David_TA fashion yes-man is no good to me.Copenhagen, DenmarkRegistered Userregular
So Game Maker 1.4 is getting sunsetted soon, meaning they'll stop updating and supporting it anymore. It'll still work, though.
Now, I don't know how many still use Game Maker, but the reason I bring this up is that Humble Bundle has a Game Maker "Rebundle" sale with a lot of games with source code (including Cook! Serve! Delicious!), but also all the 1.4 modules, iOS, Android, HTML5, etc. So it's a couple of soon-to-be sunsetted $299 modules for $15.
I restarted this old Angry Office Lady game I first used to learn gamemaker. Fail Faster as a philosophy has made this a pleasant thing to do as I've improved the boss AI which made me give up. Need to stop all the enemy ladies from spawning on top of each other and doing a stutter step across the screen.
I wonder if .....holy fuck!
That's the boss I was having trouble with stuck in her attack animation and rocketing off to the side, leaving a trail of attack boxes.
If you want to feel a little evil, there was a sci fi book I once read that had plants that migrated around a habital zone of the moon by growing as little catapults and flinging their seeds forward once the sun set and their stems got cold, snapping the tension cable and sending the seeds rocketing in the low gravity to spawn new speed throwing plants.
I haven't fully decided of what type of game I am making yet but first I wanted to solve some technical issues with doing 3D in 64x64 resolution. I suck at making sprites but I also want my mesh to look like sprites without prerendering everything out to sprites.
So the camera does a couple of things.
1. It snaps it's location to only move by whole pixel increments.
2. All dynamic actors's mesh get snapped to the view's pixel to also always display the same for a set orientation.
3. A combined Erode and Dilate pass is done to enhance details before down sampling to 64x64.
My only disappointment right now is that UE4's orthographic camera does not support dynamic shadows.
pixel snap is funny when it makes your pixel mullet get a cowlick.
After much trying, I switched that goofy boss' behavior to script instead of a state machine, and have now formed her into a capable fighter.
Now I just need to kill her attack frames
make all enemies stop running through each other
and stop the player from walking through enemies
and set up invisible walls to hem the play to the screen
and set up a victory screen.
I haven't fully decided of what type of game I am making yet but first I wanted to solve some technical issues with doing 3D in 64x64 resolution. I suck at making sprites but I also want my mesh to look like sprites without prerendering everything out to sprites.
So the camera does a couple of things.
1. It snaps it's location to only move by whole pixel increments.
2. All dynamic actors's mesh get snapped to the view's pixel to also always display the same for a set orientation.
3. A combined Erode and Dilate pass is done to enhance details before down sampling to 64x64.
My only disappointment right now is that UE4's orthographic camera does not support dynamic shadows.
I'm pretty sure Dead Cells uses this! The character simply has too many animations and moves too fluidly for it to actually be sprites.
On an unrelated note, can someone help me with some probability questions? I've never really been able to get my head around probabilities.
If A, B, C, D, and E each have a 25% chance of happening, what are the odds of at least one happening? Odds of two things happening?
Likewise, same questions if A, B, C, and D each have 30% chance of happening.
Basically, an ability has a 25%/30% chance to inflict 5/4 different status effects, and I'm trying to figure out how powerful the ability is.
Easiest way to approximate it if you don't know the math or don't trust yourself to get it right is to just roll the dice a whole bunch of times and look at the average result!
In this case you have 5x 25% chances of a status occurring. If I have my probability maths right, that means the chance of getting any status is (25% * 5) - (25% ^ 5)= 124.9%.
The chance of getting any specific combination of two statuses is 12.5%. 6.25% for any specific combination of 3, 3.125% chance for any specific combination of 4, and a 1.5625% chance of all 5 statuses occurring.
Note that I'm talking about specific combinations - meaning that to get the chance for "any two", we have to add the probabilities of all specific possible combinations, if I'm not mistaken? You know what, I'm just gonna run a test.
Unity seems to limit floats on position. So to be able to make my cars shake, I enlarged the whole scene. (Cars were at about 1 unit...) And then I discovered that the default Quality setting for shadow distance is what was randomly disappearing my shadows from android builds. Tried every other setting tho...
So 'shadow distance'.. keep an eye on it.
Easiest way to approximate it if you don't know the math or don't trust yourself to get it right is to just roll the dice a whole bunch of times and look at the average result!
In this case you have 5x 25% chances of a status occurring. If I have my probability maths right, that means the chance of getting any status is (25% * 5) - (25% ^ 5)= 124.9%.
The chance of getting any specific combination of two statuses is 12.5%. 6.25% for any specific combination of 3, 3.125% chance for any specific combination of 4, and a 1.5625% chance of all 5 statuses occurring
The chance of getting at least one status is:
1 - (Chance of No Statuses) =
1 - (Chance of No Status 1)*(Chance of No Status 2)*... =
1 - (75%)^5 =
1 - 0.237... = 76.3%
You can tell the first number is wrong because it comes up with a probability greater than 100%, which means "absolute certainty this will happen." Since, just thinking about things, it's possible for no statuses to be applied at the end*, this therefore cannot be correct.
* Can you miss 5 attack rolls in a row when each one only has a 25% chance to hit? X-Com and D&D say "Hi!"
More generally, the chance of something happening is:
(The chance of anything happening) = (the chance of what you care about happening) + (the chance of anything else happening)
Almost always, the (chance of anything happening) is 1 - something is going to happen. Your attack roll will happen, and you'll hit or miss. Your saving throw will happen, and you'll save or fail to save. You'll determine damage, and it'll be enough to kill your target or not. Etc.
That rewrites nicely into:
(the chance of what you care about happening) = (The chance of anything happening) - (the chance of anything else happening)
(the chance of what you care about happening) = 1 - (the chance of anything else happening)
It's often easier to calculate (the chance of anything else happening).
I'm about to hop on a plane for a ... long time, but I'll try and post something later today on a way to view probability that may help you visualize them better.
I bought them anyway. Like worst case scenario is that you donated to charity, best case is that some of them are good/useful. I haven't really had a chance to dig into any of them though.
The USB key on which I wrote my initial version of the status report is now refusing to show up in my file system. So instead you get the "Kupi can't be arsed to write actual English twice" version for this week!
- The Activity Button survives.
- I bought some Japanese textbooks, because I want to learn Japanese both out of personal interest and (thread relevant) in the fullness of time, I might wind up translating my games. I acknowledge that this is a horrible idea too far out into the future and should definitely be left to professionals in any case.
- I spent some time in FL Studio and learning music theory. I have nothing to present.
- I spent some time in Clip Studio Paint acquainting myself with the interface and feature set. I have nothing to present.
- I spent some time in Unity working on my I Wanna Be The Guy-like, ATTITUDE MAMMAL. I created a basic character sprite and rigged up the animations, as shown:
So I've been away from my project for a bit and today I open up Unity to find that my inputs are completely fucked. I recently got tired of messing with the bluetooth nonsense for my DS4 and switch it back to wired, and that's the only thing that's changed.
So Game Maker 1.4 is getting sunsetted soon, meaning they'll stop updating and supporting it anymore. It'll still work, though.
Now, I don't know how many still use Game Maker, but the reason I bring this up is that Humble Bundle has a Game Maker "Rebundle" sale with a lot of games with source code (including Cook! Serve! Delicious!), but also all the 1.4 modules, iOS, Android, HTML5, etc. So it's a couple of soon-to-be sunsetted $299 modules for $15.
What are the big differences between GM1.4 and 2? I've been thinking about making a 2D game recently but I don't really want to deal with getting pixel perfect 2D working with Unity.
So you can replace Unreal's HUD class with your own, and there are a bunch of DrawDebugLine methods. Useful for plotting data! I'm maybe going overboard, but the real-time graphs are more useful than trying to look at values while debugging blueprints.
Note that you can call the debug functions from anywhere and they will work, and you can make things single frame only or time expired. And you can give log messages IDs so the same one will get updated
#LOWREZJAM is coming along nicely but I will need to cut my time short and submit early (family thing), time to prioritize and limit features. Might just finish the squid boss and just make it a boss battle or two.
So Game Maker 1.4 is getting sunsetted soon, meaning they'll stop updating and supporting it anymore. It'll still work, though.
Now, I don't know how many still use Game Maker, but the reason I bring this up is that Humble Bundle has a Game Maker "Rebundle" sale with a lot of games with source code (including Cook! Serve! Delicious!), but also all the 1.4 modules, iOS, Android, HTML5, etc. So it's a couple of soon-to-be sunsetted $299 modules for $15.
What are the big differences between GM1.4 and 2? I've been thinking about making a 2D game recently but I don't really want to deal with getting pixel perfect 2D working with Unity.
I am back from my vacation and I feel amazing! I didn't know how bad I needed that break! Yet, time slows for no one!
I spent a bit of time tinkering with GM:S 2 some more and I am so freaking ready to switch! Super Galaxy Boy uses 1.x right now and I have reasons not to switch over just yet - but damn I want those new workspaces and editor! The roadmap for GM:S 2 looks so awesome too! This is the last project I'll use 1.x for. Very excited to switch over to 2 at the end of the year!
I'm using OpenTK and 2DOpenTKFramework on top of that so I wouldn't have to mess with OpenGL to draw basic stuff. I'll have to replace it to do fancy graphics stuff, though.
Am I correct in that I can add a direct link to my game here? Cause I published. The train game. Not the plane game, which is at the cellar door giving me puppy eyes.
There has been a lack of progress on my game recently and I feel like I've lost all motivation. I've been working paying back technical debt in a couple key systems, adding animations and polish to the main screens but my game isn't any closer to being done and in other people's hands than it was last month. I think the problem comes down to our initial design. When my copartner and I first started this game we were focuses on technology, marketability and turning a profit so much that I think we forgot to make the game fun. Gameplay was something we could always add in as soon as we got all the systems up and running but now that the systems are up and running, the game just isn't fun and I'm not sure I can make it fun. My partner started a fulltime job recently and that's cut down on the time we can work together and his interest in the project.
What makes it worse is that I made a card game that is fun on a spur of a moment creative binge. It's cute, unique and the paper prototype has tested well with my friends and yet I can't seem to create that fun in a game that I've spent 100x more hours on. It's rather depressing.
I have a couple options now:
a) Keep working on my game and try to push through to get it fun and to a completed state.
b) Drop it (and all the money/time I've spent on this game) and focus more on job hunting.
c) Drop it and try converting my card game to digital form.
If anyone has been in a simular situation, I'd love your advice. Otherwise, thanks for listening to me vent.
There has been a lack of progress on my game recently and I feel like I've lost all motivation. I've been working paying back technical debt in a couple key systems, adding animations and polish to the main screens but my game isn't any closer to being done and in other people's hands than it was last month. I think the problem comes down to our initial design. When my copartner and I first started this game we were focuses on technology, marketability and turning a profit so much that I think we forgot to make the game fun. Gameplay was something we could always add in as soon as we got all the systems up and running but now that the systems are up and running, the game just isn't fun and I'm not sure I can make it fun. My partner started a fulltime job recently and that's cut down on the time we can work together and his interest in the project.
What makes it worse is that I made a card game that is fun on a spur of a moment creative binge. It's cute, unique and the paper prototype has tested well with my friends and yet I can't seem to create that fun in a game that I've spent 100x more hours on. It's rather depressing.
I have a couple options now:
a) Keep working on my game and try to push through to get it fun and to a completed state.
b) Drop it (and all the money/time I've spent on this game) and focus more on job hunting.
c) Drop it and try converting my card game to digital form.
If anyone has been in a simular situation, I'd love your advice. Otherwise, thanks for listening to me vent.
I was here a ton of times with Audience of the Singular. I built the tech for the music generation first, then tried to build a game around it.
I went through several amazingly bad designs before finally ending up at something that was fun. Like what ended up with a DJ board and a dancing audience started out its design as a tower defence game. There were a few things that ended up happening to get it to a reasonably fun state.
The first thing I did was share it with some non-game-players and getting their feedback, even though a lot of it had to be decoded. The second thing I did was basically just throwing mechanics at the wall until things stuck, while simultaneously throwing out mechanics left and right. I went through some really shitty ideas too... there was one point where there was this weird modal gameplay thing with a sort of faux-grand-staff looking thing that indicated the intended mix, and one of the modes was governed by a meter which recharged slower if you depleted it, but also the indicators would get closer together if you got it right, and also the sliders would lock into place if you got that slider right for that mix, and... it was a mess.
One of the breakthroughs happened because to test out this colour-coded thing, I just stuck some coloured squares right in the middle of the UI, and it ended up looking nice enough that it led to the development of the actual light system that was the final game.
The long and short of it is that I'd recommend just going back to a super-basic level of just testing out gameplay ideas until one of them is fun. You can always bring the polish back up, and if the core other systems are all in place, then prototyping a billion gameplay ideas a day is much easier. Find out what the core gameplay loop you want is and go with that. Also steal ideas from other games(AOTS became an actual game when I basically said "Well what if I just made a real-time mastermind? That's basically what I've been hinting at anyways")
Now, I also had funding enough to finish the game and wasn't reliant in any way on cash flow from releasing it, so I can't speak to that part, but if you want the game to be fun, I'd say go back to just prototyping and testing different gameplay ideas.
If anyone has been in a simular situation, I'd love your advice. Otherwise, thanks for listening to me vent.
I've been in that situation a few times, but not with games. Well, I might not finish the airplane game, and that'd be the first.
With books, there's a saying that you need to write 7 bad novels before you hit a good one. You need to put in work to earn skills, and the results might be wasted, and the skill might be a novel appreciation of KISS (the principle).
However, I also have lots of projects that are lying on the plank, waiting to be picked up again or taken apart for parts.
Some spaceships I've modeled in 3D, 14 years ago, show up in 5 or more unfinished projects, and they'll be in my next project. If I don't finish that, they'll be in another one that finishes eventually. The work is never truly wasted, the skill grows.
Being able to spot a lame duck is the hardest skill of all to acquire. Moving on from one, relatively easy.
However, I also have lots of projects that are lying on the plank, waiting to be picked up again or taken apart for parts. Some spaceships I've modeled in 3D, 14 years ago, show up in 5 or more unfinished projects, and they'll be in my next project. If I don't finish that, they'll be in another one that finishes eventually. The work is never truly wasted, the skill grows.
Any NeoCairo stuff in that? I lost all of my files ten times over since then...
Two weekends ago I spent a double long weekend visiting family, where in addition to being able to talk to my sister without heavily Evangelical Christian parents in the room, I also learned that my nephews are worse than not even trying at Mario Kart. As a consequence of that weekend, I also took a week of vacation from having any expectations of myself with regard to game development, which was followed by a week of not being able to get back into the swing of things and loathing myself for it. This week also hasn't seen much movement, but there is one thing to report, so I guess I have to report it.
RPS RPG has four status effects that affect the resolution of accuracy-based attacks, one for each possible permutation of whom it effects and whether it leads to automatic success or failure: Blind, Lock-On, Camouflage, and Stun. In addition to decreasing in duration at the end of each turn, you lose one stack of these status ailments each time they force their effect; if you miss an attack due to being Blind, for instance, your Blind duration goes down by 1. Last post, I described how I created a system for deferring reaction effects, so that "explosion" moves would appear to resolve instantaneously despite actually being a series of individual attacks. This was necessary because if one character throws a grenade at the enemy party and and the second enemy to get hit reacts with a counter that kills the attacker, the third person should still get damaged; likewise, if the second enemy to get hit counters with a move that reduces the attacker's attack power, the third enemy to get hit shouldn't take less damage because the grenade had its attack power fixed at the start of the attack.
I think y'all might already have figured out what I discovered: Blind and Lock-On weren't playing by the same rules. Each individual attack consumed a stack of Blind or Lock-On, so an all-hitting melee attack could miss the first two enemies and hit the second two enemies as the user depleted their Blind stacks in mid-swing. So, I moved the determination of "force hit" and "force miss" flags further up the call stack, so Blind and Lock-On are consumed per action, and not per individual attack. Huzzah!
My favorite musical instrument is the air-raid siren.
So ChooChoo is not completely polished, but I'm working on the next diorama game which features animation!
I've also set up a simple timed camera manager, which'll allow me to add conditionals.
So we get this: https://youtu.be/6-PiLGkcxLg
I've mentioned space ships before, and this is one that I did a long time ago. I actually reused the original texture, but I had to redesign the landing gear completely, as the original used advanced handwavium geometry to fold...
Posts
Now, I don't know how many still use Game Maker, but the reason I bring this up is that Humble Bundle has a Game Maker "Rebundle" sale with a lot of games with source code (including Cook! Serve! Delicious!), but also all the 1.4 modules, iOS, Android, HTML5, etc. So it's a couple of soon-to-be sunsetted $299 modules for $15.
https://www.humblebundle.com/gamemaker-rebundle
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198004484595
I wonder if .....holy fuck!
That's the boss I was having trouble with stuck in her attack animation and rocketing off to the side, leaving a trail of attack boxes.
If you want to feel a little evil, there was a sci fi book I once read that had plants that migrated around a habital zone of the moon by growing as little catapults and flinging their seeds forward once the sun set and their stems got cold, snapping the tension cable and sending the seeds rocketing in the low gravity to spawn new speed throwing plants.
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
I haven't fully decided of what type of game I am making yet but first I wanted to solve some technical issues with doing 3D in 64x64 resolution. I suck at making sprites but I also want my mesh to look like sprites without prerendering everything out to sprites.
So the camera does a couple of things.
1. It snaps it's location to only move by whole pixel increments.
2. All dynamic actors's mesh get snapped to the view's pixel to also always display the same for a set orientation.
3. A combined Erode and Dilate pass is done to enhance details before down sampling to 64x64.
My only disappointment right now is that UE4's orthographic camera does not support dynamic shadows.
After much trying, I switched that goofy boss' behavior to script instead of a state machine, and have now formed her into a capable fighter.
Now I just need to kill her attack frames
make all enemies stop running through each other
and stop the player from walking through enemies
and set up invisible walls to hem the play to the screen
and set up a victory screen.
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
I'm pretty sure Dead Cells uses this! The character simply has too many animations and moves too fluidly for it to actually be sprites.
On an unrelated note, can someone help me with some probability questions? I've never really been able to get my head around probabilities.
If A, B, C, D, and E each have a 25% chance of happening, what are the odds of at least one happening? Odds of two things happening?
Likewise, same questions if A, B, C, and D each have 30% chance of happening.
Basically, an ability has a 25%/30% chance to inflict 5/4 different status effects, and I'm trying to figure out how powerful the ability is.
In this case you have 5x 25% chances of a status occurring. If I have my probability maths right, that means the chance of getting any status is (25% * 5) - (25% ^ 5)= 124.9%.
The chance of getting any specific combination of two statuses is 12.5%. 6.25% for any specific combination of 3, 3.125% chance for any specific combination of 4, and a 1.5625% chance of all 5 statuses occurring.
Note that I'm talking about specific combinations - meaning that to get the chance for "any two", we have to add the probabilities of all specific possible combinations, if I'm not mistaken? You know what, I'm just gonna run a test.
Unreal Engine 4 Developers Community.
I'm working on a cute little video game! Here's a link for you.
So 'shadow distance'.. keep an eye on it.
The chance of getting at least one status is:
1 - (Chance of No Statuses) =
1 - (Chance of No Status 1)*(Chance of No Status 2)*... =
1 - (75%)^5 =
1 - 0.237... = 76.3%
You can tell the first number is wrong because it comes up with a probability greater than 100%, which means "absolute certainty this will happen." Since, just thinking about things, it's possible for no statuses to be applied at the end*, this therefore cannot be correct.
* Can you miss 5 attack rolls in a row when each one only has a 25% chance to hit? X-Com and D&D say "Hi!"
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
(The chance of anything happening) = (the chance of what you care about happening) + (the chance of anything else happening)
Almost always, the (chance of anything happening) is 1 - something is going to happen. Your attack roll will happen, and you'll hit or miss. Your saving throw will happen, and you'll save or fail to save. You'll determine damage, and it'll be enough to kill your target or not. Etc.
That rewrites nicely into:
(the chance of what you care about happening) = (The chance of anything happening) - (the chance of anything else happening)
(the chance of what you care about happening) = 1 - (the chance of anything else happening)
It's often easier to calculate (the chance of anything else happening).
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Unreal Engine 4 Developers Community.
I'm working on a cute little video game! Here's a link for you.
Ah! One of the classic blunders!
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I'm about to hop on a plane for a ... long time, but I'll try and post something later today on a way to view probability that may help you visualize them better.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/unreal-unity5-book-bundle
Not specifically, but it's Packt - there's basically no quality control at all from what I've heard.
Unreal Engine 4 Developers Community.
I'm working on a cute little video game! Here's a link for you.
Bummer :-/
I'm kind of tempted, but as someone who can't help refactoring, I'd rather start on a reliable foundation.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198004484595
The USB key on which I wrote my initial version of the status report is now refusing to show up in my file system. So instead you get the "Kupi can't be arsed to write actual English twice" version for this week!
- The Activity Button survives.
- I bought some Japanese textbooks, because I want to learn Japanese both out of personal interest and (thread relevant) in the fullness of time, I might wind up translating my games. I acknowledge that this is a horrible idea too far out into the future and should definitely be left to professionals in any case.
- I spent some time in FL Studio and learning music theory. I have nothing to present.
- I spent some time in Clip Studio Paint acquainting myself with the interface and feature set. I have nothing to present.
- I spent some time in Unity working on my I Wanna Be The Guy-like, ATTITUDE MAMMAL. I created a basic character sprite and rigged up the animations, as shown:
Plan for next week is to maximize the ratio of Free Time Directed By Activity Button to Total Free Time.
God I hate Unity's input manager.
Has anyone used this? https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/56980
What are the big differences between GM1.4 and 2? I've been thinking about making a 2D game recently but I don't really want to deal with getting pixel perfect 2D working with Unity.
So you can replace Unreal's HUD class with your own, and there are a bunch of DrawDebugLine methods. Useful for plotting data! I'm maybe going overboard, but the real-time graphs are more useful than trying to look at values while debugging blueprints.
#LOWREZJAM is coming along nicely but I will need to cut my time short and submit early (family thing), time to prioritize and limit features. Might just finish the squid boss and just make it a boss battle or two.
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
I spent a bit of time tinkering with GM:S 2 some more and I am so freaking ready to switch! Super Galaxy Boy uses 1.x right now and I have reasons not to switch over just yet - but damn I want those new workspaces and editor! The roadmap for GM:S 2 looks so awesome too! This is the last project I'll use 1.x for. Very excited to switch over to 2 at the end of the year!
Check out all this new!
New blog: http://www.supergalaxyboy.com/blog/
New Steam page! http://store.steampowered.com/app/695470 (Add to your wishlist!)
New awesome contest! http://www.supergalaxyboy.com/blog/stars-event
And a new-ish trailer! (I polished up an older one)
Full steam ahead!
http://store.steampowered.com/app/684330/Impromptu_Vector_Field_Painter/
I suppose I should make it not crash if you try to go to a room that doesn't exist.
There has been a lack of progress on my game recently and I feel like I've lost all motivation. I've been working paying back technical debt in a couple key systems, adding animations and polish to the main screens but my game isn't any closer to being done and in other people's hands than it was last month. I think the problem comes down to our initial design. When my copartner and I first started this game we were focuses on technology, marketability and turning a profit so much that I think we forgot to make the game fun. Gameplay was something we could always add in as soon as we got all the systems up and running but now that the systems are up and running, the game just isn't fun and I'm not sure I can make it fun. My partner started a fulltime job recently and that's cut down on the time we can work together and his interest in the project.
What makes it worse is that I made a card game that is fun on a spur of a moment creative binge. It's cute, unique and the paper prototype has tested well with my friends and yet I can't seem to create that fun in a game that I've spent 100x more hours on. It's rather depressing.
I have a couple options now:
a) Keep working on my game and try to push through to get it fun and to a completed state.
b) Drop it (and all the money/time I've spent on this game) and focus more on job hunting.
c) Drop it and try converting my card game to digital form.
If anyone has been in a simular situation, I'd love your advice. Otherwise, thanks for listening to me vent.
I was here a ton of times with Audience of the Singular. I built the tech for the music generation first, then tried to build a game around it.
I went through several amazingly bad designs before finally ending up at something that was fun. Like what ended up with a DJ board and a dancing audience started out its design as a tower defence game. There were a few things that ended up happening to get it to a reasonably fun state.
The first thing I did was share it with some non-game-players and getting their feedback, even though a lot of it had to be decoded. The second thing I did was basically just throwing mechanics at the wall until things stuck, while simultaneously throwing out mechanics left and right. I went through some really shitty ideas too... there was one point where there was this weird modal gameplay thing with a sort of faux-grand-staff looking thing that indicated the intended mix, and one of the modes was governed by a meter which recharged slower if you depleted it, but also the indicators would get closer together if you got it right, and also the sliders would lock into place if you got that slider right for that mix, and... it was a mess.
One of the breakthroughs happened because to test out this colour-coded thing, I just stuck some coloured squares right in the middle of the UI, and it ended up looking nice enough that it led to the development of the actual light system that was the final game.
The long and short of it is that I'd recommend just going back to a super-basic level of just testing out gameplay ideas until one of them is fun. You can always bring the polish back up, and if the core other systems are all in place, then prototyping a billion gameplay ideas a day is much easier. Find out what the core gameplay loop you want is and go with that. Also steal ideas from other games(AOTS became an actual game when I basically said "Well what if I just made a real-time mastermind? That's basically what I've been hinting at anyways")
Now, I also had funding enough to finish the game and wasn't reliant in any way on cash flow from releasing it, so I can't speak to that part, but if you want the game to be fun, I'd say go back to just prototyping and testing different gameplay ideas.
I've been in that situation a few times, but not with games. Well, I might not finish the airplane game, and that'd be the first.
With books, there's a saying that you need to write 7 bad novels before you hit a good one. You need to put in work to earn skills, and the results might be wasted, and the skill might be a novel appreciation of KISS (the principle).
However, I also have lots of projects that are lying on the plank, waiting to be picked up again or taken apart for parts.
Some spaceships I've modeled in 3D, 14 years ago, show up in 5 or more unfinished projects, and they'll be in my next project. If I don't finish that, they'll be in another one that finishes eventually. The work is never truly wasted, the skill grows.
Being able to spot a lame duck is the hardest skill of all to acquire. Moving on from one, relatively easy.
Any NeoCairo stuff in that?
Unreal Engine 4 Developers Community.
I'm working on a cute little video game! Here's a link for you.
Two weekends ago I spent a double long weekend visiting family, where in addition to being able to talk to my sister without heavily Evangelical Christian parents in the room, I also learned that my nephews are worse than not even trying at Mario Kart. As a consequence of that weekend, I also took a week of vacation from having any expectations of myself with regard to game development, which was followed by a week of not being able to get back into the swing of things and loathing myself for it. This week also hasn't seen much movement, but there is one thing to report, so I guess I have to report it.
RPS RPG has four status effects that affect the resolution of accuracy-based attacks, one for each possible permutation of whom it effects and whether it leads to automatic success or failure: Blind, Lock-On, Camouflage, and Stun. In addition to decreasing in duration at the end of each turn, you lose one stack of these status ailments each time they force their effect; if you miss an attack due to being Blind, for instance, your Blind duration goes down by 1. Last post, I described how I created a system for deferring reaction effects, so that "explosion" moves would appear to resolve instantaneously despite actually being a series of individual attacks. This was necessary because if one character throws a grenade at the enemy party and and the second enemy to get hit reacts with a counter that kills the attacker, the third person should still get damaged; likewise, if the second enemy to get hit counters with a move that reduces the attacker's attack power, the third enemy to get hit shouldn't take less damage because the grenade had its attack power fixed at the start of the attack.
I think y'all might already have figured out what I discovered: Blind and Lock-On weren't playing by the same rules. Each individual attack consumed a stack of Blind or Lock-On, so an all-hitting melee attack could miss the first two enemies and hit the second two enemies as the user depleted their Blind stacks in mid-swing. So, I moved the determination of "force hit" and "force miss" flags further up the call stack, so Blind and Lock-On are consumed per action, and not per individual attack. Huzzah!
I've also set up a simple timed camera manager, which'll allow me to add conditionals.
So we get this:
I've mentioned space ships before, and this is one that I did a long time ago. I actually reused the original texture, but I had to redesign the landing gear completely, as the original used advanced handwavium geometry to fold...