Amateur Game Development General ~ /agdg/ + /vm/

Unity is a good engine to start with, but I'd first build a few tech demo/demo projects before you dive into making the game "you actually want to make".
Don't perpetuate the shitty dev using Unity as a crutch reputation.

The point being to experiment with the engine, learning to code better + expanding your knowledge, and how to apply your programming knowledge inside of the engine using its design paradigm.
Know that the engine uses a ECS design paradigm (entity component system), and you should study this before you start making any game in Unity; as you'll have a basis to understand the inner workings of the engine (how everything is structured, and to work with the engine itself, not against it).

Also, use C#, not the bs javascript/unityscript which is in large part being abandoned in favor of C# by the Unity devs.

Guess who's about to make you his bitch.

High quality pre release screenshots of whatever-sigmanon-decides-to-call-his-game

preorder now

pls fix the physics sigmanon

This is looking pretty nice now.

this is looking good, but when you going to change that weapon sprite? I really don't like it because it looks like the gun is pointing to the left slightly, yet when I see it fire it fires straight. You should change it.

I"ll move it slightly so it doesn't do that, thanks for pointing that out

Anyone here use overtone (clojure) for vidya music?

I'm not the dev, I'm just the poor soul who volunteered to make him some levels and textures.

I'll make some weapon sprites if he wants.

I decided to just get a female base model so I can modify it for my Gynoid, I will basically break down the body into separate parts to add some joints and give it the hybrid look, then I can proceed to make addons for it.

That's it, I'm switching distros for real this time. You can fuck with my gtk themes, config files, force me to use systemd, even switch my default audio server thanks Lennart Poettering, but you do not fuck around with my audio output.

♂Fuck♂you♂leatherman♂

...

I know that feel, I had to find ways disabling PulseAudio and enabling ALSA/OSS instead. I can't exactly remember how I did it but there is a way to disable PulseAudio from starting up in the first place.

You understand that in the art community and elsewhere, the whole "faceless cyborg/masketta man/gasmask soldier" thing is seen as the ultimate cop-out of someone who can't draw or model faces, doesn't want to/can't do facial animation or someone who is just a dumb cunt in general, right?

Well, I can do all that more or less, I just wanted to do it because I find the faceless mannequin with erotic undertones very interesting, the idea comes back since I was drawn to Warframe porn and Haydee reminded me of that.

But of course, you can think of it as just a cheap excuse, I was just trying to share my stuff with you.

That's the excuse we all were expecting to hear.

Hi fellow devs.

I come with a stupid question. You know how every indie piece of shit wants to go "retro" with badly done pixel art, right?
What about retro 3D art in low poly form? I'd like to get into it, but avoiding the same problem indiehipsters get with pixel sprites that do not recreate the actual feeling of the sprites of the time they try to emulate. I mean, is there any kind of guidelines (infographic, tutorial site, or whatever) to follow to make a model that looks actually from the n64 era?
I'd like to know stuff like how many triangles or faces a model/scene should have, or what would be the texture's max size. I tried searching for examples, but I didn't find a consensus and every example differs from the next, pics related

Thank you in advance!

Be my guest, I only respond to money if you want to see something more elaborate.

have a gift
rubbermatt.deviantart.com/gallery/?catpath=/

don't be a cunt

Thanks, is nice to see some people have a more open mind.

keep at it user, I like that warframe/halo look too.

o hot damn that last pics design is sexy as fug, as in, I really like the style you're going for no clang included.

As for the low-poly look reminiscent of n64 era there's an user lurking these threads that has all the info you need. I saw em, I think, two/three threads ago.

What I can think of though is using point filtering for your textures (gives it that grainy look), and keeping texture sizes small (maybe, 128-256, I'd experiment with it).
I'd assume the best bet would be to experiment, and maybe you'll come up with your own stylized look.

Check for model rips from N64 games and base it off of those, I saved a couple links about it but never really put it on practice since I prefer pixelshit myself.

vg-resource.com/thread-16126.html
blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?256061-How-to-make-an-N64-model

Like the other user said there's an user around that knows more.

Don't do this. Do the best 3D models you are capable of texturing and animating. Trying to recreate a look from a previous era of games, for what purpose? Appeal to nostalgiafags? To be lazy like ? The first two models in your post are top-notch work. The last one is ass though, and by no means low-poly. With good textures and animations no one would be able to say that they feel lazy, poorly-done, or otherwise "indie."

Some pointers, my fellow agd bro.
1. Although you're doing low-poly out of necessity due to being a one-man team, make the choice meaningful in the game. Either a lot can be on-screen at once, or the framerate is really high, or it can run on a toaster.
2. To answer your questions about polycounts and stuff, download models from models-resource.com and import it. Some game engines have tricks to make textures repeat or transparent but it's really good to examine the model.
3. Don't forget vertex shading. It's the difference between an ugly flat world and a colorful, moody one.
4. Texture sizes were 64×64 max on the N64, higher on the Gamecube. But go the Startopia route. It's a lot easier to mask low polygons with clear textures than vice versa. Blurry is ugly.
5. If a character can still animate in a lively fashion without looking like a stretched-out mess, it has enough polygons. Animation is key.
6. Bake all shadows if not going the vertex shading route.
7. Have fun!

I'm pretty sure he posted examples only. Doing good 3D models takes a ton of time, something most of us don't have. I can't answer for him but I'd prefer to finish my game in less than a decade, so unless I make a tech demo with nice 3D graphics I don't see the point.

Add some vertex shading and moody lighting or your level will look awful.

I know those aren't his models. If he had that kind of skill he wouldn't be here asking dumb questions.

Of what? Making good models? I'm not sure what you mean.

Uh, I don't quite get it, anyway, but I agree, the current goal of my little pet project is just a tech demo, not even a game right now, I am learning on the go.

Well, great models I mean, the best models that you can do. That takes time, it's not even that I'm lazy, but I don't see people that finished a great looking 3D game by themselves, they are all just tech demos/prototypes.

...

Wait a minute, what questions am I asking when it comes to the models? I was showing stuff and I know what I am doing, I don't get it.

Oh. By that, I meant don't limit yourself to arbitrary restrictions based on some historic piece of hardware, not that each prop in your game needs to be the polygonal equivalent of Michaelangelo's David. You seem to be under the impression that the lower poly you go, the easier it is to make, when beyond a point, the opposite becomes true. So for the average modeler, I'd posit that there is a sweet spot where the graph lines for looks and ease of modeling/animating cross, and that it's at a polygon count a few hundred more than the average N64 model.

I was addressing this post

"Retro" 3D is difficult because it's very difficult to resist improving upon it. It's just plain bad in reality, but we don't remember that because of the interesting design and how fun the games were.

Old 3D games used a lot of gradients and flat colors in places so they wouldn't have to use textures, and they often had little to no real shading or maybe even used a billboard sprite so they wouldn't have to use 3D in the first place.

Remember that these were designed by pro artists back then, they were the best at making the best out of the limited graphics power. Low poly won't suddenly make your game look as magical as these, unless you're an artist with the skill of what was the equivalent of AAA developers back then.

Oh, for a moment I thought it was about my cheap faceless model and all.

I see, you meant to not be autistic about replicating the original hardware limitations. I don't think he was looking for that though, he probably just wanted something a little easier to make and going to old models it would be easier. Maybe early 3D models are difficult to animate, but I think that less polygons = less time.

I think people should remember that about pixel art too. There were professional teams back then drawing the pixel animations, pixel art isn't bad it's just that people today are lazy. What's worse is when I see indie teams with a bunch of people in them and the pixel art still sucks dick, why did they even make a team?

ONE GUY /agdg/
O N E G U Y
O N E G U Y

The one video that gets us butt devastated each time. I can't help it, I'm human. I don't have the time or money to make that by myself.

I see your one guy and raise you a ONE GUY, IN ASSEMBLY.
Now stop shitposting and get your ass into gear, you fucking faggot.

It seems low-poly relies way harder on textures, and being clever with your poly layout. In reality, it's probably harder than highpoly where you can just copy a reference.

For low-poly I would like to do the MGS1 trick, textures would be simple but lighting and other stuff is what makes it look like a movie.

ONE GUY
And a freelance animator, and a freelance 3d modeler, and a freelance texture artist, and a freelance music guy, and a freelance sound designer.

ONE GUY

Just get good fam, and don't worry too much about hard limits, if you want to see good low poly or good faux low poly look at 3d games.

Although for comparison Crash is roughly 1700 polygon's and Dillon is 1268, so whatever goes.

Didn't one guy make Metal Gear Solid too?

So their friends could get a paycheck.

I think the correct word is "impatient". We expect things to get done so quickly that we don't have the patience to work on stuff for a long time, and let other people work on their stuff for a long time. If you take your time to make something, people will see that as a lack of skill.

Crash was 512 polygons in the first game.

You are correct, it's just hard to not be impatient when you see hundreds and hundreds of games being made by indies every day

I remember downloading the model and it was 1500 polygon's, I guess I will have to check it again.

1700

all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/04/making-crash-bandicoot-part-3/
Seems like your downloaded model isn't the original vertex data. The person who ripped it most likely fucked around with it to make it work with modern modeling software.

and shit like tumblrtale getting alot of praises and other numale trash "games".

It appears to have been edited.

ONE GUY
ONE GUY

Did anything worthwhile come out of these threads?

Risk of rain

What did he mean by this?

did these threads got credited for helping someone "make their dream game"
>yandere simulator: "suck my glass, choke on it"

Did that cunt ever post in these threads? Cause I'm drawing a blank here.

That's a weird thing to say in 2016 on a video games board. I wonder who would he vote for.

these are /agdg/ threads, user.
he posted progress on /vg/'s /agdg/ threads
it still counts

I don't think Yandere ever posted in /agdg/, only made threads in Holla Forums or posted in them.

Also, taking credit from RoR and shit for "these threads" is kind of dishonest, because all those guys were from 4chan's agdg.

The only "significant" game I remember that was posted in 8ch agdg was Xenoraptor. There's that pixel "horror" game, but he didn't really post progress as much as he made a thread for attention.

Sounds like the art version of java shitters who frown on fizzbuzz implementations that don't use every design pattern at least once.

Do we have an artist version of csgrad.png?

posting bombs requested by @user last #thread

You did it fam with noice trips.

You think we aren't? We left 2 years ago, but that doesn't mean there's not the same people here as there were there. And new people join and leave both /agdg/s all the time.

I don't know if anyone will remember me, but, here I am. Rat Knight dev.

Decided to re-write Rat Knight into Godot, rather than my MonoGame/Python clusterfuck. It's going a lot smoother now.

You get to see a nice little crash at the end.

I remember that you posted some of these few units that you were about to make.

I almost feel famous!
Yeah, I think last time I posted was back when I was using MonoGame and Python, and I'd just made champions, which of course will be re-implemented.

I prefer the UI design this time around, too. Much cleaner than my shitty attempt at a UI library in MonoGame.

does that mean you switched to windows?

Well what can I say, I lurk a lot in this thread because it feels comfy and I like how the anons here are posting progress and the like.

kill me pete

(checked)
So you are adding new sprites for the Sigma Engine?

Seems to me like he's replacing the poorly shooped placeholders.

Well imagine you make game that becomes successful, then some faggots in reddit /gamedev/ say your game came from "their" community, just because some aggydaggers go there.

It's basically the same thing, the developer never came here so saying that his game came from here is pretty lame.

hey guys, i've got an idea, the first word of the sentences in the next 5 posts will become a password, i'll hide that password somewhere in the game, deal?

We don't say it came from here. We say it came from /agdg/. This is /agdg/. But /agdg/ on 4chan is also /agdg/. If you made an /agdg/ on 420chan it'd also be /agdg/.
Your definition of /agdg/ is too rigid. Like I said, people join and leave all the time. Yet 4/agdg/ can still say RoR came from there when 90% of the people there weren't around at the time. They weren't part of the community that helped make RoR. Ship of Theseus and all that.
And do you have any proof that Paul and Duncan never visited Holla Forums? I doubt it.

People very often ask "has anything came from these threads" or "here", just like they did ITT. And then people throw RoRs and Yanderes and Minecrafts everything that's ever been made by someone who goes or used to go to imageboards.

8ch is distinctly separate from 4chan, even though this /agdg/ was founded by people who came along with the exodus. I don't consider it the same thing, or even the same community, even if there's some overlap from the people. I consider them related, but not the same.

I see it the same way as if a group of people left 4chan and made an agdg thread in 9gag, and then people started claiming that RoR came from "those threads".

I honestly think that it's /agdg/'s unique identity that causes people to think this way, because agdg has a name and even a logo, even though it's really just a game dev thread. /agdg/ shares people with many other game dev communities, the only real difference is that these two threads use the agdg identity.

Oh fuck you made me dig through old /agdg/ folder.

I've used Fedora, Slackware, and Gentoo in the past, I just installed Ubuntu last time and slapped i3 on top in hopes of having a stable development environment.
It wasn't

I've done that before, but even killing PulseAudio and using plain ALSA does nothing to help. I'm not sticking with this shit anyways since JACK absolutely refuses to work no matter how many man pages and guides I consult.
Probably going with NixOS, will back up my stuff in a bit and then try installing it in VirtualBox. If I didn't rely on Nvidia's binary driver I'd probably install Alpine Linux instead and run Steam/applications that absolutely require glibc in a chroot.

yes

9/11, n o i c e.

The secret phrase is "we people rat i yes" then, if anyone of us succeeds he must include it as an easter egg

Quick question because I dont have time to fuck around and trial and error it right now and want to get right into working on it when I do have time…

In unity, what's the order of priority for and/or conditions in an if statement. meaning, if I have

Will that execute as

or

Alright I am working a bit on my damagefactor stuff but there is some problem I am running into it, I have a 37-75mm Armor Piercing projectile which has the Piercing damage factor but now I also have boolits I think it's the 7.62x54mm one or so and obviously a bullet cannot damage a armored vehicle at all at least not the tank type and similar vehicle types.

And what if the Quad-MachineGun/Coaxial-Machinegun has a AP,FMJ,HPJ etc… Bullet types?

This is from my MachineGun_Truck actor, I have added other DamageFactor types so that when it is used in other mods it has hopefully similar protection.
DamageFactor "Normal" ,0.9 DamageFactor "Extreme" ,0.9 DamageFactor "Drowning" ,0.0 DamageFactor "Falling" ,0.1 DamageFactor "Ice" ,0.0 DamageFactor "Fire" ,0.8 DamageFactor "Acid" ,0.9 DamageFactor "Poison" ,0 DamageFactor "PoisonCloud" ,0 DamageFactor "BioChem" ,0 DamageFactor "Energy" ,0.85 DamageFactor "Electric" ,0.85 DamageFactor "Reclaim" ,0.9 DamageFactor "Radiation" ,0.0 DamageFactor "Explosive" ,0.9 DamageFactor "PiercingExplosive" ,1 DamageFactor "Piercing" ,1 DamageFactor "Frag" ,0.8 DamageFactor "BulletAP" ,0.85 DamageFactor "Buckshot" ,0.75 DamageFactor "Build" ,0

I think every language has AND bind tighter.

Do you actually have that? Post gamer that we forgot about then.

Is there a script for GM anywhere for converting floating point to and from binary?

I will first animate that thing then I will later finish the missile turret variant.

wew lads

hmm, right it was actually easier than I thought. Oh well it is at least safe to say I 100% completed all my enemies to transition to pure blend format, atlasing and animation.

I like it how my enemy module is now only 3.1MiB big. My core mod is however 38,6MiB big, total size 41,7MiB big. Due to Zip/PK3 file format it is a bit smaller the WAD format is rarely useful and doesn't allow for good organization.

cool fps zombie game with ads and social networking, also multiplayer

should take you a month, right?

Can anyone give me the "Japanese level in a video game" webm with the drums and the guy going "YOOOOOOO"?

Oh boy, here we go again…
You've baffled me with some of these in the past and this one is no exception. Keep then coming.

this one's actually aggressively bad

...

This?

Wew

Weeeeeeew

I wanted to add some sort of hard to find reference to /agdg/. Haven't decided on the specifics yet though.

AND conditional operator has the higher precedence:
msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa691323(VS.71).aspx

Note that if operators have the same precedence, it evaluates from left to right.
Imo, just use a parenthesis to make it explicit, and easier to read.

How much is a 45 degree angle?

How can i tell if two kinematic2d bodies are colliding in godot? Documentation for this engine fucking sucks

(is_colliding() obviously doesn't work)

What

Seriously?

if(is_colliding):
if(get_collider() extends KinematicBody2D): return true
else: return false

Maybe something like this? I've been using kinematic bodies in 3D for player characters and they work fine for me.

Oh ok, directly translating to my native tongue has a different meaning so it was pretty strange.

[bootleg midi rock music intensifies]

is there a list of finished /agdg/ games

Yes, here:

.

Right here friendo:
homph.com/steam/

or for those wishing not to click

Lethal League and Deadbolt are quite a stretch since the devs of each had moved on from AGDG when they started working on those, even if the LL guys did post an early demo.

And please never say his name, I don't want to risk summoning him

gnu.org/software/leg/
gnu.org/software/rpge/

...

Summoning who? The cuntflap named in ?

Googum who is/was an infamous tripfag/namefag on the 4chan /agdg/ threads that helped to stir (admittedly hilarious) drama among other trip/namefags in /agdg/

AGS is pretty okay, apparently.

Any of the adventure games here (in particular Heroine's Quest and A Tale of Two Kingdoms) are good crystalshard.net/

Thanks, I've frankensteined something together now and can tell if my player is swinging if an enemy is colliding with it. This tree/node business takes some getting used to to say the least.

SHOT
GUN

is there anything better? is fl studio just something that lets you edit existing sounds, or is it like musecore where you can just write music but do more?

It's so shiny.

Nice, I'd really just fault you for it's materials, probably that thing on the top too, what is that?

*For most languages… The standard order of operations for basic fundamental operations is (first to last precedence):
- NOT ¬
- COMPARATOR/EQUIVALENCE (==, >=, ,

Not that familiar with it but it looks like fairly basic sheet-music oriented composition software. If that is your preferred way of working you should be able to export to midi, and import to any major software, FLStudio included, to mess around with instrumentation.
If you aren't particularly attached to standard notation, the differences between the different DAW software largely comes down to interface and workflow. FLStudio was originally designed to imitate DJ sequencers and drum pads, Reason to imitate the process of actually hooking up control voltage inputs and outputs on a rack, Ableton was designed specifically for live multitrack performance and session recording, and so on.
You can write music in any of them.

It's a complete audio production software that you can use to compose music, particularly electronic. Like most audio production suites, it supports VST plugins (virtual instruments/synthesizers) and allows you to organize the individual pieces you create with these plugins into complete songs. There are other popular audio production programs such as Ableton Live but many amateurs (such as myself) prefer to dive into FL Studio because it isn't as intimidating, which isn't to say the FL Studio lacks the professional aspects it needs.

Tl;DR it's what DJs use to make obnoxious EDM songs among other things but can really be used for any type of audio production.

I usually just use Audacity when I need sound effects because its interface is more conducive to that endeavor than a fully fledged audio production system. youtube.com/watch?v=uxV6F1jDV_4

After I learned how to use the basic systems in FL Studio that one needs to know to start making songs, I watched the attached video series for learning how to create my own sounds. The specific VST I like to use is Harmor (one popular synthesizer VST that comes with packaged with FL Studio 11 but there are countless others). And I used musictheory.net/ to learn the basic mechanics of song construction.

I'm not very good at making music yet but I'm on my way. After that I just need to learn how to do muh art and learn blender beyond subdividing and extruding shitty ms paint guns.

It's gonna be rendered to a 640x480 sprite, who cares.

Can sprites rotate smoothly in Gamemaker or will it look horrifically pixely?

...

dunno if it just me but it somehow reminds me the Double-Barrel Shotgun from Serious Sam TFE.

Dope shotgun, if you're looking to make the animation look better make the barrel swinging down slower and have it snap back up quickly

So… RPG Maker is at a 90% discount on Steam. I have no knowledge about how to make a game, so would purchasing it and starting from there be good?

If you haven't already started, it probably won't make you either.

Learn how to program and make clones of really simple games before you work on your dream game. Godot costs nothing and uses a the language it uses borrows a lot of Python's syntax which makes it very easy to learn. Plus it lets you have something playable pretty fast which is important when starting out.

RPG maker is way too locked down for my own liking.

has someone made a Knytt clone starring Gondola yet? if not, which finngolian do I have to pay in salmiakki schnapps and cigarettes to get one made?

Well, it is good to make fast RPGs, so that's why I asked if it was worth 6 €.

Dope as fuck model. Maybe try a bit of an overshoot like in pic related

I really have to disagree with you. While RPG maker can be basic, it can get really out of control once you start fucking around with the scripts. Fuck, I even saw someone make a RHYTHM GAME out of rpgmaker. some furries even made a vn out of rpgmaker, ableit an incredibly shit vn

You CAN technically make an rpg super easily. However, to make an rpgmaker game that isn't like every other rpgmaker game, it takes quite a bit of effort.

That being said, it's not too hard, as there is a metric fuckton of pre-made scripts and tilesets that you can find on the various communities for rpgmaker vx ace.

However, since so many people have made so many shit games with rpgmaker, it has a very poor reputation, and expect plenty of people to be turned off by the very notion that you made your game in it.

It's used to make fast RPGs that all feel and look like RPGMaker games. People will dismiss your game for feeling or looking like an RPGMaker game, especially if it's not both free AND FOTM. Making an RPGMaker game NOT feel like an RPGMaker game costs a lot of time and effort with a shitty language and codebase last time I checked at least, making it not a "fast RPG making" engine.
That said, 6 jewros is pretty cheap so feel free to buy it and see for yourself.

Ah, I forgot you may be looking at MV, which is honestly a bit better, as it naturally supports higher resolutions without the need to hardcode it, as well as the ability to publish games for mobile devices.

I get that, and I guess Gamemaker isn't any better, right? I just want to make a 'survival horror' about a woman lost in the woods evading orcs and mythological monsters and then make in gamemaker after I get some experience a beat'em up sequel about one of those orcs starting to explore and loot the modern city that woman came from.

Game maker is a little bit better and a little bit worse. Personally, I find RPGMaker has a vastly superior UI, as well as a better workflow. GM also needs to run through it's own launcher and browser, and it's all jsut a complete mess.

Technically, GM is the more 'powerful' of the two, as well as the more popular. Though for what you want to do, RPGMaker will do just fine honestly.

Gamemaker can do everything RPG maker can and more. It's arguably the best 2D engine unfortunately. It doesn't give you any kind of game template though so you'll have to make whatever you want to make from scratch.

You should just get it and see how you feel, unless you're a poorfag who can't afford food after spending and extra 6$. I got started with an UI-based engine called The Games Factory, it made it much easier to get into game dev and show me what it's like, but the engine itself is shit that I would never recommend anyone to use.

use mint for desktop, centos for server stuff.
anything else is a meme.

So in game maker if I want monsters to track smell/noise I would need to spawn am object for them too "see" right? Or is there a better way to do it?

I have no idea how Gamemaker works but in that case it might work if you make the "smell actor" act gaseous.

Well, I'll see later.

I guess it would be hell to make an actual vertical battle system where the characters do their battle animations? also a run or spring button.

i've been bashing my head at a framerate issue for over a week
when i sent units to attack a single unit, once they reach him, they'd end up recalculating their path over a thousand times or so, and that obviously killed framerate
so today i finally figured out how to fix that
aside from that, i've still got some issues. there's still the occasional unexplained framerate drop
and there's a huge framerate drop if units have to path to a nearly surrounded by buildings area
and i still can't balance out hammers and spears

Factorio devs modified their pathfinding, maybe their dev blog for it will give you a few ideas if you're still running into problems since they deal with mass unit movement too.

factorio.com/blog/post/fff-117
factorio.com/blog/post/fff-121

two things i got from that:
negative path cache - saves unreachable paths, instantly tells a unit that a path is unreachable, if it's in the cache
reusing paths in a cache - use an existing path from point A to X, and then calculate the rest from X to whatever the initial goal is
i've got issues with these though, the negative path cache isn't accurate if the path suddenly becomes clear (the blocking building gets destroyed)
and i have no idea how to reuse the paths.
besides, for my issue with the buildings, i don't actually know why it fucks up the framerate. technically, there is an entrance through which units can walk, and even if there wasn't, it still shouldn't kill framerate that much to find a path there, since i only search through 250 nodes per frame

reset the cache everytime the map changes
this isn't very good for a very dynamic map

that includes units getting killed
and that happens a lot
in which case, i'd have to wonder why i'd even bother with a cache, it would get wiped nearly instantly in a fight

i've made an effect to make the player look like he's walking in an infinite plane, what should i do next?
the dungbeetle thing is out of the question as i've decided that dungbeetles are tumblr-pandering

we have our secret phrase, we just have to make sure it isn't forgotten during our lifetime, at least

uwot

actually that doesn't include units getting killed
you should be including units as obstacles or any moving parts really

Not just when they get killed, any time they move. Caches are completely useless for you, unless you make a separate algorithm for avoiding terrain and units.
I don't remember, are you still using A* or did you implement JPS? That might make the impact less, though that's patching up the problem instead of fixing it.

You don't get to decide what features someone implements, user.

alright, i guess i can do that, it's a minor optimization

i'm still using regular A*, with the difference that i only search a certain amount of nodes per frame so that framerate doesn't get clogged too much on long searches, although it still doesn't help my situation

He means the edit with the Boku No Pico reaction guy screaming yoooooooooooaaahhhhhh

so, i'm reading from harablog.wordpress.com/2011/09/07/jump-point-search/
the way i understand it, JPS ignores neighbors based on the direction from the last node to the current one
so in essence, we're cutting down the searched nodes by at least 3 times
how helpful is this towards performance?

I have that too.

Have you made anything with those software? I can't recall any gud games coming from there since I have yet to see it.

How much it cuts down depends on particular implementation and heuristic you used for A*, but some numbers I've seen used before are 3-15x faster with just the addition of JPS. There are more optimizations you could do, but they usually don't work together with dynamic maps.

alright, i guess my next task is to rework my A* to use JPS then
if it really is 3-15 times faster, then i mind as well

The easiest way i can thin of is

FLStudio is a complete suite with support for all kinds of different plugins.

Everything in this track was done within FLStudio 11 using only plugins in the program.

clyp.it/wtljhgdl

Holla Forums how bad is it that I want to AGDG on the Nintendo Switch?

Don't be a faggot and just wait for the damn thing to be out before making any assumptions. Maybe it'll be great. Maybe it'll be utter shit. Maybe it'll be something in between. Who knows at this point.
I hope this thing becomes successful to make local multiplayer a common thing again.

Pretty sure than an SDK is going to cost you a pretty penny. Aside from that I might be interested too.

Holla Forums seems to already be shitting on the thing, preemptively. I'm putting some positive vibes out there for this thing, if only for local multiplayer.

Not 3rd party, but true AGDG. MS opened it up for a bit on the 360, Sony on the Vita, so there is some small hope of getting fucked after a few years of tepid support.

porgersssss

These are actual in-game screenshots, unlike the mockups from last week. Somehow in the process of adding new features, a shitload of bugs popped up in things I could swear I didn't even touch. Spent a good few days just doing debugging, somebody please kill me.

Looks fucking sweet.
But why

I want to fuck those graphics.

mementor pls go

Man is this sexy

goddamnit

Just put memes in it, and eventually, inspiration will come

put cool guns that are fun to use

It doesn't matter, cool guns will fix it.

Pepe cannons aren't out of the question. That gives me something to figure out as well since I need to figure out a better way to implement weapons since they're currently part of the character sprites.

If we are sharing, I made this with FL Studio as well, though I used some soundfonts that don't come with it.

clyp.it/fb2qrnkf

Pepe cannons it is then, I'm eager to see how this unfolds

Continuing with my gynoid project, I took a pre-made low polygon body but I am adding some stuff, what do you think? does it look nice in comparison?

It was smoothed only once in Maya, I don't want to add too many polys, maybe I will do some cleanup in certain parts.

woops, wrong file

Huh, I never knew I wanted this, now that I think about it, I never gave much thought to how a robot girl's feet would be, it's looking pretty nice user.

pic related is still the series with the best robot feet bar none

wow I'm stoked

Have you been gay up until now or something?

I'm having a problem in UE4. When I try to play my game the editor freezes and won't start the game or let me do anything else in the editor. Searching the forums brings up nothing of value. I deleted the assets I had made before the freeze but it changed nothing. I clicked play and left it for a couple of hours and when I come back it's still frozen. This doesn't happen with any of my other UE4 projects, just this one. does anyone know what could be causing this? Will I have to create a new project and migrate the assets over to keep working on it?

are you using some kind of infinite loop in an update event?

I checked for that but I couldn't find anything I'll check again just in case I missed something.

I'm not one of those weirdos that gets turned on by feet, so naturally I didn't really cared about what was the robot girl using for standing as long as it had all of the right equiment on the important places, like the girls in pic related, but now I kinda see the robotic toes usefulness, I mean, a footjob with fuckhuge megaman X style feet could be pretty dangerous.

Sage for double post.
I created a game level with literally nothing in it and it still froze. I think the project somehow got corrupted. Time to start migrating assets…

...

why did you have to remind me

youtube.com/watch?v=wH4lvVvjQnc

did I just enter an alternate reality of programming?

Get away from the computer while you still can, it's bound to blow up any second.

Got distracted by more nifty detail stuff. One day I'll get my core meshing/terrain system done so I can start implementing game mechanics that require it…
Love coding shaders though, they're definitely one of the more "instant gratification" parts of game dev.

Also need to add LoD… but that I'll do later (on the to-do list).

Ditched the custom parallax method for now, as seen here >>10989800 for now.
May experiment with it later though, as I like it more (especially so when I removed the grainy-ness), and it could be part of the "stylized" but realistic-esque look I'm going for.

if you put memes in your games then maybe people might actually give a shit

Yeah, and don't forget to acquire anthony burch for your meme team :^)

Were sprites from this game more likely to be hand drawn for every single angle or rendered in 3d from a single base model from multiple angles? These are ripped from an obvious game and I like the style and would like to modify it to my liking.
Fucking art is killing me goddamn this should be the easy part.

Can't tell anything from how fucking tiny the resolution of those pictures are.

drawn

That's what I figure. I'm just having a hell of a time trying to do the rotations in my head. I guess that's why artfags exist and why desperate programmers become artfags themselves. Seems like that's where I'm headed.

I think the legs are done, well, the base, I still have to decide if the joints will be simulated with texture or maybe I should use polygons.

Why don't you focus on what the game will be like before fleshing out the details of your polygonal waifu before you end up like that other sad fuck doing a robo-cunt slash-em-up game with jiggly ass and big feet.

Because I am not aiming for a game in a sense right now, I am focusing on the aesthetics right now, hell, maybe someone will want to use said waifu as a placeholder later.

IT'S A TRAP, RUN!!

On that note, for anyone doing 3D work here, how do you deal with placeholder models vs simpler placeholder 2d graphics? For instance, animations. If you take someone else's shitty gynoid model and rig it and animate it for your game, don't you have to throw all of that work out when you replace the model? New model, new bones, new weighting, new animation movement range/duration/etc? How does that work? That sort of thinking has kept me away from 3D for a while now.

Will there be a loli option?

just use a placeholder everything, duh.

Once I learn enough about blend shapes, yeah.

Please don't be the Roll feet poster from the other thread.

You got my attention, I'll be cheering you on from now on.

No, I wasn't aware there were other Roll fans here in /agdg/, but hey, the more the merrier

You can, for example, take my full model and upload it to Mixamo auto rigger, then download it again with the option to use stuff like UE4 skeleton or Mixamo's which also has a tool for easy animation controls in Maya.

Ready for the ball joints, this will be a little complicated.

John Paul II approves this post

Upon second thought, nah, no ball joints, I will just use normal and bump maps to add some stuff.

I do it by making the best model that I can at the moment, following your advice in , with a full featured rig so that the animation can be reused for another model.
Then I get chewed out by the same guy on the same ID for following his own advice, because MUH FEET REEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Who chews on you? just because the robot feet thingy? Also, this is the final model for now, I may add accessories later but those will be independent of the model.

Less than 10,000 triangles, I think this is quite good.

Shit! I wish Maya gave me better preview renders so I wouldn't need to crop stuff on paint.

...

Fuck off you stupid nigger

Applying for game dev internship at local indie company, mainly to see what the field is even like, rather than go exclusively off rumors of it being hell.

Worried about:

My strengths are that I actually made OpenGL programs before, know about DoD and how companies like Ubisoft structure their programs, I'm getting a minor in math and I'm not a game design degree sucker.

Elaborate? Can this rig be modified later? I don't imagine the final model will have the exact same size or proportions, which I imagine would throw off the animations, no?

Was it that obvious? お姉さん、鋭い！

fresh off the boat, are we?
I'll let you in on a little secret…

A(mateur)
G(ame)
D(evelopment)
G(eneral)

I'm working a shitty grocery job, not as bad as raw stocking or checking, but I'd kill to be doing anything programming related as an actual living, no matter how lousy.
Then again I'm quitting said job on the 1st.

That's the thing. Due to all the shit I've done I have a bunch of other programming options that aren't games.

Those options won't all magically vanish because you applied for an internship at a game dev company.

Blender is very lenient about this (unlike Maya), while Unity makes it possible but tedious.
Modifying the bind pose only requires resaving every FBX; that can be automated. However; adding, removing, renaming and reparenting bones in Blender breaks the player prefab.
While the animators in both programs look for the bones by their names, Unity ties the SkinnedMeshRenderer to internal bone IDs.

As for throwing off the animations, correct use of IK and FK prevents that for the most part.

This will backfire when your normal maps are stretched in a zigzag pattern by the triangulated mesh.

I think I know what you mean, but I won't be using them in some conflicting areas, I will use some other "joint effect instead of simulating ball joints.

I spent half a year making game just for myself, didn't I?

what is it about

Always make your games for yourself.
If other people play them, that's just a bonus.

How is it that people are crawling at your feet wanting to contribute to your game, but you still think nobody cares about it?

It's a simplistic dungeon crawler with monster girls.

They want to help because they're just cool like that but it doesn't seem like they actually want to play the final product.

I like how that sounds, tell me about your loli monster girls

I'd play the fuck out of it

Are you the guy with the dungeon crawler on /monster/?

Depends on the levels of degeneracy, but if it was made by competent and passionate people it can only be good user. Curious to see what you're producing.

Yes.

There are like 4 lolis in total.

My maps are pretty shit and balance is fucked I was never a good DM.

I'm sold, show me something

Please shill a link once it's available user.

gitgud.io/blux/lizardry/tree/master/sprites
All current sprites, has about 2 lolis at this stage.
Please don't look at the code it wasn't meant for mortal eyes

I'M GONNA DO IT
I'M GONNA LOOK AT THE CODE

I warned you.

...

I claim goth loli dark angel healer for myself

There's quite some nice stuff in there. Is the story good or just simple smut ? I love when my porn actually makes me feel emotions.

Wow, user, really didn't expect to see you outside of /monster/, nice work so far.

This tbh

Why don't you post in >>>/agdg/?

Stop being a giant faggot and fap normally like the rest of us.
And that's coming from one of your friends.
Hi.

That will depend on writefags but for now all sex is consensual except for rape. Story is direct spoof of Wizardry - chessire cat sent you to dungeon to recover magical amulet that was stolen by her arch nemesis. If you succeed and return with amulet, the mad cat will reward you with memes

I chuckled. The rest of cunt.lua made me cry though.

Now that's an old picture I didn't think I'd have to dig back up
Anyway don't hesitate to share progress when you're further done, user.

I spilled all my spaghetti in control. I know it's shit code but the game basically started as top view sokoban clone with RPG elements and somehow I changed it into dungeon crawler after I had controls already done.

I'm always here

Way to ruin the spoiler

Because it's dead

There is really no point on going there, a lot of people here might find the thread by chance scrolling through the frontpage and be interested in a game being developed, or get the feel of doing a game themselves, these people would not see that if we are on our own board. Also, there really is no need to fragmenting our community, since it's not big enough for it to be a problem. If the threads gets too fast for us to actually discuss apropiately I think that would be the time for us to migrate to our own board, but as it's stand we are still far from that.

are-
are these memes
dank?

Beause fuck if they are I'm preordering right now.
But seriously user, I really like the look of this, keep updating us

THIS

Creating boards before the previous one(s) have sufficient traffic is one of the biggest flaws of Holla Forums. That's why the art boards are dead shit too, because there's like 7 of them even though there's hardly enough traffic to keep one alive. For example there's literally no reason to have an animation general in one of the art boards, but instead people would rather split into /ani/ and then they're both dead.

It's good for tutorial and resources threads or threads for specific project threads but it's too slow for general discussion.

...

Only the dankest and rarest. I'm posting updates in the /monster/ thread and I try to keep repo up to date

You are a good man monstergirls-user

You only say that because you haven't had your party wiped on second floor as a result of zombie rape yet

...

I like to think of the /agdg/ board as a kind of archive
You can make a thread about your game their with a link and you know it will always be there
Since the board is dead
So then if people wanna find your game to just control+f in the agdg catalog for a link
And then maybe you answer some question once in a while or something.

Have you all prayed to your lord and savior lately, /agdg/?

This nigga hasn't programmed anything. My lord and savior is Stallmanu for his ethics and memetic properties.

can your lord and savior choke a nigger?

>>>/agdg/23658

here's mine
i should note that the project is pretty much abandoned though
>>>/agdg/26836

F

Here's my first attempt at a sprite, drew some inspiration from Harvest Moon / Pokemon.

Thoughts or ways to improve?

super cute. i hope the actual animation will be one as well

kinda cute, there's still room for improvement though. Are you going to make an RPG?

Always found the DS to be comfy as fuck, so I've been debating on whether or not to have low poly models, although my game being first person might just shoot me in the foot.

Struggling to explain the bunnyhop as a mechanic in the lore of my game.

Can't think of anything. Note that my game does not involve magic, only cyberpunk and lowkey futurism.

Motherlike AI has taken control of Earth, and due to sheer intelligence and a genuine desire to nurture humanity as though it is her child, it has created a perfect utopia.

Humans have been effectively rendered immortal with copies of their consciousness being uploaded to a mass storage, and the AI having developed a means to grow human bodies for the consciousness to inhabit at will.

However… results in the need to stage the only one pit of brutality, ultraviolence, primal murderfuckery of pure primal urges - .

CS+Quake type gameplay + skilled movement.

Now I just have to explain people being able to do this shit without resorting to a lazy superhightech explanation.

Any ideas folks? I'm all fucking ears.

Was thinking of doing something like having graphics like the tf2 low-poly, but I kinda like how the model I came up with came out

Make it 2D and then explain to them it just werks.

t. not Todd Howard

depends on how you do it. do you plan to have AA? are the textures going to be high contrast? what kind of style is it you're going for? and if so, does it effect the gameplay (lets say you wanted competitive garbo)

Stylize the bunnyhop animations maybe, then you will be able to find an interesting explanation, unless you wanna go to the "everything is actually a simulation" thing.

Why not go to the MGS1 aesthetic direction? I want to do that for a possible Battlefront knockoff myself.

Rocket shoes powered by kinetic energy.

I wanted to do a thief-like stealth game with a real high-contrast world so it's easy to spot the shadows. I don't want Thief graphics though because the game is ugly as sin, however ds-tier poly does have some charm and would make being a one-man dev more realistic.

I'm worried about view models mainly. I haven't seen a first person low-poly game where it didn't look like ass.

I could possibly due what valve did, where they have super high-poly viewmodels super low-poly world models, but then I have to worry about how it all meshes together.

lazy, and it also devalues the ingame events

tbh it would look like a clusterfuck. Also doesn't work with a very reserved, beige and dusty cyberpunk environment

I'm not sure if this belongs in this thread or not but I have a question for a dev who has worked for a big company before. Are the points made by pic related accurate. And if this is all true then how did it become this bad?

I'm asking because the retarded kid in me still wants to make games even after reading that most devs are incompetent and treated like shit

Low poly and hi-res textures make my dick hard

Our universe might be a simulation, does that devalue your existence for some reason?
No, it remains just as meaningless as ever.

Just consider how many polys a character model has compared to a viewmodel, I don't think you should use the same polycount from a 3rd person character's arm in a 1st person character's arm.

The only other justification given your premise is human instincts and reflexes being "optimized" by all that time being "stored" in a virtual environment, let's just say, their minds have a lot of time to apply and test different logical solutions to other problems, it may sound crazy but the usual explanation for the skill could apply to that game's world (people learning to become a smaller and harder to hit target)

being in the air means reduced friction?

An average player won't really think of that, though. I am myself a nihilist but I realize the importance of the game hyping itself up through lore.

How do characters accelerate themselves by doing the the curvy movements in midair aka strafejumps?

You're not going to be making games in a big studio, you'll be a slave to a chaotic design document that keeps changing all the time and shitty work environment and ridiculous deadlines that force you to release awkward and broken shit because you aren't given enough time to do anything properly. Not to mention there will be 800 other people working on the game, which is another way of saying that your contribution will be 1/800 of the actual game.

Realistically it's totally impossible unless you add like rocket boosters or something
It may be feasibly to do this with some weird counter balance to change the center of gravity mid jump.
It's worth nothing that bunnyhopping kinda makes sense in a straghtline
A lot of animals kinda do this though they usually don't go that high

Alright, but how do you make a game by yourself/with a small amount of people without coming over like a pretentious hipster indieshit dev?

Don't be a pretentious hipster indieshit dev?

Are you serious?

Just make a game. That's it.

Becoming pretentious indieshit hipster has nothing to do with making games. There's just a large amount of overlap between pretentious hipsters and game development because game dev is hip these days.

Lowpoly can look really good if done properly, but it presents a lot of deformation problems. If you look closely in old games like Smash Bros., Morrowind, and Metal Gear Solid you'll notice most limbs are actually made up of separate pieces that overlap at the joints. Having a super lowpoly character model that is entirely one piece drastically limits deformation range.

Use less colors. I see you re-used her hair color for the leathery bits, which is good, but you can still cut down the number of colors. As a rule of thumb, eliminate any colors that looks too similar to another.
Your colors are a bit washed out, but I had the same problem for a long time. Maybe try using a pre-made color palette for starters.
Try adding shadows, like on her face/below her hair, and avoid 'noisy' textures like her hair. It gives stuff more volume and makes it easier to read.
Also, it kinda looks like you saved it as a JPG at some point? There's a bunch of weird artifacts, don't know what that's about.

I went over your sprite, maybe it helps you. I took colors from the 3rd pic.

Not bad for a start. Outline with darker colours of the same hue; try not to use black. Also maintain a consistent outline around the whole shape. Remove any colours that are too similar to others- Limit the colours you use to as few as possible.

pic related is an example of some improvement. at work though can't do much

Finally got a bunch of shit done both server side and client side. Obviously need to get class sprites in, juice/feedback, health over other players if damaged, etc, etc but at least somewhat playable now. Also need to toy with interpolation from last known velocities to help get rid of the jitters (hopefully).

Jumping repeatedly starts you flipping. As you flip, you move faster because you're like a mid-air wheel.

...

You know those leg braces that lets people jump really high? Like the ones Chell in Portal has on. Maybe something like that.

I forgot to mention, it's probably also a good idea to lighten up the shadow- have it 50% opacity or so, and use more strongly contrasting colours for shading.

Your sprite is really well done, but from the looks of it you've changed the base design the user was going for which was solid already.

I'm honestly going to sound like a picky cunt but I'm a perfectionist and I'm sorry for being this selective

leg braces would be too invasive in character design. Its something that would be way too overpowering when implementing various ideas.

I interpreted the sprite differently and tried to make it easier to read based on what I saw. That's always a danger with pixel art, which is why you have to put legibility above everything else.

I figured you could stylize them to look however you want them to, but fair enough. I honestly wouldn't worry too much about finding a good explanation as long as it's believable and looks cool.

your game is flawed

...

Thanks so much guys, and yep I'm gunning for a simple top down rpg with simple zelda-ish combat and projectile based magic

Thanks guys, this really helps!

There is no perfect game.

Hello again. RPG Maker interested user again. I have another day to choose to purchase RPG Maker Ace VX or if I should wait for the 90% discount for RPG Maker MV.

The MV version seems a bit more complete, but I would like your opinions.

...

For 5 €… maybe.

i wouldn't use it even if you payed me

So… at least anyone can tell me what is the difference between Ace VX and MV?

...

I want to slap you through the screen

>that screen resolution
How can you live with yourself?

Yes. Place to dump art. Eh, it's not like it's from a cancer channel. Don't play it anymore, but it serves a constant reminder of how much time I lost playing it. I just barely use it and I'm too lazy to switch to Discord. What?

Slap's probably deserved, in any case.

Good question.

Where can I get ideas for magical elements?

Particularly I'm looking for combinations of elements, such as water+air = ice. I want to decide what elements and how many I want, but I'm kind of drawing a blank.

Hey anons, Is there someone who passed Greenlight here? I want to know how did you marketed your games and all that mess, I'm very bad at marketing and I would appreciate some advice.

Hey, I want to make a fighting game that mimics what would be possible within the limitations of Capcom's CPS-III system. I have little to no prior experience in programming or art. Is this a bad idea?

It will be extremely difficult and painful.
But if you're that determined, then get to it.

Can anyone here into basic A*?

I translated the pseudocode here (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A*_search_algorithm) to work with my engine, but the results are kind of baffling. It's clear I've either mistyped something or misunderstood something. but I can't see what it is.
Basically, it looks like the algorithm is stopping halfway for some reason. In the screencaps, "heuristic dist" is the calculated number of nodes that should be traversed, and "node dist" is the actual number of nodes in the stack spat out by the algorithm.
The route the algorithm spits out is also highlighted in red.

Any codefags who can help?

Thanks man, what do you think of this stance?

yes

At least he's using Win7 and not 10

Don't talk shit about Paint.

Whats with all the retards and A*? It's a quicksort-tier algorithm you should be able to implement after the first week or two of any programming course, yet I swear we get some nigger who can't do it every single thread. Is it because you're trying to hack it into some shitty engine in a proprietary scripting language or what? This shit drives me up the wall. You're never going to finish your game anyway, so put it on hold for a month or two while you learn some basic algorithms and data structures for fuck's sake. Not calling you out in particular though.

What do your pictures even mean? Where are your start and end points? Start is 0,0 and end is where the text is? Post your fucking code too before asking what's wrong with it.

proportions are off. biceps are too long and so are the abs. Shoulders are too wide.

most people here are newbies or cant program data structures that well, implementing A* is a big achievement if you arent good at data structures

?

I've never taken a programming course, for starters, other than intro to C. I'm mostly teaching myself as I encounter shit, and when shit goes wrong, I sometimes don't have enough experience yet to adequately know why shit don't work. If it's something simple, I can generally just semi-randomly shuffle things around until things work and then work backwards from my solution to figure out why it's a solution, but I don't full understand the A* algorithm as it's laid out there, so that's difficult in this case.

Start is (0,0), and end is where the cursor is hovering, which is still circled by the highlighted neighbor cells. That was pretty unclear, my bad. I still have lots of debug stuff on, since implementing this hex grid has taken me nearly a month so far and it's not even really working yet.

I didn't post code because I was waiting to see if anyone actually was interested in helping first. I'll put it in a pastebin: (pastebin.com/Rc6VBefG)

It's written in gamemaker's gml language, which is similar to fuck only knows. Python maybe?

better. try shortening up his left bicep and narrowing his shoulders a bit and you'll be great

meant to reply to:

Just having one of those nights.

He's supposed to have ludicrously wide shoulders, to emphasize his masculinity, 'cause the boy band hair isn't doing him any favors.

Problem is game programming is difficult and broad in scope. In short, you don't just need to know programming, but you need to be good at it (in order to do a whole fuckton of it in a short amount of time) but you also need to know a wide breadth of programming related shit (physics, math, graphics, etc). I think I'm more annoyed by the fact that people think they can do it (make a game) without knowing anything, as if they'll pick it up as they go. Now I'm not saying "study programming for 10 years before making your game" but there has to be some middle ground between that and "You don't need to know programming, you can just use blueprints!"

Pic related is a screencap I found while looking for my old A* experiments. Still cant find the actual code though.

I have been learning a lot as I go, by making things with a lot of mistakes in them, and then seeing what the mistakes were

pic related is my game, for reference. The code is using the tutorial about BSP compilers as a base for the rest of the engine, it has lots of problems, and I still dont completely understand the BSP data structure, at least not well enough to write my own compiler, but I am limping through.

I do think you have to learn things as you go along to some extent, not that you can learn everything as you go along, but if you have a basis in programming you can come out with a poor product, but an ok understanding. Programming books from what I have read dont tell you how to make a project with over 2k lines of code (i forget how many lines my project has), but you learn how to keep that kind of thing from turning into a mess by making a mess at first and then seeing what you did wrong.

The funny thing is that I've successfully implemented A* before in C# about 5 years ago, when I was dicking around trying to learn various concepts. I don't have that project data anymore, and it took me a few weeks to get it working correctly that time, too. It's been a long time since then, but I've managed to get the algorithm half-working in only a few hours, whereas it took me days to just translate the pseudocode into non-gibberish C# back then. I'm definitely making progress.

Learning is an iterative process; programming doubly so. Gotta keep throwing shit at the wall, keep what sticks and discard what doesn't.
It's surprising to me that there's always such an elitist mindset surrounding programming, though. It doesn't matter what forum you go to, asking for help generally earns you either several pages of condescension, or a bunch of people telling you to give up or try something differently, without ever explaining the crucial detail: why.

I'm pretty used to it by now, so I don't mind if people want to shit all over me for seeking help, but it's not going to stop me from asking for help every single time I have a problem. Giving up is the only way to make sure you never make any progress, after all. If I'm lucky, and I manage to learn what I need to learn, I'm hoping to have this game done in 2-4 years.

A few weeks? IIRC the jist of A* is: check nodes in the direction of the goal. Upon hitting an obstacle or something, search adjacent spaces, prioritizing those with the lowest Euclidean distance to the goal. Recurse and shit." Probably took me an hour. If that's even A*. Pretty sure that's how it worked, and if the pic is how I remember, with the blue numbers showing explored spaces and their Manhattan distance from the start, it was pretty fast.

Right, that's what my algorithm is doing. It's just not doing it all the way like it's supposed to. It stops short for some reason.
I've looked through the code multiple times, and everything looks right, so I'm honestly at a loss.

I'm glad A* is super easy for you, though, user. You're pretty great.

Relax. I just think in the whole spectrum of popluar algorithms out there, it falls towards the easy end. I'd like to try to debug your implementation but, this GML needs game maker to run? Have you tried whipping up a testbed in python or similar? That's what I do when testing a new algorithm. Python and something like pygame for a quick visualization. Try something like that and see if the fault is in your understanding of the algorithm or in your particular implementation… is my only suggestion since I can't run the code you posted.

That's actually a pretty good idea. I'll do that, thanks user.

That and I'm not trying to shit on you in particular or be elitist. The thing is, I've been programming as a hobbyist for years and I don't feel I'm ready to tackle any kind of serious game I want to make (I've done tons of practice, though. Tic tac toe, hangman, connect 4, pong, card games, billiards, rogue-like-likes, platforming, etc.) So when reading these threads I'll see user A post "guys I can't figure out how to do to X" and I think "well duh, use this datastructure and this pseudocode and you're gold" and next thread user B will post "how the fuck are you supposed to X in Y game? It keeps bugging out on me" and of course I know the answer to that too. Then user C posts something I know nothing about. So I don't feel like some hot shit because I can do what A and B are trying to do, because I know I can't do what C is trying to do yet. And that's game programming. So when people come in and say they can't do A at all, I extrapolate that naturally they can't do B, C, D, E, etc. which are part of game programming and harder than A, and I recommend they get some serious programming practice in before pushing on.

Feel free to just ignore me though, because I'm just a nodev who lacks the courage to sink the remaining few good years of my life (I'm 30) into something with a low chance of payoff (monetary or otherwise) when the deeper I get into it, the bleaker things get for a solo dev (hardware limitations, user expectations, labor involved in content creation, the uncanny valley, inherent network latencies, etc. etc.)

I get you, and you and I are actually the same age. I don't feel like I'm ready to tackle a serious game, either. I figure any project I undertake has at least a 95% chance of failure and/or abandonment, but as long as I learn from each one, eventually that failure rate will decrease and something will get finished.
I may be a nodev all my life, but unless I actually commit to working towards a goal, that's definitely all I'll ever be.

A* is based on Dijkstra's algorithm, and is just applying a heuristic (cost based approach) to the algorithm.
Look at that, i.e. the original algorithm, and also maybe read a few sections from books that are focused on application of A*, and node based pathfinding algorithms in a "game" setting.
A book I recommend is "Artificial Intelligence for Games". You can find a PDF online, and it's a worthwhile read.
Go over Dijkstra's algorithm, and node based pathfinding in the book (chapter 4).

Basically, the core concept I'm trying to get across, is that I recommend you understand the core concepts first, knowing why it works, and then you can figure out the how it works for applying it to code.
I.e. realize the differences between an engineer, and a codemonkey; as in gamedev you're required to be good at both!

Well, any hobby that requires skill/knowledge is like that.

It's mostly the point that people come into gamedev with an idealistic + naive mindset, and hope that the task of "just like make game" is a simple one.
As this user mentioned it's a multi-disciplined hobby, that requires a broad scope of knowledge to truly excel in game dev, and if one lacks that knowledge then you're expected - by now - to at least have one of the fundamental lessons of programming down; that is, you know how to find learning resources, absorb all you can, and refine your skills until you're competent. As being a proficient programmer - i.e. a fundamental skill to being an indie, or a competent 1MA - is to know your stuff, but to also know where/how to look to make up for any lack of knowledge you have.

Asking questions is fine, imo, and I tend to only try to ask good questions every once and awhile if I'm in need of someone's knowledge that can give me a different perspective; be it on something I'm just starting to learn, or am thinking about trying out.

Initial quote meant for

no point in saging for correction

holy shit go make a fucking game already you faggot

This is why we try not to bump the thread at ~4am EST. Feel free to hit up my cell anytime though,

Well, don't do it as a fulltime job user, kek.
Just do it as a hobby. It's super fun, and is a really rewarding hobby imo.
Make what you want, i.e. full creative control, and only keep going at it if it's what you enjoy; as it's not for everyone. Imo I'm glad I found this hobby, and pushed myself into getting over that initial - steep - learning curve; as I now know this is what I'm meant to do in my life for what fulfills me the most.
Also, why would you care about the monetary aspect if it's just a hobby (monetary aspect is a nice side-effect, imo), and you obviously love vidya or why else would you be here?

I'm 31 and I just gave notice at my job so I can chase goals, including gamedev or off myself, whichever comes first
Don't be a faggot, just like make game

I really don't want to go full /r9k/ on everyone, but I already have a full-time job. So in this sense, developing a game means foregoing meaningful relationships with my family (some of whom will die soon), not having children (wew white genocide), and not securing a career (hope I don't develop health problems cuz I don't have health insurance!, etc. etc.)

You're not alone, that much is obvious, right?

I can appreciate what you're saying. I find that my problem is often the other way around: I understand the concept of what I'm trying to do, but I struggle to twist the programming language into the correct shape to make it happen.
I'm also finding debugging frustrating in gamemaker, since its debug tools are really janky and you can't even properly track variables, for example. That's why I've hacked my code up so much with debug overlays giving real-time data displays all over everything.

The big lesson I learned from my C course long ago, was to break the problem down, visualize what it's doing in some concrete way, and then just walk through it until you see the segment that's not doing what it should be doing.
With gamemaker, again, I find it really difficult to do this, since you're essentially working with nothing but untyped variables holding pointers. Things become abstract really quickly, and when something's not working correctly, it can often be extremely confusing as to why.

A small example I ran into last week: I had written a piece of code to track what I click on, so that I could click shit in my game. Basic as hell, I know, but needs must. So I saved the object clicked to a variable obj_clicked, and used a dot operator or whatever it's called ti access its data to make it change color. Just to test it out: "obj_clicked.color = red" for example. This would work about half the time. The other half of the time, it would always change another specific object red for no reason.
So I tried the "with" construction gamemaker has: "with (obj_clicked) {self.color = red}" for example. Fun thing about "with" is that it means something different depending on how you reference it - if obj_clicked is an instance of obj_clicked, then it only affects the instance. If obj_clicked is the original obj_clicked, then it affects all obj_clicked instances that are active.

It took me about half a day before I decided to just wash my hands of it all and really come down extra hard on that shit, clamping id ranges and triple-checking to make absolutely sure that the only thing that could possibly be interacted with was the thing directly under the god damned mouse pointer.
Doing everything else, like leaving it selected after the mouse moved away, deselecting, selecting and then applying secondary selection (like painting targets for example) was gravy after that initial struggle, but I run into struggles like this a lot with gamemaker.

I was mostly just hoping that somebody who'd done A* a thousand times would take a look at my half-working solution and notice that I had two variables swapped or a comma out of place or some other easy-to-overlook debugging nightmare. I imagine there's something a bit more fundamentally wrong with my A* solution, but it can never hurt to ask.

you fucking pro skub

Ah, well yeah, you should attend to your responsibilities first of course.
Life is a balancing act as you know, and obviously you need to weigh things in your favor (for free time) to pursue any such hobby that requires large time sinks, but it can be done; while still having most of that (obviously order of actual execution will vary).
I can empathize to hear about your family members nearing passing, as I know how frustrating that can be not being able to do anything, and I hope you and them to have the most amount of time together before that inevitable cudgel drops. I always try to remember though, as long as I keep them alive in my thoughts, then they're essentially still here with me.

same, but it's a mix of a job + uni

Personally, I find that gamedev gives me a purpose in life, and in daily life after it's all said and done… I know that each days work is me striving to achieve my dream, and that I'm realizing it as time passes.
Before I had this self-assigned purpose, I was really directionless, and didn't really know what I was meant to do or where the fuck I should go, or anything really except shit like dropping acid and being a wage slave.
Stability is nice, and so is fulfilling your self-assigned purpose; I just feel that - men especially - need a self-assigned purpose in life, and to pursue some type of dream.
As, without that life is really directionless, in my experience, and it really helps to put everything into perspective.
So, yeah, my bad for droning on, but I thought I'd try to give you a hint of my perspective on why maybe, if you can, find something to give yourself purpose in life (i.e. creating something!); obviously this will vary in what it'll be, but imo having a self-assigned purpose helps a whole lot into putting life into perspective.

So… no help?

nobody really uses rpg maker, as far as I've seen on these threads, and you'd be hard pressed to find someone making a full game in said engine in these threads (that will admit it); as rpg maker is meme tier.

Ah, shame. It's just the easy and convenient way because I have no idea how to program and wanted to do some game.

Good, if you have this it's all really a matter of understanding the language, and the design paradigm being used (so you're not working against the engine design itself).

Sounds like maybe you learned in the mindset of a specific design paradigm, say OOP, and are attempting to apply it to a foreign design paradigm; which can create a lot of confusion.
Or due to the point of GML being an amalgamation of different languages, and not being as proficiently designed following a standard as say C++/C#/C (leading to ambiguities in the way the language itself was designed, due to no "set" standard… i.e. imagine graphics libraries designed with openGL standard, etc).
tbh I wouldn't know the specifics as I don't use game maker
You sound like you would be right at home for say UE or Unity though (once you've understood their design paradigm), as they both use a C language.

I don't really use gamemaker, and have avoided it due to the points above; in addition to other specifics.
Personally, I'd rather use an engine that harnesses an official language, and where I can apply said language practice to other coding applications.
As, say in Unity, it uses the ECS (entity component system) design paradigm, and once you understand this; in addition to how the engine pipeline works, everything clicks for why an issue occurs, and most stuff concerning the language used (C#) is nicely documented in many outside sources for any issues there.

Maybe, it's a fundamental issue with how the engine/GML was programmed, or maybe a lack of looking or availability of documentation?
I'm shooting in the dark here, but that's what I would assume.

My bad, I wasn't trying to patronize you tbh, but giving you the resources I learned from.
Agreed, it can never hurt to ask, and if I knew GML I'd definitely give it a gander; though as mentioned I don't.

While I'm a bit hesitant to say it, you can use blueprints (a visual scripting system) provided by unreal engine to make a game without learning how to code; although you'll still be required to understand the fundamental concepts behind programming (logic, and algorithms mostly, more complex coding stuff is multi-disciplined though).
If you really want to make quality games, and have the same standard as this community; then I'd at least take a few online programming courses for C, or C++, or C# (i.e. the languages used by the engine you've decided on) before diving into making a game.
Unless, say you're an artist, then just join a team with a proficient programmer.

You may be selling yourself short. I know a lot of people say: "well I can't program so I guess I'm stuck using Engine X or such shit." When in reality, you'll find the average 2D game is retarded simple. For instance, you might take a low-level graphics library and use it to draw a 16x16 pixel sprite (your background tile) every 16 pixels. Then on top of that, draw a 16x48 pixel character sprite. And every tick, when you push left, right, up, down, etc. you change the grid coordinates of that character sprite, etc. Then you discover 2D/3D vectors, and use that to encode your map… and so on. As someone who can program, it annoys the fuck out of me to see people who can't (or, more often, think they can't) hobble themselves with some bullshit framework when they can just set up what they need in SDL or SFML in a day.

I'm not in much of a position to give advice, as I'm a rank amateur myself at game dev, but if you want to make a game you're going to need to do a fair amount of programming, no matter what.
Certain aspects of programming can be very tricky, and the logical concepts can pull your brain out your dickhole - as in the case of my own current obstacle - but in a general sense, programming is actually kind of easy to fun to learn - at least the basics. Everything builds on everything else.

I've played around in RPGMaker, and if I recall correctly, it uses a scripting language called Ruby. That should be a fairly easy one to start with. Give it a try, and see how it goes, user. The only way to fail is to do nothing at all!

fuck you, i got my A* working just fine. it just tends to kill framerate on some random occasions, but it does work as intended

well said

I was thinking about first starting with something retard proof and build a game and story arround it, then mood it, that's why I asked about RPG Maker, because I could buy Ace VX for 6 € today or I could just wait until MV has that same discount.

I actually used RPG Maker many years ago when it was just a gimmick, but seeing people starting to sell games in RPG Maker I thought I might have a chance.

Eh…. Whats the best RPG maker game you've even seen? If your aspirations are below that, by all means, use RPG Maker. If they're more ambitious, trash that shit,

Wasn't Lisa made in RPG Maker? For now on I'm just happy to start with something small and make the assets to maybe make a bigger game in Gamemaker or something.

good luck with being stupid user

kek, the irony is pretty hilarious here

I also enjoy being stupid user

I know I'm biased here but honestly for simple 2D games like the kind you get from RPG Maker there's no particular reason to not use LOVE. Lua is retarded simple and runs on just about everything.

Mhm I have setup a gitlab repo here.
gitgud.io/Boris/MicroTank
and no I won't do jackshit with GitHub, they can go to hell and take their stupid Code of Conduct too.

There is 2 major things I need to figure out, the first being adding my enemy module somehow because it is separate and then a directory to pk3(zip) bin file because not all source port launchers supports loading directory because reasons such as Doomseeker.

t. git noob

Today is a good day.
Today I learned that UMG widgets in UE4 are just blueprints, with all the perks of the blueprints system (inheritance, polymorphism, etc.). I don't want my game's UI do be a lowest common denominator thing and this makes it so incredibly easy. I can now just switch between a PC focused UI for KB/M and a couch focused UI for controllers on the fly.

Well, then why don't you make something that's not sh–
Can't speak for others, but I will play it.

Stop trying to make it more than it is, I implemented A* in about three weeks after I just learned how to program. It's not a huge accomplishment but I didn't even needed to know more than 2 + 2 = 4. Yes, you need math in game programming, but not in that algorithm.

And I fully think that you can implement A*, you can make a game. What I don't get is why some people do it in such a way that it works slow, I could have 100 pathfinding objects in game maker and only then it slowed down.

There's a problem with your code man, I don't wanna be a do it for free shill but game maker is not the problem here. If something unexpected happens it is mostly your fault, and for the slow pathfinding, again, if it's running slow you're doing something wrong. What I want to tell you is to ignore that elitist guy telling you that you aren't ready to make games. He's trying to bring you down because things in his life aren't working well. Keep trying even if it takes you months, having determination will be 10x more important than taking programming intelligence for granted.

I'll give you a hint to what's slowing down your A* even though I didn't look at it, it's probably memory leaks. Somewhere you did not free up memory at the right time, look if the memory in the processes in windows keeps increasing or not.

You shut the fuck up already you asshole. Stop trying to shit on people when you haven't made jack shit yourself. Yes you can criticize food without being a chef, but if you are gonna say how much it annoys you to see people not make simple games then fucking make one, and make it good if you truly are that skillful. You know what's more helpful that complaining? Doing something, so use that intelligence that you claim you have and make a ton of money, if you're so great.

I'm tired of assholes talking down to others, if I would had listened to guys like you years ago when I didn't even knew how fractions worked I would had never retaken math courses and learned programming, and I'm glad I didn't listen.

I really can't figure this out: How do you jump in a 2.5D space? I thought of simply disabling the y=depth during jumping but I can't move upwards
or downwards during that. Is this where gamemaker is shit applies true?

Explain 2.5D.
Is it like Kirby 64 where it's fully 3D, but you're confined to a 2D path, or is it 3D models, in a 2D world?

Or is it neither, like isometric or birdeye view?

2.5d as in you can move up,down,left and right, and jump in the same spot. Upwards means inwards.

Add a Z variable, draw sprites at [X, Y + Z], but only do depth sorting based on Y as you do right now.

Pretty much all of the neat Japanese indie horror/surreal games are either RPG Maker or Wolf RPG Engine. I loved Ib quite a lot.
But honestly that's more a testament to the power of nips and neets rather than the engine itself–you could have made those games on other engines just as easily, if not easier. A good dev can make a fun game with whatever tools he's got, but some tools are just better than others.

I guess the question you should be looking at is not "Is RPG Maker worth it?" but rather "Will I use this engine to make game?".

Hey guys,

Ironing out my sprite walk cycle and still looking for improvements / suggestions.

I think i fugged up making my map and put some of them off center when copying (first time using my monoprice stylus tablet and was trying to make the bob weave up and down / left to right) so I have to iron that out but what do you guys think?

Also attached is another color/palette swap on the same girl with a hat, thoughts on that as well?Hey guys,

Ironing out my sprite walk cycle and still looking for improvements / suggestions.

I think i fugged up making my map and put some of them off center when copying (first time using my monoprice stylus tablet and was trying to make the bob weave up and down / left to right) so I have to iron that out but what do you guys think?

Also attached is another color/palette swap on the same girl with a hat, thoughts on that as well?

Didn't know Holla Forums kept comment inbetween refresh \('-')/ pls no bully double text

it's hard to judge a walk cycle when it doesn't move

My apologies m8, I didn't want to make the gif till I ironed out the displacement issue i mentioned above

I don't really know anything about animation or the specifics of walk cycles, but I think this looks really good and fluid. Pretty badass little character animation from my limited perspective.
My only question is how she sort of bobs up and down as she walks - from the side it looks normal, but when she's walking up/down won't she look too much like she's speeding up and slowing down sporadically since it's in 2D space?
Or is that what you meant by displacement, or am I just totally crazy?

Either way, nice one!

Well, for the purposes of the idea I think RPG Maker is what I need. I just want to make an 2d horror/thriller RPG with guns instead of magic about rednecks and the sheriff looking for lost people in the forest just to find monsters.

You'll have to do a fair amount of scripting if you want non-stock game mechanics, which I'd highly recommend since all of RPG Maker's stock stuff is pretty terrible.
It shouldn't be too difficult, though, so you should absolutely go for it. Stop wondering if it's what you need - try it and see.

When it comes to engine selection, the bottom line is that you can do pretty much any kind of game on any engine - it just comes down to which engine has a framework that you're most comfortable working with.

Well, not that I have the time to start working on a game right now, just saw the chance to purchase the engine now it is on sale.

So I want to dinamically create new enemies:

std::vector ptrNpcClass;
if (something)
{
NpcClass * npc = new NpcClass;
ptrNpcClass.push_back(npc);
}

Say the player kills a npc, how do I get the index of that specific npc to delete it?

well how do you know a player has killed an npc in the first place
How do you know when and which npc a player kills?

I would make a for loop to check if, say, a bullet position is inside the npc[i] area. Then if it is delete [i].

But the I end up with many for loops each frame?

you can do it in the same for loop you check for bullet collision but it doesn't really matter.
The loops themselves incur little to no overhead compared to whats inside them
If you are asking if it's an efficient solutions it's not but you shouldn't be trying to do any optimization unless your game starts running poorly and when that happens get a profiler and fix it
The reason you don't wanna try to fix these things in advance is because you don't know what is gonna cause a significant slowdown ahead of time unless you really have know the language very well and you have a good grasp of complexity theory

I think I sorted out the displacement problem / adjusted the head bob to speedup problem.

Hows this look?

Christ I can't into language right now.

Do you think the speedup effect of the head bobbing I think is lessened here.

So one thing to remember is that a typical computer can do hundreds of millions of calculations per second. There's a point where too much shit going through at one time slows things down, but don't be shy about having 6 or 7 loops going simultaneously every frame for a particular action.

I think that looks great. My only nitpick now would be that my eyes seem very drawn to the back of her hair in the bottom pic, particularly where the animated part of the hair meets the static part. Maybe that's fine. It doesn't look bad, but the hard cutoff between motion and zero-motion in the hair makes me stare right at that.
It's probably the kind of thing that won't matter at all once there's a whole visual environment around the character, and I have to stress again, I don't know shit about art or animation.

Me neither :) this is my first time actually putting effort into something not super simple

Thanks for the critique!

Just store the index IN the enemy.

Noart here. With an isometric hack'n'slash arpg project, how do I create models(sprites?) similar to the artstyle in red alert 2?

This is a video of a new level that I have finished for the next version of the sigma engine (0.8)

I also have new weapon model art from the robo-waifu user, so the first two guns look a lot better now. There are also various bug fixes and re-balances applied to this new version.

collab

Probably by making 3d models, giving them a similar texture scheme, take pictures of them and touching them up in post.

ooga booga where they new thread @ fam?

This is looking really nice man! When can we expect a demo?

Also, was this was made using SFML?

Will your game include a tollbooth?

the graphics library is openGL 1, legacy openGL, not SFML. I dont think SFML can do 3D graphics, but I don't know. The graphics library is not very important though, since the only things I am doing is basic matrix operations and texture mapping which any 3D API can handle. You can learn about legacy openGL on nehe.gamedev.net, but it is probably better to use a modern library.

You can download any of the released versions at ika.neocities.org

I am still trying to finish up some things before I release 0.8, so you can expect to be able to play 0.8 in about a week, maybe less than a week.

yes

So, it turns out that my A* algorithm actually works perfectly, and the buggy behavior was manifesting from the way I was reading path data afterwards.
I figured this out after I decided to dig out a bunch of old obsolete UI code to see if there was a timing problem cutting off my command calls before the path was fully displayed.
Turns out, I was half correct. The command calls were getting cut-off halfway, but the way I was storing and retrieving the path was also impermanent - the path was being deleted as it was read.

Tonight was a good night.