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Hidden Asbestos
Nov 24, 2003
[placeholder]

Nagna Zul posted:

So I've been working on this game for around a year now, and it's starting to come together:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yefWDeWZLxo

I'll be releasing an early access version next month.

I'm currently looking for people who are interested in partnering with me full-time to work on this project; I am most in need of an artist and a business expert.

That looks really good. Does it work with non orchestral music?

A1A Beachfront Boss Battle

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Mr Underhill
Feb 14, 2012

Not picking that up.
Tangentially related to game development: Paintstorm studio http://www.paintstormstudio.com/ are having a heck of a sale at 19 bucks a license and 29 for two. If you wanna feel like doing "real" digital oil painting, this stuff's for you. Give the trial a spin, it's miles above PS when it comes to oils, and at 19 bucks it's more than a steal. No, they're not paying me to advertise, I got the link off of a great painter's facebook and the soft's real, real good. Shame the trial is very time limited, but the price is really amazingly low.

Resource
Aug 6, 2006
Yay!

Aneurexorcyst posted:

Really? I mean I didn't list much for some (like Far Cry because it was recent) but I think I gave a good amount of detail on Watch Dogs and Streets of Rage. Is there anything specific you think that was missing?
To be honest the depth in which I go into what I did on say - Wheelman or Watch Dogs is kinda more for people who are interested than potential employers. I find that kinda thing interesting to read myself, so I thought it maybe provided insight, but if it comes across as marketing speak, I've failed :saddowns:

I think that terms like "best-selling" and "rich franchise" feel more like marketing terms than game development terms (just pulling from the first paragraph on the FC4 and WD pages)
I didn't do more than glance beyond the top of the each page, because all the information I want is up there, which is good! Also, having information there for people other than prospective employers is a cool idea.

Also this type of thing from the About page "("best shooter of the year" - The Game Awards) and the record-selling open world action-adventure title, Watch_Dogs." makes me wonder who your audience is. If I'm interested in hiring you then I know what Far Cry 4 is, and unless you are a producer or marketer, why would I care about the record sales?

I would go through, think about who my audience is and adjust to that.

unlurked
Jan 20, 2006

Set phasers to HURT!

Dewgy posted:

Hey Spatials guy! You're on my Facebook feed somehow from an ad. Nice work, that's super cool to see. :3:

A Facebook ad? I remember throwing 20 bucks a year ago at FB ads when I was running around like a headless chicken after our shameful iPad launch, but that ran out a long time ago. It's probably from Bundle Stars, we are on sale on their store this weekend. If you catch it again I would like an screenshot, I'm keeping a collection of digital mementos of the game, like a first born.

high on life and meth
Jul 14, 2006

Fika
Rules
Everything
Around
Me

Abjad Soup posted:

New bug report! Occasionally after hitting RETRY, the screen freezes towards the beginning of the fade-from-black, though there's still sound effects of the enemy wrasslers landing on each other (and me?) as well as music. I've tried pressing the on-screen buttons but couldn't tell if they were doing anything. I was able to semi-reliably reproduce this frozen state by dying while holding down the Jump button, sometimes with at least one of the movement buttons or one of the movement buttons as well. I had to force-quit the app in order to get back to playing; the only other interaction I could make was switching to the opposite landscape orientation, which rotated the screen but kept the frozen video. This is all on iOS 8.2 btw.

I'd definitely second the suggestion to have the arms buttons indicate rotation. Even making them just be diagonal arrows would probably help distinguish them from the movement buttons. Also some way to get back to the title screen without force-quitting would be nice, plus maybe a way to replay the tutorial (mostly because it's fun to watch the referee getting wrassled on + around, but I also like the title screen music).

Would it make sense to have an arrow pointing to your Wrassler while off-screen, like the magnifying glass in Smash Bros?

Then I saw that apparently purchasing the no-ads upgrade unlocked all the hats! :O I was having fun unlocking them incrementally and didn't realize the upgrade would unlock them all in one go, and I also don't see any way to return to unlocking them incrementally.

On the title screen, I couldn't figure out what the circular arrow button does. If it's a shortcut to the "restore purchases" button on the Credits screen, both of them just make a not-allowed noise when pressed. (This may be me not understanding how in-app purchases and "restore purchases" buttons usually work, since I don't use either very often at all. Does it only work if I delete and re-download the game, for reverification that I've already purchased the item?)

WRASSLIN'

Whoa, thanks for this! Alright, answers:

The RETRY bug we've been hearing more about, we're looking into it. It's something to do with the game over state triggering ads but it appears to be doing it in situations where it shouldn't. Not sure yet, but it's being worked on!

There's a way to get back to the main menu but it's way too convoluted: Go to the hat selection screen, tap the (i) icon, then tap back. I'm thinking about adding a home button to the play screen because it's also really hard to kill yourself on purpose in game. Another thing I like about the main menu is that it works as an attract mode thing, it's p fun just watching enemies wrassle each other!

Dunno about the arrow thing, I'll mull it over. Generally if you're flung off the screen there's not much hope, but otoh I have seen people make some amazing recoveries.

We made the iap unlock all the hats as a way to incentivise people to do it, and since another way to unlock hats is by watching videos it made sense. It shouldn't be a problem to add an option to reset the challenges though, if you're into unlocking the hats we can make that happen. I actually really like that, so thanks for bringing it up!

The circular button is indeed a Restore Purchases button, it does the same thing as the one on the credits screen. With all the requests and suggestions I think what will happen is that icon will get replaced with an OPTIONS button that takes you to an options screen where you can erase your progress and invert the arm directions and all that kinda thing.
The way "restore purchases" usually work is exactly how you think, it'll just check if you have bought the iap, and if you have on that device it does nothing. If you're on a new device or uninstalled the game and then reinstalled, it'll take action.


And on another note, I was super surprised and psyched to find out Apple featured WRASSLING! I had to screenshot it because I couldn't believe it.

Omi no Kami
Feb 19, 2014


This is more idle pondering than anything, but in games like Diablo II, where players love to squint at numbers and classes have a huge number of abilities that can synergize differently with equipment and each other, how do devs go about ensuring that some degree of balance is maintained? The only things I can think of is that they either have gigantic honking spreadsheets that some poor intern is (not) paid to slave over, or they prototype role and utility balance with naked characters, then base the item generator on some extremely generalized principals, like "Item base stats are random with a range governed by this lookup table, then modified as a function of level and rarity".

GarethIW
Feb 25, 2003

The internet destroyed me, but I forgave it

Tummyache posted:

It's taken me a couple of days to recover and come to terms with my LD game. I think I did really well, I just ended up making another metroidvania game, which is what I always do. Wish I had spent a little more time thinking up something more original. Anyway, it's kind of fun, if a little too hard, and people seem to like the artwork.

Oh hey, I just randomly played and rated this :) Nice work!

TooMuchAbstraction
Oct 14, 2012

I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.
Fun Shoe

Omi no Kami posted:

This is more idle pondering than anything, but in games like Diablo II, where players love to squint at numbers and classes have a huge number of abilities that can synergize differently with equipment and each other, how do devs go about ensuring that some degree of balance is maintained? The only things I can think of is that they either have gigantic honking spreadsheets that some poor intern is (not) paid to slave over, or they prototype role and utility balance with naked characters, then base the item generator on some extremely generalized principals, like "Item base stats are random with a range governed by this lookup table, then modified as a function of level and rarity".

I can't claim any particular legitimacy for this, but I believe what mostly happens here is that they list out things like how much damage they want players to be able to do, how easily they want them to be able to deal with crowds (i.e. how good their AOE attacks are), what kinds of resistances they want them to have, etc. and then they do have a gigantic spreadsheet that they balance around those listed goals. So e.g. they'll say "we mostly want resistances to come from shields and body armor, so we want this +resistances modifier to be more common on those items" and then tweak things until 1 out of every 1000 shields (or whatever) spawns with the higher-tier +resistances modifier, the player finds it, and they're happy with their find.

In other words, there's an awful, awful lot of hand-tweaking and running of statistics here. If you want to make a D2-alike, then be certain that your item generation method is amenable to statistical analysis; you'll save yourself a lot of time if you don't have to run a Monte Carlo simulator for an hour every time you want to examine the game balance.

Polio Vax Scene
Apr 5, 2009



Omi no Kami posted:

This is more idle pondering than anything, but in games like Diablo II, where players love to squint at numbers and classes have a huge number of abilities that can synergize differently with equipment and each other, how do devs go about ensuring that some degree of balance is maintained? The only things I can think of is that they either have gigantic honking spreadsheets that some poor intern is (not) paid to slave over, or they prototype role and utility balance with naked characters, then base the item generator on some extremely generalized principals, like "Item base stats are random with a range governed by this lookup table, then modified as a function of level and rarity".

It takes several years of feedback from the playerbase to get any sort of balance. There were items in diablo 3 for a very long time that were absurdly powerful.

Part of the fun of a game like that is finding something OP and being all whoaaa dude this item is nuts!!

Omi no Kami
Feb 19, 2014


TooMuchAbstraction posted:

If you want to make a D2-alike, then be certain that your item generation method is amenable to statistical analysis; you'll save yourself a lot of time if you don't have to run a Monte Carlo simulator for an hour every time you want to examine the game balance.

This is great advice to be sure, but I don't think I'd ever consider making a diablolike without a full staff and a lot of motivation: the ease of loot-powered skinner boxes is alluring, but the sheer amount of labor that must go into ensuring even nominal balance and progression is kinda staggering.

Bert of the Forest
Apr 27, 2013

Shucks folks, I'm speechless. Hawf Hawf Hawf!

Nagna Zul posted:

So I've been working on this game for around a year now, and it's starting to come together:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yefWDeWZLxo

I'll be releasing an early access version next month.

I'm currently looking for people who are interested in partnering with me full-time to work on this project; I am most in need of an artist and a business expert.

This looks like a pretty rad concept! If it's a paying gig I'm most definitely interested. Don't have the funds to take on anything pro-bono or rev-share though, but here's a quick preview of some of my art work:

















If y'all are interested, then feel free to email me at nicholaslives[at]yahoo dot com and we can discuss the details!

Nagna Zul
Aug 9, 2008

Hidden Asbestos posted:

That looks really good. Does it work with non orchestral music?

A1A Beachfront Boss Battle

It works with any music; I've had a lot of fun trying out various genres and seeing how the game reacts. For obvious reasons I can't make videos including copyrighted music, but it works very well with Rammstein, Dubstep, Electronic music of all kinds, Metal, Ambient, Classical, video game music...

FraudulentEconomics
Oct 14, 2007

Pst...

Nagna Zul posted:

So I've been working on this game for around a year now, and it's starting to come together:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yefWDeWZLxo

I'll be releasing an early access version next month.

I'm currently looking for people who are interested in partnering with me full-time to work on this project; I am most in need of an artist and a business expert.

What sort of art style are you looking for in this? Are you looking for 2d or 3d assets? Compensation methods? Drop me a line at atippingofthescales[at]gmail[dot]com and I'd be happy to correspond with you and figure out if I can meet your needs.

Somfin
Oct 25, 2010

In my🦚 experience🛠️ the big things🌑 don't teach you anything🤷‍♀️.

Nap Ghost

Omi no Kami posted:

This is great advice to be sure, but I don't think I'd ever consider making a diablolike without a full staff and a lot of motivation: the ease of loot-powered skinner boxes is alluring, but the sheer amount of labor that must go into ensuring even nominal balance and progression is kinda staggering.

Speaking as someone who is working on a diablolike skinner box lootstorm, the main trick that I've heard about is to find the one stat that rules them all, make a fuckton of assumptions, and balance everything to those. This stat, incidentally, is always going to be the one that most directly maps to the player's time. In almost all cases, this stat is health.

Hit zero health and you die. Die, and you hit a failure screen. Everything you do is to prevent the failure screen from showing up before the victory screen shows up, so everything you do is to prevent you from losing that last single hit point. Additional health gives that last critical point some padding. Armour prolongs health or lets you ignore lesser sources of damage. Regeneration restores health, adding to the time you have left directly. All damage dealing (which is the primary thing that players actually tend to think about) can be boiled down to 'preventing enemies from lowering my health before I lower theirs enough to remove them.' If you double your damage output, you double your functional health. A weapon that can hit four enemies at once is theoretically a quadrupling of functional health, though it must be used properly for this to actually happen. Slowing enemies prevents them from getting to you, which further increases functional health. Speed increases the player's ability to both avoid and deal damage, resulting in, you guessed it, additional (though flaky) functional health. Health health health health health.

You get used to writing things over and over until they no longer look like words.

Focusing on health gives you a vague universal resource around which all decisions can be based. The lady who focuses almost exclusively on damage and the guy with a diverse array of tanking options can actually, at a fundamental level, be equals- as long as their functional healths are the same, and nothing in the mandatory primary game path is capable of idly smacking down captain DPS in a single undodgeable hit, or trying captain HP's patience too much.

After that, all you need to do is establish your weapon baseline and all of the relative calculations start to fit into place (Armour rarely needs a baseline since it is a modification from zero anyway). My baseline, incidentally, is The Wimpstick- a zero-range, long-windup, long-cooldown weapon with a small hitbox, which hits one enemy, once, for a single point of damage. Everything else can be measured in terms of how many Wimpsticks it is worth, in terms of relative health gain. Cut the total downtime in half? Two wimpsticks. Take that half-cooldown weapon, increase the hitbox size, and remove the single-enemy restriction? We're up to about five or six wimpsticks.

Somfin fucked around with this message at 07:36 on Apr 25, 2015

Omi no Kami
Feb 19, 2014


That's interesting- why health as the greatest saver of time, because it translates directly to survivability and thus minimizes restarts/checkpoints? I remember emphasizing health the first time I played a souls game, only to belatedly realize that it's so heavily skill-focused that maneuverability and dps were actually massively more effective in fights than sustain.

Police Automaton
Mar 17, 2009
"You are standing in a thread. Someone has made an insightful post."
LOOK AT insightful post
"It's a pretty good post."
HATE post
"I don't understand"
SHIT ON post
"You shit on the post. Why."
I've been getting up-to-date in where the gaming industry is in the last few weeks because quite honestly, I had no clue. I have sort of an immensely spergy brainchild I wanted to realize for about over 20 years now, starting off on the Commodore Amiga with my back then very limited programming skills an then just sort of moving forward from platform to platform and language to language without ever turning it into something other than a tech demo. Job-wise I went through almost completely unrelated fields although I have experience in programming. I once took of about a year from work where I planned to make this a reality but lots of other personal things happened instead and I feel like the market wasn't really there for indie titles to begin with back then. Now I'm in a secure job again but kind of want to take another whack at it before I get too old and too easily confused by colors and sounds. I don't really intend to get rich or even make it a career, it would just be nice to realize it.

My currently biggest problem is that I am not an artist or designer. I have no idea how to put things together visually. I tried my hands at pixel-"programmer"-art and failed. It's really bad. I actually sat down on my old Amiga I still have and tried to do some pixel art there because the programs are more accommodating for it. That worked out slightly better for me, but the frustration always keeps taking me in. Anyone not artistically-challenged have a few pointers for me?

tehsid
Dec 24, 2007

Nobility is sadly overrated.

Police Automaton posted:

I've been getting up-to-date in where the gaming industry is in the last few weeks because quite honestly, I had no clue. I have sort of an immensely spergy brainchild I wanted to realize for about over 20 years now, starting off on the Commodore Amiga with my back then very limited programming skills an then just sort of moving forward from platform to platform and language to language without ever turning it into something other than a tech demo. Job-wise I went through almost completely unrelated fields although I have experience in programming. I once took of about a year from work where I planned to make this a reality but lots of other personal things happened instead and I feel like the market wasn't really there for indie titles to begin with back then. Now I'm in a secure job again but kind of want to take another whack at it before I get too old and too easily confused by colors and sounds. I don't really intend to get rich or even make it a career, it would just be nice to realize it.

My currently biggest problem is that I am not an artist or designer. I have no idea how to put things together visually. I tried my hands at pixel-"programmer"-art and failed. It's really bad. I actually sat down on my old Amiga I still have and tried to do some pixel art there because the programs are more accommodating for it. That worked out slightly better for me, but the frustration always keeps taking me in. Anyone not artistically-challenged have a few pointers for me?

Don't worry about your graphics for now and just work on your gameplay, and maybe look into packs of free sprites/models in place until it feels how you want to. Then look into art, be it commission work it otherwise.

Omi no Kami
Feb 19, 2014


Early start to saturday: looks kinda rear end-y, but working on a cool guy smurf camping thing to learn UE4.

unlurked
Jan 20, 2006

Set phasers to HURT!

Somfin posted:

This stat, incidentally, is always going to be the one that most directly maps to the player's time. In almost all cases, this stat is health.

This is how I did the ARPG-lite segment of The Spatials too. I have a function that given a level number, returns the expected amount of HP for a typical, no frills mob at that level. Absolutely everything else is a function of that function. Player damage, player HP, damage reduction, weapon DPS, healing skills, mob damage, etc. The core function is very simple too, just something like a + b * level ^ c, with a b c being the knobs to tweak things around (c is 1.18 for example).

Omi no Kami
Feb 19, 2014


unlurked posted:

This is how I did the ARPG-lite segment of The Spatials too. I have a function that given a level number, returns the expected amount of HP for a typical, no frills mob at that level. Absolutely everything else is a function of that function. Player damage, player HP, damage reduction, weapon DPS, healing skills, mob damage, etc. The core function is very simple too, just something like a + b * level ^ c, with a b c being the knobs to tweak things around (c is 1.18 for example).

That is really cool- so if I pick up a fifth level 2x4 of awesome, it just computes everything from the expected mob HP? That simplifies things considerably.

Somfin
Oct 25, 2010

In my🦚 experience🛠️ the big things🌑 don't teach you anything🤷‍♀️.

Nap Ghost

Omi no Kami posted:

That's interesting- why health as the greatest saver of time, because it translates directly to survivability and thus minimizes restarts/checkpoints? I remember emphasizing health the first time I played a souls game, only to belatedly realize that it's so heavily skill-focused that maneuverability and dps were actually massively more effective in fights than sustain.

I don't think you quite got what I meant.

Most balancing focuses on health, because it is the only thing that matters. The single failure state in most lootbox games is having [ if (current_health <= 0) ] go true during an update step. Every tool and bonus the player has is tied to keeping that resource above zero. Nothing else matters in the same way. You're never going to lose a game because your attack damage dropped below 50. You don't fail because your movement speed is below 95. Not directly. You directly fail the game only if those stats lead to you taking enough damage that [ if (current_health <= 0) ] goes true during an update step. If you arbitrarily die without your health being at zero, the game has cheated, and as player you can feel it.

That's not to say that stacking health directly is going to be your best bet in most games. If the armour system is "every 100 points of armour makes you take half damage from all sources," then stacking 100 points of armour is equivalent to doubling your current health. What I'm saying is that every stat and bonus in the game- health, damage, AOE effects, damage reduction, damage increasing, splash damage, et cetera- can all be converted to an equivalent in terms of additional health.

Omi no Kami
Feb 19, 2014


Ooh okay, okay, that makes more sense- I don't know why I was fixated on the strategy thing, but I see what you mean now- thanks for clarifying :)

Police Automaton
Mar 17, 2009
"You are standing in a thread. Someone has made an insightful post."
LOOK AT insightful post
"It's a pretty good post."
HATE post
"I don't understand"
SHIT ON post
"You shit on the post. Why."

Somfin posted:

That's not to say that stacking health directly is going to be your best bet in most games. If the armour system is "every 100 points of armour makes you take half damage from all sources," then stacking 100 points of armour is equivalent to doubling your current health. What I'm saying is that every stat and bonus in the game- health, damage, AOE effects, damage reduction, damage increasing, splash damage, et cetera- can all be converted to an equivalent in terms of additional health.

This is pretty simple and at the same time pretty profound, never looked at it that way. Thanks!

tehsid posted:

Don't worry about your graphics for now and just work on your gameplay, and maybe look into packs of free sprites/models in place until it feels how you want to. Then look into art, be it commission work it otherwise.

I think the worst thing is actually getting beyond my own ego of wanting to do everything myself. It's not really like I have no idea how I want it to look like, I have some very specific ideas there. My hands just won't cooperate.

Somfin
Oct 25, 2010

In my🦚 experience🛠️ the big things🌑 don't teach you anything🤷‍♀️.

Nap Ghost

Police Automaton posted:

This is pretty simple and at the same time pretty profound, never looked at it that way. Thanks!

I should probably post the link to the place where I got that concept from. It wasn't my thought, and the guy I stole it from said it better than me.

https://gamebalanceconcepts.wordpress.com/2010/07/07/level-1-intro-to-game-balance/

Here it is. It's a 10-part series of big ol' essays about various aspects of game balancing, including economy balance, combat, resources, magic, et cetera. It's a doozy. A bit dated, at this point, but the ideas are pretty general and generic.

tehsid
Dec 24, 2007

Nobility is sadly overrated.

Police Automaton posted:

This is pretty simple and at the same time pretty profound, never looked at it that way. Thanks!


I think the worst thing is actually getting beyond my own ego of wanting to do everything myself. It's not really like I have no idea how I want it to look like, I have some very specific ideas there. My hands just won't cooperate.

There is nothing at all wrong with that! My suggestion is to make something, post it in here and as for suggestions on what tips people have. And following tutorials for similar styles may point you in the right direction. But most of all, have fun!

retro sexual
Mar 14, 2005

Police Automaton posted:

I've been getting up-to-date in where the gaming industry is in the last few weeks because quite honestly, I had no clue. I have sort of an immensely spergy brainchild I wanted to realize for about over 20 years now, starting off on the Commodore Amiga with my back then very limited programming skills an then just sort of moving forward from platform to platform and language to language without ever turning it into something other than a tech demo. Job-wise I went through almost completely unrelated fields although I have experience in programming. I once took of about a year from work where I planned to make this a reality but lots of other personal things happened instead and I feel like the market wasn't really there for indie titles to begin with back then. Now I'm in a secure job again but kind of want to take another whack at it before I get too old and too easily confused by colors and sounds. I don't really intend to get rich or even make it a career, it would just be nice to realize it.

I would say don't make your dream game idea first. How about making something in one day or one weekend? Try a gamejam or two to get into the feel of things, then make that game

Aneurexorcyst
Feb 11, 2004

There is a great disturbance in the monarchy...

Resource posted:

Also this type of thing from the About page "("best shooter of the year" - The Game Awards) and the record-selling open world action-adventure title, Watch_Dogs." makes me wonder who your audience is. If I'm interested in hiring you then I know what Far Cry 4 is, and unless you are a producer or marketer, why would I care about the record sales?
It's funny, but now you call those points out, I realise I come across as a bit of a wank, or perhaps someone using the success of a collective as a crutch rather than my own personal achievements - something I attempt to explain in the body of the individual game entries.

Thanks, I'll reword some of that. :hfive:

Unormal
Nov 16, 2004

Mod sass? This evening?! But the cakes aren't ready! THE CAKES!
Fun Shoe
*Wrong thread!

Unormal fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Apr 25, 2015

Chunderstorm
May 9, 2010


legs crossed like a buddhist
smokin' buddha
angry tuna
Couple screenshots from my capstone project this year.

Polio Vax Scene
Apr 5, 2009



Just a thing

Shalinor
Jun 10, 2002

Can I buy you a rootbeer?

Somfin posted:

I should probably post the link to the place where I got that concept from. It wasn't my thought, and the guy I stole it from said it better than me.

https://gamebalanceconcepts.wordpress.com/2010/07/07/level-1-intro-to-game-balance/

Here it is. It's a 10-part series of big ol' essays about various aspects of game balancing, including economy balance, combat, resources, magic, et cetera. It's a doozy. A bit dated, at this point, but the ideas are pretty general and generic.
Ok, so... man. Complicated.

What this is is procedurally generated design, which means it has all the same pitfalls as procedurally generated content code-side. Namely, that the diversity of the content, the "fun" of it, is directly proportional to the complexity of your algorithms and, more importantly, the number and diversity of distinct algorithms layered on top of eachother. That "everything is HP" algo? that, unless you're careful, boils down to ONE algorithm. If you want to see the kind of same'y, dull game that would potentially result in, look at Diablo 3. Easily the most polished yet terrible game I've ever played in my life (and yes, I even mean post-redesign).

Tricks like this are a lens through which to view your design, but it's easy to start thinking of them as the only tool in your toolbox. You get designers that make their giant spreadsheet, make it all balance off HP, and proclaim "and surely that will be fun!" (or similar / balanced off some other single parameter).

Police Automaton
Mar 17, 2009
"You are standing in a thread. Someone has made an insightful post."
LOOK AT insightful post
"It's a pretty good post."
HATE post
"I don't understand"
SHIT ON post
"You shit on the post. Why."

Shalinor posted:

Ok, so... man. Complicated.

What this is is procedurally generated design, which means it has all the same pitfalls as procedurally generated content code-side. Namely, that the diversity of the content, the "fun" of it, is directly proportional to the complexity of your algorithms and, more importantly, the number and diversity of distinct algorithms layered on top of eachother. That "everything is HP" algo? that, unless you're careful, boils down to ONE algorithm. If you want to see the kind of same'y, dull game that would potentially result in, look at Diablo 3. Easily the most polished yet terrible game I've ever played in my life (and yes, I even mean post-redesign).

Tricks like this are a lens through which to view your design, but it's easy to start thinking of them as the only tool in your toolbox. You get designers that make their giant spreadsheet, make it all balance off HP, and proclaim "and surely that will be fun!" (or similar / balanced off some other single parameter).

And then there's the other extreme of designers which apparently pulled most of their stats/numbers out of their rear end and turned a good idea into something that's playable really well for half an hour and then just deteriorates into a mess.

Many many years ago I played an absolute metric ton of business sims, I always tried to break them with maths. When you do this (and just don't play and do whatever you think feels the most right) it often becomes pretty clear pretty quick which game followed the "use numbers that sound good" approach of design and which game implemented actual formulas from the economic world ("key of payment" being a prominent example, no idea if this is the actual english term, I am german and google doesn't give me anything else) and implemented them into the game. The economically more accurate sims were always the harder ones that were also harder kick out of balance (where you'd end up doing certain things in order to get obscenely rich) but also ultimately, usually always also the more boring ones because your progress replicated the real-life experience were there are usually no "get rich quick" schemes and where it is often already a constant struggle to break even financially. Usually eventually there was always some flaw you could abuse but the non-so-accurate simualtions were the less boring, albeit the more shortlived ones. (When you gather billions in these games, there is usually just no place to go)

tl;dr It is sometimes really hard to find out what's actually fun.

retro sexual posted:

I would say don't make your dream game idea first. How about making something in one day or one weekend? Try a gamejam or two to get into the feel of things, then make that game

I actually have a bit of experience in developing bigger software projects but nothing that has to do with games and nothing that's even comparable. I think I really should try this, especially a deadline could teach me some things. Thanks!

tehsid posted:

There is nothing at all wrong with that! My suggestion is to make something, post it in here and as for suggestions on what tips people have. And following tutorials for similar styles may point you in the right direction. But most of all, have fun!

I've been looking at a lot of pixel art lately, it actually helps. I have an artsy friend (drawing, unrelated to computers) who always tells me he doesn't believe in talent and he thinks it's just all practice. Easy to say when you have lots of talent methinks.

ether
May 20, 2001

Nagna Zul posted:

It works with any music; I've had a lot of fun trying out various genres and seeing how the game reacts. For obvious reasons I can't make videos including copyrighted music, but it works very well with Rammstein, Dubstep, Electronic music of all kinds, Metal, Ambient, Classical, video game music...

I love rhythm games, keeping on eye out for this. Mostly curious if it works out with bands like iwrestledabreaonce and the tony danza tapdance extravaganza, sadly those generally are non-fun as input in Audiosurf/Crypt of the Necrodancer :/

Popoto
Oct 21, 2012

miaow
Anyone has opinions on Unity GUI vs UI? A bunch of my old infrastructure was written in GUI, but I intended it to be a placeholder. I'm about to make the real interface for the game and seeing there's the whole of UI I did not know was out since this past summer. Is it worth getting into instead of writing an interface from scratch? I remember the old GUI being quite criticized in its bulkiness.

Pi Mu Rho
Apr 25, 2007

College Slice

StarMinstrel posted:

Anyone has opinions on Unity GUI vs UI? A bunch of my old infrastructure was written in GUI, but I intended it to be a placeholder. I'm about to make the real interface for the game and seeing there's the whole of UI I did not know was out since this past summer. Is it worth getting into instead of writing an interface from scratch? I remember the old GUI being quite criticized in its bulkiness.

The new UI is light years ahead of the old one, both in terms of usability and performance. You'd be silly not to use it.

Somfin
Oct 25, 2010

In my🦚 experience🛠️ the big things🌑 don't teach you anything🤷‍♀️.

Nap Ghost

Shalinor posted:

Ok, so... man. Complicated.

What this is is procedurally generated design, which means it has all the same pitfalls as procedurally generated content code-side. Namely, that the diversity of the content, the "fun" of it, is directly proportional to the complexity of your algorithms and, more importantly, the number and diversity of distinct algorithms layered on top of eachother. That "everything is HP" algo? that, unless you're careful, boils down to ONE algorithm. If you want to see the kind of same'y, dull game that would potentially result in, look at Diablo 3. Easily the most polished yet terrible game I've ever played in my life (and yes, I even mean post-redesign).

Tricks like this are a lens through which to view your design, but it's easy to start thinking of them as the only tool in your toolbox. You get designers that make their giant spreadsheet, make it all balance off HP, and proclaim "and surely that will be fun!" (or similar / balanced off some other single parameter).

I'm planning on using 'everything to hp' as a method for balancing player character equipment.

I feel like the main problem with D3 is that it used enemy scaling on enemy types that had already been fought, so you never got to feel any sense of growing noticeably stronger. Basic zombies in the first area would die in one hit against basic zombies from the fourth area, who would all die in a second if they faced off against a single basic zombie from the end of the chapter, but all of them die in about two hits from you. Enemies who start off as heavies end up still being heavies. Nothing ends up stepping down from 'gently caress-off strong' to 'moderate challenge' to 'weak if unaccompanied' to 'filler' like in old-school games, because the power level keeps pace with the player. This also kinda killed the hit point economy because it lost the bottom end.

Don't get me wrong, I love D3, Barb4Lyfe, but it sold itself almost entirely on juice and there was very little else going on after a while.

Popoto
Oct 21, 2012

miaow

Pi Mu Rho posted:

The new UI is light years ahead of the old one, both in terms of usability and performance. You'd be silly not to use it.

Thanks. Here's to a less painful Unity UI learning experience :unsmith:

deck
Jul 13, 2006

If it makes you feel any better, it's still painful to learn.

ZealousQuakeFan
Feb 13, 2011

Nice to finally make a bit of progress. Trails on projectiles probably a bad idea though...

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D_W
Nov 12, 2013

The game I've been doing the soundtrack for not only got through Greenlight but is coming out on Steam tomorrow! http://store.steampowered.com/app/358070/

I also just released the soundtrack on Bandcamp and Itch.io. It's pretty exciting!

D_W fucked around with this message at 20:23 on Apr 26, 2015

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