What I learned after 1000+ hours of game development |
- What I learned after 1000+ hours of game development
- Life of a community manager
- Do not use PremiumBeat.com for game music
- Open Source Game Features 0.1 is now released!
- Beware of BadLand Publishing
- Want to serve content to my mobile game remotely, what are the best options?
- How To Use Bosca Ceoil to Make Music for Your Game (FREE DAW Music Making Software)
- I recorded how I added a new gun to my game, Rogue Star Rescue, with Unity3d. When setup is there, it takes 10 minutes.
- Is it worth adding achievements to apps?
- Week 1: Aeldun got some Diablo vibes, and its random dungeons are (co-op) explorable!
- Committing to developing my first game, but constantly running into issues (Combat, Environments, Design)
- This is what happens if your ad is seen by over 250,000 people on YouTube
- Where do you het your music and/or effects for your games?
- How to store player placed objects information on server (UNITY) ?
- Quick level layout with basic colours tileset for TILED ?
- Steam Blog :: User Reviews Revisited
- Screenshot Saturday #424 - Visual Overload
- Dedicated Server x User Hosting - Which one should I choose in my project?
- Made a base builder using editor scripts
- Majority - A quiz game where the majority always wins!
- A game jam entry postmortem, or what I learned participating in February’s ‘TV Game Jam’.
- Is there a large free to use dataset of games?
- Why restarting/rewriting does not mean losing progress.
- How To Design Game?
| What I learned after 1000+ hours of game development Posted: 16 Mar 2019 04:58 AM PDT |
| Posted: 16 Mar 2019 08:44 AM PDT |
| Do not use PremiumBeat.com for game music Posted: 15 Mar 2019 02:09 PM PDT I had it recommended to me by somebody here on r/gamedev and it has put me in a bad situition, I just wanted to warn everybody else. The licence does not allow for secondary media, user created videos. If you use premium beat anybody uploading videos of your game to YouTube or Twitch will get copyright strikes and eventually banned! This was 100% my fault for taking a random internet stranger on their word, it was my responsibility to read all of the fine print and I didn't. Lesson learned, always do it yourself. [link] [comments]  |
| Open Source Game Features 0.1 is now released! Posted: 16 Mar 2019 08:45 AM PDT Hello there! Today I'm releasing a library you'll probably be in love with! If you are like me and hate wasting your time reimplementing common game features, then this is perfect for you! I recently created a new open source library which aims to implement many of those features. The goal is to support as many use cases as possible, while not forcing a specific workflow on the user and encouraging reusability. All the features are data-oriented, which means that this library doesn't force you to store the data in a specific way. This way, whether you are using an ECS-based game engine or object-oriented programming or even a database, you will be able to use this library! Since it is only composed of basic data structures and methods, it allows it to be compiled into other languages and to be serialized easily! Yes, that means that even if the library is made in rust, eventually you will be able to use it in c, c++ and c#! See the repository page for more info on this https://github.com/jojolepro/game_features. Want to replace the inventory of a player by a snapshot you took a month ago? Well now you can! Here's a list of the currently planned features: * Extensible and fully-featured Inventory system (Almost Done!) * Complex Loot Trees (Done!) * Statuses, effects and transitions * Player Authentication * User Management (kick, ban, mute, etc) * User Permissions * Group Based Chat Formatting and Scopes * World ownership and protection systems * Faction-based claiming systems. More info available on the repository page here: https://github.com/jojolepro/game_features We have a gitter for those who want to discuss or have questions here: https://gitter.im/OpenSourceGameFeatures/general Always feel free to ask for new features and to open pull requests! They are very appreciated! If you like what I'm doing, consider supporting me on patreon https://www.patreon.com/jojolepro [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 16 Mar 2019 06:38 AM PDT |
| Want to serve content to my mobile game remotely, what are the best options? Posted: 16 Mar 2019 11:14 AM PDT Mobile game I'm developing weighs in at 230MB, and I can't do much more to get below that without sacrificing quality. Target is, as probably is for everyone else, < 100MB. I'm mulling over setting up a simple file server to feed the additional content to my game, but I feel like there must already be a service for this kind of thing. I know of cloud storage options like FireBase and Azure, but I'm looking for something that is specific to my need here, and one where I don't have to write a significant amount of plumbing to get running reliably (ie. security, integrity, updates). Any advice would be much appreciated. [link] [comments]  |
| How To Use Bosca Ceoil to Make Music for Your Game (FREE DAW Music Making Software) Posted: 16 Mar 2019 08:08 AM PDT |
| Posted: 16 Mar 2019 11:34 AM PDT https://i.redd.it/i5run36nxim21.png The full video in a slower pace is available on Youtube: https://youtu.be/PDMaIPLQmSc [link] [comments]  |
| Is it worth adding achievements to apps? Posted: 16 Mar 2019 07:45 AM PDT |
| Week 1: Aeldun got some Diablo vibes, and its random dungeons are (co-op) explorable! Posted: 16 Mar 2019 11:03 AM PDT |
| Posted: 16 Mar 2019 11:01 AM PDT As a bit of background, I've been messing around with Unity for a number of years making small things jumping from idea to idea being worried about difficulty but finally I was fed up and a month ago I started to jot down ideas for a survival horror game. I'm a programmer at my day job, and do music in my own time so the only big thing left was art, which in most games is kind of huge. Due to this, I went from a third person more traditional Resident Evil styled design to a first person melee centric game, but that doesn't alleviate the issues completely.
To make things simple to understand, essentially I'm trying to make a first person melee combat survival horror game with the level design of early Resident Evil (big hub world, recursively unlocked), Condemned style combat, with some Silent Hill aesthetics (music, story). However, since this is my first 3D game (and real game), I'm not sure how much to focus on each of those elements. To replicate combat to the level of detail in Condemned seems almost too big of a task even programming aside as I don't have 3D animation experience, let alone an understanding of designing enemies and bringing them to life in a believable challenging way to the player. Currently I've been using premade free assets to do a basic mockup with just a fireaxe weapon in first person, a basic "swing" animation done in Unity, and a collider on end of the axe being enabled during the swing attack. I'm not even sure if this is remotely close to the "correct" way to do this, and naturally as such it feels very off and floaty just doing basic attacks. This isn't even with fully fledged enemies with AI and unique attack animations, though with several indie horror games there seems to be an acceptable middle ground where you don't need the most complex animations and AI out there.
The next biggest thing I'm struggling with is understanding how to design a level, both conceptually and literally within the engine. I am aware you can mockup or even create fully fledged levels all within Unity, but I've always seen more complicated 3D work done using external tools such as Blender (which I have some experience with). I'm sort of hitting a wall in terms of wanting to jump into designing a level that I can use, but without having to throwaway and restart my work too many times. For example I don't want to spend hours/days designing using textured cubes or whatever just to have to remake it all in Blender in higher detail, but I'm not even sure if that is the logical next step, any suggestions would be appreciated. As mentioned since this is a resident evil styled game I'd want to have a central hub but areas which you return to with new items to further your progress at a later point, so with this in mind I guess holding off from doing final work until the layout has been solidified would be ideal.
If you've made it this far, I apologise for this being so wordy. I honestly don't have a solid "idea" in my head, so I'm just getting a feel for things as I go along. Designing weapons, environments, levels, enemies, etc, tying it together with code, and then trying to make it actually half decent is still something I'm new to and I'm not expecting anyone to give me straight answers or tutorials that hold my hand until I have a game finished, but any advice would be appreciated. Thanks [link] [comments]  |
| This is what happens if your ad is seen by over 250,000 people on YouTube Posted: 15 Mar 2019 04:18 PM PDT |
| Where do you het your music and/or effects for your games? Posted: 16 Mar 2019 04:49 AM PDT For the sake of transparency: I'm a music producer-composer-thing. rather, I am wanna be - iamoneabe (see what I did there? ;) But that's just for you to be aware of my bias - no self-promotion here :) But with that said.. What are the places/resources you use for your projects? [link] [comments]  |
| How to store player placed objects information on server (UNITY) ? Posted: 16 Mar 2019 09:18 AM PDT I'm trying to be able for the player to place an object and then store that objects information on a server with the objects name , position and rotation so i can simply instantiate it if the player rejoins or another player joins that room. What is the best way to do this? I've got some experience with MYSQL so i know how to setup a database and use queries but not how to send queries to the database over the internet in a secure way. [link] [comments]  |
| Quick level layout with basic colours tileset for TILED ? Posted: 16 Mar 2019 11:59 AM PDT Hi ! I'm trying to create basic top-view level layouts for a school project and while searching for a tool to help me draw those quickly I stumbled upon TILED. This software looks like it's exactly what I'm looking for but the problem is that I can't find a tileset with just a couple of colours and basic shapes. Is there something like that out there ? Or am I missing a basic feature in TILED ? Thanks ! [link] [comments]  |
| Steam Blog :: User Reviews Revisited Posted: 15 Mar 2019 07:36 PM PDT |
| Screenshot Saturday #424 - Visual Overload Posted: 15 Mar 2019 07:52 PM PDT Share your progress since last time in a form of screenshots, animations and videos. Tell us all about your project and make us interested! The hashtag for Twitter is of course #screenshotsaturday. Note: Using url shorteners is discouraged as it may get you caught by Reddit's spam filter. Bonus question: Has there been a game where you've liked a side component (minigame, a specific game mode, etc...) significantly more than the main game itself? [link] [comments]  |
| Dedicated Server x User Hosting - Which one should I choose in my project? Posted: 16 Mar 2019 11:23 AM PDT Hello! I am having a little of trouble trying to figure out the multiplayer area and I would appreciate some advice. My project is a game turn-based. Like Chess, or Hearthstone. So... How complex is to setup a multiplayer for this style of game? It can be done by the own player hosting a match? How would ping works in this case? Or I should look for a server? In this case, would be too expensive to have one for like 1000 players or so to start it? I'm going to dive in the networking articles that /r/GameDev has i nthe wiki, but I would love some simple introduction before it if possible. [link] [comments]  |
| Made a base builder using editor scripts Posted: 16 Mar 2019 11:21 AM PDT |
| Majority - A quiz game where the majority always wins! Posted: 16 Mar 2019 11:08 AM PDT |
| A game jam entry postmortem, or what I learned participating in February’s ‘TV Game Jam’. Posted: 16 Mar 2019 11:07 AM PDT With my mind being a slippery thing, I wonder if I really did learn anything. So writing this is partially me trying to piece some thoughts together. If you need a bit more context while reading, I have a gamejam's page and my game's link in the comments. I didn't take the prize places, but I didn't do absolutely terrible either. In February I took part in my first game jam ever, 'TV Game Jam', where participants needed to translate the spirit of any TV show of their choice into a game form. I choose Doctor Who with the Weeping Angels, and named my project 'Invision'. I had two weeks, of which I used 140 hours (10 per day or almost 6 full days). 1) Scope grows constantly, especially when you aim low in the beginning. All my previous projects are, traditionally, the unfinished ones. Can't really call this one finished too, but at least it's somewhat polished and playable. So I knew I had to scope really low. Just a few mechanics and that's it. So I focused heavily on the game's prototype. Here is what I had a few days in: https://reddit.com/link/b1vb5k/video/l8yql84esim21/player
And mechanics felt done at this point. But oh boy, how wrong I was. First of all, they didn't pass the real world testing. Things kept breaking at some points, and I had to patch a lot of stuff up. Then, they weren't prepared to all the small nuances of my level. Like for example when I needed to reverse the door triggers (make it opened by default and closed on button press). That took a lot of time as well. It would seem, you can never get too experienced at predicting how the development would go. It honestly looks like you just need these huge blank spots in your calendar, which you fill with tasks as you go. I mean, I'm far from experienced, but overestimating time and work requirements is my constant downfall. Additionally, feature creep is a real bitch. So the smaller you aim, the more 'lacking' your game feels. It really sucks, especially when this fear keeps getting proven. 2) On jams, always go for a polished web game. 'We are all developers here' I though. 'Those who aren't, are dedicated streamers, surely we can rate each other fairly'. Well, the overall rating really was fair. But what I found, is that even the dedicated people still seem to be biased rather hard. We had six rating categories, and guess what, even games with few weak qualities still scored high in them, when their overall impression was high. Not ideal, sure, but high enough to matter. Especially things like 'gameplay innovation' on games obviously inspired by other games of the same genre. That's point #1. These same dedicated people are really poor on time. That includes me: I rated just around 10 games out of 90 total. So I can understand why lightweight web games get a significant edge (since ithc.io normalizes ratings based on total amount of ratings). That's point #2. This one is kinda obvious, but still counts. Polish, polish, polish. The mechanics, the ideas, the design. 10 high-quality things win over 30 medium-quality any day. #3. So if you, as foolishly as I was, think the psychology of developers, as players, is different - you are probably wrong. No one is going to search for strong sides unless you ask them directly, but this is definitely not a sportsmanship behaviour for a game jam. 3) Self-taught mechanics are amazing. Invision's main mechanic is… vision. Which is you pointing with mouse at things. I have a spotlight on my character, so everything he looks at is 'Lit'. And this is also the main mechanic for fighting the enemies. So you have a very natural and simple action as a backbone for most of the game's mechanics. And it also requires almost none outside knowledge to understand. Now, I might overrate my solution a bit, but I think this direction for designing mechanics is really good. Take 'Zelda: Breath of the Wild' for example, it teaches you game's numerous interactions through common knowledge (such as fire burning wood, metal conducting electricity and so on). And this is also a good example of self-taught mechanics. So I think, for many games, this is a nice strategy to take in allowing the player to quickly dig in and explore. 4) Mechanics must always work and stack together. When designing mechanics, I tend to daydream about them a lot. But as cool as they might seem in my head, in reality they might feel too separate or even overcomplicated. I always envy the experienced game designers who can imagine and bring to life all these wonderful intertwined systems. The mechanics themselves seem to be simple. But their relation with others, that's what makes them complex and deep. Not some silly one-off gimmicks, but rather various consistent interactions. My game lacks that. I believe I got the vision part nicely, but I underexplored on the possible interactions. Thus, puzzles lack depth. If you ever have a feature creep take a look back and think: 'what if my other mechanics are simply too constricting and one-dimensional?' 5) Three steps of fun: exploration, learning, mastering. This one is probably the most questionable, but I think it's a good entry point on the subject of 'designing fun'. The last two are common knowledge obviously. I think the first one is the most important for my post. Fun of new mechanics shouldn't be locked behind a skill-wall. Every new mechanic should be interesting from the start, and it should incentivize experimentation and exploration. It should be that spark that lights up the player's imagination. It might apply to story as well: if it's catchy, has some interesting twist – it might make the player dig deeper, trying to understand it in-depth. Reserving fun for later stages (learning and mastering) should still exist, but the initial excitement can never be underrated. Again, that's probably something I should have done better… --- Huh. I suppose that wasn't much. Buuut, good thing I have some data regarding development time to look at! Let's start from the Workflow Types. https://i.redd.it/5fkas1udtim21.png The 'Design' includes everything from design document to character and level design. 'Revision and fixes' refers to changing some stuff after prototyping + bugfixing/tweaking. 'Prototype' is self-explanatory. 'Active development' is a main workload after I figured how stuff should look and work. Nothing surprising here really, seems pretty fine to me. Maybe design should have taken a bit more time? By the way, here is the Game Design Document, if you'd like to take a look. Also, just for the sake of completion, here is the initial level design (such a mess though). Next up, categories: https://i.redd.it/po2djm2ltim21.png As expected, 3D assets took most of the time, by a margin. I think, in the context of a jam, that's a bit too much. Should have scoped a lot lower with the environment. This is a huge chunk of time right here that could have been used on perfecting mechanics and puzzle design. Also, minigame took surprisingly much time. Well, I did encounter lots of problems there… And last but not least, the detailed task breakdown: https://i.redd.it/d83u4q0ptim21.png As you can see, a whole day was devoted solely to the minigame. Which, given how early in development it was, didn't seem too bad. I considered it an important part of the game, and thus was fine with spending a whole day. But I could have optimized the process a bit, that's for sure. I did it before the level design, and if I tried playing the level beforehand, I would have spent my time a bit differently. Level design and assembly took a lot of time too. Now, with the defined scope it's fine. But with a smaller scope, I could have won a bit of time here as well. Although… I kinda like how the level and assets turned out in the end, visually. Not sure if I'm objective here. Probably not. But I like how the end result looks. Okay, now that's all I've got. Learned a few things here and there. Had a lot of fun, that's for sure. Hope you got something from this post as well! Thanks for your time, cause I really wanted to share. Definitely will be doing more jams in the future! [link] [comments]  |
| Is there a large free to use dataset of games? Posted: 16 Mar 2019 10:38 AM PDT Just wondering if anyone knows if there is a large csv file or something I could use that contains the names of pretty much all games? Looking to maybe create a searchable web app to make sure the name of your game doesn't correspond with one that's already commercial. [link] [comments]  |
| Why restarting/rewriting does not mean losing progress. Posted: 15 Mar 2019 04:58 PM PDT Lots of my developer friends and I complain when we make some bad code because working with it is a pain, but in our view, rewriting and refactoring it would be working backwards and wasting time as we already implemented it, why reinvent the wheel? I think this a trap that a lot of developers (possibly more beginners) fall into, feeling that refactoring is unnecessary but if you are even going to expand on it, it's essential. Every time I finally get down to deleting a rewriting a messy class or function, it always helps in the long run. Although it might seem time consuming, you may increase your efficiency in the long run therefore saving time and also increasing maintainability. What I'm trying to say is don't be afraid to rewrite, if you don't it'll bog you down further down the project. tl;dr rewrite messy code or it might screw you over as it's screwed me many a time. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 16 Mar 2019 09:30 AM PDT So I have worked out the basics of using the unity game engine, and now I want to start my very first game. Honestly the hardest part for me is coming up with an Idea. Does anybody have a good design process that they could tell me so I can come up with some good Ideas? [link] [comments]  |
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