/agdg/ - Amateur Game Development General

>devs with cut content

Thanks. Any advice on where to start for a language? I have a little base knowledge of C++ but that's it.

I can keep up my current lifestyle on what I have saved for another 4 years. If now isn't the time to pursue my interests, when is?

anything you're comfortable with. if you go with Godot or UE4 blueprints you'll need some basic programming knowledge, and after that it's just practice.

look at really basic art principles, "fundamentals". Look at shape, form, value and color. There are many books to choose from but try to stick to one at a time. The best tip for a beginner is to learn to draw what you see. Not what you think you see, what you really actually see. Basically, you have to learn how to trace with your eyes only.
This is for generally learning art and heads more towards the realism/alla prima direction.
You could also go more of a graphic design route. This would mean looking more at color and shape and how to make simple things look sexy.
All depends on what you wanna do. If you only want to do simple pixel art for your game, go the graphic design route. learn a bit, then copy a lot of good pixel art and do some origional stuff.

The one thing that most people don't know about learning art is that literally no artist is ever happy with his shit. Ever. You will always find flaws and that's okay, that's what will make you better: The motivation to not be absolute shit.

>Any advice on where to start for a language?
Told you it wouldn't take long for another question like this.

C++ is fine. Works with UE4. C# for Unity.

> 27th day of no job and living off of savings
> can do anything I want
> always said i'll dev 24/7 if I have the time
> didn't do a single thing on gamedev in those days.

It's over for me.

Yes. Write down some things you want in your game. Also keep a to do list. It makes starting to dev in the morning much easier.

Get over it, that's what new people want to know. It's called amateur game development GENERAL. Get off your high horse.

This is most people on the planet, user. Don't feel badly. You likely don't really want to do game development if you don't want to work on any aspect of it during your free time and would rather do something else instead.

That's really good advice, thanks. You seem pretty knowledgeable.

Thanks user. I'll look into it a bit more, but C++ seems like the route I'll go then.

Thread should have an FAQ and defer people to it. All questions like it should be ignored. Handholding caters to shitty lazy people who aren't intelligent enough to do research and likely are actually driven. But that's all I am saying on the matter. Shitflinging got pretty heavy at the end of the last thread.

> using ue4
> expecting to finish a game

That part was shitposting, but on a serious note, it seems that alot of the "simple" ue4 games run like shit. I played alot of the games in the past few ue4 game jams and they all ran sub-optimally at best. Is this just a case of very bad optimization?

Another thing that always put me off from deving with UE4 is the performance in the editor. Even on the lowest settings/scalability would barely pull 50fps in it. Granted this was during 4.9. Did it get improved in that regard?

I liked the workflow in the engine itself and the prototyping, but the performance always made me drop it.

user that was asking the basic questions here.

Just wanted to say that for questions like this Veeky Forums is usually the first place I go for research. The people in a given thread usually have a real interest in what they're talking about, so it's a great place to start on the right track. That said, FAQs are great - the Veeky Forums sticky really helped me go from being a skeleton to being to open my own pickle jars.

I don't think you should be using UE4 if you plan to solo dev a game. Especially with the level of fidelity of the graphics requiring a decent modeler/animator. That's way too much horsepower for nothing. But it's great to learn with.

The game I'm thinking of making has a different "style" for every stage. Is this going to put people off, do you think?

you want a quality game? if that's your goal you should practice at what connects best.
i mean, how long you gonna be home and how much money you have is a question too.
this is how i do my equation

good:
good code - good art - good music - good story

bad:
good code - passable art - good music - mediocre story

its usually how its going down, and i seen games come and go
take your pick

It's the same shit as Game Maker, the default UE4 settings have motion blur and temporal AA, it makes games look like they're running sub 60 even if they're not.

I don't understand how people can be so retarded as to not change it.

I did the same thing about three years ago. I already knew how to program so I just jumped right into my grand opus idea.

A couple things I learned were, its okay to spend time fantasizing about what you want your game to be, since you have time, you dont have to rush to get something visible or concrete. I jumped right in without planning it out enough, and lost literally months of work by adding something because it seemed cool, but later I changed the design and cut lots of parts off. Find the games soul first, is what I think. And the mechanics.

But once you start making it, go for a crude vertical slice over a single polished component.

Also always have a sense of fascination and humility, as its way more rewarding (and will drive further learning) by going "wow i was actually able to get it to do that! Its just like the real thing!". When you get an ego and stop being impressed with yourself it stops being fun and you will resent the fact no one cares about your game

Also no one will care about your game, not even AGDG

Where can I learn to make a little generic fps with Unreal Engine?

The less scripting, coding, etc, the better.

Does anyone know if Unity is a similar scenario? One doubt I've been having since I started using it is the possibility I won't be able to finish what I start.

What I usually counter that with is c# is a relatively sought after programming language that it's worth learning.

That, and for a 3d game it seems like my main choices are Godot, Unity, and UE4, and I need a little hand-holding in the form of tutorials.

Style of what? Aesthetically or gameplay wise? It's going to depend on the audience though. I personally like games with variety but it can feel disjointed depending on the overall feel of the game, i.e., The Last of Us's shooting segments with the rest of the game felt way off. But a game like Wario Ware or No More Heroes (mostly the minigames), it's more acceptable since they are way less serious.

stock/placeholder everything btw. I just want to see if I can "drag and drop" first.

youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZlv_N0_O1gaCL2XjKluO7N2Pmmw9pvhE

That's bullshit. Your engine choice won't determine if you can finish a game or not. It's bullshit, just keep working.

I know a lot of game dev majors who have made 2D games with Unity by themselves. Mileage may vary but it's mostly your own personal drive that governs if it'll make it to completion in a reasonable amount of time. Like implied.

Do I need to learn rigging if I'm not that dedicated?

yall niggas need to stop mentioning unreal and unity, there is 99% chance you won't be able to harness all the features of of both engines so stop talking about it like its life or death situation

I have no idea wtf you are doing. Can you model? Do you plan to model at all? Because UE4 has a basic FPS set up when you create a new project. But if you plan on using any external assets, yes you will need to learn something.

Anyone have experience with Visual Studio? I've been trying to learn C# if that's relevant.

I have VS open right now.

If you're using Unity, use MonoDevelop.

Notepad ++ is good too.

Sketching the first room you see when you start the game.
The camera will start at the top and slowly pan downwards and then you can start moving around.

Why do you niggas try to come up with every possible reason for not finishing a game? Just fucking keep working at it. It doesn't matter if it's in GM, Construct, Python or RPG Maker, just fucking keep at it and if you don't give up you'll finish your game.

You people piss me off sometimes.

Where is your game?

I've noticed it's extremely easy to get distracted for a lot of people. It's not limited to game dev. I had a group project this semester and we didn't finish because 3 out of the 5 of us kept making excuses for why we couldn't do anything. It's not the first time I've encountered people like that either which tells me it's common.

Both Sublime and Atom are vastly superior to NP++. NP++ is babby's first text editor with syntax highlighting.

No discipline. Trend towards less/no corporal punishment of kids by parents, too much general leniency regarding chores.

Result, kids and manchildren can't be bothered to do the simplest tasks if it doesn't reward them immediately.

Anyone know how to increase the visibility of the palette in GraphicsGale?

Those require plugins to really be worth the use. And it's not really straightforward for a newcomer. I do dig Atom's activate-powermode though. Wish CLion or VS had it. Delicious game feel to programming.

atom.io/packages/activate-power-mode

Field of view now 'lights up' walls, this gives them a kind of neat depth effect, may still need tweaking here and there.
FoV graphics still need work.

I suspect it has to do with how you've stored the inventory and more importantly, how you remove elements from that list.

It's even worse when you consider how difficult it is to build up discipline, when you have no discipline.

What a tiny oversight, with such massive consequences.

Webm
I'm controlling the camera manually for now

Yes, they require plugins to be 100x better than NP++. Out of the box they're still both 10x better.

How to make dirt/paths look better?

Reposting progress because I didn't have time to dev today.

you make it sound like you just started working on this. I am assuming this is a very incorrect assumption?

I didn't suggest NP++ but I like it for quick source code review. Doesn't take long to boot and highlights. That's all I really need it for. For Atom and Sublime, they take too long to boot but aren't as heavy as an IDE but that just makes them obsolete in my situation.

>Sublime takes too long to boot
?

did theatrhytm influence this?

I'd worry more about the completely fucked perspective

I've been working on the game for a long time. I started working on this particular area just now though.

It's not extremely long but it's long enough that it makes it not worth loading. I used it for JS development, which is the only time I ever used it for anything major.

I guess my point is, neither NP++, Sublime, or Atom beat out decent IDEs.

Are you not using a SSD? Sublime boots instantly for me.

little pebbles and specks. Also grass should wrap over the edges

You will get tire of games eventually, you will realize how shit modern stuff is and how you could do it much better

Then you make a little bit of progress and get hyped,and hopefully the feeling takes hold and propels you to dev

Nope. I upgraded ~3 years ago but I am on an 6 year old HDD. Still holding out for SSDs to come down in price and go up in capacity.

Not him. I have mixed drive. I no longer shirk vital work but I still TRY to play games. But when I do they don't feel rewarding anymore and that frustration fuels me to push forward.

I need someone who can do HUD and menu UI in GameMaker. Already got most of the game made; I just don't want to deal with that shit. You'll get a decent credit, and I'm open to longer-term collabs.

Maybe you should post a shot of your friend instead of doing the game dev equivalent of a craigslist personals ad.

friend? I meant game obviously.

progress :^)

because you realized how fucked up is making games
most of the people i know don't have the discipline to sit on their ass 10 hours a day just watching tutorials and program, including myself.
its simply too hard to make a game by yourself

Damn, you're working in "Hammer World Builder" too bro? It's great!

...

...

>watching "speed programming" videos on youtube
>a fuckton of really basic errors
>a fuckton of bad practices and newbie mistakes
>words like "super duper" "awesome" "fancy shmancy" are repeated thoughout the video
>mfw

>implying programmers type impeccable, well-formatted code on the first attempt

>not using words like agile, nimble, scrum, KPIs, quick wins, critical success factors
No wonder they are awful

This. Without the power of the Unity Asset Store, it's impossible for anyone but AAA studios to make a game. Just look at he tried to use something that's not Unity and the Unity Asset Store, and look how shitty it is!

What do you call a group of frames?
And a group of groups of frames?

track
animation

posting progress!
youtube.com/watch?v=97IDWBeohAg

im being serious.
look at stardew valley. his game is good but for 5 years worth of investment he could have done alot better, but he didn't. you know why? because he was 1ma and basically started the project for fun purposes
i don't have 5 years user, and certainly not for a game like stardew

An animation?

but UE4 takes so many minutes to boot up

i just want to make a game and its not letting me

a packet and a message respectively

Dear god the framerates man. But nice otherwise.

...

>links to that source image
Don't reply to anyone like that, it's a shitposter

Maybe next time. Don't really like posting progress, but there's some occasional talent here for collaboration.

I'm being serious too. The Unity Asset Store is the only way to make games. See my work in for an example, it really is the best way to make a game.

>framerates
Where is your game, nodev shitposter?

>being this defensive even after I followed up with a compliment

>6 months ago

uh.. I thought danny was a dev, why was his last progress half a year go??

The person who posted the link isn't the actual dev, user. Come on, you should know better

If people missed it last general:

project.pixelships guy here. I'm ready to admit that I can't pull of this vidyagem myself. Tomorrow I'm rebooting my project from the ground up, and I could use an experienced programmer on board. The project is a Heavily stat driven Shoot-em-up RPG. Think Mechwarrior meets Tyrian 2000 or Raptor:Call of the Shadows.

The idea is to basically partner up, and do this as a two man team. This way I can shift some of my focus on the Art / Animation / SFX.

Project up till now:
some-pixel-dev.itch.io/pixelships

You die in a zelda dungeon

Should you respawn at the start of the dungeon, or at the start of the room you died in

maybe it's because he's on unity, if he used "Hammer World Builder" he could develop much quicker!

Oh yeah. What I'd need is someone that knows some basics of Unity and has decent knowledge of C#.

This is clearly your decision.

At the beginning, like every other Zelda game? If it was just the room, there'd be little punishment in death.

Don't start over, just keep chugging and posting progress

Not sure what's all going on, but I just started learning to use Allegro. Def. not much but new hopeful dev here.