How to create an invisible tutorial through level design |
- How to create an invisible tutorial through level design
- Aztec Desert Stone Gate | Lowpoly Modeling in Blender | 3d Game art (Blender Speed Modeling)
- I challenged myself to make a game in a 35-hour work week to prove that we don't have to crunch to make games. It ended up being a surprisingly good exercise to learn how to plan, manage and scope projects properly. Here's a complete retrospective about how it went.
- The myth of The Codeless Game™
- MasterPlan: A Project Planner By An Indie Dev For Indie Devs
- How are good weapon recoil animations made?
- Creating your own Ghibli-Style 3D Environments (Breakdown)
- How to increase the visibility of your game on Steam
- What composers do game developers follow?
- If online multiplayer was not such a pain in the ass to implement, do you think we would see more indie multiplayer games?
- What are your strategies for getting a stable income while being an indie dev?
- Progress/Fill Shader with Shader Graph for 3D Objects | i.e. a shader graph use case for coloring objects with two colors divided with a movable border in selected axis | Unity Tutorial
- Tips from a Year in Game Development
- How does Total War animate so many meshes at once?
- Learning Blender
- How to fix redblobgames' line-of-sight visibility algorithm to support overlapping edges?
- After deciding to develop my own engine (in Vulkan/C++) and then procrastinating for months, finally got a workable version that can sort of run my game (more details in comments)
- Is modding a good way to start a game dev journey?
- Spaceslingers Post-Mortem Part 2: Recounting A Successful Failure...The second half of my post-mortem thoughts on marketing, general development, and what to expect as an indie developer releasing their first commercial game.
- Planetary Drift RPG elements
- How to deal with backface culling in procedural generation?
- Level Curve for an RPG video game meant to be played over months/years
- How to transition to a producer role?
- We present some interesting features and quirks of the Godot Engine. Should be helpful if you're thinking about giving this engine a try!
- Can AI revolutionize automated game testing?
| How to create an invisible tutorial through level design Posted: 12 Apr 2021 11:07 AM PDT
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| Aztec Desert Stone Gate | Lowpoly Modeling in Blender | 3d Game art (Blender Speed Modeling) Posted: 11 Apr 2021 11:38 PM PDT
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| Posted: 12 Apr 2021 08:06 AM PDT
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| The myth of The Codeless Game™ Posted: 12 Apr 2021 01:39 AM PDT Hey folks! You may have seen me make threads such as this one, or this one. Well today we are going to talk briefly about "codeless games". This isn't to bash the subject but to dispell some illusions about making games. The general idea is sold as "you don't need to know how to code to make games!" which, if you are just on your own at least, is completely false. But what is it that people tend to try and sell you with this claim? The answer is usually Node Based Editors! If you've never used a node based editor, the premise is rather simple; You are presented with a bunch of "nodes" that each represent some sort of block of code, which gets executed the same way every time it's used. Then you tie that node to other nodes in a daisy-chain like setup. The result is that you have a bunch of nodes that, when executed, will carry out some sort of game-related functionality. Some examples could be Blueprint from Unreal Engine 4, PlayCanvas in Unity or Bolt also in Unity (just to name a few. I think Game Maker also has some sort of node setup?). Now you might already see the problem here with the "codeless game". Node based editors are code. Quite a few engines that make use of them actually transpile the node chains you make into written code (like C++), then compile that instead. There are several ways to handle node based editors and they come in many forms. There are also other types of editors that are similar in nature, but doesn't use nodes to accomplish it. Same idea though. As a side-note; If you've ever used a material or texture editor chances are you've used a node based editor to do it as those are quite popular in that space. Why is this idea being pushed in the first place though? Because programming seems like this intimidating behemoth of a mountain that you have to climb before you can make games. Who wants that? You should just get to making your game already! No need to bother with all that technical stuff right? Well...not quite. Great things take time to make. Programming is a skill that a lot of people are more than capable of learning. But a lot of people are bad at teaching it online. Clearly node based editors are a much more approachable way to look at code when you start out, or perhaps just if you don't want to learn how to write code. Perhaps a nicer introduction to it than writing the code with text. Node based editors are, to put it simply; An abstraction layer. They abstract away the difficulty of learning how to write code from scratch and streamlines the process so you can still makes games, without knowing how to write a piece of software. There are trade-offs of course. Node based editors tend to get quite unruly once you start making complex mechanics and game setups for example and there can also be quite the performance drain (on a per implementation basis). There are also certain systems and whatnot that are just not well-suited for node based editors. A lot of backend systems in a game (like save-file systems for example) would be much better off being written in code, rather than trying to make that work through nodes. Again, implementations differ of course, but it's just my own general experience talking there. This is all to say that, node based editors are valid if you can make a game out of it. Why wouldn't they be? People who were schooled in making software, such as myself, might not really make much use of them because we prefer to write the code. But they serve a purpose for people who might need the programmatic freedom, but don't want to spend years studying for a bachelor's degree in the subject. What's important to take away from this post is that; Whenever someone tries to sell you the idea that you can make a game without code? Know that it is a completely false statement. Someone on your team has to know something about programming or how to code in order to make a game. This idea that you can somehow make games without programming is one that needs to go away and instead we need to be honest about it. There is no such thing as a codeless game. But making games now is more accessible than ever before because of tools like these. [link] [comments]  | ||
| MasterPlan: A Project Planner By An Indie Dev For Indie Devs Posted: 12 Apr 2021 10:28 AM PDT Hello! My name is SolarLune, and I'm an independent game developer, and like many of you, I am someone who has struggled heavily with the process of planning games. I've started probably 1000's of games over the past few decades, and finished 3 or 4. It's insanely hard to make games, and I feel like the hardest part is rarely the engine you use, but rather the planning process, and the follow-through. Over the past year and a half or so, I've been working on a tool specifically designed for helping developers to both plan and stay on track when it comes to developing games. It's also useful for individuals who simply need to maintain their motivation. It's called MasterPlan, and I've been steadily improving it with my community over time. Here's some images (linked, as I can't post images): MasterPlan with a different theme, shadow, and no outlines. The Map Task, which can handle creating maps for things like interiors, world maps, etc. And here's the rest of the album so you can get a feel for it. The main reasons why one might prefer to use it is because:
MasterPlan is currently available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. It's available to build for free over on my Github repository (though prebuilt binaries are available over on Steam and itch, and it's on sale this week as well). If you do purchase it, it would help fund development; otherwise, please do feel free to build it, try it out, and see if it fits your needs. Anyway, that's it; I appreciate it if you read this far, and I'll get out of your hair now. [link] [comments]  | ||
| How are good weapon recoil animations made? Posted: 12 Apr 2021 05:18 AM PDT Hello, I was just wondering if anybody knows how games like EFT are handling recoil animations like these: https://youtu.be/OS8rVnsq6dk It seems to me that they are using a combination of: - Camera movement - 3 recoil animations (left, middle, right) - Moving the whole hand mesh up But I have no idea how they achieve fluid full auto animations like this, does anybody have any idea? It almost feels procedural while shooting in full auto, is it just the animations blending so well together or is it some shooting loop animation? Also, if it is handled by shooting loops, then I have no idea how they match the animation to reflect the in-game stats (you can basically adjust the recoil of the gun in-game by attaching different parts to it...) I know how to adjust the recoil in game logic, but I have no idea how I would adjust the animations to match the recoil... [link] [comments]  | ||
| Creating your own Ghibli-Style 3D Environments (Breakdown) Posted: 12 Apr 2021 06:17 AM PDT
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| How to increase the visibility of your game on Steam Posted: 12 Apr 2021 02:23 AM PDT First think you need to consider is where your game can be seen. Here I will be talking about released games. Steam algorithm may surface your game mostly in these places:- Home Page More Like This (Because You Played)- Home Page Recommended For you- Home Page Recommendation Feed- Discovery Queue (if your game is old you will have hard time here)- More Like This on other game pages- Search Results- Tag Pages- A few other places In most of these places Steam calculates how well your game fits there. This calculation is based on two parts: 1. The power of your game: - How well it sells (it means how much $ it earns per thumbnail/capsule impression)- What is the median playtime (it's a bit more complicated than that, but it's based on the median play time) The power is calculated per country. In search results the higher your power, the higher your game is. In other places power of your game is only part of the equation. To increase the power, you should:- Create a good looking, fun game that will have good reviews and will look really great on screens. Also that will resonate with the Steam audience. So please do a research before you start making your game and check if there is any audience on Steam for your game. For example: If you create an NES-like retro platformer (like I currently do), remember that people who will play your game are most likely 30+, most younger gamers do not care about NES that much or at all. So if you will make your game around candies and little girls no one will play it. You should use some dark theme for your game, maybe a horror. I am doing this with my upcoming game Vampire vs Devil, you can check it on Steam, I published the page 2 days ago.- Find the optimal price (every game has it's optimal price that will increase your revenue per impression, you need to find it)- Find the best image assets (capsule, screens, trailers)- Find the best description- Localize the page of your game and the game itself. To at least a few To find which price/image/trailer/description is the best, you need to use A/B testing. On Steam it's only possible to do the sequential A/B testing. So you keep one version for a week, then another version for another week and then you compare the CTR and Sales/Wishlist per impression stats. Be careful when you analyze the data using the info provided by Steam. Remember to not count the bots traffic and other kinds of traffic that is not related (for example if you are testing the capsule, do not count visits from external websites as they do not see your capsule). So it's a bit tricky on Steam to do this, but it's possible to some degree if you are careful. If you want your game to have better reviews and you are still developing your game, read the negative and positive reviews (but especially negative ones) of games similar to yours and do not make the same mistakes. 2. Tags In most places I mentioned on top of this post, Steam not only use the power of your game but it also checks how well the tags fit to the place and the player. In recent times the power of your game is much more important than it was in the past, so the tags may not help you too much if your game has low power. There are at least two tagging strategies you can use, depending on the place you want your game to be. a) If you want to aim for the recommendation places (Recommended for you on top etc.), you should use tags that describe your game very well and that are used by as few games as possible. In general the best tag is the one that:- Describes your game as good as possible and is as concrete as possible- It's used by as few games as possible- The games that use the tag are popular and have many potential players that will be related to the tag. If the tag would be used by 1 very popular game, then it means that you have almost no competition but a lot of potential players related to this tag. b) The other possible strategy to use it to aim for the Home Page More Like This (Because You Played). If your game is somehow similar to other quite popular game, you can use the same tags as the other game and in exactly the same order. But very important! Use only tags that describe your game to at least some degree. If the other game has tags that describes feature you don't have in your game, do not use that tag as this will be very badly seen by players and by the Steam itself. The other important thing is that for this to work, the target game needs to first be similar to yours, and second needs to have as many tags as possible. If it will have only 10 or less tags rather than 20, it will be not enough to be shown on the Home Page of steam. Remember that half of the equation here is still the power of your game. Tags are only the second part of it. So even if you would have exactly the same 20 tags in exactly the same order, you may still not appear there in some countries, because your game is not good enough. But most likely you will appear if there are not many other good games similar to yours and to the targeted games. I would suggest to try both strategies in many possible configurations and see the results. But most of all you should focus on the power of your game as this is the most important factor on Steam. What else can you do? - Add good keywords in the Dev Panel. You may use google keyword planner to find them.- Remember that Steam also uses the Description field as the source of keywords. The description can be long, so having a good description full of good keywords may increase your visibility.- Answer to reviews.- Twitter - post there and use good hashtags. You can see how I approch Twitter, find: @ Unusualsoft. Twitter is also very good to get feedback and to see if someone will like your game at all. Very valuable!- Open your wishlist page as soon as possible. If you have any other advices, post them in the comments. [link] [comments]  | ||
| What composers do game developers follow? Posted: 12 Apr 2021 09:02 AM PDT From my other post, i'm curious to known exactly who you people follow when it composer to music. Specifically, I want to know who game developers turn to when they consider making their own music for their own games. I want to create content for these people and looking for references. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 12 Apr 2021 09:33 AM PDT Is a prohibitively complex process for implementing multiplayer holding back a lot of indie devs from making awesome MP games, or do you think the interest for indie devs would continue to focus on tight single player experiences? [link] [comments]  | ||
| What are your strategies for getting a stable income while being an indie dev? Posted: 12 Apr 2021 11:46 AM PDT Hi, I was wondering if any one of you has used some specific approach in order to make a stable income as an indie or solo dev? For example, making small apps for kids and publishing them on AppStore, or having some niche taken by you on a game market? What I want to know is if any one of you found a formula that they can share with others? [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 12 Apr 2021 07:38 AM PDT
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| Tips from a Year in Game Development Posted: 12 Apr 2021 01:20 AM PDT A year ago today I began work on my first game and now I'm looking down the barrel of my third game with a demo already available. While most people in this forum can probably share similar stories, I had no prior experience or skills in software development of any kind, my background being in marketing, and thus I thought my lessons might be of value to someone who was in my position a year ago. Start Small A month or so ago there was quite a bit of debate on this forum about how someone should start out in game development. I believe the majority of people came down on the side of starting small and for good reasons but I would like to throw my own voice into the crowd. Put your must do game idea in your back pocket and start on something you'd like to do instead, because starting out you're going to make all of the mistakes. My first game has giant scripts that handle almost everything in scene and features only ONE array. This is the sort of technical debt that saps motivation and kills projects just as they're getting off the ground. Someone with a technical background might not make these mistakes but you're better off making whatever mistakes you will make with small projects which you can limp to the finish line rather than on your magnum opus. Finish your projects Unfinished projects seem to be a common practice in the Game Development community which I think is a dire mistake. The experience learned from finishing a project and the ability to be able to point at something you have made if you want to collaborate in the future is invaluable. If you're knee deep in a project and still have a full bodies worth of work ahead of you think about scaling back, what can you do to get the project out the door in the next month? Not enough time? What about the next two, or three. I'm not advocating for shovel ware but you'll learn so much about not only the design & publishing process but also how great it feels to BE a Game Developer. Kill your darlings This is a phrase attributed to Stephen King in the writing community and it gets thrown around a lot, I think it has equal merit in the Game Development community. If you have an idea that just isn't working, no matter how much you love it, you need to kill it. Game development is tricky and time intensive. When you're starting a new project it's awesome coming up with ideas and mechanics which you think will play off each other but as soon as you start committing pen to paper some of these ideas just don't mesh. Kill them. As a designer you should be obsessed with the core foundation of your game, mentally try to strip back the layers of a game until you have a minimum viable product, anything else is just glazing to this core. Early in your Game Development career there may even be ideas that are worth putting in the game that you just aren't capable of yet. If your game can function without it and you just can't get your head around how to implement it in a satisfying way then kill it. If your core foundation is solid ground, then any half-implemented idea is only going to hurt the project in the end, you're better off with 3 great mechanics than 6 iffy mechanics. Work with what you have As indies we occupy an unsure space in the market. Most marketplaces you'll be featured next to companies that have a larger lunch budget than your project budget. Trying to compete against these titans on their home turf is going to leave you frustrated. Instead, try to identify a niche you can service. I'm personally a massive history buff and I have an inclination towards games that ask you to use your imagination more so than feeding the player fancy graphics and cool action. I want players to feel like they've stepped back in time and to do that my games have mostly been 'event' based where players are given multiple choice solutions to randomly generated problems in a historical setting where they can play the role of a person in those times. Work with what you have, if you want to simulate a massive open world then do it, but that doesn't mean you have to show it all. King of Dragon Pass was a major inspiration for me starting out and I'm convinced that with enough skill you can create real, living worlds without a giant studio team. Build an Audience This advice might not be so relevant for your first couple of games as they may just not be up to snuff but you'll want to start trying to build up an established fanbase as soon as possible that you can bring with you from title to title. I'd really recommend setting up your social media, Reddit, Discord, Twitter, Facebook, anything you can think of, as soon as possible. Also, link to them on the menu page of your game, it makes it so much easier for players to contact you. There are better write ups on here on marketing your game than I can get into in a paragraph but as an indie your best asset is approachability, you can directly communicate with your customers and implement their feedback, this is the sort of relationship a AAA company would go crazy for. You should also try to get an intimate knowledge of your given platforms various quirks, for instance on Steam 10 reviews is your sweet spot, the more reviews the better of course, but if you can't hit your 10 reviews after your first month, you'll find yourself buried. Steam also does visibility rounds for major updates to games, which can help push you back into the spotlight. Preparing a fan feedback-based update for a couple of weeks post-launch is a great way to show your fans and potential customers that you care. You should also try and go on sale as often as possible; it doesn't have to be a huge sale but having that visibility for your wishlisters is awesome. Just Start My only regret in game development is that I didn't start sooner. It may be tough to start but hell is it worth it. Thank you for reading I hope this is helpful. In the interest of brevity in an already long post I left a couple of points out, I think they speak for themselves though: Develop for yourself Collaborate when possible TLDR; I rewrote this a couple of times to try and make sure I was imparting as much pedestrian knowledge as I had to hand. If you're a grizzled developer, it might not be worth reading but if you're subscribed to /r/gamedev because you dream of one day making the things you play then stop reading and start doing. [link] [comments]  | ||
| How does Total War animate so many meshes at once? Posted: 12 Apr 2021 11:02 AM PDT Are they baking the animations into static meshes (flipbook animation) or into textures? [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 12 Apr 2021 10:55 AM PDT Hi there. Is there any book out there that would be considered the blender bible when it comes to learning blender? thanks. I was watching youtube tutorials, but I'm just not getting what I want from them [link] [comments]  | ||
| How to fix redblobgames' line-of-sight visibility algorithm to support overlapping edges? Posted: 11 Apr 2021 11:20 PM PDT I found this article on implementing line-of-sight visibility from redblobgames on this subreddit. There's an implementation section at the end and I ended up using this one in my own game. It works great, but there's one problem: overlapping rectangles. It seems as if the original algorithm doesn't support them. On the little things section the author also mentions that "the algorithm doesn't handle overlapping lines." Is this possible to fix? For performance reasons, my game has many overlapping rectangles. This allows the line of sight calculation to be much faster since it only has to compute line of sight against 14 rectangles instead of around 200. Allowing for rectangles to overlap greatly lowers the computational cost. Unfortunately, overlap results in extra triangles appearing. If you scroll down the article to the interactive visualization that lets you place your own blocks, you can see the error for yourself. Put a small box on top of a large box, barely overlapping, like so: https://i.imgur.com/1Oxhwy0.png As you can see (the error is circled in red), there's an extra visibility triangle shown on the opposite side. Interestingly, if you move the small box to the bottom of the large box, there is no error. https://i.imgur.com/vRWpa1B.png (the error doesn't occur when the small box is under the large box, only when it is on top of it) Someone in the comments mentioned that this is possibly occurring due to the sorting, but they don't mention any potential fix. Does anyone have any idea on how this could be solved? It is majorly destroying the lighting my game with all these random triangles showing up. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 11 Apr 2021 02:45 AM PDT
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| Is modding a good way to start a game dev journey? Posted: 12 Apr 2021 12:26 PM PDT Hey fam, But now that I'll have some time, I want to start this journey again. I've been playing a lot of Fallout 4 (with mods) lately, and thought that maybe creating my own mod would be help me understand game dev a bit more. I'm not sure how hard it is to create mods, but I know that learning Unity from scratch was difficult. I know I just need to keep with it to improve, but it would be a good win to get something simple completed in a reasonably short time. So any experience with modding and the pros/cons of it? End goal is to create my own game using Unity (or another engine), so maybe I should just put my energy into learning the engine instead of modding...thoughts? [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 12 Apr 2021 11:49 AM PDT Hey folks, I posted part one to this quite a while ago (A Pre-Post-Mortem About Marketing) and a lot of people liked it, so, muuuuch later, here's the second part: a deeper breakdown of my thoughts on actual development (stats included). Spaceslingers was made in GMS and was my first commercial game (but it was by no means my first game, I've been a casual hobbyist on and off for nearly 15 years now). Here's a small portion of the article:
Read the rest here: Recounting A Successful Failure (The Spaceslingers Post-Mortem) If you like how I write you can follow me on twitter: @refreshertowel [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 12 Apr 2021 11:46 AM PDT Hey, everyone. I'm designing the universe for Planetary Drift that you can explore after finishing the main campaign. Planetary Drift is a top-down racing adventure game set in space at the heat death of the universe. I don't want to procedurally generate much, and your goal is to get as much of the world's currency as possible. The focus is the racing, so I think I'll build it like this: Players can generate new race tracks, which are then added to everyone's shared game world as a new star. New stars are added to the universe at increasing distances from the center of the star system, and elements are generated around them. There's a data link station, which lets you view leaderboards and the locations of new stars, a ship hangar, where you can repair your ship and download new engine specs (there are currently 77 different downloadable stat sets with unique names), a planet under attack by a the game's enemy drones, and a wormhole that spits you out one-way at the coordinate opposite your current one. I think I'll implement trade, where you can buy things at the planets under attack and deliver them to other planets under attack, and they'll deal in 4 different goods with prices depending on their quadrant (+,+ / +,- / -,- / -,+ on a 2d grid). Of course, you have to get through the enemies to sell and buy from a planet, which involves an asteroids-like combat system. The main focus will be the racing, which gets you the most light. I'm looking for whether or not there's anything else you'd like implemented on the galactic scale? This will be an infinite space, mind you. [link] [comments]  | ||
| How to deal with backface culling in procedural generation? Posted: 12 Apr 2021 09:25 AM PDT Hi. I'm trying to draw some tetrahedrons where I have the corner vertices. The Engine I use (Unity) is based on OpenGL and therefore makes use of either clockwise or counterclockwise winding order for backface culling. I have no idea how I would go about calculating in which order i need to list my vertices (per triangle) so that the tetrahedron is only visible from the outside. I could of course simply double my triangles, but that would come with the downside of doubling my triangles. Can you tell me how to deal with this? Performance isn't that important to me during the generation. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Level Curve for an RPG video game meant to be played over months/years Posted: 12 Apr 2021 11:12 AM PDT Hey, I built a character-building style game that's tied to workout activity, and thus is meant to be played over the long haul. It's become clear over 9 months of working on it that the higher end of users are leveling too quick. I mostly expect users to not get to level 100, but if they do, I want the curve to continue to get more difficult. Here's the old curve I was using (X axis = level, y axis = xp required): https://www.desmos.com/calculator/pydkn4qru9 And the new one I'm thinking about: https://www.desmos.com/calculator/acisuaurbd I'm still new to game development, and would like any feedback you may have or problems you foresee. Thanks!! [link] [comments]  | ||
| How to transition to a producer role? Posted: 12 Apr 2021 09:00 AM PDT I am currently working at a bank and have been in the industry for 5 years, and the pandemic has really showed me how bad this industry is so I'm trying to move into game development because it is something I am passionate about. I just finished a certificate of computer science from CSU last week and I am looking for what my best steps are to move into the gaming industry. I am looking at a producer role as it seems the best fit for my experience, while I do not have experience in a production type of role I do have management experience and know how to work with and communicate with multiple departments to complete tasks. I am really looking for any suggestions on what I can do to help me stand out for applications/interviews and to expand my skills. I am looking to get my PSM 1 for scrum this week and I am currently learning how to use the unreal engine through the unreal learning courses. I am also not entirely sure what other roles I might qualify for and I am open to any suggestions on positions that I could transition into. Thank you! [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 12 Apr 2021 08:59 AM PDT
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| Can AI revolutionize automated game testing? Posted: 12 Apr 2021 09:41 AM PDT
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