Interested in Game Dev?

Games GameDev
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I’d like to quickly reconfirm our team and responsibilities as we move into month 2 of our project.

@ashes987 - Project Manager

  • Team coordinator and Project planning
  • Scheduling and scope management
    @BloodMoney - Lead game designer
  • Mechanic design.
  • Gameplay cohesion
  • Game asset design
    @roketfiq - Lead artist
  • Art Design
  • Graphical and audio cohesion
    @Severok - Lead code monkey.
  • Engine and mechanics design
  • Bug hunter

Does this sound about right?

While we are welcome to contribute to any aspects of the project we are able to, it would be good to keep a clear outline of what our roles and focuses should be.

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I also consider myself code monkey, although I probably haven’t been pulling my weight enough on that side.

BloodMoney is out. RIP.

(No, he’s not dead, just busy with new job stuff and doesn’t want to commit and be dead weight.)

Roketfiq is also quite busy IIRC, I’ll ping him on Discord and see if he’s in. It would be nice if you could hop on discord every now and then.

(Moved: reply to this thread post)

Your idea of design-docs, design-first, etc. is what the gaming industry tried (and perhaps still does, sadly) in the late nineties / early 2000s. Like Waterfall software development, it doesn’t work because what sounds good on paper may not be fun in reality.

So the “new” way is to prototype rapidly (as fast as possible) – no UI, coloured squares, etc. because if it’s fun at that level (like that other game you described), adding polish and properly theming etc. will rock it. But if it’s not fun, no amount of shine can make it a great game.

With our small time commitments (not putting it down, saying: compared to eight hours a day), we drag out if we do that. We tried that with the PCG shooter and sort of were prototyping until the last week.

Please pick the new game/genre. One thing that works for me is “dream the best version of the game and slice the smallest possible MVP you can.” For you, one thing that works is “what can I make in X dev time that I will play for X+Y game time?”

RPGs, MMOs, and anything with networking are probably too big to bite off. Then again, if you’ve played Final Fantasy VI, they have this awesome “collesium” which is basically an autobattle of you vs. an enemy. That, or FF7’s “Golden Chocobo” arena sounds fun (TLDR: you vs. seven rounds of enemies, and after each round, something random breaks, like all spells, or all summons, or your sword, or your level cuts in half, etc.)

Can we please move this back to the gamedev thread? It’s not really about the PCG shooter any more.

123

Alright @ashes987 lets do this thing.

If you are sure that rapid prototyping is the way to go with this, then we will give it another shot.

Following our experiences from PCG, I think our next project should have more of a story focus.

I understand from your perspective that you want to use game developement as a medium for teaching Islamic themes so lets roll with that.

For the moment we will have to assume that we are down an Art director and Game designer, leaving us as a Coder/Manager/Maybe writer? and a Coder / Artist to cover the full project scope (No hard feelings to the departing brothers of course), between us we will have to estimate roughly 120 hours of dev time across the month.

Our current skill base is more mechanically inclined rather than Artistic, so I am thinking perhaps an RPG or some form of Stratergy rather than Adventure which would require more development of an Art focus.

I am not looking for an Epic story like Finay fantasy, maybe something focused around a randomly generated dungeon with a connected town and story elements. IE reach the next floor of the dungeon, unlock more items and story progress back it town.

Proposal: Top-down ARPG

Now, to cut down on development time and lower our requirements for a MVP, how about we canabalise part of our engine from PCG and make a Top-down ARPG in the style of something like the early Zelda games.
We can add characterisation for the protagonist and story integration to make it a more worthwhile product.

  • We take what viable code we can grab (Prototyping enemies from Json files, Object handling, sprite rendering and position correction, collision detection etc)
  • Re-write other parts to do them right like making a proper hirachy for object classes / sub classes
  • Each enemy type is its’ own subclass, has its’ own AI function etc.
  • Revert controls to absolute rather than vector
  • Add in an item system
  • Create a room mechanic where 1 game area transitions to another to create a more complex map mechanic.
  • Boss monster room
  • Etc etc etc.

For an MVP maybe start with a smaller scope

  • Strip down PCG engine to needed components
  • Absolute controls (Up-Down-Left-Right. Simple movements)
  • Edge of screen trigger transition to new location
  • Indestructable walls to define unique areas
  • Save-Game function.
  • Some sort of data-file and linked list to define each room and how they connect
  • Maybe 5-10 connected rooms to start with,
    • Generate a tree that will randomly connect these rooms on the start of each game to generate a new dungeon.
  • Eneny spawn type / location, wall locations, transition directions and connected rooms.
  • 3 basic enemy types + 1 boss in MVP scope, expandable if time
  • Simple player inv & Item system
    • Very basic item types in MVP scope, expandable if time.
  • Dialog system w/ character portrait
    • Text w/character head
    • prototype diaglog tree?

No more - No less to start with

If all goes well we can expand scope

  • Art assets (Simple animated sprites, Good animated sprites if we can pick up an artist).
  • Town location
  • Simple Shop system
  • Story integration
  • Extra object types/items
  • Extra Enemy types
  • More complex controls (Sprite, strafe, etc).
  • Boss rooms in dungeon choak points
  • Story progresses after defeating boss, unlocking further exploration

Keeping in mind we ONLY have ~120 hours dev time so… Focus on Depth over complexity.
Adding more content won’t fix a simple system that just doesn’t feel fun.

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I haven’t had sufficient time/brain-cycles to fully digest your proposal, so please forgive me if this response is … odd.

  • Please count me as 30 hours of dev, not 60. I will do what I can, but I have to figure out once again how to do this sustainably (last month was not remotely sustainable for me).
  • Agreed with epic story. Yes, I consider myself a writer and story-writer.
  • I made a quick ARPG prototype in JS. What do you think?
  • I’ve been trying to make a procedural ARPG with a procedural story for a couple of years.

Sorry, I have to truncate this post abruptly. I’ll try to edit it later.

Rough notes:

  • tech stack
  • reuse vs. rewrite
  • polish for final release on website
  • not saying don’t design up front
125

I thnk for tech-stack stick with: Pythong + Pyglet so we can build on what we have already instead of retarting from zero. We built PCG from 150 - 200 man hours with this new project sitting in the 60 - 90 hour range, so this head start should Insha Allah at least make this project viable.

From PCG import obj (Spawning, Sprite management & Collision)
From PCG import proc (Screen drawing & Input handling)
From PCG import Tutorial related functions

Remove :

  • All art assets
  • Remove Object sub-classes (Player, Guns, Bullets)

Add:

  • File handling:
  • Game Load/Save
  • Map Data
    • Individual rooms
    • Linked list of room connections
  • Item Data
  • Inv system
  • Walls + simple path finding
  • New object subclasses
    • Player
    • Enemies
      • Enemy Type sub-classes
    • etc etc\
    • Area transition objects (Invisible wall objects that trigger new map on collision)
    • Walls (Indestructable wall objects defining map)

Events:

  • ON start: [Map ID = 1]

    • Load map from file
    • Populate map: Walls + Enemies
    • Spawn player at location

  • ON collision with transition (Blue bar)

    • Despawn map objects (Walls + enemies)

  • Calll event: ON start [Map ID]

  • On Keypress [ i ]

  • Game Pause

  • Render Item window

    • On MousePress [ Left ]
      • Assign Item ID Player_Equip[ Left ]
    • On Mousepress [ Right]
      • Assign Item ID Player_Equip [Right]

  • On Event: Dialog

  • Game Pause

  • Render converstaion window (Bottom screen)

  • Load Dialog tree

  • Iterate through tree structure

    • Call sub-scripts as required. (Area transition, Add/remove items, Spawn enemies, etc)
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Sorry about this.

To resume:

  • When I launch a game, it goes on the Deen Games website. I have a history of releasing … less than stellar games. I want to stop doing that. That means games need to be at a certain level of polish. I guess one game a month supercedes that.
  • Tech stack: the absolute best way (IMO) to get feedback and see results is to put our games online and make them web accessible. I planned to upload them to Kongregate. If you agree, using a web stack is more important than, IMO, reusing code from a single month session.
  • I spent a couple of years trying to write solid, testable, long-term game code. What I realized? Code quality is proportional to lifespan. If I’m writing one-game-a-month code, who cares about quality? Writing for quality actually (and I fought this for a long time) gets in the way of speed, often.
  • Based on this: we wrote a bunch of throw-away code for the PCG shooter. It’s messy. It’s copy-pasted. It’s called with different cases which are not related. It constructs objects strangely. I would rather start (mostly) fresh and learn from those lessons, instead of carrying existing code along – if we can avoid it.
  • For prototyping, I’m human too, and this is the best way I know. I’m not saying this is THE end-all definitive way; nor am I saying we shouldn’t design up front – we should. But design docs, by the time you start implementing and see the idea, you realize that it’s not fun, it’s too late (and expensive) to rewrite 100 pages.

Moved to the January/2017 game thread.

127

Guys I know you’re still in Ramadan mode; are you still interested in making a game next month?

I pencilled you in as a “maybe” @AbrarSyed @BloodMoney @roketfiq and @asad3ainjalout

Aye or nay please.

@Wulf you’re always welcome to the party.

128

Lol funny today I did some game dev in a very long time. I don’t really have time to do anymore though lol.

129

Lesson learned: when there’s hype, don’t wait, cancel existing projects and bring the Code Brotherz on board.

Thanks though.

130

Yeah team hype is hard to maintain.

131

Ive always was interested in developing video games. Dont delete this thread. Im new and this thread is perfect!

1 Like
132

@ashes987 we may have a few new peeps heading this way interested in game dev. :smiley:

133

@roketfiq I definitely don’t have capacity for anything right this minute, but I guess it depends on who’s interested and what role they want me to play (dev? manager? QA?)

Who’s in?

134

Haha no worries bro. I just pointed them towards the forum. Got a lot of new coders recently. Doesnt have to be now.

135

Coders are cool. Folks with other skills are also cool (QA, art, audio, game design, etc.) Worst case, training people is always something I’m up for, even if they have “no useful skills.”

136

@here sorry I should clarify.

I probably won’t be able to contribute code, due to time constraints; but I’ll work on other things, which could include:

  • Testing and finding/logging bugs
  • Overall vision and direction and coordination
  • Masterminding Islamic content
  • Pixelly art, sound design
  • Marketing

What I want to know is, who’s willing to team up? The scope of this project would be:

  • For September, we work on something - 30 days commitment of however much time you want to give.
  • Any genre of game, any platform/tools, etc. are fine (I recommend 2D because it’s much easier than 3D)

We’re all doing this on our free time, so there’s no hard requirement about time; but there is accountability. If you say you do X, we will all depend on you to get it done.

Who’s willing to try this out for September?

Pinging @AbrarSyed @Rec and @Severok because it would be fun working with you guys again :slight_smile:

I’m in inshaAllah.

137

I’m interested. Can you give me a brief of what the project is / what you guys have done thus far?

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138

I don’t know what the project is right now, that’s up for discussion. What would you like to make?

Severok and I created two games: Dajjal’s Minions (google it) and an incomplete Jinn-themed horror game where you have to escape a mansion.

1 Like
139

September huh?

Sure, lets make something.

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140

Any ideas what you guys want to make/play?

I suggest two things:

  • Think as small-scale as you can; ideally, something you can prototype and see the core game loop done in a week; then add more stuff to it and experiment.
  • Let’s go web; easiest is to send someone a link and they can try your game and give immediate feedback.

Agree/disagree?

I was thinking of something crazy like a game about stitching (time limit, gotta stitch together similar colour/material patches or something) but didn’t give the mechanics much thought.