started and be a part of the global market? [link] [comments]  |
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