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    Half-Life 2 devs explore when developers should ignore playtester feedback

    February 27, 2019

    Half-Life 2 devs explore when developers should ignore playtester feedback

    Half-Life 2 devs explore when developers should ignore playtester feedback

    Posted: 27 Feb 2019 03:31 AM PST

    Recreated the capture animation on Pokemon Let's GO using Unity!

    Posted: 27 Feb 2019 05:12 AM PST

    Public domain background art for...backgrounds.

    Posted: 27 Feb 2019 10:50 AM PST

    Hey everyone! Here's a package of background elements that could work for a wide variety of games (and skyboxes?), included are both separate sprites of common background elements plus some seamless pre-made samples.

    License: CC0 (public domain), completely free to use in personal, educational and commercial projects (no permission/credit required). Download includes license file.

    If you'd like to support me you can do a one-time donation (and get some goodies) or at Patreon. Obviously, both are much appreciated!

    submitted by /u/KenNL
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    Godot accepted as participant organisation in Google Summer of Code 2019!

    Posted: 27 Feb 2019 09:42 AM PST

    I made a fancy shaderified menu in Unity 2018!

    Posted: 27 Feb 2019 12:53 PM PST

    I've hit a kind of "confidence wall" with marketing my game

    Posted: 27 Feb 2019 03:59 AM PST

    I'm currently in the process of marketing my first ever game (a relatively short and cheap indie title) and until the past couple of days I was doing quite well. I posted a fair amount across social networks, sent some keys on keymailer, invited a load of curators to review it, got an ok number of wishlists, but now I've hit this wall that I can't seem to get past. I'm starting to seriously doubt that my game is as good as I'm making it out to be. Don't get me wrong - I generally stand behind my work, but I just don't think it's as good as the games Steam is comparing it to, and I'm starting to freak out a bit. It's making it really hard to do any further marketing. I want to finish a press kit and reach out to game sites, but I'm finding myself paralysed by this sudden lack of confidence.

    I guess it's a kind of impostor syndrome because I've never made a game before, and also because I used a visual scripting tool on unity and didn't "really" program the game. I feel like I'm not a proper game dev, basically, and I'm trying to compete with people who are.

    Is this normal? Is this something that everyone experiences that I'm going to have to push through?

    EDIT: a few people have mentioned beta testing, which is something I should definitely have done more of. If any of you are interested, let me know. The steam page for my game is here, so you can see if it's the sort of thing you'd be interested in beta testing.

    submitted by /u/a_hirst
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    This is what happens if you spent 50 bucks on Google ads

    Posted: 27 Feb 2019 12:52 PM PST

    The Science of Off-Roading: Uncharted 4's 4x4 - making a car game? You need to watch this

    Posted: 27 Feb 2019 09:46 AM PST

    An Analytics Tool For Indie Devs and Small Publishers

    Posted: 27 Feb 2019 10:02 AM PST

    Hi all,

    ​

    So a couple weeks ago, I started a small personal project to teach myself React and D3. The idea was simple: make a simple, bare bones dashboard where I could simultaneously see sales from Steam and itchio. It wasn't anything special. I finished it and learned what I wanted to learn.

    ​

    But from it I starting getting really excited and inspired by the idea of accessible analytics for indies. What if there was a tool that allowed developers and small publishers to easily see how well their games were doing across all storefronts and platforms? Sure you could rig something up in Excel, or even Power BI or Tableau if you were so inclined, but updating and maintaining would be a pain.

    ​

    Now I've always loved graphs and data stuff so I may be biased, but I find that seeing the big picture of how well your studio is doing is super useful when it comes to your strategy for pricing, promotion, budgeting, etc. Essentially to ensuring the long-term viability of your business (ie Keep making awesome games).

    I've since started developing a desktop app which I would like to release in beta in the next 6 months with basic features such as:

    ​

    • Inputting data from most PC storefronts, mobile stores, and consoles.
    • Comparative analytics between games and platforms across a multitude of common metrics.
    • See sales performance during known store-wide sales events (Summer Sales, etc.)
    • Easy to use interface packed with visual flair and personality.
    • Export reports in pdf format.

    The beta version will also be desktop only. I know that sharing your sales data with third parties is likely breaching NDAs so the app will only pull from local storage or from Drive or Dropbox. Most stores allow you to export raw data in csv format so we'll be leveraging that.

    ​

    So what do you think? Is this something you would use? What features would you like to see?

    ​

    ​

    P.S. I've hosted the initial project on github pages if anyone's curious. It's a user-unfriendly, buggy, hacked together mess of code and was never meant to be used by anyone that isn't me, but hey, check it out!

    Notes on its usage:

    • It will only accept csv files from Steam or itchio. When you upload one, select which store it's from so it's properly parsed. When you are done click on the "I'm done" button.
    • It also only accepts only one file per store. So adding more than one will overwrite the older ones.
    • If more than one game is present in a file, it will only register the first game and count all subsequent sales as being from that game.
    • There is no backend so any file you do upload will only stay in the browse cache. I'm not interested in your data after all. But if you reload or close the browser, you'll have to upload your files again.

    Cool! Thanks! Have a nice day!

    submitted by /u/visual_Indie
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    Shadertoy for absolute beginners

    Posted: 27 Feb 2019 10:54 AM PST

    Riot Games devblog article on reducing rendering complexity by removing tech debt

    Posted: 26 Feb 2019 08:31 PM PST

    Here is a quick look at how you can use interfaces to loosen up some of those dependencies in Unity!

    Posted: 26 Feb 2019 09:56 PM PST

    Made a rewindable driving mechanic where all cars need to reach their destination. Each car you have driven will run as a collidable ghost car in the next run.

    Posted: 27 Feb 2019 10:31 AM PST

    What to put on a portfolio website?

    Posted: 27 Feb 2019 02:47 AM PST

    So, I'm a college student who's trying to intern as a game designer over at some local studios. I'm based in Southern California, so thankfully I have a lot of AAA studios based near me.

    I've thrown together a portfolio on GitHub (if this runs afoul of the self-promotion rules, let me know, but it's more to gather feedback than anything else).

    It's a simple GitHub pages website with links to a couple of the more polished games I've created, a bunch of levels I made for other games as a teenager, some 3D models I've made, and my resume/contact info. The homepage also talks a little about my non-gaming work (although most of my work is gaming-related).

    So far, it's been hit and miss. It helped me get one interview, at an indie studio in Santa Monica. I also had a recruiter at an AAA studio get into contact with me, although ultimately I never even got a real interview. However, that's pretty much been it. Most of the companies I apply to either never get back to me or give me a no in the first round.

    Is there anything I'm missing? What sort of things are "supposed" to go on there? I have a whole bunch of unfinished work I could potentially link, but I've been trying to keep it to things I at least have a prototype of. I don't have any industry experience to link to, either.

    Any help would be appreciated!

    submitted by /u/EnglishMobster
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    A couple of questions about steam sales and how they work (related to number of sales and revenue)

    Posted: 27 Feb 2019 07:10 AM PST

    Hi guys.

    ​

    So first off I just released a game on steam. I was pretty apprehensive about it, worked really hard on this game but I also know that steam these days has difficulties so I wasn't expecting anything great. I released the game on a Friday (Feb 22) with a 30% discount, so as to take advantage of the fact that it would be a weekend and all.

    ​

    I watched a lot of material on the average number of sales on steam, how it's something like 50 units in the first month at 7$ per unit, etc. So I was under a bit of stress over that, but then I release it and in the first three days I get a little over 50 units sold. I'm really happy about this and hope was reborn. Way better than anticipated, and people even seem to like the game, I gained some more confidence.

    ​

    Here's the thing though, after that momentum in the first three days, sales completely froze. For over 24 hours I've had not a single sale, although wishlist numbers continue to grow (looking at ~650 wishlist additions).

    ​

    My questions are as follows:

    ​

    1. Is it normal for there to be a few sales every few hours then suddenly a complete halt like this? Perhaps the system is not updating? It seems to be though.
    2. Kind of unrelated, but for those familiar with steam's sales/activation reports, is the number shown next to "lifetime revenue" the amount I would expect to receive as it is or are there deductions applied to that? (this is if I have 0% tax withholding)

    ​

    Any info would be greatly appreciated. And if this is the wrong place for this, I really apologize. I read the rules and this seemed to fit from my understanding, but I could also have been wrong.

    submitted by /u/DungeonBrickStudios
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    I'd like to learn how to make dialogue systems but don't have a good story to tell. Where can I ask?

    Posted: 27 Feb 2019 05:59 AM PST

    It was against the rules of WritingPrompts to ask for help, so I'm not sure where I should ask. I need a rather short story, with at least 3 characters in it, different dialogue choices which branch out to different paths and endings. I'd like to make it heavily inspired by my favorite game, Night in the Woods. It's just gonna be a short project, I think the game will be a bit shorter than an hour. Would anyone like to help or knows where I should ask?

    submitted by /u/Piepaws
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    Steam front page and top seller algorithm

    Posted: 27 Feb 2019 07:07 AM PST

    Just wondering about the general perspective of the developer community. I opened Steam today and noticed this game front page, identified as a "Top Seller" etc.

    But, there's not a single review? Is that really possible that something doesn't even have 1 review and it's a top seller? There must be something I don't understand here and I'm curious about people's thoughts on this.

    submitted by /u/modeus
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    Dialog system for a 2D RPG.

    Posted: 27 Feb 2019 07:05 AM PST

    Hello r/gamedev. Long time lurker here.

    So I'm making a tile and turn based RPG in C++ using SDL (In 2^x dimensions, ). I'm doing everything from scratch, I'm drawing my own characters, and I plan to make my own music.

    Currently I'm focusing on making the Start Screen. But I wonder, how can I make a dialog system like those where the letters appear one by one like if someone was typing them?

    TL;DR: How can I make a dialog system like those where the letters appear one by one like if someone was typing them?

    ​

    submitted by /u/elchicoplaya
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    My Brackeys Game Jam #2 Submission: Sightless

    Posted: 27 Feb 2019 12:56 PM PST

    Methods for picking slope mesh for tile?

    Posted: 27 Feb 2019 12:52 PM PST

    So, right now I'm working on terrain for my game. Since the terrain data is stored in a 3D grid, the default way for rendering tiles is cubes and other rectangular shapes. However, I'm trying to visually distance myself from appearing too Minecraft/Voxel-y when it comes to natural tiles.

    In total, there's 15 different meshes that can be used to cover all cases. For a visual representation, basically the Rock Raiders logic for walls.

    Now, my main issue has been finding out a good way to compute this on the fly. To test things out, I used a huge mess of if...else statements to return which mesh to use, however this system looked gaudy as fuck.

    What I want to run past you guys is this: Since the test checks all 8 neighbors to a tile, would it be a better option to use the 8 states (occupied vs empty) as bits in a byte and run the byte through two Bitwise operations to check if the neighbors 1.) meet the minimum requirements for a tile slope, and 2.) don't have neighbors in the spots that would return a different tile? Something like:

    if( 00111111 & 00011111 && !(00111111 & 01000000)){ return left_slope; }

    Alternatively, what would be the best solution for something like this?

    submitted by /u/SoundInterfaceDude
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    The moon is getting angry!

    Posted: 27 Feb 2019 12:16 PM PST

    Are the Unity tutorials public domain?

    Posted: 27 Feb 2019 11:41 AM PST

    I just finished a Unity tutorial off the Unity website and now I want to expand the game to create a free game to possibly put on the app store or maybe just online. If I give credit, can I use the Unity assets or will I have to recreate my own?

    And what about the code? Does it count as plagiarism if I followed the tutorial, even though I physically wrote all the code myself?

    submitted by /u/shaneh369
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    What is better for early development? Coherent Programmer Art or an Asset Flip style mix?

    Posted: 27 Feb 2019 11:37 AM PST

    Its a PC game, but I finally managed to make a level editor version on Android, so levels can be designed on the go! At Subway, Taxi, Queue, Toilet..No limit to when new levels can be designed!!

    Posted: 27 Feb 2019 05:16 AM PST
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