Blender 2.80 removes blender game engine, and recommends Godot as an alternative

"Somewhere in your game development career you start to notice game design is really a trade of manipulation. Utilize this technique to teach people not to do something, that technique to reward them for their actions; training a new player has a lot in common with training a puppy. Nothing in my game career makes me sadder than realizing that the most effective technique for making players feel as though they have accomplished something is to make a number increase.

Dave Arneson, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, was said to have invented experience points and level advancements during the evolution of Chainmail's combat resolution (link). Here, in the early 70's, a game tool was invented so powerful that nearly 50 years later we can't escape the shadow of it: earn XP for winning combat, earn enough XP and Level-Up. What a simple concept, kill stuff and eventually stronger, it's almost hard to think at one point games didn't have it.

Let's start at the abstraction, what are experience and levels abstracting out?

I did Muay Thai or some form of kickboxing for roughly 9 years. I started with all the talent of Daniel son at the beginning of The Karate Kid: I couldn't move without losing balance, my kicks were like wet noodles slapping a street light pole and my punches well, you get the picture. After a few sad years I could throw a beautiful, and somewhat effective, roundhouse kick and put together a one, two, low-kick combo. Fast forward through training under some amazing instructors including, two-time Lumpini champion Jongsanan Fairtex, now I'm a competent retired amateur fighter. Anyways, the point of this trip down memory lane is 9 years of Muay Thai was punctuated by milestones and periods of plateaus. Maybe I threw a round knee 40 times a practice but suddenly 3-months in, something clicked and I started throwing it like Buakaw in his K1-Max prime (ok, the fight game references will stop now). Although my Muay Thai progress was likely linear, my mind remembers major events like memorable sparring sessions, amateur fights and first times I executed "cool" techniques.

This is what experience and levels represent. Experience is the acknowledgement of engaging in an activity, in the Chainmail case it is adventuring, in fighting it is me showing up to practice everyday. Level-Ups are breaking through plateaus where previous difficulties are trivial and a new arena of skills and techniques are available for mastery; this is me winning my first amateur fight or suddenly start hitting head kicks in sparring sessions.

The problem with experience and levels is they have outlived their usefulness. They have become the lazy designer's tool for simulating progress and giving the player a sense of accomplishment. XP and levels have ruined the genre of RPG, which at one point actually stood for Role Playing Games, now means any game where increasing numbers is the most important aspect of making progress. Experience and levels have finally made their way through other genres: FPS, Fighting Games, Racing Games.

It's frustrating because I myself am susceptible to the illusion of increasing numbers. I feel a sense of satisfaction when an amazing UX flourish appears, with a progress bar hitting its completion to reveal a number increasing by 1. "Yes, a number went up, all this time and effort has been worth. This game has marked me a 4 when a mere week ago my level label had a miserable 3 after it". There is something about the human psyche that is vulnerable to a simple habit loop with a number increase at the end (please read "The Power of Habit" for insights I am not qualified to explain).

What can we do as developers? We need to reward engagement and time with something that is both easily understood as a plateau breaker and stills feels like the perceived value was worth the time. There are a two tried and true options available: unlock options for the player or make player skill king and force the player to break through plateaus themselves. Unlocking options is The Legend of Zelda approach; after every major dungeon Link has a new weapon, tool or equipment at his disposal. Make skill king is the FromSoftware approach; breakdown your game into skill plateaus and force the player to break through those skill plateaus through sheer will. There is another option: getting rid of habit forming as we know it. I challenge everyone to find better ways to reward the player and give us new 50 years reign."

submitted by /u/emcconnell11
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Decided to take a break from our Project, and release a Game

Posted: 12 Jul 2019 12:50 PM PDT

Hello,

I'm fedellen and I just solely developed and released my first Indie Title, Astral Defense, on iOS, Android, PC, and Mac. My development time took 2 months in between watching my one year old son on a daily basis. My app just got a front page article from Cameron Bald on Pocket Gamer and my adrenaline is literally oozing out of my mouth: https://www.pocketgamer.com/articles/080663/pixel-art-shoot-em-up-astral-defense-channels-galaga-and-other-retro-classics/?fbclid=IwAR1cH6bqeiJ68uzu7xQgbrWY8i1o37-aIvTaiSi5ztfyMGKuyfm-rRXQz-o

What did I do right? I'm not sure.. but below is a summary of what I did do.

I began teaching myself Progamming and Pixel Art in October of 2018; but whats probably most important, is I began networking, marketing, and branding myself and our Game Studio around the same time. We spent over 6 months developing a platformer called the Adventures of Duck Guy; I spent 6 months learning how to code with an Engine called Stencyl.

Coming up next was a daunting amount of Animation, Level Design, and World Building. I felt I had become proficient enough with Stencyl to skip all that and just release a game. "Its time for me to make a space game," I told my business and life partner, abonbon. Personal Game Jam mode was set off in me like a firecracker; I prototyped Astral Defense with 4 enemy types and procedural generation within 3 days. Music and Sound Effects took me weeks after as it was also a learning experience. I got it into as many playtesters as I could early and took feedback seriously.

My Google Doc labeled, 'space runner ideas,' is littered with great ideas all slashed away as 'Feature Creep.' ~~Daily Chests, Boss Waves, Wave Skips, Special Ammo Powerups, Skins, More Enemy Types, Ship Turning Animation, etc, etc, months of developing extra features.~~ I kept my scope extremely limited and I focused on Polish and Playtester Feedback/Suggestions -- not that I can't go back and add these fun things later.

All of that is seems pretty standard, but how did I get an article on Pocket Gamer? Probably our growing Social Media presence, or maybe one of my emails I sent landed straight his desk? I don't know yet, this is everything I've done with my marketing and networking strategy:

I'm in a lot of Discord communities; not only that but I try my best to participate in as many of them as I can and build relationships. I would guesstimate that for every chatter you see in Discord, you have 5 lurkers who say nothing; but those lurkers are just as much a part of that community. We created our own community Discord for Pixel Artists and Game Devs to share their content with us; in turn we support them via our Twitter presence (Retweets and Likes) and any feedback on their work that we can offer. The inspiration posted from all these great artists and developers benefits everyone; now its by far my favorite community of people.

I've been hitting Twitter hard recently. Our studio name choice, Pixel Pajama Studios, was aboslutely on point for our target communities. While I say target communities, they are also the communities we wish to be a part of for inspirational purposes as well. For months I've been browsing the recent #pixelart feed multiple times per day and Liked hundreds of pixel art pieces I liked while Retweeting any that I loved; as well as participating heavily in pixel art community trends. All of this time spent viewing great art made me a much better pixel artist as well as spread our name and grow our audience for our posts.

Our Instagram is kept up to date with all the content we post as well, although not my target social media platform I do my best keep up with all the comments we receive there. From my experience Instagram has a very large reach, but getting traction is hard. You have to spam that Like button on your target hashtags straight into your phone to get people to look at your stuff. I did a little of that here and there but mostly just keep it up to date as best I can.

Don't even think about forgetting about Facebook. That Social Media nightmare you deleted years ago? It matters a lot. I spent the last 3 days finding all the friends I remember from high school and blasting my game news off at them. These people are WAY more likely to play your game than the 10 people who see your Twitter post. Being an Indie Developer is probably way cooler than what they're doing so go ahead and flaunt it. Think of it as call to arms on anyone you've ever sort of known.

I sort of dropped the ball on emailing journalists early; but I've emailed my homemade Press Release, Press Kit, and Release Trailer to 10 publications and I targeted 7 journalists for personal pitches. The only replies I received were semi-automated messages trying to sell me advertisement spots. I emailed back one of these messages explaining my budget and asked for all the professional advice he had to offer. A real person replied, "don't feel afraid to follow up emails," so at that moment I did many more follow ups and way more emails.. more emails.. more emails.. I honestly still don't know if this helped or was just spam but I spread my news as best I could.

I think the most important thing I did was talk to people and make friends in the Pixel Art community. Conversations in discord, comments on twitter, and getting involved in their work via heartfelt compliments and/or retweets. Just being the friendly person that I already am.

TL;DR -- Market yourself early and make real connections. Contribute to and participate in your communities very actively. Take a break from your project, make a game.

Thanks for reading!fedellen, Pixel Pajama Studios

submitted by /u/Fedellen
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When deciding/coming up with a new project.

Posted: 12 Jul 2019 05:39 AM PDT

Do you check out the app store or steam or just Google to see if the idea has already been made? Personally I sometimes get discouraged when I do find it because it's really good so I never truly start. Anyone else get that?

submitted by /u/st1nc1ty
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"Learn Game Development" Humble Bundle?

Posted: 12 Jul 2019 12:33 PM PDT

Hey folks, I stumbled across a deal currently on Humble Bundle, and it piqued my curiosity. Particularly "Complete C# Unity Developer 3D/2D" courses, and I was curious if anyone here has any experience with these? I'm not terribly concerned with the price, I'm more interested if the courses themselves are worth messing with.

For some context, I've been doing C# web development for about a decade now, so I'm less concerned with the learning to code aspect, and more interested in the learning to make a game aspect. If that makes a difference.

submitted by /u/WinterZenyth
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How To Create An Item System - Part 9 - What's Next?

Posted: 12 Jul 2019 04:39 AM PDT

submitted by /u/natemi10
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How to get Player Movement working in SpatialOS with just a few lines of code (Tutorial in Comments)

Posted: 12 Jul 2019 05:59 AM PDT

submitted by /u/charlesamat
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G2A Proposes a key blocking tool for developers

Posted: 12 Jul 2019 02:41 AM PDT

Finally...?

https://www.g2a.com/news/latest/g2a-proposes-a-key-blocking-tool-for-developers/

submitted by /u/SammyVimesKeel
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As someone completely new to game development,coding etc. I was hoping to get some pointers

Posted: 12 Jul 2019 04:07 AM PDT

I have finally taken the first steps toward teaching myself the ins and outs of coding and game development. I have been covering a variety of courses with regards to developing games on unity in-particular but wished to see if there were somethings that anyone could help clear up for me and offer their own opinion as to what engine I should use for the project i have in mind and where you think would be a good place to start.

In short I am hoping to work on a project that functions similarly to the creature creator/stage from spore, a game from the early 2000s that had an interesting concept that i haven't seen attempted in quite the same way since.

I am aware that something like a character creator that was found in the game would be a difficult thing to teach ones self however i have been looking over Chris hecker's notes regarding his work on the project, http://chrishecker.com/My_liner_notes_for_spore#Creature_Skin_Mesh, and want to understand how to properly incorporate this into a working prototype of my own or at least something similar. If nothing else I am interested to see i cant do anything more with original vision for the game that the developers had now that it is some 12 or so years later.

If you happen to have any tips that you think may come in handy when beginning this it would be greatly appreciated, and of course i am in no rush with this to be quite frank this is meant to be sort of a passion project/time sink that i can turn to when i have little else to do so by all means the more links and resources that may be relevant the better.

submitted by /u/Towboat421
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What's a good size audio budget for an indie game?

Posted: 12 Jul 2019 07:37 AM PDT

Hi, I'm working on a tower defense dungeon crawler RPG called [Dwerve](https://dwerve.com).

We're currently working preparing to either pitch to publishers or launch a Kickstarter campaign to get funding and I'm trying to figure out how much to ask for in regards to a music budget. I have googled how much composers cost and see ranges like $50-$1,000 per minute of music and $500-$2,500 per minute of music. I anticipate us having about 20-25 tracks that last an average of 3 minutes.. so that's anywhere from $3,000 to $187,500. Maybe a better question might be, what percent of the total budget should I allocate to audio? Maybe 10%? If a total indie game budget was $250,000, the audio budget would be $25,000 which sounds about right - based on my gut haha. Anyways, thanks ahead for the help!

submitted by /u/snarlynarwhal
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Podcast with Video Game Programmers

Posted: 12 Jul 2019 12:25 PM PDT

I am an avid listener of Joe Rogan Experience and Lead Singer Syndrome.

With Lead Singer Syndrome, I have gained a lot of interesting information from artists. Unique perspectives and stories about bands beginnings.

Recently, there was a video posted about the AI behind Goldeneye (https://youtu.be/M9sOE376tzk). I enjoyed all the insider information of the development process behind Goldeneye.

Now, if there is already something like this, please point me in the direction. If not, how many of you would be interested in a Podcast with the programmers behind: Halo, Fable, Driver, Gran Turismo, Gears of War, etc.?

(I just named a few that came to mind).

submitted by /u/FluffyKitten73
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Anyone live in Utah with a finished game they want me to review for SLUG magazine?

Posted: 12 Jul 2019 12:13 PM PDT

I'm newly hired at SLUG magazine and want to pitch an idea for reviewing several games made by native Utahns since they focus on local culture. There are some requirements for the games though. They must be:

fairly short 3-10 hours
solid storytelling
story-driven or character driven
finished

I would be happy to review your game to get the word out in the September issue of SLUG (given that the staff likes my idea)

Let me know!

submitted by /u/brittsters
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Question concerning creating and designing levels

Posted: 12 Jul 2019 08:20 AM PDT

Hi,

me and a friend of mine recently started do develop a 2d action platformer game. We use Godot Engine. My friend creates the graphics while i do all the programming work. At the moment we think about how we should create the levels. One idea is to make tilesets in photoshop and use these to create the levels in the engine. The other idea is to draw the whole levels in photoshop and then add all the collision boxes in godot. Or is there even a hybrid way of doing this like for example drawing the whole level in ps cut it into chunks in a tileset and then put it back together in godot. Maybe there are even other ways of doing this that i haven't thought of. I should add that my question is just about the static level architecture.

What are your ideas?

edit: removed link that was added automatically

submitted by /u/mallerius
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How to move an object's world space matrix to another matrix by linear interpolation?

Posted: 12 Jul 2019 02:14 AM PDT

I have got the world transform of an object and I want to animate it. I thought about creating a handful of matrices at different positions with different rotations, just like key frames in blender. Now I want to move my Object using its world space to some other matrix' position over time, without just multiplying it with a transform matrix. From there it is supposed to continue to the next one (or "key frame").

From what I found out, the solution would be to linearly interpolate, between the two matrices (or its components), but I just can't figure out how.

What do I need to do, to achieve this simple animation?

submitted by /u/N30__
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Real-time fluid simulations for sprite sheet creation. Upcoming tool - EmberGen by JangaFX

Posted: 12 Jul 2019 11:02 AM PDT

Real-time fluid sims inside of our upcoming software EmberGen. Everything in the video is still a work in progress and our renderer will get much prettier. Learn more and sign up for an invitation at https://jangafx.com/software/embergen/ and we'll let you know when you can test it for free!

EmberGen is built specifically for real-time VFX and our current goal is to produce high quality sprite sheets within a matter of seconds instead of hours. We are also doing research to export volumes to popular engines like Unreal and Unity, though this functionality won't be released at first.

The video shows tests we've done with EmberGen over the past few months during development.

(Direct screen capture, hence the low resolution).

https://reddit.com/link/ccebaz/video/l1m7gaxfww931/player

submitted by /u/JangaFX
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The RNJam is in a week!

Posted: 12 Jul 2019 02:53 AM PDT

https://itch.io/jam/rnjam

Make a game based on a randomly generate name! Now includes prizes.

submitted by /u/89odev
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Networked Enemies(Sync 80 enemy robots in Unity) - SocketWeaver SDK

Posted: 12 Jul 2019 12:49 PM PDT

submitted by /u/PeterZSW
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Best 2D Game Engine For Linux Development?

Posted: 12 Jul 2019 12:41 PM PDT

What is a good game engine for linux development? I would prefer to be able to use a programming language like C# with it.

submitted by /u/TOAST3DGAM3R
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Is there an automatic Pixel art to Voxel converter?

Posted: 12 Jul 2019 06:36 AM PDT

I was thinking that it would be nice to have a converter that takes a minimum of two 2d pixel art pieces (front and side) and up to 6 (for each face of a cube) and convert that to voxels.

I checked quickly online for a tool like this and found one with no functional links or way to download.

I've recently downloaded magica Voxel and looked at their file format. I think that I could make this tool, but am I repeating effort here? If anyone knows of some converters, either online or downloaded, I'd like to know about them.

submitted by /u/GardenGnostic
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Breaking News

Programming29

Friday, July 12, 2019

Blender 2.80 removes blender game engine, and recommends Godot as an alternative

Blender 2.80 removes blender game engine, and recommends Godot as an alternative

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