Screenshot Saturday #536 - Top Quality |
- Screenshot Saturday #536 - Top Quality
- Are "Code Challenges" for game-dev company interviews a scam?
- How to Improve the About This Game section on your Steam store page
- I made animal-fusion mechanics! (tutorial on how you can do it in comments)
- How difficult it is to develop a simulation game?
- Any Photoshop-level tool, which is completely free?
- C++ game engine
- Controlling materials with Blueprints in Unreal Engine. Interactivity, global switches and how to optimize (getting rid of dynamic instances)
- Finished flight HUD project for my computer graphics class
- Any good Youtubers that talk about good and bad game design? Bonus if they go over a lot of 3D platformers and metroidvanias
- I want to become a game developer. Where do I start?
- Coding Accessibility for the visually impaired
- What is Best Method For Low Poly Organic Creature Modelling ?
- Struggling with visual representation of the three parts of a character
- Wanna know the logic behind gacha rates?
- Our logo, capsule and overall branding is complete. Here's what we learned, including how our numbers on Steam were impacted.
- Problems in lazy foo sdl tutorial
- NEED SOLUTION FOR MATCHMAKING IN UNITY PUN
- Articles about indie games and the use of 8 / 16 bits graphics?
- Tutorial for 2D shadows using Unity's Shadergraph & HDRP (Took me all morning to figure out the three gotchas of this method and wanted to share)
- Software engineer resume to game dev resume
- What's the most user-friendly game design program for someone who's never made a game before?
- FreeCAD Beginner Tutorial : Booleans
- If I am making an asset for asset store is PBR textures enough for developers?
- FREE KITBASH PACKS
Screenshot Saturday #536 - Top Quality Posted: 07 May 2021 09:11 PM PDT Share your progress since last time in a form of screenshots, animations and videos. Tell us all about your project and make us interested! The hashtag for Twitter is of course #screenshotsaturday. Note: Using url shorteners is discouraged as it may get you caught by Reddit's spam filter. Bonus question: Do you usually having something else going on in the background when you play games (TV, music, voice chat, etc...)? [link] [comments] | ||
Are "Code Challenges" for game-dev company interviews a scam? Posted: 08 May 2021 10:13 AM PDT I have been tasked with a 72 hour(!) programming "challenge" that is basically a full base for a game, where the PDF stresses that 'Code needs to be designed with reuse-ability in mind, so that new mechanics and features can be added with minimal effort' and I feel like I am basically just making a new mini-game for their app suite. I have dealt with a fair share of scams lately and used to look at 24-48 hour code tests like this as just part of the application process, but come to think of it I have not once gotten an interview after a test of this style. Either my code is really crap, or positions like this are just scamming job applicants by making them perform free labor, with no intent to hire. Anyone have thoughts on this? [link] [comments] | ||
How to Improve the About This Game section on your Steam store page Posted: 07 May 2021 02:24 PM PDT IntroductionHave you ever stumbled across a Steam Store page, scrolled down to the 'About This Game' section, and found a real mess? More to the point, did you find it didn't really inspire you or tell you much about the game? Could this scenario, perhaps, describe your Steam page? Do you consider the customers' reading experience by making sure you clearly communicate and properly structure your game's description? Maybe you don't know where to start, and you're confused about how much content you need to include. If so, don't worry; the About This Game section doesn't have to contain ten GIFs, walls of text, and a massive checklist of non-prioritized features to be appealing. Here are my tips on how to present this section. Let's make marketing simple. (Please make sure to have a look at the mockup I created, linked at the bottom) Contents 1. About This Game Section 2. Dimensions 3. Overview 4. Images & GIFs 5. Key Features 6. Call to Community 7. Conclusion 1. About This Game SectionThis section is used to further describe your game. If a customer has arrived at this space, it means either your trailer, screenshots, or short description enticed them enough to scroll down and learn more, and that's a good thing because you've piqued their interest. At this point, customers want you to tell them why they should take the last leap and purchase your game, not talk them out of it. All you have to do now is make their choice easier by showing the right amount of information — remember: quality over quantity. 2. DimensionsLet's talk about how much content you can include. If you add tons of GIFs, images, and text, part of your content will be placed after a 'Read More' button. You have about 600 words to play with before that happens. Keep in mind, most people will not click 'Read More,' which is why I recommend including as much concise information as possible before activating this button. If you feel you can't do that, it's not a major problem; simply make sure all information above 'Read More' clearly and creatively describes the best of what your game offers. Essentially, you want to tell the customer what your game is about as quickly as possible. Be considerate of their time; they don't have a lot to give you. 3. OverviewThe Overview section is where you'll briefly talk about your game. It's technically your second hook (your short description is your first, and that is where you would tell the reader the basic features about your game). Here's an example of a Short Description for my completely made up up game:
As for the overview, you still want to write as few words as possible to explain what your game is about and include some unique selling points. Be careful to not oversell/promise something! Stick to the core mechanics your game actually offers. Typically, you want this copy to have flair, rather than being too technical or boring. To give you an example, I've written some copy: Example 1 - Not Creative
Try to set a more compelling tone and show some personality to stand out from the crowd and pull the reader into your game's world. Example 2 - Creative
Example 3 - Creative
Hopefully, those examples give you an idea of the difference. If you're still struggling with keeping this sentence short, don't worry; it's not a necessity. However, I strongly suggest following the rest of the above advice. Finally, don't copy text from your short description. Nobody wants to read the same thing twice, especially after being encouraged to scroll down for more information. 4. Images & GIFsYou've likely been told that placing GIFs in the About This Game section is a good idea, and while I definitely agree, you should keep some points in mind. Let's go through them. GIFs with Purpose Firstly, do not use the same image as your small capsule or footage from your trailer for your GIF. The customer doesn't want to see the same thing twice. GIFs can be very effective because they give life and motion to the About This Game section and allow you to highlight specific gameplay mechanics. They help the customer imagine what your game is about and can add a bit of creative flair. In a sense, using GIFs is almost like visual storytelling. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words. However, keep the focus on what you wish to convey, rather than on the number of GIFs you use. (This same guideline also applies to images.) Less is sometimes more. Don't slap on a dozen GIFs simply for the sake of using GIFs. I realise copious GIFs are quite common, but following a trend isn't always the best option. Lastly, there is some talk about how GIFs can serve as your second trailer. I agree with this notion to a certain extent, in that they can encourage the customer to make a final decision if you present them right. But what I don't agree with is using GIFs because your trailer isn't as strong as it should be. In that case, you should invest more time into learning the fundamentals of what makes an effective game trailer. Both GIF and trailer have clear objectives; make sure they fulfil their purpose well. (Derek Lieu has some fantastic tips regarding game trailers). GIF Optimisation This discussion is aimed towards the 'About This Game sections that literally contain dozens of uninspiring and unorganized GIFs and images. You've probably seen these pages countless times, and they are actually quite off-putting. If I just described your About This Game section, here's a reminder: not everyone is blessed with fast internet. I know you could argue that the number of people without fast internet is negligible, but not according to Valve. Here's what they had to say on the matter back in 2018:
You can read more about that here. My advice is to crop your GIFs and images appropriately to cut down their size, (ezgif.com is a convenient tool). It's also important to make your GIFs run at the highest frame rate (FPS) possible. If not, customers may think your gameplay is laggy, or that your Steam page is making them lag. In the end, Steam is a vast place with millions of users, so you would be wise to try and accommodate everyone by increasing the chances of your About This Game section loading optimally. 5. Key FeaturesNext, make a concise list of features that best show off your game. Remember, features are features for a reason. If you have a massive list of them, then they stop being features. This list must be easy to read and contain creative copy. What parts of your game stand out? Try to make it sound intriguing; each word should have a desired effect. Don't repeat features that are already displayed above the Languages section, such as Split Screen, Full Controller Support, and so on. Leave that area to do its job; it's there for a reason. Here are some key features I whipped up for my fictional Sword of Vengeance game:
6. Call to CommunityPlease note: If you're creating a Steam store page from scratch, make sure to upload your Discord Image (external link) after your Steam page is approved. Otherwise, it may get flagged. If you don't wish to add an image like this, that's completely fine. The following advice describes how to get the most out of it should you decide to include one. This is where you'll add your Call to Action, but I like to think of it as Call to Community. I recommend creating a Discord button because it gives interested players a chance to ask either you or your fanbase questions in real time. Should they join, they'll be able to tell how active your server is. Putting in the effort to interact with your players shows that you care and listen to your fans. Overall, Discord is a fantastic platform to champion your community. As for tips concerning the image itself:
7. ConclusionTo show you what the end result of everything I've discussed can look like, I've created a mock-up for the "Sword of Vengeance" About This Game section. My goal is to demonstrate that even if this section doesn't go past the Read More button or contain a magnitude of GIFs, images, and copy, so long as the content is properly structured, creatively worded, and visually striking, it can still be very effective. In terms of content placement, your content doesn't necessarily have to be structured the way mine is. For example, you might prefer placing your GIF at the very top and the overview just underneath. Or maybe you want to show off two GIFs instead of one. Be as creative as you want; you get the idea. However, my personal rule of thumb is to try stay above the Read More button to make sure the reader can retain as much information as easily and quickly as possible without using any more of their precious time. If the customer has to read more to learn important information about my game, then my content up to that point wasn't intriguing enough. I'm not saying a long About This Game section can't be effective, or that you should never use lots of GIFs. I merely suggest that you consider the benefits of a short About This Game section and encourage you to try out alternative creative and original approaches. MockupNext time you're browsing through Steam's endless catalogue of games, have a look at how developers design their About This Game section and ask yourself: "Could this be structured better? Is it telling me everything I want to know in a creative way?" I'm not saying my way is the deciding factor that will determine whether your game sells well or not. Many Steam store pages out there have different concepts and have sold thousands of copies. What I am saying is that your About This Game section might have room for improvement, and if you think it does ... what are you waiting for? It's time to clean up your Steam store page! If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below or drop me a tweet. [link] [comments] | ||
I made animal-fusion mechanics! (tutorial on how you can do it in comments) Posted: 08 May 2021 06:01 AM PDT
| ||
How difficult it is to develop a simulation game? Posted: 08 May 2021 08:32 AM PDT So I've been playing mad games tycoon 2 and wonder how difficult and time consuming it is to develop a simulation game where so many factors decide an outcome. Anybody has any experience creating sim games? [link] [comments] | ||
Any Photoshop-level tool, which is completely free? Posted: 08 May 2021 11:32 AM PDT | ||
Posted: 08 May 2021 10:02 AM PDT Hi, I have already tried learning UE4 but it fells kinda to big for my purposes. Honestly, I don't have any planst work in big studios. All I want is to publish some self made games and at the same time improve my programming skills. I'm learning C++ for 1.5 years and I really want to use my knowledge. In the future, I want to study cs(computer science) in the university. Any experience will help. So what should I learn then? Should I continue with her or should I learn c#(it is said it easy to learn it after c++) and switch to utiny? Or maybe there are other viable game engines(with c++ preferably)? [link] [comments] | ||
Posted: 08 May 2021 09:12 AM PDT
| ||
Finished flight HUD project for my computer graphics class Posted: 08 May 2021 05:13 AM PDT 2 months ago I posted here asking if it was possible to create a flight simulator in Unity for a semester long project. I wanted to make something where a space shuttle lands, and you have a heads up display (HUD) that guides you onto the runway like in this app. The answer I got was "No", so instead of trying to do a flight sim + HUD, I just decided to do just do a HUD with a premade aircaft. I took the standard asset aircraft jet in Unity, and used GL to draw 2D lines on the screen to represent the HUD. I got it to work with pitch/roll indicators, a velocity vector, and to project the outline of the runway outline onto the HUD. Screenshot here: https://imgur.com/4g0VGZZ My favorite part about learning C# was that, in other programming languages there isn't standard support mathematical objects, whereas in Unity/C#, I googled "how to find a ray plane intersection in Unity", and found that there are "Ray" and "Plane" classes, where all you have to do is use the Raycast method to find the ray/plane intersection. Additionally, I googled "how to project vector in Unity", and found that Unity has a method to support vector projection. Instead of having to implement these things manually, Unity/C# (not sure which) does it for you. [link] [comments] | ||
Posted: 08 May 2021 10:08 AM PDT | ||
I want to become a game developer. Where do I start? Posted: 08 May 2021 12:40 PM PDT Video game development has been a long-time passion of mine. I've done programming in the past, and I think I have a decent understanding of video game design. But I feel that I'm missing some insight. I guess what my question is, where do I start? What programs should I familiarize myself with? [link] [comments] | ||
Coding Accessibility for the visually impaired Posted: 08 May 2021 08:53 AM PDT Hello, I was wondering if there are any good 3rd party libraries or even Windows APIs for accessibility for the visually impaired. Specifically I was wondering about any screen reading APIs or APIs for interfacing with braille keyboards. This would allow games which rely on a lot of text/dialog such as point-and-click adventure games to be more accessible. Does anyone know if there are native C++ Windows APIs for this, or 3rd party standard libraries? [link] [comments] | ||
What is Best Method For Low Poly Organic Creature Modelling ? Posted: 08 May 2021 12:25 PM PDT Have you ever played "Deep Rock Galactic" ? I really loved the low poly style creatures. Some creatures has organic shapes and it looks great in low poly. example video: (1) Deep Rock Galactic - Meet the Glyphid Grunt - YouTube I thought, how can i model this organic creature shapes. My best solution for this , sculpting a high poly version of this creature and with some modifier like decimate in blender i can transform my high poly to a low poly style game object. But making a high poly model a lot of work. One another solution is sculpting. Similar to first method but rather than making a high poly i can work with low poly model while i sculpting. That probably saves a lot of time but i can miss details maybe. What's your opinion about this ? How to model a low poly organic shape ? Also when i talk about low poly, not only polygon count. I'm talking about low poly style models. (flat shaded) If you know any resource to suggest about organic shape modelling or organic low poly shape modelling could be great! [link] [comments] | ||
Struggling with visual representation of the three parts of a character Posted: 08 May 2021 12:24 PM PDT So I'm working on a monster collector / battler in the vein of Pokemon. One of the core parts of the game is that all of your monsters/spirits are built out of three 'Aspects' that can be interchanged, even in combat. These three aspects are Geo(graphy), History, and Purpose. Geo are things like 'River', 'Ocean', 'Volcano', Mechanically it's a passive skill and a few active skills that interact with that passive. History are things like 'Rocking Chair' that your grandmother sat in, 'Broken Blade' that a nameless soldier once held, or 'Campfire' where the wounded were tended in a great battle. Mechanically these are passive skills. Purpose are things like 'Soldier', 'Blacksmith' or 'Archer'. Mechanically these are a collection of active skills. My hangup is that I would like to represent all three parts of a spirit/monster in their sprite, without massive amounts of work. So far the History of a spirit defines their primary appearance, and the Geo applies a texture effect over it. I'm not really sure how to display the Purpose component though, and I'd appreciate any advice and ideas. [link] [comments] | ||
Wanna know the logic behind gacha rates? Posted: 08 May 2021 08:15 AM PDT So I have been thinking of making a simple console Gacha game for a while where u press a key and it gives you a random item from a list of drops and every item has specific drop rates. So what I exactly wanna now is how do I do the logic behind drop rates? Like if I wanted a specific item ( say platinum ) which has a drop rate of like 5% here. So what's the logic I have to do get this thing setup of having a chance of getting a particular item? ( I know basics of programming so yes i just wanna know the logic, do we use random or something. You can also provide me a simple code for this if you want... :) ) ( Sorry if my English is hard to understand. ) Thanks in advance, yay. [link] [comments] | ||
Posted: 08 May 2021 11:57 AM PDT
| ||
Problems in lazy foo sdl tutorial Posted: 08 May 2021 11:39 AM PDT I have reached tutorial 3(event-driven programming), the problem is that the window closes as soon it pops up even though it is supposed to close when the user says so. What might be the problem? code: /*This source code copyrighted by Lazy Foo' Productions (2004-2020) //The surface contained by the window //Update the surface edit: I have included the code. [link] [comments] | ||
NEED SOLUTION FOR MATCHMAKING IN UNITY PUN Posted: 08 May 2021 11:10 AM PDT Hey devs, I'm currently developing a multiplayer game. So the UI works like this : The user logs in/ signs up via Playfab Authentication The user choses a category out of A, B or C This category gets saved as a player data on playfab Now, I want to match the players with each other whose category is same. How can I do it? Please help, I'm literally stuck on it for 2 days now. [link] [comments] | ||
Articles about indie games and the use of 8 / 16 bits graphics? Posted: 08 May 2021 11:03 AM PDT Hi! I'm developing my final proyect in university as is about this subject. You guys know articles, books or anything that can help me learning about the retro trend in indie games? [link] [comments] | ||
Posted: 08 May 2021 07:10 AM PDT
| ||
Software engineer resume to game dev resume Posted: 08 May 2021 09:09 AM PDT I'm in maybe an uncommon situation here. I'm a dev with about 8 years of experience professionally, I've started my own business both building projects and acting as a green field consultant for some pretty large projects. But obviously none of that has anything to do with games. I have some hobbyist experience on the side, I've written shaders for DX9 using HLSL (been doing hobby coding a lot longer than professional) , I've used a fair amount of Unity and I'm now really diving into VR after picking up a few HMDs last year. But my biggest game dev experience has been the two years I spent making content for a gaming group. I used an editor that is very much like what you would expect from any other 3D software, placed enemies, scripted their actions, designed scenarios, tweaked AI settings and finite state machines, balanced scenarios, made some mods and contributed to community mods, managed IT operations for the group (not an understatement, surprisingly complex), . The engine handled things like networking, most lighting, most sound design, but I'm very used to those concepts. Writing it out, the answer to my question seems fairly obvious, but what do you guys think about including that experience on my resume as a way to bridge the gap between enterprise/startup/consulting dev experience and the game dev job I may want? Any hesitations? [link] [comments] | ||
What's the most user-friendly game design program for someone who's never made a game before? Posted: 08 May 2021 05:13 AM PDT I had the idea recently to try to make a game inspired by Portal or I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream (in terms of atmosphere and eerie AI for the latter, not gameplay). Particularly got the idea after seeing that 3D 1st-person games would be an option in Nintendo's upcoming Game Builder Garage. However, I have never attempted coding or game-design before so I don't know where to start. GBG looks like it will be very user-friendly, but I'm unsure as to how detailed the potential will be, plus it's not out yet anyway. Is there another common game creator out there that has a good user-friendly interface, especially for someone who's never done coding before? Or should I just wait for GBG since it comes out next month, seems to have a lot of options and is user-friendly, and is $30? [link] [comments] | ||
FreeCAD Beginner Tutorial : Booleans Posted: 08 May 2021 04:55 AM PDT
| ||
If I am making an asset for asset store is PBR textures enough for developers? Posted: 08 May 2021 08:26 AM PDT I am making an model pack and have spent 4 hours exporting textures in PBR, Unity URP and Unreal 4 Packed formats. But now I am not sure If im wasting time and should just export in PBR. How hard is it to convert PBR textures to textures that work in unity and unreal? Never tried that because I always have drawn and exported the textures in the format I require,but Im thinking that other developers who doesn`t have tools or experience in texturing might have problems with this. [link] [comments] | ||
Posted: 07 May 2021 11:23 PM PDT Hello, my name is Rafael Bicalho, I would like to share with you some kitbash pack bundles I did for free it's more than 200 pieces all of them combined and I released them to use for free commercially too but some credit would be appreciated :) , the packs mostly focus on hardsurface and mechanical assets. Here is the link: https://gumroad.com/rmb I hope it helps! [link] [comments] |
You are subscribed to email updates from gamedev - game development, programming, design, writing, math, art, jams, postmortems, marketing. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States |
No comments:
Post a Comment