My safeguard against an excess of ambition lately has been internalizing the fact that I have yet to establish basic competence in almost all necessary fields.
My favorite musical instrument is the air-raid siren.
Yeah, though my projects skew towards the "so ambitious they never get finished" side of things. Right now I'm working on a Legally-Distinct-From-Metroid themed space pirate simulator (at least when I'm not busy trying to buy a house). I've been posting about it mainly in the Metroid thread.
Unity question: So I just learned serialize (so long playerpreferences!) and now my next step is to save an array of parts bought by the player.
Is there a compact way to do this?
My plan is to save an array of length 1 (starting gear) with the part number in it. Then every time a buy button is pressed do foreach, check if the (currentpartnumber) is already in the list, if it is set alreadybought to true.
Then after the foreach if alreadybought = false set the arraylength++ and for that arraylength *set* item to currentpartnumber
But that foreach looks clunky...
If I understand it properly, if I stick to simple arrays they should serialize as is?
Unity question: So I just learned serialize (so long playerpreferences!) and now my next step is to save an array of parts bought by the player.
Is there a compact way to do this?
My plan is to save an array of length 1 (starting gear) with the part number in it. Then every time a buy button is pressed do foreach, check if the (currentpartnumber) is already in the list, if it is set alreadybought to true.
Then after the foreach if alreadybought = false set the arraylength++ and for that arraylength *set* item to currentpartnumber
But that foreach looks clunky...
If I understand it properly, if I stick to simple arrays they should serialize as is?
Why not check the list when the store is opened and eliminate purchased gear? Then you only do the forereach once?
So it turns out there's no Contains for simple arrays. The night is too short to switch to List and also then have to 'make it a scriptable object to be able to serialize.
So going with something like:
for(int i = 0; i < array.Length; i++)
{
if(array[i].name == desiredName)
{
//Do Stuff
}
}
Ah! they call those Lists. I use them for 2d arrays, if that makes sense?
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Zavianuniversal peace sounds better than forever warRegistered Userregular
So, I've been working on a 2D platformer in Unity for the past few months with a goal of having a nice retro Mega Man style game by the end of the year. I've been focusing entirely on PC so far, but interested in Android development as well. I have an older tablet with Android 3.2.1 though which is the only device I currently own to test on, so was wondering what are my options for testing it out on newer Android builds? I've never really done Android builds before, I'm guessing there is some official emulators to test with? Or would I need to purchase some physical hardware running the latest Android? I definitely would want to avoid putting up anything on Google Play without making sure it runs well on people's devices. With so many different Android builds and devices out there, I'm just not sure where to start and was wondering if anyone has any experience with mobile game development that could give me some pointers
With so many different Android builds and devices out there, I'm just not sure where to start and was wondering if anyone has any experience with mobile game development that could give me some pointers
Very little experience here, but some ideas.
I'd get a cheap and slow device to build to, so you can check for framerate issues.
AFAIK if it runs on one device it'll run on all of them, if they have enough processing power. I've even tried running my game on a HTC desire with KitKat on it, just for laughs. My most useful test device is a Mi2s.
Now, I rooted this and updated it, so it's running a pretty recent cyanogenmod. Few users will have bothered for a phone 3 years old.
However, you want to exclude Android versions before 4.5 because on those versions it's easier to rip your apk (cannot find a handy reference to that so perhaps the other forum users can debunk/confirm?)
So you can disregard phones older than 2-3 years as they are not secure.
The same goes for screen size. Lots of people have a sub 720 screen; those are mostly older phones.
You can see phone distribution here
In the end I found swapping my meshes (from lots of little ones to few big ones) was enough of a fix to framerate not to have to worry about device age. I'll look into publishing for 4.4 when my game is ready for shipping, but only because I expect my demographic to have older phones.
What took me aback was the difference in colour and brightness reproduction when building to my colleague's samsung phone. Not sure how this can be managed though...
Cornucopiist on
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KoopahTroopahThe koopas, the troopas.Philadelphia, PARegistered Userregular
Still having procrastination issues getting back into daily dev'ing. I'm gonna try to implement this chart that I saw on Reddit front page. Maybe it'll also help someone here. Spoilered for laaaaaarge:
Ah! they call those Lists. I use them for 2d arrays, if that makes sense?
Not really, Lists and Sets have fundamentally different performance trade offs. You most likely wouldn't want to use a Set for a 2d array.
If you are in a spot where you are doing multiple look ups against a collection of objects / primitives and you don't want / care about duplicates, sets are almost always the way to go.
If you are doing a single look up it shouldn't matter much either way.
Still having procrastination issues getting back into daily dev'ing. I'm gonna try to implement this chart that I saw on Reddit front page. Maybe it'll also help someone here. Spoilered for laaaaaarge:
Now if only I could wake up without a feeling of fatigue that didn't remind me of a hangover.
Ah! they call those Lists. I use them for 2d arrays, if that makes sense?
Not really, Lists and Sets have fundamentally different performance trade offs. You most likely wouldn't want to use a Set for a 2d array.
If you are in a spot where you are doing multiple look ups against a collection of objects / primitives and you don't want / care about duplicates, sets are almost always the way to go.
If you are doing a single look up it shouldn't matter much either way.
That chart is nice and all but... damn if that isn't an overload for just getting work done.
The trick (imo) to working all the time is routine. Routine drives success, success circles back to drive, and now you have this cycle of being addicted to completing goals and after about 3 weeks you're pretty much unable to "stop" working.
If you've ever struggled with keeping disciplined and have had those pockets of pure bliss where you simply couldn't stop working - routine will bring you that all the time. It's like a runner's high.
I've seen enough magic charts to know that magic charts are an extremely unreliable way of actually helping yourself.
Much like weight loss is all fundamentally 1) stop eating sugar, start eating plants and 2) get some exercise every day, whatever it is, productivity is all fundamentally 1) put all of your favorite distractions out of arms' reach, and 2) make something, without thinking too hard about what. Pretty infographics are just creative exercises on the part of the creators.
... speaking of eliminating distractions, it's just about time to put the PA Forums back into LeechBlock...
My favorite musical instrument is the air-raid siren.
That chart is nice and all but... damn if that isn't an overload for just getting work done.
The trick (imo) to working all the time is routine. Routine drives success, success circles back to drive, and now you have this cycle of being addicted to completing goals and after about 3 weeks you're pretty much unable to "stop" working.
If you've ever struggled with keeping disciplined and have had those pockets of pure bliss where you simply couldn't stop working - routine will bring you that all the time. It's like a runner's high.
Oh my friend, you need to stop working.
Burnout is extremely real and different people have different limits but you will burn yourself unless you pace yourself. Long projects like games are a marathon not a sprint. If you put great time during the first half it's not going to matter if you can barely move during the second.
Hey folks! I was at the Epic Games & Nvidia Funhouse VR Game Jam last weekend, and it was pretty amazing. There were 7 teams, and we were all sitting in the cargo hold of a ship, a decommissioned freighter, in the Hamburg harbor, and had to create a mod for Nvidia's VR Funhouse game in 48h. Best jam ever, tbh!
My team, consisting of me and two friends from the UE4 community, made a game descriptively called "Kid in a candy store", in which you are in a candy shop and your mission is to eat as much candy as you can before you get caught. You eat by grabbing things with your motion controllers and stuffing them in your face. There are drawers, freezers and closets to open, jars and chocolate packs to empty, and a guard bot that patrols the area.
Unfortunately I don't have any footage of the game itself (didn't record any at the event, and haven't yet set up my lighthouses again after getting home), but I did make a quick video of the model and animations I threw together in just a few hours:
Capping off the jam weekend was a public event after a few hours break - members of the public could buy tickets to come in and play our games. It was pretty cool to not have done it "for nothing", but to actually have about 5h to demo the games to random people, and chat with them about all sorts of things. They seemed to like our stuff :-)
Best jam ever, for sure. I slept once, for 3h, between Saturday 8 am and Tuesday 5 am, so that was fun!
OK, real talk game design/program/functionality question. *SUPER LONG POST! READ AT OWN RISK!*
I've been sitting on an idea for a football game for the PC for over a decade tentatively called the VGFL (video game football league). Since nothing can compete with Madden, this idea would be it's own wholly separate game without ties to the NFL. Granted that kills a majority of the audience, but instead focuses more on building the game into an eSport.
Rather than a 3rd person 1v1 game, the game would be be an MMO football game where each position on the field is controlled by a player. In most games, you simply control the QB, RB, or WR on offense, and a DL or FS on defense. AI handles all the other less-exciting positions like OL and LB.
Now a team will have to work together in order to succeed on even the most basic of play. Being designed as an eSport in mind, the game will have a strong focus on players banding together to form teams and have practices in order to get in sync with timing routes, run blocking, and so forth. Basically try to replicate what actual football players do during the week between games.
In addition, each team will have mutliple non-football players involved in communication and tactical roles just like in real life. Each team can have a HC, OC, DC, and sub-roles as needed. For example, the HC makes all the big decisions and can request real-time game data and camera views during the game. The OC has a microphone connection to the QB for calling in plays. Similarly, the DC can directly talk to the defensive captain, be it a LB, DL, or S.
The QBs mic is tied into all other players while in the huddle. After that, only an audible can get the attention of teammates. Same thing for the defense, with the designated captain having a audio range to communicate with his teammates on audibles.
As for gameplay, each player would be playing from a first-person perspective. This was done before in NFL 2k5 and turned out to be quite amazing (see below). Using a wide field of vision, players had an "awareness" stat that had left or right side radar pings letting them know if an defensive player was closing in on them.
Given the strong element of teamwork required to play, I just don't see the idea working too well in a casual setting. Each play would be mass chaos if people aren't communicating. That sort of thing is fine in a FPS, but not in a coordinated game like football. Probably entertaining as hell to watch though.
But let's assume it could work and find an audience. Say there are people creating teams (clans) and working together on practice during the week before league created game days. Imagine how incredible of an experience this could be. Being a video game, cameras could be non-intrusive and everywhere making each game a phenomenal spectator sport. You could even put the camera INTO a player's helmet for replays and highlights. Watch their decisions made in real-time. Steam games live on Twitch and perhaps integrate a home v away system where crowd noise (via Twitch emotes or something) would hamper a teams audio.
Obviously this would require a large amount of work, not only from a development side, but from the player base too. Could it even be technically feasible? MMOs have existed for over a decade and FPS games can field over 64 player at a time. For huge eSport events, dedicated computers and LANs could compensate for lag and 3rd party cheating (voice chats, camera pulls, etc).
I've envisioned a game like this forever and can see how glorious it would be to behold. Sadly, I think that there are just too many obstacles to overcome. I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on it though, even if football or sports in general aren't your thing. Could this even be technically feasible? What would be the biggest hurdles? Would the market even care?
Thanks for taking the time and reading!
Need a voice actor? Hire me at bengrayVO.com
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051 Steam ID Twitch Page
From a technical standpoint, of course it is doable. The main question is how the mechanics work. How, for example, do you throw a pass? Is it stat-based like an RPG or worms-style with aim for angle click and hold for power or ? Keeping in mind that the mechanics that let us throw very accurately in real life don't translate as well to a video game. How does whoever is going to catch it know where it is landing? Does the opposing team get that info? How is a catch made? How do you determine if the ball is dropped?
It might translate well to a VR setup though, that could certainly be interesting
It also probably wouldn't be as much work as you think dev-side (depending on how you do certain mechanics). Your content consists of player models and a bunch of essentially identical stadiums. Without the licensing you don't need to (and can't) reproduce the exact details of every single team, player and stadium. A 20-ish player game can be done on UE4 without breaking a sweat
However, IMO US football is a bad sport for that type of game. You said it yourself "AI handles all the other less-exciting positions" - at any given time isn't like half the team just designed to smash into the other team's uninteresting half? Signing up for an hour of that is... not a great value proposition for a player. I suppose as a strictly premade team vs premade team game it might work, but you do need a critical mass of people. I would straight up drop any off-field player position though; that should be handled maybe by a short break after a play to review what happened
I think saying it is designed for e-sports is a bit of a cop out, the top e-sports games in terms of $ are DOTA2, LOL, CS, SC/SC2, HotS, WC3. Obviously a few of those were designed for e-sports, but they are good games first. And without a good underlying game that someone can pick up and play without a week of practice with a dozen friends first it's going to be hard to hit e-sports status. Every top player started out playing by themselves after all
How big is your team MNC Dover? Because that sounds like a lot to take on.
There is a guy at the local meet up who is taking on something like that he has been working it for like 2 and half years with a team of 5 or so people. I also get a sense he has awhile to go before he releases.
My team is one, just me. I've great fun concepts and ideas, but no programming expertise. This is just an idea I've floated around forever, but the scope is far too massive both technically and from the player base. Granted there are wahoos that still play Quake 1 so anything is possible. A game concept like this would need a massive financial backing to even get off the ground.
Need a voice actor? Hire me at bengrayVO.com
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051 Steam ID Twitch Page
As weird as it may sound, I don't think a video game version of a real sport will ever be an e-sport. The closest thing to that right now is Rocket League and soccer, and RL is hardly close to soccer.
I think it would be more worth your time to come up with an idea that is similar to football, but works better as a video game. Designing a skill based, realistic, and fun system to kick a ball is kind of hard, so Rocket League instead uses simple rigidbody physics collisions between a car and a ball. That's easy for a player wrap their head around because it has similar results to kicking a ball, and it also takes skill to perform accurately. Instead of trying to replicate football 1:1 try and come up with something that evokes the same feelings as playing football.
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JacobyOHHHHH IT’S A SNAKECreature - SnakeRegistered Userregular
You know what always had that feeling for me? Unreal Tournament 2003's Bombing Run, InstaGib, Shock Rifles only. The movement of the ball around the arena was football-like (maybe more like rugby?). The shock rifle's range isn't very football, but the fact that you don't have a high fire rate means that skill was much more important.
I agree that the big problem will be pitching it to a publisher, because really it seems sports games (not an e-sport game, but games on sports) are 95% licences. This is pretty true for racers, too; a lot of potential players will want real brands.
So it's one thing to say 'no ties to Madden' but a whole other thing to convince people that it'll be commercially viable.
On the other hand your idea is cool.... so cool idea (gameplay) vs not enough funds to build a fully fledged 3d sports game... Call me crazy, but I think the big problem is actually a path to an elegant solution: make a top-down prototype à là Slither.io
A pretty small team could do it, though I wouldn't underestimate the realtime network stuff. Focus on the UI in creating and managing teams; i.e. integration with social media, outlook and gmail calendars, etc.
A couple of experienced UE4 dudes could probably proto that out pretty good in a weekend.
Yeah it doesn't take that long to prototype anything to get a feel of the idea and gameplay but the multiplayer aspect does complicate things.
Speaking of short dev times, Epic MegaJam 2016 starts next week. There are decent raffle prizes so I suggest that anybody in this thread that want to try out UE4 that this is a good week to do it, the jam gives you a week to make a small game and submit.
I'm excited about the recent Humble Bundles targeted around game dev, as I was able to pick up both GameMaker and Clickteam for cheap. After playing with both, I think right now I'm liking Clickteam a bit more, but that's because I have next to no programming knowledge (I know bare-bones php for web design stuff), and the way they grid out the check-box for game logic is super easy to use and direct. I'm glad I have GameMaker though, because I think once I have a handle on logic and the why behind making a few simple games, it'll be neat to dabble in coding with GML to see more specific results.
Thinking for my first little game I'll do a Castlevania-esque deal with like 10 rooms and a few quests (kill 10 bats and I'll give you better armor, for instance) so it'll dabble with a bit of multi-layer eventing systems.
I should be able to do this okay with Clickteam, yeah? I've finished the 'ChocoBreak' tutorial (their Breakout clone) and it seems like it should be able to handle the task relatively well, but of course not as nuanced as something like GameMaker.
Unable to find any instance for object index '18' name 'obj_level1_control'
at gml_Script_scr_spawner_inactive_right (line 3) - if ((obj_level1_control.x - x) <= attack_range) //if level 1 controller is in range
The idea here is to have the spawner in an inactive state until the controller (invisible object in middle of viewport) gets in range
if object_exists(obj_level1_control)
{
if ((obj_level1_control.x - x) <= attack_range) //if level 1 controller is in range
{
scr_spawner_archer_alarms(); //fire alarm script
state = state.active; //set state to active
}
}
Rather than crashing when the game loads, it crashes when the level loads, so progress.
I was using object_exists rather than instance_exists.
The former checks to see if its in your object tree while the latter checks to see if its in your room.
You can't limit voice chat. An organised team will just use an out of band voice chat server and circumvent any voice restrictions you have in game.
Oh sure, but at a LAN based tournament setting they couldn't do so and would have to prepare like everyone else. Not really a big deal, just keeps things less chatty and more inline with actual football. Easy enough to just link all mics.
Need a voice actor? Hire me at bengrayVO.com
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051 Steam ID Twitch Page
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acidlacedpenguinInstitutionalizedSafe in jail.Registered Userregular
Coming back to the motivation/procrastination thing, a few things:
1: routine is excellent. I will seemingly debunk that in the following post, but bear with me.
2: When I last wrote a 120.000 word novel I tracked my word count daily. Turns out it's quite even in a weird way. There were periods where I got totally discouraged, or started on another project, and got nothing done. Then there were periods where I crunched 4k a day. But most of the latter stuck close to the former, and together they tended to give a biweekly average the same as the weeks I stuck to a solid routine.
In many ways it seemed there were only so many words I could write a week, and if I pushed past that I'd have to wait for inspiration.
I ended up cutting 60k words (and writing 60k new, better words), and editing for over a year and a half before giving up on the thing because the writing was just too convoluted. But I certainly was bloody productive, and zero regrets.
3: However in the procrastination periods, if I was working on another project, drawing, or doing other stuff, I was still productive. I applied the routine to something that didn't make me go 'blargh' and later on my subconscious would have racked up enough micro-inspirations to motivate some serious crunch.
Routine works at its best to defeat the first 15 minutes of work. Starting is the hardest bit, period.
4: However, if after 30 minutes you're not locked on to something interesting you feel a need to deliver, stop. You'll do nothing but deliver bland, mediocre, gray stuff. Either go do some serious relaxing that does not involve multitasking i.e. no facebook or other sh*t. Or do another project. Disinterring old projects is always a good thing, because moving forward with stalled stuff will give you a lot of positivity re: working that can break a demotivated feedback loop. Some of the projects I picked up this year were 18 years old. The game I'm near to delivering is based on a non-fiction book I researched for 3 years ago. etc...
Posts
Then, anything it does right is a surprise.
I finally got my small enemies working the way I want, now to hash out a background of sorts.
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
At least you already have an audience, the Metroid thread people seem excited when even I check in on that thread.
Unreal Engine 4 Developers Community.
I'm working on a cute little video game! Here's a link for you.
Is there a compact way to do this?
My plan is to save an array of length 1 (starting gear) with the part number in it. Then every time a buy button is pressed do foreach, check if the (currentpartnumber) is already in the list, if it is set alreadybought to true.
Then after the foreach if alreadybought = false set the arraylength++ and for that arraylength *set* item to currentpartnumber
But that foreach looks clunky...
If I understand it properly, if I stick to simple arrays they should serialize as is?
Why not check the list when the store is opened and eliminate purchased gear? Then you only do the forereach once?
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
Or put your deserialized array into a set and go nuts seeing what it contains with little lookup penalty.
@Delzhand brilliant! will try that
@Uselesswarrior I don't think unity contains sets?
So going with something like:
for(int i = 0; i < array.Length; i++) { if(array[i].name == desiredName) { //Do Stuff } }And look into scriptable objects tomorrow.
Sure it does, its using a slightly older version of C# but it has all the basics in it, https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb359438(v=vs.110).aspx.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
Ah! they call those Lists. I use them for 2d arrays, if that makes sense?
Probably useless now but a check mark at the far right of the item?
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
I'd get a cheap and slow device to build to, so you can check for framerate issues.
AFAIK if it runs on one device it'll run on all of them, if they have enough processing power. I've even tried running my game on a HTC desire with KitKat on it, just for laughs. My most useful test device is a Mi2s.
Now, I rooted this and updated it, so it's running a pretty recent cyanogenmod. Few users will have bothered for a phone 3 years old.
However, you want to exclude Android versions before 4.5 because on those versions it's easier to rip your apk (cannot find a handy reference to that so perhaps the other forum users can debunk/confirm?)
So you can disregard phones older than 2-3 years as they are not secure.
The same goes for screen size. Lots of people have a sub 720 screen; those are mostly older phones.
You can see phone distribution here
In the end I found swapping my meshes (from lots of little ones to few big ones) was enough of a fix to framerate not to have to worry about device age. I'll look into publishing for 4.4 when my game is ready for shipping, but only because I expect my demographic to have older phones.
What took me aback was the difference in colour and brightness reproduction when building to my colleague's samsung phone. Not sure how this can be managed though...
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
Not really, Lists and Sets have fundamentally different performance trade offs. You most likely wouldn't want to use a Set for a 2d array.
If you are in a spot where you are doing multiple look ups against a collection of objects / primitives and you don't want / care about duplicates, sets are almost always the way to go.
If you are doing a single look up it shouldn't matter much either way.
Now if only I could wake up without a feeling of fatigue that didn't remind me of a hangover.
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
Well, I'm following the instructions to a t.
*I'll get my coat.
The trick (imo) to working all the time is routine. Routine drives success, success circles back to drive, and now you have this cycle of being addicted to completing goals and after about 3 weeks you're pretty much unable to "stop" working.
If you've ever struggled with keeping disciplined and have had those pockets of pure bliss where you simply couldn't stop working - routine will bring you that all the time. It's like a runner's high.
Much like weight loss is all fundamentally 1) stop eating sugar, start eating plants and 2) get some exercise every day, whatever it is, productivity is all fundamentally 1) put all of your favorite distractions out of arms' reach, and 2) make something, without thinking too hard about what. Pretty infographics are just creative exercises on the part of the creators.
... speaking of eliminating distractions, it's just about time to put the PA Forums back into LeechBlock...
Oh my friend, you need to stop working.
Burnout is extremely real and different people have different limits but you will burn yourself unless you pace yourself. Long projects like games are a marathon not a sprint. If you put great time during the first half it's not going to matter if you can barely move during the second.
My team, consisting of me and two friends from the UE4 community, made a game descriptively called "Kid in a candy store", in which you are in a candy shop and your mission is to eat as much candy as you can before you get caught. You eat by grabbing things with your motion controllers and stuffing them in your face. There are drawers, freezers and closets to open, jars and chocolate packs to empty, and a guard bot that patrols the area.
Unfortunately I don't have any footage of the game itself (didn't record any at the event, and haven't yet set up my lighthouses again after getting home), but I did make a quick video of the model and animations I threw together in just a few hours:
Capping off the jam weekend was a public event after a few hours break - members of the public could buy tickets to come in and play our games. It was pretty cool to not have done it "for nothing", but to actually have about 5h to demo the games to random people, and chat with them about all sorts of things. They seemed to like our stuff :-)
Best jam ever, for sure. I slept once, for 3h, between Saturday 8 am and Tuesday 5 am, so that was fun!
Unreal Engine 4 Developers Community.
I'm working on a cute little video game! Here's a link for you.
I've been sitting on an idea for a football game for the PC for over a decade tentatively called the VGFL (video game football league). Since nothing can compete with Madden, this idea would be it's own wholly separate game without ties to the NFL. Granted that kills a majority of the audience, but instead focuses more on building the game into an eSport.
Rather than a 3rd person 1v1 game, the game would be be an MMO football game where each position on the field is controlled by a player. In most games, you simply control the QB, RB, or WR on offense, and a DL or FS on defense. AI handles all the other less-exciting positions like OL and LB.
Now a team will have to work together in order to succeed on even the most basic of play. Being designed as an eSport in mind, the game will have a strong focus on players banding together to form teams and have practices in order to get in sync with timing routes, run blocking, and so forth. Basically try to replicate what actual football players do during the week between games.
In addition, each team will have mutliple non-football players involved in communication and tactical roles just like in real life. Each team can have a HC, OC, DC, and sub-roles as needed. For example, the HC makes all the big decisions and can request real-time game data and camera views during the game. The OC has a microphone connection to the QB for calling in plays. Similarly, the DC can directly talk to the defensive captain, be it a LB, DL, or S.
The QBs mic is tied into all other players while in the huddle. After that, only an audible can get the attention of teammates. Same thing for the defense, with the designated captain having a audio range to communicate with his teammates on audibles.
As for gameplay, each player would be playing from a first-person perspective. This was done before in NFL 2k5 and turned out to be quite amazing (see below). Using a wide field of vision, players had an "awareness" stat that had left or right side radar pings letting them know if an defensive player was closing in on them.
Given the strong element of teamwork required to play, I just don't see the idea working too well in a casual setting. Each play would be mass chaos if people aren't communicating. That sort of thing is fine in a FPS, but not in a coordinated game like football. Probably entertaining as hell to watch though.
But let's assume it could work and find an audience. Say there are people creating teams (clans) and working together on practice during the week before league created game days. Imagine how incredible of an experience this could be. Being a video game, cameras could be non-intrusive and everywhere making each game a phenomenal spectator sport. You could even put the camera INTO a player's helmet for replays and highlights. Watch their decisions made in real-time. Steam games live on Twitch and perhaps integrate a home v away system where crowd noise (via Twitch emotes or something) would hamper a teams audio.
Obviously this would require a large amount of work, not only from a development side, but from the player base too. Could it even be technically feasible? MMOs have existed for over a decade and FPS games can field over 64 player at a time. For huge eSport events, dedicated computers and LANs could compensate for lag and 3rd party cheating (voice chats, camera pulls, etc).
I've envisioned a game like this forever and can see how glorious it would be to behold. Sadly, I think that there are just too many obstacles to overcome. I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on it though, even if football or sports in general aren't your thing. Could this even be technically feasible? What would be the biggest hurdles? Would the market even care?
Thanks for taking the time and reading!
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It might translate well to a VR setup though, that could certainly be interesting
It also probably wouldn't be as much work as you think dev-side (depending on how you do certain mechanics). Your content consists of player models and a bunch of essentially identical stadiums. Without the licensing you don't need to (and can't) reproduce the exact details of every single team, player and stadium. A 20-ish player game can be done on UE4 without breaking a sweat
However, IMO US football is a bad sport for that type of game. You said it yourself "AI handles all the other less-exciting positions" - at any given time isn't like half the team just designed to smash into the other team's uninteresting half? Signing up for an hour of that is... not a great value proposition for a player. I suppose as a strictly premade team vs premade team game it might work, but you do need a critical mass of people. I would straight up drop any off-field player position though; that should be handled maybe by a short break after a play to review what happened
I think saying it is designed for e-sports is a bit of a cop out, the top e-sports games in terms of $ are DOTA2, LOL, CS, SC/SC2, HotS, WC3. Obviously a few of those were designed for e-sports, but they are good games first. And without a good underlying game that someone can pick up and play without a week of practice with a dozen friends first it's going to be hard to hit e-sports status. Every top player started out playing by themselves after all
There is a guy at the local meet up who is taking on something like that he has been working it for like 2 and half years with a team of 5 or so people. I also get a sense he has awhile to go before he releases.
Just to give you a rough idea of the scope.
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
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I think it would be more worth your time to come up with an idea that is similar to football, but works better as a video game. Designing a skill based, realistic, and fun system to kick a ball is kind of hard, so Rocket League instead uses simple rigidbody physics collisions between a car and a ball. That's easy for a player wrap their head around because it has similar results to kicking a ball, and it also takes skill to perform accurately. Instead of trying to replicate football 1:1 try and come up with something that evokes the same feelings as playing football.
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So it's one thing to say 'no ties to Madden' but a whole other thing to convince people that it'll be commercially viable.
On the other hand your idea is cool.... so cool idea (gameplay) vs not enough funds to build a fully fledged 3d sports game... Call me crazy, but I think the big problem is actually a path to an elegant solution: make a top-down prototype à là Slither.io
A pretty small team could do it, though I wouldn't underestimate the realtime network stuff. Focus on the UI in creating and managing teams; i.e. integration with social media, outlook and gmail calendars, etc.
Yeah it doesn't take that long to prototype anything to get a feel of the idea and gameplay but the multiplayer aspect does complicate things.
Speaking of short dev times, Epic MegaJam 2016 starts next week. There are decent raffle prizes so I suggest that anybody in this thread that want to try out UE4 that this is a good week to do it, the jam gives you a week to make a small game and submit.
Thinking for my first little game I'll do a Castlevania-esque deal with like 10 rooms and a few quests (kill 10 bats and I'll give you better armor, for instance) so it'll dabble with a bit of multi-layer eventing systems.
I should be able to do this okay with Clickteam, yeah? I've finished the 'ChocoBreak' tutorial (their Breakout clone) and it seems like it should be able to handle the task relatively well, but of course not as nuanced as something like GameMaker.
Ugh, ghost lines around backgrounds again
edit: FUCK~!
if object_exists(obj_level1_control) { if ((obj_level1_control.x - x) <= attack_range) //if level 1 controller is in range { scr_spawner_archer_alarms(); //fire alarm script state = state.active; //set state to active } }Rather than crashing when the game loads, it crashes when the level loads, so progress.
I was using object_exists rather than instance_exists.
The former checks to see if its in your object tree while the latter checks to see if its in your room.
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
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.
Oh sure, but at a LAN based tournament setting they couldn't do so and would have to prepare like everyone else. Not really a big deal, just keeps things less chatty and more inline with actual football. Easy enough to just link all mics.
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...made while the creator(s) themselves are procrastinating on their real job(s).
1: routine is excellent. I will seemingly debunk that in the following post, but bear with me.
2: When I last wrote a 120.000 word novel I tracked my word count daily. Turns out it's quite even in a weird way. There were periods where I got totally discouraged, or started on another project, and got nothing done. Then there were periods where I crunched 4k a day. But most of the latter stuck close to the former, and together they tended to give a biweekly average the same as the weeks I stuck to a solid routine.
In many ways it seemed there were only so many words I could write a week, and if I pushed past that I'd have to wait for inspiration.
I ended up cutting 60k words (and writing 60k new, better words), and editing for over a year and a half before giving up on the thing because the writing was just too convoluted. But I certainly was bloody productive, and zero regrets.
3: However in the procrastination periods, if I was working on another project, drawing, or doing other stuff, I was still productive. I applied the routine to something that didn't make me go 'blargh' and later on my subconscious would have racked up enough micro-inspirations to motivate some serious crunch.
Routine works at its best to defeat the first 15 minutes of work. Starting is the hardest bit, period.
4: However, if after 30 minutes you're not locked on to something interesting you feel a need to deliver, stop. You'll do nothing but deliver bland, mediocre, gray stuff. Either go do some serious relaxing that does not involve multitasking i.e. no facebook or other sh*t. Or do another project. Disinterring old projects is always a good thing, because moving forward with stalled stuff will give you a lot of positivity re: working that can break a demotivated feedback loop. Some of the projects I picked up this year were 18 years old. The game I'm near to delivering is based on a non-fiction book I researched for 3 years ago. etc...