I'm working on a cute little video game! Here's a link for you.
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Jeremy23000Indie DeveloperHalifax, Nova Scotia, CanadaRegistered Userregular
Thought you guys might be interested in the Road/Traffic system I've been working on recently. I'm quite proud of it so far - the cars sometimes spawn and drive on the bottom of the roads though... I'll have to fix that... But otherwise it seems to be working pretty nicely!
Orbitron was designed so that graphic designers in the future will have some alternative to typefaces like Eurostile or Bank Gothic. If you’ve ever seen a futuristic sci-fi movie, you have may noticed that all other fonts have been lost or destroyed in the apocalypse that led humans to flee earth. Only those very few geometric typefaces have survived to be used on spaceship exteriors, space station signage, monopolistic corporate branding, uniforms featuring aerodynamic shoulder pads, etc. Of course Orbitron could also be used on the posters for the movies portraying this inevitable future.
@RiemannLives
So, this book I just got, Game Coding Complete, is written by an ex-Ultima Online guy and is just ridiculously comprehensive in what it covers both with the design and implementation of game architecture and the fine details of the actual process and realities of game development. The former I was hoping for, the latter I could never have expected. Like, this book is just a pile of answers to every question that has been plaguing me for the past six months. I wish I had bought this book long before I had even started putting together a video game.
WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL THIS TIME, BOOK? SO MANY MISTAKES COULD'VE BEEN AVOIDED.
Granted, I've only just started digging into it, so who knows, it may only appear to hold the answers I wish I had. Either way I'm incredibly excited.
EDIT: Halfway through the second chapter, and I can affirmatively say that anyone who wants to program a video game ever should probably read this book.
@RiemannLives
So, this book I just got, Game Coding Complete, is written by an ex-Ultima Online guy and is just ridiculously comprehensive in what it covers both with the design and implementation of game architecture and the fine details of the actual process and realities of game development. The former I was hoping for, the latter I could never have expected. Like, this book is just a pile of answers to every question that has been plaguing me for the past six months. I wish I had bought this book long before I had even started putting together a video game.
WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL THIS TIME, BOOK? SO MANY MISTAKES COULD'VE BEEN AVOIDED.
Granted, I've only just started digging into it, so who knows, it may only appear to hold the answers I wish I had. Either way I'm incredibly excited.
EDIT: Halfway through the second chapter, and I can affirmatively say that anyone who wants to program a video game ever should probably read this book.
Oh. That book has been around for a while now. Still, I would just leverage an open source engine instead of making one from scratch. Still, whatever you are into.
I'll add Rules of Play by Eric Zimmerman and Katie Salen
The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses by Jesse Schell. It's pretty awesome! Picked it up on a recommendation, and it is very good. Uses the eponymous lenses, 100 different ways to look at your game or idea in order to make it better.
Yeah. I just bought the Lenses one last week. Waiting for it to show up in the mail.
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
So I recently started working with Coherent UI, which is an HTML5 UI plugin for UE4. Has a subscription like UE4, though I'm pretty sure it only works while you're subbed (unlike UE4 itself), though I could be wrong. You may just lose updates. I originally started working with UE's Slate API to build my UI in C++, but frankly that was ridiculous. The API isn't terribly well documented, and finding good examples of it was like pulling teeth.
I thought about trying to roll in Blink and V8 (Google's HTML rendering and JavaScript engines, respectively) but there is an immense amount of glue to make that work which Coherent handles for you. So for now I'm building my UI in HTML, CSS and JavaScript, which is surprisingly nice. Since I do web app development for a living, it's nice to have one part of my project where I am super comfortable. When I'm not feeling productive in the game world, I can go work on the UI for an hour and feel like I'm really making good progress.
Anyone know of good software for running a user-built card game on? it would have to support a user drawing from multiple deck sources. Also be relatively easy to use.
So I recently started working with Coherent UI, which is an HTML5 UI plugin for UE4. Has a subscription like UE4, though I'm pretty sure it only works while you're subbed (unlike UE4 itself), though I could be wrong. You may just lose updates. I originally started working with UE's Slate API to build my UI in C++, but frankly that was ridiculous. The API isn't terribly well documented, and finding good examples of it was like pulling teeth.
I thought about trying to roll in Blink and V8 (Google's HTML rendering and JavaScript engines, respectively) but there is an immense amount of glue to make that work which Coherent handles for you. So for now I'm building my UI in HTML, CSS and JavaScript, which is surprisingly nice. Since I do web app development for a living, it's nice to have one part of my project where I am super comfortable. When I'm not feeling productive in the game world, I can go work on the UI for an hour and feel like I'm really making good progress.
I've been going through this weird wash cycle where, when I work on web stuff, I'm all, "But this is actually kind of insane, isn't it? The user tells the browser to query the server to process the request in PHP, while querying the Postgres DB, and produce custom HTML and send it back to the user, who will run it through Javascript and also whatever-the-fuck his browser feels like doing, and then the user will respond by...."
But then when I work on game stuff I'm like ffffffffffffffffffffffff, where's the DOM when you need it?
I'm a long ways from having any of my crap anywhere.
Buuuuuuut....
What I would call The Basics are done! I can hardly believe it! i finished formatting the last basic card this weekend, right on schedule!
Now I need to do a reasonable mock-up (probably just a digital one, because I don't want to waste a ton of substrate / ink on a rough draft) for testing.
...And now is usually the part of the process where I would say, "That is great, The Ender, but nobody can print those. You can't even print those. It would have to go to a professional print shop, and you can't afford that kind of job for some hobbyist project," and then I would get frustrated and kick the whole effort onto an archive drive and bemoan the state of personal printing.
Buuuuuuut....
It works! It fucking works!
Avery sells glossy do-it-yourself business card stock. You can even print right to the edge, because the sheets have a bleed zone. i wasn't sure how well it would come out, but just printing on a really basic Epson inkJet it looks Goddamn gorgeous. No fucking around with scissors, no flattening of the colors because lol 20 lb bond; punch them out, glue the backs onto the faces, wait for it to dry, you're good to go.
This is the happiest I have ever been with a print-and-play mock-up.
If I was starting again I would do so much differently. The opening levels are almost cringe inducing in their crapness. I hide the really fun stuff way too late in the game.
Sooo, been wanting to take another crack at this for a while. Now I've got the time I've got no excuses to make the 2D game I've always wanted to.
I used to swear by XNA for 2D but is there a better option out there? How does Unity handle 2D these days? I've been out of the loop for 12 months or so. I mostly code in C# at work so would like to stick to that if possible.
Sooo, been wanting to take another crack at this for a while. Now I've got the time I've got no excuses to make the 2D game I've always wanted to.
I used to swear by XNA for 2D but is there a better option out there? How does Unity handle 2D these days? I've been out of the loop for 12 months or so. I mostly code in C# at work so would like to stick to that if possible.
Unity 2d is pretty nice, the upcoming delayed changes to the platform sound like they will be even nicer.
I did a little(tiny) bit in XNA and if you don't want to code engine/everything from scratch, unity is really great for letting you jump in and get rolling. You can use C# with it.
Finally subbed to UE4. Seems pretty cool, but I have some questions I probably already know the answers to...
Is there an in-editor way to animate 2D characters composed of multiple sprites? I'm guessing I will probably have to rig it in Blender or something first, but I would love to be able to avoid that step. Also, I'm not willing to plop another $20/month for an add-on that gives me that functionality. One-time cost, at the most!
The render geometry of a sprite always seems to reduce to a triangle fan or something close to it. Would there be a way to, say, use the dice function and force it into squares(EDIT: obviously it would still be triangles, but laid out in a square-like fashion matching the dice)? I was messing with a material that would look incredible and be more versatile if I could.
That's all I have so far. I haven't done too much of anything yet. Thanks in advance for any advice!
Sooo, been wanting to take another crack at this for a while. Now I've got the time I've got no excuses to make the 2D game I've always wanted to.
I used to swear by XNA for 2D but is there a better option out there? How does Unity handle 2D these days? I've been out of the loop for 12 months or so. I mostly code in C# at work so would like to stick to that if possible.
Unity 2d is pretty nice, the upcoming delayed changes to the platform sound like they will be even nicer.
I did a little(tiny) bit in XNA and if you don't want to code engine/everything from scratch, unity is really great for letting you jump in and get rolling. You can use C# with it.
Might play around with unity, I know whats involved with XNA as I've used it before and done fairly well with it but its a time sync doing the backend stuff. So if unity has come on a bit, it'll be worth giving it a fair shake.
So this seems like kind of a silly question but I'm having a hard time deciding how to approach this. I have a general concept that breaks down into capture the flag. The intent is for it to be multiplayer and right now I'm just putting together a very simple prototype.
My question is - who should be in charge of picking up the flag? Should the script be part of the GameController, the Flag itself, or the player who is picking up the flag? I have a decent understanding of what needs to happen when a player picks up the flag but I'm not sure where to put the script and who should own that transaction.
It's possible I am just super overthinking it. I'm just doing this in Unity with C# though I don't know that is important to the answer here.
Finally subbed to UE4. Seems pretty cool, but I have some questions I probably already know the answers to...
Is there an in-editor way to animate 2D characters composed of multiple sprites? I'm guessing I will probably have to rig it in Blender or something first, but I would love to be able to avoid that step. Also, I'm not willing to plop another $20/month for an add-on that gives me that functionality. One-time cost, at the most!
The render geometry of a sprite always seems to reduce to a triangle fan or something close to it. Would there be a way to, say, use the dice function and force it into squares(EDIT: obviously it would still be triangles, but laid out in a square-like fashion matching the dice)? I was messing with a material that would look incredible and be more versatile if I could.
That's all I have so far. I haven't done too much of anything yet. Thanks in advance for any advice!
UE4 (and UDK) have a built-in system for turning a texture atlas into an animation frames, but alas-it's only applicable to particles, as far as I know. You can easily replicate the functionality on a material for a typical mesh, however. Basically, you'll subdivide your texture's UVs (so if you have 64 frames in an 8x8 grid, you'll only ever look at 1/8th x 1/8th of the texture) and pan around the texture with a material parameter being driven by the animation system.
I'm not familiar enough with the animation system, but I'll mock up the material setup (or dig up my UDK implementation) later today.
Sorry, I wasn't completely clear with my first question. When I say multiple sprites, I mean a character made of pieces, and each piece has its own rotation/scaling/etc.
I'm trying to think of a good example, but I'm drawing a blank. Maybe the armored giant brothers(regular enemies) from Symphony of the Night? Anyone know what I mean?
Sorry, I wasn't completely clear with my first question. When I say multiple sprites, I mean a character made of pieces, and each piece has its own rotation/scaling/etc.
I'm trying to think of a good example, but I'm drawing a blank. Maybe the armored giant brothers(regular enemies) from Symphony of the Night? Anyone know what I mean?
Do you mean skeletal sprite animation? I don't think UE4 supports that yet, but I saw it on their todo list. Might be able to hack it yourself, but maybe you're better off waiting for official support for it.
Okay, that's what I thought. Not sure why I didn't call it that myself considering I was just looking at their trello board. Thanks for the answer, though
So this seems like kind of a silly question but I'm having a hard time deciding how to approach this. I have a general concept that breaks down into capture the flag. The intent is for it to be multiplayer and right now I'm just putting together a very simple prototype.
My question is - who should be in charge of picking up the flag? Should the script be part of the GameController, the Flag itself, or the player who is picking up the flag? I have a decent understanding of what needs to happen when a player picks up the flag but I'm not sure where to put the script and who should own that transaction.
It's possible I am just super overthinking it. I'm just doing this in Unity with C# though I don't know that is important to the answer here.
The way I would do this is to have a player script and a flag script, and have them both be part of the transaction. eg:
Player script detects that it is in range of a flag (through triggers or some other method) and wants to pick it up, so it says "hello flag I am player X can i pick you up please"
Flag says "yes of course", or "no you are not allowed to at the moment"
If the flag says yes, flag does what it needs to do and player does what it needs to do to change state and become joined.
When the time comes to drop the flag, player says "I am dropping you flag", and they both disengage.
That way when you want to modify how the flag behaves (flag can only be picked up by a certain team for example) you edit the flag script, when you want to modify how the player behaves (player can't pick up flags while doing X) you modify the player script. I find this less confusing when the scripts start to pile up.
On the plus side, my system for deploying a challenging board state for a player to solve looks promising.
On the downside...
The opposing deck, in the first encounter, outnumbered the player 13:1. That image probably just looks confusing without any context, but the player is on the bottom half of the image, and the only asset they have deployed is that lone jet.
instant annihilation in the first round of combat.
Torque3D is looking good to me now. I am trying to find free open source engines that have good scene editors. I tried Urho3D, but the exporting into it's editor seems wobbly. I may go back to it when I get better with Blender. Panda3D seems good, but they don't have a polished editor.
There is a 3D adventure package with Torque3D that looks really nice. It has an ICO-like demo. When you buy it, it also supplies the source. I am thinking of studying it. http://www.garagegames.com/products/browse/genrekits
Krathoon on
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MachwingIt looks like a harmless old computer, doesn't it?Left in this cave to rot ... or to flower!Registered Userregular
I quite like how easy color grading is in UE4. Why's Instagram only gotta work on pictures, after all?
Probably the simplest definition I could come up with to that question would be "a single strategy, of multiple options, that dominates in a supermajority of circumstances." If an actor ostensibly has multiple options in a given situation, but readily selects the same option at each major decision point, then the option they're choosing is likely too powerful or "cheesy".
However, it's important to note that you should account for preference or talent, depending the situation. If Player A chooses the Flamethrower every time, and Player B chooses the Rocket Launcher every time, then it might only be a matter of personal preference. If players A, B, C, D, E, through to Z choose the Rocket Launcher given the opportunity, then the Rocket Launcher is probably too powerful*. To put it another way, "an actor" should be the platonic ideal of an actor as opposed to one instance of an actor.
*Ignoring for the moment the possibility that there can only ever be one Rocket Launcher in play and all players are attempting to take it from the guy who has it.
My favorite musical instrument is the air-raid siren.
I would say unintended dominant strategies are "cheese", or less mildly put, exploits. These can only occur when a game is poorly balanced. Balanced symmetrical games (i.e. most things PVP) by definition have no single dominant strategy.
Posts
Unreal Engine 4 Developers Community.
I'm working on a cute little video game! Here's a link for you.
I laughed for like 2 minutes.
Sold.
Thanks for the link.
So, this book I just got, Game Coding Complete, is written by an ex-Ultima Online guy and is just ridiculously comprehensive in what it covers both with the design and implementation of game architecture and the fine details of the actual process and realities of game development. The former I was hoping for, the latter I could never have expected. Like, this book is just a pile of answers to every question that has been plaguing me for the past six months. I wish I had bought this book long before I had even started putting together a video game.
WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL THIS TIME, BOOK? SO MANY MISTAKES COULD'VE BEEN AVOIDED.
Granted, I've only just started digging into it, so who knows, it may only appear to hold the answers I wish I had. Either way I'm incredibly excited.
EDIT: Halfway through the second chapter, and I can affirmatively say that anyone who wants to program a video game ever should probably read this book.
Oh. That book has been around for a while now. Still, I would just leverage an open source engine instead of making one from scratch. Still, whatever you are into.
I'll add Rules of Play by Eric Zimmerman and Katie Salen
The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses by Jesse Schell. It's pretty awesome! Picked it up on a recommendation, and it is very good. Uses the eponymous lenses, 100 different ways to look at your game or idea in order to make it better.
Unreal Engine 4 Developers Community.
I'm working on a cute little video game! Here's a link for you.
I thought about trying to roll in Blink and V8 (Google's HTML rendering and JavaScript engines, respectively) but there is an immense amount of glue to make that work which Coherent handles for you. So for now I'm building my UI in HTML, CSS and JavaScript, which is surprisingly nice. Since I do web app development for a living, it's nice to have one part of my project where I am super comfortable. When I'm not feeling productive in the game world, I can go work on the UI for an hour and feel like I'm really making good progress.
I've been going through this weird wash cycle where, when I work on web stuff, I'm all, "But this is actually kind of insane, isn't it? The user tells the browser to query the server to process the request in PHP, while querying the Postgres DB, and produce custom HTML and send it back to the user, who will run it through Javascript and also whatever-the-fuck his browser feels like doing, and then the user will respond by...."
But then when I work on game stuff I'm like ffffffffffffffffffffffff, where's the DOM when you need it?
Buuuuuuut....
What I would call The Basics are done! I can hardly believe it! i finished formatting the last basic card this weekend, right on schedule!
Now I need to do a reasonable mock-up (probably just a digital one, because I don't want to waste a ton of substrate / ink on a rough draft) for testing.
...And now is usually the part of the process where I would say, "That is great, The Ender, but nobody can print those. You can't even print those. It would have to go to a professional print shop, and you can't afford that kind of job for some hobbyist project," and then I would get frustrated and kick the whole effort onto an archive drive and bemoan the state of personal printing.
Buuuuuuut....
It works! It fucking works!
Avery sells glossy do-it-yourself business card stock. You can even print right to the edge, because the sheets have a bleed zone. i wasn't sure how well it would come out, but just printing on a really basic Epson inkJet it looks Goddamn gorgeous. No fucking around with scissors, no flattening of the colors because lol 20 lb bond; punch them out, glue the backs onto the faces, wait for it to dry, you're good to go.
This is the happiest I have ever been with a print-and-play mock-up.
https://gumroad.com/l/PennyAndPaul
If I was starting again I would do so much differently. The opening levels are almost cringe inducing in their crapness. I hide the really fun stuff way too late in the game.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
I used to swear by XNA for 2D but is there a better option out there? How does Unity handle 2D these days? I've been out of the loop for 12 months or so. I mostly code in C# at work so would like to stick to that if possible.
Unity 2d is pretty nice, the upcoming delayed changes to the platform sound like they will be even nicer.
I did a little(tiny) bit in XNA and if you don't want to code engine/everything from scratch, unity is really great for letting you jump in and get rolling. You can use C# with it.
Is there an in-editor way to animate 2D characters composed of multiple sprites? I'm guessing I will probably have to rig it in Blender or something first, but I would love to be able to avoid that step. Also, I'm not willing to plop another $20/month for an add-on that gives me that functionality. One-time cost, at the most!
The render geometry of a sprite always seems to reduce to a triangle fan or something close to it. Would there be a way to, say, use the dice function and force it into squares(EDIT: obviously it would still be triangles, but laid out in a square-like fashion matching the dice)? I was messing with a material that would look incredible and be more versatile if I could.
That's all I have so far. I haven't done too much of anything yet. Thanks in advance for any advice!
Might play around with unity, I know whats involved with XNA as I've used it before and done fairly well with it but its a time sync doing the backend stuff. So if unity has come on a bit, it'll be worth giving it a fair shake.
My question is - who should be in charge of picking up the flag? Should the script be part of the GameController, the Flag itself, or the player who is picking up the flag? I have a decent understanding of what needs to happen when a player picks up the flag but I'm not sure where to put the script and who should own that transaction.
It's possible I am just super overthinking it. I'm just doing this in Unity with C# though I don't know that is important to the answer here.
UE4 (and UDK) have a built-in system for turning a texture atlas into an animation frames, but alas-it's only applicable to particles, as far as I know. You can easily replicate the functionality on a material for a typical mesh, however. Basically, you'll subdivide your texture's UVs (so if you have 64 frames in an 8x8 grid, you'll only ever look at 1/8th x 1/8th of the texture) and pan around the texture with a material parameter being driven by the animation system.
I'm not familiar enough with the animation system, but I'll mock up the material setup (or dig up my UDK implementation) later today.
I'm trying to think of a good example, but I'm drawing a blank. Maybe the armored giant brothers(regular enemies) from Symphony of the Night? Anyone know what I mean?
Do you mean skeletal sprite animation? I don't think UE4 supports that yet, but I saw it on their todo list. Might be able to hack it yourself, but maybe you're better off waiting for official support for it.
Unreal Engine 4 Developers Community.
I'm working on a cute little video game! Here's a link for you.
The way I would do this is to have a player script and a flag script, and have them both be part of the transaction. eg:
Player script detects that it is in range of a flag (through triggers or some other method) and wants to pick it up, so it says "hello flag I am player X can i pick you up please"
Flag says "yes of course", or "no you are not allowed to at the moment"
If the flag says yes, flag does what it needs to do and player does what it needs to do to change state and become joined.
When the time comes to drop the flag, player says "I am dropping you flag", and they both disengage.
That way when you want to modify how the flag behaves (flag can only be picked up by a certain team for example) you edit the flag script, when you want to modify how the player behaves (player can't pick up flags while doing X) you modify the player script. I find this less confusing when the scripts start to pile up.
On the plus side, my system for deploying a challenging board state for a player to solve looks promising.
On the downside...
The opposing deck, in the first encounter, outnumbered the player 13:1. That image probably just looks confusing without any context, but the player is on the bottom half of the image, and the only asset they have deployed is that lone jet.
instant annihilation in the first round of combat.
I may need to make some adjustments...
There is a 3D adventure package with Torque3D that looks really nice. It has an ICO-like demo. When you buy it, it also supplies the source. I am thinking of studying it.
http://www.garagegames.com/products/browse/genrekits
I can't for the life of me find a half decent colorblind simulator for my desktop.
Would you mind clicking on the top spoiler here and telling me if the text / icons / art are legible to you?
It all looks great to me (except it's kinda hard to make out detail on the hound, since it's so dark)
What metric(s) do people here usually use to distinguish between game strategies that are good / competitive vs game strategies that are cheese?
In vague terms: embracing mechanics vs avoidance?
However, it's important to note that you should account for preference or talent, depending the situation. If Player A chooses the Flamethrower every time, and Player B chooses the Rocket Launcher every time, then it might only be a matter of personal preference. If players A, B, C, D, E, through to Z choose the Rocket Launcher given the opportunity, then the Rocket Launcher is probably too powerful*. To put it another way, "an actor" should be the platonic ideal of an actor as opposed to one instance of an actor.
*Ignoring for the moment the possibility that there can only ever be one Rocket Launcher in play and all players are attempting to take it from the guy who has it.
Unreal Engine 4 Developers Community.
I'm working on a cute little video game! Here's a link for you.