Lessons I've learned in the four years I've been in this hobby. |
- Lessons I've learned in the four years I've been in this hobby.
- People wont like your game if it's ugly
- Unity 2020.1 is now available!
- Creating Handpainted Textures for 3D Environments - Tips & Tricks
- How do 2D sprites behave as tridimentional objects in the Sims 1?
- I want to share some 3D Lowpoly Assets with you beautiful people! 51 Camping / Survival props for free!
- Large open world terrain. Unity or Unreal?
- C++ game engines? Write your own?
- The long road to following your dream
- I have this Turn-Based-Strategy framework and I have no idea of what it should become
- Large game publisher rejects my friend's game, only to develop it and publish it themselves.
- So in a 3D with carpet, do they put carpet texture over an object then make it bumpy with a 3D modeler or would they use particles to actually make carpet?
- My first game. It happened!
- What's the simplest way of preventing game elements from blocking the camera view?
- How can I make a tactical rpg game
- A Little Update on the Reddit Games Festival Idea
- Games in which 3D environment is used as a main menu?
- Unity-Bolt Part 3: Make a new Node using Other Nodes - Getting Started with Bolt
- Is creating Candy Crush / AFK clones very lucrative?
- SNES-like Music
- Is it still worth it to develop for mobile as Indie devs ?
- Methods of creating a 2D animation from 3D animation captured on Unity's camera
- Can't fix these errors?
| Lessons I've learned in the four years I've been in this hobby. Posted: 23 Jul 2020 05:28 AM PDT I started making a game in 2016. My dream was to make an open world RPG. At the beginning, I had read everyone's warnings, so I decided to make a team of 3 people. Very quickly I realized that nobody was going to help me because there was no prototype. So I gave up for a year. In mid-2017, I came back, this time deciding to take courses on Unity. So I followed Unity courses to do as it was advised everywhere: a pong, a tetris... In short : a simple game. It was fun at first, but I got bored quickly. Mid-2018, there was a course on Udemy to make an RPG. So I took it. And quickly gave up (towards the middle I think) but... I didn't give up my game, because that's what I wanted to do. So it wasn't easy, I had a job that took all my time (evenings and weekends) and not much time to do my game. And that's normal, it was for a science PhD thesis. But I managed to do it. Little by little, until now. To tell you what I managed to do: A city (village?) of 8 souls, 2 shops, 3 monsters, 6 buildings, 3 different weapons, a trading system, 3 complete dialogues with branchings, a save system, a container system, an inventory, a loot system. Of course, all this is of the quality of an hobbyist, but that's enough for me. I'm telling you all this because I'm getting some tips and tricks out of it. First of all, if you're in the craving for something, you gotta go for it. You don't have to start with a pong, or you'll be disgusted. Then, secondly... I had a more or less precise idea in mind and especially of games I wanted to copy/improve. So I dissected them like a madman, until I saw a logic in each system that I wanted to copy. It was important, for example, for the skill system I wanted to implement. In order not to completely copy a game, look what other indie guys are doing! Buy an atypical game on steam for example. Often, the dev' have used a little trick to simplify their life, and that could be useful for your own game. I also made a reserve of code and script to reuse later. These scripts could come from online courses, forums, reddit... Anywhere on the internet. That's why unity is a good engine... There is almost 10 years of experience from the community. I was also willing to pay for asset (inventory and dialogue system). If you sign up for a sport, at least in Europe, you spend at least 300 euros per year. There's no reason not to spend on a hobby that's important to you, it just has to be proportional to your budget. From time to time I see questions in this reddit with 0 answers. If there's one thing I've learned: 1° Nobody is going to help you on a too technical problem (because nobody knows without having the project in their hands). 2° Nobody will help you with a question that is too broad because there are too many answers to give. Some people have been able to help me in certain ways. I found them on some very specialized discords. And still... most of the time I found the answers on my own. The reason I'm telling you this is that I think you need to grieve: Nobody cares about your game and your problem. And your most useful resource isn't knowing how to program or make art, but... you're on your own. And in that sense, it looks like a thesis... This requires you to break down all your problems into small tasks. It's thanks to those little tasks that I've been able to keep going on. Each time it was small victories that didn't radically change the game but gave me a feeling of satisfaction. Lately, I've had a job that doesn't require me to stay very late at night and keeps my weekends intact. My game has never been better. My routine is to work on my game every day. No matter how silly the task of the day. It can be changing a value. Making a rock. Anything. To say that it's impossible to make such or such game... I often see the example of the latest AAA to show that it takes 100 billion hours. Don't be fool. It doesn't make sense to compare yourself with such game. On the other hand, I find that very old games (before 2010) are a good point of comparison because it's possible to do roughly the same thing with slightly less quality, but with more powerful and easier to handle tools. Careful, it's still complicated. And you'll need to simplify this or that part of the game. But in fact, you'll do it naturally if you keep working on your game. Once you're in the bath, you'll know what you can and cannot do according to your abilities. Artistically, I can't do Cyberpunk 77. On the other hand, I'm becoming more and more efficient at doing lowpoly and I'm getting more and more ambitious. And I can do it, because I've been as modular as possible. As a result, the more "art" I create, the more I can make art through almost improbable combinations. The point is... the hardest part is getting started. I've gotten to the point where it's fun to work there every day. Cheers. [link] [comments]  | ||
| People wont like your game if it's ugly Posted: 23 Jul 2020 12:47 PM PDT I participated in the GMTK Game Jam 2020 and it was a soul crushing experience. I put so much effort into the mechanics and programming, I made posts on social media about it. I put so much more effort into this than in all the jams I've made in the past, and yet I got zero feedback and I landed at the bottom of the list. It's the worst rated game I have made so far. Like I didn't even got told what's wrong with the game; people just gave it a bad rating and left, without leaving any criticism. The only thing I can conclude is that my game is just ugly. Which admittedly, it is. Mark talked only about mechanics in his video, but what jumped into my eye right immediately is, how every game in his video was somewhat pleasing to look at. I mean people pretend that mechanics are the most important thing, and yet everyone judges your game by it's graphics and they don't even play it, no matter how creative or good your mechanic is. How am I, a programmer, supposed to make a good looking game? Sorry for the rant, I am just sad and angry and tired. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Unity 2020.1 is now available! Posted: 23 Jul 2020 06:43 AM PDT
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| Creating Handpainted Textures for 3D Environments - Tips & Tricks Posted: 23 Jul 2020 07:51 AM PDT
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| How do 2D sprites behave as tridimentional objects in the Sims 1? Posted: 23 Jul 2020 06:42 AM PDT
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| Posted: 23 Jul 2020 05:52 AM PDT
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| Large open world terrain. Unity or Unreal? Posted: 23 Jul 2020 10:41 AM PDT I'm comfortable with Unity, and they've added terrain tools in the past few years, however it looks like Unreal is suited for large open worlds and terrain. Are the differences big enough to learn Unreal? [link] [comments]  | ||
| C++ game engines? Write your own? Posted: 23 Jul 2020 08:11 AM PDT As everyone knows, C++ is the "best" language to write games with (quotation marks for generalization). But, as far as I know, there's only one mainstream C++ engine out there, which is Unreal. I've only used C# so far, with Unity, MonoGame and FNA. I'd like to get more into C++. What should I do? I like experimenting, so I'd like to use a framework that handles things like graphics, audio, input etc to build my on stuff on top. Should I make my own engine or is there a frame work that suits my needs? [link] [comments]  | ||
| The long road to following your dream Posted: 23 Jul 2020 11:58 AM PDT First, let me just say, for as long as I've read stuff on reddit this is my first attempt at a thread ever. So let me apologize if it sucks. I've just read a lot of motivating and uplifting threads here recently, and I wanted to add to it if I can. To give you a basic background of me. I am a software engineer who spends his days working in both front end and back end languages and thankfully a lot of C# and JavaScript. I actually became a software engineer because I really wanted to be a game developer, but knew making good money was important as well (owning a home, raising kids, health insurance etc). So... when I decided to go back to school years ago I made the decision to take on a career that I had hoped would help me learn what I'd need to know. Help me to not feel chaotically lost in the idea of game development. In the last 15 years the whole community around game development has really flourished, compared to when I had first tried to learn. Now comfortable with the code side of things, I decided after the virus lockdowns took place this was the perfect chance to make a change and learn more about game development. I started in Unity because it's one of the platforms so many people talk about, and I know some people have their issues with it. However, much like C# and JavaScript, when there's lots of people using it, there's lots of online resources to help you learn. In April and May, I worked tirelessly till wee hours in the morning and every chance I could get (basically ignoring my kids and wife, to be terribly honest), but I had the support of them knowing how important this was to me and that was HUGE. So lesson 1, get support from anyone and everyone you can. By the month of June, I had learned enough that I was toying around with various tutorial projects that I was really turning them into entirely different games. I finally felt it was time to start my own from scratch. I hoped to get buy in from my closest friend on a project, and while they said they were down to help with art and things, I never felt like they really wanted to commit. Since it was always me talking about it, and nothing from them other than "good idea", etc. Well this, unfortunately demoralized me a bit. Thinking maybe I'm just chasing childish things. Since mid June, I've been really trying to get back to finding that fire I had in April and May. I really want to say thank you to so many other people for sharing their stories and struggles here. It makes such a huge difference for me! It really helps me say screw it, it's worth it even if it's just for me. You will always need some support in your life, but sometimes you can find that in the oddest of places. I'm not giving up my job, I've found that balance of having a family as well as working on my dream when I can. Heck, since I'm a terrible artist and my wife is amazing, she has committed to helping create digital art that I can animate myself. 15 years ago, I set out on the idea of becoming a game developer. I'm not there, I'm still learning, and only been working as a full stack software engineer for 6 years, but I found my way!! I am now trying to come up with a simple enough game that is both mildly unique and simple enough that I can launch it on various platforms. I want to learn from that experience before I shoot my entire wad into my dream game. Maybe this is the slowest and most overly cautious approach ever to reaching my goal, but I just want to point out it can be done! I want to thank everyone in this community for the feedback on things, their stories! 100% all of it! I will be sure to share more about my projects when I have things I feel worth sharing, but I hope someone is reading this and finds the support in my words as I have found in others that have shared their stories. [link] [comments]  | ||
| I have this Turn-Based-Strategy framework and I have no idea of what it should become Posted: 23 Jul 2020 08:56 AM PDT
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| Large game publisher rejects my friend's game, only to develop it and publish it themselves. Posted: 22 Jul 2020 01:59 PM PDT
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| Posted: 23 Jul 2020 09:44 AM PDT I thought it would be using a carpet texture but that doesn't look that realistic, but using particles seems like it would need a lot of rendering power. Do people use both or do some people use one or the other? [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 22 Jul 2020 08:46 PM PDT
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| What's the simplest way of preventing game elements from blocking the camera view? Posted: 23 Jul 2020 10:53 AM PDT Hi guys, I'm working on a game that uses a camera high-angle shot and, of course, the problem with this approach is that tall elements block the camera view constantly. I made a short video for illustrating the issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFOUpiF-qgY I've been considering the following options, but I'm not completely happy with any of them: Option A) Custom shaders for tall objects, to make them transparent or invisible when the character is behind them (example). Drawback: there are too many tall objects in the game, and some of them already have their own shaders (e.g. terrain, windows, etc). I would like to keep their current shaders if it's possible. Option B) Custom shader for characters, to show their silhouette highlighted, or their outline when they are behind a wall. Drawback: you can see the main character and the enemies, but you can't see the path or other obstacles. Any more ideas? How would you approach this issue? [link] [comments]  | ||
| How can I make a tactical rpg game Posted: 23 Jul 2020 01:28 PM PDT I have a game concept that i'm really excited about, it's basically XCOM with some differences. I don't expect that I can make a perfect version of the game with every feature that I'd like to see in a final version of the game, because I don't have very much experience with coding, I'm an artist. What I would like to do is make a kind of minimum viable prototype version of the game, so that I can at least find out whether or not my ideas to improve the gameplay of the genre will pan out. I've done some python coding in the past to automate certain tasks for a tabletop game that I developed, but I'd definitely call myself a beginner. I saw pygame in the engine faq, and took a look at it, but I didn't really understand what was going on. I think that I could learn it eventually, but what if there were something simpler? I found a very basic example of the basic structure of a turn based isometric game running in godot, but after taking a look at the scripts I really have no idea what's going on. I have experience getting assets ready and set up in unity, but I don't have a clue about C#, and after taking a look at some tutorial information, it seems like it would be quite a while before I'd have enough of an understanding to actually be writing code to make the game work What would you guys suggest? [link] [comments]  | ||
| A Little Update on the Reddit Games Festival Idea Posted: 23 Jul 2020 07:20 AM PDT Hi folks! After talking to a lot of moderators, I've got some rather mixed news. On one end, it looks like a lot of folks have tried this in the past and not succeeded, or been burned by others. It is a lot of effort to organize for sure. On the other end, folks at /r/Games would be interested in our proposal, and the community of /r/IndieGaming seemed very receptive too! A lot of people joined the thread last post, maybe we can continue the discussion and organize a call this coming week. It may be something as simple as: A form for Reddit game developers to submit their playables (demos, recently released). Then we can have a weekly sticky on a couple of subs depending on the list of games that week. I think starting small will be our best way to go, what do you all think? I'm happy to take the lead here :) [link] [comments]  | ||
| Games in which 3D environment is used as a main menu? Posted: 23 Jul 2020 08:51 AM PDT Hi! I am making a game at the moment and would like to make a 3D environment instead of a main-menu. The idea is that the character would go in to different rooms and have that serve as different menus. Do you know any games that do something similar? If yes, which? Thank you in advance! [link] [comments]  | ||
| Unity-Bolt Part 3: Make a new Node using Other Nodes - Getting Started with Bolt Posted: 23 Jul 2020 12:30 PM PDT
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| Is creating Candy Crush / AFK clones very lucrative? Posted: 23 Jul 2020 12:28 PM PDT In mobile there's tons of games that are clones of other games like match-threes, incremental games, afk base building games, etc. On one hand there's a huge market for these types of games but on the other there are huge amounts of clones that exist already - you think that the market would be saturated. Does anyone have experience / knowledge of whether it is actually lucrative to jump on genre bandwagons and make clones and such? I'd imagine the risk is lower because it's a familiar concept to players but the reward is lower as well because there are already so many big players. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 23 Jul 2020 04:34 AM PDT Hi, everybody. I'm glad to say that finally I'm having a little free time to make some 16-bits songs again. I used to be a full time soundtrack composer, but I've been struggling to have some time since I got a job as professor. Well, 3 tracks are available for free right now, I hope you guys enjoy it, the links are on my SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/victor-m-leao [link] [comments]  | ||
| Is it still worth it to develop for mobile as Indie devs ? Posted: 23 Jul 2020 06:05 AM PDT With so many post mortem about indie dev making their games for mobile and barely making it to 1000 download I'm curious to know if some of you still manage to make their way into the business [link] [comments]  | ||
| Methods of creating a 2D animation from 3D animation captured on Unity's camera Posted: 23 Jul 2020 11:41 AM PDT I saw a video demonstrating this but I can't find it anymore. I believe it was a GDC talk. An animator using a 3D rigged model doing an action used the camera to capture the model's movements on a 2D plane from the camera's POV. They then used this captured animation as a 2D asset in their game. I see a bunch of methods in gameobjectrecorder, but I don't see how to make this happen. Anyone know of a way to do this? I also see this method, but the video I saw demonstrated looks much easier to use. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 23 Jul 2020 11:23 AM PDT In this snippet of code, I'm having an impossible time fixing these errors void OnCollisionStay(Collision col) { if (audioSource.isPlaying == true && speed >= 0.1ff && (collision.gameObject.tag == "Ground")) { audioSource.Play(PuckMovement); } else if(audioSource.isPlaying == true && speed < 0.1ff && (collision.gameObject.tag == "Ground")) { audioSource.Pause(PuckMovement); } } It keeps giving me 1002,1513,1026 errors in both if statement. I'm so confused because I checked all brackets and parentheses in the whole file and everything is closed. [link] [comments]  |
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