/agdg/ - Amateur Game Development General

>mfw didn't use git for my small project I've worked on past week
>mfw I deleted it by mistake
>mfw rewrote everything I lost in 3 hours and it's better than before
>mfw it's on git now

>has a delicious brown girlfriend to teach her code
Truly the dream

If everything is so bad, why dont you make it better or propose better systems? Where's your game?

This is why i got into game dev.
I believed i could be better than the rest.

But nigga that aint easy.
If u were able to make a game with this "better" crafting system u mentioned.
you would have a million shitty design aspects littered throught the rest of the game.
that other no-devs spot... and the cycle continues.

In most games? Pretty sure shit you're talking about only happens in elder scrolls games.
Crafting systems in other games are mostly a complete waste of time as well but for very different reasons.

the main loop dont freeze the browser no more

had a fight with my game
feeling pretty bad мoя ceмья

You could say that no game is perfect, just like people creating them.

You have never made anything yourself yet you say that it's so easy.

>average idea-guy

Most games making it to you are games with giant budgets, therefore with giant expectations of returns, therefore with simplified systems.

Congratulations, we've recovered the history of Bethesda.

>So am I just arrogant and a delusional nodev
Mostly. Also kinda petty.

I mean not completely wrong, but sort of approaching it at a weird angle that ignores pretty much every factor. Like Extra Creditz.

>uni
is this like some doogie howser gamedev anime?

It's barely about gamedev.

it's a gamedev anime where the characters make games, work and study without shitposting all day. Nothing you can retate to, gogem

...

none of this answers the
>uni
part i was actually asking about.
are you all too young for the doogie howser reference? is AGDG the doogie howser of shitposting?

How do I store branching dialogue as data?

json?

I can store a buncha string using json, but how do I make choices and branching without having a giant script with if statements for every branch?
Surely less retarded people already came up with a good format

store each option as an object and have it contain the suboptions for where it links and just change what the current option is. like a linked list but the pointer is to an array not a linear next step

>Care to name a few of the good games?
store.steampowered.com/app/420440

I don't know why this made me laugh. Debugging/Creating the hard mode only moves.

>how I feel every day
>just like my hopes and dreams
Heh.

I'd suggest:
response
{
string message
dialog* next_dialog
}

dialog
{
string dialog
response* responses
}

have a parent dialog which contains an array of responses which then points to the next dialog and repeat.

Triumph of the Cosmos dev here:
what's better for modeling on-world (planet, moon, and asteroid) settlements? I had made a mockup with a grid kind of like stellaris but I realized it got kind of silly to try and break it up into units like that when I calculated the area of each grid square for various sized worlds. There's still a certain appeal to making it nice and discrete but would it be better to make it be just settlements and there's no hard limit to the number of settlements, but there is on surface area and resources available. I could eventually try to do a map projection or (god forbid, everything else is 2D) a 3D model like EVE if I wanted even more detail.

My top priorities in order are balance, do-ability, and realism.
Other things that matter would be I want to be able to interact with all of the details of the world like available resources, oceans, atmosphere, temperature. I'm going to have research and tech for dealing with different conditions but would one of the models I mentioned be better or does anyone have ideas?

>only just now discovered the beauty, elegance and usefulness of pure functions

WHY HAVEN'T I BEEN TAUGHT TO USE THEM PROPERLY IN COLLEGE

who /given up/ here

>All players will do is just spam crafting shitty iron daggers until it gets high enough to create their dream weapon
That takes longer though.

This same logic can be applied to RPGs.
If the player needs to beat a difficult boss, all they have to do is grind shitty low level enemies until they're high enough to not worry about actually using their brain.

>simply changing it to a milestone and specific requirement system
>prerequisite requirement system
So now crafting is just a quest system? Doesn't sound that much better to be honest.

What's the point of craft levels anyway? If you have the items, then you should be able to craft it.

>but realistically the player will need certain amount of experience to craft more complex items
This can be solved by making it so only specific NPC's can craft the more complex items.

>He thinks college actually teaches you something useful

Loving every Laugh

>So now crafting is just a quest system
Well crafting has always been basically a quest system. You're just collecting items and drag + dropping them in some boxes.

I dont think any game has an engaging crafting system because its not ideal. If you make crafting more like a mini-game, IE, autistically matching up the lines and measuring heat or some bullshit, then it becomes a pain in the ass to quickly craft basic shit you need.

here's the mockup. no functionality

Best crafting systems are implicit ones like Etrian Odyssey where you sell materials and can buy items made from them. Least pain in the ass possible but still encourages searching for materials.

Star Ruler 2 had a good system for this
It's too bad nobody played it and the studio shut down

I was pretty fond of the one in Summon Knight: Swordcraft Story.

Get your whole set up, match weapon type to material and throw in some extra crap. It worked, and you were only bothering to make milestone weapons anyway, not steel dagger x 500, so it felt rewarding.

>c# has garbage collector shit
>Meanwhile in gdscript any object without reference deletes itself automatically making 0 overhead when creating and destroying hundreds of objects as if you're doing it in c++
>still sucking on that microsoft dick

>This can be solved by making it so only specific NPC's can craft the more complex items.

I've seen in some games where you have to find or purchase crafting books in order to unlock tiers of crafting.

This would eliminate grinding for experience or taking it to NPCs.

How do I specify what options are linked in json?

Wait, what. Did I fuck up somewhere, or can GODOT seriously not perform exponentials on floats?

>every game should cater to me 100% of the time
There's literally nothing wrong with grinding.

Many languages can't... Use Math.Pow(a, b)

He's actually doing it, the absolute madman.

Though, I've considered making my game's currency bitcoin.

You have to wait around while your transactions go through lmao

that's a bitwise operator you imbecile

>automatically
That's called reference counting, it's another type of garbage collection it can sometimes be even slower than C#'s stop-the-world garbage collection

Stop being a pussy and use C++ already

Grinding is a nice way to balance games. If the player isn't good enough or lucky enough to win against a boss or tough part of the game, they can go through a few encounters to come back and do it again.

The difference is that grinding can be used as a gate for progression in a game's story or quests, but skill or crafting grinding is shit. You can't craft better gear through being skillful and grinding is just a way to make it easier, nor is crafting the primary method of challenge and difficulty of a game like the combat is. Crafting grinding is just a seriously annoying time waster.

its not the 90s/early 2000s anymore man.
nobody wants to spend all day grinding in your game when there's thousands of other games out there

>relying on filler
weak

>tfw it's finally working
>tfw it was fucking dumb
>tfw but it's working now

Stuck player death routine into main game loop instead of making it a natural outcome of taking damage.

So when player died he got stuck in eternal explosion limbo, unable to truly die until the game was mercifully closed.

Yeah, I figured it was my bad. I'll look into it further.

Koreans still like grinding (in a social setting, though).

Loads of people I know still like grindy games (as a soothing no-brainer way to chill after work).

I absolutely hate it... but I've found games that do gimmicks that aren't balanced just right tend to be weaker overall than something that just slapped in grind-shit.

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I've never actually used json I'm sorry. This might help though
json-spec.readthedocs.io/pointer.html

Grinding in terms of crafting is a resource thing; you need to obtain enough materials to get the XP to level up.

Turning crafting into a skill-based minigame isn't the answer that'll solve all your problems either, it'll just be an annoying thing that forces you to play another game than you wanted to play.

hmmm looks interesting. I like the natural growth bit.

But if you only do it 10-15 times it won't. It will remain an occasional distraction. You're assuming that the game should have a minigame AND force you to craft 50 iron daggers, when it probably shouldn't.

Also I don't think a minigame would necessarily be a good idea either but it would be a step in the right direction. I think the real answer is to make crafted items as good if not better then items you find on quests and to make crafting very rare; you only craft to make shit you actually want or need, not just whenever you get the materials.

Having to play the minigame 15 times most fucking definitely means you'll be playing that minigame. This does not apply only if you play that minigame 0 times.

Do not make me play a fucking skill-based minigame in an RPG, because I'm playing that game for the RPG not for your stupid snowflake minigame.

>it'll just be an annoying thing
Just make it so when you craft, it makes items in bulk instead of singles. This way you're not constantly trying to playing the mini-game, but when you do actually play it, it's more exciting since the risks are higher.

IE,
Collect x50 wheat + x5 bottles of milk
Play crafting game
Do a 10/10 job?
Get x25 Bread.
5/10 job?
x15 Bread

1/10?
x3 Bread

Fuck off. Uninstall your dev software and never touch them again.

This one sounds so annoying that just thinking about it made me mad.

I guess you could just have a field with the names or identifiers for the linked options. But in your actual code you have to convert that to actual links. Those are where you need the links.
I'd love if someone could chime in but I think json is used because it's easily modifiable, so you could specify the actual data literally in your code if you want.

Ok, well add a 'I'm a lazy piece of shit' button and have it randomly do the crafting for you. You can optionally use your skills to get better yields though.

Solved.

>in game development general
>hates fun

Being forced to play some fucking puzzle game when I'm playing an action game is the polar opposite of fun.

Minigames are only acceptable when the gameplay of the minigame is very similar to the gameplay of the surrounding main game and uses the similar controls and mechanics. And I don't see how you would accomplish that for baking bread in an RPG.

>And I don't see how you would accomplish that for baking bread in an RPG

turn baking bread into an RPG battle

>sullying pure functions by using them
MONSTER!

how can it be slow? an object is deleted as soon as there's no reference for it, it's instant garbage collection, c# has an annoying delay that makes ram usage go crazy

>Minigames are only acceptable when the gameplay of the minigame is very similar to the gameplay of the surrounding main game and uses the similar controls and mechanics.

Then why make a minigame at all?

>Minigames are only acceptable when the gameplay of the minigame is very similar to the gameplay
no
the point of mini games is to provide a breath of fresh air

mario games have it
sonic games have it
most games have it

you're just a brainless idiot

To be honest, all mario minigames are using the same mechanics as main games usually.

Minigames are good excuse to shove those useless starting projects (all those pong, breakout,... clones) into the game

you cant hate what doesnt actually exist

DMC where you slice falling watermelons before they hit the floor.

Mario where you must hit switches and buttons around the room quickly in order. Or deliver items around a complicated map with lots of verticality and multiple routes

Both are minigames but use the same control mechanics, only you're using those mechanics for different purposes than you normally would. Technically you COULD make a cooking minigame in an action game. But you'd have to design the cooking station in such a way that you can use your weapons to toggle switches and move gauges.

Depends which one

SMB3 had card matching games and slot machines

Mario&Luigi RPG had tetris

Sonic Mania had tetris

>Sonic Mania had puyo puyo
Also, Sonic Adventure had like every minigame ever.

i never thought of the switches for red coins in mario levels as minigames, it's great when it adds to the level without changing the gameplay at all

>Both are minigames but use the same control mechanics
I'd consider them more level gimmicks than mini games. A mini game is usually independent of the level you're in.

The racing part in twinkle park was pretty fun.
I also think I spent more time playing the NIGHTS mini game in the casino than any other level

I consider a minigame anything that has nothing else inbetween it's start and it's end (i.e. if you quit halfway through you'll fail it), and is somehow different from the "main game".

Also Chao World is probably the biggest 'actual' mini-game where 99% of my time in SA2 was spent.

i added ragdolls !

i would have never thought how much work it actually is to make a somewhat simple tower defense
or maybe i just suck

>99% of my time
99% of the time half of the playerbase of SA2 rather.

>TD with ragdoll physics
Potential comedy gold right here. Just make waves denser and watch the massive flopping.

Dismemberment when

make a napoleonic wars td game

>towers are firing lines
>cannons shoot straight forward till the edge of the map

actually that's pretty cool

what version of opengl unity uses?

>Make gamedev tweet before going to bed
>Wake up and immediately check it
>0 likes
every time

circumvent the deception of people not caring about you on twitter by not having twitter

>Minigames are only acceptable when the gameplay of the minigame is very similar to the gameplay of the surrounding main game and uses the similar controls and mechanics.
For you, I love when a game throws me a curve ball, as long as it's fun or not too long.
I love every minigame in Yakuza and it would be significantly less alive without those.
Leave this armchair game design generalization shit to youtube "analysts" and judge shit on game by game basis, if it works it works, no need for hard rules.

>0
literally how

Post twitter.

whodevs unite.

We lit.

There's no hard rules, but as long as people do something retarded 99.9% of the time, I'm going to act like there are hard rules.