Made an open-source, Pokemon inspired game engine for Android!

Ludum dare has just ended and wow, as a second time participant, things went nowhere near as smoothly as I hoped. Here's what I've learned by going through that grueling journey:

Sh*t happens. If I had to describe this year's ludum dare in a nutshell- that's how I would describe it. The artist I was working with had to leave on the same day due to RL issues. That left me with with a very small amount of usable assets and not enough time to look for premade ones. I had to somehow work with that. Then My university decided to randomly hold classes on the last day of ludum dare. Then, as if that wasn't enough, They announced that my yearly result would come out on the day before. I spent the second day frantically refreshing the results page to get some peace of mind so that I could work on the game. Naturally, progress came to a halt. Which brings me to my second point.
Don't give up before the end. I almost did. My motivation was already running low with all the issues I was having outside of the game. 12 hours before the submission I realized that I might not make it even if I crunched all night. I closed unity and basically gave up. I procrastinated for two hours playing Sekiro. Weirdly, beating one of the bosses I was stuck on for a while gave me the motivation to retry. Then, I somehow submitted the game less than an hour remaining.
Cut your scope again and again. Don't bother with extra features that you don't have time for. In my experience, UI falls in this category. I spent the majority of the second day implementing the UI for an upgrade menu before deciding to replace it with a more simple one. I didn't even bother with a title menu since the game is not very replayable. I think the game is better for it. But this will vary from game to game.
Don't be overly worried about clean code. One of the reasons the upgrade menu was taking too long was because I was trying to code everything the clean way. I threw away all of it for a more simplified upgrade system that directly modified the variables in the code. And I just copypasted the same code for all the powerups. It took me just a couple of hours and I never had to look at that piece of code again. Plus, when you do something the wrong way, you have a better understanding about what the better approach might be.
Making an actual playable build is important because you'll probably mess up your first time. I said this last year as well. This time I decided to do a webgl build. I didn't know that Itch.io requires you to upload a ZIP file, not a rar. It's a simple mistake but I was stuck on it for an hour. I don't think I'll ever repeat it now. So fail fast and make those mistakes early.
Do not be complacent with your progress early on. The first day went really fast for me and I had a lot of things done. But that's only because I was doing the simple things then But progress was slow afterwards and I almost ended up missing the deadline.
Know your toolset. I lost a lot of time integrating an external pathfinding library. I also wasted a lot of time writing a save manager (which didn't even make it in the game). Pathfinding and serialization is one most common things you need in games. Learn them before hand so that you don't have to waste time.
The theme will always suck. Don't avoid participating on the jam because you didn't like the theme or some other external reasons. I skipped ludum dare for a year making various other excuses. What matters is not the theme but how you approach and design based on it. I don't think my take on the theme was particularly unique, but it is still MY interpretation and all the weirdness that it entails.
Accept that you'll never be able to do justice to your ideas. There were a lot of things I wanted to implement but I didn't have the time for.
Polish your game- I was going say this but I should really practice what I preach. Unlike last time, I didn't have time to polish the game and it really shows. The main thing I realized from playing other people's games was that theirs was much more polished. In a sea of games, polish is what will separate your game from the rest. I won't link THAT game juice video here (because I've already linked it before and someone else will inevitably post it) but you should watch it if you haven't already.
And last but not least, don't beat yourself up by comparing to others. There will always be people who have accomplished much more impressive things in three days compared to you. But know that they still had to reach that point by trying and failing again and again. Your first game jam is unlikely to be that great but over time you will learn and improve. But I'll admit that I still don;t understand how people can make such amazing games on the 48h compo.

Whew, that was a huge wall of text. Thank you for reading this far. I've tried to avoid repeating my previous points from my last ludum dare. If you want to know a first timer's perspective or why you should do game jams I've talked about it

here

As once per game links seem to be okay, Here's the link to the game in question.

submitted by /u/Krons-sama
[link] [comments]

Is it a good or bad idea to post content of your game on social media while it's still being developed?

Posted: 01 May 2019 07:32 AM PDT

So we're 3 weeks into development of a new mobile game (Android & iOS), but we already have a prototype out, a few characters modeled and animated, and some concept art. Our social media pages are pretty empty though, so i was wondering if its a good or bad idea to start posting some snapshots, short prototype videos, and concepts on our Instagram and Facebook pages although we're still early in development (Expected to be completed by mid-September). Worries come from ideas being stolen and/or showing unpolished work.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this!

submitted by /u/kingofthehill93
[link] [comments]

What Makes a Good Trailer? And do you have one?

Posted: 01 May 2019 09:23 AM PDT

What makes a good trailer?

In my opinion, showing actual gameplay to show the player what they are getting into, clips edited well to the music, and some text/voiceover to give some plot insight.

A lot of movie trailer do things like this, have you guys noticed anything different about video game trailers that make them stand out compared to movie trailers?

I feel like making a trailer can only help your game, unless it's really badly made.

Here's my little trailer show me some of yours

submitted by /u/VitaliaDi
[link] [comments]

Hand Tracking and deforming objects in augmented reality (See comments for tutorial)

Posted: 01 May 2019 01:54 AM PDT

submitted by /u/dilmerv
[link] [comments]

How to make and self-publish a game in 12 months, by SomaSim Games founder Matthew Viglione (YT video summary)

Posted: 01 May 2019 09:04 AM PDT

submitted by /u/mbellinaso
[link] [comments]

Art of an Indie Game - Episode 3: The Plants

Posted: 01 May 2019 09:47 AM PDT

submitted by /u/Dani_SF
[link] [comments]

Recently Graduated my game-programming course. Here's some free apps for indie game development

Posted: 01 May 2019 12:14 AM PDT

I recently graduated my Game-Programming course after 3 years (usually 2 years). I went for 3 years because I took a few design courses relating to Digital Cinema, 3D Design, and Visual Communications. Although I never started any projects during school because I was more preoccupied in learning, I did research and practiced with free open-source software that I thought would be useful; since one of my goal was to at least publish an indie game that is entirely done by myself.
Here are the few software that I have stayed with (excluding the one-time bought softwares that I use):
https://boscaceoil.net/ - Creating Music ( One main thing I love about Bosca is the flexibility of the things you can create)

https://beepbox.co/ - Creating Music (mostly Chip tune Music)

https://www.bfxr.net/ - best free place to make retro sound effects (in my opinion)

https://krita.org/en/ - professional painting program & 2D animations (I recommend using a tablet/drawing tablet)

https://www.piskelapp.com/ - Sprite sheet editor/creator (Also useful in making UI/GUI in low-poly or pixel style)

http://dotween.demigiant.com/ - Unity Animation Engine c# (The school program was taught in Unity)

https://www.gimp.org/ - Image manipulation program (like Photoshop, but not really)

https://inkscape.org/ - professional vector graphics editor (Also good for UI/GUI/Button)

http://guillaumechereau.github.io/goxel/ - 3d Voxel Editor (VOXELS!)

http://www.sweethome3d.com/ - 3D & 2D House Floor plan creator (You can also export the house as a 3D File e.g. OBJ)

https://www.blender.org/ - Everything 3D: Anim, Sculpting, Modelling, texture painting etc. (Even CGI camera tracking)

https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/community/ - Free IDE for Individuals (INDIVIDUALS!)

https://code.visualstudio.com/?wt.mc_id=vscom_downloads - Free Open Source Code editing Software

https://www.sublimetext.com/ - Notepad++'s father

But I think that's it for my list. Hopefully this might help somebody especially people in the game-development community whether you are having financial problems, looking for alternatives, or just do not want to go through the legal process when downloading from "Free" libraries. Some of the softwares in the list I have stopped using completely, since I managed to save for some alternative softwares that were a one-time buy. But that would be for another list. There might be some typos since I am writing this late at night, so I am sorry. But good luck on your journey and peace out!

submitted by /u/awkward-gaijin
[link] [comments]

Game Development Software Engineering Life Cycle Process diagram

Posted: 01 May 2019 10:49 AM PDT

submitted by /u/HaPK_PerCar
[link] [comments]

Game Development 09 | User Interface | Survival game |

Posted: 01 May 2019 09:05 AM PDT

submitted by /u/novavillanueva
[link] [comments]

I've got an ambient/symphonic album free for use in your games!

Posted: 01 May 2019 12:10 PM PDT

Hi there. I write songs. I've done a bunch of heavier, electronic music for videogames. However, sometimes a game needs something a little bit more relaxing in between races or fights or whatnot. It's under "name your price" so feel free to put zero dollars to get a full download.

https://maximalism.bandcamp.com/album/summer-cycle

All the songs on the bandcamp site are downloadable under an attribution share-alike license.

submitted by /u/maximalismmusic
[link] [comments]

That feeling of "I want to stop working on this game"

Posted: 01 May 2019 12:00 PM PDT

So I'm in the weeds. Been working on my current project about 4 months. It's come along pretty nicely, but for the past month or so progress has just started crawling.

And now I'm getting that feeling. That feeling that what I've made just isn't coming together, that I don't know what I'm doing with it anymore. That feeling of "I want to stop working on this game".

This is definitely not the first time this has happened. I always salvage what I can from the previous game, take what worked and leave the rest - but it would be really nice to at least finish one game.

I could even consider this one "finished" - it has a main menu, two procedurally generated (isaac style) floors populated by four different enemy types, two different bosses, and when you beat the last floor you go to credits. Beginning, middle, end - game beaten. But... is that all that's this is ever going to amount to?

submitted by /u/Valar05
[link] [comments]

How can a publisher demonstrate transparency about marketing costs?

Posted: 01 May 2019 10:43 AM PDT

Hi,

Lots of mobile publishers offer revenue split deals where the developer gets a % of game revenue after marketing costs. Do developers just have to trust the publisher's word for cost of acquisition? I'm asking in the world of casual / hyper-casual F2P games where marketing is usually done on social networks like Facebook.

The revenue part is more easily measurable through platforms like IronSrc or AppAnnie, but the UA costs can literally be anything.

I heard from a developer that even after millions of installs of his game, the publisher just paid him $20k with the excuse that CPIs were extremely high. The worst part is, it is not quite possible to tell if they are lying or not because sometimes CPIs can be very high.

Thanks

submitted by /u/kungfufightin
[link] [comments]

College major decision

Posted: 01 May 2019 08:29 AM PDT

Hi, I am currently going into my junior year this fall as a computer science major, I'm super interested in game dev and it's what I want to do when I graduate, but the classes are definitely getting harder and I've been struggling a bit more. My school offers a game dev specialization for IT where it focuses most of your classes in that area. Should I switch to IT and specialize in game dev or stick with computer science and try to finish it? Just want some other perspectives on the matter

submitted by /u/errMeep
[link] [comments]

How do I do tiles for rocks and ridges in isometric game?

Posted: 01 May 2019 12:24 PM PDT

Hi guys, I have a isometric game with a perspective you can see in attached file. Which tiles do I need to make ridge/rocks to grass transfers, like in the left part of the picture? With brick/dirt transfer, it is pretty straightforward, I need just 3x3 and 2x2 tiles with inner and outer bricks, but with ridges, it seems a bit more complex to me.

https://i.redd.it/jndsoc5mhnv21.png

submitted by /u/hotkeym
[link] [comments]

Alto's Odyssey: Forgiveness Mechanics | Farlands In Focus

Posted: 01 May 2019 12:17 PM PDT

submitted by /u/Farlander1991
[link] [comments]

Playerbase: Growth or decline?

Posted: 01 May 2019 11:49 AM PDT

I am wondering why some games have a growing player base while others decline very fast after release. For example, Warframe and Path of Exile continuously increased in player count throughout the years while Artifact kinda died weeks after release. According to you, which characteristics allow games to grow and sustain user engagement?

submitted by /u/AdagioCreative
[link] [comments]

Interactive Map Creator

Posted: 01 May 2019 11:47 AM PDT

Hey,

Im working on interactive map creator - tool for creating maps with easter eggs/loot/etc for any game as long as you have image of map (can be used in other ways too). I was inspirder while playing gothic 3 (ye ye, it doesnt exists, gothic ends with gothic 2) and using maps with marked chests/herbs and had to check myselfe in .doc which one i found. Thats why i want to create this.

For now it looks like in video (link to download is below).

Current features:

- creating/removing/moving marks

- changing colors

- saving and loading

- load map from file (any image)

- add descriptions

- basic camera movement with bounderies

So here are my questions, or rather topic.

Im planning to use it in 2 ways.

As a free tool for any gamer. Create map with loot or anything you want, add descriptions, or event links to screenshoots and save it all to 1 file. Then send it to anyone having downloaded my "tool" and he/she can open it and use in own ways (delete used marks/change color, add smth new etc).
As a plugin in unity asset store for sale.

What features should i add? Im asking in both ways here. I want to improve this tool for everyone, not only to sell it. What features would you like to see in it as a gamer or as a fellow game developer? What should I improve?

Im thinking about adding server site, uploading finished maps there and just have a link for own map, but i am afraid od any copylaws about used images etc. So if someone has knowledge in this manner Im willing to share this project in future.

(Link to version from video - 01.05.2019)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/13J_AjrfnqgyJ9-4JgOnzikv5_cYKjpmS/view?usp=sharing

submitted by /u/Vyznawca
[link] [comments]

what is your favorit mobile game?

Posted: 01 May 2019 11:44 AM PDT

https://forms.gle/MpovJh3XoZ7qvm8H7

submitted by /u/CNTD3
[link] [comments]

Inverse transformation matrix for checking whether a point is inside a rect

Posted: 01 May 2019 11:38 AM PDT

I'm trying to determine which nodes in my scene graph contain a given point in global coordinate space, using the inverse of the node's global transformation matrices.

Here's a simplified version of the Node (real version does dirty checks and caches matrix etc).

```ts class Node { parent: Node;

width: number; height: number;

translation: Vec2; rotation: number; scale: number;

// Get the transformation matrix required to draw this node onscreen get matrix() { let mat = mat2d.clone(this.parent.matrix); mat2d.translate(mat, mat, this.translation); mat2d.rotate(mat, mat, this.rotation); mat2d.scale(mat, mat, [this.scale, this.scale]); this.matrix = mat; }

// Check if point is inside this node's rect contains(x: number, y: number) { let point = this.toLocalPoint(x, y);

return ( point.x >= this.translation.x && point.y >= this.translation.y && point.x <= this.translation.x + this.width && point.y <= this.translation.y + this.height );

}

// Convert a point in global space to local space toLocalPoint(x: number, y: number) { let inverse = mat2d.create(); mat2d.invert(inverse, this.matrix);

let point = vec2.fromValues([x, y]); vec2.transformMat2d(point, point, inverse); return point;

} } ```

This is working fine for the renderer. Here's an example of how that looks for reference.

ts for (let node of nodes) { renderer.push(node.matrix); renderer.draw(node.texture); renderer.pop(); }

The Node#contains method has some problems. It seems to adjust correctly to detect rotation and scale changes, but as soon as there's a translation applied to a node, the inverse matrix gives the wrong results.

Here's an example that shows a test of whether the mouse cursor is inside a node.

![](https://media.giphy.com/media/33HmMxhV9bnw0nvy07/giphy.gif)

The cyan node is at the origin, given a scale, and rotation.
The magenta node has the same scale and rotation, but it has also been translated along the X axis.

There are points off to the right that are registering as inside the node though.

I'm fairly sure that this means that the separate steps of the matrix transform are being applied in the wrong order, but I'm not sure how to apply the inverse matrix in any other way (without decomposing it into the 3 individual components of the transform and applying them in the reverse order that the Node#matrix getter does).

Have I misunderstood how the inverse matrix works here?

submitted by /u/danprince
[link] [comments]

Breaking News

Programming29

Wednesday, May 1, 2019

Made an open-source, Pokemon inspired game engine for Android!

Made an open-source, Pokemon inspired game engine for Android!

No comments:

Post a Comment

Popular

Blog Archive