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    The Making of Age of Empires II (1999)

    April 14, 2021

    The Making of Age of Empires II (1999)

    The Making of Age of Empires II (1999)

    Posted: 14 Apr 2021 12:51 AM PDT

    Early Access to MetaHuman Creator is now available!

    Posted: 14 Apr 2021 08:11 AM PDT

    Battle for Esturia Postmortem

    Posted: 13 Apr 2021 06:17 PM PDT

    Battle for Esturia (Steam, itch.io)

    For the past four years, I've been working on an old-school CRPG called Battle for Esturia. I have been working on this project in my spare time between my day job and parenting two young kids. As a quick introduction, the game is a turn-based open world RPG with an 8-bit aesthetic where you recruit NPCs, fight monsters, and explore dungeons. Battle for Esturia finally went on sale on Steam about a month ago, so I thought I would talk about my experience releasing my first game.

    Expectations and Results

    My goal was never to release a hit or even be able to quit my day job. I just wanted to make a game that other people would enjoy and if I made some extra cash along the way, that would be great too. So far the game has exceeded my modest expectations. Between itch.io and Steam, around 400 people have played my game and I've made about $1,000 in revenue. I only spent around $30 total on art assets for the game, so nearly all of that is profit.

    Development

    I started off by making a simple linear tactical RPG with a series of battles broken up by story text. However, after about a year of development I chose to go in a different direction. I didn't feel like my writing was good enough to carry the plot on its own and I felt like there needed to be some variation in gameplay. For these reasons, I decided to add an open-world exploration aspect to the game. I spent the first two years developing the game engine, the third year was spent building the world and all the dungeons, and the final years was spent testing and refining the game. I released a free early access version of the game on itch.io in December of 2020 and then spent about three more months fixing issues found by early access players.

    Marketing

    Early on in development, I realized that marketing would play a very important role if I wanted anyone to play my game. I read all the advice I could find, and did a decent job spreading information about my game leading up to release. I posted to all the relevant forums and subreddits, I contacted reviewers and online media, and I emailed numerous streamers and youtubers. Overall I got the best feedback from the linux gaming and RPG Codex communities. Members of these communities played my game during early access, offered excellent advice on improving the game, and many bought the game when it was finally released. As for streamers and youtubers, I contacted about 15 people, of which three actually reviewed my game. Thankfully, these reviews were all overwhelmingly positive.

    What went wrong

    • I could have done a better job marketing my game. In retrospect I probably should have created a twitter account and produced more frequent updates to my blog and various forums. I also could have done more aggressive outreach to reviewers and streamers.
    • My game lacked innovation. I basically took all my favorite parts of the RPGs I played as a kid and shoved them into the game I was building. Overall, I think it resulted in a fun game, but I probably would have had more success with a more innovative game.
    • The game had a few pretty nasty bugs and typos after the initial release. I made sure to get these fixed right away, but they may have had an impact on people's initial impressions. For my next game I will probably dedicate more time to testing before the final release.
    • The graphics were extremely minimalistic. While this style has appeal to a certain niche of gamers that grew up playing 8-bit games, I would probably have had more success with a more eye-catching graphical style. However, given that I had practically no budget and very little artistic talent, I don't see how I could have done much different here.

    What went right

    • Releasing a free early access version of the game really helped me identify bugs and improve the game's balance. The RPG Codex community was especially helpful in providing useful feedback.
    • I kept the scope of the project limited. As RPGs go, my game is very short (between 7 and 10 hours for the main quest). This allowed me to release in a reasonable timeframe as a part-time solo dev and I haven't received many complaints about the game's length.
    • The game's aesthetic, while minimalistic, was very cohesive and consistent. I received positive feedback about the game's graphical style from my target audience and the simple artwork allowed me to focus on gameplay and create more content. I relied a ton on public assets, but made some custom art as well.

    Conclusion

    Overall I am happy with how the game performed. Hundreds of people played my game, I got positive feedback, I learned a ton about game development, and I made some extra spending money. Hopefully I can take this experience and make something even better for my next game.

    submitted by /u/nlfortier
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    NVIDIA DLSS Natively Supported in Unity 2021.2 | NVIDIA Developer Blog

    Posted: 14 Apr 2021 07:37 AM PDT

    How to make a GeoGuessr clone with JavaScript!

    Posted: 14 Apr 2021 03:04 AM PDT

    Why isn't my game selling and why don't the people who buy it play it?

    Posted: 14 Apr 2021 08:34 AM PDT

    A few months ago I published my first game, I have not seen good results in sales and the few people who have played it have played it very little. I try to keep getting updates but I don't know what is wrong with the game, I have already lowered the price, I corrected many bugs, I changed part of the gameplay and people still do not buy / play it.

    ​

    Here is the link of the game on the Steam store (It's my first game): https://store.steampowered.com/app/1268710/Skitt/?

    submitted by /u/Ricachonas
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    Canadian Student wants to create a company. How do I do the do?

    Posted: 14 Apr 2021 10:30 AM PDT

    Hey, Canadian student here. Graduating in a few days, looking for advice. I'm thinking of myself and my team as rather competent and holding onto a rather unique not horrible idea.

    I've gone through the process of this wonderful page: Incorporation - Online Filing Centre - Corporations Canada - Corporations - Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada .It is effectively me handling *all* of the business for our company, or that is the intent.

    I have done all of that and received the Certificate of Incorporation. Is this the correct order of operations? I've literally only gotten the certificate, made emails, got a website and more. Is there anything I have to do to register it beyond this? I imagine I need to set up with the CRA, get HST and all that, but I don't know where/how/what order.

    I'm also just looking for more information and important stuff I need to do. Assume I did nothing else because I literally have not - and Canada doesn't really help you out here.

    Edit: We would be a Game Company based in Canada, intending on selling on Steam and internationally on other launchers. Do I need to have licenses for selling outside Canada and where would I get this? I only have the license for "conducting business in Ontario".

    submitted by /u/T-Revvington
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    Tightly coupling animations with game mechanics

    Posted: 14 Apr 2021 05:03 AM PDT

    I'm a Unity dev in the process of learning the Unreal Engine (and until recently, Roblox. Don't judge =) ) and one thing I notice exists in every game engine that I know of is some way to assign data to animation key frames that determines the what & when of calling events to create "animation synchronized" behavior.

    Now, when I see this being used to synchronize animation with sound, particle effects, decals, shaders... that all seems fine to me. However, what I also see often which I don't like (at least in tutorials) is the practice of using animation events to directly influence / trigger important game mechanics, typically registering the hit when playing the attack animation.

    The latter seems to me like a breach of the concept of not mixing visuals and actual game mechanics. Just like you usually don't, say, use an explosion's particles to determine what takes fire damage and how much (or whatever), you shouldn't use animations (visual assets) to determine the flow of game mechanics. If you need to synchronize a game mechanic with an animation's "hit frame", you should have a data oriented design on your attack mechanic that simply allows you to specify a time after your attack begins to register the hit.

    I guess the one exception is if you're making a physics based combat system where you're dependent on animations to move your weapon or character properly. In this case I'd argue you're technically dependent on moving points in space rather than the animation itself but even then you're still *indirectly* dependent on it.

    But it just occured to me that I've practically never brought this up with fellow game developers so here I am. What do you think ? Is it something you do ? Avoid ?

    EDIT :

    I might add that after thinking about it in greater detail and reading the first few responses, it just occured to me that in a way, the animations themselves might not be considered as a visual thing in all cases. Maybe the visual part is only the Skinned Mesh Renderer itself ? Sometimes the boundary between visual & mechanics can get blurry.

    submitted by /u/Hoshiqua
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    Are there any game developer stereotypes that you've heard?

    Posted: 14 Apr 2021 11:51 AM PDT

    I've been trying to think of some, and honestly haven't been able to come up with much of anything. I figured some of my fellow devs might have some interesting ones! Could be based on indies, AAA, or anything in between.

    submitted by /u/JawDroppinAwesome
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    You can blend two camera views together with a render texture in Unity URP. It's great for transitions. Tutorial in the comments!

    Posted: 14 Apr 2021 09:14 AM PDT

    When should I publicly announce my game?

    Posted: 13 Apr 2021 05:33 PM PDT

    I'm working on a visual novel right now and I don't know if I should publicly announce it yet because it's still in it's early stages.

    submitted by /u/Memeation
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    I need help with marketing! Can anybody give me advice?

    Posted: 14 Apr 2021 06:57 AM PDT

    Hi everyone, I'm writing this because I'm lost when talking about marketing. I'm an indie developer, but i have a full time work to afford the game development expenses. That means I don't have too much spare time.

    Even when my project is in a early stage of development I thought that it would be a good idea to start growing a community around it. But, since I have no idea about marketing and I don't have the time to learn about it I took the decision to hire a twitter community manager as a first step for a future campaign. I told this person that I dont want fake accounts nor bot accounts, but it is obvious she is getting fake/bot followers since we jumped from 0 to 32 followers in 1h and checking those followers' profiles I see those accounts were created this month and most of them follow hundreds of profiles with no interaction with them. Luckily I hired this person through fiverr so I won't lose any money, but this issue worries me a lot.

    Can anybody tell me what can I do? How can I trust any community manager? Who should I ask to make this kind of work? What are the normal short term and long term goals? and how much do they usually charge for it?

    Thank you so much

    submitted by /u/Khaikaa
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    Curious about Steam's algorithm

    Posted: 13 Apr 2021 04:56 PM PDT

    I finished the steam page for my game 5 days ago and initially saw a huge bump in traffic in the analytics for it (vs. the independent homepage), which has been declining by about 25% each day after. I was musing that either steam has served it to everyone with matching tag preferences already, or that Steam has some method of prioritizing new games (other than the new release queue, but I'm guessing mine is too small potatoes for that) that it's now stopped doing. Does that track?

    I know Steam's algorithm is a black box, but just wanted to compare notes on how other people's page traffic trended. Anyone else launch as small indie game with a similar traffic pattern? What happened after that?

    submitted by /u/CalamityBayGames
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    Finally some progress with Patron citybuilder

    Posted: 14 Apr 2021 12:01 PM PDT

    Entity Component System

    Posted: 14 Apr 2021 08:09 AM PDT

    Hi,

    Working on a minecraftclone. It has:

    1. HUD
    2. Invetory UI
    3. Crafting Table UI

    I'm wondering if I need to model this as:

    • player entity with one HudUIComponent + HudUIRenderComponent
    • when opening the inventory ui -> add InventoryUIComponent+InventoryUIRenderComponent

    to player entity

    • when opening the crafting table ui -> add CraftingTableUIComponent+CraftingTableUIRenderComponent to player entity

    ​

    ..my render components holds render specific info (like vertices or render only data things). non-render component holds state for that particular component (ex. HudUIComponent will have selected slot and anchorposition (bottomCenter), HudUIRenderComponent will have calculated position and VAO.

    submitted by /u/sharepointme
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    I wanted to share full walkthrough of me and my close friend first project that we made almost 5 years ago in 6 monts I guess with no experience at all. We tried to get MegaGrant to polish it, but failed. Now, after 5 years into UE fully 24/7 we are renewing it from scratch.

    Posted: 14 Apr 2021 11:55 AM PDT

    Where do I start

    Posted: 14 Apr 2021 11:48 AM PDT

    Hi, I am Bram, a 16-year-old, pretty average guy who loves his computer. I've been playing games since I was 5 years old. I recently bought a good gaming pc and I looked into unreal engine. I am so fascinated by the big games like GTA V, Fortnite, COD, ... My dream would be to gather like-minded people and develop a game like that. I have some ideas, but I need to get the fundamentals down before I can even dream about such things. I like the style that the blueprints look and I want to get deeper into the subject. I also know java pretty well, so I should be able to learn CS or CPP if needed. My question is: Where do I start my game dev journey?

    submitted by /u/X_CosmicProductions
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    What is the best way to do level design for fun?

    Posted: 14 Apr 2021 07:56 AM PDT

    I want to do level design as a hobby without any intention of getting any money. I love doing levels in mario maker, I would love to do that but in 3d with quests, dialogue and level exploration. I know this sounds heretic, I'm not afraid of programming but I would like to minimize my time building systems and just have fun, make levels, quests, etc.

    So far searching for something like this I got two variants: buying some rpg template, some environment assets for ue4 or unity and modifying that to make my levels or core for ue4. And I don't have ps4 to try dreams.

    Maybe you guys have any advice on that or some other ideas or maybe some courses for this topic?

    submitted by /u/blanty
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    Implementation of Game Audio (Music, SFX & Ambience) | | DAWay to Good Game Audio pt. 5

    Posted: 14 Apr 2021 11:36 AM PDT

    How to develop a cross-platform game without Unity or Unreal

    Posted: 14 Apr 2021 11:35 AM PDT

    I don't have (yet) the intention of making a cross-platform game, but since I'm doing a lot of research into game engines and libraries, now I want to know how a single person can develop a game without worrying about platform specific problems.

    I know that Unity and Unreal have the feature to build your game to multiple platforms (even consoles) with a couple of clicks. I'm talking more about mid-level development stuff.

    For desktop and mobile game development we have things like SDL. But I don't know any library that is compatible with consoles too.

    So, I want to know how would be the process of a developer that doesn't want to use a engine like Unity or Unreal but at the same time wants to have a cross-platform game without worrying too much on developing specific ports.

    For example, lets say I build a game for PC with SDL, but know I want to sell it in the Xbox store (ignoring all the platform legal requirements). What's next? The developer should learn platform specific technology? Rebuild the game in another engine?

    I hope I explained myself, thanks in advance!

    submitted by /u/xtasyx
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    I wholeheartedly recommend Flopperam's GaneLift tutorials

    Posted: 14 Apr 2021 11:33 AM PDT

    https://youtu.be/tOy0xYaP3wA

    I've been for so long trying to find a comprehensive source to learn about server hosting, and all of that kind of stuff. I finally found this guide and it's great. Be aware that it is a LOT of content (just got through nr 5 at 4,5 hours...), but this guy is so pedagogic and it's very well thought through.

    Aws seems to be a pretty good backend to build your game on, even though it might cost a bit after your initial trial is over.

    If you are building multiplayer, check it out!

    submitted by /u/slindan
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    How do you handle the technical ignorance of what you wan to create

    Posted: 14 Apr 2021 11:32 AM PDT

    May seem like a weird or unclear topic. But it's quite a thing every now and then if you think about it. It really could be anything: art, sound, mechanics, physics, movements, animation, visuals, ... name it. Let's say you have a unique and cool idea you really want to work out. You can exactly imagine what you want but when you start thinking about how to technically handle it you end up in a clueless void. As it's quite unique or special and there aren't really any guides to be able to achieve exactly that. What do you do?
    What's your general approach to this?
    Does this happen a lot to you?
    Should you give up some of your ideas?

    ​

    Have a nice dev day!

    submitted by /u/v-tilbo
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    Reconstructing Cave Story

    Posted: 14 Apr 2021 11:26 AM PDT

    FREE Simple Rocks and Stones Vectorized Textures

    Posted: 14 Apr 2021 07:37 AM PDT

    https://gumroad.com/l/freerocksnstones

    Each texture includes an svg, png, and seamless png file!

    Enjoy!

    submitted by /u/Manimaniac1234
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    Undone Games Twitter

    Posted: 14 Apr 2021 11:12 AM PDT
    Read more
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