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    Thursday, April 22, 2021

    Home Unlabelled We made a time-lapse showing off all the progress we've made in our game. How we did it in the comments

    We made a time-lapse showing off all the progress we've made in our game. How we did it in the comments

    April 22, 2021

    We made a time-lapse showing off all the progress we've made in our game. How we did it in the comments

    We made a time-lapse showing off all the progress we've made in our game. How we did it in the comments

    Posted: 22 Apr 2021 09:38 AM PDT

    Blown away... AI voices can now shout

    Posted: 22 Apr 2021 03:47 AM PDT

    A few days ago I remade Reinhardt's Shield from Overwatch in Unity. And I think it's a pretty cool Sci-Fi shield.

    Posted: 22 Apr 2021 02:40 AM PDT

    Free animated RPG character

    Posted: 22 Apr 2021 03:45 AM PDT

    Game developers, would you use a royalty free soundtrack in your game?

    Posted: 22 Apr 2021 05:13 AM PDT

    Just out of interest, do you prefer music written specifically for your game or you would you be bothered if it was royalty free and other people had also used it in their game?

    submitted by /u/zoeyoung92
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    Itch.io coming to Epic Games Store

    Posted: 22 Apr 2021 10:17 AM PDT

    Looks like Epic is adding an app for itch.io to their store. I'm hesitantly excited for this? Hopefully it'll direct more traffic towards games over on that platform!

    Article Link: Epic Games Store Adds New Apps Including, Um, Another Game Store (kotaku.com)

    submitted by /u/Ziggymia
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    Encouraging friend rivalry in a highscore-based PC game through in-game systems

    Posted: 22 Apr 2021 09:20 AM PDT

    So, back when I picked up Devil Daggers, I kind of lost interest within the first hour of gameplay, however, what kept me going back to it over and over again was a rivalry between me and a friendly, constantly trying to beat each other's high scores.

    ​

    So I'd like to start a discussion on the topic of increasing the value of a fairly simple one-mechanic high-score based game, by actively encouraging rivalry between friends.

    The first step to this would be to have an in-game leaderboard that would have a "friends" filter. However, the problem with this is that is a very passive thing that requires the player themselves to ignite that rivalry and competitive spirit to begin with.

    ​

    So what could a game do to encourage this even further (specifically in a PC game)? Some ideas I have (without prototyping them yet) are as follows:

    ​

    1. A constant acknowledgment of the rivalry throughout the game, think, your friend's customized character sitting on top of the "Leaderboard" button in the main menu drawing your attention to it, and after you click it, you see a little animation of your friend's avatar dethroning your score through a nice short little animation
    2. Potential nudges/notifications that your score has been beaten. Be it a notification through Steam's API (very rarely used for asynchronous multiplayer games), or maybe a direct "Rub it in their face" button, that basically captures a short gif of your screen during that dethroning animation of the leaderboard and sends it directly to your friends through that platform's chat system (Steam in this case)
    3. A collectible item like a crown that is worn only by the current high score keeper between you and your friend, encouraging the rivalry through more visual means of trying to steal and hold onto that crown.
    4. A reminder of how close you are to dethrone your friend's score during your play session. This depends on how the gameplay is structured, however a nice real time progress bar while you play would be very encouraging and would raise the perceived tension during your gameplay.

    ​

    Now, I'm curious if there are games that play around with this concept and what potential ideas are there to push this system even further.

    submitted by /u/xelu
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    Upgrading "Always Follow" AI to a State Machine with Idle, Patrol, and Chase States (Including ScriptableObject configuration!) | AI Series Part 11 | Unity Tutorial

    Posted: 22 Apr 2021 05:36 AM PDT

    How To Make A Multiplayer Game In Unity 2021.1 - Syncing Variables

    Posted: 22 Apr 2021 07:03 AM PDT

    Godot 3.3 has arrived, with a focus on optimization and reliability

    Posted: 21 Apr 2021 03:39 PM PDT

    How to stay motivated as an indie developer. (It's working for me.)

    Posted: 21 Apr 2021 12:46 PM PDT

    After chatting with some other devs here about motivation, I decided to make a separate post as I think this information will hopefully be helpful to more developers.

    First of all, motivation is different for everyone. All I can do is let you know what has been working for me. These may not work for you too, but maybe they could help point you in the right direction.

    I will start by saying that I have struggled with depression, and am still getting through that.

    Getting through that chunk of my life really helped me think more introspectively and made me start "Thinking about how I think". A lot of these conclusions come from that experience.

    I'll break this up into sections to make it more readable.

    Don't set out to make a game.

    Just set out to make "something". For my current project I originally set out to see if I get platforming feeling good after playing Hollow Knight. I wasn't setting out with high hopes to make a full metroidvania, or even a complete game. That for me would have been too much of a commitment, and I likely would have given up.

    The way I look at it is to think about game development like gaming itself. There is a reason why there are checkpoints, levels, quests and achievements (beyond the technical reasons).

    It is hard to keep people motivated while doing the same thing without chopping it up into bite size pieces, even if they are having fun while doing it. Imagine a Call Of Duty match that lasted forever without ending. It might be fun a first but you need to break it up otherwise it gets stale. This is the same for game development.

    Having smaller goals allows you to get an emotional payoff more often. If your goal is to make 1 level, then you finish making that level you feel good. That feeling helps motivate you to make another level. And so on. But if your goal is to make ALL the levels, chances are you are going to get stressed out and quit before you finish them all.

    Don't hide your passion away.

    For a long time I didn't show what I was creating to anyone in my life. I never really thought about why that was until recently.

    I was scared of failure and didn't want people to know I wasn't a success, or that I made a game nobody liked. Doing that might allow you to start more projects because there is less pressure.

    But overall I think this is a bad idea because it is allowing yourself a "get out of dev free card". If nobody knows what you are working on, then nobody can judge you when you give up.

    Recently I have been sharing my passion with family and friends. It is scary, because it's a niche game and not many of them will understand it. Regardless they have been massively supportive. This makes your game development part of your *real* life. It brings it into reality and makes it into this tangible thing that is less hard to throw away.

    Surround yourself with people with the same passion.

    Indie development can be a lonely experience, especially if you are a solo developer like myself. Reaching out to other indie developers online has been hugely beneficial for me. This is great for motivation as you are sharing your hopes and dreams, your struggles and pains with people who are going through the exact same thing that you are.

    The indie games community is so kind and supportive. (Even when your game sucks!) So get out there and chat with them. Plus it has a good bonus of helping with networking and marketing (although this shouldn't be your priority.) Long lasting friendships with other devs are way more beneficial than that one retweet you were after.

    Go all in.

    Okay I shouldn't recommend this one, your game will likely fail. This is only an option if you have nothing to lose. Even then I would be hesitant to suggest it.

    That being said, it's what I did and it's great for motivation. I cannot afford to fail.

    I quit my job and am using all my savings to make a demo and run a kickstarter to fund development.

    I don't have kids, a mortgage, a car or a pet. This has allowed me to take a big risk.

    This has caused me to be more motivated than ever. It is no longer a hobby, this is my passion and I will make it a success, or I will fail and go back to working a job I likely won't enjoy.

    Build a community

    This is hard before you have a playable demo out, but it can be done. Even a small group of people in a discord server really helps. Through development I posted regular demo builds in the Zapling Bygone discord server. Knowing that someone would play every build I posted and give me feedback was hugely motivating.

    It's also super important from a game design perspective, but that's not the topic of discussion.

    Having a community to interact with that relates to your title keeps you sane, it has saved the project more times than I would like to admit. (Shoutout to the Zapling Bygone discord Server OGs! You have been amazing!)

    Switch up your tasks

    Doing the same thing for a long period of time can get you to burn out. Luckily there are so many other hats you could be wearing.

    If you get bored of coding, do some art. If you get bored of doing art, do some sound design. God you are so fed up of looking at the project. Guess you can do some video editing or make a website for your game. Okay you're bored again, guess you'll browse twitter and do some marketing.

    You know what, you haven't done coding in a while, let's jump back into that.

    I think you get my point.

    Make the tasks you enjoy a reward for the tasks you don't.

    Okay you are a pixelartist and you love doing pixelart, but you hate coding.

    Treat the fun pixelart as the reward for doing the boring code. Break it up into intervals where you can thing. "Okay just let me get this working and I can do some art for the rest of the day." Your project will end up leaning heavily on what you enjoy doing as a developer, but that tends to happen anyway.

    Finally, have fun.

    If you aren't planning on making this your full time job, then just make whatever you enjoy making. It doesn't matter if it's marketable or if it will sell well. Just "do you".

    Any questions or extra tips please add to the comments.

    Okay you reached the end of my rambling. Good job.

    If you want to check out my game then cool, but to be honest your should be working on your own game!

    Keep up the awesome work gamedevs!

    submitted by /u/oatskeepyouregular
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    I'll have my 2nd job interview at an entry level gamedev position in The Netherlands next week, how should I prepare myself contract wise?

    Posted: 21 Apr 2021 06:36 PM PDT

    I don't have a gamedev degree, but I have spent the last couple years self studying all things programming and game development and I am finally about to be accepted at my first entry/junior level job. My first job interview went great and I've been selected for the 2nd interview (which usually means they've accepted me and will talk about the contract).

    They know I'm a noob, so I expect them to abuse this and offer me a low salary. What other things should I be cautious of? What could they try to write in the contract that I can easily miss? How should I prepare myself? What are my rights? What should I ask?

    Thank you in advance

    submitted by /u/DavoMyan
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    Tips on 'How to get a UX/UI Design Job in the Games Industry' from a CEO

    Posted: 22 Apr 2021 09:22 AM PDT

    Hey Gang,

    You all seem to enjoy our articles, so I thought I would point you towards a recent webinar we held.

    Last week Sprung Studios CEO hosted a webinar where he discussed his article on 'How to get a UX/UI design job in the games industry.'

    Throughout the webinar, James discussed:

    • His hiring process
    • What he looks for in a portfolio
    • How to handle yourself in an interview
    • How to succeed once you land a job

    James's detail with these subjects should be beneficial for new designers and designers looking to transition to the games industry. The last point, in particular, is a topic I haven't seen a lot of people discuss and something I feel would be of great benefit to many of you.

    Throughout the video, James also answers several questions from the webinar audience, so check those sections out as he might have answered something you were curious about.

    A link to the whole webinar is below, and there are timestamps to the appropriate sections.

    https://youtu.be/XV0FODf5LXs

    The article that sparked this webinar is here: https://www.sprungstudios.com/2020/04/20/how-to-get-a-ux-ui-design-job-in-the-games-industry/

    Again, I hope this can help you all in some way!

    submitted by /u/SprangDev
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    Question regarding 2D Pixel Top-Down JPRG style game

    Posted: 22 Apr 2021 07:43 AM PDT

    Just want to point out that I have no experience coding and I am not a professional artist. I've dabbled in Photoshop/Illustrator.

    I've been thinking of developing a top down 45 degrees game with a Japanese anime inspired character/world design (Pokemon, SNES JRPGS...etc etc)

    However I've noticed that pretty much every game in this style has the overworld or town section too low res for the characters to have any detail. I'd like to have the in-game character sprites hi-res enough so that you can actually feel the anime aesthetic rather than retro JRPG style or "chibi" (simplified cute anime style with huge head, small, body). I'm not a big fan of the "chibi" look and I want to keep the characters proportional and detailed as much as possible.

    So the question I want to ask is why is it that even now with modern indie pixel games, the world section is still low res? (For ex. Crosscode)

    Is it a stylistic choice because they want to replicate the retro 16-bit era pixel style? Or is it because of hardware or practical limitations?

    And I've been doing research for the past few days and have found that for pixel games the sort of standard resolution seems to be 640x360 due to its ability to upscale to 720p and 1080p.

    Now I'm still trying to figure out the vertical ration of character sprite to the full resolution, but if you look at the vertical ratio of character sprite:vertical height it comes out to this:

    1:3 120px

    1:4 90px

    1:5 72px

    1:6 60px

    1:8 45px

    It seems like most RPGS I've seen use around 1:6 to 1:18 thus makes the character tiny in the middle of the screen but you can see a lot more of the world and environment.

    But as I've said my hope is to have my character sprite be at about this level of detail.

    https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/66931841

    The girls in this artwork have a vertical height of about 120-130px.

    That means at the resolution of 640x360 my main character would take up 1:3 of the height of the entire screen and my world would be a lot more zoomed in than traditional RPGs.

    So again my question is why is it that nobody has done this before? (Or have they and I just don't know about it)

    Possible reasons I'm suspecting are:

    1. Because the character is too large for a top-down view. The world is hard to navigate(?) because so little of the surroundings can be seen at once on screen?
    2. It isn't practical to do because the world would be too big to draw with pixels. It's just not realistically possible.
    3. Because there's too much animation work due to the increased number of resolution?

    Or..just because it's not the norm? There's no reason why it shouldn't work?

    If the answer is #1 then is it possible for me to just pick a bigger resolution? Is there a bigger resolution I can use that doesn't cause an issue scaling to 720p & 1080p?

    FYI I'm not looking to do mobile. PC and hopefully consoles if possible!

    If you took the time to read through this long post thank you!

    I don't know anything about game development so any help would be appreciated!

    submitted by /u/cloudd_99
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    I created a liquid wobble Shader Graph in Unity engine similar to the one in Half Life Alyx and recorded a step by step tutorial to help devs creating same effect

    Posted: 22 Apr 2021 09:07 AM PDT

    When releasing a premium smartphone game onto Steam, how can a developer market the game to overcome the stigma of "eww phone game" if the game has always been designed with PC players in mind equally as much as smartphone users?

    Posted: 22 Apr 2021 09:07 AM PDT

    Now for some context:

    • Steam users, with good reason, tend to be very suspicious and biased against games coming to Steam that released first on smartphones. In my experience, it helps if the game has a premium-pay model like our game, nevertheless most players are turned off by the assumption that the game will have a smaller production value to accommodate for the weak hardware of phones. As far as they're concerned, phone ports are rarely if ever "true PC games" or "on the same level as my favorite PC games."
    • Our game was designed originally for the Nintendo New3DS (the hardware upgrade versions of the 3DS that came out in 2014). That puts our game in a very unique position because 3DS games were like a middleground between the hardcore console/ PC games on one end and the casual, small mobile phone games on the other end.
    • To give you a sense of scale, our game is about the size of an average, successful Nintendo Switch indie game. Likewise, it's not as if our game has a simple control scheme; it's a turn-based roguelike with 3D, polygonal graphics.
    • This is our first commercial game.
    submitted by /u/HealingSound_8946
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    Help me make better indie game trailers (3 minute student survey)

    Posted: 22 Apr 2021 11:17 AM PDT

    Am i doing tile maps correctly or is this really inefficient?

    Posted: 22 Apr 2021 06:56 AM PDT

    So im really new to game developement, but ive been playing around with libgdx and have started a bigger project over the past few days. I have not looked up how to create tile maps, the way i do it is i have a single grass tile and print out an array with like 50*50 of them. the thing is i learned about sprite sheets today and how loading alot of seperate sprites is really slow, so i was wondering is if what im doing is actually really stupid by having so many tile objects with their own texture.

    submitted by /u/UniqueAirline9393
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    Atom or VS Code

    Posted: 22 Apr 2021 07:52 AM PDT

    Hi! If you were to choose a text editor, would it be Atom? or VS Code? I have read several articles from them, yet I can't still choose. So, it'd be great to hear your preferences! Thanks!

    submitted by /u/Aspenpen_
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    Free 2D Animation Sprite - Details in Post

    Posted: 22 Apr 2021 09:45 AM PDT

    Hi,

    I'm an animator who creates sprites for games and I noticed a lot of similar animation being redone. So I figured why not create templates that developers with basic drawings skills, illustrators with no animation experience, and freelancers looking to save time could use to knock out animations more quickly. The idea is that you get multiple animations for your character just by modifying all the drawings in a single template.

    The project can be seen here: https://theanimationbank.com

    And as promised, here's the template you can play around with, no strings attached. I'd love some detailed feedback both on concept and execution so I can make it better if you're so willing, but again, no obligation.

    Compatible with any version of Flash or Adobe Animate. Animated at 12fps, so you can x5 to get 60fps.

    When done modifying, just export as a PNG Sequence at your desired resolution.

    If you're an animator looking to create your own templates, I'd love to work with you.

    submitted by /u/reddit_animals
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    I’m prototyping a protagonist character for a Metroidvania game and I could use some feedback/critique (description in comments).

    Posted: 22 Apr 2021 06:39 AM PDT

    Need help with where to start looking for information on how to use Kinect body tracking in Unity

    Posted: 22 Apr 2021 11:59 AM PDT

    Hello,

    For a school assignment, we have to create a media installation or something along those lines, we have some restrictions to make it more of a challenge.

    I would like to create a game that is multiplayer with 2 screens and 2 Xbox Kinects.

    I would like to make one Kinect track the upper body movement of one person and the other Kinect track the bottom which combined makes 1 character in the game. the game is supposed to be played in public areas by strangers. I can look up anything needed for programming but I have no clue where to start with my search. In what order of steps do I achieve my goal?

    All tutorials I tried to look up related to using the Kinect is for VR and usually ends with installing software that does the job for you. I would like to create my own since this is a requirement from school.

    if this idea seems too much for a beginner let me know! I will create a different concept which I know how to produce, its just that I wanted to create a bit of a challenge for myself :p

    submitted by /u/Pururina
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    Dismemberment systems?

    Posted: 22 Apr 2021 11:18 AM PDT

    I'm working on a brutal party game and I want the players to be able to be dismembered, like maybe lose a leg, and have that affect them the rest of the round. What are some good ways of doing this? How can I determine when the player is lethally dismembered or non-lethally dismembered?

    submitted by /u/mlr399
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    how should i start

    Posted: 22 Apr 2021 11:12 AM PDT

    hello I'm been wanting to make a 2d game for a long time i have no idea how to code or use a engine. i would like some help figuring out what game engine to use

    submitted by /u/rocketkat2
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