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    Friday, February 1, 2019

    Home Unlabelled 2 years after quitting my job as an Architect, my first game is OUT NOW!

    2 years after quitting my job as an Architect, my first game is OUT NOW!

    February 01, 2019

    2 years after quitting my job as an Architect, my first game is OUT NOW!

    2 years after quitting my job as an Architect, my first game is OUT NOW!

    Posted: 01 Feb 2019 09:09 AM PST

    Hi everyone!

    I'm super excited to share that a day I worked so long for is finally here! After 2 years of working solo on my 2D murder mystery adventure game Rainswept, the game is now available! (Link is at the bottom of this post)

    In this post I'll talk about how I transitioned from a 9-5 job that I was very unhappy with, to working full time on my game, how I made everything work out, and everything else that I learned along the way!

    Now of course, a lot of things here may not apply for everyone. For instance, I live in a place with a very low cost of living, so this was less of a risk for me than others. I also moved back in with my parents, and I'm young (26) with no financial baggage. Keeping the worst case scenarios in mind and planning for them is super important before doing anything of this sort!

    ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    1. How it started - from Architecture to game dev:

    For starters, here's the origin story. It's something I've shared before on this sub, but I think context is important so here it goes:

    I've always wanted to create and express myself. Because of this, I've jumped between different mediums: drawing, music, writing, photography. As a kid, I really wanted to be a part of the games industry, but due to the lack of industry presence in my country, I gave up on that dream a long time ago.

    In an attempt to combine art with practicality, I joined Architecture. A month in, I knew I hated it. During this time, I fell in love with film making mainly because of how good a story telling medium it is.

    Upon graduation, I joined a film set, and realized I hated that too. Working with a huge crew didn't creatively satisfy me at all – someone who loves sitting by himself in a quiet, dim room while working on my PC. At this point, I went back to Architecture and joined a firm so that I could stabilize myself and start earning money while I tried to figure out the next step.

    At this time, I started getting caught up by the entrepreneurial wave – being my own boss, working on my own terms etc sounded great! I wanted it to free me financially so that I could then pursue my passions. I just didn't have any good business ideas. A friend of mine suggested I make a video game. And I was like "What? Haven't you heard of the indiepocalypse? That's not a good idea at all!" Thank god I changed my mind.

    Mainly, I realized that even in a business sense, I didn't know jack-shit about anything. Like, what was I gonna do, launch a mattress delivery start up? I don't know how that works, plus it sounds boring as hell! But video games? Everyday of my life is spent involved with them – I watch game related videos with my breakfast, along with my tea, in bed before sleeping. I listen to game industry podcasts while working. I read video game articles when I'm tired and need a break! If anything, this is an industry I really understand, and as gamers we often don't take it seriously, but that's so valuable.

    Right, let's make a video game!

    This was around October 2016, and I decided that I'd create the foundations for this game while (obviously) keeping my day job. Around Jan 2017, I started teaching myself Unity and Adventure Creator (a Unity asset) while also building the foundations of my game.

    I knew that I had no technical skills in game design, but I understood story telling and presentation from my film making hobbyist days, and that's what I decided to focus on – story and atmosphere.

    I worked during the nights after my day job for about 6 months (nearly burning out at this point) and on May 2017 after I had a solid foundation, I quit my job and went full time indie.

    ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    2. The indie dev life

    Now I was a full-time indie dev, working on my game proper – How did I survive? How did I keep motivated? What was my daily schedule like and how did I ensure that the game gets finished on time and doesn't fail?

    Here I'll try to describe all this and hopefully help others out on this long but rewarding journey.

    But first let me tell you the best thing I possibly did that set everything in motion: After working on the game proper from June 2017-Dec 2018, I released a demo of the game's first hour on gamejolt and itch.io. This immediately hit a chord with many players, and created a following of thousands of people on both those websites. This then fed into my twitter, mailing list and the game was even picked up by tons of Youtubers and websites. Basically, it did one of the hardest things in marketing a game – it put my game on the map.

    Now, right after I quit my job, I tried to structure and plan out my work schedule based on popular recommendations – wake up early, create a trello board, work x hours and stop for x hours, meditate, plot out your goals for each day, week, month etc etc.

    I tried sticking those things for a month or two, but it didn't work. What worked for me was creating simple old school to-do lists on a notebook on my desk. I did all my planning through that.

    That brings me to one major point – Popular game dev wisdom may not apply to you. Even the most basic of stuff may not apply to you (which means none of my experiences might work for you either) Instead, understand yourself and what works for you. This is really important, don't get caught up with conventional wisdom! I'll return to this from a different angle later.

    For instance, it is often recommended that you start with a small game like pong, or take part in game jams before starting on a commercial project. I did none of that, this is my first game of any form. I knew I had to jump straight into it because I knew that's how it would work best for me. So, know yourself!

    ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    · My daily schedule in my game dev "job"

    I slowly settled into a rhythm of waking up around 9am, and getting to work by 11am. I'd work till about 2, break for lunch, work again till 4pm. At this point, I'd either take a nap, play a video game for an hour, or go to the gym.

    Going to the gym has been an amazing support to my daily life during development. Not only did it take me out of my room and engage my body, but listening to my gym playlist ("This opportunity comes once in lifetime!") while working out was extremely motivating. It encouraged me to keep going on with my game and to give it my everything.

    I'd resume work at about 7pm, and I'd have my golden hours between 9-1130pm. Oh god, it's hard to describe the amazing times I've had working during that time slot! And again, this brings me back to knowing yourself and understanding how you work. My golden hours were late night, not early morning.

    And if you noticed, all that adds up to only about 8-9 hours of day. And that's been my average amount of hours worked every day during development. I understand that projects are different, and people work differently, but that's what is important to understand – It's often assumed that making a game means working insane amounts of hours, but you don't have to - it might be different for you!

    · How was the experience, how did it feel?

    To be blunt – fucking amazing. 99% of the days, waking up to work on my game has felt heavenly. I'm not exaggerating. I remember this one day when I had to take a bathroom break in the middle of the afternoon and I couldn't stop smiling while sitting on that pot lol. I had just had an amazing time working on my game and couldn't wait to get back to it. Really, it's been so good that I feel I've finally found the thing that I could happily do for the rest of my life.

    Honestly, creatively speaking, this has probably exceeded all my prior experiences. This is best described in this video (an amazing video that kept me motivated during my early dev months), a poem by Charles Bukowski: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lK4LrD8Ii4 "Your life is your life." "Go ALL the way."

    Watching other personalities like Gary Vaynerchuck and Jordan Peterson also helped me out on my less motivated days, because there were those too. Here's one by Gary Vee that really puts quitting, working and being patient into perspective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTHbFb1fNy4

    · The not so great days

    There were bad times too, mostly in the early days. The first one being when Steam direct was announced, and we didn't know what the entry barrier would be, and how it would affect visibility.

    Second was early on during the time I was working on the game alongside my job, while also going through a break up. One day during this I felt completely burned out and had zero energy to work on anything (I slept on the sofa without eating dinner) This was when I learned that burnout is real, and have managed to avoid it since then, meeting friends every weekend and going on occasional trips. Not having to juggle a day job alongside gamedev has probably helped the most!

    My Indiegogo campaign failed as well, but that didn't affect me at all as I made it work by staying at my parents place instead of by myself, which actually turned out to be a great thing as it allowed me to focus more on the game.

    There were also random days of feeling demotivated where I'd just lay around on the bed and waste time. The main cause for these was that my plan for the day wasn't clearly outlined (this is where keeping a to-do list helps most) If you don't immediately know what to work on, it's hard to do anything. These would come up like once a week or two, and mainly happened before Aug 2018. After that, things got really busy as I began to race towards the release date.

    ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    3. Practical steps: Motivation, hitting goals and not giving up

    So, all this is great, but what were the main things that I learned that helped me finish the game on time?

    Gamedev is tough and we hear of projects being cancelled all the time. Others exceed their dev time by years and many fade into obscurity. Here's what has helped me avoid those situations.

    • Alright, it's time for (a part of) "the secret". Corny as that may sound, it's the best piece of advice I can possibly give anyone. There's a note I've got pinned up to my board and it says "Small daily steps over long periods of time"

    It may sound simple, but I guess that's where its power lies. Honestly, it's crazy when I look at the game I've made now. There's so much I've put into it. SO much art, so many dialogues – it's not a mammoth creation in terms of content by any means, but it's quite a lot all the same. If you showed me this game in the beginning, if you showed me everything that's involved in making it all at the same time, I'd have probably fainted, been overcome with fear and told you that there's NO way I can make all that in two years, and would then have gone ahead and scrapped the whole idea.

    But bit by bit, piece by piece, I was able to make this game WHILE feeling relaxed and at peace. I mean, even mundane and intimidating admin work like uploading to Steam, paperwork, financial stuff etc would have ordinarily demotivated and defeated me.

    • The second part of the secret? Positivity.

    Now, I'm a realistic person and I'm not asking you to delude yourself into believing everything's gonna be fine. I mean, I fell physically sick when news of Steam Direct had come out.

    What I mean instead is more in line with gratitude and appreciating what you have. The fact that you're working on a game!! This was probably your childhood dream, and how many people get to actually pursue their dream? Even if it's a hobby, or you do it part time, it's something we can be happy about.

    The popular narrative around indie game development, that scares off a lot of aspiring devs is that it is a life just filled with misery. While it definitely is challenging, I think it's important to also pay attention to how rewarding it is and to be aware of how lucky we are. Heck, I was even excited while filling up my previously mentioned dreaded Steam paperwork, because my game was actually going to be on Steam, you know? (I know that doesn't count for much anymore lol, but you get the point)

    Sure, some devs may be in difficult situations where it's hard to feel good about any of this, but there's room for positivity for sure. This "first-time-excitement" is definitely something that can be exploited by first time devs like me.

    That's pretty much the secret to keep going and finishing a game: Taking it day by day + positivity.

    • Apart from that a couple of other things helped me in getting my game noticed:

    The most important thing was starting early and staying active. In social media, in devlogs (on gamejolt, itch.io, indiedb, and my game's website) and in newsletters. After my demo release in Jan 2017 (most important move ever) I kept in touch and kept posting updates usually about once a week on the above-mentioned platforms.

    Oh, and if gamejolt decides to feature your game/ demo on their homepage (the feature lasts for 4 days or so) every update/ devlog you put out will push your game back onto their homepage right under the 3 currently featured games. My game was on the homepage once every week for a year. This meant more downloads, more followers, more videos etc. All of this comes in handy near release.

    All of that constant communication kept my game in the public's consciousness, and I was really able to build that into a tide of momentum going into the release month. I wasn't a popular dev with a popular account at any point though - I've always had a relatively low numbers of likes, followers (~400 for the longest time) retweets etc but it all adds up. Also, it's worth stressing how important Twitter is. I've met so many amazing people related to the game industry on that place - other devs, journalists, artists, musicians - and they've helped immensely during the development of this game in many ways.

    Keep in mind, I wasn't able to manage 1000s of followers or build extreme amounts of hype like many indies do - What I'm talking about is unglamorous but functional - it's the difference between the public being aware of your game vs obscurity. Your game is then a thing that exists on the internet. Also, the Indiegogo campaign may have failed but it was great for marketing, and it helped me make many contacts that I could get in touch with again during launch.

    ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    ​

    There's probably a bunch of things I'd planned to talk about on this post for months that are slipping my mind right now, but at the time of writing this, the game's launch is about an hour away (!!) so I'll leave this excessively long post at this. I might not be able to reply immediately to the comments due to launch but I'll definitely be back here later today to respond to all of you and answer any questions you may have! :)

    Thank you for reading all this.

    Finally, some links and screenshots:

    Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/772290/Rainswept/

    Trailer: https://youtu.be/bjbfd8IQmxc

    ​

    https://i.redd.it/92evlf6lazd21.png

    https://i.redd.it/0mip12ljazd21.png

    ​

    https://i.redd.it/1r6yhx6pazd21.png

    submitted by /u/huntingmagic
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    [Pytorch+OpenCV] My implementation of QuickDraw - an online game developed by Google (Source code: https://github.com/vietnguyen91/QuickDraw)

    Posted: 01 Feb 2019 12:20 AM PST

    Looks like Steam’s getting dedicated servers for non-Valve games

    Posted: 01 Feb 2019 05:04 AM PST

    It is possible to make games in Go! Proof of Concept...

    Posted: 01 Feb 2019 05:52 AM PST

    So I've developed a lot of small games in C++ using Urho3D, in Javascript using ThreeJS, C# using Unity etc. But I really like the Golang (Go) language. But could I make a game with it?

    So I read a lot about making games with Go. Most discussions ends up in "too slow due to GC". Having developed quite a few Javascript games I'm well aware of the issues with a garbage collector that might creates lag-spikes. Of course I had to test to create a game with Go! Why wouldn't it work if it works in Javascript.

    So next up was to find a good library as I rather use some wrapper than using plain OpenGL (I'm lazy). After trying out a lot of different libraries that mostly seemed abandoned (ouch! Perhaps it was so bad that everyone was giving up developing games with Go?). However, I kept searching and finally found faiface/pixel library (https://github.com/faiface/pixel). I tested it out and it was a really simple library and it even has an active little community on gitter that is really helpful. The author is there and helping out as well.

    ​

    So after a few months I've created some sort of Proof of Concept that I actually believe might work to release as an actual game!

    Conclusion:

    The GC isn't noticed. I worked a lot with converting my old 3D voxel engine to a 2D pixel engine for a fully destructible world. I also learned some basic GLSL to get some nifty effects in the game. The result can be seen in the youtube video below. I haven't released the code. Due to the fact that I actually planning to release this game (yeah it's hard and if my focus ends up somewhere else the code will surely be found on my github.com/lallassu page as everything else I never end up finishing).

    ​

    Demo/PoC video:

    https://youtu.be/6zcQvsf4R4Q

    ​

    Perhaps this little PoC will open up the eyes for Go as a gamedev language.

    ​

    submitted by /u/proc_
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    The most valuable work gets done a late Friday

    Posted: 01 Feb 2019 11:58 AM PST

    There and back again, a solo indie dev tale - On release of his first game Part I ?

    Posted: 01 Feb 2019 08:33 AM PST

    Hi everyone my name is Marcos or as my user says pixelaccountant, basically because I have a super cool job as an accountant but honestly my heart lays with game development.

    I wanted to share with you guys and with everyone thinking on beginning like me what where the things I found most and less useful and how it was possible for me to finally release a game on Steam, which was, my biggest goal so far.

    My first finished game, out on steam, is called Everpath, it's a roguelike with action rpg combat and lots and lots of pixel art if you are into that.

    The game

    Most important I would love to hear from fellow developers with finished an unfinished games to try and learn from everyone mistakes and acquired wisdom. My twitter

    I guess that the most important for me was to never give up on improving, like everyone could be better, every code line could work better, every enemy, every item could be polished, and specially the art, everything was reviewed more than once (this of course demanded a LOT of time)

    ​

    Here are some improvements of my art:

    https://i.redd.it/9omuseq21zd21.png

    Now this caves are specially important for me, because they represented for a long time, sort of a stuck up, they were for a long time what I thought was the best I could do, there are much better artists and I saw hundreds of caves ideas for walls and etc but nope best I could pull was left side luckily after countless tries I could pull out a much more decent caves area, specially the walls, I played with different sizes, a cleaner floor, and how some accessories, in this case what are old ruins inside of the caves all made it feel much more rich and interesting to explore.

    ​

    ​

    https://i.redd.it/c59zgbsh4zd21.png

    This forest is another example of a moment of my development where I honestly didn't thought it was possible to achieve what I wanted, a decent looking forest "room" (my game is like zelda a link to the past dungeons). And here with the forest is where I learn the power of color balance and pixel art color saturation. The hardest part was to stop using what in my non artist mind seemed to be the correct colors for a forest (all the browns on the tree, the super green grass, only green trees) and if you can check out the small door it's all gray because well I thought stones = gray.

    But I found out that there are much better color alternatives that might seem "weird" at first. All my current stone objects are mostly formed with shades of purple, the grass is not green but in the orange yellow area, same for leaves, and specially the tree tops. Another thing I like to use this big rooms when I'm working and drawing is to be able to test multiple objects colors at once, in the latest you can see a chest and a knight character.

    ​

    Menus

    Working on the menus was one of the hardest and unexpected things of gamedev for me. What about you guys? It's something that I guess I always ignored, not ignored, but took for granted, like yeah this thing is cool let me play. But I guess menus is the perfect example for everyone trying to get into game dev that there are things lot of things before drawing cool characters and coding some neat skynet ai stuff, that will take A LOT of time out of your hands.

    ​

    https://i.redd.it/cs31tee48zd21.png

    ​

    https://i.redd.it/wjrj1vu58zd21.png

    Now this two screens, where you will spend, 2 secs of the game, were one the screens that took the longest to make, both in the concept I wanted to show, (You playing as a member of a different order in this universe army from the reign of Northbarrow) and in the general feel of the game. The first images, although the colors were kinda nice, were definitely not of the tint of darkness I wanted the game to show the player.

    ​

    Although sometimes I got into a blind rush to make stuff that probably took more time than what I should have committed to the feature, the biggest and most important rule I had while making the game was to realize that not all features I imagined or I wanted were truly needed at that point, and that every little feature you think is cool is a feature you can apply to a future game, and it was more important to work towards perfecting the current game features instead of blindly adding more and more nonsense.

    How do you guys handle this kind of issues? How sometimes you need to diverge from your original or your "dream game" features towards play-ability or possibility of finishing a game?

    ​

    Do you guys also keep everything worked up on Excel? How do you organize your work?

    Here's what I have in my google drive spreadsheet, this is are the last things I worked before releasing:

    https://i.redd.it/qaerasopfzd21.png

    This is my short-term list, I have another list with a LOT of stuff. But I found much more productive to work with short term objectives, work for 7-10 days, not more. And I also like to spread my work in 4 big areas, and spread the work for the next 10 days in similar % for all 4 boxes.

    Box 1: Player and characters

    Box 2: Enemies

    Box 3: Level and environment

    Box 4: Everything else

    ​

    I found this kind of work-flow structure allowed me to evenly distribute the time and amount of stuff done in several areas of my game, and was excellent for getting an immediate feedback on how most areas interact between themselves and allowed to act quickly to modify whatever was needed.

    ​

    submitted by /u/pixelaccountant
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    How can I support my 10yo son in his endeavors to start making video games? Suggested platforms/tutorials/references?

    Posted: 31 Jan 2019 03:00 PM PST

    My step son is 10 years old, and his current life goal is to be a game designer, (right now his main inspiration is terraria, and he wants to learn how to make side scrollers). I want to support him in this endeavor any way I can, but I don't have any idea what that actually looks like.

    The main thing I'm hoping to find here is some direction on where to start. What development platforms are more accessible to beginners, or more rewarding in the short run? Are there tangential/related activities that would provide relevant knowledge or help cultivate his mind for what lays ahead?

    He has a decent gaming laptop to work with. But our budget for software and classes is very limited for right now (but we're willing to save up for costlier resources that will really benefit).

    Any and all suggestions appreciated. I'm pretty out of my element with all this lol.

    submitted by /u/Metatronic-Mods
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    What goes into acquiring the licenses for old games that weren't released in the US?

    Posted: 01 Feb 2019 10:06 AM PST

    So this is more of a business question than a development question, but I'm not aware of a more appropriate sub to ask this in.

    Let's say I have acquired some independent wealth and have a passion for classic Japanese games. I want to create a company whose main goal is to translate old games that never got released in the US and port them to modern consoles/steam.

    Founding a company, hiring programmers and translators are all plenty daunting tasks on their own, but I don't think there would be too many barriers outside of having the capital and resources to do it. The thing I'm not sure about is getting the legal permission to translate and release another company's game. A lot of these titles are often from inactive franchises that haven't had much done with them in the US or Japan for many years, and in some cases, the original developer may not even be around anymore.

    I'm wondering if someone who's done work on ports of foreign games before could explain what the steps might be in locating the current rights holder and approaching them about getting permission to work on the game and release it stateside.

    submitted by /u/CriticalGoku
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    Raph Koster On What Drives Retention

    Posted: 01 Feb 2019 08:48 AM PST

    Is there anyway to "save" the output of a 2D shader including the lighting, maps, etc. applied?

    Posted: 01 Feb 2019 08:14 AM PST

    I dunno if this is a question for this subreddit or Unity specific ones

    ​

    Okay so, I have no idea if this is possible because I just started getting into shaders (mainly for a 2D game) and I seem to be relying on a decent amount of lights and standard unity PBR shader (using normal and specular maps). But since all the lighting is static and so are my own shaders, I would love to cache the data or save the data as a png image(?).

    Now I dunno if its even in the realms of possibility so sorry if its a stupid question. But if its possible, how ?

    submitted by /u/rr24
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    So what is "other" in the Steam traffic analytics?

    Posted: 01 Feb 2019 09:35 AM PST

    Hello,

    So most of the traffic to our Steam page is of external nature and 99% of that traffic is classified as "other". Is there any way to get an actual breakdown of this? This is important because we need to know which marketing efforts pay off and which don't. The Steam page is linked on our itch.io page and I can see why they wouldn't want to admit that but it's hard to imagine that all of that traffic comes from just there. It would be really good to actually know where the traffic to our page comes from. Stores that take less than a 30% cut provide more detailed information.

    submitted by /u/Cygopat
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    How to create a video game character in ZBrush

    Posted: 01 Feb 2019 03:30 AM PST

    Found a really cool tool for GDD and planning

    Posted: 01 Feb 2019 09:34 AM PST

    https://www.notion.so

    I stumbled on this tool, a mix between google docs, a wiki and trello. I always struggled a bit with planning - I used mostly trello for management and tasks, but also google docs for GDD or writing lore and descriptions. Also tried tools like hacknplan, realtimeboard or articy draft but they didn't stick (couldn't figure out a good way to tag and categorize tasks, some apps were too complex, etc) and my project is a mess split between 4-5 places.

    So with this thing, I'm using like an interactive google doc - you can turn every word into a link to a new page, and each page can have its own kanban board (or checklist, table, calender, embeds, etc). So I finally have a good method to pour all my thoughts and plan tasks: GDD / Player / Weapons / Weapon A - its own description, references, kanban board with all related tasks for art, programming and sound, etc

    Also, I'm not affiliated in any way with them, it was just too cool not to share, maybe it helps somebody!

    submitted by /u/dopethrone
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    ML Terraform : A Terrain Generator implemented using a Neural Network trained on handmade 3d models

    Posted: 31 Jan 2019 01:23 PM PST

    How would you implement camera boom like Hitman 2, colliding with the geometry?

    Posted: 01 Feb 2019 04:46 AM PST

    I'm toying with camera boom implementations and I can't figure out how the new Hitman game does this bit, see this minute how the character exits the toilet. The camera interpolates to a nearby position and then extends back to the normal boom position.

    https://youtu.be/7WHM37biOY4?t=147

    I'm in UE4 and the spring arm component just traces a ray and jumps from one location to another. If I interpolate locations the camera then goes through geometry, so that by itself can't be the solution.

    Any idea how a camera control system can be implemented for something like this?

    submitted by /u/MotherTomato
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    What are some popular player retention mechanics in big games?

    Posted: 01 Feb 2019 12:16 PM PST

    Sorry if this is the wrong subreddit, please point me in the right direction if necessary!

    But I was wondering, Destiny 2 has this thing where a character pops up somewhere in the world every weekend for players to find and buy legendary items. Are there similar mechanics in other games?

    submitted by /u/chaz9127
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    Could you give me some feedback for the new energy & health system for my game Asteroidal!

    Posted: 01 Feb 2019 12:16 PM PST

    Outworld Battlegrounds - our first Steam Game

    Posted: 01 Feb 2019 12:11 PM PST

    HitGrab Game Labs (a small indie studio in Toronto) has been working hard on a unique take on the battle royale genre and we have something to show. With Outworld Battlegrounds we make our first foray into Steam and we're super nervous but hoping for good things.

    Outworld Battlegrounds is a casual, 2D, top-down shooter. Our goal was to take the best parts of the battle royale experience (frenetic scavenging, suspenseful competition, awesome weapons, and the elation of the chicken dinner) and deliver them in a casual, fast paced, sci-fi themed, package. The main problem, in our opinion, with top-down battle royale games is the issue of maintaining the sense of suspense with that kind of bird's eye point of view. We solved this by implementing a vision system that mimics the visual information you would have if you were playing from a first-person perspective.

    We would love for you guys to check out the game and provide feedback. Heres a short clip to give you a sneak peek…

    Outworld Battlegrounds - 30 sec trailer

    submitted by /u/Joshua_HitGrab
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    Controls of my top-down shooter game

    Posted: 01 Feb 2019 11:04 AM PST

    Hi guys,

    I'm working on a top-down shooter game. I wrote my character controller and want to share it to get your thoughts. I'm also learning 3D modelling and texturing. I use Blender to model and Krita to texture. So, you will see my first 3D models and textures in the video, too.

    This is my video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm1PLMzICGo

    Thank you very much. All feedback is a gift :)

    ​

    ​

    submitted by /u/CloudsArePissing
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    How to handle spritesheet organization and delaying

    Posted: 01 Feb 2019 10:53 AM PST

    In the case of an animation having a certain delay that is greater than other frames, should the frames be duplicated to account for these movements, or should the the frame just not move on the side of the program?

    Obviously in terms of an optimized project, handling it on the side of the program and not duplicating images is far better.

    However, the issue of a time constraint appeared, in which notifying the programmer (me) as to which frames need to be repeated in order for the animation to look normal may take a ton of extra time.

    I cannot decide if the optimizing the program after having larger, bloated spritesheets will take longer, or if having specifically varied frames will take longer to implement.

    What is the best way to go about this? All of this is 2D, by the way.

    submitted by /u/neck_crow
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    Game a month Challenge

    Posted: 31 Jan 2019 11:59 PM PST

    This year I will finish and publish a game every single month. I'm doing this so I can get as much experience possible making games while also building a portfolio.

    While the games i will be releasing every month wont be gargantuan in scope and will probably lack polish. I will learn a lot from each one and I will try new things with every release.

    I'm very excited to see how my game making skills will progress over the year and what awesome games and experiences I will craft this year.

    ​

    I would also like to hear your ideas about this concept of basically a long game jam every month. Have you done this before? What are some pitfalls I should avoid?

    submitted by /u/gwcreates
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    How do I develop my programming skills further?

    Posted: 31 Jan 2019 08:55 PM PST

    A little story about me that should tell you where I'm coming from:

    2 years ago, I wanted to understand how programming could make my life easier. Looking back, I think I wanted to learn how to web scrape, but didn't really know the term 'scraping', so I dived head first into web development books, mostly the head first series on HTML, Javascript and Python. I enjoyed the read, but I was also surprised - was programming really this easy? Everything made sense, and I blazed through all the books in under 2 weeks. I won't lie, as embarrassing as it is, I honestly thought I'd become a 'developer' who could write code and heck, could even be employed.

    Last year of college, thinking about having to work 9-5 and having to 'grow up', I wanted to leave some part of my childhood behind, and what better way to do it than make something I spent a large part of my childhood on? So, I decided to make a game.

    And so I sat down to code my game.

    And that's when I realized what a naive little child I was.

    I realized no amount of reading can make you a better coder, that knowing the code and knowing how to use the code is completely different. Yes, I knew if and else statements existed, I knew dictionaries and lists and tuples, and objects and classes, but how in the world was I supposed to use that here to make my little button act the way I wanted it to? I was very lost.

    So I did what I could, I read the documentation carefully, watched videos on YT and asked the lovely community there for help. And for my very first question, I got a very nice and simple line of code as an answer, something like

    "if variable == "This" show 'image1'

    if variable == "That" show 'image2' else show 'image3'"

    I swear this might look so simple to you guys and you might even laugh, but I was over the moon. Everything suddenly clicked, I realised how to interpolate variables, use if statements as well as some commands common to the game engine. I think I fell in love with the feeling of getting my code to run.

    Fast forward to now, a year later, I have been steadily learning more and more. I can create basic classes and objects, styles, loops and more. Reading and using codes from people smarter than me, I've been able to code about 75% of my game, and it's looking good. And while I'm still learning, I've noticed something...

    Which brings me to my problem:

    I don't know how to progress my skills further. Yes, I know basic code but when I see others code where they are blending classes, loops and god knows what to make complex interactions, I have no clue what's happening or how it works, and I have a really strong urge to want to learn how to do that. But to get to that level I don't know what to do or what to learn.

    I've thought of coming to a different game engine like Godot or Unity, but I'd have to repeat the same process of learning that game engine's commands and processes which took me so many months, plus I don't think it'd up the level of my code anyways, I'd just be moving horizontally to a new engine and not vertically up like I want to go.

    There is a youtuber who teaches how to code better in my engine, and I'm thinking of joining her patreon to learn more of coding from her. Yes, she's good and I can ask her to explain some of the more complex codes I've come across.

    But this feels like plugging the gaps rather than building from the foundations.

    Which brings me to my question:

    What do good programmers know that amateurs don't? How did you become a better programmer? What should my next steps be, should I learn algorithms? Computer Science? Any good resources you can link me to?

    Thanks for taking the time to read! It took me an hour to write this, but I'm glad I got this off my head into words.

    submitted by /u/dadumdada
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    Suggestions on NDA and a good generic one.

    Posted: 01 Feb 2019 08:36 AM PST

    I was curious if anyone had a suggestion on a good NDA that basically says you cant use our stuff and go make a game competing with this one. Or something that protects the intellectual property.

    submitted by /u/chadmandoo
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