The Beginning of a new Free Asset Library, Lux Materium! |
- The Beginning of a new Free Asset Library, Lux Materium!
- A game jam for making blind accessible games started today! An interesting challenge for anyone wanting to learn how to make games more accessible.
- What are good programming practices in gamedev context'
- Getting to 3000 wishlists as an Indie Developer with passive marketing!
- SDL 2.0.18 released
- Interesting video where uploader talks about Korean Indie Gamedev Scene
- I made a tutorial about tessellation shaders in Unity! Use them to add details to a mesh dynamically. Video and article links in the comments!
- How is After Effects used in 3d game VFX animations?
- Is github used for gamedev? Or some other solution?
- Is Exhibiting At Pax East Worth It
- When do you start producing content vs. features?
- Can owning an LLC indie game company pay enough to keep a house?
- Are real weapons copyrighted?
- Why should my game exist?
- Help needed with art for horror game!
- Curious on Algorithm/technique used in ACNH water / waves / shore effect.
- Where is a good place to find game design teams
- Help! My game's announcement trailer got picked up by PC-Gamer, but I don't know enough about marketing to capitalize on it...
- How to close a characters mouth/eyelids?
- How To Make One Way Platforms From Dead Cells In Unity
- Is it worth it trying to get professional QA testers?
- glfw and glad cmake boilerplate code
- How To Plan a Sandbox Game?
- How to NOT make a Souls Like Game?
| The Beginning of a new Free Asset Library, Lux Materium! Posted: 01 Dec 2021 06:01 PM PST I started a new free CC0 library of photogrammetry assets. The library has models, materials, and decals. The library is just starting so there will be new assets weekly!!! [link] [comments] | ||
| Posted: 01 Dec 2021 03:39 AM PST
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| What are good programming practices in gamedev context' Posted: 01 Dec 2021 03:43 PM PST I'm making a game in C++ and SFML, and it is getting big with classes. I've noticed that I have to spend a lot of time thinking how should I design some things because of what I think, lack of experience in the field. In this path, I've collected some questions. If I want to check a collision between a bullet and an enemy, should I do it in the enemy class? In which I should have every bullet and it probably will become harder to read, or do I do it in the game state class, where I have everything I need, but I have to iterate between every enemy and bullet again to just check the collision and do what I want If I want to add a function like a silly getter into a class which is child from an abstract class, and I don't have the variable in the base class, what do I do, should I add that variable in the base class even though I will not use it in any other child than that? What cool way exist to run a chunk of code only once without making aux variables? Like starting an animation that executes based in a clock, but I want to restart the clock only once. I've found a method which works of creating an aux int, which is set at 0, so when it checks 0, the code runs and then it gets added, then it comes back to 0 when I want, but I feel that it's too hardcoded, and I have to spend time making the variables in the class, then in the constructor setting up to 0, etc, etc... What are the ways that normally stuff gets done? [link] [comments] | ||
| Getting to 3000 wishlists as an Indie Developer with passive marketing! Posted: 01 Dec 2021 04:38 PM PST Hey Gamdev, I wanted to give back with a deep dive into data about wishlists from the SteamNext Fest and a youtube video. I'm hopeful this may be able to help you make smart decisions about getting those wishlists. It was positively received on /r/IndieDev so thought it might be good to post it here too. Some quick context. Lodestar is a multiplayer sci-fi action adventure game where you explore planets, refine resources, and acquire cool upgrades (think zelda + satisfactory-lite). It was worked on by 12 people, mostly hobbyists, for about 6 months prior to the demo launch. Wishlist Data https://i.imgur.com/3S8UKPN.png - Daily Additions https://i.imgur.com/RWiKBlP.png - Cumulative wishlists The first graph above shows wishlist additions by day. The second graph shows accumulation over time. With both these graphs I feel like you can grasp our three important inflection points. My first learning, that we verified, was that getting out early matters. Even doing virtually no promotion, in 9 months we were able to pick up about 1000 wishlists (33% of all). During much of this time our page was really rough with little information and very poor screenshots. Even updating the quality of the page had little effect on the rate of wishlists. So definitely try to get your page up asap, even if you or your team are a little ashamed of what you are putting out there. Time in the market beats timing the market. The second learning is that SteamNext helped nearly doubled our wishlists quickly and had a massive impact on the number of impressions and visits to the page. https://i.imgur.com/wHcd0GK.png - Total Visits to Steam Page There are two spikes that did not have a direct correlation with gained wishlists like other spikes did. We believe this is likely bot traffic. You can see that even after the SteamNext fest events closed, we still had almost double the daily traffic coming through. It appears that either the number of wishlists or merely participating in the SteamFest has a significant impact on the number of people visiting the page. This leads me to believe that either participating in the first SteamNext Fest you can is a great idea. This will give you a long tail of boosted visibility on Steam. Otherwise, wait until the last possible SteamNext fest and possibly align your launch date right after the window to capture the greatest number of purchasers. Note that by participating in the SteamNext Fest we have agreed to go into Early Access by at least May 1st so it has put us on a deadline. I'm not sure what the consequences of not hitting this deadline we agreed to Steam with for the festival, but we do not intend to find out. Finally, a little about the Nookrium Youtube video found here (~34k views): https://youtu.be/vO_hXUEeHZ8 Prior to the SteamNext Fest, I e-mail about 30 youtubers who covered similar games with 50k-500k average views. Either in the indie genre or the open world survival style genre. Not a single one of them covered the game, and only 2 responded, both declining to cover the game due to time constrictions. Nookrium was not even on my radar because I figured I should go after larger reviewers. Had I contacted Nookrium, and got him to cover during or after the festival I am fairly certain it would have had an even bigger effect on wishlists, but I am very grateful he chose to cover the game, even without me reaching out to him. Surprisingly, his Lodestar video has been the best video of the month for him, and even the other smaller youtubers that covered us saw the same effect. Perhaps with so few videos on our game they draw additional traffic or perhaps there is more demand for our game than most other genres. Regardless, don't underestimate aiming smaller to get early attention for your game! Our conclusion from this data is for indie developers to:
Demo Data Our demo build is very rough (and still out) but playable. Most problems were the occasional crashes and UI/Input bugs that required a restart. Fortunately, we prioritized auto-saving so usually little progress was lost. It had around an hour of solid content available. It lacked a single boss, and only showcased the first planet with the basic mechanics of the game. Initially I had expected that it would receive about 500-1000 wishlists from SteamFest and about 10k-20k players of the demo. This is based off our previous game of Valgrave and how many wishlists we had prior to the demo. https://i.imgur.com/X4WJ9HY.png - Demo players Our actual numbers are about 4227 players have downloaded the games and 1091 have hit the play button (about 500-600 during the festival). So while we exceeded/met the wishlist expectation we did not get anywhere near the players we were expecting. This may be because there were hundreds of other games to play and our download size was a bit longer (3GB). I don't have other data to compare this to so it is really up in the air if its good or bad. I kind of expected us to get reamed in the feedback and discussion sections we set up, but the response was pretty positive (90% positive, 10% critical) so it seems like player expectations of how far along games should be was met. An interesting note is that Nookrium's video, since it will stay up forever, has a long tail on the number of players trying our game, where Steam had a huge and quick dropoff. Initially we had thought when the festival was over the demo would automatically get taken down by Steam, but it just stayed up! We talked about taking it down but the data showed it was helping with our daily wishlists at the time (4-8 instead of 1-3 on average) so we left it up. This additionally is what led to Nookrium getting a shot and playing a later patch of the game that was more sophisticated. We're definitely glad now that we left it up. Our current plan is to polish the first two planets and their bosses and at least leave the demo up until launch. https://i.imgur.com/XuCJg6n.png - Time played in demo In terms of play time we were also met with good news. Over half the players played for more than 30 minutes which hits all core features and nearly 31% played for one hour which includes the totality of content in the demo. Surprisingly another 14% played for 2 hours so they must really love the game. We launched additional patches after the first demo patch in quick succession to solve major bugs and added some player-requested features. This took average playtime from about 25 minute to 32 minutes, so it was a great investment as well. In conclusion we think that demos could be a good idea at least after the first SteamNext fest to generate passive buzz about your game without taking away time from development. Just be sure to get your demo approved ASAP and don't wait until the last week like we did. Parting Thoughts It is hard to view with hindsight your own actions and what might have been. But I'll speculate here on out that is not backed by hard data. The first thing is that it appeared the SteamNext was promoting games with more wishlists higher on the list. So developing a following prior to the festival could be huge in how much you can get out of it. Additional effort there will be noticed. I would VERY MUCH AVOID immediately entering a festival if you don't already have some wishlists as if they are truly trying to double your wishlist and you only have 10, that would be a big waste. The team really pulled together to launch in time. We mostly were attempting to push ourselves to give a playable demo and wanted to set a hard deadline on ourselves. This led to a few days of crunch for some of us, but most developers blamed themselves for procrastinating to the last day instead of doing it overtime as was intended. Who knows what would have happened if we waited til the next SteamFest with a better polished 1st and 2nd planet and 2 hours of content. Perhaps we get more because the game is super well received. Perhaps we get less because we don't get the long tail. Perhaps we develop a lot slower and still wouldn't have a playable demo. Overall it was really positive from a product development standpoint of pulling us all together as a team, versus everyone working in their own space. Thanks for taking the time to read through all this. Hopefully you have learned something you can apply to your own game. You can find us u/EdenicEra on twitter if you want some more smaller posts like this or check out Lodestar on Steam and judge for yourself how rough the demo is. If you have any questions feel free to post them below and if I'm not breaking NDA with another company I'll answer them asap. [link] [comments] | ||
| Posted: 01 Dec 2021 09:22 AM PST
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| Interesting video where uploader talks about Korean Indie Gamedev Scene Posted: 01 Dec 2021 06:11 PM PST
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| Posted: 01 Dec 2021 10:03 AM PST
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| How is After Effects used in 3d game VFX animations? Posted: 01 Dec 2021 06:46 PM PST I can see how Photoshop is used for game VFX for texturing, but how is After Effects used for creating 3d VFX. Was After Effects used more commonly for game VFX back when 3d was less powerful and computer systems weaker, or is it still used a lot in creating game VFX in 3d games? Could someone link me to a YouTube video or a tutorial somewhere that heavily utilizes After Effects in the process of creating a 3D game VFX animation? I would love to learn about the utility of After Effects in good-looking 3d game VFX animations. I'm wondering specifically about the real-time rendered 3d game VFXs. [link] [comments] | ||
| Is github used for gamedev? Or some other solution? Posted: 01 Dec 2021 06:43 PM PST I'm guessing if it has lots of assets it could be a hassle to upload it. I come from web development btw. [link] [comments] | ||
| Is Exhibiting At Pax East Worth It Posted: 01 Dec 2021 10:01 PM PST Hello! I recently got the idea of exhibiting my game at Pax East, and was just wondering, what are the benefits of doing so? Do you get more Steam Wishlists? Is it worth spending the couple thousand dollars to purchase a lot? And how many Wishlists could you expect from that. Thanks! [link] [comments] | ||
| When do you start producing content vs. features? Posted: 01 Dec 2021 09:46 AM PST Hey guys, how are you? I'm creating a simulator game and it has some features, the core gameplay loop is working properly, etc - however, there's one thing I can't figure out: when to stop creating features and start adding content. Think of The Sims: you can move your characters, make them interact with the environment, build houses, etc. As an analogy, the current state of my game is that it allows you to do all the things I mentioned, except that when you build a house, there's only one type of floor, one type of furniture - it lacks volume in terms of content. That said, a few questions I have:
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| Can owning an LLC indie game company pay enough to keep a house? Posted: 01 Dec 2021 09:05 PM PST So a couple days ago I had a talk with my parents about my life goals and what such, and they have told me that when they were close to my age they did own their own place for a bit but then they had to move back to their parents house because they weren't making enough money. And so then they told me that I can get a job somewhere(like fast food, grocery stores, malls, etc) and I think they told me that I should work at a place like that until I can get my dream job and also have enough money to afford a house and even keep it. And my dream job is to own my own LLC Indie game company. So yeah should I just work the basic young adult job first just to save money for a house and also game company stuff and then use the money from my dream job to pay for bills and pretty much everything else? The overall question is can I get paid enough from owning an LLC Indie Game Company to live out on my own? Also just a side note, me and some friends of mine are making a game right now that we estimated will take 5 years to make. And lastly I'm 18 and graduated high school last may and now I'm taking a 3 year adult program that's teaching me life skills(money, cooking, jobs, etc). So yeah. Also I live in Boise Idaho. [link] [comments] | ||
| Posted: 01 Dec 2021 07:54 AM PST Which weapons can I use in my game without paying for license? [link] [comments] | ||
| Posted: 01 Dec 2021 10:23 PM PST Recently while developing my game, I asked myself, " why should my game exist? What makes it different from every other game in this genre?". I drew a blank. Does it need more development time? Do I need to take some time off? It's fun but there are other games that have done it better. Has this kind of thing happened to anyone else? [link] [comments] | ||
| Help needed with art for horror game! Posted: 01 Dec 2021 10:22 PM PST Hello all! New to this Reddit and game development. A group of my CSE buddies and I are creating a horror game and don't have much experience with just the artistic part of the characters/props. Any suggestions or points of contact that anyone can recommend? All tips are greatly appreciated :) [link] [comments] | ||
| Curious on Algorithm/technique used in ACNH water / waves / shore effect. Posted: 01 Dec 2021 05:22 PM PST I have played Animal Crossing New Horizons (ACNH) for awhile now, and am curious how the water system works. My best guess is a few texture+shader layers, with a shader for the waves that is a vertex shader, and manipulates the height / color of vertices / fragments for the wave based on an animation texture source. I'm curious how this is replicated / tiled around the island too. But what gets me... is the darkened effect that stays behind? Is this merely another duplicate shader/mesh, but is UNDER the water, and is slightly out of phase of the animation of the shader that creates the waves, so that it "lags" behind? How is the fishing pole "bobber," and other ripple effects handled? How is boyancy handled? Just a physics volume of forces / predefined heights in the volume that just bob / move objects up and down around this height value? [link] [comments] | ||
| Where is a good place to find game design teams Posted: 01 Dec 2021 10:13 PM PST Instead of making a team myself, I found it better to join a game dev team working on a new project or perhaps a team that is making a mod for a game (beside fnf i am working on one with a team) But in order to improve my skills and get into actually game development, i want to join a team somewhere I can use Photoshop decently and might get some stuff done with fl studio and audacity (don't expect super banger music yet I've just started fl) My point is which social media is good for finding game development teams that actually need someone to join their team? [link] [comments] | ||
| Posted: 01 Dec 2021 10:44 AM PST Hey! My little game got a bit of traction after the announcement trailer got picked up and put on PC-Gamer when someone wrote an article about it. The only issue is that I don't really know how to properly capitalize on that early success. It seems like a lot of devs are looking for external validation, some kind of media success, etc... and that I struck gold on accident! Some other devs [who quite frankly made better games] I talked to even said they'd reached out a few times to the same website but got nothing but radio silence. I lucked out I guess, but luck favors the bold. How can I use this as leverage to further promote and work towards my game's success? What would a smart person do if they were picked up by a major media outlet as a small indie? I'm dumb as bricks when it comes to marketing, and don't want to waste this opportunity. [link] [comments] | ||
| How to close a characters mouth/eyelids? Posted: 01 Dec 2021 03:04 PM PST Usually when I work on a character I sculpt them with the mouth open, especially for non-human characters, so that I can put all the detail in and keep everything separate so its easier to rig. This creates issues in the rigging process though as I've seen that most rigging tools, like FaceIt (blender addon), prefer that the rig's mouth is closed while in the resting position. Does anyone have any good tips they use in their workflow? I'm just kind of uncertain how to close the mouth and eyelids manually without completely distorting the geometry with proportional editing or the move tool. Any help would be super appreciated! Thanks :) [link] [comments] | ||
| How To Make One Way Platforms From Dead Cells In Unity Posted: 01 Dec 2021 02:56 PM PST
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| Is it worth it trying to get professional QA testers? Posted: 01 Dec 2021 01:26 PM PST I have a fair number of playtesters right now, and feedback is good, but I feel like the process is kind of auto-selected for people who will like the game. That's because I'm distributing the game demo from discord, and the people who join are already the people who will like it. What I think I could really use is someone who might like the game, but isn't someone who automatically likes the game enough that they're willing to check out the discord. How can I get an "average person"'s opinion without paying for it? Any ideas? [link] [comments] | ||
| glfw and glad cmake boilerplate code Posted: 01 Dec 2021 01:17 PM PST This is boilerplate code for a simple glfw and glad setup using static libraries just in case it's useful for anyone. Took me ages to figure this out because I couldn't find anything about it online so I thought I'd share it here. GitHub repo: https://github.com/7tsvn/glfw-and-glad-cmake-boilerplate-code [link] [comments] | ||
| Posted: 01 Dec 2021 05:21 PM PST I'm about to start development on a sandbox game, a bit of a new concept for me, but I like the challenge. Before I start, however, I want to plan out exactly what I'll need to do (custom tech and all that, I know it's not fast-to-make but it's what I enjoy). My general idea was to work out exactly what I want, work out what systems they'll need, and that should be it, but any other feedback is welcome. [link] [comments] | ||
| How to NOT make a Souls Like Game? Posted: 01 Dec 2021 11:16 PM PST Hello. Not that I'm going to do try and do it anytime soon but how would you make a game that there is no way it would be called "Souls-Like". If you can please give a detailed answer I would appreciate it. Why? You ask... Yeah, I love souls-like games, especially Bloodborne but I'm tired of dying in somewhere and starting at the last bonfire in most of the 2D-3D games I'm playing. And I don't wanna roll or parry anymore. It was a good run but Souls-Like games are done for me. I still have the respect but not the love. Instead of creating a game design, you can suggest me games to play that is not Souls-Like. (The Witcher series, MGR e.g.) I didn't play many games with sword combat. So let's look at the core topics. Most important part is to change the swordplay. Instead of using shields, parry, dodge-roll, visceral attacks we need a new system. If you have a Souls-Like swordplay, that's it, your game is Souls-Like. Second is Map and Game Design. Instead of half-open world where we can open doors to create a circle, we maybe need more open spaces and classic RPG save points. (Elden Ring?!?!?!?!?) And losing "souls" and coming back to gather it back at the point where we died should be taken out too but these are details. Third is models, atmosphere, events, core lore, background themes, etc. Instead of Lovecraftian or Medieval themes we can use different themes and art styles and events that will effect the art style. Last not least, we have to explain the story. No reading the canon from a broken shield. [link] [comments] |
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