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Harrow
Jun 30, 2012

Slayerjerman posted:

"We want X item to drop after an average of Y hours playtime".

It's s good idea to just tie the drop rate chance to time committed rather than keep the chances random. Like after X hours or missions the chance increases

I'm always a fan of bad luck protection in games with random drops. Either things like a stacking increase to the drop rate that approaches 100% over time until you get the item, or just currency you build up that lets you just buy that item if you never got a drop (which is something FFXIV does for some of its content).

Random drops can be fun and exciting, but for items that have critical gameplay effects, I really think the randomness needs to be mitigated as much as possible.

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SupSuper
Apr 8, 2009

At the Heart of the city is an Alien horror, so vile and so powerful that not even death can claim it.
How do game devs feel about modding? It's always felt like this huge grey area that the game industry promotes with one hand and slaps with the other.

Gerblyn
Apr 4, 2007

"TO BATTLE!"
Fun Shoe

SupSuper posted:

How do game devs feel about modding? It's always felt like this huge grey area that the game industry promotes with one hand and slaps with the other.

I haven't been verified by Mutata yet, but I implemented and managed a Modding system for one of our games a few years back, and I think they're great.

Players constantly have requests for features and tweaks that aren't really that hard to do, but a lot of the time we can't help them. Perhaps we feel their idea would hurt the game in some way, or we don't have the time to implement it and test it, or we think other players will hate it, or maybe their idea is just really bad. Modding goes a long way to fixing that by letting players implement their niche ideas themselves, so they can have the experience that they want without it interfering with how other people play.

Unless, your question is more "How do Devs feel about their VISION being modified by the unwashed masses?", then I've never met anyone who complains about it. I have argued with people on forums about design and balance decisions, and then seen mods that go and do the things I say I don't like. In a petty kind of way, I do sort of get offended by it, and I admit I might gloat a bit if everyone hates the mod, but I try and remain objective about it, and if the mod is really popular then I try and admit that I was wrong about the whole thing.

ninjewtsu
Oct 9, 2012

How do developers feel about developing many smaller dlcs vs a few large dlc "expansion packs?"

djkillingspree
Apr 2, 2001
make a hole with a gun perpendicular

SupSuper posted:

How do game devs feel about modding? It's always felt like this huge grey area that the game industry promotes with one hand and slaps with the other.

Mods are how a lot of the current industry started working on games. I think mods are great but I don't think it's a knock against a game if it doesn't allow modding.

I don't think there's a ton of "slapping" going on, unless IP is involved. If you mean shutting down mods over someone else's IP well... don't use someone else's IP?

The only other case where mods cause issues are in social games, like UI mods in MMOs. Once you feel like you are either directly or indirectly competing with other players, players start to feel like mods that improve efficiency or provide more information are "mandatory" and you start to lose control of the look, feel and presentation of your game. Obviously there are advantages, too, but I don't think it's an unambiguous win.

Mother
Sep 30, 2004

You are help Orz with *parties*.

SupSuper posted:

How do game devs feel about modding? It's always felt like this huge grey area that the game industry promotes with one hand and slaps with the other.

Really? Why? I don't think I know a dev in the business who doesn't love modding.

Aside from it just being awesome that anyone loves what you worked on enough to put time into building something for it, modding has, no question, been resposible for the success / legs of a number of big games.

What do you see as the "slap"?

Chev
Jul 19, 2010
Switchblade Switcharoo
A number of EULAs no one ever read or respect do forbid reverse engineering and modding of games, and then there are things like the whole hubbub about Rockstar shutting down GTA modding tool OpenIV and possibly only backpedaling because of review bombing.

mutata
Mar 1, 2003

There are definitely publishers who bristle at modding aka modifying their product. The disconnect there, though, is that devs love mods because mods only expand and build on the game and extend its life but publishers and especially legal really don't want to let them alone because if planets align and the right cocktail of IPs and content are seen by the right people and make them angry then press picks it up and it could turn into A Thing and yadda yadda.

Devs, though, generally think mods are great and we love them.

Edit: From what was in the press, Take Two (publisher) sent the C&D to OpenIV and backpedaled because Rockstar (developer) stuck up for them. I'm sure it was a combination of factors, though.

mutata fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Oct 5, 2017

Discendo Vox
Mar 21, 2013

We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.
I would imagine this is made more complex in the context of competitive games, or multiplayer settings where mods can effect the experience of other players.

djkillingspree
Apr 2, 2001
make a hole with a gun perpendicular

Chev posted:

A number of EULAs no one ever read or respect do forbid reverse engineering and modding of games, and then there are things like the whole hubbub about Rockstar shutting down GTA modding tool OpenIV and possibly only backpedaling because of review bombing.

Oh, I'd expect you'd have to ask publishers, then. I don't think devs in most cases give a poo poo.

As far as GTA/Take2 goes, I wouldn't be surprised if past PR issues caused as a result of modding (sup hot coffee) have caused them to be extremely conservative wrt modding.

Mother
Sep 30, 2004

You are help Orz with *parties*.
I didn't know anything about the C&D on GTA tools, but a few minutes with Google makes that at least look like potential issues with online?

Those are the types of situations I'm aware of getting C&Ds. If the mod is a bot that levels characters in a MMO, it might not enjoy "mod" status for long. Or, someone mods something using other IP that causes heat for the devs and then they need to cover themselves legally.

Chev
Jul 19, 2010
Switchblade Switcharoo

Mother posted:

I didn't know anything about the C&D on GTA tools, but a few minutes with Google makes that at least look like potential issues with online?
It's the excuse that was given once the situation had escalated enough and they decided to backpedal, but it's inconsistent with what had actually happened as OpenIV mods don't work online and the C&D itself never mentioned online and instead made it clear the GTAV EULA prohibited reverse-engineering and modding of the game, period.

Anyway, mutata and djkillingspree have the right of it, I shouldn't mix up devs, who are usually supportive of mods, and publishers, who usually aren't.

I've got a question tangential to that though: what about data mining in relation to secrets or spoilers? There was that thing with the Binding of Isaac remake where a lovingly crafted hidden in-game metapuzzle that was supposed to take months to solve was discovered and cracked in less than a week by people looking through the game files. Or future unrevealed DLC being discovered through code references, as often happens with fighting games. What do you guys think about that kind of stuff? Have you or people you know ever taken deliberate measures to hinder or mislead data miners?

SupSuper
Apr 8, 2009

At the Heart of the city is an Alien horror, so vile and so powerful that not even death can claim it.

Mother posted:

Really? Why? I don't think I know a dev in the business who doesn't love modding.

Aside from it just being awesome that anyone loves what you worked on enough to put time into building something for it, modding has, no question, been resposible for the success / legs of a number of big games.

What do you see as the "slap"?
As has been mentioned, there have been lots of situations of companies taking it badly to their games being modified, such as bans or C&D even for harmless mods (eg. GTA5, Dark Souls 2, etc), usually under the guise that it promotes cheating or violates EULAs or something.

If that's purely a publisher thing though, then I'll ask something more dev-oriented: do you worry that mods can make you "look bad", either by deviating from the dev's vision, or making users "work for free" by fixing issues that the devs can't or don't want to?

And for those that have implemented modding tools and docs: is the implementation cost worth it compared to the benefits it may create?

SupSuper fucked around with this message at 14:33 on Oct 6, 2017

mutata
Mar 1, 2003

We had to deal with spoilers from data mining on Infinity since we had to put an entire year's worth of rolling content on the game disc due to insistence on supporting the disconnected part of our target demo (kids and families) for so long. It was a huge concern once we started trying to convince JJ Abrams and Kathleen Kennedy to let us do Force Awakens content. Disney paid for the most beefy encryption they could in order to make it work. The fact of it is, it's a bummer when players don't play along (especially when it comes to carefully crafted args and puzzles like that), but there's not much you can do about it. You either figure out a way to breadcrumb it via online updates, pay for encryption, give everything codenames, or just eat it.

Gerblyn
Apr 4, 2007

"TO BATTLE!"
Fun Shoe

SupSuper posted:

If that's purely a publisher thing though, then I'll ask something more dev-oriented: do you worry that mods can make you "look bad", either by deviating from the dev's vision, or making users "work for free" by fixing issues that the devs can't or don't want to?

Not really. For the former, it can be a little hurtful for a designer if they work hard on something, and then a modder comes along and rewrites their design, usually accompanying their mod with long, ranting posts about why said design is stupid. Devs work hard and want people to enjoy their work, and having a user insult it, and then rewrite it can feel pretty sucky, especially if that rewrite ends up being really popular. That doesn't actually happen very often though, and when it does, it's usually best to take it as a learning experience rather than as a personal attack.

As for the latter, I've only ever really seen that accusation leveled at bethesda games (Skyrim, Fallout, etc), and I've never worked for them, nor do I know anyone who has, so I don't really want to comment on how they feel about it. In general though, no-one makes modders work for free, they do it because they want to and because they enjoy it, and enabling that is a good thing.

There is also the issue of mods containing "Questionable Content", like porn or politically incorrect stuff. There was a bit of a fuss a while back because of some Stellaris mod that remvoed all black people from the game, for example. In those cases, I think most people understand that just because a Modder makes something, doesn't mean we, as devs, approve of it. If the mod is within a curated space, like the steam workshhop, we'll often remove it, because we don't want our game associated with alt-right lunatics or whoever, but otherwise I don't think it's a big worry.

SupSuper posted:

And for those that have implemented modding tools and docs: is the implementation cost worth it compared to the benefits it may create?

This is kind of a hard question to answer, since the amount of work needed to add modding support to a game varies wildly depending on how the game engine itself has been written. It cost me about 6 weeks to add modding support to our game, but the benefits have been huge; a couple of years later there are nearly 500 items on our steam workshop page, with everything from balance tweaks, to new units and factions. My 6 weeks of work has encouraged users to put in several man-years of dev time into adding stuff that other people can play with and which (hopefully) improves their time with the game.

Gerblyn fucked around with this message at 07:10 on Oct 6, 2017

Avalerion
Oct 19, 2012

I assumed it's the other way around and a game is moddable by default, unless you go out of your way to lock it down so that it isn't? Is it always the case that modding support is something that has to be deliberately added?

Gerblyn
Apr 4, 2007

"TO BATTLE!"
Fun Shoe
It's kind of complicated, but in general, Yes, modding support always needs to be deliberately added.

When you get a game, it's usually split into 2 parts:

1) The code, normally written in C++, which is stored in the application (.exe file) as well as various libraries (.dll files, etc).
2) The data, which is loaded by the code, and is edited using specially written tools like level editors and resource editors. This includes scripts, levels, enemy definitions, etc.

When we talk about modding, we're normally talking about changing the data, not the code (modding code is possible, just extremely hard, and limited to a small group of very smart people). So for a game to be moddable, the thing you want to mod has to be defined in data, not built into the code. Most modern, commercial engines put their game logic into the data, so anyone with the right tools can mod that data and change the game. However games written by smaller teams will often put a lot of their game logic directly into the code, meaning it can't be modded. The hows and whys of this are a bit beyond the scope of this post, but the long and short of it is, defining everything in data and making it mod friendly is harder to do and can take much longer, so it's often not viable for smaller teams to do it.

Another issue is, even if you had access to dev tools to modify the game's data, the game's data needs to be set up in such a way that makes it easy to actually make arbitrary changes without having an in depth knowledge of how all the data is set up and organized. For example, Unity games are heavily data driven, yet making them moddable requires a lot of extra work, as this thread from the Unity Reddit discusses.

Lastly, when we talk about Mods in modern games, we're not talking about old school hacks where you just overwrite a bunch of files and launch the application. Mod support now means things like:

- Mods can be enabled and disabled
- Multiple mods written by different people can be used at once with minimal fuss for the user
- The game handles issues like "You're hosting a Multiplay game with a mod, so tell anyone who wants to join that they need the mod too" and "You're trying to load a save that needs a Mod, but that mod is gone, so we need an error message"

All this needs to be added, and depending on how you're game and its data are designed, this can be quite a significant challenge. We always knew mod support would be a thing, so during development we made decisions that minimized the amount of work needed, if we hadn't done so, it's possible that the amount of work would have made adding proper modding support simply impossible.

The Kins
Oct 2, 2004
The thing I find fascinating (and frustrating) about modding stuff (as a modder, not a gamedev) is when companies that support modding in the past start stepping away from it very publicly. Like Epic Games, which built their engine licensing empire from every human being on earth having made at least one UT map or mutator. Now they're pretty heavily de-emphasising that stuff to the point where engine licensees can't even ship the editor with their game anymore. It's saddening.

(Yes, I am aware that a lot of people are just making their own drat games, but I feel a lot of folks in the western games biz nowadays - especially level designers - learned their craft by getting their feet wet within the predefined rules and scope of an existing game... Blocking that from happening feels a bit like shooting yourself in the foot.)

MissMarple
Aug 26, 2008

:ms:
There are a couple of frustrations as a dev when you support modding, one of which is that updates can often break mods.
If you take the attitude of "not my problem", a vocal minority of your player-base are suddenly super mad at you because v4.51 "broke" the game.
Alternatively, you try to make sure things are backwards compatible and support the mods which is the same as supporting a huge part of Not Your Codebase. That way madness lies.

The other bigger one is if people mod in features you have on your roadmap.
That puts you in an awkward situation for whether you carry on and build it anyway.
The reception could actually end up being negative because you are "ripping off" ideas from the mod, when in fact it was pencilled in as your big Q3 release anyway.

If you have a "Live Product", as games increasingly are, I can see why people would steer away from supporting mods because of these factors.
On the flip side, people innovating on top of your work is super cool, and can give a game a really long tail without you needing to do anything.

nielsm
Jun 1, 2009



As a player whose first experience with game mods was original Quake 1, I keep getting disappointed when new games boast moddability, but it turns out to be heavily limited to just adding/modifying object data within the original framework. I think it's wonderful how in Quake (and Quake 2, and Half-Life, and more), the base game is just another mod, and you can use the published tools to change almost anything about the game logic. Sure, the core engine still has some things you can't veer away from, like the HUD, menu structure, and various limits on active objects, but it still gives a massive freedom. I would consider that the gold standard of moddability.

What disappoints me is a game such as Transport Fever, which boasts moddability, even via Lua scripting (that's great, I love Lua!), but as it turns out it's only defining static data for the game to work with. There is no way to introduce or modify actual logic. E.g. I can define a new industry and cargo type, and other industries that work with it, but I wouldn't be able to add new logic so that industry only produces cargo during summer months. I know it's a huge amount of work if you want to hook in to user scripts that may or may not exist, from various points in your C++ code, but for an indie developer I think it would have made a lot of sense, and improved their longevity, if they had designed for game logic to be placed in scripts and be overridable, rather than everything coded into the engine.
Sorry, it became a rant.

But I suppose it could lead to another question for developers: Players creating their own tools to hack game content, yay/nay?
I think this happened with at least some of the earlier The Sims games? They were obviously designed to be expandable from the developer, but very limited/none from players.

Avalerion
Oct 19, 2012

On that note, what happened to cheats? A lot of new games don't really do them anymore, or if yes then it's just debug console commands.

GeeCee
Dec 16, 2004

:scotland::glomp:

"You're going to be...amazing."

Avalerion posted:

On that note, what happened to cheats? A lot of new games don't really do them anymore, or if yes then it's just debug console commands.

A lot of the pull of cheats when I was a kid was either to derive enjoyment from games which were too hard for me (there were a lot in the 80s and 90s) or to mess around in games in ways that normally the game wouldn't allow within it's ruleset. Super Sonic in Sonic 2 was a cheat (you input a code) to make the game a different kind of playground where you were temporarily mostly invincible. IDDQD and similar in Doom is the same. That's still technically a legitimate form of play but the game hasn't been balanced or designed to accomodate that particular experience of exploring these levels in a completely threat-free way.

Nowadays Minecraft has what would have been considered cheating back then: Creative Mode. You suspend the danger, give the player access to everything and they can fly.

And that's basically it, there is a lot more awareness now among devs of allowing players different ways to enjoy a game that cheats aren't really that exciting or daring any more. MGS3, Bayonetta and some Platinum games even have super easy modes where you get an experience designed for players who would have major difficulty in normal play and would otherwise be the market for cheats.

I totally think that daft bonus modes are a great thing to add to games, no gravity mode in a game reliant on physics, ragtime call of duty mode, but there's not that same need for cheats any more.

GeeCee fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Oct 6, 2017

Tricky Ed
Aug 18, 2010

It is important to avoid confusion. This is the one that's okay to lick.


Avalerion posted:

On that note, what happened to cheats? A lot of new games don't really do them anymore, or if yes then it's just debug console commands.

Cheats were *usually* meant to be debug commands in the first place, especially on console. Modern dev kits include toggles that let you enable or disable debug/cheat commands while testing, but early ones just didn't, so to get any extensive or repeatable testing on a game you'd need cheat codes. Some special ones got added in as easter eggs, sure, but in most cases they were tools. Modern games still need those tools, so that's generally the starting point for cheats, if they're present, and generally the easiest way to make them available to the player is to let them use the dev console.

Spuckuk
Aug 11, 2009

Being a bastard works



Dark Off posted:

I think bigger problem is the fact that gamers think everything is possible. In magical land of games.
And publisher arent helping by bullshotting.
that is the thing that turns everything bit too toxic. During and after the game release.

I would say NMS was rather good example of that. The game was rather okay on release. But because how hyped up it was it ended up disappointing the gamers.
And during its development nobody listened to critics asking the right questions. (the price was rip off on launch however, and sean murray did lie about features)

The continuing saga of Star Citizen is the prime example of this particular fallacy. The fallout if it collapses and/or releases will be immense.

Why yes, I'm a bitter, cynical ex-games developer.

Sefal
Nov 8, 2011
Fun Shoe
I am not in Game Development. I'm in IT.
But something happened.
A player got banned from a game. Said player found out who banned him. And flew all the way to our office to talk with my colleague. We escorted that person out of the office. And made sure that our colleague was safe.

But I wanted to ask. Have you guys had any interaction with a player who was so upset that he physically entered the office?

This happened before I started here. but apparently. Another player who got banned. Came all the way to the office and handed our receptionist a stack of money and said "this is my account can you unban me?"

floofyscorp
Feb 12, 2007

Do you happen to work at Jagex? :v: I used to work in the same building as the Player Support team(before everyone was brought into the big building with the fingerprint sensors on all the doors) and we did once or twice have an office-wide email telling everyone to just stay at their desks while an angry player was escorted from the building. Runescape players can get pretty... intense. I had one guy actually make a fake LinkedIn profile to try and worm information about the studio's other projects out of me because he was angry about the company spending resources on games that weren't Runescape.

I know many studios have had incidents with overly passionate players overstepping a line, but it seems to be more of a problem for online games where people pour thousands of hours into their accounts. I wouldn't trade this work for the world but it does encourage you to be a lil more rigorous about your privacy settings and what you share on Facebook and the like.

Mother
Sep 30, 2004

You are help Orz with *parties*.

Sefal posted:


A player got banned from a game. Said player found out who banned him. And flew all the way to our office to talk with my colleague. We escorted that person out of the office. And made sure that our colleague was safe.

But I wanted to ask. Have you guys had any interaction with a player who was so upset that he physically entered the office?


This has happened several times during my career.

My favorite is the guy who drove half-way across the United States to get to our office because of a ban and started the conversation with "I'm not crazy...".

I spent a few days with the Sigil guys (now many of the same people are at Daybreak I believe?) when I was working on a MMO -- the stories about surprise visits from EverQuest fans are waaaaaay better.

Owl Inspector
Sep 14, 2011

I have no idealistic impression of players but flying across the country to make demands of a studio in person is utterly :psyboom: even to me

GeeCee
Dec 16, 2004

:scotland::glomp:

"You're going to be...amazing."
We get cute fanmail from kids every now and then :shobon:

Chunderstorm
May 9, 2010


legs crossed like a buddhist
smokin' buddha
angry tuna

Sefal posted:

I am not in Game Development. I'm in IT.
But something happened.
A player got banned from a game. Said player found out who banned him. And flew all the way to our office to talk with my colleague. We escorted that person out of the office. And made sure that our colleague was safe.

But I wanted to ask. Have you guys had any interaction with a player who was so upset that he physically entered the office?

This happened before I started here. but apparently. Another player who got banned. Came all the way to the office and handed our receptionist a stack of money and said "this is my account can you unban me?"

No, thank God. Our office is small enough that if someone got in everyone could see them from their desk. It'd be really awkward.

Discendo Vox
Mar 21, 2013

We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.
I once considered calling into one of those orderup-type places and buying my favorite game's devteam a ton of pizza.

GeeCee
Dec 16, 2004

:scotland::glomp:

"You're going to be...amazing."

Discendo Vox posted:

I once considered calling into one of those orderup-type places and buying my favorite game's devteam a ton of pizza.

I mean we do have a dominoes like 30 seconds walk from our door, it would arrive nice and hot if you were to lead by example and send us some of that doughy stuffed crust goodness for making your most favourite game ever. I'll have a Large Scrummy. :q:

Sit on my Jace
Sep 9, 2016

I've been poking around the GDC Vault to try to learn more about what game developers actually deal with in making games, and so far it's been real fascinating stuff. Are there any talks that you guys would consider must-watches for a layperson trying to understand game development?

GeeCee
Dec 16, 2004

:scotland::glomp:

"You're going to be...amazing."

Anil Dasharez0ne posted:

I've been poking around the GDC Vault to try to learn more about what game developers actually deal with in making games, and so far it's been real fascinating stuff. Are there any talks that you guys would consider must-watches for a layperson trying to understand game development?

My favourites are the GDC2015 Arc System Works talk about Guilty Gear that I linked earlier in the thread, the Feng Zhu one (which incidentally took place at exactly the same time slot) but honestly I've been to really very few talks I'd consider bad for the student/enthusiast. The grumpy seniors I know don't find them as useful though.

Star Warrior X
Jul 14, 2004

I don't know if you're talking about the vault youtube channel or the actual vault, but if it's the latter, I really like https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020447/Designers-Are-from-Saturn-Programmers to give you a great view into the game developer world.

Canine Blues Arooo
Jan 7, 2008

when you think about it...i'm the first girl you ever spent the night with

Grimey Drawer

Dark Off posted:

I think bigger problem is the fact that gamers think everything is possible. In magical land of games.
And publisher arent helping by bullshotting.
that is the thing that turns everything bit too toxic. During and after the game release.

I would say NMS was rather good example of that. The game was rather okay on release. But because how hyped up it was it ended up disappointing the gamers.
And during its development nobody listened to critics asking the right questions. (the price was rip off on launch however, and sean murray did lie about features)

This is something that for some reason the gaming community never really 'gets'. It's awesome that people get excited for a game, or an IP or an expansion, but software has limits, and maybe more importantly, networks have limits.

Remember in 2006 when Age of Conan was coming out and it was going to be the WoW Killer? People projected all their hopes and dreams onto this game, hoping it'd be exactly what they wanted out of an MMO because WoW didn't do X or Z as well as they wanted. The thing is, that projection wasn't a community projection - It was a personal projection. Everyone had their own person ideals of what the Best MMO™ is and as a result, everyone had a dream of what Age of Conan was going to be. A sign that this is going off the rails is when people are vague. "WoW PvP is poo poo. AoC will have great PvP!" OK, but exactly what systems are going to support that 'great pvp?' What makes you think it's going to be good besides a developer saying that 'PvP is going to be a focus and we want it to be engaging'. That's not an explanation of systems. That's something you put on the back of a box.

10 other 'WoW Killers' later with the exact same cycle of hype from a community that constantly fails to manage expectations, and WoW is still around and every other game, save FFXIV is dead.

'Player-Driven Economy' might be my personal favorite modern manifestation of this. Everyone has a different idea of what that means. WoW has a player driven economy, but some people actually mean something more robust e.g. EVE and others are totally content with the Currency/Item/Auction House relationship that's more or less boilerplate in MMOs. But hey, all you have to say on your kickstarter page is 'Player Driven Economy' and people go nuts.

The biggest, most spectacular version of this is probably Star Citizen. CIG shows a slide with 8 bullet points. Everyone projects their personal fantasy onto those bullet points. CIG under delivers, but there are 8 new bullet points to get excited about. The degree that Star Citizen does this honestly borders on 'unethical', but this strategy is so old that I can't help but do a little victim blaming here as well - the individual needs to take a step back and demand details before creating expectations for a game.

Discendo Vox
Mar 21, 2013

We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

GC_ChrisReeves posted:

I mean we do have a dominoes like 30 seconds walk from our door, it would arrive nice and hot if you were to lead by example and send us some of that doughy stuffed crust goodness for making your most favourite game ever. I'll have a Large Scrummy. :q:

The company in question works in Sweden and iirc they get free pizzas most days anyways, so I didn’t follow through.
Edit: someone from the game careers thread should take note, this would probably be an effective networking technique

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 14:48 on Oct 10, 2017

Gr4vyB04t
Jan 31, 2010

Hey gurl, hey.
I've been a network guy for my entire professional career. I went network because I hate coding. I decided I would try and make a game in Unity during my days off instead of spending a small fortune at the bars every weekend. Turns out, I still hate coding. Making notes and designing the game in my notebook makes the hours fly by. Messing around in Blender is great. Making pixel art with this fancy digital tablet is endlessly entertaining. Unfortunately opening up visual studio makes me cringe. Any professional coders have any tips for making it over the hump between coding being a chore and coding being something natural? Is this something I'm just going to have to beat my head against until it clicks?

eshock
Sep 2, 2004

AnElegantPeacock posted:

I've been a network guy for my entire professional career. I went network because I hate coding. I decided I would try and make a game in Unity during my days off instead of spending a small fortune at the bars every weekend. Turns out, I still hate coding. Making notes and designing the game in my notebook makes the hours fly by. Messing around in Blender is great. Making pixel art with this fancy digital tablet is endlessly entertaining. Unfortunately opening up visual studio makes me cringe. Any professional coders have any tips for making it over the hump between coding being a chore and coding being something natural? Is this something I'm just going to have to beat my head against until it clicks?

The real answer if you want to get over the hump is just "code more", and eventually it'll get more natural to you. But if this is a free time thing for you, and you already know you really don't like coding, there are tools these days that are actually pretty decent at letting you build games without having to touch a line of code.

For quick 2d prototypes I still tend to whip out Construct 2 (https://www.scirra.com though it seems to be dead right now). It's an HTML5+Javascript engine that lets you dig into the code if you want, but doesn't in any way require it. My day job is videogame programming, so it's not something I shy away from, and I've never felt like I needed to touch a line of javascript in Construct.

"Make games without writing code" tools have been around for some time, and they've traditionally been kinda lovely, but that isn't universally the case and you can probably get pretty far without coding.

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hey girl you up
May 21, 2001

Forum Nice Guy

AnElegantPeacock posted:

I've been a network guy for my entire professional career. I went network because I hate coding. I decided I would try and make a game in Unity during my days off instead of spending a small fortune at the bars every weekend. Turns out, I still hate coding. Making notes and designing the game in my notebook makes the hours fly by. Messing around in Blender is great. Making pixel art with this fancy digital tablet is endlessly entertaining. Unfortunately opening up visual studio makes me cringe. Any professional coders have any tips for making it over the hump between coding being a chore and coding being something natural? Is this something I'm just going to have to beat my head against until it clicks?
I'm a Math/CS teacher, not a professional gamedev, so bearing that in mind:

I always tell my students that coding is like sculpting. (Or at least what I imagine sculpting to be.) There are some days where you're working on the arch of a nose or the detail of a finger, and truly feel like you're making great art, but then there's the days where you're just chopping away at a big stone block until it's in the vague shape of a dude giving a thumbs up so that you can get working on the "real" part. It can be laborious and dull, and you better not mess it up. (For me, that's anything involving a GUI :barf:)

The question I usually pose my students who are interested in pursuing programming (or advanced math):

If you work on a really hard problem, one that leads you down the wrong path a few times, but you finally work out in the end, how do you feel afterwards? Do you get psyched up and pumped at finding the solution, in a way that makes it all feel worth it? Or do you get annoyed that this dumb problem took so long to solve and now all you have is this simple-looking answer?

If your personality is closer to the former than the latter, then you'll enjoy a lot more of the work. You can become an expert either way, but it'll be a lot easier if you can learn to celebrate the hard-fought victories.

The worst part about starting coding is that the beginning stuff can be bland. There's a lot to learn before you can start actually solving problems. And far, far too many introductions fall into a trap of either jumping straight to some magic code that gets things working (but you have no idea why) or going incredibly deep before producing any meaningful results (which can overwhelm with details).

hey girl you up fucked around with this message at 18:30 on Oct 13, 2017

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