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    The human cost of Red Dead Redemption 2

    October 26, 2018

    The human cost of Red Dead Redemption 2

    The human cost of Red Dead Redemption 2

    Posted: 26 Oct 2018 05:23 AM PDT

    Wireframe - New magazine launching aimed at Game Devs.

    Posted: 26 Oct 2018 02:07 AM PDT

    Crunch has always been a thing. A message from an exhausted dev, hidden in the DOS game dungeonkeeper.exe

    Posted: 26 Oct 2018 09:29 AM PDT

    My game hit New Popular Releases on Steam after 24 hours from release. And that's why I want to warn you about something VERY important (so you won't repeat my mistakes)

    Posted: 26 Oct 2018 09:40 AM PDT

    Dear devs!

    In April 2017 I decided that in order to become a programmer I need to make a game that will look nicely in my CV. I even didn't want to become a gamedev. It supposed to be a small warm up project that would show me if I can stand a long-term programming. Of course things got out of hand pretty quickly and here I am now, 1.5 years later with a finished product. I've read tons of valuable post in here, watched plenty of youtube videos (like we all!) in order to make the best game possible.

    Today, 24 hours after release my game is New Popular on Steam (at least in my region of Europe) (proof) and there's one thing I want to make you aware of (and you probably know that but tend to forget). Gamedev is a fantastic and inspiring and helpful community but in this whole process of making the game and marketing it we often forget that

    Devs are not your audience

    So you probably often read many posts about devs who had finished their projects and regretted not starting marketing early. I think we are all learning on their lessons and we got better in this. I'm sure of it because I'm in the same places as you. We like one another posts, share our work and give out insights. And that's all very nice. It's great that in such competitive market we still want to help but it seems that unfortunately many of us tend to think that if our post gets 10-30-50 likes on Twitter, if we copypaste the same post to different facebook groups then after the release things will somehow "click" and we get plenty of buys. But unfortunatly most of these people who likes your posts will not buy your games. They'll admire your work, sure. They may even share it. But there's so many games today, that physically we are not able to play them all. So if promote your work to the wrong audience, you'll have this false illusion that your game will get hundreds of buys after the release. It's possible, sure but don't forget that there are 30 other games competing you in the same day of the release (even if most are craps) and many other great titles left on the "maybe later" shelf. If you still have doubts think about yourself. How often do you, dear dev, like posts, gifs, trailer of other games and how often do you ACTUALLY buy it once it's released? Sadly if it comes to me it's less that 10%. Not because I don't want to support devs. I'll just won't have time for all that awesome games. (also I have too little money but shh)

    So how does that all relate to my story? Like all of you, I'd been posting on twitter, sharing, liking etc. But when it came to the release, only a little percent of sales were related to this sites. Yes, my game doesn't look that good so I got up to 10 likes per post. Also if after every post hunreds of people are screaming in the comments that they want your game then you're probably good (heck! You could teach us all!) but still you have to be aware that you have to actually reach to the gamers. If everyone is marketing the same way (copypaste posts on different groups - yes, I did that), does this marketing work? There's also this Networking thread with about 500 comments of people sharing their twitter accounts. How many these acounts you actually checked and followed?

    One final thought. I also failed. I'm in popular releases only thanks to one popular site in my country (not game related) on which I made a very popular post at the day of the release. This post got about 22k views but the conversion rate is less than 1%! Yes my game is maybe not that visually appealing and the genre is rather niche but I think it proves my hypothesis than most people will congratulate you but almost none will actually pay for your game. And it's not their fault! There's nothing wrong with them! That's how our overcrowded world works. We will never find enough time for all the things we want to do. And the worst thing is that even if I'm in popular releases of my region I still sold less than 500 copies (not sure now, because Steam is down) and that means it was still enough to be better than 30 other titles released the same day. So think that in order to make your dream come true you'll have to be in this 3% to have a moderate succes.

    Yes, I also know that the poor conversion rate might be due to the low number of viable reviews. So this is it. I knew I wouldn't make fortune so I'm actually proud after all the hard work. I hope I didn't sound too salty but it's really sad to read all these comments of aspiring devs whose games failed after X years of work. I also know that there are many things I could do better. I know that I chose the wrong audience, that my game is not that visually appealing but that was still enough to be in that popular. Do you think you will this 3% too?

    Ps. Sorry for my english but I'm not a native speaker. It was really challenging for me to write this and took me almost 2 hours but I really wanted to share my experience with you. I also didn't want to sound self-righteous, really. I think I'm very mediocre dev who has this one important insight that can be shared with world.

    For the reference, you can find my game here . Not sure if 4.50$ price was good decision but it was at least best price for my marketing "strategy" I will gladly answer to all your questions :)

    ​

    submitted by /u/Ithariuss
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    Game Engine programming enthusiasts?

    Posted: 26 Oct 2018 07:47 AM PDT

    Are there any more Game Engine enthusiasts?
    I've been reading this sub for a while and there have been a few posts about Game Engine development, it is certainly a very tiny fraction it seems. I was wondering if there is any dedicated community to development of Game Engines specifically, where there is a somewhat active discussions of game engines?
    Now, I know Game Engines are by themselves a huge bundle of components, such as Graphics, Networking, etc... So usually there are communities for those that are separate(I am in a dedicated Graphics Programming discord as well). However I am more interested in a place where we can discuss all of those with game engine development in mind and different approaches to making an engine.
    As someone who is aspiring to get into the industry, I think it would also be nice to talk with different people about the types of jobs available for people interested in game engine development, as well as getting more advice on how to break into the game engine industry.
    So I guess my question would be, is there a place that is active, like this subreddit or a discord channel where people mainly discuss game engines and the game engine industry?

    submitted by /u/FaustWasHere
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    Quaternions and 3D Rotation, Explained Interactively - 3Blue1Brown

    Posted: 26 Oct 2018 09:53 AM PDT

    Creating a proper Save system in unity

    Posted: 26 Oct 2018 05:26 AM PDT

    I've searched the internet and i'm little confused there is playerprefs which is limited and not a good way for making save system ( however is good for basic stuffs) and there is json which is text based and i'm not sure is good.

    how do you implement save system?

    note : i know how to use json to save but i just don't know how to load because i can't really find where json files are stored so i might be wrong at some point i can use playerprefs to load but i don't want to use playerprefs.

    thanks.

    submitted by /u/Raminlich
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    Trying to find a game development article from way back

    Posted: 26 Oct 2018 12:34 PM PDT

    I remember reading a story, or an article, or a post, or something by a game developer who was talking about the perception of power regarding a weapon. Beta testers were giving feedback saying that a weapon was weak, but the spreadsheet math on the weapon in question said that it should be balanced.

    So the devs fixed it by making the sound effect for firing the weapon deeper and giving it more bass and this completely reversed the feedback they were getting from the testers.

    Would anyone happen to know what game this was, or have a link to the article/post/whatever I'm thinking of? My google-fu is failing me.

    submitted by /u/Arandmoor
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    Things that are easy to do but make your game a lot better.

    Posted: 26 Oct 2018 12:01 PM PDT

    This is meant for everybody who got started with game development less than a year ago. Everybody else, you're welcome to correct me or add some additional advice on top.

    When I got started with game development, I had a pretty long phase where I was stuck making games at the same quality level over and over again. Usually they had pretty decent gameplay and a cool idea, but for some reason the games weren't very pleasant to look at or play for more than a couple of minutes. I still see a lot of games at this level, especially in game jams, which tells me I'm not alone with this. This is what I wish I would have known back then:

    There are a couple of simple ways to improve your game drastically with almost zero effort. (At the very least when your quality level is below a certain threshold.)

    Here you go:

    • Make sure the decisions the player has to take in your game are interesting... You know that. Most people think about big decisions first. I'd encourage you to focus on the small ones: Where do I go next? Which weapon do I use? Should I jump? Who should I attack first? Should I duck? What is the right move now? - Making these micro decisions more interesting is absolutely essential in my opinion. A micro decision is interesting when there is a best solution (an optimal way to play), but only when the solution isn't obvious. If the best solution is too obvious, it's a boring decision, and if there is no best move for the current situation, your decision simply doesn't matter. - What's the fix? Make sure the player gets confronted with situations where your actions have different outcomes and where the player can make an educated guess about the outcome, but can't tell for sure. You might think that sounds complicated, but usually you can make some massive improvements to your game once you get this. You just need to make sure there are multiple viable options to overcome problems and which one of them works best needs to depend on the situation. Is there a situation where a specific solution is always the obvious answer? Then maybe just add an alternative. If possible without making your game more and more complicated.

    In case you'd like to see an example, I made a short 6 minute YouTube video where I apply some of these tricks to a simple twin stick shooter game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plj09H-aLOk

    • Pick a decent color scheme. This is a lot harder than it sounds, so it's totally fine to use one from the internet. There are a lot of good ones out there. This can have a massive impact on your visulas and it's not a lot of work.

    • Add a bit of post processing. In Unity it's quite easy. Just download the post processing stack and you've got everything you need. Don't overdo it, though.

    • Good Sound effects make your game a lot juicier! Unfortunately good and free sounds are still a little hard to get, so don't be afraid to make your own ones with audacity. You'd be surprised what you can do with a simple USB microphone, the things you have in your house and some pitch shifting. I admit that this takes some time. It's usually well worth it, though.

    • Add some slight camera movement to make your game feel more dynamic. Especially screen-shake can add a lot of extra satisfaction if you don't overuse it.

    • Make sure to give the player good visual feedback for everything that's going on. A good rule of thumb: When you look at a screenshot, you should be able to tell both the past as well as the future. (Talking one or two seconds here.) Portray enemy attacks before they happen etc.

    • Pacing is definitely something that is also often off in beginner games (including mine). Just experiment with the game speed a bit. Sometimes you can get away with making your entire game 30% faster. Faster is not always better, but usually that means less downtime and more action, so at the very least try it out. It's worth it.

    • Visual effects that react to the environment and the player actions feel a lot juicier in my opinion. If every enemy just explodes in the exact same way it gets a little boring. If the death animation of enemies reacts to the way they were killed, it feels like your decision have more impact plus it's more interesting to look at, because it's different every time. Ragdolls go, generic explosions no. :D (You don't need radgolls to do this. Just considering the direction the enemy was last shot at from can be more than enough for the beginning.)

    Is there anything else you would add to the list of things that are easy to do, but can have a massive impact on the feel of your game?

    Hope this was somewhat useful. Cheers.

    submitted by /u/JonasTyr
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    What platforms do you use to back up your game?

    Posted: 26 Oct 2018 05:37 AM PDT

    Hello game developers!

    ​

    This is probably a trivial question, my apologies if that's the case. I've started working on a new game two months ago. Since the project was relatively small I used to back up all the data in my external hard drive but as the project grows bigger, this question started to pop up. What is your preferred platform to back up your game in order to keep everything updated and secured?

    I'm used to GitHub, but their free repositories options don't let you create a private one, and I don't want my game out to the public while I'm working on it.

    I also familiar with Google Drive, Dropbox... but as I said, these options are not optimal when your game starts to grow, since you need a lot of space to store all the data every time you want to update any changes.

    ​

    Thank you very much!

    submitted by /u/Coffeex
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    How much time to invest per prototype?

    Posted: 26 Oct 2018 10:22 AM PDT

    I've been jumping from one prototype to another lately but I'm starting to think that I'm not giving them enough time. In most cases it falls under two categories:

    1. Full prototype would require features I can't implement with my current experience. I see that happens a lot for stuff involving physics. Sometimes I just don't have the patience/knowhow to tweak built-in physics for it what I need. Example would be a pinball rpg I gave up on.

    2. The prototype was not fun or it is fun but I don't know how to improve it. Most of the time, I end up making this call by myself. A recent example would be a casual Android game I made that was somewhat fun(by my opinion) but it was too rough for me to show it to anybody.

    In most cases I spent around 2 days per prototype. Is that enough or too little? When should I show people my prototype?

    submitted by /u/Reihado
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    Level Design Case Studies: Trainyard and Cut the Rope

    Posted: 26 Oct 2018 09:48 AM PDT

    How goes it? I'm in the process of updating to 4.20.3 in Unreal

    Posted: 26 Oct 2018 09:14 AM PDT

    Hey Devs, tried to find if this topic was covered elsewhere and didn't see anything but apologies if its old hat.

    I'm working on updating our game from 4.17 to 4.20.3 and it has given us some trouble but we are getting some awesome improvements to our huge world aspects. The new LoD proxy mesh generator will definitely improve the look of distant buildings, and there are more BP debugging tools in this version, which is handy.

    Is anyone else in the midst of updates / has already updated? Whats your experience or hows it going so far?

    submitted by /u/FracturedVeil
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    Epic Games Gets $1.25 Billion Investment From Seven Firms

    Posted: 26 Oct 2018 09:06 AM PDT

    How do I sell a graphics-lacking game on Kickstarter?

    Posted: 26 Oct 2018 12:45 PM PDT

    For some context to understand my issues, my friend and I have been working on a fairly large game in whatever time we could for a while now, and we are finally getting ready to put the initial work and idea into the public eye. However excited and confident I am in the engine work and project design we wrote up over this time I can't help but worry that we are doomed due to neither of us being artists.

    From looking at well funded kickstarters for other games I've noticed that the trend seems to be either:

    • Show good concept art to visualize what is being said will be in the final project (best shown by BattleTech)
    • Having the game be well polished with more simplified 2D graphics and demonstrate that along with the description (such as with RimWorld)

    For our situation we are in what appears to be an awkward spot of funding. The art style is well documented and planned out, but it is with the Kickstarter money that we are going to be able to pay for it. So how would we go about creating the page to demonstrate what we have done and plan, but also make clear that the open source models being used are only temporary and will be replaced given the funding?

    submitted by /u/oonis
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    Good Engine for 2D water physics?

    Posted: 26 Oct 2018 06:38 AM PDT

    Ive been working on a game for the past year or so using GameMaker Studio 2. Its a 2d cross-sectioned game detailing naval combat. A large mechanic of the game was going to be water flooded rooms and hulls, causing the boats to capsize or sink.

    Unfortunately it appears GMS2 doesn't handle rotating physics grids too well (30 frames drop with only 2000 particles). After consulting with the GMS2 community it seems that not many recommend using mass amounts of physics particles with it.

    Does anyone know of any engines that could be used for a 2d game with proper/dedicated water physics?

    EDIT: Heres a quick little video showing what I mean

    https://youtu.be/dTExb3wFLxc

    submitted by /u/FrenklanRusvelti
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    Health System | Unity 2018 C#

    Posted: 26 Oct 2018 12:34 PM PDT

    Happy Halloween everyone!

    Posted: 26 Oct 2018 12:30 PM PDT

    Creating collision geometry

    Posted: 26 Oct 2018 04:53 AM PDT

    Is it OK to create collision geometry from say, a box and a cylinder or should I build a proper mesh that has connected vertices?

    submitted by /u/yaschancool
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    A template and video demo of a hotloading system for Monogame or C# gamedev

    Posted: 26 Oct 2018 12:18 PM PDT

    I recently got a proof of concept working where you can rebuild your game logic while the game continues to run, and as well change shaders while the game is running and have them swapped in. I've put this template projects up on github and there is a link to a short youtube video demoing what you can do.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1708LklhW0&feature=youtu.be

    https://github.com/jackmott/monogame-hotload

    submitted by /u/jackmott2
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    What's the best way to get play-testers?

    Posted: 26 Oct 2018 11:56 AM PDT

    Hey everyone!

    So I'm getting to a point in the development of my game, where I'm thinking about starting some play testing. I'm about half way done with the project, but I've been thinking it might be good to start getting some of that final polishing done.

    My game has a pretty small base of followers, and I sent out a survey to them to see how many people would be interested in play testing, and there really aren't that many people who are. What have you all done for play-testers? My last game didn't have any, and ended up releasing with a bunch of issues, and I definitely don't want to repeat that. Should I just try to grow my fan base, or is there some better way to go about all this?

    Thanks for your input!

    submitted by /u/JawDroppinAwesome
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    Here's a good reminder about what goes inside Rockstar

    Posted: 26 Oct 2018 11:44 AM PDT

    I want to ask about how to describe a certain artstyle, for potential team-mates

    Posted: 26 Oct 2018 11:36 AM PDT

    Within a few days, I want to submit a "Pitch" for a short project for the purpose of recruiting team-members through subreddits such as Inat and GameDevClassifieds.

    I want a certain artstyle for my game, but I don't know what that artstyle is called.Here are a few samples:-

    Garrison from BattleChasers NightWar and a screenshot from a game called Adventure Quest

    So....what is this artstyle called?? Comic Art?? Manga Art?? Hand-Drawn Art??

    I know its not called Pixel Art.

    NOTE:- Just because I linked some high quality stuff doesn't mean that I'll want that exact quality. I'm more interested in the Aesthetics part.

    Thank you in advance!!

    submitted by /u/Anagram_GameDev
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    Playstation 4 Devkit Question - Can we acquire some as a remote company, across 12 countries?

    Posted: 26 Oct 2018 07:21 AM PDT

    We know that some companies are strict regarding the devkits being in a secure location such as an office.

    We are a remote company, and we will start porting some games to PS4, later next year.

    ​

    Have any of you acquired PS4 devkits for several engineers across different countries?

    Thanks in advance.

    Edit: 12 countries, work-from-home setup. Cloud CI and SCM.

    submitted by /u/Franches
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