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    Thursday, October 7, 2021

    Home Unlabelled Eidos Montreal switches to 4-day work week (32 hours, same salary)

    Eidos Montreal switches to 4-day work week (32 hours, same salary)

    October 07, 2021

    Eidos Montreal switches to 4-day work week (32 hours, same salary)

    Eidos Montreal switches to 4-day work week (32 hours, same salary)

    Posted: 07 Oct 2021 10:26 AM PDT

    How come Godot has one of the biggest communities in game-dev, but barely any actual games?

    Posted: 06 Oct 2021 02:30 PM PDT

    Title: How come Godot has one of the biggest communities in game-dev, but barely any actual games?

    This post isn't me trying to throw shade at Godot or anything. But I've noticed that Godot is becoming increasingly popular, so much that it's becoming one of the 'main choices' new developers are considering when picking an engine, up there with Unity. I see a lot of videos like this, which compares them. But when it boils down to ACTUAL games being made (not a side project or mini-project for a gamejam), I usually get hit with the "Just because somebody doesn't do a task yet doesn't make it impossible" or "It's still a new engine stop hating hater god". It's getting really hard to actually tell what the fanbase of this engine is. Because while I do hear about it a lot, it doesn't look like many people are using it in my opinion. I'd say about a few thousand active users?

    Is there a reason for this? This engine feels popular but unpopular at the same time.

    submitted by /u/DarksquiOfficial
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    Thoughts on this post, "So You Want To Compete With Roblox"?

    Posted: 07 Oct 2021 08:09 AM PDT

    Where do you read your industry news?

    Posted: 07 Oct 2021 05:39 AM PDT

    I'm quite curious to know if there are some particular blogs, sites, or pages that might not be well known as gameindustry.biz or gamedeveloper.com where you read your latest news

    Thank you for sharing!

    submitted by /u/Tommyash92
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    Were there any video game developments that seemed so impossible it's failure was a self-fulfilling prophecy

    Posted: 07 Oct 2021 08:47 AM PDT

    Hey everyone, not sure if I'm asking this in the right place so, sorry if I am!

    I was just wondering, historically speaking, were there any game developments in the past where the task of accomplishing the making of the game was so monumental that it hurt the motivation of the workers, and therefore hurt performance?

    I'm in a organizational behavior university class, and for an assignment we have to use a real-world example, and thought to do something in the gaming industry.

    Thank you so much to whoever responds ^-^

    ​

    Edit, I was looking into Cyberpunk's development (as that was my first idea), but I could not exactly relate "the massive scope of the game = demotivation and therefore poor performance", was hoping someone could find other examples

    submitted by /u/Derpy_Kirby
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    How to create a positioning system in racing games

    Posted: 07 Oct 2021 02:49 AM PDT

    I want to promote upcoming game with my previous game

    Posted: 07 Oct 2021 02:49 AM PDT

    Hi, everyone. First of all, sorry for bad English
    So, I have an idea. I want to make steam giveaway with my old game in exchange for advertising our upcoming game? Is it good idea? How can I successfully implement it?

    submitted by /u/Emil_Abbasov_Azd
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    Yes You CAN Have Moving AND Rotating NavMesh Platforms Using the Unity Navigation System! AI Series Part 30 | Unity Tutorial

    Posted: 07 Oct 2021 05:47 AM PDT

    A post mortem in planning and releasing a video game (10+ years in the making)

    Posted: 07 Oct 2021 11:05 AM PDT

    A post mortem in planning and releasing a video game

    The seven P's: Proper planning and preparation prevents piss poor performance.

    Introduction

    Welcome to my first written post-mortem. It's also for the first commercially released game I made: Absolute Territory, a space combat arcade-sim with linear missions, a level editor, and Steam Workshop to support user-created missions.

    Who are you?

    My name is Dan, a gamer wanting to make video games since I was 15 years old. Not until the age of 18 and with Div Game Studio I started making simple games (replicating Pong, Asteroids), moving on to the various versions of Blitz Basic 2D/3D/Max.

    My industry background was squarely rooted in software development for seven years in a software house maintaining and developing a mail-order system covering sales and purchase to stock allocation and invoicing, and everything in-between more.

    I moved on to teaching computer science in Secondary education (11-16yr olds) for a further five years. My current job is unrelated to anything to do with coding or software development.

    For the last 3 years, I have been turning a hobby into a part-time career as an indie developer. I'm going to cover roughly the last year preparing to release Absolute Territory.

    I have a distinct disadvantage of never being in the game development industry.

    What do you want?

    For the last 4 years, I have been aiming to achieve a full-time salary for working part-time hours as an indie developer. I'm going to be very general without any actual figures, as determining success on sales would vary from person to person in which country they live. Instead, imagine yourself in my shoes and what success would look like to you.

    Where are you going?

    I'm on a very long journey that only ends when I do. Where that journey will ultimately take me I don't know. I hope to reach a self-sufficient state relying on a back catalog of titles and upcoming releases to turn this into a full-time business. This journey will be a discovery to see if it's a possibility for me.

    The Post Mortem Begins

    Absolute Territory is a space combat arcade-sim. Mechanics include energy management between shields, engines, guns; Choosing your ship, customizing its weaponry; Newtonian physics; and flying a linear sequence of missions covering a variety of search & destroy, assault, patrol, escort, and scan missions.

    I started working on Absolute Territory back around 2010 with the Unity Game Engine. I started just as soon as Unity version 3 came out. I had a good idea of what I wanted to accomplish.

    I had a working 2D variant from my Blitz Basic days with a couple of missions, functional enemies, guns, missiles, decoys, and even an orderable wingman. This all began 4 years earlier. I can only imagine what you may be thinking...

    Where's the plan?

    I said earlier I had a good idea of what I wanted, but the main thing that let me down was a clear overall goal for a final product. I knew I wanted 3D space combat with Newtonian physics using forces for thrusting and rotating, the features from my 2D version, and for it to play very similar to space combat games of the 90s. While I had the features locked down, I didn't consider anything beyond the core loop, i.e. story and mission design.

    A result of time wasted on creating missions never used in the final game, along with more time wasted on features specific to that mission. Further time was wasted from fixing individual missions as features unavoidably broke during development. Not counting copious amounts of refactoring.

    There is sort of a plan

    For seven years I felt like I was making little progress. I was making little progress. There would be long breaks of mostly 6 months with a spurt of two or months of work. A lengthy break took a whole year when I started training for teaching.

    Eventually, I started making small plans outlining small features. I used Trello to keep track of individual tasks helping narrow down direction. It certainly helped me figure out where I was in development, and what I had coded and why.

    There is a plan

    I firmly believe plans provide a clear enough sense of direction while allowing some flexibility towards achieving an overall goal. I decided to release Absolute Territory within a year with 30-40hours of work a week in addition to a full-time job. I planned out exactly what the final game would include and how it would play from beginning to end. Detailing the requirements for a short campaign of 6 missions and a quick play feature.

    A year came, I was still nowhere near to completing the game. It took an additional 6 months of making a level editor (making mission creation and editing faster and easier. Originally this was out of necessity to help me create missions, but I decided it would be worth including in the release. A further 3 months of polishing and debugging to get it working well enough for public consumption.

    Playtesting

    I published a Beta signup page for willing participants, 'advertising' to appropriate Reddit groups and where my niche audience would be.

    The playtest was to last 1 week with daily goals and discussions over Discord and a final questionnaire. By the time I got towards inviting people to Discord and messaging keys on an individual basis. The initial 100 signups dropped to around 40 Discord participants, with half a dozen providing various degrees of feedback.

    If you are going to run a playtest invite as many as you can. Interest is quickly lost. Look for a way to make the process simplified as possible for yourself and participants. Give them access to the game as quickly as you can from when they signup. Use the fact you can do certain things quicker than big businesses, as an individual, to your advantage.

    The whole playtest lasted 2 weeks, and interest in providing further feedback to updates had dropped to 0 by that time.

    The final month to release

    The game still misses some features, and a 1/3 of the campaign needs completing. Did I mention the campaign expanded from 6 to 21 missions? No one outside of 200 Twitter followers and the 500 wishlists gained on the Steam page knows Absolute Territory exists.

    For two weeks I search around YouTube google gaming press, collating a list of emails and forums. Researched the best way to send out keys to press and wrote the email. Then was stuck at how to send hundreds of Steam keys without doing it all manually. Found out Google Sheets can automate the process with a hard limit on sending emails daily. A week later than planned, the emails were sent.

    Marketing

    Ask on gamedev, many will tell you your marketing starts on day one. Well, they appear to be right from being in an unknown Indie perspective. There is nothing like a big push on marketing efforts to increase interest. However, its time consuming and unless you have someone dedicated, you'll have to scale accordingly.

    Over the two years of development, I aimed to post gifs twice per week (no less than once) on Twitter and less occasionally on Imgur after being disheartened with downvotes and negative comments.

    21 Days of planned Marketing

    My pre-release strategy was a 21 Days campaign of releasing a new gif on Twitter and Imgur counting the days to release. Each gif showing some form of gameplay as best as a gif would allow.

    For Imgur I found the 'begging for help' posts to be more successful in getting upvotes and views. A post with the direct title "I'm releasing my first game on Steam and need your help!" got the most upvotes and comments. Trying to replicate that gave mixed success. "I'm releasing my first video game, and I need your help as I'm just one guy." gave slightly more upvotes than the latter and fewer comments. Where "As a single indie developer I need your help to get noticed by the Steam algorithm" gathered 2/3rd fewer upvotes and some negative comments regarding the marketing.

    Overall I found Imgur very fickle. Replicating a post that did well one day would fail to achieve a similar result the next. It felt more like the luck of which eyes fell upon than any positive "game dev" "indie game" tag community spirit. Twitter was much more warming from fellow indie devs.

    If a social media platform has tags, make sure you use those tags to the intended audience and post when people are most active.

    You can try traditional forums. Unless you are already an active user expect your posts to be taken down swiftly by mods or hated upon by regulars. I garnered less traffic than either Imgur or Twitter.

    Release Day

    I'd just finished a night shift and had the thought of releasing early in an attempt to get one over all the other 100 releases due in the same day. Hit the release button and went to bed.

    On reflection, releasing your game when your main geographical audience is either going to bed or getting ready to head to work or education is not the best time. There are no do-overs here, but release day was poor and marketing efforts while great to get 600 wishlists in 21 days with an overall 1000 wishlists. The majority of the traffic came from Reddit at the start of the 21-day campaign effectively drowning out any traffic from Imgur and Twitter combined.

    Post-release marketing

    The game is out, I've used my 10% of self-marketing posts on Reddit with Imgur and Twitter providing a trickle I needed to switch it up for release week and beyond. It's time for paid marketing.

    Feeling the stress of releasing a video game, and other the 'my game is released post' I posted just a few times on release week. I had no plan for follow-up with social media and the little traffic that came from it grew smaller.

    With prior experience of Reddit marketing, from an app developed and released earlier, the main rule learned was to disable comments. Where Imgurians demand you pay for marketing posts, Redditers will spam your comments with irrelevant garbage.

    Facebook marketing (which did well for my previous app) was the way I went for Absolute Territory. Traffic flowed to my Steam page, yet there was a problem. Despite the huge amount of traffic coming in each day, no one was buying Absolute Territory. After 5 days I stopped the paid marketing.

    You can pay to get an audience to your shop but that doesn't mean you will get them to buy anything. I had done my best to ensure the marketing ads went towards the intended audience but seemed it was overall pretty broad as the relevant tags for my niche just didn't exist.

    Though just maybe my store page wasn't enticing enough to encourage buying (something I still keep working to improve on a year after Absolute territory was released).

    What did I learn?

    Plan your game

    Have some sort of game design document for your game detailed game mechanics and player interactions, enemies, music, audio, effects, and any other considerations. Break this down into chunks, achievable tasks which require little time to make to provide a sense of progression.

    Plan your time

    Decide which days and how many hours per week you will work on your game. You can use this to schedule your taskings and have a clear goal mindset towards achieving progress.

    Plan your marketing

    Include marketing in your time and what that will look like. From posting cat pics on Reddit to keep you within that 10% self-marketing rule, to posting where your niche hangs out towards. You want to come across as not promoting and but adding value to the group.

    Get a store page up on Steam ASAP and use "call to action"

    While Itch is free, Steam has an algorithm that gets eyes on your game every day for the rest of its life. You are effectively paying a one-time fee for lifetime marketing. On Itch, if you are not fortunate to get noticed by either the editors or on the new release section, all marketing is down to you.

    Every time you post something about your game have a "call to action" to wishlist your game and link your Steam page.

    Get feedback on users playing your game early and often

    For any future games, I tend to get a demo up without any barriers for playing towards getting feedback early and often. Over the development lifetime, I can use an updated demo in social media marketing and get fans onboard earlier. Decide where they will leave the feedback, how you will respond (if at all), and collate towards influencing development.

    Marketing is a black box and needs to be worked on consistently

    You have programmer art. Your game is not 100% finished. You don't want to show off your game until it's in its best light. You have fallen into the same trap as I and many other indies.

    Start working on getting eyes on your game towards fans from the start, be that showing unique mechanics, development diaries, concept art, etc. Start learning marketing by doing marketing.

    Using social media and paid ads to the content of your store page affects marketing.

    Look up the 'marketing funnel' for how this works and apply its principles as you learn to uncover the mysteries of marketing.

    Marketing is easier if you have something visually distinctive to show-off

    If you have a visually appealing distinctive art style or interesting mechanic to show you'll have a much easier time. If you don't then all the more reasons to ensure consistent marketing happens and work towards that goal. As best as your skills permit anyway. Alternatively, source free or paid assets. In the end, it's not going to matter that you sourced some of the same assets as another dev.

    Reddit is currently the best place for marketing

    Make sure you follow each subreddit's rules and their interpretation of the 10% self-marketing. If you post cat pics every day to make it easier, make it doesn't come across as spamming for that very purpose. I've seen one person get caught out. They hadn't posted anything for over a week then posted a bunch of cat pic posts followed by their self-marketing post which was subsequently pulled by a mod.

    Be prepared to change your plans

    Don't be afraid of failing. Something won't go as planned and life will get in the way. Be prepared to make changes where something is not working or time, money, or skills don't permit. It's a learning journey after all. If you succeed at everything you do the first time then you are not learning or pushing yourself to do better.

    The main changes to Absolute Territory revolved around the scope of the campaign and supporting content features, and the level editor expanding from being a dev tool to including in the release with Steam Workshop support.

    TL;DR

    • Plan how your game will play from start to finish
    • Plan which days you'll work and how many hours each week on either development, marketing, etc, going forward
    • At the start of the working week, break down development and marketing tasks for each working day
    • Get a store page up on Steam ASAP and use "call to action" to filter traffic to it
    • Decide how to get feedback on users playing your game, how you'll respond, and where they leave feedback
    • If you haven't started marketing your game start now
    • Collect a list of content creators and gaming press emails and look for a way to automate sending out press keys
    • Reddit is the best place for finding an audience for your game
    • Learn to adapt to circumstances and improve as you go
    • Failing is part of the learning process, don't beat yourself up over it
    submitted by /u/centaurianmudpig
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    How does a car work in game?

    Posted: 07 Oct 2021 03:26 AM PDT

    I just want a general overview. Is it the wheels that spin and move the car forward or it's the car itself that moves through applying physics force and wheels rotate through friction or animation? Making a car is always a confusing part for me, I can't seem to break it down properly on how do I make it. Then there is gravity and suspension etc...

    submitted by /u/sanketvaria29
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    Ideas for Game Dev Programming Talk to Older Teenagers

    Posted: 07 Oct 2021 10:54 AM PDT

    Next week I, together with a designer and artist from a different studio, will go to the local college to do an outreach talk to some of the students there. I am doing the programming part, I would really like to make it interesting, preferably interactive. It is tricky finding a balance between something self-contained but still interesting. Any ideas would be super welcome!

    After the intro I have (a non-strict) 30 minutes for the programming part. My background is C++. The students are aged 16/17 and have done a bit of python.

    submitted by /u/Abject_Chemical4306
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    [is::Engine 3.3.5] Run SFML C++ Games / Applications with SDL 2 on Linux

    Posted: 07 Oct 2021 10:29 AM PDT

    Hi all,

    I hope you are doing well!

    Now you can run SFML games / applications with SDL 2 on Linux with the is::Engine 3.3.5 !

    - Here is a tutorial video that shows you how to integrate your SFML project in the Game Engine:

    Youtube

    ​

    - Here is a video trailer of a game created with the Game Engine:

    Youtube

    ​

    Have a nice day!

    submitted by /u/IsDaouda_Games
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    This is a tutorial to start with your Unity game creator adventure - what is Unity Hub and how to manage multiple Unity editor versions | Coco Code

    Posted: 07 Oct 2021 09:15 AM PDT

    Game tester - Job

    Posted: 07 Oct 2021 02:40 AM PDT

    Is it hard to become a game tester? Is there a difference between big companies (Ubisoft, EA, Rockstar) and small companies/indie developers?

    I really like to work with games, but I don't have enough knowledge about game development. Although I know, how to analyze and improve them, because of many years of experience as a 'gamer'.

    submitted by /u/GeneralBoomo
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    Question for game art designers: Should I work at a studio whose games I personally don't like?

    Posted: 07 Oct 2021 12:12 PM PDT

    So I want to become a videogame art designer, but the few studios in my area work on games that I do not like (2d games, mobile games). I'm worried about this since I don't think I'll enjoy working on mobile games for a living. So does the game you are working on as a designer have any effect on your enjoyment or does it just not matter?

    submitted by /u/buckkerzzfanaccount
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    What would happen if I sent a spammer some keys that have already been activated?

    Posted: 07 Oct 2021 04:34 AM PDT

    I'm getting sick of spammers. There's one, who I'm pretty sure is the same person, using several different email addresses, all slightly misspelled, supposedly belonging to real streamers, asking for up to 10 keys at a time. I've made email rules to send his emails straight to spam and I've forwarded them to the abuse address for his mail provider. But he keeps sending me spam. I'd like to mess with him a little.

    What would happen if I sent him a bunch of keys that have already been activated? I assume he's going to sell them on key reselling sites. Do those sites have any way of checking whether a key has already been activated? Is he going to get money from selling used keys? If I send him used keys, am I just hurting the people he sells the keys to? Or are they protected and only he gets hurt by trying to sell used keys?

    submitted by /u/NathanielA
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    Could I get into legal trouble for sending cash prizes to the first user who solves a puzzle in my puzzle game?

    Posted: 07 Oct 2021 11:51 AM PDT

    I'm making a very difficult puzzle game and I want to be able to send a cash prize of $100 to the first person who solves the puzzle. I'm thinking when they solve it, they'd receive a code and email address and they must email the code in order to prove they got the answer. I would then send the prize via PayPal or something. Are there any legal consequences to this? What if I made the game free or $0.99? I live in Canada

    submitted by /u/theprinterdoesntwerk
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    So I’m looking to create a 2D platformer and was wondering is there a general rule or video for an assets list? Or for this stage?

    Posted: 07 Oct 2021 08:03 AM PDT

    I want to keep organized in this process. Like I keep thinking of my characters and their subsequent animation sequences, foliage and landscape stuff, bg, mg, fg.

    submitted by /u/CookedEggs
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    Do you think payers would be interested in an "auto" DarkestDungeon-inspired game?

    Posted: 07 Oct 2021 07:53 AM PDT

    As a player you would upgrade your town, level up heroes, manage items etc... Then send heroes on missions where they fight themselves (cannot be controlled), or maybe it lets you intervene with a spell or two, or a well placed resting phase.

    Maybe you know a game like this already?

    submitted by /u/Edarneor
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    Alternatives to Reddit for raising awareness of your game?

    Posted: 07 Oct 2021 11:14 AM PDT

    Reddit is great to spread the word about a game. You can post images or a video and thousands of people will see this and possibly engage. Is there anywhere else similar? Twitter is challenging if you don't have a following, same with YouTube. Are there any other forum type sites for gaming that you can post to?

    submitted by /u/WonderFactory
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    Has anyone got Spine animations working with lip-sync in Unity?

    Posted: 07 Oct 2021 11:12 AM PDT

    I'm trying to figure out how to get mouth lip-syncing to work on some 2D Spine animations in Unity. I have the Salsa lip-sync plugin but can't find any resources online that explain how to set that up with Spine animations. Maybe there's a better option? Any advice would be mega helpful! Thanks in advance

    submitted by /u/SadPandaStudios
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    I created a mobile app to help you find other people to play with

    Posted: 07 Oct 2021 11:11 AM PDT

    Hello! Essentially you create an account and set up your player "traits". Once you do that you can then create a new party post searching for a single person or multiple people (up to 10 currently) to create a party with and chat in-app before getting on the game with them. The app is set up like Tinder in the fact that there is no friend system, and if you kick someone out of your party they are gone forever and have no way of contacting you. All friend systems can happen on the machine you play on or in-game. The app's purpose is to help you find people similar to you. That's the app in a nutshell.

    I'm aware there are other apps like this, but I can't stand how much other stuff they have on it. It's too overwhelming. I'm an active dev and looking for all kinds of new things to add for you guys. Please tell me any ideas you'd have I'd love to implement them. Try the app below! ⬇️

    iOS Download: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/partyup-find-new-players/id1587060884

    Android Download: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.PartyUp

    Join our Discord! - https://discord.gg/Y4ndbqkRu9

    submitted by /u/iwannaberick
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    Unity Playmaker 2D Platformer - Player Jump and Ground Check

    Posted: 07 Oct 2021 04:59 AM PDT
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