/agdg/ - Amateur Game Development General

didn't read

Just sounds irritating to me, if you have no way of going down levels.

At which point you might as well just implement difficulty settings.

Pretty simple

So a better item for a lower level character? Seems like it would make you grind more, because as you get better the drops get shittier and you begin to slow down.

My point is to stop people from grinding. I had another idea of changing exp requirements to gain the next level depending on where you are on the game but generally it's better to reward rather than punish

Fuck off boku you idiot.

How would you grind more then? It's only at certain checks throughout the game, not every single enemy you run into

>My point is to stop people from grinding.
What's the point? Just design the game so grinding isn't necessary, and people who want to grind will already be ruining the game for themselves.

Why are people allowed to shill their games in the OP? Shouldn't there only be information?

>What's the point? Just design the game so grinding isn't necessary, and people who want to grind will already be ruining the game for themselves.
That's what I'm trying to do dumbass. Players will ruin the game for themselves regardless of what they do, part of our job are developers is to protect players from themselves. A lot of times players will look for the most efficient or safe path rather than fun

>A lot of times players will look for the most efficient or safe path rather than fun
Maybe they find that fun. Who are you to decide for the player what is fun and what isn't?

Because it isn't fun. I've found myself going down a path that I didn't really think was more enjoyable for certain reasons and looking back I wish I hadn't. Sometimes, the players are wrong

Reminder that if you want to get to the required level for 3D Modelling for games, you should get a CG Cookie subscription instead of relying on Youtube tutorials.
You might think you can figure everything out by messing around in Blender, but the reality is, you're probably doing a lot of things poorly.

RPGs and level systems are fundamentally very hard to fix if your aim is to reduce grinding

>stop liking things I don't like

>A lot of times players will look for the most efficient or safe path rather than fun
Then make the most efficient or safe path fun.
Or make the most fun path the most efficient.

That should be your goal, not to eliminate options by removing them.

Like I said I want to reward not grinding, however there are plenty of ways to punish instead. For example level caps is one, another way could be a very complex story where you switch characters so often that you don't want to invest time grinding in any of them
Like I said I myself have done things which I didn't actually think was fun because I wanted an optimal path. It's boring as fuck but I still find myself doing it in RPGs all the time and wish I didn't

>part of our job are developers is to protect players from themselves

huehuehue

>makes a big talk about le task as le developer to guide le poor player
>doesn't even know to avoid doing that through punishment

What's that? I got that quote from some Dev talk a while ago, I think it was X-Com
Like I said here, I want to avoid punishment, which why I'm looking for suggestions; I don't suppose you have any

Mark Brown video. Game makers toolbox.

Speaking of which, do you guys watch his stuff? I like it from an entertainment perspective.

>I'm looking for suggestions; I don't suppose you have any

what's the rest of the mechanics

Wait, is that Polygon article just a rip-off of that Game Maker's Toolkit video?
Have they actually sunk to literally stealing from YouTubers?

It's a regular type of JRPG. You meet characters, you battle enemies, buy new equipment, fight bosses and there's a big story

I wouldn't be surprised but the phrase is something Sid Meier said

It's quite good as an introduction to game DESIGN. Even if it feels like stuff you already knew from playing games, he puts it into words.

You can run an article about a tweet.

So when I run the tutorial 'Hello World' love2d main.lua file it doesn't do anything but show a piece of toast and say "No Game" and if I try to make it a zip and rename it to .love it just says main.lua is not the first class file even though it is. Is love2d really this obnoxious to compile? Like, I can't just run it on the command line in a way I would do 'javac Main.java'?

only give xp during mandatory battles/events. wait for people to get mad because they can't beat a boss. tell them to git gud instead and watch hijinks ensue.

I have mainly been working on grabbable objects. I made colored switches that solidify dotted line blocks when pressed, and small spring trampolines. Also colored keys and locked blocks. The locked blocks can block areas off or have items inside them. Rendered in unlit just because.

Not a bad idea I think; force strategy rather than numbers

>he isn't writing his game in Shakespeare

>force strategy rather than numbers
Don't make a bloody RPG if you don't want numbers to be significant.

>his game has writing

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_Programming_Language

It's not just about that. The biggest problem I find in JRPGs is everything except the fact that grinding can eliminate strategy.

I have some idea of how I want my demo to be when the time comes. I am very excited again after taking a while off

also is unofficial official spooky jam ever going to be an actual thing or.....

you guys suck at animation

Everything I like*

If you haven't already, look into Keith Burgun's work. You seem like the kind of person who's open to it. Here's one that's relevant to the current topic

keithburgun.net/clockwork-game-design-episode-7-grinding-toys-and-value/

I can already see the potential. This looks like it would be fun with just a small demo. MC does seem quite slow, though.

Is there any non-dodgy reason for many people to suddenly each buy multiple copies of a game on itchio

Zelda got the RPG formula perfect where you collect heart containers and equipment upgrades instead of XP and levels.

>Linear progression
>Good

No.

>Grinding basically has no place in interactive systems. In this episode, I talk about why that’s my position.

Opinion fucking discarded. Fucking liberals dude. Just because you don't like grinding since you don't like working hard for something and all that that entails it doesn't mean it shouldn't exist. The world isn't made for people like you alone. I hate how game developers are so biased towards one point of view on these things. You should be ashamed of spreading that non-sense.

If I block someone on tumblr can they no longer like my post?

Zelda's progression isn't inherently linear. A Link Between Worlds lets you do the dungeons in any order, because you get items via this weird rental system instead of finding them in dungeons.
Unless your idea of linear progression is needing to get +1 HP before you can get +2 HP.

What?

owo

love2d.org/wiki/Getting_Started
how are you running it? you absolutely can just use the command line. as the wiki says, just type "love [location of folder containing main.lua]" or just drag that folder onto the love.exe. if you're making a .love archive make sure the root contains main.lua and not something like my_game/main.lua. that's a super common mistake

Simply getting better and better by going forward rather than left to right

Still working on the city theme. But its now in game and can make real life levels using it, but colors are still being tweaked.

What the fuck are you trying to say?

What are you talking about

I agree wholeheartedly user

Start with sword a, then sword b does +5 damage, then sword c does +10 damage

Wow... I never thought of it like this.

Friendly reminder, left to right is more heroic than left to right

Like a racecar?

Do you think sword upgrades are the only form of progression in Zelda games?
Hell, do you think sword upgrades in Zelda games are always strictly-better?
Because you're wrong on both counts.

Which Zelda game does this?

How does the leveling system in your game work? Do you just pick a class at the start of the game, and then the player gets a fixed amount of stat gains every time he levels up? Or does he get the option to choose which stats he want to improve when he levels up/gets XP?

If its the former, then eliminating grinding will pretty much eliminate the only possible reason you could have for implementing a leveling system in your game, you might as well just power the player up every time he beats a boss or an important battle or something.

If it's the latter, and you want to eliminate grinding, you could do the same thing Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines did. In that game, the player only gets XP after completing quests, and the game has a limited amount of quests, so grinding is essentially impossible.

>tfw my first time playing Ys II was on Nightmare and I grinded to max level before fighting the first boss
Bump combat makes grinding fun. Like a literal meat grinder.

TRIPPIN OFF THE BEAT KINDA, DRIPPIN OFF THE MEAT GRINDAH

It's a bit more complicated than that. Each character has base class which that start with. For example one character could start of as a knight. In terms of actually gaining stats and abilities it's a lot like the FF12 licence board. You gain ability points which allow you to traverse the board and unlock points. Now each class has 4 subclasses which have their own board, and as you progress through the game the character will receive a token which unlocks these sub classes, however on one playthrough you will only get two tokens for each character, so maybe the Knight gains access to a Holy Knight sub class but also a Lancer sub class

not him and he may be doing it for personal reasons, but games don't need to be catered to the smallest common denominator. as long as the game itself is good enough in the end, people will be attracted to it simply because of a more unique styling. for example, eo/iwbtg had shit tons of pitfalls for masochistic players but it's precisely that which gained them popularity.

There's no point in sperging about whether your players are grinding. Some people actually like doing it, and it will probably take longer than playing "correctly" anyway, so they definitely get their money's worth.
Just make sure the game doesn't push normal players towards grinding.

Also, if you reward the grinders with rare drops or an absurdly overtuned bonus dungeon, they will buy every sequel you shit out.

I'm saying that the meme opinion that grinding is bad is prominent with all indie game developers. This bias is retarded because not everyone wants a game without grinding and not everyone thinks it's bad.

Keith has a tendency to state his design opinions as facts, with no hedging. You can mentally insert a "most games", "in my opinion", and "probably" a couple times per sentence, but that's just not useful for clear writing. As a designer you can gain some value from his work by just taking what you feel is accurate.

I suppose you're right, but If I'm going to reward people who grind I don't see why I can't also reward those who don't

I like this

>but that's just not useful for clear writing
this
You're not supposed to say "in my opinion" when you're trying to persuade somebody, because it weakens your position. Everyone knows it's an opinion, so stating that explicitly is redundant.

That said, "grinding is always bad" is in fact a retarded opinion.

>however on one playthrough you will only get two tokens for each character, so maybe the Knight gains access to a Holy Knight sub class but also a Lancer sub class
What's the problem, then?

How do you all prefer that a web-based game be distributed standalone?
A big electron / nw.js thing, or like an html file you can open in your own browser?

I don't want players to grind out the whole board as soon as they get a character

you should wrap it in an exe for windows, i assume that's electron?

>You're not supposed to say "in my opinion" when you're trying to persuade somebody

Not everything you write should be aimed at persuading everyone.

Keith's writing and podcasts falls squarely into that category, though. He states his design philosphy and tries to convince others of it

I never played FF12, so I don't know if I understood this correctly, but it seems to me that the solution would be to just have a limited amount of those ability points available in the game, and make the players get them by completing quests, beating bosses, and exploring the overworld.

Join us on Discord!
discord.gg/DSzZa9K

Then don't give those tokens out normally, have them found in the game world.

Yeah, but you end up with a download of 50+ MB even if the game itself is like 500KB because you basically bundle it with a copy of Chrome, so I wonder what people prefer

I agree, but you shouldn't obsess over ways to discourage grinding. As long as the game isn't unfair without it, players who don't enjoy it will avoid it. Players generally don't have a problem choosing a less-optimal but more fun option in single-player games, as long as they aren't constantly nudged the other way, like how Dishonored is "meant" to be played as a pacifist but inadvertently pushes you towards wanton violence at every opportunity.

That's easily solved by making XP requirements non-linear, which is what almost every RPG does. You can also make XP scale with relative level, so not only do you need more XP to level up, but you get less from each kill until you move on to a higher-level area.

People unironically think a 50mb game is better than a 500kb game.

Is it really meant to be pacifist though? What makes you think that

Right, your grocery list shouldn't be written like a persuasive essay.
But a podcast about game design should be, because if you don't think your opinions are worth persuading others to believe, then clearly even you don't think they're worthwhile opinions.

Are you some kind of compositionlet, user?

What is the most fun and/or interesting method of crafting potions in games?
I have various ingredients and various potions I want to create with them.

You mean like how people think paid games are always better than free ones?

Does anyone know a good site for teaching C#? Khanacademy seems great but it focuses on java script.

Yep. It's silly, but you should take advantage of mental quirks like that if they aren't eqregiously exploitative.

Any kind of system where you put in a few ingredients and get out a potion, in a semi-predictable way based on the qualities of the ingredients. You can also throw in a few oddball recipes, since people do like discovering the quirks of a system.