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    I've made a clone of Contra (1986) in Unity

    August 03, 2019

    I've made a clone of Contra (1986) in Unity

    I've made a clone of Contra (1986) in Unity

    Posted: 03 Aug 2019 01:53 AM PDT

    My tool for creating terrain in my 2.5D rpg.

    Posted: 03 Aug 2019 06:52 AM PDT

    From homelessness to Steam release, ask me anything!

    Posted: 03 Aug 2019 07:12 AM PDT

    Hello! I've been given a lot of resources and practical advice throughout my years on this subreddit and think it's about time for some contribution of my own. At the age of 25, I had a very brief (albeit horrible) stint of homelessness. Game development helped out of that specific rut and gave me a clear objective to climb towards. I just released my game onto Steam and have some relevant advice for anyone willing to listen. Feel free to ask any questions. :)

    TLDR Game development gave me purpose, and helped divert my energy into something productive.

    First Tip - Control your scope

    I can't stress this enough, control your scope. No, you will not be able to make that big MMO project by yourself. And no, you won't be finishing your GTA clone any time soon. There's logicality behind seasoned developers preaching how important it is to start small.

    Resolution: Take the game you want to make, break it into fourths. Now visualize these individual pieces in terms of importance, make the most important portion the mainstay of your project.

    Keep this in mind: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product

    Second Tip - Know when to cancel a bad project

    Unless you're extremely lucky, someday, and sometime, you will find yourself trapped in a bad project. Usually, it's because of bad scope (see my first tip). Cancelling a bad project can save you weeks if not years of trauma. Sleep on it before scraping your work. Unless you think your first project will take more than five years. In that case, don't think twice.

    Third Tip - You aren't alone

    We all have our strengths and weaknesses, a jack of all trades is ultimately the master of none, especially in game development. You aren't alone in this. If you aren't just an idea guy, and have something valuable to bring to the table, I can almost guarantee your inauguration into a team of some sort.

    Programmers need artists, and artists need programmers, find yourself professing as one of the two, and you'll be fine.

    Fourth Tip - Fail Fast

    Don't just think about it, get your hands in the dirt as soon as humanly possible. If you're an artist, tools like Play Maker or Bolt will help you get started. The sooner you get used to the API and kinks of your selected engine, the better. And remember, discipline ALWAYS beats inspiration.

    Fifth (and final) Tip

    Take care of yourself. Please, if nothing else, put your health first. Do your very best to stay healthy. Don't be like me, it doesn't feel good being told by a work wife that you look like a zombie...

    Want some free resources to help you get started?

    Music - Check the r/gamedev subreddit, lots of hungry musicians willing to help there.

    https://freesound.org/

    Great repository of audio; unfortunately, you'll probably have to dig around to find something.

    https://assetstore.unity.com/

    Plenty of great resources here, filter your search with a "free" parameter for music aplenty.

    3D models

    QuaterniusDev

    Very generous 3D model creator who consistently gives out free models, check 'em out!!

    Kenney

    Need I say more?! The asset Jesus continues to bless our hearts with premium content at no charge. If you like his stuff, maybe donate or check out Asset Forge.

    If you found this information helpful, check out my game on Steam

    https://store.steampowered.com/app/811500/The_Last_Piece_of_Bacon/

    It's on sale now for just three dollars. I look forward to your questions and wish each of you a great day! Cheers. :)

    submitted by /u/LisaDanceGames
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    Where does your game making process start?

    Posted: 03 Aug 2019 10:01 AM PDT

    Hi all,

    Very new to reddit so apologies if I'm asking anything out of sorts, but I'm curious as I'm sure everyone has their own way of doing things.

    Say you have an idea for a game; where do you start your process? Do you create a design doc that outlines major gameplay features, story, art direction, etc, and only begin development when everything is sufficiently fleshed out? Do you jump right into developing key gameplay mechanics to see how they feel without even thinking about story or art? Do you write a story first and build the gameplay and art around it? I'm curious what processes everyone has explored and what works for them.

    submitted by /u/timsgames
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    The JRPG Startup Cost, PSX Edition

    Posted: 03 Aug 2019 08:45 AM PDT

    GameDev Discord

    Posted: 03 Aug 2019 07:41 AM PDT

    Hey, is there any Game development discords where people can showcase their stuff, recruit people for a game and just talk about Game Development in general, brand new to this and looking for people to help out and give inspiration

    submitted by /u/PureWhizkey
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    How my wife and I developed a game featured on App Store and Google Play while traveling with a tent (+ dog and a kid). Details, marketing and some data.

    Posted: 02 Aug 2019 07:56 PM PDT

    Hi,

    My name is Sergei. My wife and I are traveling indie game developers. We've been building and polishing our game Lull Aby: Dreamland Adventure for the last 3 years.

    It was released few days ago (July 31 2019). On the second day after the release it was featured 4 times on App Store Home Page, got in Top-charts (#5 Top Paid games in Ukrainian App Store and #8-12 Top Paid games in Russian store), and 1216 times on App Store category pages worldwide combined for iPhone and iPad (#1 in puzzles in Ukrainie and #2 in puzzles in Russia)). It also got #2 in Trending Apps in Russian Google Play store. I want to share the development story, some statistics and hopefully to motivate people finish their games.

    THE DEVELOPMENT STORY:

    Background:

    I've developed mobile games as a hobby since 2012 in the spare time after a full time job as SAP BI consultant. I've managed to finish 4 out of 6 personal projects before Lull Aby, and published them on Google Play (shame on me) but the quality, visuals and game design wasn't good enough even to share them with my friends.

    Three years ago, my wife decided to help me with the visuals (she's an Architect and has a great drawing skills and the sense of style). We decided to develop a game with unique mechanics and a socially valuable story. The plan was to create something simple and polished in 3-4 month. I had a prototype of puzzle runner with unique mechanics so back than it seemed quite realistic to us. Life is an interesting journey and it took us more than 3 years to build and polish it.

    The challenges:

    · Almost at the same time as we started the development, few things have happened:

    · Our child was born.

    · A car accident. My wife and I ended up in hospital for several weeks and the driver at fault was fined for only 80$. We were stunned by the legal system in Russia and decided to move to Australia.

    · We discovered that our dog was not allowed to enter Australia directly from Russia and we had to prepare her for six months in another country.

    · I switched from a reliable full time office SAP BI job in the biggest Russian gas company to a Unity gamedev freelance.

    All these years our gamedev family was travelling across Europe in order to pass an English exam and prepare our dog for import to Australia.

    For us the only chance to get an Australian visa 189 was to pass an English exam with the highest score. The mission seemed to be impossible for a person who almost didn't know the language (me).

    I made 7 attempts of PTE English exam in Finland, Turkey and Bulgaria. I've coded in tents (we spent in a tent 3 weeks in Scandinavia and almost 3 month in the USA), cars (while my wife was driving), planes, ferries, hotels, apartments, deserts, beaches, mountains, forests and wherever possible. We were creating the game in more than 17 different countries on 3 continents.

    Also, in order to pay our bills I worked as a freelance developer.

    You can imagine how many times we thought to cease the development. Luckily we did not.

    THE GAME

    Mechanics:

    The main idea was to couple popular side scroll runner and tetris mechanics.

    First prototypes were fun to create but extremely hard to play. Player had to select blocks with a complex shapes one after another in order to create a passable path and simultaneously make the character (constantly running) jump and avoid the obstacles. It was a frustrating experience even for hardcore players, so we decided to simplify the gameplay.

    Few iterations later, we ended up with the current version. A player only selects the right level of flat platforms one after another and makes a constantly running character jump and avoid the obstacles. It still gives players a lot of challenge, but now it's not frustrating - it's fun.

    To keep players interested for a long time we added special platforms and power up(down)s that progressively adds challenge. For example, ice platforms increase character speed and block the ability to jump, cracked platforms crumble few seconds after the first touch etc. Speed up power downs increase character speed and player have to tap faster, block power downs lock a random level of platforms to select. Each new feature is introduced every 2-3 levels.

    Art:

    We decided not to use pixel art. Instead, we choose fantasy-like aesthetics. Such a style combined with alive backgrounds helped to create an immersive atmosphere of a dream. We used parallax with 5-6 layers for backgrounds and added there several animated moving characters. Story is told by stylish comics every few levels.

    Story:

    In order to help us create something meaningful, interesting and of high quality we found a great freelance scriptwriter. He wrote scripts and plots for TV, theatre etc but had no experience in gamedev.

    He did a great job and now we have a story that not only is interesting to discover but it is also draws attention to a vital social issue.

    The main purpose of the plot is to draw attention to social and healthcare issues related to mental health and fear management. In many countries (like Russia), mental health topics are traditionally avoided by people and even labeled as shameful. We want people to pay attention to each other, especially to children and to help them cope with traumatic experiences.

    Music and Sound design:

    One day I was surfing Vkontakte (Russian Facebook analog with lots of music content) and accidently found a composition that resonates with the game story. The composer was a Russian guy, who agreed to make several music themes at indie-friendly price. The results are great; each music theme represents the emotional condition of the main character (anxiety, fear, joy etc.). Music themes and sound design were highly appreciated by alpha testers.

    MARKETING:

    During development:

    I started to post in my devlog twitter account from the first day of the development. But as you can imagine in our situation I was extremely out of time. So, the updates were very inconsistent. Somehow, I've managed to get 9k+ followers.

    In the end of 2017 we started a travel blog (in Russian) on Instagram that wasn't related to gamedev at all. Today it has 120k+ active followers. However, we constantly shared the process of the game creation and many of our followers were began to wait the game release with enthusiasm.

    Release:

    3 weeks before release, we opened pre-orders on App Store and GPlay.

    At the same time, I started the marketing campaign:

    1. I emailed small, medium and even large youtubers and game press people from all over the world to make a review or letsplay. By far, I've sent several hundreds of emails.

    2. I posted almost every day on twitter facts about the game, release related info and asked people to make video of the game. I also spammed influencers and game related people with open DM.

    3. We informed our IG followers that our game is about to be released. And made several announcements after release.

    4. We filled the App Store form for featuring 10days prior the release (which is too late, you should do it 4-6 weeks prior)

    Results:

    We've got one nicely written article in press: https://games.mxdwn.com/news/atomic-horse-hopes-to-open-encourage-conversation-with-their-new-puzzle-platformer-lull-aby-dreamland-adventure/

    And several letsplays on medium sized youtube channels (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTMQNtJgmZW41WRkHXG6_Iw)

    The only channel that worked very good in our case was the IG. People there are really engaged and they know about our abilities and dedication, also they feel involved in the process of the game creation. We've got hundreds purchases on App Store and thousands downloads on Google Play. In 2 days they've left a lot of reviews (20+ on App Store, 200+ Google Play) and ratings (60+ App Store, 400+ Google Play). And the most important part is that they really loved the game!

    App Store and Google Play featuring:

    On the second day after the release (the day I wrote this text) I've checked AppAnnie database and found that Lull Aby was featured on App Store few hundred times! It was also listed above GTA in top paid Category in Russia and Ukraine. On Google Play it's #2 in trending Apps in Russia.

    The featuring gave us a slight boost in installs. According to the App Store Analytics only 12% of purchases are from featuring, 33% from search and 55% from links. I believe that at least half of the installs from search and 90-95% installs from link are made by our IG followers.

    On Google Play Lull Aby got around 4k installs. It generates slightly above 5$ in ads revenue.

    EARNINGS:

    Almost all revenue came from premium IOS version.

    Sorry, I will not disclose the exact figures. It's definitely not Supercell-like profits, but I can say that time and efforts that was spent on the game weren't a waste. For now, the earnings are sufficient to pay our bills and to live.

    Conclusion:

    Well, this is a lot of text. I hope it was interesting to read.

    Thanks for reading this far and thanks everyone who helped on our game.

    I hope our story will motivate someone to finish and polish his or her unique games.

    We had more than 100 extremely reasonable excuses to quit, but we didn't.

    Just do it no matter what.

    ​

    That's the game I'm talking about:

    Lull Aby trailer: https://youtu.be/ydiAMdClALA

    iOS (Paid 1.99$): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/lull-aby-dreamland-adventure/id1452315574

    Google Play Market (free with ads): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.atomicHorse.lullaby

    submitted by /u/plujak
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    Game AI Pro 4 Ever Shipping?

    Posted: 03 Aug 2019 09:04 AM PDT

    Does anyone know if Game AI Pro 4 is ever happening? I assume not given the timeline they have posted on the site (http://www.gameaipro.com/gameaipro4.html). I tried emailing the editor three weeks ago and he never got back to me. Maybe someone in this community knows the editor and can contact him directly?

    Technically version 3 should be released for free now per their agreement but I dont see that anywhere either...

    submitted by /u/Deathcalibur
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    I make indie instrumentals inspired by early 2000s indie rock bands like Modest Mouse, Pinback, Phoenix etc. All music is under Creative Commons and I really would just love to see it go to some use.

    Posted: 02 Aug 2019 08:12 PM PDT

    Latency issues for simple multiplayer game?

    Posted: 03 Aug 2019 08:15 AM PDT

    I am making this game multiplayer: http://jsfiddle.net/PxpVr/16/embedded/result/ I've created the lobby and have basic controls worked out. Now I'm brainstorming on how to sync players' movements. Can anyone help? I know there also come problems with latency, but I'm wondering if a game so simple would have these problems. Thanks in advance

    Stack is python/django, postgresql, jquery, using websocket (django-channels) for real-time updates

    submitted by /u/Mjjjokes
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    Portland, Oregon: UE4 Summer Demo Night - Share what you're working on!

    Posted: 03 Aug 2019 11:36 AM PDT

    Creating Sci-Fi Sounds For Games Using ONLY Free Software

    Posted: 03 Aug 2019 05:37 AM PDT

    In search of the hardest thoughts in rather soft dreams I'm begging you for help.

    Posted: 03 Aug 2019 07:33 AM PDT

    Hi, r/gamedev. For the name of training, I set myself the goal - to create at least somehow working prototype of a game in the cosmos genre, mostly inspired by the X universe. Something very casual, broken and a little bit ridiculous. I want to try as many different things as possible until I lose my mind (which is likely to happen much earlier than I would like).

    Features I want to do:

    * shove AI, which I have not yet encountered in ships/stations/other suspicious objects. It's not so difficult to make a bunch of behaviors and put them together, right?

    * with the hope of a bright AI - merchants who know everyone and everything, supplying all kinds of objects in our cute abstract universe.

    * all sorts of things which can be traded / used / thrown into space, attracting strange personalities who explode for some unknown reason when I approach them, teleporting me to distant parts of the universe where people finally free of my bullshit about the greatest project of all time.

    * production. Especially production. A ton of production. Maybe even Factorio-level of production. Station, planets, mega-machines. For sure.

    ​

    And now, a great question - what can you recommend to implement? What are your thoughts on this whole idea? What pipeline I should have?

    submitted by /u/Eleseer
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    Landing Site from Metroid Prime in UE4

    Posted: 03 Aug 2019 10:59 AM PDT

    Dynamic character rig, update #3

    Posted: 03 Aug 2019 10:55 AM PDT

    Screenshot Saturday #444 - Pleasing Aesthetics

    Posted: 02 Aug 2019 08:07 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.

    Previous Screenshot Saturdays

    Bonus question: What game soundtrack have you listened to the most?

    submitted by /u/Sexual_Lettuce
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    Konquest, retro fighting game

    Posted: 03 Aug 2019 10:12 AM PDT

    Been working away at this game for awhile now mainly developing it by myself, just wanted to show off the main menu to round start and the scenes in between. Will get some fighting footage out eventually after the combat is more fine tuned. I went into making a fighting game thinking it would be relatively simple, but my gosh was I wrong, its been an incredible learning process and has humbled me just thinking about how hard the original MK games must've been to pull together.

    If you're interested in seeing more updates follow: https://twitter.com/KONQUESTGAME

    https://reddit.com/link/cll5xb/video/01yuxbwkm9e31/player

    submitted by /u/Romp88
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    Testing some light. Any suggestion for a good night light in Unreal?

    Posted: 03 Aug 2019 10:11 AM PDT

    Good Game Design - Super Mario Maker 2: Building Better Creators

    Posted: 03 Aug 2019 09:11 AM PDT

    Is UI design copyrighted? Is there such thing?

    Posted: 02 Aug 2019 08:36 PM PDT

    Publishing advice

    Posted: 02 Aug 2019 05:16 PM PDT

    I'm a solodev and I've been contacted by some publishers about my current project. Any small/solo devs out there with experience dealing with publishers who can offer advice? Should I partner with a publisher? Self publish?

    submitted by /u/mission-ctrl
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    Where to upload demo for pitching publishers or playtesting?

    Posted: 02 Aug 2019 08:58 PM PDT

    Any advice on where to store your games demo for pitching to publishers and play testing and all those situations where you want to share the game but not make it publicly available? Is Steam set up to do this or is there another service thats popular for this sort of thing?

    Thanks in advance!

    submitted by /u/ryandlf
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    Getting Started

    Posted: 03 Aug 2019 06:31 AM PDT

    Hello! I've been really interested in game development for awhile now, especially on the indie side of things, and just to get my foot in and start working on development skills I wanted to find a place to work on some of my own ideas while I'm saving up before going to school.

    I really want to make a 2D/pixel art type of game, top down type of game like the Sword of Ditto or Stardew valley with a lot of RPG elements tied in. My main issue is not really knowing the best place to kick of practicing with no real experience in software/game development.

    I know there are a few game engines out there like GameMaker and Unreal Engine that offer good resources for development, but for my interests, and especially coding (I've heard a lot about C# and JavaScript), anyone have any advice about the best way or place to start to get started?

    submitted by /u/An-Meicniocht
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    Legality of allowing custom names in a sports game

    Posted: 02 Aug 2019 09:26 PM PDT

    I'm thinking about making an ice hockey game and have some questions about trademarks etc

    If I allow the game player to name their hockey players whatever they choose, and they decide to name them after famous NHL players (naturally), then they post the video on Youtube. What protections do I have / how much risk am I incurring by making a sports game? Is this why there are hardly any sports games by indie companies?

    The game would have 0 reference to the NHL or any NHL teams / logos etc

    Thanks

    submitted by /u/canal_smarts
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