/agdg/ - Amateur Game Development General

Got my "faux IK" going for my trees. (faux because it doesn't use any IK maths - just rotations relative to previous bone).
Pretty happy about that. Was a bit of a nightmare getting it to work with rotating the whole tree around.

why ?

For sure, but it's going to have to change from the WoW/Everquest/Korean grindan days.

Is it better to go in with a full plan for what to make or to just start pissing out code and see what feels good?

>pajeets
unity devs

Thanks, on the internet, all the answers I have found are people telling me to watch 10 hour tutorials.

Definitely not a full plan, but a general idea is good.

>in engine texturing with a fucking brush tool
>devs will still be too lazy to texture anything and use memepoly

It has evolved into the Battle Royale genre

the first step is to not call it an mmo because the label attracts an extremely bad crowd.

Yes. I think we went through a long period where developers perceived that they had to be the 'wow-killer' in order to produce a successful MMO, and therefore assumed the only way to go was heavy AAA production, which resulted in formulaic games with little risk to be taken due to the people who are able to fund that kind of production understandably wanting a lower risk investment.

I think with the state the industry is in now, the MMO genre could thrive again. I think the prestige of WoW has crumbled and that's starting to make devs think less about competing and more about just creating a product. I don't think it'll be in the hands of an indie dev though, and I think people have been throwing their money at pure vape for a while as far as MMO projects go.

Looks really nice. Doesn't look scalable like you say hence the faux, but the effect on that model looks great.

I'll always maintain that having a near-complete plan is best. Look at devs that have made it. Risk of Rain, A Hat in Time, Vagante, Aviary Attorney. They knew almost exactly what they were making when they started. You can check the archive and see for yourself.

How many devs do you see in AGDG change major shit in their game, have no idea what the fuck they're making, and haven't made a single game worth a shit despite being here for 5+ years? I know I'm at least one. I'm trying to get more organized and have a more solid plan. I think that's where I've gone wrong.

The last few weeks / month I've had a real problem customer, the kind of armchair designer who makes all sorts of nonsensical suggestions on how to "improve" the game. Every day I'm spammed with notifications about their ideas.

My game doesn't get a lot of traffic, it's really niche, so I need to interact with the community or it appears dead. I always tried my best to placate them, "that's a neat idea" or some variant thereof only to wake up to their next list of "genius ideas" that would make my game a best seller.

Last week I finally had enough of this shit and I just blatantly told him: "Why don't you just make your own game if you know so much about game design?".

No response. Silence for a week. A little peace finally.

Today I woke up to a huge negative review bomb from a bunch of accounts with only 1 game owned, mine. From overwhelmingly positive to mostly negative. I contacted my Steam store rep, but I know they're not going to do fuck all. I'm completely fucked now.

Moral of the story: Don't ever interact with your customers except for technical issues. It's simply not worth the headache it brings.

/blog post

Making a platformer in GM.
Should I place the player sprite's origin in the middle or the middle bottom?

Probably a stupid question, but is it possible to make a 3D game without using 3D models?

What aspects do you think were key in a mmo?

I fondly remember playing Ragnarok Online and Runescape, and I just can't find any charm in modern games.

Why do you think an indie dev can't get a mmo right? They lean more extremely to try new things.

It's less about knowing what you want beforehand and more about avoiding feature creep and having a decent work ethic.
Always relevant: makegames.tumblr.com/post/1136623767/finishing-a-game

Yeah

Depends a little on the scale of the game you want to make, but I feel having an idea of what your game will be up until the point when you'd be happy to have a member of the public playing it is a good way to go, even if you only have an abstract idea about what some of the secondary elements of your game might look like.

You don't need to plan the whole thing, but having the core gameplay planned out, and then the level of content over which that gameplay will be stretched, I think that's what you need. Enough that you could ship what might look like a shitty tech demo.

Pissing out code and having a play is sort of the thing you might do in the ideation stage before you actually decide you're making a game. If that's what works for you and gets you started, do it.

MMO can be anything. Different audiences want different experiences. I do think a lot of more recent attempts have gone wrong in not making the games social enough. Regular players should have reasons to care about their game world and the major events on the server.

billboarded sprites

Thanks, user.
Yeah, weirdly Unity doesn't support generic IK, so I had to write something myself to achieve that result. Trying to write a custom IK system would have taken far too much time.
As it is, the end result is all that matters - mission accomplished!

Is making a basic 3D engine really that hard?

Most 2D games are 3D games nowadays.

Depends on how basic

basic? no
something that works consistently and fast and has enough usability to be used in a full game? yes

It's not a question of how hard it is, more a question of 'is it worth the time/effort'. If you're doing it to learn, it's absolutely worth it. If you want to make a game quickly, probably not.

It depends on your definition of a "3d model".
People saying billboards are 2d are technically incorrect, since you're putting textures/sprites onto a quad in 3d space. The quad is 4 verts and 6 indices - ie. a 3d model.
Do you mean "complex 3d models"?

I should rephrase what I said, because I do think its possible for an indie dev to get an mmo right, I just think that the infrastructure they'd need to develop in a timely manner and launch strongly would only be available to indie devs who are quite established, and it'd be a bit of a make or break.

I don't think the first project someone works on is going to be a successful MMO, nor probably the second, and sometimes people attribute that to being what 'indie' means.

I think if you were independent but had managed to build a fairly established studio behind you, you'd be in the best position to make a successful MMO in the current day. If that still meets the criteria for indie, then yeah, an indie dev can get it right.

Thanks for the answers, I spent a lot of my childhood playing mmorpgs so the current drought of the genre makes me wanna do something about it. Plus I've always wanted to try and make a game.

I'm ideaguy'n right now.

I was spending too much time trying to figure out how wrong I was using it. Maybe one day I'll come back to it.

I forgot about the "paper mario" style graphics.

But yeah I meant complex 3D models. I'm asking because I want to be able to focus on programming first and then add models later. Like I know in a 2D game you can have simple programmer graphics like squares in place of detailed sprites. Is there anything like that for a 3D game?

thanks for the answer.

any engine has primitives like cubes/capsules you can generate

>Like I know in a 2D game you can have simple programmer graphics like squares in place of detailed sprites. Is there anything like that for a 3D game?

C'mon, user. What is the 3D version of a square? Spoiler: A Cube.

>glitch doesn't happen under any normal circumstances

worth spending effort fixing it?

it's not hard if you're jeff preshing
preshing.com/20171218/how-to-write-your-own-cpp-game-engine/

Yes. If something fucky is happening, fix it. It could come back to bite you in the ass later.

Anyone here used HGE before?
I started making an RTS in it but that was a long time ago.
Anyone know if the engine is still viable/updated?
(Haff's Game Engine)

You can use primitive shapes. You could even do the same and stick a vertically billboarded sprite in your 3D world as a placeholder. Pic related, my player character whilst I was getting it to move in 3d.

Does /agdg/ currently play any games?

I finish the stuff I wanted to do for the day and then I just kind of sit around wondering what to do because I can't find anything to play.

define "normal"
if it's something the player can do then it should be fixed

Ahhh ok. Yeah I'm new to 3D devving. Thanks!

500 ping

Always fix bugs as you encounter them.
You never know what the flow on effects are and they only get harder to find, the more shit you implement.
I always stop everything when I find a bug until it's completely eliminated.

No, I'm only making a game because all of them suck.

Tried Probuilder, since it's now free for all Unity versions. Not bad, I was expecting to suffer like I usually do on Blender, but it is easy to use after all.

You mean it occurs when you have 500 ping? How gamebreaking actually is it, if its not a typical behaviour due to shitty ping, then fix it, because a player can have 500 ping.

Currently playing a mix of Skyrim, Caesar 3, Command and Conquer 95 and some emulated PSP games (mainly MHFU and FF7:CC).

Are those stairs like an import or something or did you build them entirely yourself? I don't know exactly what Probuilder provides.

That's cool!

I go with middle bottom so I can place the player "on" a platform. As far as I know it doesn't really matter though.

What is probuilder.
Looks like a rapid prototyping tool for levels.
I wonder how many people are gonna use it as a replacement for purposfully generated art.
Can see it now - a flood of hardedged, untextured levels in cruddy FPS games.

I end up playing CSGO for one match before it leaves me feeling empty and wanting to dev again but by that point I decide I'm too tired to let myself work on something. It sucks, but only 700 more unbearable days until ship, right?

Thanks, user!
Hoping to use it for some really fun effects that'll add real character to my game.

someone said i should just use probuilder in unity instead of blender now. It seemed like a nice tool a year ago, but skills in blender are at least transferable to other engines and are timeless, unlike unity with its constant updates and compatibility issues

Unity calls it "integrated in-editor Advanced Level Design", you know very well no one will use it just for prototyping.

Look forward to all Unity games using the exact same premade stairs and shit.

Made with it as well. Stairs are one of the "primitives" you can create. There's literally a slider for the number of steps, and another one to curve your stairs how you want them to be. It's pretty amazing.

Never seen superhot? Also, it's still a tool. Lazy devs gonna be lazy no matter what.

Doesn't Unity have landscape splines or something? Tracks should be easy.

Alright, I'll stick to that, then
Thanks

I won't be mad about it if it leads to better level designs.

it doesn't
maybe they will get it in 2025 and unitybabbies will be calling it revolutionary

Since I'm just getting started with 3D it might be useful for some less blocky placeholders.

I use to run a small business. Get hammered on a daily basis by people who want to run the business themselves and are completely confident they are 100% correct, yet have no business experience of their own while having 10million excuses as to why they don't start their own business.

Shit drove me crazy

It will do the trick. I used SabreCSG up until now, but I'm definitely switching to this new option. Considering that I'm broke and could not afford it before, this is a godsend.

also what's the game broseph

unity terrain tools are garbage. With some assets and spline/road tools from asset store you can get functionality similar to cry engine, but it will be very unoptimized, so in the end you ll still have to export it all out and optimize in blender or something, but all of that might just corrupt it and wont export the trees/grass etc. In short its pain!!!!!!!!!!

...

Welp, this sucks.

Not since I'm deving.

Probuilder is just for blocky doom-era levels, you're better off using UE4 since it has splines that are perfect for roads.

That's what you get for being rude

Playing games has become too depressing since I know I'm not making progress on my own game and I feel bad that my game isn't as good as anything I play

No, is also has polyshapes you can extrude on the fly, as well as bezier shapes.

Wait... are you trying to start an engine-war again, you silly willy?

I call bullshit. Post game.

But "blocky" doom-era levels were objectively better than modern level design.

I'm a UE4fag and I wouldn't even recommend using UE4's built in spline system for roads. It would be useful for a continuous road I suppose but intersections won't be easy.

Why not use multiple splines with special intersect meshes to connect them?

...

Enjoy your 5fps

Doom levels were good because John Romero was a great designer and architecture aficionado, not because of the blockiness of the engine.

You know splines are made up of multiple meshes to begin with right?

Anyone here familiar with Blender addons such as HardOps? gumroad.com/l/hardops
Do you think they are worth the buy, or what are some other "must have" addons in your mind?

Wrote up a little download page and tutorial / instruction manual for my game. Planning on pinning this to my twitter and linking on the first page of most of my devlogs. Might use Tumblr since it allows embedding gifs.

docs.google.com/document/d/1anNgRHyUwN5ioALWUH8El1f-vqAqtlka1Qivnl5VmMs/edit?usp=sharing

If anyone looks it over and notices some bad grammar or anything, let me know. Also play pls.

webm?

>making a 6-pages-long manual for a touhou clone
no user, no one will read that
you put the tutorial in the game

I used gifs because I wasn't sure if I could embed webm's in gdoc / tumblr.

Plus I wanted them to autoplay hue.

Yeah...I know. Nobody reads anything ever.

But I don't have time right now, so that comes next update. This is the best I can do for now.

Hoping the gifs will at least catch peoples eyes before they scroll through it.