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al-azad posted:Point and click or text based? I love looking at Maniac Mansion's design notes which are penciled scrawls of each room, the items in the room, and how they fit with the rest of the map. You can also look up the original Zelda's design documents which were pixel-by-pixel hand drawn on graph paper. Text-based: it's 2d with actual walking around, but all of the puzzles are dialogue-centered. I have a game loop like Phoenix Wright in mind: short, open-ended exploration sections where you wander around and talk at people funneling into on-the-rail scenes whose choices constitute the major decision nodes for the story. Your actions in the bottleneck sections steer the story, but the the choices you have are directly determined by the people you've hobnobbed with/called nasty things in the exploration sections. Getting the numbers right on this is one of the big challenges. To keep things simple there are three major NPCs, and two hidden stats (essentially Nice Guy and rear end in a top hat stats). Each time you make a big decision, you chose from two default options that never change, one social skills option that is effectively a paragon/renegade prompt, and 0-3 choices opened up by NPCs. The NPC part is easy if you assume that the player exclusively tries to get one guy on his side, but it's trickier to balance the story well enough that splitting your attention feels like it has an effect, and if I was working on a 5-hour game with 10-20 characters instead of a 30-minute one with three guys, it would be a nightmare.
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Feb 12, 2015 08:06
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Huh. I guess you're better than GBS, thread.  Bel Monte posted:^^^^^^ I'm just a hobbyist too. I have a job that eats up a lot of my time, mostly because I'm the one they call when people don't show or things get busy. So if I'm not too tired from work, and I feel like "working", then I do something. My feeling is that it's not the end results that matter as a hobbyist, so much as the journey and experience. Maybe I'll make a really good game one day that sells a ton! ...but I'll probably just make games for myself and friends. The important thing is that you're enjoying it. If you keep plugging away at it, eventually you will make a game you've wanted to make. It doesn't matter how long it takes, what matters most is that you enjoy what game designing is in your life. Unless you're in this for the money, in which case I don't have any advice on that. No. Making pixelated characters obey my every whim is the immediate and the ultimate goal. But I've finished my studies early today, so I hope to get quite a bit of coding time after I finish work (unless I've already screwed it up by coming here). A simple question: in Box2D, what's the best way to detect clicking on a joint? (Specifically, a distance joint.) I got confused by the fact that a joint is simply a vector without width, but probably I could just iterate over all the relevant joints and see if any of them intersect the cursor area. Right?
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Feb 12, 2015 08:18
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Omi no Kami posted:Has anyone done the planning for an adventure game before? I thought I'd write something fast and silly for fun, but even managing a planned 30-minute game with 4-5 decision nodes is becoming a nightmare to manage. I should probably be using visio, but I've resorted to index cards with colored string and meeple to track characters and decision points. I wholeheartedly recommend Ron Gilbert's blog, especially this post about puzzle dependency charts. Also, check out this one about why adventure games suck and what we can do about it. Oh, and again, recommending Chat Mapper, for dialog trees, it's a life saver.
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Feb 12, 2015 09:36
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Oughta scoot the "GOOAAL!" to the right a smidge so the middle "O" goes past the camera like a
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Feb 12, 2015 10:46
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supermikhail posted:I mean, could I do it for half-an-hour every day instead? I'm in a similar boat to you. I work full time, although occasionally work from home so at the end of the working day I don't always have to sit in traffic for 45 minutes to sap my motivation to write more code. On my game, I'm doing all the 3d as well as writing the code, so I get to pick and choose which side of my brain to use when I sit down to work on it, which is great. But I too used to get trapped in the cycle of epic productivity followed by burnout. Starting work on a new feature of idea is always great - you seem to make a huge amount of progress and it's very satisfying. For example, I wanted to add support for fighter formations in my game. In one evening, I'd figured out how to do it and implemented it. To my joy, it pretty much worked, aside from a couple of issues. Turns out, those issues are pretty complex to solve, and despite a few more tries, I've yet to get formations finished. And it's been months. And part of that is because I can choose between adding new interesting and visible features in a short space of time, or I can spend more precious time trying to stop my lead fighter flying way ahead of the rest of the fighters. And if I keep adding something new, I end up with many more features in the same boat. It's kind of a destructive mindset, because you end up with more and more little bugs and issues. In the end I decided to make peace with the fact that I wasn't always going to achieve something big every time I sat down for a work session. Instead, I tried the following: - Before I sit down to start work, make sure I have at least one specific goal that's achievable in the time I sit down. Usually, it's a part of a larger feature, but my goal will be to get that part right. - On a similar note, don't get sucked into working too long - if you discover a new issue or angle that you hadn't considered, and you really need to get some sleep, make a note of it and stop working. You'll remember it, and keep thinking on it, and the next time you sit down you'll be right back into it, probably with a few good ideas waiting in your head. - Don't let bugs slide. By that I mean don't stop working on one feature for another if you know there are still some bugs to fix. It sucks, and can be boring, but it's also a great way to keep your brain tidy. This may not work for you or anyone else, but these steps have made me much calmer about my development time. It means in the evenings, I'm not trying to grab as much time as possible - if I feel like I've made progress, I may stop after an hour, or I may push on for three hours. Basically, the aim is to make me be methodical and not race ahead, so that I feel like I have solid, complete features under my belt, not a growing list of stuff to revisit.
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Feb 12, 2015 11:02
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You're probably right, but... hnng. Must resist... I did about two hours of coding today (with interruptions), and the... game doesn't do anything new except in the console. But there's about 20 new lines of code, so I guess it's progress... I... don't feel fulfilled.  I hope it grows on me, since supposedly now the progress is going to be steady instead of staggered.
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Feb 12, 2015 17:26
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Omi no Kami posted:Text-based: it's 2d with actual walking around, but all of the puzzles are dialogue-centered. I have a game loop like Phoenix Wright in mind: short, open-ended exploration sections where you wander around and talk at people funneling into on-the-rail scenes whose choices constitute the major decision nodes for the story. Your actions in the bottleneck sections steer the story, but the the choices you have are directly determined by the people you've hobnobbed with/called nasty things in the exploration sections. Have you tried any flowcharts? Twine especially might help if you use coding to track your variables and visualize the options a player has at a given time, but ultimately it'll feel like you're making another, simpler game on top of what you're already doing which you may not want to do.
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Feb 12, 2015 17:34
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supermikhail posted:You're probably right, but... hnng. Must resist... I guess one other thing I should mention - try to keep in mind that every step is necessary in finishing your project. Even the boring bits like console tweaks. It's progress. And, most importantly, the fact that you're fitting in smaller chunks of work more frequently means burnout is less likely (although it still happens) and you'll simply get better and faster, because you're doing it often. Today might have sucked, but try to stick with it. Most days should not. Or, of course, a totally different approach might work for you.
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Feb 12, 2015 17:37
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When I was doing gamedev outside a day job I tried to allocate one day per weekend to actual game making. Even a 4 hour block once per weekend dedicated to solidly working on games got me some good traction. Then I could do stuff like blog-writing, outreach, reading, networking type stuff in evenings during the week. I would say doing something regularly is very important.
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Feb 12, 2015 17:56
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Dirty posted:I guess one other thing I should mention - try to keep in mind that every step is necessary in finishing your project. Even the boring bits like console tweaks. It's progress. Yeah, this is important. I'm going through UI work right now and it is hella boring and doesn't seem like it's very important progress on its face, but the game will not run without it.
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Feb 12, 2015 18:10
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lmao
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Feb 12, 2015 18:25
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Dirty posted:I guess one other thing I should mention - try to keep in mind that every step is necessary in finishing your project. Even the boring bits like console tweaks. It's progress. Oh, you give me too much credit. It actually doesn't do anything new because the new code is probably one huge bug, and I finished today's session by adding some console stuff that might help me work out geometrical operations that I barely understand, next time. retro sexual posted:When I was doing gamedev outside a day job I tried to allocate one day per weekend to actual game making. Even a 4 hour block once per weekend dedicated to solidly working on games got me some good traction. This... is making me feel a lot better.
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Feb 12, 2015 18:32
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retro sexual posted:When I was doing gamedev outside a day job I tried to allocate one day per weekend to actual game making. Even a 4 hour block once per weekend dedicated to solidly working on games got me some good traction. Yeah, this is pretty much where I'm at. It takes awhile for things to get done, but as the year goes by the work adds up and you can really get poo poo done. And its not so hard to keep it up that way. Trying to work on something every day after coding all day at my day job is really exhausting, and if I can even manage to make myself do it for awhile I'll tend to burn out. And that kinda stop and go doesn't really get you much progress either.
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Feb 12, 2015 18:41
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Sorry to bring up sort of old news, but does anyone recall what "The Spatials" was made in? I'm wracking my head in trying to figure it out but thought why not ask.
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Feb 12, 2015 21:05
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What's a good method of clamping down on just-one-more-feature-itis? I find myself 90% of the way through a significant code revision that I need to finish before updating to the next version of my game, but I keep running into a) other parts of the codebase that need to be updated to reflect the overall changes and, b) new ideas that I can implement based on the new system. Keeping in mind what I've got is alpha, is it worth prolonging the development phase so that I can keep hacking, or is it better to just push what I've got and address bugs / new features down the line?
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Feb 12, 2015 22:00
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Cicadas! posted:Oughta scoot the "GOOAAL!" to the right a smidge so the middle "O" goes past the camera like a Done! It looks great now, thanks haha  edit: Sorting out tackling and a few bugs. It uh...kinda works right now but I want it to really punt you across the map when you get hit. 
Shoehead fucked around with this message at 23:14 on Feb 12, 2015 |
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Feb 12, 2015 22:21
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I tried to make my character's hat fall off when they are low health, but I forgot to have it affected by gravity... 
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Feb 13, 2015 06:09
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goku i won't do what u tell me
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FraudulentEconomics posted:Sorry to bring up sort of old news, but does anyone recall what "The Spatials" was made in? I'm wracking my head in trying to figure it out but thought why not ask. Cocos2d-x. Also search the thread for the pro/cons from other people with different experiences.
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Feb 13, 2015 10:35
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a medical mystery posted:Have you tried any flowcharts? Twine especially might help if you use coding to track your variables and visualize the options a player has at a given time, but ultimately it'll feel like you're making another, simpler game on top of what you're already doing which you may not want to do. I like Twine a lot for pure text adventures, but I think I'm going to end up resorting to Visio or Articy Draft to aggregate the minimum amount of information I need to keep things straight.
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Feb 13, 2015 11:48
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For those thinking about making the switch from Unity to Unreal Engine here is a wiki detailing some of the differences in the apis: https://wiki.unrealengine.com/Unity3D_Developer%27s_Guide_to_Unreal_Engine_4
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Feb 13, 2015 17:22
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So recently I was contracted to do the music for a game called "EarthTongue" by Eric Hornby. Here's the first original piece I've done. It was all made in Famitracker using the vibraphone patch from the VRC7 module.
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Feb 13, 2015 19:27
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New art is starting to trickle in for Gravity Gunners. Here's the old and new Ms. Kittington.
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Feb 13, 2015 22:25
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poemdexter posted:New art is starting to trickle in for Gravity Gunners. Here's the old and new Ms. Kittington. That's a dramatic improvement! Very nice. The first is workable but the second one is eye candy 
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Feb 13, 2015 22:32
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poemdexter posted:New art is starting to trickle in for Gravity Gunners. Here's the old and new Ms. Kittington. The outlines look a lot better but you could make the sprite clearer by using less contrasting colors for the outline where it's overlapping something close to another:  (my version lost a row of pixels because the canvas wasn't evenly divisible by 8, ha)
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Feb 13, 2015 23:20
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Count Uvula posted:The outlines look a lot better but you could make the sprite clearer by using less contrasting colors for the outline where it's overlapping something close to another: Thanks for this! I'll let my artist know. Also sorry, I have a bad habit of zooming in at weird resolutions when i take screenshots.
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Feb 13, 2015 23:36
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D_W posted:So recently I was contracted to do the music for a game called "EarthTongue" by Eric Hornby. This is a pretty good piece. I would maybe say that the intro is a bit too sparse though, however once you get into the meat of the song you are nailing it. The intended purpose might change how I feel, but I think you could afford to add a little to the intro. Especially if it is intended to loop.
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Feb 14, 2015 00:17
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JossiRossi posted:This is a pretty good piece. Best post/avatar combo I've seen for a while. This is really nice, and it looks like it'll fit the game very well.
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Feb 14, 2015 05:15
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Count Uvula posted:The outlines look a lot better but you could make the sprite clearer by using less contrasting colors for the outline where it's overlapping something close to another: THAT is gorgeous. If your artist does that outline tweak -  EDIT: VVV Use OBS. It's great on PC, and believe it or not, it's great on Mac now too, they JUST updated it to be usable and stable. Shalinor fucked around with this message at 06:31 on Feb 14, 2015 |
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Feb 14, 2015 06:24
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EDIT: ^^^ Oh dang. Just tested this and it is really easy and super smooth. Good lookin' out  I'm going to be making some setup/walkthrough videos for my upcoming Unity asset, and have to settle on a screen capture setup. I was thinking about just using VLC's capture mode, but is there a recommended piece of software (or workflow?) I want to record the audio at the same time, and I'll lay in title cards, subtitles, etc. later. Pentecoastal Elites fucked around with this message at 06:47 on Feb 14, 2015 |
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Feb 14, 2015 06:25
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Screenshot saturday! Here is a cool teleporter:
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Feb 14, 2015 08:13
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Didn't turn you into a chicken-man. Trash.
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Feb 14, 2015 08:37
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My screenshot saturday is much more mellow than ya'alls
Coldrice fucked around with this message at 11:05 on Feb 14, 2015 |
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Feb 14, 2015 09:10
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Coldrice posted:My screenshot saturday is much more mellow that ya'alls Nothing about that gif is "mellow"
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Feb 14, 2015 09:19
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Anyone know of any good discussions / best practices on what you can reasonably expect of a player's reaction times in a game?
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Feb 14, 2015 15:19
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Spek posted:Anyone know of any good discussions / best practices on what you can reasonably expect of a player's reaction times in a game? That would be hugely dependent on your target demographic and genre. Generally, the older you are the slower your reaction time is, but you are better at planning. It also depends on what kinds of reaction do you mean. It will be different for 'press x to not die' and something more complicated.
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Feb 14, 2015 15:56
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evilentity posted:That would be hugely dependent on your target demographic and genre. Generally, the older you are the slower your reaction time is, but you are better at planning. It also depends on what kinds of reaction do you mean. It will be different for 'press x to not die' and something more complicated. And it'll depend on the player's experience with the genre. Someone who plays a lot of FPSes will have much faster reactions to an enemy popping around a corner compared to normal, but they probably won't be all that great at, say, bullet hell games.
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Feb 14, 2015 17:12
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Lucid Dream posted:Screenshot saturday! Here is a cool teleporter: "Oh, I didn't see you there <flex>, hello, I just like to explore alien planets in my underwear <clenches>"
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Feb 14, 2015 17:36
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poemdexter posted:New art is starting to trickle in for Gravity Gunners. Here's the old and new Ms. Kittington. New suit looks good but you should yell at your art guy bout dem jaggies. How do the hard lines look against space?
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Feb 14, 2015 18:15
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A good rule of thumb is that the average reaction time for an untrained someone who's prepared that there's going to be something to react to is around a third of a second, a little longer perhaps. Younger and quicker people will be around a quarter of a second, those who have trained the gently caress out of their reaction time and know very well what they can expect can get it down to even less in some instances, a sixth of a second or so, but not 100% reliably.
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Feb 14, 2015 19:13
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Though of course it's worth keeping in mind that some things like linking moves for combos in fighting games are working off muscle-memory more than reaction time, so in the right context it's alright to expect very quick actions from the player if you give them the chance to learn them.
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Feb 14, 2015 19:20
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