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    Anyone else notice the weird abundance of eliteism among game devs?

    October 06, 2021

    Anyone else notice the weird abundance of eliteism among game devs?

    Anyone else notice the weird abundance of eliteism among game devs?

    Posted: 06 Oct 2021 01:38 AM PDT

    I started with making art, and a big policy among indie artists was "never put someone down for making something". The phrase "Oh I can't even draw a stick figure!" Gets tossed around a lot, and the answer is yeah- you're bad- but unless you draw that bad stick figure a bunch, you're never going to improve. Anime OC's and horrible anatomy is embarrassing, but do that shit if it helps you draw more, you should draw for yourself, have fun, you'll get better the more you make!

    Among game devs, I see very little of this. A general policy of "practice makes perfect" is there, but there's this weird air of eliteism and gatekeeping I keep finding. GMTK posted a helpful guide that basically said "master the basics first, learn through repartition", and I found multiple people bashing it. Claiming that a real dev wouldnt rely on any tutorials or tips, and would instead explore, brute force, and "figure out" their game engine alone. Or others that claimed his usual videos diving into game design were for "game devs that will never really make a game".

    Then there's the crunch culture- people bragging about how much time and over exertion they put in. Even going so far as to try and gatekeep and scare off hesitant new comers- who ask if they could be a dev without much free time, and being met with "no, you need to put in real work". Which disregards that you can make casual projects- that game development is an art form that should be fun to participate in, not just rush to perfect. Sure if you paint every day you'll get a lot better, but you'll also burn out and hate yourself for not putting in the "right" amount of effort. Give yourself realistic goals that suit yourself.

    I mean, there's a post today about ideas versus execution- with a ton of people talking about how ideas really don't matter- it's all execution and how it's done. And I mean, yeah that's fair- skill in any artform is essential for making impressive works- a forest isn't a cool idea but a skilled painter can make it look phenomenal. But fun, cool ideas do matter- that's the entire creative aspect of game development. It's like saying the subject of a painting doesn't matter, only the texture of the brush and straightness of the strokes.

    Idk, maybe it's because game development is much more technical than other artist pursuits- so people think there's a binary right/wrong way to do it. But I wish there was a more welcoming aire to new devs, it's an intimidating hobby by default- we don't need to pile on. The goal should be to have fun and make something you like.

    submitted by /u/shoeless255
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    Do these two styles of prompts layouts have distinctive names to differentiate themselves?

    Posted: 06 Oct 2021 03:25 AM PDT

    Im abandoning this projects, here is the core mechanic if anyone interested.

    Posted: 06 Oct 2021 09:40 AM PDT

    I hate implementing Sound Effects, but they add so much life to the game

    Posted: 06 Oct 2021 12:48 AM PDT

    Just added some music and sound effects to my current project and it really brought my game to life. The process of implementing them is just so obnoxious that I always put it off until later. But not this time.

    You have to add the triggers for them, which can be a pain if you don't plan for them. Then you have to find the SFX. I have gigabytes upon gigabytes of sound files that I've collected over the years (thank you to those who have shared them for free here, and thank you to those humble bundles) but they are almost completely unorganized. I mostly search the folder and hope the naming scheme is descriptive. Then you have to listen to a million of them to find one that fits.

    And they mostly sound bad on their own, but when it all comes together, it's like magic and it starts to feel like a real game.

    How do you guys feel about sound effects? Do you have any good tips for implementing them?

    submitted by /u/prog_meister
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    Can we talk about crossposting in all the gamedev communities?

    Posted: 06 Oct 2021 06:14 AM PDT

    I'm a pretty new member to all the various gamedev communities but I see so many duplicate posts about game progress/announcements/etc across each one every day. I imagine this happens in other community groups but my sense is that gamedevs place reddit pretty highly on their list of social media priorities so could be somewhat unique. Some questions:

    Members: What are your thoughts on this? Do you mind seeing the same things over and over? Are you annoyed, and if so, what's your message to all the posters that do this? If you're not annoyed, what's your message to all the people that are annoyed?

    Posters: Have you seen a tangible benefit to posting duplicates all over the place? Has there been any backlash?

    Would love to hear some thoughts on this.

    EDIT: To be clear, I'm not personally annoyed by crossposting. I understand why people do it. I'm more curious about the effectiveness, and hopefully help devs figure out the best strategy for posting

    submitted by /u/whiskeypig89
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    Giving myself an artificial deadline boosted my productivity

    Posted: 06 Oct 2021 08:57 AM PDT

    I worked on my game for a few months now. My friends wanted to see something but I always excused myself that the game wasn't ready etc.

    Now I finally told them a date when I'm going to send them a demo (eoty) and it was the best thing ever to actually make meaningful progress on my game. I should have known because even in game jams I always finished a playable game before the deadline. Who knows how many weeks I would have spent with my game slowly going nowhere otherwise.

    submitted by /u/synthesizednoise
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    How do you know if you are moving in the right direction with tycoon games

    Posted: 06 Oct 2021 09:20 AM PDT

    How do you know with tycoon/management games if you are onto something good or just wasting your time?

    I've been trying to do small management games like drug lords 2, taipan or the oregon trail for some time and always end up with something kinda boring.

    With platformers or shooters it's pretty easy to see quickly if your mechanics work or not. You create a small level, implement whatever movements or actions the player will be able to do and you can tell right away if it feels right or not (and from there you can adjust the gameplay or just scratch the all game and start over with another idea)

    With tycoon and management games it's a lot harder…. I have no idea if my prototype is boring because, only the basic system is implemented and it needs more stuff, if it's boring because it is not balanced, or if the idea is just bad and will never become something fun…

    There is also very few resources and guides on that genre so I am usually left navigating in the dark without being able to find much help online…

    So tycoon devs what's your secret? How do you know when your game is good or when you should just move onto your next idea?

    submitted by /u/Pasadu
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    FREE music loop for your games

    Posted: 05 Oct 2021 11:21 PM PDT

    Hey guys, so I've decided to upload a small loop for everyone to use. It's absolutely free.

    This is a test to see how this works out on games. I would appreciate if you leave a comment here or in Itch.io letting me know what you think about the loop. Also a video previewing the loop in your game would be awesome!

    It's here! Enjoy!

    submitted by /u/Crossedkiller
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    Where are all the destructible environments? - Vik Sohal

    Posted: 06 Oct 2021 01:21 AM PDT

    How did you start game dev?

    Posted: 05 Oct 2021 11:18 PM PDT

    What was your exposure?

    I'm doing research and posted a post a while ago and got some good feedback on how to look into the game dev industry. Curious to know how you were exposed to game dev, at what age, was it an engine that motivated you to game dev etc

    Any information is basically great info for my qualitative part for my research, so go all out if you can let me know how you got into the industry ot game dev and what you think of it!

    Cheers!

    submitted by /u/kindessissupreme
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    Do people watch devlogs? Who do you watch and why?

    Posted: 06 Oct 2021 08:57 AM PDT

    Hey everyone,

    I was wondering how many people here watch devlogs? If you don't why not? (do you read them instead?) If you do, who and why do you watch?

    For myself, who I watch the most is Sebastian Lague. I love his coding adventures. They're the exact sort of thing I wish I could do if I had more time, so getting to enjoy them vicariously through the videos is great.

    I also read S&box's devlogs, as I am personally excited for that game

    How about you guys?

    submitted by /u/AlexClarkeGames
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    Space Impact Watch - postmortem + sources

    Posted: 06 Oct 2021 05:44 AM PDT

    Intimate details about my slightly controversial project

    I decided to create almost an exact copy of old Space Impact game from popular Nokia phones from 2000's from scratch. I managed to complete it and the game is currently on Appstore. This is an article, how the project went. You can figure out pretty exactly what to expect if you work on a similar project.

    Numbers and dates

    • project start - 25th Nov 2020
    • first production release - 1st June 2021
    • work amount - 34 days, hours not tracked, but probably < 100 hours
    • lines of code (excluding config and generated files, basically just .swift files) - 5058
    • commits - 73
    • sprites created - 43 total, 19 animated with 2 frame animation, custom font for numbers 0-9
    • price - Alternate tier A EUR 0.49
      • approximately $0.49 - $0.99

    Download and sale statistics

    • total impressions - 339K
    • total units downloaded - 1.3K
    • total sessions played - 1K
      • this is interesting. ~300 people bought a game, but never started it
    • total crashes - 0 🎉
    • total proceeds (earnings that went to my account, already stripped from apples fee) - $475
      • sales was $738, therefore $263 (35,64%) went to Apple

    • top 5 countries

    • app units by device

      • iPhone - 1303
      • iPad - 21 (HOW and WHY?)

    • app download chart

    • sources of download

      • app store search - 453
      • web referrer (mostly reddit and youtube) - 366
      • app store browse - 312
      • app referrer - 98
      • others/unavailable - 95

    Other interesting stuff

    Technical stuff

    Stack

    • swift
    • sprite kit
    • krita
    • photopea

    How does it work

    Game loop

    Let's skip menu and other boring stuff. There is actually only one game scene and content is being loaded programmatically. There is one huge central class for that single GameScene, which holds references to everything happening on screen. At the beginning it sets up scene, backgrounds, ui and player. I created a system, which spawns enemies and powerups based on some kind of prescription, which looks like this:

    struct SpawnObject { let spriteOrAtlas: String //visual representation&nbsp; let time: TimeInterval //time when to appear let type: SpawnType //enemy, powerup or boss var y: CGFloat? = nil //initial y position var moves: [CGPoint]? = nil //array of points where to move sequentially let speed: CGFloat //speed of movement var health: Int? = nil //number of damage it can take var shootInterval: TimeInterval? = nil //time interval in ms for shooting var randomShootTimeIntervalRange: (min: TimeInterval, max: TimeInterval)? = nil //similar as shootInterval, but randomized and with boundaries var singleShootTimes: [TimeInterval]? = nil //exact times when to shoot once var score: Int? = nil //score for destroying this enemy var yOffset: Int? = nil //offset used for bosses in order to more preciselly restrict their move pattern var charge: (interval: TimeInterval, hideBefore: Bool)? = nil //some bosses can charge and this is the flag for that. there is also possibility to move back for a while before charging var randomMissleShootTimeIntervalRange: (min: TimeInterval, max: TimeInterval)? = nil //like randomShootTimeIntervalRange, but with homing missles var minionSpawner: (spriteOrAtlas: String, health: Int, minionSpeed: CGFloat, zigZag: Bool, score: Int, min: TimeInterval, max: TimeInterval)? = nil //like randomShootTimeIntervalRange, but with minions }

    Such objects are manually added to a collection and GameScene picks the correct on based on time. Creating those arrays was pretty tedious process, because I wanted the game to resemble the original as close as possible, and I had only a couple of YouTube walkthrough videos.
    So I had to watch them second by second and mark down the exact time, then spawn appears and also its speed, shooting pattern and move pattern. Then GameScene performed "AI" operations on every frame. This includes but it's not limited to * enemy movement * bullets movement * nukes movement * enemy shooting * hit collisions check By the way, hit collisions are checked manually without usage if SpriteKit colliders. Rectangular virtual colliders are used for this.

    Ranked mode

    The game contains also infinite pseudo-random mode which spawns enemies for the infinite amount of time, till the player dies. Then it can upload score to Apple Game Services. It gets also progressively harder. I created a simple system to ensure every game is the same and infinite. I randomly typed a bunch of long strings with numbers: private var seed : Decimal = Decimal(string: "12467548791243467501")! private var salt1 : Decimal = Decimal(string: "126549617")! private var salt2 : Decimal = Decimal(string: "265984797")!

    When deciding what and when to spawn, first I created even longer string by concating, trimming and adding mentioned variables. Then I broke the result from this method into a couple of substrings. Every substring means something. For example first two characters represent a sprite which will be used, third one represents spawn time of next entity, fourth char decide whether the entity is an enemy or powerup etc. It took a while to balance this system, but it works pretty well. It starts easy, but incrementally gets more and more challenging when enemies spawn faster and with more health.

    Graphics

    Everything is handmade pixel by pixel in 1:10 ratio. That means, 1 pixel in nokia is 10 pixels in result. Such sprites are then scaled up or down based on your resolution. Game screen has the same aspect ratio as original nokia phone - 1:1.75 (84x48 pixels). This results in almost pixel perfect experience. Bosses were pretty challenging to create, because reference videos weren't always in the sufficient quality and I had to do a lot of trials and errors. Not mentioning, almost everything consisted from two frames making a primitive animation. And I am no graphics designer nor an artist, so this process consumed a lot of time.

    Sources

    At last but not least, I decided to make it open source. Feel free to do any fun stuff you want. I would be glad if you reference this project when forked and even more for starring it. To run the project, just checkout the repository and open sources/Space Impact.xcworkspace. You will need to set your own app id and development team in order to run the project. Do not hate me, if you find some slovak comments, I planed to keep it private first :)

    Future plans

    I would like to create a Snake II free DLC. That would allow you to play also a simplified version of this game inside Space Impact Watch.

    Conclusion

    It was a fun doing such project alone. I received a lot of support from various communities but also some criticism for copying the existing game. Several people asked about licensing stuff. I did some search around for any licenses of this game, but I wasn't able to find anything, therefore I assumed, there is no license for good old Space Impact. Feel free to contact me for any kind of feedback, questions or a free codes.

    submitted by /u/wolodo
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    Help! Is there a way to lock/prevent selecting gameobjects by code in Edit mode?

    Posted: 06 Oct 2021 12:18 PM PDT

    I'm creating a custom level editor for my endless runner where I'll be creating some premade levels. I have a script that snaps the enemies and pickups to a fixed xPos with a limited yPos as well as creates an instance of the prefab.

    My issue lies in the prefab preview that I want it to not be selectable. I know I can manually prevent the gameobject from being selected on the hierarchy, but this gets very tedious when adding a lot of enemies. Does anyone know a way to disable selections by code?

    submitted by /u/TrapShot7
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    Using Steam Stats for Data Driven Game Development?

    Posted: 06 Oct 2021 08:21 AM PDT

    Great examples of sound queues from a top-down perspective?

    Posted: 06 Oct 2021 09:48 AM PDT

    Hello I would love to see examples of how a top down game communicates sound queues through on screen visuals. An example are the blood foot steps which trail a player in Horrorfield (Example) which can show where you may have heard footsteps. Fortnite does a radial display but they are FPS and not top down ( Example).

    submitted by /u/mrventures
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    How much should I charge?

    Posted: 06 Oct 2021 06:52 AM PDT

    I'm a freelance graphic designer based in the Philippines and I'm really new in designing graphics for a 2D Game, (Characters, environment, logo, UI, etc.. overall design)

    I don't know how much should I charge, I am already done with almost everything, hehe. I hope there's someone that can give me an idea, especially Filipino designers. I can also show some of my designs so you have the idea what it looks like. Thank you so much in advance! 🙏

    submitted by /u/jabeespicychixx
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    I'm back with some more networking tutorials! This time I talk about how to set up Unity's new Starter Third Person Character over a network if you're using Mirror as your networking library.

    Posted: 06 Oct 2021 05:40 AM PDT

    What is it called when two billboarded sprites are overlapped in an intersecting "+" shape to create a 3D effect?

    Posted: 06 Oct 2021 11:24 AM PDT

    Looks like this, often done with trees.
    Is there a specific name for this?

    submitted by /u/aldarith
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    Used gear marketplaces?

    Posted: 06 Oct 2021 05:53 AM PDT

    Hey folks! Looking for some help. Was wondering if anyone would know the best place to buy and sell used development equipment. Is there a good marketplace?

    I've browsed forums and sites like ArtStation, Gamasutra/Game Deceloper, and similar sites for any leads. Basically I need to find a place to sell some mocap equipment we have at work and don't know where to go. Most camera outlets aren't super big on motion capture equipment. I'll try to post in the animation subreddit as well.

    Thanks in advance for any advice!

    submitted by /u/SirBleek
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    Is there a commercial market for smaller games anymore outside of mobile?

    Posted: 06 Oct 2021 02:35 AM PDT

    I really like working as a solo dev, and I really don't enjoy touchscreen gaming. I also know from past experience that I'm not a ConcernedApe (Stardew Valley) type of person who can stay committed to one project for years and years and see it through to completion, which is what you kind of have to do if you want to make a large game by yourself.

    So I guess my question is, for anyone in the know, do smaller games developable by solo devs sell on services like Steam, or is it a fool's errand trying to go that route? Are there any thriving places for web games anymore where you can still find success, like in the earlier days of the web when some people made some money from sites like Kongregate, or is that avenue pretty much dead commercially?

    submitted by /u/ChristianLS
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    Were there any developers in particular that impressed you last generation (ps4/xbox one)

    Posted: 06 Oct 2021 09:52 AM PDT

    I know the ps4 /xbox one cpu was really weak, so weak that its very difficult to get 60fps even on the pro /x . im just curious , was there any developers that impressed you with what how well they coded a game to that weak cpu ?

    submitted by /u/mynameisedy
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    Most common distance and intersection tests used for 3D math rounds of technical interviews?

    Posted: 06 Oct 2021 09:45 AM PDT

    Some of them are trivially easy and would only be used as a fizzbuzz level evaluation. Sphere sphere intersection for example.

    Some of them are highly practical for an interview, such as AABB to AABB intersection.

    Some of them are way too involved for a white boarding session, but could be used as a limit stretcher to see how far the candidate gets, without expecting them to finish. For example, closest two points on two line segments.

    For those of you who interview or have been interviewed on this, which ones are the most likely to come up, and thus would be highest bang for buck to study before an onsite?

    submitted by /u/w_eklat
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    How do Steamworks NET GameServers work?

    Posted: 06 Oct 2021 02:12 AM PDT

    I am currently stuck on setting "official GS" stats (ranks etc), and I don't understand all of the "Steamworks.GameServer.Init()" parameters.

    ​

    I can't find any documentation on the web, thanks in advance!

    ​

    The Errors in my Server Console:

    [S_API WARN] SetUserStat() failed, stats are not loaded for SteamID [U:1:168347614]

    [S_API WARN] GetUserStat() failed, stats are not loaded for SteamID [U:1:168347614]

    [S_API WARN] SetUserStat() failed, stats are not loaded for SteamID [U:1:168347614]

    submitted by /u/EGI3000
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    Writing good choice trees in a story game

    Posted: 06 Oct 2021 01:57 AM PDT

    Hi all! I recently started planning my first story-driven game. It's supposed to be an RPG of sorts, similar in style to Undertale (though of course, nowhere near as big, since it's my first attempt at something similar), where the storytelling is the primary feature. In my previous post, some people tried to nudge me to create all the combat and overworld elements first, because they misunderstood my intentions, or tried to deter me from making a game at all, because they assumed i've never made a game before. So just to clarify, i have made small games before, just not story-driven ones and the story is in this project the most important thing.

    Thanks to advice on that post, i started a very rough sketch of how the story is supposed to progress in Twine, where i've made the very first encounter in the prologue. It took me a long time, but as i progressed, I started realising that the characters don't really act how they should and the dialogues are a bit dry. I also noticed i've written all the characters the same way (to give an example, MC's sister, Grímhilda, is supposed to be very dependent on others in the beginning of the story, only becoming more and more independent as it progresses much later on. However, in this demo, when the player asks her for help, she takes the situation into her own hands, just like much of the player's choices do.)

    On top of that, as i went through the making of this demo, i started focusing more and more on making the decision tree converge, instead of focusing on the dialogues being well written and the options being realistic.

    Here's a link to a Google Drive file where you can download the demo and see for yourself (just download it and run it, it should open in your browser): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Jbfe4DcZdjTghWIiqfQ9VWuXuCAkfiLU/view?usp=sharing
    (yes i misspelled forest, just ignore that please)

    So basically, my question would be: How does one write good and realistic dialogues and options in a choice tree in a story game? How does one write all the characters in their own way?

    submitted by /u/Mymokol
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