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    How to work with an artist - a step-by-step guide

    September 30, 2019

    How to work with an artist - a step-by-step guide

    How to work with an artist - a step-by-step guide

    Posted: 30 Sep 2019 04:47 AM PDT

    Hey folks. I am not an artist. I am a designer and programmer for my 1 person studio. However, I have found that most of the "wow" and sales come from having really good art. If you have always made half-assed programmer art and thought nobody would notice they do notice. I highly recommend that you hire a professional artist. Even if you can't afford an artist to do the entire game you can make the most of it by hiring one to at least do the main character or your cover art. It makes all the difference in the world and is worth every penny. This is a guide on how to work with one even if you have a technical background.

    TL:DR - Give quick, constructive feedback, about the work not the person. If you want to see an example of my back and forth with an artist to create a series of characters I did a visual story here: https://imgur.com/gallery/LJKa73K

    ​

    Back to the guide...

    Since I released my first game in 2011 I have released 6 games and hired at least 6 artists to do some form of work for me. I have made a lot of mistakes that caused more churn and cost more money. However I have gotten better. So much better. The last artist I hired told me "That might be one of the best and detailed description for a job ive ever gotten, so it's really helpful thanks!"

    So I am here are my tips for giving an artist everything that they need to give you some awesome art. Note I am not going into the business side such as price negotiation, contracts, and image/character rights. That is a totally different article. This is just a series of tips to get them to give you what you are looking for.

    Tips:

    A specification document:

    This is a SHORT document that explains what artwork you need done by them. It also explains what it should generally look like. Here is what needs to go in that document.

    • Provide a single specification document that tells them the game's mood, setting, references, and examples. I like to post mine in a Google Slides because we can share it, and both make comments and draw lines and arrows on it.
    • List out all the art they need to deliver. For example: 1 run animation, 1 walk animation, 1 animation of them climbing a ladder...
    • In your specification DON'T write a huge lore dump with huge blocks of text describing your game's history and setting and all that. No artist is ever going to read it. That isn't a knock against artists, I just know from experience that they work better with pictures and after 3 bullet points they stop reading (again not knocking them, that is just how their brains work)
    • For all your references you should provide a sentence that tells them what you like about it and what they should pull out of that example. Such as, "I love the way everything is out of focus in the background of this painting. Do something like that." An image is worth a 1000 words... and 1000 interpretations. You need to tell them exactly why you thought the reference image you included was worth showing them.
    • Look at your artist's portfolio and pull out pieces that they created in the past that you like and are relevant to your project. Include those images with a note "I really like the way you did this character's hair, and I want you to do something similar for my game."
    • If you actually want to see my specification document that I shared with him click here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1hxdkyRYpsknu9Iz_cQgrnKLtfisG6YWyN_3p6n7Xz60/edit?usp=sharing

    While they work

    Once they have the spec and start working on it they are going to give you some sketches back. This can be really challenging because you are going to find differences between what you imagined and what they gave you. Here is how to deal with that

    • Give constructive feedback. It is a game of telephone and so always be constructive in your feedback.
    • Give feedback in a compliment sandwich: What you love (bread), What you want changed (the filling), and then another thing what you love (the other bread) .
    • Keep telling them your personal mood. I have been a freelancer and done a lot over email and you can't get those subtle nonverbal cues that you would get if you were working in the same office. So silence can be deadly and an artist will start going on head trips wondering what you are thinking "Are they not answering me because they hate my work?" Be sure to tell them what your general mood is. I always say "I am loving this, you are doing great!" or "I am so excited ot be working on this with you!"
    • Always answer emails quickly. Even if you know you can't get to it for a day or two say when you will get back. For example: "Hey I'm traveling today and I will have to get you an answer tomorrow." There is nothing worse than that awkward waiting not knowing when you are going to get an answer.

    Finishing

    • Be absolutely clear when you are happy with a piece and they can quit. An artist can iterate on something forever. You need to be absolutely clear. "This is great! I consider this piece done. Ship it! Start work on the other piece"
    • Pay them immediately upon completion. There are zero excuses for stringing them along and making them hound you to pay them. Bad form and they will not want to work with you ever again. Boo.

    If you want to see exactly how I work with an artist, I wrote up an email-by-email story of how I worked with an artist: https://imgur.com/gallery/LJKa73K

    submitted by /u/zukalous
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    What Games Are Like For Someone Who Doesn't Play Games

    Posted: 29 Sep 2019 03:00 PM PDT

    3d mesh path finder (how to?)

    Posted: 30 Sep 2019 08:17 AM PDT

    What exactly makes a boss fight good and interesting?

    Posted: 30 Sep 2019 05:16 AM PDT

    One of the most important things for me while developing a game, is what exactly makes a boss fight truly good?

    I have played games considering to have the best boss fights, games like God Of War, Kingdom Hearts (non-Disney bosses, usually end game or secret bosses are just fucking awesome), Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro, Devil May Cry (played all of them, unfortunately most of the bosses aren't interesting, the most memorable I remember is Vergil, Dark Knight, Mundus and Credo), Shadow Of The Colossus, a little bit of Megaman and a little bit of Legend Of Zelda (Ocarina Of Time and Twilight Princess to be more specific).

    But even after playing all those games I am still not entirely sure what makes a boss fight good. Is it the design? The music of the boss? The moveset/combat patterns it has? The place/map that you fight them? The importance of the boss in the story or the world of the game? Is it maybe all of them or something else entirely? Because I have experienced bosses that may have most of those things and still weren't worth fighting them.

    A lot of games suffer from terrible, boring, uninspired and generic bosses, and I want to try as much as I can not to be one of those people who makes games like that. Could you please help and explain to me what makes a boss fight good?

    submitted by /u/xxxgreekwarrior46xxx
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    Ideas or tips for TD enemy AI

    Posted: 30 Sep 2019 10:40 AM PDT

    Hi!

    I am creating a TD game. My enemies that are spawning are using right now a "waypoints system" to find their path to the end.

    But when spawning enemies, seeing that all enemies follow exactly the same path is not interesting.

    The path it is taking is defined by Unity using transform.translate.

    I tried to add some randomness, but adding randomnes in X and Y while spawning still does not make much of a difference.

    I have checked some algorithms such as dijkstra's algorithm or A* in order to create a pathfinding that is a little bit random for each enemy, but the game is for Android and IOS, so I don't want to affect too much in performance specially because it already has a lot to manage with the characters' data. Also because if there are 50 enemies on the screen, it would have to calculate for 50 enemies each frame and that is probably too much.

    Do you have any tips or ideas to improve this?

    I appreciate any help!

    submitted by /u/Mxlt
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    Game Design User Experience Best Practices // Ultimate Guide

    Posted: 30 Sep 2019 04:39 AM PDT

    Game Networking Demystified, Part VI: Game Genres and FAQ

    Posted: 30 Sep 2019 10:00 AM PDT

    Prototyping done right... or not

    Posted: 30 Sep 2019 07:31 AM PDT

    Hello, /r/gamedev

    I need some advice.

    Recently I started working on my first game. I have some previous experience with gamedev, although I have not made Pong or Space Invaders, lol. I thought that making a small top-down shooter would be feasible for me.

    I started with the prototyping phase, just to test my ideas. The first feedback was negative, so I incorporated the comments from playtesters and 2 weeks later came up with a new prototype. But the feedback was sort of negative again:

    • It's just another top-down shooter
    • No grenades. Add grenades, pls
    • The animation looks bland - could you fix the animation.
    • Enemies should blow up like crazy - fix that. In your game they just disappear.
    • etc.

    I sort of agree and understand the feedback.

    But on the other hand, I don't seem to understand what the scope of a prototype should be?

    • It's not possible to produce cool-looking animations in a span of two weeks.
    • It's not possible to add different sorts of weapons (including grenades) in two weeks.
    • I don't have time to implement a blow-up effect, etc.

    So, I have a few questions about prototyping:

    1. How much time should I dedicate to a single version of a prototype? (I put 2-3 weeks)
    2. What should I put inside a prototype, what kind of effects, assets, etc? (I used just some stock assets)
    3. Who should playtest a prototype? (I asked my friends)
    4. How do I know if a prototype is interesting and that I may try to make an actual game based on it? (I have no idea)

    I recorded a small video where I play the prototype in question:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFgXw9Z5KZY

    I appreciate any thoughts and answers. Thanks!

    submitted by /u/yateam
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    Can I develop a game at work by myself?

    Posted: 30 Sep 2019 11:01 AM PDT

    TL;DR: Developing 20-30 level game in Unity by myself, never used Unity but I can program. I am the only programmer in my office, and I am teaching my boss how to use Unity. Any advice is super appreciated!

    To give a little bit of background, I am a CIS student, working as a workstudy with a lot of experience in various programming languages.. I have made some rails web applications, and developed various projects for fun in languages like C, Java, JavaScript, and Ruby. Throughout this, I have learned some useful information about servers, databases, dealing with back ends and scripting etc..

    I would really appreciate any advice, as I have no idea really what I should expect/how much I will be able to accomplish. We are going to develop a full game in the Unity engine...

    ​

    THE GAME:

    We have some pretty well thought out ideas about what the game would look like fully finished, and I will likely be expected to develop around 20-30 levels of 2-D and sky view game-play.. On top of that, we have to develop the game to be fully accessible, to the fully-blind and the partially blind. We plan to use various built-in Unity plugins to help us cover accessibility. We will likely be using a lot of Unity plugins for a lot of this project..

    ​

    I have literally never used Unity before, but I can usually pick things up pretty quickly... I just really want to know if anyone here believes this is even possible for me to do mostly by myself... However, My boss has talked about us 'talking' to the CIS student body and asking them for help in development so it's possible I won't have to work on the game completely by myself. We also may be able to hire a coworker to help me develop the game, the grant we are applying for covers 200 hours of work on a community college salary.

    I personally am really excited about the opportunity to create a video game for the college, as I am just trying to get something I can put on my resume, and I actually really enjoy being able to do something creative and interesting. I am willing to put a lot of work in.

    My Question:

    -How hard will this be to get developed in a time period of 1 to 2 semesters of college.

    -Does anyone have experience in accessibility, as it seems like making a fully-blind game option is really really challenging.

    -Any tips or tutorials/books/resources I could look at for getting deep into development with unity and C#?

    submitted by /u/iKraftyz
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    Claws & Paws: Post Mortem of A Game Made in 1 Month! (With Source Code!)

    Posted: 30 Sep 2019 05:55 AM PDT

    Hey Reddit!

    Me and a friend decided to challenge ourselves and make a game in 1 month.
    We started on the 24th of July and the deadline was the 31st of August, giving ourselves till the 30th of September to test and polish the game before releasing it.

    Here's the link for it if you wanna try it: https://phillserrazina.itch.io/clawsandpaws

    Post-Mortem

    C&P was an interesting experience. I have been in several game jams before but they were all 48 hours long an whatnot, and I had never taken them seriously because it was just a little fun thingy to do over the weekend.
    Me and my friend agreed that this would be a "Portfolio Showcase" type of project, but we would treat this as a real life scenario, so I wanted to get out of it with something that I was proud of, and I think I can say that I achieved that!

    What Went Wrong

    - The project started out as a simple thing: a Swords And Sandals clone (hence the name). We had the "cake" of the game ready within the first week and a half really, but I think we got cocky, and started adding little things, even when the big things weren't quite right yet.
    Because of this, I think the game has a lot of content in it, but none of it feels concise or explored enough, making it a bit boring and repetitive.
    - Not enough planning. We're both beginner game devs so we were exploring what we could do with the tools that were given to us. Because of this, we planned for some stuff to be made only to realize that said things are not doable (as far as we're aware of). Not only this, but towards the end of the project, we realized that we were complicating many many things but it was far too late to change them.
    - Making a RPG is something that is often dreaded by many game developers, and boy do I understand why now. Making the system wasn't even the hard part, the balancing was the biggest pain. And even now, after a month of testing, we're still getting a lot of balancing complaints.

    What Went Well

    - We did everything we wanted to do! Our Trello list was all checked off, and we're really proud of that. Even though the things that we added to the game aren't the most exciting or interesting, they're there and they work!
    - We managed to finish it and be happy with it; Despite the lack of coherent content, the game doesn't have any game breaking bugs as far as we're aware. You can play it from finish to end without seeing something "wrong", and that's a big plus for us!
    - We took the "cake, icing and cherry" approach, and it helped SO MUCH. During the first weeks it was plain and not interesting at all, and it stayed like that for a while tbh, but once we got to the cherry part, the improvements happened overnight almost, it was really awesome to see everything come together.

    Thank you for reading! Any critiques to the game would be amazing! :) If you want the Source Code to explore the project and maybe improve upon it as a template, you can find it one the itch page linked above!

    Claws & Paws Itch Banner

    submitted by /u/PhillSerrazina
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    What was your first complete game and how would you do it differently?

    Posted: 30 Sep 2019 10:52 AM PDT

    Do people use Instagram for reading about game design?

    Posted: 30 Sep 2019 10:47 AM PDT

    I know that a lot of people play games just to kill time, but I have a strong passion for immersive games. I want to share my passion with other game designers and developers. Moreover, I want to discuss my thoughts with others and polish my ideas.

    Now I started working on content for my account https://instagram.com/gamequisitor/ and I am wondering what are you thinking about this combination, Instagram + Game Design. What topics are more suitable for Instagrammers?

    P.S. Regarding my experience with game design, I've worked in a small indie game studio for five years, read books, this forum) and other sources about game design.

    submitted by /u/deadlyshadoff
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    I've created a free sound pack of 343 game tones and 199 general sounds for game developers.

    Posted: 30 Sep 2019 04:26 AM PDT

    Zapsplat has created a new community for our users. We just released a pack of 343 game tones and a pack of 199 general sound effects. To get them, just join the community, where you'll find a post with the password and link to download https://zapsplat-community.mn.co/ we will be adding many more 'secret' sound packs regularly.

    submitted by /u/Zapsplatmedia
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    Sprite pack for racing game (CC0) - with demo and source code

    Posted: 30 Sep 2019 08:10 AM PDT

    The sprite pack was created by my friend Vinoue and is available here: https://microstudio.dev/i/Vinoue/racingspritepack/

    The pack includes cars in multiple colors, background mountains, trees, rocks and road signs to enhance the roadsides. It is intended to be used for creating games inspired by the old classic Out Run (or more recent Horizon Chase). The license is CC0, public domain.

    You can download the full pack as a ZIP archive, no registration needed.

    Or you can clone the project or import your selection of images for your own microStudio project.

    I have made an integration demo, which you can also clone and reuse in any ways: Browse code and clone: https://microstudio.dev/i/gilles/racingdemo/ Play: https://microstudio.io/gilles/racingdemo/

    This is the first of a series of 5 packs for microStudio that we plan to release in the coming weeks.

    microStudio is a free online game dev environment with which you can create games, learn about programming, produce game art etc. It allows to work in teams on projects and is probably good for game jams(provided you are creating a 2D game). Check it out!

    submitted by /u/pmgl_io
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    Best news sources to keep up with game development software trends?

    Posted: 30 Sep 2019 10:06 AM PDT

    Hi there,

    I'm a non-dev interested in keeping up with game industry news from the tech and software side of things, and was wondering if this community has any suggestions for sources to follow! Filtering my newsfeeds for "gaming news" doesn't quite get at what I'm looking for specifically (though generally I do love all gaming news).

    The topics and trends I'm interested in include shifts in game development best practices, market shakeups in the game engine / audio engine / physics engine software realm, advancements in software tech that aid game development, etc.

    Basically, I'm interested in any news relevant to the tools game developers use in their day to day! Full disclosure - I'm dating a game dev and want to learn more about her field, yes I'm an avid gamer but I find the development side fascinating.

    Any recommendations for great sources to follow would be much appreciated - like I said, I'm having a little trouble zeroing in on the topics and trends I'm talking about here. Thank you!

    submitted by /u/crazycriv
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    Unreal Engine 4 Minutes Beginner Tutorial Play Sound at location, 3D ambient audio

    Posted: 30 Sep 2019 04:42 AM PDT

    In this episode of UE 4 Minutes Tutorial I show how to spawn Cricket sounds around our character to create 3D ambient. All in 4 minutes.

    https://youtu.be/Peykjxd01ys

    submitted by /u/kamolescu
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    Useful blogs and ressources for game marketing ?

    Posted: 30 Sep 2019 08:24 AM PDT

    Hey,

    I'm looking for blogs, resources or tools to help me sell more games on both steam and mobile app store.

    Thanks

    submitted by /u/revoltgaming
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    Website

    Posted: 30 Sep 2019 11:42 AM PDT

    Hello! I recently just started my own private game dev company. Im trying out a few new things, come check out my website so see all the games ive made and the cheapest prices for development! Thank you. yourcheapgamedev.com

    submitted by /u/itsCameron007
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    Royalty Free Beat Hip Hop (No Copyright Music) Instrumental -- Feel it

    Posted: 30 Sep 2019 11:40 AM PDT

    Question about Porting a Java Game to Multiplatform

    Posted: 30 Sep 2019 11:39 AM PDT

    Hello everyone, I have been developing a 2D Java RPG on and off since my Senior Year of High School and now that I've graduated college I finally have time and the people to finish the project. When I started the project I was just a novice High School coder and just created it as a custom-built Java application, the game doesn't use any external libraries save for UI (javafx and jswing). The game currently runs very well on Windows, a little less well on Mac OS X and I very much would like to release on Mobile Platforms (iOS and Android).

    My question is basically about how difficult the porting process will be? I've created Android Applications before so I am familiar with the process, however I've never created an iOS Application and I'm very confused on if a Java Application can even run on iOS. Any insight into this topic would be greatly appreciated!

    submitted by /u/shtevay
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    Any tips or advice for developing for the fully-blind in Unity?

    Posted: 30 Sep 2019 11:28 AM PDT

    I am new to game development, and my job requires me to develop a game with fully-blind capabilities. I have had a really hard time finding any useful resources or tutorials for creating a game for the disabled and the fully-blind. I hope this doesn't come off as me being lazy, I just really don't know where to look for this kind of thing.

    submitted by /u/iKraftyz
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    Animation queueing for a turn based game: Daisy chain events VS. do things instantaneously + cascading visual delay?

    Posted: 30 Sep 2019 11:19 AM PDT

    Let's say we're making a turn-based game where the player takes an action that triggers the next turn. For example, moving a unit or clicking "Next Turn" (doesn't matter!) In response to this, a series of things might occur. Enemies could move or attack, barrels could explode, voice lines might play, etc.

    Even though this is a turn-based game, we want to display these events in a particular order, with some delay in between them. However, let's also assume that the exact events occurring are not completely deterministic. Maybe Event 1 rolls a die that causes Event 2 to happen. Event 2 creates a condition that cancels an event that *would* have followed it... you get the idea.

    What is the best model to *visually* display these events/animations in the correct order? It seems like there are two general approaches:

    ​

    1. Daisy-chaining: When a visual-delaying event runs, the game stops processing any further game logic until the event marks itself as "complete". For example, if the player threw a fireball, the fireball event tells the game loop to pause until it hits the target. Upon completion, we look at the results of the fireball explosion and see what to do next.
    2. Cascading delays: The game processes all events "instantly". If the first event displays an animation, it tells the GameMaster "An animation of X seconds is running." Then, if another event should display an animation, the game will wait X seconds to run it, where "X" is the value stored by event 1. If yet a third event should display an animation, that one is delayed by X+Y, where Y is the time of the second event, and so forth.

    It seems like there are pros and cons to both approach. In (1), gameplay logic is now *depending* on visual logic to complete, which somehow seems wrong to me for a turn-based game. However with (2), it could be prone to failure if the events do not report the right timing values back to the central GameMaster. We could end up with a big queue of animations and not necessarily know where each one came from.

    What does r/gamedev think?

    submitted by /u/zirconst
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    Getting a programming job while continuing to make indie games on the side.

    Posted: 29 Sep 2019 10:09 PM PDT

    So I've been into indie game development for a little over a year. Since I can now code I've thought about trying to get a job as a programmer. I was told by someone who knows a programmer that the company owns everything they code - even what they make in their free time. From what I understood, when they were hired, they had to sign a document that gave the company ownership of everything the employee codes while employed there. Is this type of arrangement common for coding jobs? Is it feasible for me to expect to get a programming job that allows me to still create and sell my own games?

    submitted by /u/InverseRobzoid
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    How do I stop thinking when I create something (Gameplay, asset, texture etc.) that it is just a placeholder

    Posted: 30 Sep 2019 11:05 AM PDT

    I have the problem that I start creating a new asset for example. After some hours I think "It doesn't have to be perfect I can change it later". We all know this lie because it just stacks up to a lot of WIP objects in your game.

    submitted by /u/DasEvoli
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