Feedback Friday #483 - Smooth Sailing

Feedback Friday #483 - Smooth Sailing
Is it possible to make a multiplayer game built on the idea of online LAN?
Question as someone who is trying to get their first ever game built
Posture vs Stamina
Building a team: when to do we do it? Why do we do it? How do we do it?
Steam Deck: what you should know about discovery
Seeking Professional Advice
Ben Cloward Interior Mapping Polish with Unreal tutorial
Working on a game and curious about a few things!
What process do you do to determine what assets you’ll need?
I made a game because I was jealous, ahem, inspired by Vampire Survivors, and here’s my experience/postmortem.
Advice for Transitioning from "Tradtional" QA to Games QA and Resources for QA Automation in Games
Is it feasible to get a "home from work" position in the future?
Help in choosing a mobile game engine that meets specific criteria.
Golden Rule of Gamedev: Always get backups
Guide to Unity2D - Colliders
Best source for high quality animations?
quick question. I am working on my store page, and i am not a native english speaker. does the following sentence make sense to you/ is grammatically correct?
Unity Character Controller - In 1 Minute

Posted: 03 Mar 2022 09:10 PM PST

FEEDBACK FRIDAY #483

Well it's Friday here so lets play each others games, be nice and constructive and have fun! keep up with devs on twitter and get involved!

Post your games/demos/builds and give each other feedback!

Feedback Friday Rules:

Suggestion: As a generally courtesy, you should try to check out a person's game if they have left feedback on your game. If you are leaving feedback on another person's game, it may be helpful to leave a link to your post (if you have posted your game for feedback) at the end of your comment so they can easily find your game.

-Post a link to a playable version of your game or demo

-Do NOT link to screenshots or videos! The emphasis of FF is on testing and feedback, not on graphics! Screenshot Saturday is the better choice for your awesome screenshots and videos!

-Promote good feedback! Try to avoid posting one line responses like "I liked it!" because that is NOT feedback!

-Upvote those who provide good feedback!

-Comments using URL shorteners may get auto-removed by reddit, so we recommend not using them.

Previous Weeks: All

submitted by /u/Sexual_Lettuce
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Is it possible to make a multiplayer game built on the idea of online LAN?

Posted: 03 Mar 2022 07:44 PM PST

Hey there,

I want to make a multiplayer game, but it's a small team doing a campaign together. I want to make it LAN multiplayer, but I'm wondering if it's possible to make it work online without servers, or VPNs/Hamachi etc. Is that P2P multiplayer? Is that viable? Sorry if it's a dumb question.

EDIT: Sorry, I just mean a small group of friends play as a party, so it shouldn't require a lobby or any of that (although will still need some way to find the host IP if I don't want to make it awkward for the players). Although if I release on steam or something, I guess that would handle practically everything. Thanks for all the responses!

submitted by /u/Chaimish
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Question as someone who is trying to get their first ever game built

Posted: 03 Mar 2022 10:21 PM PST

So, I am currently leading a project and the goal is to turn these characters into a game. I was assigned to speak with a developer in Unity. The goal is to create a 2d turn-based pixel RPG game where players can duel each other for in-game currency, and then players can eventually use this currency to upgrade their character. All designs and assets have been created.

We have all the characters built, along with their stats. We are now trying to turn it to a turn-based game but the developer says to our art and creative team " Awesome. I work in a modular fashion. I am currently available for coding tasks." And then follows that up with " If a module is defined, I can code".

Me being just a creative lead for story/lore and art with no coding experience, I am asking my self what on earth that means. So if any game devs can help me out, what does he mean when he says this?

Sorry if its a bad question, I'm literally just a complete noob.

submitted by /u/heimerdingermain69
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Posture vs Stamina

Posted: 04 Mar 2022 02:15 AM PST

In a real time melee game traditionally there is a stamina bar that limits the amount of actions you can perform in a sequence, think dark souls. however in games like sekrio you have a posture bar that when depleted opens you up for a deadly blow. How do these different techniques affect the pace and style of combat and are there any other gams with a posture system or something more unique

submitted by /u/Legobrick27
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Building a team: when to do we do it? Why do we do it? How do we do it?

Posted: 03 Mar 2022 07:23 PM PST

Hello folks I wanted to touch on this subject in hopes of starting some constructive discussion about building a dev team as well as learn some new information myself.

Now, first off, why? As a newer person to developement, and a solo developer personally, I can already answer a small part here: time. It's physically impossible for one developer to design games at a fast enough pace to keep up with tools and technology once the scale of games gets to a certain level. But why else?

Knowing why is important! Which brings me to my next topic: When should we as developers recognize when their project ambitions have grown to the point of needing team members? What can we do to take on more work if we don't currently have that option?

And lastly, how? Now it stands to reason that the easiest way(provided you have the qualifications) would be to look for work in the gamedev industry. But that will only give someone experience working as a team, unless you manage to get into a position where people will listen to your ideas.

But what about people with visions of building projects beyond their workload capabilities? These people seem to be everywhere on the internet and beyond. Naturally they'd have to build their company to have the funds to pay employees or contract workers. What are some ways devs can reach out to other people in order to do that?

Personally, I think I having better access to support development and teamwork in the studio would be of great help to both the AAA studio workers and the indie devs out there.

Edit: my grammar is bad

submitted by /u/HeavilyArmoredFish
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Steam Deck: what you should know about discovery

Posted: 03 Mar 2022 03:11 PM PST

submitted by /u/Ertaipt
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Seeking Professional Advice

Posted: 03 Mar 2022 11:30 PM PST

Hello everyone,

Last night, I was talking to one of my friends about wanting to learn programming for video games. He works in tech himself -nevermind where. And right off the bat, he told me that if I seek a career in tech, I should avoid the games industry like the plague. When I asked more, he explained that the working conditions in video games industry are horrible, low pays, stressful environment with a lot of pressure and a higher number of people available for the job than there's demand.

To me, all of that sounds like every other job these days. I've worked in a few places (non-tech related as I have zero experience in development or programming) and I've felt the same in all of those. He said as a game dev, you won't be treated well by the company because you're expendable(?) and easy to replace. Which does ring true when I think about corporate environment but I've always imagined video games are more... Artistic.

I'm 24, and have wasted my life so far studying literature in hopes of becoming a writer. I want ro write video games but I also understand that you can't be a video game writer right off the bat, and need to have experience working on games before anyone would take you in as a writer. And I have no other skills, so I thought programming would be a good fit, because I'm passionate about video games and I really want to have this career as soon as possible.

So I guess my question is, mostly addressed to those who have worked in the games industry or are still working. How much of this is true? Is it really that impossible for someone living in Middle-East who wants to start at 24 to get into the industry?

submitted by /u/AutumnaticFly
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Ben Cloward Interior Mapping Polish with Unreal tutorial

Posted: 04 Mar 2022 01:37 AM PST

submitted by /u/suny2000
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Working on a game and curious about a few things!

Posted: 03 Mar 2022 02:23 PM PST

Hey so I recently started development of a game (I am doing all the art and assets myself) and I wanted to ask a few generic questions maybe people who have already "traveled the path" before can provide insight on!

When making textures for your game (2D) how important is it to use a tile map/set?

I get a lot of inspiration from hollow knight in particular and I have yet to make tilesets or anything of the sort. I try to hand draw all the assets myself and I was curious as to what more seasoned dev think of that process and maybe what other options are available?

When approaching lighting and shadows what do you believe to be good practice or a good place to start?

I've played a lot of games over the years and while working in unity now it has me wondering what is actual shadow and lighting and what is just drawn and colored in a way to simulate lighting? When I added a lot of lights to my game it caused a lot of fps issues so I had to rethink how I do lighting

When approaching sound and music what do you believe to be good practice or nice tips?

I make a lot of the music and sound effects in ableton live lite and it works pretty nicely but sometimes I get audio that is unbearably loud or quiet even when exported at same settings.

Again not looking for a one right answer as development has taught me there are multiple ways to do things so if anyone has some awesome tips or pointers to make my journey easier I'd love to hear it!

submitted by /u/Stophy_Shell
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What process do you do to determine what assets you’ll need?

Posted: 03 Mar 2022 01:56 PM PST

Right now I'm in the planning phase for a small RPG where I'm going to use a RPG template from the Unreal Marketplace to save on time, although I am probably going to change a few things about it and add some additional mechanics. Because I suck at 3D modeling and don't enjoy it (believe it or not I find programming more enjoyable despite being arguably harder) I'm going to just use Marketplace assets so I can focus more on the story, level design, and programming for some additional mechanics.

Now onto my main question. Is it better to pre-plan what assets you'll need (ex: I want one location to be a futuristic city so I'll need assets for that) or just gradually add them as you go along? For context on my abilities I worked on a project for 6 months with 2 other people and it ended up being pretty simple but we also coded everything from scratch so I know how long things can take but I think I can do more since the template I'm using already has code for a lot of basic RPG mechanics.

submitted by /u/Madmonkeman
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I made a game because I was jealous, ahem, inspired by Vampire Survivors, and here’s my experience/postmortem.

Posted: 04 Mar 2022 04:11 AM PST

Introduction

Hi! I have been making games part-time for almost a year now, and while I have a 'bigger' project in the works, I decided to make another one because I was ~~jealous~~, ahem, inspired by the recent Vampire Survivors craze. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one to look at Vampire Survivors and say, "Hey I can do that in a month!". I'm not crazy though, I know it's one thing to look at a finished game and say that you can recreate it in a month, and another thing designing a game all by yourself from scratch.

Anyways, I started listing out ideas for a few hours until this sense of doubt comes in and then I was starting to get plagued by the voices in my head telling me not to waste more time, and that this is just another shiny new toy that I will never finish.

I spent a few days like that, just being unsure on whether I should take the plunge or not. A month is a pretty long time to dedicate on a hunch after all.

And lo and behold there's a blog post from this marketing guy I have followed for a while, Chris, just the day after, that basically gave me enough justification to pause my main project for a bit. And it's on good timing too, since I was beginning to burn out and just being very unproductive in general.

Helpfully, Chris also made this list of game design criteria, that if I follow properly, should in theory get me something that can go as viral as Vampire Survivors. Here's the list (and my exact thoughts, however wrong or naive they were):

Cheap price (sub $5): I plan for the game to also cost $3. Same as VS. Check!
REALLY good game feel: Hmm, OK so I should make it super polished and juicy. Check!
REALLY fun gameplay: Fun? Of course a game should be fun. Check! (But what is fun?)
REALLY deep gameplay: Adding rogue lite progression + upgrades. Check!
Well supported by the developer: Sure, I can support the game if it is well received enough. Check!
Graphics can be simple, don't matter as much: I can only do pixel art stuff. And pixel art is as simple as it gets, I guess. Check! (But wait, didn't I also need to make a really good game feel too? So that means lots of effects right?)
No story, no dialog, no cutscenes: Less work for myself? This is getting better and better, instant Check!

So with all this planned out and kept in mind, I went back to the drawing board and made a real strict schedule for myself. The final plan was to try make something just as fun as VS in 2 weeks (or at least its foundations, because that's all the time I can afford now), and then decide whether to continue or not based on how well it all plays out after I release it for free on Itch.

In the end, did I manage to make something as fun as Vampire Survivors in 2 weeks? Well, I believe I failed, unfortunately. I don't think I even managed to reach all of the criteria I have set for the game. And even given more time, I don't think that right now it's a concept that can reach the benchmark that is Vampire Survivors, IMO.

Surprise! Turns out making a game is hard enough as it is, and it's also a fact that while I have proven to myself to have enough ability to make a game, I have never actually released a single game before.

On the bright side, I did get a game out of it. I'm pretty sure that it won't be the ultimate money making machine that I dreamed of, but I've promised to myself that even without results, that I'll work on it once in a while and at least make it the best game it could be.

What (I think) worked

Having a clear and well suited deadline to your schedule (2 weeks for me)
Cutting the scope in half. And then multiplying the time I expect them to take by 2. This gets me to a pretty accurate point.
Get the game polished as much as I can within the time limit so people can evaluate the game strictly from the gameplay and not just pointing out the bugs.
Buying the music & almost half the assets I need.

What I would do differently next time

I'm not sure honestly, design a better game?
It's pretty hard to judge how a game's going to turn out based on the idea alone, so I need to learn to do it better somehow.
Maybe don't spend like 30% of the dev time on the menus next time.
Controls are king, and no matter how much polish/content I pile on, a game simply doesn't play well without good controls.

TL;DR?

I don't have a TL;DR or a point to make. This writeup is just something I wrote for the people that have similar thoughts to maybe learn something from. I don't think giving the excuse that "this is my first game" will do anything other than stroking my ego, and I'm sure there are plenty of people who strikes gold the first game they make, however small the actual numbers are. So yeah, you'll have to just read all this, and if you do get something positive out of what I wrote, then I'll be happy.

Finally, the game took around 60-70 hours in 2 weeks to make and it's called Life in the Abyss. Thanks for reading!

submitted by /u/kadoken
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Advice for Transitioning from "Tradtional" QA to Games QA and Resources for QA Automation in Games

Posted: 03 Mar 2022 02:21 PM PST

As the title says, I'm trying to transition from so-called "traditional" QA to games QA and research (and somehow play with) automation in games QA to make me more competitive and desireable.

A little about my experience:

I've worked in QA for a little over a year working primarily in black-box testing and some grey-box testing. I've spearheaded, designed, and developed three test automation frameworks that test the functionality of front-end UI for web apps for different companies. I never got deep enough to completely automate the whole testing process since it was always secondary projects I took on myself and was not what I was initially hired to do (I am all self taught for better or for worse). To run the tests I had to manually start the test suite and all the data was semi-manually input (pulled from a yaml/csv file and not the database though I was close to getting that to work).

I first got into QA to work in games; that was my "dream" but when I was applying for jobs, more "traditional" companies were getting back to me more and were offering more than double compared to game studios. This was back in 2019-2020. I hated myself everyday for not following my passion, but once the pandemic hit and I was let go, I used that opportunity to apply exclusively to game studios. I didn't hear back from any and open positions were few and far between. I'm back in college finishing my bachelor hoping it'll make me more competitive (and to appease my mom), but now I'm not hearing back from internships. Even internships in QA.

I love working in QA, but I'm ignorant about how "traditional" QA compares to games QA. So any insight would be appreciated, especially insight into the differences between the two (besides more hours and less pay).

Not really the original pupose of the post, but I think I'd do really well in production as well, so any advice or insight into getting into prodution would also be appreciated. My major is marketing so I'd also like to work in marketing, PR, or advertising... :)

TLDR:

Looking for advice, insight, and resources for transition from "traditional" QA to games QA and automation in games... Also production, marketing, PR, and/or advertising.

submitted by /u/Bizzle94588
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Is it feasible to get a "home from work" position in the future?

Posted: 03 Mar 2022 01:16 PM PST

Hi everyone!

I recently moved to Pittsburgh and obtained a position at a dev job that, while it isn't exactly games, I am using Unity + C# to make applications. I have a Bachelors in Interactive with a concentration in games design and I currently have 2 years of experience between 2 internships.

I was extremely excited to start my career until after 1 week I already feel the urge to jump off a cliff. This isn't because of the job itself. I actually have been enjoying the job thoroughly. What should be a 30 minute drive is turned into a fudging lottery on how long you will be stuck in a car. I am currently working the only shift option I could take to alleviate this issue (7 - 3). The mornings are genuinely fine, but I come home from work nearly everyday livid because of a mixture of terrible drivers, poor road design, and a lack of zipper merging.

Basically the only thing getting me through this is the hope that it will get better down the road. I don't believe I can do this my entire life. Hopefully me gaining further experience will help me get a position at a remote studio right? I would even love to work at Schell Games as it's at least closer. But at the end of the day if I am working in that city I have to go through that terrible tunnel that a sadist designed.

Do you guys think it's a realistic goal to shoot for a remote position? I don't even mind making less if it means I can live happily. I love my career, but I hate my drive. And I understand that some people might suggest moving, but I can't. I bought a home here with my SO before I obtained the position (I know this sounds stupid, but we really needed out and we didn't want an apartment due to a previous problem).

submitted by /u/Hi_Honua
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Help in choosing a mobile game engine that meets specific criteria.

Posted: 04 Mar 2022 01:49 AM PST

I'm new to mobile game development and need help in choosing what mobile game engine suits my needs the most. I have experience programing in C++, Python and whatever we call that thing GameMaker Studio is using.

I need suport for:

-Ads

-A form of cloud server suport

-A way to give ad revenue to users, because it will be a bit of user-generated content

-Embedding YOUTUBE videos where I have control

Not necessary, but handy:

-A way to quantify the similarity between two lists

-search/sorting/filtering system

if there are any questions about the points above, ask them in the comments field and I will try to answer

submitted by /u/xX_storm_Xx_2000
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Golden Rule of Gamedev: Always get backups

Posted: 03 Mar 2022 03:26 PM PST