Support NeoGAF

[Mr_Appleby]

I started out with batch files on a 286 blue-tinged monochrome (grayscale?) laptop with a broken hard disk. Someone gave it to me with 4MB of memory and a bunch of floppy disks with various DOS versions. I guess they had DEBUG.COM or whatever so I tried to learn some assembly language. Eventually I moved up to 386's and 486's with Windows 3.1, QBASIC, eventually some early versions of Linux, C/C++, that sort of thing.

I'M LIKE 90 YEARS OLD MAN

i started on a c64.. when i hit highschool it was a regression to the BBC Electron although beeb basic was pretty nifty in some ways. i must be 100 worked in databases for a couple of years after school but basically bailed out to be a pastry chef/musician and didn't touch any code for another 12 years or so.

i've only in the last couple of years gotten back in to programming, i am not much of an artist though so my stuff is looking pretty ugly right now lol... was working on a 2D rogue-like which is still around somewhere but i started experimenting with openGL and began combining a 3D grid-traversal map with a text-based combat engine i'd written earlier..

that started morphing into a free-movement (regular FPS controls) thingy at which point i started getting caught up in things like proper z-ordering of alpha sources and collision testing:

You can climb up stairs on the right of the building and jump off, and the lights look fine from most angles. some spots seem to screw up the ordering, i don't really know anything about any "proper" way to do it, just making it up as I go along - you can see here the glow clipping through the wall there. The map is tiny because it was created as a text file by hand, defining layer by layer of cubes. Really need to make some tools to simplify that kind of stuff.

All i've done lately is rescue the turn-based project from the mid-morph broken pile of shit it was and got it running again. I'm starting a Masters in Comp. Sci. in a few weeks so that might give me the impetus (and better knowledge) to make something complete out of the turn-based one. I did recently finish a text console (terminal) version of Tic-Tac-Toe, since someone mentioned it in the C++ help thread I thought it would be fun to give it a shot. So I have finished something.

 

[Ghost23]

Scripting in GameMaker would be where you have a "code" block and you type in something like:

hspeed = 0;

It's basically a simple programming language, but the engine handles most of the work for you. Programmers may find some things easier to do that way, and once you get good with scripts you may be able to write things more quickly than by purely sticking with the graphical events and commands from GameMaker.

Big developers may often use "game engines" (such as the Unreal Engine 3 -- there's a free version called the UDK), which you could think of as a parallel to Game Maker, or if the game is small they might program it from scratch using programming languages like C++ or C#.

Here are some general GameMaker tutorials that may be helpful, by the way: http://sandbox.yoyogames.com/make/tutorials

Thanks a lot, blizzard! I will definitely look into those tutorials.

 

[thcsquad]

It's crazy going back and looking through my C++ code, now maybe 2-3 years old, from the 2D game engine I started. I was going to port it to use all SFML instead of OpenGL bits, but then I decided that it was far less work to leave OpenGL code and just toss in some SFML to replace the SDL parts.

Did I really need to change from SDL to SFML? Probably not. >_> Maybe there will be some utility functionality that will be worth it, however.

Next tasks:

• Port the simple game I had started using this engine, to use the new SFML-integrated version, to make sure I didn't break anything.
• Port my pipeline utilities (image-processing etc.) to use SFML instead of SDL.
• Integrate window creation and a main game loop more into the engine instead of the game, and fix my simple game to use this as well.
• Start working on a simple main menu system, designing it with a way to draw default graphics and have it "just work", but also a way to customize the graphics and interface.

Ideally if I can finish all this, I will have an encapsulated engine that I can use to throw together any new 2D game I want to prototype, complete with menus, without having to write main menu/new game/game loop etc. code to get there.

AFTER ALL THIS I need to start prototyping my actual game idea to see if it's really fun. =P

About SFML: If my prototype so far is only no SDL (no OpenGL, I'm using workarounds like implementing sprite rotations by prestoring all the rotated textures that rotozoom creates and referring to them later), should I just plan on converting it all to SFML? Or is OpenGL worth implementing given what SFML gives you? I'm not doing it yet, my plan is to wait at least until SFML 2.0 hits stable before starting to restart work on this particular project. But any further thoughts on OpenGL vs SFML would be helpful.

 

[Blizzard]

About SFML: If my prototype so far is only no SDL (no OpenGL, I'm using workarounds like implementing sprite rotations by prestoring all the rotated textures that rotozoom creates and referring to them later), should I just plan on converting it all to SFML? Or is OpenGL worth implementing given what SFML gives you? I'm not doing it yet, my plan is to wait at least until SFML 2.0 hits stable before starting to restart work on this particular project. But any further thoughts on OpenGL vs SFML would be helpful.

It's hard to say since I have used all three, and I'm pretty sure I left OpenGL transformations in my code. I'm using the stable SFML 2.0 dev branch or whatever.

In theory you can use Sprite objects and SetRotation, and I imagine under the hood that may use OpenGL-style matrix transformation.

I'd say if you're starting from scratch and you don't mind SFML syntax, stay with that and then add OpenGL if you need to. SFML seems like it could provide a bit more power (sprite rotations?) and a bit more performance than SDL, since it uses OpenGL under the hood and as far as I know SDL is still software rendering.

Of course some people might just use something built on DirectX/Direct3D/whatever the proper term is since that's awesome and everything, but I like the idea of being potentially cross-platform for now.

 

[The Technomancer]

Blizzard your project sounds like basically what I'm doing now, only slightly more ambitious.

 

[Blizzard]

Blizzard your project sounds like basically what I'm doing now, only slightly more ambitious.

The sad part is that I almost certainly could prototype something more quickly if I ignored the engine, but since I have aspirations of a serious game project I'm going to try to actually get a full framework going.

 

[The Technomancer]

The sad part is that I almost certainly could prototype something more quickly if I ignored the engine, but since I have aspirations of a serious game project I'm going to try to actually get a full framework going.

And in my case I'm interested in building a generic engine over a specific application because there's an aspect of personal challenge that I'm enjoying. Thus far the only highly specific programming I've been doing is in animation, where there are a dozen or so different possibilities in animation state switching for the player sprite that I need to account for.

 

[fr3shme4t]

I released an XBLIG game almost 1.5 years ago now: Spatial Rift

http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/Spatial-Rift/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d8025855060a

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHzpWrJfqz4

Overall I was pretty happy with it, given it was the first game I'd done 100% by myself. Even if the end result is a somewhat mediocre game.

Didn't really make any money from it, I should probably just upload the source on github or something one day.

 

[Mojo Bones]

Hi guys, this is my first NeoGAF post so hello to everyone. I've been lurking around NeoGAF for a while now, but only recently had my account verified so I'm looking forward to getting in on the action.

This felt like a good thread to introduce myself as we've recently launched our first game on iOS and Android. It's called Tongue Tied and here are a few trailers...

http://youtu.be/UI-7gKiEl1g
http://youtu.be/CdW40DsIcTY
http://youtu.be/hprvxgHNKh8

I didn't want to use this as an opportunity to plug the game: I just thought it might be a chance to answer any questions regarding smartphone dev. The game was made by a team of three guys and it took us three months to develop. Within that time we set up our company, created the trailers, developed the game, done our own PR, created our website etc. so we've definitely had a busy ride and learnt a lot along the way.

We've all been working in the industry for the last 10 years or so, but this has been our first experience of indie development and what it takes to actually get a game developed and self published.

If anyone has any questions about the game, development, PR etc. then I'd be happy to answer them as best I can. We're by no means experts, but even if we're able to help people avoid some of the mistakes we've made it might help. I've been following this thread for a while and there's some great stuff being shown here - loving some of the ideas and concepts. Who knows, maybe there's the seeds of a community/NeoGAF project in here somewhere!

Thanks for reading and looking forward to joining the NeoGAF discussions.

 

[Ranger X]

Wich engine did you use for that game Mojo?

 

[jump_button]

-_- been doing Logic all day it starting to dive me nuts, maybe im just not the type that love going into every little thing.

going well so far and come up with some nice idea for puzzles

ps they been alot of Junior's coming on making they own games, are they all coming from where?

 

[embalm]

ps they been alot of Junior's coming on making they own games, are they all coming from where?

I've been a lurker on Gaf for 3 years, and it was this thread that motivated me to create an account. Perhaps others feel the same way. There is something encouraging about talking with others about their goals and successes.



Mojo,
Can you share with me how you split the responsibilities of your game among the 3 people on your team?

 

[Mojo Bones]

Ranger X - we used an engine called Marmalade. Our physics were handled by Box2d. We went with Marmalade because it enables us to deploy onto different devices from the one engine rather than having to port the code directly.

Embalm - Sure can. There are three of us and we each cover different areas (design, code and art). Tongue Tied started out as a simple concept which incorporated the tether mechanic. Once we were happy with how that was working, the next step became a visual one, in trying to apply characters and an overal theme to the idea.

One thing that was different for us on this project than any other, was the idea of not needing any documentation. The project was built piece-by-piece and ideas were layered in as we needed/wanted them.

Obviously we knew the overall game we wanted to make, and we had the foundations of the design in place (some docs were required for essentials), but in terms of working out specific features and trying out different ideas our small team enabled us to easily/quickly test things out. We'd put something into the game (for example the tires that you're able to hang from) and then we'd tweak them until we were happy: rather than have them full spec'd before any work was done. We did have an overall deadline though - so it was important for us to make decisions based on timing. As I mentioned, the game took us a total of three months, and there were definitely things that we had to sideline in the interest of time.

I think that's the beauty of indie dev. If you have a good core team and you all communicate well, it's a much more organic way of working. Well, it was for us on Tongue Tied. Obviously it's a very personal thing though, and some people work better in different situations/environments.

 

[Ranger X]

Ok, I have a little interrogation about my GameMaker project and performance...

I want to add joystick/controller support and I have 3 options for doing this. I was wondering wich one would be less costly in matter of general performance.

1- Adding joystick related conditions to all my keyboard conditions of my step event (fixed update)

2- Making a script of my control step event, having a version for the joystick and another for keyboard. Each frame I would detect if a joystick is in use or not and then start the script for joystick or keyboard depending the result.

3- Making a dll for GameMaker that is actually giving me the needed joystick events and therefore putting them into my character as well as the keyboard events.

So wich scenario potentially costs less? 2?

 

[CiroContinisio]

Hi guys, this is my first NeoGAF post so hello to everyone. I've been lurking around NeoGAF for a while now, but only recently had my account verified so I'm looking forward to getting in on the action.

This felt like a good thread to introduce myself as we've recently launched our first game on iOS and Android. It's called Tongue Tied and here are a few trailers...

http://youtu.be/UI-7gKiEl1g
http://youtu.be/CdW40DsIcTY
http://youtu.be/hprvxgHNKh8

Your game has some f**** awesome animation and art, both in the trailers and in-game. Also, it looks like tons of fun. How do you play? By swinging the dog that's not walking (which drags the other one)?

 

[Mojo Bones]

Hi CiroContinisio,

Thanks for the enthusiastic response to the game. It's always a buzz when people react that way!

We tried to create something that was quite simple to play but without side-lining the more hard-core audience, so Tongue Tied is pretty easy to get to grips with, but can also be pretty challenging.

Mick & Ralph automatically walk along and it's your job to keep them safe until they reach the end of the level. Each level takes roughly a minute to complete. The dogs are controlled by dragging and then releasing to ping - much like a rubber-band. This is used to avoid obstacles, jump gaps and also break objects for bonuses. You can also tap a dog to have them hop from the platform and fall below.

Obviously there are various different obstacles and surfaces to interact with which hopefully keep things fresh throughout.

It's also worth noting that if you're the type of gamer who's into high scores, you're also able to swipe the dogs to make them swing and rotate. This is required in order to score big and earn gold medals. For example: instead of simply hopping from platform to platform, you can 'swing gap' across for a higher score. Start tying these tricks together and the scores really start to increase

Hope that helps, and thanks again.

 

[CiroContinisio]

Yeah I got pretty much everything. I had seen the combo system from the video, I was just wondering which dog you control at a time.
Cool game, the sling mechanics are interesting and, as I said, the animations are awesome.
Is it available already?

 

[CiroContinisio]

Another post for another topic.
Our campaign on Kickstarter for the game we're making is about to end, it's less than 3 days from the deadline: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tinycolossus/ufho2-a-turn-based-strategy-game
We're still a bit far from the goal, but I know about the power of the people on the internet... our problem is just we have to get the word out, and probably we kinda failed until now.
If you GAFfers like the game, help us make it!

 

[bumpkin]

Hi guys, this is my first NeoGAF post so hello to everyone. I've been lurking around NeoGAF for a while now, but only recently had my account verified so I'm looking forward to getting in on the action.

This felt like a good thread to introduce myself as we've recently launched our first game on iOS and Android. It's called Tongue Tied and here are a few trailers...

http://youtu.be/UI-7gKiEl1g
http://youtu.be/CdW40DsIcTY
http://youtu.be/hprvxgHNKh8

Tongue Tied looks really rad, man! I'll definitely have to check it out at some point. I don't suppose you have any idea how it performs on an iPhone 3GS, do you? I've been putting off upgrading (waiting for the iPhone 5) and I've slowly been encountering more and more iOS games that don't run so hot on it.

The past year or so I've been tinkering with game ideas, thrown together a few prototypes. Sadly I haven't been able to really get anything past the prototype phase, mostly due to a lack of knowledge in specific disciplines (art and sound). I'm just a coder, nothing more, nothing less; a new one at that, with a solid but still working knowledge of C++.

At any rate, I've been thinking about coding up a new 2D engine using lessons learned from a prototype I built last year, and something I'm struggling with is data structures. More often than not, I found myself painted into a corner so to speak when I wanted to add something to the mix. In looking at a lot of the engines out there - most notably Cocos2D - there seems to be a heiarachy of objects that should be drawn to the screen when the display is updated. What I'm struggling with is deciding exactly what would work best for my needs.

The idea I'm leaning towards right now is creating a "scene" class which will have a collection (debating between an STL Map or STL Vector) of the in-game entities. What I'm thinking is that each of those entities will be derived from a base "Game Entity" class (per a suggestion from NEOGAF'er Fersis) that has a draw() function. When the scene is running its update, it would iterate through the collection of entities and re-draw the ones whose position changed since the last update; I'd plan to track an entity's last known position as part of the Game Entity object definition.

From those who are more experienced, is this a solid approach? I want to do something that makes sense but is also efficient.

 

[Blizzard]

How many entities would you have on your screen? Having game entities/objects that either go down an inheritance chain (MovableEntity, maybe also EnemyEntity, etc.) could work. Some subclass could have a position as well.

Or you could go with a component method where an entity could have a MouseHandlerComponent added to it, and only entities with that component would process mouse clicks.

Either way, a simple data structure in the scene should be simple for doing something like

For all entities in scene
   entity->update();
For all entities in scene
   entity->draw();

I have never really used the component approach, but if I'm going to be insane and actually implement my own GUI system (buttons, checkboxes, lists, and scrollable things) then I should probably study up on some design. =(

 

[Ranger X]

I found a competent (well, I think) way to make my joystick support in my GameMaker project.

I however have a wierd problem yet again. When there's a d-pad press, I call an event that is the same event as when the A key is pressed. Problem is, there's no code change and when it's the d-pad press calling the event it doesn't behave the same. I am quite flabergasted right now.

 

[Blizzard]

Extra thoughts on data structures and optimization:

1. Make it as easy as possible to change the data structure if you change your mind. If you must, you could make a really simple wrapper class that has Add(whatever) and Remove(whatever) methods. This way if you do need to change from say, an STL vector to a linked list, it's easy to do.

2. As long as it's not too difficult to change the above, DO NOT worry too much about efficiency early on, unless you know that you're going to have like 200 entities on the screen at the same time, and handling that is a key requirement of your design. You're already working on an engine which will be recreating stuff other engines (e.g. GameMaker, Unity) already do, and if you spend too much time focusing on optimization then you may get burned out and not even finish.

3. However, IF you have tons of entities being created and deleted on the fly, you will probably want to use an STL list instead of a vector, or something like that, since as far as I know deleting from an STL vector will have to move every entity past the one you deleted one spot to the left.

 

[Turfster]

deleting from an STL vector will have to move every entity past the one you deleted one spot to the left.

Swap-with-last-and-delete-that-one works wonders (if your code isn't too dependant on position in list)

 

[jump_button]

I found a competent (well, I think) way to make my joystick support in my GameMaker project.

I however have a wierd problem yet again. When there's a d-pad press, I call an event that is the same event as when the A key is pressed. Problem is, there's no code change and when it's the d-pad press calling the event it doesn't behave the same. I am quite flabergasted right now.

iOS big failing for game is no buttons im going to try and come up with my own way if i can, I do want to get away from what we see now

 

[Blizzard]

Swap-with-last-and-delete-that-one works wonders (if your code isn't too dependant on position in list)

This is super clever, like something basic I never learned and which never occurred to me. Thanks for sharing. I already made a linked list collection implementation a while back, but this would provide another option for implementing an unordered collection.

 

[Turfster]

This is super clever, like something basic I never learned and which never occurred to me. Thanks for sharing.

No problem, I hesitated to mention it before because, as you said, it's something so basic and obvious to me that I hardly ever think about it anymore but just use it automatically.

 

[Bentles]

I'm making a game in my spare time. Here's an animation I made for it:

I've done a silly thing and designed stuff before checking if the gameplay is any fun, haha. It should be amusing/frustrating testing that out later.

Anyway I want to randomly post about 2D Boy (World of Goo). Have they made nothing since World of Goo? All they seem to do is re-release it. It seems an awful waste of their time to me. Maybe it's financially viable but it's so boring as a fan of a developer if they release the same game over and over. Aren't they bored too? Are they working on something?

 

[gabbo]

Anyway I want to randomly post about 2D Boy (World of Goo). Have they made nothing since World of Goo? All they seem to do is re-release it. It seems an awful waste of their time to me. Maybe it's financially viable but it's so boring as a fan of a developer if they release the same game over and over. Aren't they bored too? Are they working on something?

Aren't they part of that Indie Fund angel investor group? Maybe that's taking up a lot of their time.

 

[bumpkin]

How many entities would you have on your screen? Having game entities/objects that either go down an inheritance chain (MovableEntity, maybe also EnemyEntity, etc.) could work. Some subclass could have a position as well.

Given that I'm creating this as something generic I can potentially utilize for more than one project, ideally I'd like for it to support as many on screen as possible. Upwards to 100 to 200, maybe?

Either way, a simple data structure in the scene should be simple for doing something like

For all entities in scene
   entity->update();
For all entities in scene
   entity->draw();

Okay, here comes a newbie question... When it comes to input detection and in-game reaction to button presses, do you typically code them in as part of the entity's update() logic or do your entities poll a central input reader/class?

Extra thoughts on data structures and optimization:

1. Make it as easy as possible to change the data structure if you change your mind. If you must, you could make a really simple wrapper class that has Add(whatever) and Remove(whatever) methods. This way if you do need to change from say, an STL vector to a linked list, it's easy to do.

2. As long as it's not too difficult to change the above, DO NOT worry too much about efficiency early on, unless you know that you're going to have like 200 entities on the screen at the same time, and handling that is a key requirement of your design. You're already working on an engine which will be recreating stuff other engines (e.g. GameMaker, Unity) already do, and if you spend too much time focusing on optimization then you may get burned out and not even finish.

3. However, IF you have tons of entities being created and deleted on the fly, you will probably want to use an STL list instead of a vector, or something like that, since as far as I know deleting from an STL vector will have to move every entity past the one you deleted one spot to the left.

Points taken on all counts. I'll likely take a wait-and-see approach to find out whether or not the hits to performance by using a vector are dramatic or inconsequential. In my prototypes, I've used them and haven't really seen them hurt execution. It might be a different story once all the pieces are in place and it's a full game rather than a bare-bones experiment though.

 

[thcsquad]

It's hard to say since I have used all three, and I'm pretty sure I left OpenGL transformations in my code. I'm using the stable SFML 2.0 dev branch or whatever.

In theory you can use Sprite objects and SetRotation, and I imagine under the hood that may use OpenGL-style matrix transformation.

I'd say if you're starting from scratch and you don't mind SFML syntax, stay with that and then add OpenGL if you need to. SFML seems like it could provide a bit more power (sprite rotations?) and a bit more performance than SDL, since it uses OpenGL under the hood and as far as I know SDL is still software rendering.

Of course some people might just use something built on DirectX/Direct3D/whatever the proper term is since that's awesome and everything, but I like the idea of being potentially cross-platform for now.

Thanks. I'm developing on Linux, so DirectX is definitely out of the question. I'm pretty sure I'll just stick with SFML unless something screams out for OpenGL as I'm developing it.

 

[Ranger X]

iOS big failing for game is no buttons im going to try and come up with my own way if i can, I do want to get away from what we see now

Yeah, sometimes touch buttons aren't the best solution for platformers but it's not like IOS is the only platform on wich you can release your game.

 

[Turfster]

Okay, here comes a newbie question... When it comes to input detection and in-game reaction to button presses, do you typically code them in as part of the entity's update() logic or do your entities poll a central input reader/class?

Uh, have input handling separate and 'hook' input to an entity, but that's me

 

[Blizzard]

Given that I'm creating this as something generic I can potentially utilize for more than one project, ideally I'd like for it to support as many on screen as possible. Upwards to 100 to 200, maybe?

(sort of) quick test: Try an STL list to implement it. I think that allows adding and removing elements and might be implemented as a linked list (not sure). Then make a for loop to add like, 200-400 copies of the same entity. Make each one have a random direction and/or speed and "bounce" off the walls by changing the X and Y velocity when they hit the edges of the screen. If you have animation in your engine, make each one use like two frames of animation.

Check your frame rate! Unlock it if you want, make sure it seems fine.

Bonus round! Add code that deletes like 50 entities and adds 50 new ones every second or so. If frame rate and CPU usage are still fine, there you go, presumably no worries from the list overhead itself.

That's a fair bit of work, but if you're really concerned about this being awesome and general and working for the future, it's a way to test it. But again, try not to write too much code that DEPENDS on the implementation being an STL list or whatever. If you change your mind later, you want to be able to easily swap it, with only a couple of interface functions affected.

Okay, here comes a newbie question... When it comes to input detection and in-game reaction to button presses, do you typically code them in as part of the entity's update() logic or do your entities poll a central input reader/class?

I don't feel I know enough to act like an expert. I have to figure that out in the near future on my own engine, I suppose. I guess you could use events that propogate, or for a mouse-down thing you could search through entities and find the first one that matches and has a mouse handler component, or (etc. etc. ways to implement this).

In short I have ideas, but I'd like to see if anyone has expert advice on it.

I do think that having input handling separate is probably the best idea, so you can swap different input methods in and out, configure controls and so forth, and then individual button/mouse handler pieces of code could call methods on entities that need the information.

 

[Mojo Bones]

CiroContinisio - Just taken a look at your kickstarter: looks great guys! Loving that controller design too. We'll make a donation, although I'll have to do it tomorrow as it's pretty late here and I should already be counting zzzz's.

In regards to Tongue Tied: yes, the game is out now (shameless links below) and you can control any dog you like, but only one at a time.

bumpkin - the game runs great on 3GS (I have one myself) and doesn't drop below 60fps. Keep up the good work with the coding. If you need any specific help regarding what you're working on I can point you in the direction of our coder who'll be able to answer some questions for you - although there seems to be some good advice already being posted. If you need us, drop a mail to info@mojobones.co.uk and I'll hook you up. Also, we do all our audio in-house too, so if you need any advice there we can try and help.

Oh, and here are those (shameless) links

iOS - http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tongue-tied!/id482699417?mt=8
Android - https://market.android.com/details?id=co.uk.mojobones.tonguetied

 

[fr3shme4t]

I do think that having input handling separate is probably the best idea, so you can swap different input methods in and out, configure controls and so forth, and then individual button/mouse handler pieces of code could call methods on entities that need the information.

Yeah, I'd suggest keeping the controller/input code out of your entity's update. Use a separate HandleInput method or something. It also make it easier to hook up AI to any entity and makes it cleaner to handle other input modes (menus etc)

 

[Raide]

Sat down yesterday to try and learn Gamemaker. Hrmm...seems pretty easy to start with but I am wondering if I can get my idea working on it. I am sure my netbook hates me actually using it.

 

[Blizzard]

Sat down yesterday to try and learn Gamemaker. Hrmm...seems pretty easy to start with but I am wondering if I can get my idea working on it. I am sure my netbook hates me actually using it.

If you're using a room rate of 30 or 60 it might not be too bad. Are you worried that your idea will be too tough on your notebook, or that your idea will be too hard to make in Game Maker (Lite)? If it's the latter, feel free to tell us some about your idea (or PM me if you're afraid of someone stealing it) since that will give us a better idea of how hard it would be to do.

 

[CiroContinisio]

CiroContinisio - Just taken a look at your kickstarter: looks great guys! Loving that controller design too. We'll make a donation, although I'll have to do it tomorrow as it's pretty late here and I should already be counting zzzz's.

Thanks! Don't do it the day after tomorrow though, as we only have 65 hours left now
We're at 70% almost... How can one spread the word even more?

 

[Ranger X]

Sat down yesterday to try and learn Gamemaker. Hrmm...seems pretty easy to start with but I am wondering if I can get my idea working on it. I am sure my netbook hates me actually using it.

I can help you evaluate this if you want. Don't hesitate to ask also if you get GML questions

 

[Raide]

If you're using a room rate of 30 or 60 it might not be too bad. Are you worried that your idea will be too tough on your notebook, or that your idea will be too hard to make in Game Maker (Lite)? If it's the latter, feel free to tell us some about your idea (or PM me if you're afraid of someone stealing it) since that will give us a better idea of how hard it would be to do.

Kinda worried my Netbook won't be able to handle it and that I won't be able to accomplish the idea to the degree I want. Not that the idea is complicated, its just particular. Its tough makes design choices when I am currently limited by my Netbook. Thats what I get for moving to Japan

I knew I should have taken more Programming classes when I was younger.

I am not sure if my own ability is enough to really make it, so trying to find some likeminded people is what I would prefer.

My idea if something that I would like to get feedback on, since some of it requires variety to make it work. I can PM you the rough outline if you would like to see.

 

[Blizzard]

Kinda worried my Netbook won't be able to handle it and that I won't be able to accomplish the idea to the degree I want. Not that the idea is complicated, its just particular. Its tough makes design choices when I am currently limited by my Netbook. Thats what I get for moving to Japan

I knew I should have taken more Programming classes when I was younger.

I am not sure if my own ability is enough to really make it, so trying to find some likeminded people is what I would prefer.

My idea if something that I would like to get feedback on, since some of it requires variety to make it work. I can PM you the rough outline if you would like to see.

Gotcha. Well maybe you will get access to a better computer down the line. As long as you're careful that it doesn't overheat...

As for the idea, I'm certainly not very experienced at game design, but you can PM me the outline if you like. All I'll really be able to do is give you feedback as a potential player, and very rough feedback about how one might start making it in Game Maker.

 

[Raide]

If you're using a room rate of 30 or 60 it might not be too bad. Are you worried that your idea will be too tough on your notebook, or that your idea will be too hard to make in Game Maker (Lite)? If it's the latter, feel free to tell us some about your idea (or PM me if you're afraid of someone stealing it) since that will give us a better idea of how hard it would be to do.

Gotcha. Well maybe you will get access to a better computer down the line. As long as you're careful that it doesn't overheat...

As for the idea, I'm certainly not very experienced at game design, but you can PM me the outline if you like. All I'll really be able to do is give you feedback as a potential player, and very rough feedback about how one might start making it in Game Maker.

I will PM you some of the details. Writing stuff and coming up with ideas seems to be the only thing I can actually do. All the programming and graphics etc is out of my league.

Maybe it would be easier to post it here and see if people are interested enough to help out? I am so jealous of all the talent that is shown in this thread.

 

[Blizzard]

Maybe it would be easier to post it here and see if people are interested enough to help out? I am so jealous of all the talent that is shown in this thread.

If you don't mind everyone seeing it in an open forum, by all means post it. You'll get better feedback from everyone instead of having to mess with PMs to specific people.


Unrelated update about my own engine project: The library stuff is ported to use SFML now, and I ported over a couple of command-line utilities. One of them just generates an image, and the other one takes script input to process resources -- a content pipeline, I suppose it would be called. Next up is porting my old barely-started game, making sure it still works, and then beginning to design new engine features (a menu system).

Somewhat annoyingly, SFML apparently has libjpeg built into it which caused me grief when I tried to link to a newer version of libjpeg (that I had compiled myself). I was also trying to get everything to match together in terms of debug/release stuff. In the end I said screw it, kept the prebuilt SFML libjpeg .lib file, and used the no default library option to drop out libcmt.lib.

 

[Raide]

If you don't mind everyone seeing it in an open forum, by all means post it. You'll get better feedback from everyone instead of having to mess with PMs to specific people.

That sounds like a good idea. I have the design doc already typed but not complete yet but I can at least post the idea here and see what people think.

Thanks!

 

[Mojo Bones]

Raide - I'd love to take a look at your design and give you some feedback.

CiroContinisio - We've pledged $10. I know you said it's unlikely you'll reach your target but hey... who knows. All of our fingers are crossed.

 

[Limanima]

Hi guys, this is my first NeoGAF post so hello to everyone. I've been lurking around NeoGAF for a while now, but only recently had my account verified so I'm looking forward to getting in on the action.

This felt like a good thread to introduce myself as we've recently launched our first game on iOS and Android. It's called Tongue Tied and here are a few trailers...

http://youtu.be/UI-7gKiEl1g
http://youtu.be/CdW40DsIcTY
http://youtu.be/hprvxgHNKh8

I didn't want to use this as an opportunity to plug the game: I just thought it might be a chance to answer any questions regarding smartphone dev. The game was made by a team of three guys and it took us three months to develop. Within that time we set up our company, created the trailers, developed the game, done our own PR, created our website etc. so we've definitely had a busy ride and learnt a lot along the way.

We've all been working in the industry for the last 10 years or so, but this has been our first experience of indie development and what it takes to actually get a game developed and self published.

If anyone has any questions about the game, development, PR etc. then I'd be happy to answer them as best I can. We're by no means experts, but even if we're able to help people avoid some of the mistakes we've made it might help. I've been following this thread for a while and there's some great stuff being shown here - loving some of the ideas and concepts. Who knows, maybe there's the seeds of a community/NeoGAF project in here somewhere!

Thanks for reading and looking forward to joining the NeoGAF discussions.

Wow. Congrats for a job well done. The game seems to be pretty fun to play, and has awsome art.
What engine did you use?

 

[HP_Wuvcraft]

You know, as much as I love what Doublefine accomplished, it makes me wonder if it says anything about gaming culture in general that no indie game (read: small start-up or one person team) on Kickstarter has ever raised that much money.

 

[Mojo Bones]

Thanks Limanima. I'll pass on your compliments to our resident artist: that should inflate his head for the next day or two

We used an SDK called Marmalade, which allows us to deploy on multiple platforms from a single code-base. It's worked well for us, alongside using Box2D for our physics engine.

 

[AcceptableGhost]

You know, as much as I love what Doublefine accomplished, it makes me wonder if it says anything about gaming culture in general that no indie game (read: small start-up or one person team) on Kickstarter has ever raised that much money.

Because DoubleFine have proved themselves to put out quality games over and over? The fact that putting down 15$ is pretty much a sure bet that you will be getting a game on Steam because Valve would never reject anything they put out? People definitely shouldn't make Kickstarter pages for their first-ever game projects (except maybe for finishing work like professional art/music or something after the game is done). Kickstarter projects with reasonable expectations (and actually look like they may go somewhere) seem to reach their goal with a decent frequency. One person teams don't need 400K as well unless they -need- to make games while drinking out of solid gold cups.

 

[The Friendly Monster]

Okay, here comes a newbie question... When it comes to input detection and in-game reaction to button presses, do you typically code them in as part of the entity's update() logic or do your entities poll a central input reader/class?

Neither for me, my entities have separate methods for touch(), drag() and untouch(). These get fired before the update() methods. I'd never actually had things set up like this before but it works amazingly well for my game and menus.