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4 | What game mechanic can I use to show that the player character is bored? I'm designing a part in my game where the player must notice that his character feels bored about a certain mundane task he is doing, without being boring for the player. By observing the game mechanic, the player should understand that his character is bored or fatigued. To keep the player interested in playing though, the mechanic has to gamify that mundane process into something interesting or challenging. How could this be done? |
4 | Main characteristics of a game I was doing some reading for college and I searched for "Main characteristics of games" "Main characteristics of video games" and other similar ones, the result were a bunch of psychological studies and some non totally related links. The bottom line there was no real definition. I can see why, however I m suprised there are no attempts I m going to think I m looking for the wrong thing, so can you help? My purpose is to try to understand what is a video game and what isnt. ie bad games are still games, so fun and immersion are not characteristics of a game ( before I started thinking about this I thought that was the case) Cheers |
4 | What are the advantages and disadvantages of different grids in a turn based strategy game? The two most common types are using hexagons and squares. My question is rather concerned with game design. Why are specifically those two found so often? What are disadvantages that speak against using other polygons such as triangles, pentagons or octagons? |
4 | How should I structure a design document? Should the design document be a continuous line of text, with real sentences, more like a description of the entire game, or should I structure it in simple points? What are the benefits, and are there more ways of structuring it? |
4 | Cartesian Coordinates Layout The way cartesian coordinations are presented and used is kinda confusing. When working with 2D the vertical axis is Y, though when working with 3D the vertical axis is Z and Y becomes the "depth" axis. Basically I'm thinking the correct way, and best way would be to use the layout of axis. Though Blender (3D modelling program) and other program, a lot games, present the axis in the "weird order" (my opinion) Also if you read on Wikipedia about cartesian coordinates, your are presented with that layout of axis. Wikipedia Cartesian Coordinates Is there any specific or logical reason for this "flip" of axis? |
4 | What is the point in using API such as Open GL or DirectX when there are game engines? I was wondering why today programmers place so much emphasis on API like DirectX, and even OpenGl. As far as I know, you'd need thousands of lines of code to make a simple 3D game using one of the aforementioned. But with game engines like Unity, the process is simplified and you can pretty much drag around shapes to create the graphics in lieu of programming it. So what I wanted to know why is knowing APIs DirectX more preferable than being knowledgeable in Unity, other than the fact that with an API you can code it to be portable on other systems. To me it's like choosing Assembly over a high level language like C. Sure, with assembly I'll really understand what's happening at machine level, but it's take a lot longer to write programs using it and it would be a lot harder to debug. |
4 | Ideal way to instantiate abilities in a class give a dynamic list of abilities to use? I have a PlayerClass class that is used to set my Player's class. For instance, this will make him a warrior PlayerClass warrior new WarriorClass() WarriorClass will instantiate abilities like so Ability ability1 new LeapAbility() Now my problem is that I will eventually dynamically update my Warrior's abilities (think talent trees or perks). So say I give warrior a list of abilities to use. How do I do this in code? Right now I need to know the Abilities before hand and hard code their instantiation in. Put another way, how do I instantiate a dynamic list of objects? I'm open to other solutions too if this doesn't make sense or is impossible. |
4 | What is an alternative to scratch damage to solve combat deadlocking? Scratch damage is a game mechanic whereby any successful attack always does some minimal amount of damage. This is often used in subtractive combat systems, where the defense is subtracted directly from the damage done by an attacker. Therefore, the target will always take some minimal damage. The downside of such a system, for me at least, is that it's a hack. It takes a simple formula like Damage Attack Defense and turns it into a (slightly) more complex one Damage max(Attack Defense, 1). I also feel that it detracts from a player's skill in developing their character etc. No matter how many defense bonuses they get, every attack will do some small damage. So why get your defense so high, if it won't mean anything? Furthermore, this now encourages the use of larger numbers for Hp and damage, so that the scratch damage is truly negligable. After all, if the minimum damage is 1, and you only have 10 Hp, that's still 10 of your health. Even with 20 Hp, that's 5 . And I would rather avoid using larger numbers like that unless it's absolutely necessary. However, there is one very important upside of scratch damage it solves the deadlock problem. Deadlock happens when neither side is able to do damage to the other. If you invest all of your resources into defense, and few into attack, then your character may not take damage, but they won't be able to deal very much either. Thus, you could come upon an encounter where neither side will be able to inflict damage, so battle continues forever. This is especially if you don't have random mechanics like critical hits (which I also hate). At least with scratch damage, someone will eventually win. It may only be the one with the most Hp or highest number of attacks, but the battle will end. So I like having a combat system where there will always be an outcome. But I don't like having scratch damage. What are my alternatives? Alternatives that don't involve rolling random numbers I want combat to be 100 deterministic. If the same battle is fought, the exact same outcome must happen. If you want specifics on the gameplay, think in terms of turn based combat, where battle can be automated (you design your forces, then pit them against others). |
4 | Calculation of a fight with many entities User A can have many entities A Entity is a object that has properties such as health, attack, defence, agility, stamina, etcetera. When User A want to attack User B with x entities I am looking for the algorithm equation to calculate the fight. I have brought some couple of ideas but they all have some pros and cons and I am not sure which one I would use or If I should use one of them at all? Model A The while loop Basically I would get all the entities that is suppose to fight in this battle, I would assign each of them (objects) in to an array (the User A array and the User B array). Now I would simply loop through until one of the array is empty. Inside the loop I would let one of the User attack first, calculate the result (If the Entity has 0 health, remove it) and then let the next User attack back, calculate the result (If the Entity has 0 health, remove it) And then continue. The Pros with Model A would be that every entity would be battling and instead of just do a calculation on all around there would be a justice fight. The Cons To loop through like 10 entities would be fine but what about 1000 2000 entities? And how about the different strength of each entity I mean how could I decide which entity should battle against what entity? This could be just an sorted array (weakest to strongest) But then I couldn't have like different types of entities is better against a different type of entity, meaning like a Gunner wouldn't mean anything If it met a Swordsman even though a Gunner would most likely win such in a real fight. Model B The idea of Model B is quite simple basically calculate all the attributes (properties) together and then If User A army has greater stats than User B army, User A army would win the fight. The Pros with this is it easy on the performance. The Cons are "Which entities would survive?" And it would basically be, the one with greatest army would win. You wouldn't even have a "chance" to win. Model B B Then I started to think what If I take the concept of Model B calculate the stat and then I have a battle between just those two single entities. This way User B actually would have a chance ( a small one but the possibility to win) even though the User A has greater army (better stats). The Cons are yet again, How would I know which entities that would survive on the winning team? The answer I am looking for to this question is what Model should I use? And how would I solve the cons in that particular Model. Or should I use some completely different model (idea) ? (If possible please provide some php pseudo code) |
4 | How can I know how difficult a question is? I'm making a "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" style of game. I'm really stuck at the part where I should arrange questions from easy to hard. Isn't this subjective? How can I tell how hard difficult a question is? |
4 | How is game development different from other software development? For a solid general purpose software developer, what specifically is different about game development, either fundamentally or just differences in degree? I've done toy games like Tic tac toe, Tetris, and a brute force sudoku solver (with UI) and I'm now embarking on a mid sized project (mid sized for being a single developer and not having done many games) and one thing I've found with this particular project is that separation of concerns is a lot harder since everything affects state, and every object can interact with every other object in a myriad of ways. So far I've managed to keep the code reasonably clean for my satisfaction but I find that keeping clean code in non trivial games is a lot harder than it is for my day job. The game I'm working on is turn based and the graphics are going to be fairly simple (web based, mostly through DOM manipulation) so real time and 3d work aren't really applicable to me, but I'd still be interested in answers regarding those if they're interesting. Mostly interested in general game logic though. P.S. Feel free to retag this, I'm not really sure what tags are applicable. |
4 | G rated word lists in various languages for programming children's games I'm programming a word guessing game that uses large lists of words (no definitions, just words). Word length is configurable. Parents could set the word length to be very short and let small children play the game. I'd like to make sure there are no obviously obscene words in the list. For American English, the closest I've found was a Scrabble like dictionary file that uniformly labelled questionable words with "obscene" so I can easily filter them out. Does anyone know of a better list in English, and or any lists in other languages? |
4 | Which elements make some maps in multiplayer FPS games more fun than others? I'm working on a sci fi multiplayer FPS game, and am currently designing maps with layout influences from the 2015 Star Wars Battlefront game and from the original Halo CE game, as those games have the maps which I find very enjoyable. When I was building the map layouts for my game, I started to wonder why I was looking at these older games for reference instead of, say, maps from these games's sequels. I know that the enjoyability of certain maps is subjective, but there's a big difference in the amount of fun my friends and I have had playing the maps in these specific games instead of the newer sequels. Something about the maps in these games provides an inherently fun, memorable experience, and some newer games (like Battlefront II or Halo V) lack that experience. Maybe some of these maps aren't really anything special, but I know that certain maps like Blood Gulch have been praised by fans for years. What makes these maps so memorable and fun to play on multiplayer? Is it a product of the developers' map making experience and the resources of the large companies (the Battlefront devs went to Iceland for reference), or are there specific layout styles and or structures that are known to provide interesting close quarters scenarios? Is there an intangible quality to good maps? |
4 | How can I reward dungeon masters that take risks? I am working on a MORPG project featuring essentially two major roles adventurers and dungeon masters. My concern is about balancing the two roles. For those who have heard of it, the principle is inspired from the French comics Dungeon. The business model of a dungeon, as stated in the comics, is the following dungeon masters place treasures in heavily guarded dungeons, to lure in adventurers seeking fame and fortune. While some of them succeed, most die in the process, dropping valuable items which joins the pile of treasures of the dungeon, further attracting more adventurers. Dungeon master make a living by collecting the right amount from these drops to create new rooms, pay mercenaries, fetch new creatures, breed dragons and whatnot. Adventurers are quite classic they are combat oriented characters that can attack monsters or fellow players and earn XP, items and money in the process, gradually making them stronger. Dungeon masters are trade oriented. Their difficulty is balancing budgets treasures and dragons are expensive. Now, I already expect a sort of equilibrium among dungeon masters because dungeons that are either too hard or too easy are naturally penalized (low attempt rate or low kill rate, respectively). DM vs DM balancing check. Since PvP combat is enabled in dungeons, there is also a competition among adventurers pushing weak players to stick to easy dungeons that offer little reward to more advanced players. Adventurers vs advanturers balancing check. However there is one specific imbalance between the two roles that I am trying to solve adventurers have a bias toward attempting dungeons above their league, because even if they die (dropping some items and respawning outside the dungeon), they will have gained some XP in the process. This is good because it rewards risk takers. On the other hand, dungeon masters do not have any advantage of this kind if an adventurer completes the dungeon and escapes with their share of the treasure, nothing is gained. This would be a pity if it lead dungeon master to be too cautious about their defenses, killing the probability of ever completing the dungeon. Adventurer vs DM balancing problem. Hence my question what reward mechanism could I introduce that incitates dungeon masters to maintain a small but non zero winning probability? |
4 | How to make an object towards the mouse on one Axis Gamemaker Studio 2 I am trying to have my "obj playership" move towards the Cursor on a single Axis. Prefer it to be the Vertical Axis. I tried doing this is an "Execute Code Box" in a step event "direction mouse x" "speed 1 " but the movement looks weird and does not do what I am trying to do. To better refine my question I'm trying to have my "obj playership" move just up and down in relation to the mouse, so if I'm moving my mouse up or down the obj playership" will follow towards the mouse either up or down. |
4 | G rated word lists in various languages for programming children's games I'm programming a word guessing game that uses large lists of words (no definitions, just words). Word length is configurable. Parents could set the word length to be very short and let small children play the game. I'd like to make sure there are no obviously obscene words in the list. For American English, the closest I've found was a Scrabble like dictionary file that uniformly labelled questionable words with "obscene" so I can easily filter them out. Does anyone know of a better list in English, and or any lists in other languages? |
4 | How can I handle a bunch of achievements in a game? Take for example Team Fortress 2. There are a huge load of achievements, and I'm wondering how the manages all of them. And since there's a lot of achievements, I'd also like to know how it "knows" you've achieved one. Basically, how can the game handle a huge achievement system? Is there some special process? Are there hundreds and hundreds of boolean variables all over the code, waiting for certain conditions to be met, then ,Bam, achievement? If there are several approaches, what are they? |
4 | How important is music to mobile phone (smart PDA) games? Specifically iPhone iTouch, Droids, and the new Windows Phone 7? I don't know how to quantify this, or if any research has been done. I am wondering how important the music is to the gaming and what of games come with music at all, if good music at that. |
4 | memorizing button tap code iOS game I'm using a single view app in Xcode 6.1 for my game with Storyboards. Not unity or sprite kit. It's a small game not even 3MB. Anyways, I created un lockable characters with a BOOLEAN. (void)hidden if(scoreNumber gt 9 HighScoreNumber gt 9) BlueChar YES (IBAction)Blue bird.image UIImage imageNamed "BLUE.png" if(BlueChar YES) BlueChar BOOL BlueChar.hidden NO When you click on BlueChar button, the UIImageView is connected to BlueChar character. So when you tap START GAME button game starts and you play as BlueChar. Then when it's GameOver and you click START GAME button again, the BlueChar button that was clicked isn't saved and instead you play as Original Character. How do I make it that if you click BlueChar button ONCE, now you can play as BlueChar forever unless you click on another button that represents another character? How do I make the game save the last button clicked unless user clicks on another button in Objective C code? |
4 | Should cooldown be time or tick based? In the past I've done cooldowns as a specific time in ms, but I was thinking isn't having tick based cooldowns better. This would be more accurate and efficent(not sure). The bad side I can think about is that if the tick rate is increased, it would affect the game logic. While having a base update rate and a multiplier(that can be applied to everything that is tied to tick rate) would probably fix this, I am not sure if this is a good approach. |
4 | How do I fairly distribute new powerful cards to players in a collectible card game? I'm writing a game in which users start with a few cards. They use those cards to play against other players. The winner can steal a card from the other player. The aim is to get more different rare higher powered cards. If everyone starts with 10 low powered cards, how would anyone ever get higher powered cards? They'd just be playing against people who have the same type of cards as them. How do you fairly distribute these more powerful cards among players? |
4 | Algorithm for determining random events I'm struggling with coming up with an elegant solution to generating random events in the game that I'm working on. Say there are 4 classes of events that can happen, with varying events in those classes that may occur. So something along the lines of main events "common event", "not so common event", "somewhat rare event", "rare event" sub events 0 "common event 1", "common event 2",.. ... I have a somewhat kludgey solution in place that first just has a random number generated between 0 and 100, and if the number falls within a given range then a main event will be triggered. Then I'll do another random roll to see which sub event occurs. Is there a better solution than something along these lines? Like I mention, it doesn't feel very elegant, and I'd like to make it easily expandable for the addition of future events. |
4 | A game that can balance itself over time? So after reading some history and learning about how some countries were allowed to survive by stronger countries, just so that a power gap wouldn't exist. That being said, we can assume that if this power gap did exist, eventually the world will rebalance itself one way or another. Would that be applicable in games? Can a game (for example, Overwatch or any MMORPG) balance itself over time whether the imbalances are a result of how the classes are built or even the population of people in every faction? I thought about it a lot and I tried finding dissimilarities between my real world example and games. In games, you are allowed to have many identities. You can essentially have a character in every faction. In a game like OW you can pick any hero. You don't have a fixed identity that defines you like IRL so cloning the idea of a "Country Nation" in real life to a game is nearly impossible as developers don't have power over how many characters factions the player can have. Nations have finite resources. All MMOs I played have infinite resources which simply doesn't make sense compared to the real world. Finite resources is what makes nations great whether by smart utilization of said resources or conquering invading other nations. That being said, I still have a feeling that it's possible, one day, to have a game that can balance itself over time. But to achieve that, I believe we need to put many constraints on the gameplay to mimic real life constraints that "define" a nation. What do you guys think? What would those constraints be? |
4 | Can Achievement systems be implemented later in development? I'm undecided if I want to implement this feature in my game at the time or not. I don't want the project to get to far out of control so I'm focusing on core mechanics first. Is this a feature that is easy to implement later assuming I data drive everything and store everything? |
4 | Do delays after losing and before restarting serve as a defense against burnout, or are they addiction machines? In games like Super Hexagon or even Everwing, there's a very brief but noticeable delay from losing to starting over waiting for the restart button to appear, pressing it, etc... Is this a defense against player burnout? If there's no pause that separates one game try from next, the game might feel never ending and burn out the player quickly. Or is it a way to keep the player addicted? I often suspected this in Everwing, because that game's hardly shy about its avaricious nature. Perhaps there's a psychological effect in making the player wait before they can play again like building the craving part of a habit? Or perhaps a lack of this delay is to keep the flow going, so to speak? Ori and the Blind Forest does something similar in its Ginso Tree level. It has very fast restarts, no button or anything, and deaths do not restart the music that's playing in the BG. The result is that deaths do not break the flow of the game, and despite them the whole level feels seamless. So, are there any studies on this? Barring those, anecdotes? I couldn't find anything, anywhere. |
4 | How to target an entity that is moving I want my arrow to chase the minion that I just rightclicked on. I have a Minion Class and an Arrow Class. These are the constructors lt summary gt Constructs a minion lt summary gt public Minion(Texture2D sprite, int x, int y, int windowWidth, int windowHeight, bool isFriendly, int minionHealth) lt summary gt Constructor of the bullet from champion to minion lt summary gt public Arrow(Texture2D sprite, Vector2 sourceEntity, Vector2 targetEntity, float arrowSpeed, int arrowAttackSpeed, int damageDone, bool isArrowActive) In the Game1 I have the standard if click structure and I check if the click is on the minions. But I check this with foreach (Minion minion in enemyMinions) So I want to mark somehow the minion I clicked on and then to send the arrow directly to its moving location. How to do that? Update checks if rightmouse button was clicked to activate the arrow if (mouse.RightButton ButtonState.Released amp amp previousButtonState ButtonState.Pressed) checks if the right mouse click was on a minion and the minion is in champion's range for (int i 0 i lt enemyMinions.Count i ) if (enemyMinions i .CollisionRectangle.Contains(mouse.X, mouse.Y) amp amp (Math.Abs(mouse.X enemyMinions i .X) lt vayne.ChampionRange) Math.Abs(mouse.Y enemyMinions i .Y) lt vayne.ChampionRange) mark the minion that the click was made on theCurrentTarget enemyMinions i sets the arrow.targetEntity to that particular minion arrow.TargetX theCurrentTarget.X arrow.TargetY theCurrentTarget.Y arrow.IsArrowActive true previousButtonState mouse.RightButton |
4 | Driver AI in racing game I'm curious how I could control cars in a racing game. Should my AI agent control its car with commands like "throttle on 0.35, steereing wheel on 0.5 right, brake on 0.0"? Or should I rather pre compute a curve the car sticks to, and visuals like front wheels turning are just to make everything looks consistent? Or is there any other way? |
4 | Strategy Games Online Resources I am looking for some good online (ebooks) resources about strategy games discussing the gameplay and the interactive aspects of strategy games, and how to design interesting and challenging strategy game. I found this book (http www.amazon.co.uk Game Guru Strategy Dave Morris dp 1904705456) and seems interesting by reading table of contents. Unfortunately, I did not find any way to buy an ebook version of it and I am in Middle East and ordering this book would take lots of time. Any idea? |
4 | Twin stick shooting with keyboard In a top down shooting game, what alternatives are there for input if I want the direction of movement to be independent from the direction I'm shooting at? I'd like to avoid shooting with the mouse as it's much too precise, but alternatives that make it harder to aim could also work. Alternatives I've already considered are Arrows for movement and WASD for shooting. The Binding of Isaac does this and it has two problems. It only allows for shooting in four directions, where I'd prefer at least eight and most keyboards start ignoring some key presses if you press more than 2 keys at one, making it impossible to move in a diagonal while shooting. Arrows or WASD for movement, shooting direction becomes fixed in the direction you are facing when you start shooting. I don't remember where I saw this. This allows for shooting on any direction, but you have to stay still for a moment to change shooting direction, and it just doesn't feel very dynamic. |
4 | Mental Image of the engine behind an RTS like SimCity Settlers, what is it? Disclaimer I'm first a programmer and then an RTS gamer. This means I'm a complete and utter newb in terms of patterns, best practices and glossary of technical terms on the game dev world. Since I was a kid that most of my electric electronic toys were always taken apart to learn how they were made and most of the pieces were stored for future use. This gave me a VERY curious mind in terms of How does it work? I've started planning scribbling for more RTS games than the market has dished out, but never got around to implement any of them due to the lack of basic knowledge about Game Devel. So what I'm asking is that someone could point me in the direction of the engine schematics of an RTS game like SimCity Civ Settlers. Something that will assume a bit of programming background but will introduce the terms used for programming a RTS base game. How do they do the Unit Manager? Is it called this way? Is creating a complex multi threading system wise? Should I use multi threading just for groups of units? Well, I think you get the picture of how newb I am ) Many thanks in advance. |
4 | Game Design Turn based ship to ship combat with simultaneous movement Im currently building a browser based game, which basicly goes like 2 Players place starships on a 2d plane, move them around and fire their guns at each other. The game is divided by turns, each one has 2 phases Phase 1 Movement Phase 2 Firing Summarized, it is basicly a table top game played in the browser. Due to earlier experience i want to avoid the issue of Players talking movement in turns, i.e. Player A moves ship 1, B moves 2, A moves 3, B moves 4. It makes for some awkward experience and delays the actual firing Phase too Long. So instead im aiming for something along the lines of "Both Players move all their ships in one step and see the actual Resolution of ALL ships movement afterwards they then can issue weapons fire". The Problem is Manovering ships in this game is Kind of important, because weapons have different arcs of fire and ships different parts of structure. So ideally i want to make "smart" movement choices in order to bring as many weapons as possible to bear while also protecting damaged parts of my fleet ships. However, with parallel, "blind" movement, i cant really make smart choices. What would be a way, from a game design Point of view, to allow parallel, blind movement while also ensuring impactful choices ? |
4 | Clay Jam continuous path tap I saw this game Clay Jam, that the user can create a path in the sand. The path is a continuous one, and it can varies from a single point to curves. How one can develop smooth and continuous paths? |
4 | Strategy Games Online Resources I am looking for some good online (ebooks) resources about strategy games discussing the gameplay and the interactive aspects of strategy games, and how to design interesting and challenging strategy game. I found this book (http www.amazon.co.uk Game Guru Strategy Dave Morris dp 1904705456) and seems interesting by reading table of contents. Unfortunately, I did not find any way to buy an ebook version of it and I am in Middle East and ordering this book would take lots of time. Any idea? |
4 | Having the player face themselves after the mid game I am writing a game, in the vein of a jRPG, in which you begin playing as the main villain. You don't know it. You think you are playing the hero and the more successful you are and the stronger you make them the harder they will be to defeat at the very end of the game. My main concern is anyone who puts in a significant effort early game could feel punished for it. It is also troublesome if the player finds the challenge of the final boss insurmountable because of actions from very early in the game. Is there a way I can signal early on in the second act that if they over powered the villain it may haunt them? And there is also the possibility the twist will get out and people will just game it from the beginning. It is my intent to get some replay value out of it by having people do multiple runs based on different villain playthroughs. But is it a distraction if everyone learns the twist. Or conversely is it better if I reveal it myself in game so everyone knows what they are working at from the start? How do I make my potentially disengaging design hold up without turning people away? |
4 | Designing an RPG damage type system I made this thread to gather what the majority of RPG players like in terms of damage variety in a hack and slash game. I play quite a bit of ARPG (mostly Diablo 3 and Grim Dawn as of now) and recently have generated some game ideas of my own. One specific criteria that I am reaching is intuitiveness. The players should be able to easily distinguish between the damage types and choose the correct way to build their character suiting to their flavors. At the moment, I am stuck with deciding the right number of damage types and what they are. I have a basic list for myself Physical Magical Fire Ice Cold Lightning Poison Here comes another question should Magical be there? Is it a redundancy since the 4 elemental Fire,Cold,Lightning and Poison is "magical" already? or Should there be an independent and unique type called Magical? Or, should the Magical damage, if increased, will also modify all those elemental damage? I am looking for a good desgin here. Next question, I want to implement the mechanics of Bleeding as a Damage Over Time type of damage. Then, what type of damage should Bleeding be? Physical? or Poison? I have a solution, which is for each damage type, add a "Duration" counterpart which represents the DOT of this damage type, then the list becomes (Type,Duration damage of this type) Physical, Bleeding Magical, Corruption(just a random word to fill in) Fire, Burn Cold, Chill Lightning, Electrified Poison..........??? Here comes the problem, Poison is already a DOT, introducing another DOT counterpart for Poison would be weird. Another problem with this system is that it is complicated, so many stats. So my question is, how do we efficiently implement the least amount of damage type to produce the most amount of diversity in gamestyles and build types. I really want to promote freedom and creativity, which means that if someone likes playing DOT lightning he could. Sorry if my questions aren't clear, but I would love if everyone shares their ideas of a Damage type system, how many are there is good, and how does damage over time works. |
4 | Optimal touch controls for a twin stick shoot 'em up? So we recently launched a shoot 'em up arcade type game (think Smash TV or I Made a Game with Zombies in It!). You can move in one direction and fire in another, so the ideal control scheme is probably two analog joysticks (like the Xbox 360 has). We support WASD to move and arrow keys to fire. The best way to control though is to move with WASD and aim with the mouse. We're getting a lot of people asking for mobile versions of the game (mostly for iPad and Android) and the problem is we just can't come up with a good way to translate the controls over to a touch device. Interestingly, someone actually hacked an early version of our game a while back to work on Android by overlaying D pads, and sure enough, it was almost impossible to control. The game gets really difficult later on, and the thought of releasing a game with a crappy control scheme that nobody could possibly ever use to beat the game does not sit well with me. So I was wondering if anyone has any previous experience or suggestions on how to approach this problem? Overlaying two D pads on the screen is clearly not the way to go and we're kind of at a loss for other ideas. |
4 | Should the game host be the authority, or another dumb client? When designing a networked multiplayer game where one player hosts and others connect, there are two strategies I'm aware of Have the host player's game be the authority, with all other players as dumb clients trying to catch up with the current game state. In the code, there will have to be lots of special cases, depending on if the current player is the host or not. Make the host a dumb client like everyone else by running a hidden dedicated server on another thread. The dedicated server will be the authority, and the host will connect to it like everyone else (through localhost). What are the advantages disadvantages of each of these? Which is used most often (or does it vary by game type size)? |
4 | Who kept a blog for a year with a new game idea every day, and where is it? There's this indie game developer who tried to come up with a new original idea for a game every day for a year and he put all his thoughts on his website. 200 ideas so far, if I remember correctly. I don't remember the URL to his site, or the name of the author. Anyone know what I'm talking about? Delete this post if it doesn't belong here! Just wanted to add it to the blog thread if I managed to find it |
4 | Game economy for a tower defense game I am currently working on a tower defense game, and I am having trouble figuring out how to implement the cost of turrets, upgrades, and the gain from completing a level, killing an enemy. Below is a summary of the requirements There are multiple types of turrets, each turret has different properties, such as reload speed, range. Each upgrade has multiple levels. Each turret can have multiple types of ammo, each ammo type can have different upgrades, such as blast range, damage, addons. Each upgrade has multiple levels The sources of income are killing enemies, each enemy has a different value completing a level My problem is with balancing everything so the game is at least playable, or in the right direction to get balanced by testing it. I know there is no magic formula for this but I believe people with experience will know where to start, and what process to follow. So my questions are 1 is there a method to calculate the cost of turrets, upgrades? what factors should I take into consideration? 2 Should I use two different currencies for upgrades and turret purchases? 3 How to calculate the upgrade cost as the upgrade level increases? i.e. when the user purchases more of the same upgrade. |
4 | How to make a chat lobby in my game? I'm writing my own RTS game in Delphi. Single player part is almost done and works well and I'm thinking about adding multi player to it now. There's going to be a lobby where players should be able to chat and organize games. I tried googling for a convenient way to do it, but couldn't find anything related .. My idea looks like follows Players are identified by Names they choose and their IPs There's main chat area where all players meet There are rooms, where players may select game options (map, teams, flag colors, etc..). After everything is settled players exchange IPs and multi player engine starts. I want to avoid usage of server side software. Currently I'm looking into running everything through SQL database where each player commits posts and his state and reads other players posts states. Whats the common practice of organizing in game chat lobby? |
4 | How should I define interaction modes in a strategic game? I am creating a typical strategic game that gamer can select, deploy and move the game characters (Human mostly) and move or create buildings on its isometric map. These all are going to be done by gamers gestures obviously, So each time I am handling a tap, pan, swipe or pinch, it is important to know what was the gamer at the middle of or was doing so the new gesture can be handled. Doing this, I created a global enumerated type including Idle,Select,PanMap and Place and defined a variable with name gameMode to control what the gamer is about to do. for example when the game starts it is valued "Idle" and when gamer touches a building or a character it will be selected only if the gameMode is Idle and if so gameMode will be changed to Select so the handlePan() method can manage the new gesture and sees if the user is moving the map or a selected building for instant. When the gamer selects a building and does a pan afterward, the game logic should update the gameMode. When the first touch point of the pan gesture is recieved by handlePan() function, the function will check it against the selected building(currentSelection) to see if the gamer is tended to move the building or it is just a simple map panning, by changing the gameMode to "Place" or "PanMap" and check which gameMode is the case while processing the rest of the touches so they can be handled correctly. As I have mentioned above, I have four game modes including idle, select, panmap(while something is selected), place (when gamer is moving something on the map) Can anyone with strategic experience tell me is this kind of handling user interaction is the best way? if yes do you think these modes are enough? Can you tell me what was your modes in case you used this method? I am using SpriteKit with xcode. |
4 | Questions about property centric game object runtime I was reading Game Engine Architecture by Jason Gregory So according to him, I should use an array of entities, and arrays for each property, such as an array gameObjectsPosition, gameObjectsHealth... But in my case, the world is divided in a chunk grid. Each chunk have its own array (or for the moment vector but I plane to change that) of entities (game objects). Then, what should I do? Create a single array containing all entities positions wherever there are (and so one for health, level, orientations, dimensions...), or create the property specific arrays in each chunk? Then how to process these property arrays? I mean, for each dynamic entity, I could update dimensions, sizes and health or I could for each property update each entity. Example UpdateWorld() for each entity in dynamicEntities entity.updatePosition() entity.updateHealth() entity.updateDimensions() entity.updateMesh() UpdateWorld() for each entity in dynamicEntities entity.updatePosition() for each entity in dynamicEntities entity.updateHealth() for each entity in dynamicEntities entity.updateDimensions() for each entity in dynamicEntities entity.updateMesh() How to handle sizes for each chunk? That'd mean each chunk have an array with MAX ENT PER CHUNK (say in my example 1024), and then if a chunk have 24 entities there would be 1000 entities useless. Also, I can't use more than 1024 entities. I could use pointers, but then the CPU cache would hit a lot of misses. How to handle IDs? If I have an array of entities I need to use IDs. I can use macro SID has specified in the book, but the IDs are not ordinals (they may not begin at 0) |
4 | Game planning and software design? I feel that UML is not convenient In my university, they always emphasize and hype about UML design and stuff, in which I feel it is not going to work well with game structure design. Now, I just want a professional advice on how should I begin my game designing? The story is I have some skill in programming and have done many minor game such as getting some 2D platformer working to some extend. The problems that I find about my program is the poor quality design. After coding for a while, things start to break down due to poor planning (When I add new feature, it tends to make me have to recode the whole program). However, to plan everything out without a single design flaw is a bit too ideal. Therefore, any advice to how should I plan my game? How should I put it into visible pictures, so that me and my friends are able to overview the designs? I planned to start coding a game with my friend. This is going to be my first teamwork, so any professional advices would be a pleasure. Is there any other alternatives than UML? Another question is how does "prototyping" normally looks like? |
4 | How can I find a good fixed ratio between buying and selling prices for the player in an in game market? I'm developing a single player game containing gathering and crafting where I'm still struggling to find base values for the prices of gathered resources and crafted items. (But this is part of Constructing a game stock market) Since it's a single player game and just one in game market that offers items, I do not want to use dynamic pricing, I'm looking for a reasonable ratio between the buying and selling price. I was not able to find any hints on how to determine a good starting point. Is for example 2 1 a reasonable ratio between the buying and the selling price for the player? Things to consider Of course the buying price has to be higher than the selling price or otherwise players could just make fortune by buying and selling the same item. Only some randomly chosen items will be available to buy in a certain time period and rarer items will be seen less often in the shop to buy. The offer should be reasonable enough to tempt the player to buy the item instead of farming the ingredients and craft the item for themselves. Updated the question to fit the constraints. |
4 | Fight with creativity burnout I have big creativity burnout Do you have any ideas how can I fight with it ?? |
4 | What's the economical design difference for a global auction house or seperate auction traders? I'm playing The Elder Scrolls Tamriel Unlimited and there we have local auction houses. (Thy don't have auctions, but I keep the term to not get confused in the following text.) I can see the advantage that guilds (who own these AHs) can set up their own little economy, which is a nice feature. On the other side I always have to check several guild traders to see which one offers my searched item for the lowest price. On the forums, people are discussing heavily whether a global auction house should be introduced or not. This may have pros and cons, too, but I'm not too involved in this game design to really set up a mind for that. Backers argument that an global AH leads to a more regulated market, easier to use and a seller will reach a broader audience (reads When you put in an item, you can be sure that there may be a buyer.) On the other hand critics say that this will make only really useful items get a massive increased price and common used items will drop their prices to their normal selling price. But are these concerns really true? Would the introduction of a global AH really have such a big impact on the game's economy? And if yes, will they more tend to even the prices or really make most of the items useless for selling? You could also ask vice versa If a game already has global AH, what would the impact be if they replaced it with local auction houses? What is the difference for the game's and players' economy if you introduce a global or local auction house system? For clarification I do ask this for the matter of The Elder Scrolls Tamriel Unlimited. But you can also subject this to other games. (This should be more a theoretical question for a developer's decision.) |
4 | How do game companies handle DLL resources? This question is based solely on curiosity. I have played a great many games on my PC over the years, and just now realized a trend across all games(most if not all). In the resources of the game, or in other words, next to the executable that runs the game, there are never DLL(Dynamic Link Library) binaries. This means that those games are created by statically linking to source files and dumping them all into the primary executable. I am certain that most of these game projects Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Splinter Cell, and Include other arbitrary examples here , are utterly massive by scale and have hundreds of smaller children projects. I would probably not be wrong, either, in assuming that those same projects(such as API's, etc) could be packaged into a DLL instead of the obvious static linking. I apologize if it seems like I am rambling, but there is a point to this it will be coming up soon. Next, I wanted to address the use of the games graphics API. Most games use DirectX, why is not relevant to this question instead, it is how. Would I be safe to assume that said games are also statically linking to DirectX? And more importantly, why? Is there a logistical reasoning behind this inherently conventional trait? Do game companies statically link all of their resources? And just again, why? Why not use DLLs instead? Hopefully someone can answer this question, having been present or currently are present, working for an actual game company. Oh and I typed this all on my phone so I apologize for any errors. |
4 | Implementing cheat safe loot algorithm at clientside I am developing a "city building" type of browser based flash flex game. I was checking some of the implementation of existing one of the popular games in facebook using decompilers. I noticed they have implemented the loot algorithm the client side and sending the loot item to the server which I think is not cheat safe. Knowing the fact that there are cheaters every where and it is easy to manipulate the messages and send the best loot always, is there any way we can counter this type of cheats? I dont have a concrete solution designed for it yet but I am thinking to track the drops by maintaining the loot history. So instead of mere updating the resources inventory, I will implement a logic which will compare the loot with history to see if the player is receiving the rare drops excessively and flag the user or take a smart decision (which I don't have yet) Or Is it a good idea to implement the loot algorithm in the server side? Since this is "city building" kind of game, where it will not have extensive user actions like in typical RPG games which can trigger loot events. |
4 | MMORPG Design Question Best idea for adding PvP(PlayerVsPlayer) in open world MMO? Brief Explanation of game Time Travel, one map, open world MMO called ChronoCraft. If you'd like to know more about the game, you're welcome to check out our twitter where we post some of our development https twitter.com Chrono Craft Here are the ideas so far 1 Safe Zones Pros People in major towns are safe and can fight when they leave the safety of the town Cons When dealing with NPC's and Quests(Non instance ones) outside of town, someone can kill you as you are talking to them 2 PvP Zones Pros Instead, areas of the map where PvP is possible is limited to the "wilderness" or dangerous areas(Anything that doesnt have Quest able NPCs) Cons Significantly reduces the area of allowable PvP areas 3 PvP Toggle Pros This allows players to turn on PvP mode in settings where only other PvP enabled players can fight eachother outside of Safe Zones (We would make it so if you are hit, you cant turn off PvP mode until a certain time to prevent people escaping death) Cons Ambushing is limited, because only the people who are ready to fight will have it enabled 4 Separate servers Pros Having a PvE server and a PvP server. Which makes it so the player decides what gameplay he wants. Cons Players cant bring items or money between servers so they may have to start from scratch if they change their mind on what type of server they like playing.(This is to protect the player economy from taking all the resources from one server and bringing them to another server) 5 Time Specific Pros When night falls, then PvP is enabled for everywhere outside a Safe Zone Cons For players wanting to avoid PvP they will be forced to stay in towns half the time which might get boring unless they do fun stuff like running a shop or restaurant. 6 Special Days Pros When there is lighting and rain, PvP is enabled which will happen every few minecraft days in the game. Allowing PvPers to fight outside of safe zones. And a HUD display will make this clear. Cons Players wanting to avoid PvP will have to stay in town during the inclement weather, which they might not enjoy. 7 Level Specific Pros Only players with a similar skill level will be able to fight eachother. So new players dont have to worry about pros slaughtering them early on. Cons It would be hard to fight along friends unless you're the same skill level. "John help me kill this guy" "Sorry cant, he is too low skill for me" 8 Arenas Pros Confines the fight to specific spot like a colosseum Cons Nearly impossible to wage huge fights like 100v100 (Colosseum will make it into the game at some point, but should it be the only PvP option) 9 PvP Everywhere Pros Either (A)Players can figure out their own police protection system or (B) NPC guards in major towns spawn and nearly guarantee the death of a killer in the town. Cons Has alot of potential to be annoying if players dont want to get killed in the middle of business in towns. Might also turn away less PvP focused players. What do you think is the best? Can I mitigate the cons for the one you choose? Is there a better idea entirely? |
4 | Advices fo starting a video game design career I'm 24 and have a passion for video games and game design. I've decided I want to design video games as my career. I have no experience with designing video games or coding but I'm interested and willing to learn. I want a job at any level but what would I need to land a job? I have no college experience and I have no money. What is a cheap school, or do I really need to go to school for this, or can I learn on my own? Is it possible to do this with no money? I'm literally broke but I want this so bad I feel like its the only career I'll enjoy. I want to call up company's and ask them what they are looking for in someone they want to hire, is that a good idea? Also I don't know the history of video game design and I don't want to sound like a dummy when someone says something about this field or talks about a famous designer and I have no idea who they're talking about. So what is key info when it comes to this field and where should I find it? Hopefully some of you guys and girls can help me out I know in the future I will create something everyone will enjoy and you guys will remember when you gave me advice and I will always remember you guys for helping me. I'm gifted I know I am and I want to share my gift with the rest of the world by making games that change the Industry. Help me out please. |
4 | Art style setting gameplay I'm looking for resources describing art style setting gameplay relationship (from game design perspective). For example, Fallout's colour palette most often is the dark one, models realistic and not cartoonish. Setting post nuclear holocaust. Auditory mature players. I could also take a different example like Borderlands. Art style is cartoonish, comic but not childish. Setting vault raiding monster killing on an alien planet. Auditory mature players, but still appealing to teenagers (I suppose 13 and up). Pixar and Nintendo games tend to be both cartoonish and childish. Setting simple or movie based. Auditory definitely kids, yet can be entertaining for adults for a limited time. GTA cartoonish, comic and somehow childish (especially the first one), yet auditory is definitely mature. Setting working for crime syndicate free roaming. Let's say I create and epic fantasy game (setting). How should I choose most appropriate art style for my game? Are there any canons in art style like there are canons in literature (western, eastern, etc...) How does art style alone suggest what kind of gameplay one should expect? One can release concept art, but setting is generally kept secret so that player could uncover it while playing. |
4 | What are the advantages and disadvantages of different grids in a turn based strategy game? The two most common types are using hexagons and squares. My question is rather concerned with game design. Why are specifically those two found so often? What are disadvantages that speak against using other polygons such as triangles, pentagons or octagons? |
4 | Taking Physics into account for AI Planning What I've seen in most Game Engines and game engine design is that the Physics Engine is the be all end all system. Basically, AI for example may want to travel to some position, but it simply sends that request (velocity, direction) to the Physics Engine. If the AI really gets to that position is up to the will of the Physics Engine. Is there some Design or Physics Engine which will let you plan out how Physics will react? Before it will actually occur? Take for example that you can do Motion Planning by the AI to nearly eliminate foot sliding. images from aigamedev.com Motion Planning for Fun and Profit! |
4 | How to move around in a map and remember position? I am working on sound labyrinth game. My game is about a person getting trapped in the basement and the only way to navigate and get out is through sound. I have created a map over the basement and for each square there has to be a sound. The player starts in b5 with an intro sound and then has to move forward using the arrow keys. I've created this bit of code that plays a sound when forward arrow (keycode 38) is pressed var thriller new Audio("thriller.mp3") document.addEventListener('keydown', function (background) if (background.keyCode 38) thriller.play() , false) My question is How does the code know in which square the player is situated? Is there some smart way in which I can systematize the squares and the sounds they represent? |
4 | How do I deal with the problems of a fast side scroller? I'm making a side scrolling airplane game and when I begin going very fast I begin to experience some problems as a player Elements are not distinguishable, like power ups from bullets, etc I start to feel dizzy and uncomfortable There isn't enough time to see what's coming How can I sort this out? Do I use less details in all the grahpics? Tiny Wings has the same horizontal movement speed as in my game but it doesn't suffer from these problems. Are there any other really fast side scrollers I could take as a reference? |
4 | How to Store AI Knowledge about the Game World for AI Decision Making I have a game world with a fair amount of AI that have some Senses, like vision, hearing, touch, smell, etc. But I'm not sure how to put that information in a single place for the individual AI to then iterate over it and make a decision. For example, each sense (emitter and receiver) currently returns a structure called a Stimulus with information like position, direction, stimulus type (sight, sound, smell, etc), npc type (human, animal, monster, etc), and so on. And currently, the monster AI just have a hard coded hierarchy of preference touch (e.g., damage events) sight sound smell, so if you fire a gun it'll try to follow that noise but if he then sees you, he'll switch to tracking you visually and forget about the noise. However, this isn't very robust. It doesn't deal with repeated damage events or one player kiting or stale stimuli vs new stimuli very well. Ideally I'd want to use some sort of utility evaluation so that I can get more complex and dynamic behaviour out and I can fix edge cases where it feels like the AI isn't interacting right (e.g., ignoring stimuli that it shouldn't be). I'm not sure how to approach that implementation. Should I just have an array of every stimulus the AI encounters and loop over that every tick? But then how do I prune that list since it'd get very large very quickly and might contain really old stimuli (currently the AI only has one "target stimuli" and new stimuli go through that hierarchy of preference before being either discarded or replacing the target stimuli). (As a side note, this GDC Talk about Creating the Living, Breathing World of Hitman has provided some great information about how they deal with Knowledge, but I wasn't able to discern how they store it and iterate through multiple Knowledge fields of a single AI and so on). (I'd also love any advice on the Knowledge Stimulus data structure itself to be modular enough to hold different types of information, instead of having a bunch of unused fields say how a sound might need only type and direction, but a visual stimulus might only need type and position and so on) |
4 | Why do Monsters drop things? Why do Monsters drop things in so many games? It creates all sorts of problems, including in game gold hyper inflation questionable moral implications, if there is a strong incentive toward killing things but no incentive not to Monster killing giving XP is equally bad you rename an ingame currency to XP, the mechanics stay the same. Here you have something like quot fighting force inflation, quot so after some levels you have to have giant giants attacking your small figure or it stops being interesting. This is just hyper inflation written a different way. Is it enough reward if a monster stops killing you? What benefits of monster killing rewards make up for these problems, or how can we compensate for those problems? |
4 | When should design give way to marketing and vice versa? When should a Designer draw the line in design decisions when marketing does step in? Where should the bounds be set? (For most part I know this is might mostly be situational. Gut feel like thing. But would like to get some inputs on this as well) |
4 | How to deal with raw values and percentages? What is the standard practice for dealing with attribute modifiers in games where units have attributes, such as RTSs, MOBAs and RPGs? Specifically, in which order are "buffs" given to the unit? Suppose the case where unit X has 10 blah points (BP). It obtains two modifiers that add 10 blah points, and another one that adds 30 blah points. Finally, a enemy unit applies a 40 blah points modifier. What is the usual way of processing this, for player familiarity's sake? Aggregate by grouped type (10 30) (1.0 0.1 0.4) 28 Obtention order (10 (1.1) 30) (0.6) 24.6 Aggregate iteratively by type (10 30) 1.1 0.6 26.4 Some other way? |
4 | How to become a Ph.D. in video game design? The title says it all, I am wondering if it is possible and if so, how it would be possible, to become a Ph.D. in video game design. I'm quite sure you can become a Ph.D. in pretty much anything, but since video games are such an informal and relatively young sector, I thought I'd ask. Thanks in advance! |
4 | Airplane passenger point of view scene I'm building a game with unity where a lot of scenes take place in an airplane as a passenger seated near the window, the airplane has to do a take off and a landing. I can't find any examples of similar scenes anywhere on Internet. So I was wondering which would be the best approach to do this Simulate the airplane physics, "checkpoints" system where the airplane travels through each checkpoints (current solution) Animate the airplane with the unity animator system (tried it but it feels really cheap) Static plane but make things move around him (possibility to have better lightings inside the plane as it is static) 360 Videos The current solution works ok but I'm looking for improvements. I found the intro scene from The Forest pretty similar to what I'm trying to acheive here and I was wondering how they did it. The current system works like this The plane has two engines script who control the speed of the plane. Another script controls the yoke, roll and pitch of the plane. And the last script is the 'Autopilot', each checkpoint tells the plane where to go and at whitch speed. You have to tweak the values until you have a good result which can be really time consuming. Thank you ! |
4 | Method for creating a next gen MMORPG out of thin air? Update August 2012 thank you all for your answers. I started small as suggested, creating first a Facebook Game about it, the next step will be to port it later on PC for a 3D version, and much later as a MMORPG as I would have build credibility and funding. The upcoming FB game will be done by Blup Blup Game Studio (my studio). Thanks. Original Question Background I am documenting since a few months a game design document (GDD)(sci fi amp fantasy MMORPG) all by myself, without any real game design background (I am just a Chartered Accountant (CA and CISA)). For now, it looks more like a proposal document. The question If you would have a series of amazing ideas that would revolutionized MMORPGaming how would you create that company out of thin air? Focus on creating the initial core team that would create the mockup that would be present to capital venture companies for major financing. You may not be financial expert here but you did a massive amount of games in the past, of various types and platforms. With our different backgrounds we are complementary. Cheers, Raistx P. S. Edited for a leaner question. Removed elements linked to money as it's not the core question. I know how to get money and convince cap venture CIES, but I need a mockup high pitch to do so. |
4 | Is my understanding of designing games in layers correct? I have started explaining how a game is designed in layers to a friend of mine. I want to make sure that I explained things, correctly, so I wanted to verify my thoughts. Basically, the way I understand it, games are designed with the following layers, in the following order Rendering Engine Physics Engine Game Engine Scripted Game Is this correct? Am I explaining this right? |
4 | Game Design Lexicon terminology for gems etc When a Hero picks up gems or coins or other "collectibles" that add to his wealth in a game, what are those things (gems and coins etc) commonly called and how are they generally referred to in game design terminology? |
4 | Scaling web game to suit any screen size I've made a simple multiplayer game, and now trying to make it fit on any screen size. I've tried stretching it out to fit the browser size, but it just appears weird and distorted. I'm also trying to avoid having borders around the edges as it doesn't look particularly nice. Is there a way to solve this that is fair to all players? |
4 | What are the code structures for storyline based game? I am curious about how storyline based games are written. For example if the character done Event A, then he meets an NPC and result in Event B. On the other hand if the character didn't do Event A, then he meets an NPC and result in Event C. From the code structure that I've thought up, the NPC should be an object of a class, and there should be a status variable that mark if character have done Event A or not. However, what if there's thousand of similar type of Event as Event A? How'd I handle huge, complex storyline game in coding? I just want to know exactly how the trick was done to keep in check of what Events have happened. Another thing that I'm curious about is how Event is kept in. An object? or just a function? For example Event A might have some flashy effect played in non fmv ,while maybe Event B is an fmv, and Event C might be a battle. and there may be variety of them. Therefore, how would I handle variety of Events with a consistence method? or maybe, at the very least, contain them in a consistence way (function? or Object?) I just want to know how the trick was done. |
4 | Tower Defence game scoring system I am in the process of developing my first game on android mobile platform, it s a tower defence game and I am currently busy designing the scoring system. At the end of the stage when the user has defeated all the waves of enemies I want to take his score and somehow calculate a rating out of 3 Stars. What will the best way be to calculate a score? When should I increment the score during gameplay for example when an enemy dies? And how do I calculate if the score is worth 1 3 Stars at the end of the stage? Basically I want help or any ideas on how the formula should look like and how to calculate if the user scored a 1.. 2... or 3 Stars. My variables in game Every enemy has a value Example 5 The stage has a number of life s before you are defeated Example 20 Each stage starts with money that you buy your towers with Example 120 Each towers costs money Example 30 A stage can consist of 1 or more waves of enemies. Any help or ideas would be appreciated as I am new to game development . |
4 | It is worth planning before jumping in the code? I always thought that planning is important for a game. But i don't know at which point. Some are telling me to code instead of planning but i feel like its still important because when you will be in the code you will know what to do next more easily. I am currently working on a game that will have lots of content so i decided to start a design document introducing thoses content and at a side level i am doing proofs of concept to check if it can be done. Parts of each proofs of concept then could be used later in the real game. EDIT I am working alone on this project. So my question is It is worth planning before jumping in the code ? Im still interested to know what others have to say about this. Cause i still get some poeple saying i should code instead of thinking.. so what your opinion on this ? |
4 | Time based movement Vs Frame rate based movement? I'm new to Game programmming and SDL, and I have been following Lazyfoo's SDL tutorials. My question is related to time based motion and frame rate based motion, basically which is better or appropriate depending on situations?. Could you give me an example where each of these methods are used?. Another question I have is that, in lazyfoo's two Motion tutorials (FPS based and time based) The time based method showed a much smoother animation while the Frame rate based one was a little hiccupy, meaning you could clearly see the gap between the previous location of the dot and its current position when you compare the two programs. As beginner which method should I stick to?(all I want is smooth animations). |
4 | What is a good rule for blocking projectiles on a square grid? Suppose we have a square grid, and each tile may or may not be occupied by an object. Some of those objects can be a unit that can launch a projectile at another unit. However, that projectile should be blocked if a third unit is "in the way" of the projectile path. What I want is a rule for whether a projectile path is "blocked" from one tile to another, based on possible intermediate tiles blocked by an object. The blocking rule should satisfy the following criteria 1) It should be based only on the information about the relative position on the grid of the two tiles, and the occupation of tiles by objects. Details such as which object is occupying a tile should not matter. Imagine the same rules would apply with placing stones on a Go board 2) It should be as obvious to the player as possible what the projectile blocking rules are. Imagine they could move a ranged unit to a tile to get a shot, and that movement is irreversible. If they later find out that the shot they wanted to make is blocked, they essentially got screwed over by a game mechanic. I don't want people to lose a game because of opaque mechanics. It should be as obvious as possible to the player that the shot they want to make form a tile is blocked before moving to that tile. 3) The rule should be generally applicable, not just a heuristic for a non general set of possible scenarios. Given any two integer coordinates, X1, Y1 and X2, Y2 we should automatically be able to name the coordinates of all tiles that block those two coordinates. 4) The rule should be invariant to 4 way rotation, translation, and reflection along either axis. Some rules would be obvious. For example, if your shot is completely horizontal vertical (rook movement) or completely diagonal (bishop movement) and something is directly in that path, it should be blocked. But there are cases that are not completely obvious to me, and different rules have been followed in different games. For example, what if the projectile launcher and target are separated by a knight's path? Is an object blocking the projectile if it lies on one of the two tiles that sit between the launcher and target along the long axis of separation? I have seen that being a valid block in the game Hero Academy, though it's not obvious to me that it should be. EDIT I realize that point 2 can be addressed with a nice UI that can inform the player of whether a path is blocked before they commit to their move. However, even if the UI does that, I still want it to be obvious to the player, independent of the UI. (If the player has to play a few games to learn how it works, that's fine, as long as it's easy to learn.) This aligns with my general philosophy that one should maximize the proportion of cognitive effort that goes towards strategic decision making, and minimize the proportion of cognitive effort that goes towards figuring out game mechanics on the spot. |
4 | Self set vs explicit goals and their efficacy Just curious if anyone has an insight onto the efficacy of self set goals as opposed to explicit ones in regards to player retention. Content requirements aside are there any anecdotal or quantitative results on which method provides a more immersive experience for a player, and thus is more likely to keep them around and playing? |
4 | Create ROI tools for analysis I want to create some ROI tools on my game for personal analysis. Let's say that I have 3 different level of special powers with a recursive cost and certain bonus. So, I want to see when certain level will start have income. 1st example 1000 coins for 10 uses. Bonus 10 on farming speed. 2000 coins for 10 uses. Bonus 20 on farming speed. Etc In this example, I know exactly what the bonus will do. I have the price of the farming per unit and I can calculate the income per use for each power level. So, I can tweak the numbers using the ROI tool to make the effect better. 2nd example 1000 coins for 3 power ups on a weapon. Bonus 1 attack power, 5 chance to destroy the weapon. 2000 coins for 3 power ups on a weapon. Bonus 2 attacking power, 10 chance to destroy the weapon. 3rd example 1000 coins per use. Bonus 30 heal, 5 chance to get injured. 2000 coins per use. Bonus 50 heal, 10 chance to get injured. As you can see, the first example is simple to calculate the income vs cost. However, the second and third example don't have an exact effect and both of them have a probability to either good or bad effect. How do you work on this type of ROI? How do you calculate the pros of each level? |
4 | How to make something happen every N seconds in game? I want to have something happen every N seconds, how would I do that? Maybe use a timer but how? |
4 | How do I come up with the game mechanics for a puzzle game? I want to make a puzzle game, but I don't know how to start. I have observed that each puzzle game has a core mechanic that enables opportunity for numerous puzzles. I'm not sure how to think of ideas. I was wondering how to come up with ideas for my game. I do not want any of your ideas because I want the game to be original. |
4 | Scrambling word into least recognizable form My goal is to present the player with a scrambled word that should be reordered back into the original form OELHL HELLO I want a scrambling algorithm that takes any given word( 3or4 letters, may contain spaces) and turns it into the least recognizable form. While randomly moving every letter around certainly works, I noticed that not all shuffles are equal, some are more recognizable than others. I am posting this question in case someone knows of a better algorithm (maybe based on linguistics) that guarantees least recognizable form. |
4 | Comprehension question to MVC Pattern in Game Programming So is my assumption right? If I use MVC in Games I will have to implement a Model,Controller,View for every kind of interaction object. For example in an Motorbike game. My Motorbike object will have its own controller, view and model class. Or is it enough if I define a model,view and controller for the world object and just use that view for drawing my bike?! Or am I mixing something up? |
4 | Simultaneous game states I think I understand the basic idea behind a Finite State Machine based game loop. But I'm trying to write a little game in which the same object can simultaneously be in multiple, independent states. At least that's what I want to do. To give you an idea Robot may be in FleeState and FireLaserState at the same time, besides in each of them individually at any time. Would something like this be possible using the FSM pattern? Or ought I to look elsewhere? After all, does the whole idea make sense? Pasted from my comment below A little clarification of why I'd like states to be kept separate I want the player to have the ability to program simple state changes before a game... say "if (health is way too low) flee". But then I want multiple such rules to be active simultaneously in order to keep the game interesting, and cannot know beforehand which other states may be active. |
4 | Bomberman clone, how to do bombs? I'm playing around with a bomberman clone to learn game developement. So far I've done tiles, movement, collision detection, and item pickup. I also have pseudo bombplacing (just graphics and collision, no real functionality). I've made a jsFiddle of the game with the functionality I currently have. The code in the fiddle is very ugly though. Scroll past the map and you find how I place bombs. Anyway, what I would like to do is an object, that has the general information about bombs like function Bomb() this.radius player.bombRadius this.placeBomb function () if(player.bombs ! 0) place bomb this.explosion function () Explosion I don't really know how to fit it into the code though. Everytime I place a bomb, do I do var bomb new Bomb() or do i need to constantly have that in the script to be able to access it. How does the bomb do damage? Is it as simple as doing X,Y in all directions until radius runs out or object stops it? Can I use something like setTimeout(bomb.explosion, 3000) as timer? Any help is appreciated, be it a simple explanation of the theory or code examples based on the fiddle. When I tried the object way it breaks the code. Update I now place bombs, and after a certain amount of time delete it depending on the position I placed it. But if I place a bomb before the first bomb explodes it only deletes one of them (obviously since bombX and bombY has changed since the first was placed). Now i need to know how to fix this issue, maybe create a new array with all of the bomb positions? What's the best way of doing this? Current code function placeBomb() if(placebomb amp amp player.bombs ! 0) map player.Y player.X .object 2 bombX player.X bombY player.Y placebomb false player.bombs setTimeout(explode, 3000) function explode() alert('BOOM!') delete map bombY bombX .object player.bombs |
4 | Is there any specific reasons to include clearly inferior options in a game? Games contain inferior options A lot of games that I have played contain some optimal options and some clearly inferior ones. Sometimes, like in Heroes of Might amp Magic IV, it could happen due to the limited time the developers had to balance it (e.g. Academy benefits so much more from choosing Gold Golems and then Genies rather than Magi and Naga that there is no reason to go the second way). Sometimes it happens for no apparent reason However, it often happens that the developers clearly had enough time to polish the game, didn't go bankrupt after its release etc., but it is still full of quot trap quot options that sound cool, but are actually inferior to something always available in the same situation, or almost always available in similar situations. There are just so many examples of such, almost every game has something like that. For example, Age of Wonders I began a successful series thga, but a lot of abilities to be chosen for the heroes are clearly underperforming, and a lot of units have clearly better alternatives on the same levels in the same factions. It is important that while some very overpowered stuff often gets nerfed (like it also happened in AoW I), the obviously underpowered choices often stay as they are (as it also happened there). So, I ask Why do game developers create clearly inferior options in their games and don't rebalance them? Is it intentional? If it can be avoided how? |
4 | AI to help player by suggesting upgrades Suppose I'm creating a racing game.. I would like to implement an awareness system AI, that will suggest to the player that he can buy that booster or some other upgrade, .. etc. How should I start implementing that? A FSM ? A decision tree ? Suppose that I have variables like, how many crashes, how much is the damage, how many gates I have passed, .. etc how would I use those variables then to say for example you need to buy that stuff? |
4 | Why are most characters all the same height in games? In the majority of video games I play, I notice that NPC's are the same height. What's up with that? It kinda takes me out of the experience, when I see ten people in a row that are 5 foot 8. Anyone else notice this, or am I crazy? |
4 | Easy SpriteKit question on creating a function The following code is what I'm working on to animate characters in a SK scene class. I can run the code without building, no problem, but I can't build it and run it I get one error message Binary operator ' ' cannot be applied to operands of type ' (SKTexture) ' and ' SKTexture! '. The code is below func initStoryBegin() let CaitAtlas SKTextureAtlas(named "cait") let DrewAtlas SKTextureAtlas(named "drew") CwalkAnimation self.animateSheet(CaitAtlas, walkAnimation CwalkAnimation, formattedword "cait 01d") This is where I am having trouble. In the walkAnimation line. func animateSheet(nameAtlas SKTextureAtlas!, walkAnimation (SKTexture) , formattedword String) gt SKTexture for index in 1...nameAtlas.textureNames.count let imgName String(format formattedword, index) walkAnimation nameAtlas.textureNamed(imgName) println(walkAnimation) return walkAnimation override func touchesBegan(touches Set lt NSObject gt , withEvent event UIEvent) let charNode self.childNodeWithName("charNode") if (charNode ! nil) let animation SKAction.animateWithTextures(CwalkAnimation, timePerFrame 0.2) charNode?.runAction(animation) I can't figure out why the code works when I run it, but it doesn't work when I try to build and run? Any help would be greatly appreciated. |
4 | How do multiple expansions to a game typically should be implemented? Let's say I have a game that's finished and shipped, what would be the approach that is typically taken in regards to future content such as expansions? I'm not talking about programmatic implementation. I'm talking about how to integrate it to the base game, especially for multiple expansions. If I finished making Expansion Pack 1 which adds new locations, new quests that tie in to the base vanilla game, etc, and then later down the line, I finish Expansion Pack 2 as well, how do I handle if the player only bought Expansion Pack 2 without making it feel disjointed in relation to the lack of Expansion Pack 1? Or should I make all older expansions mandatory before being able to use the latest one? In short, I'm trying to wrap my head around implementing multiple expansions without any of the expansions being mandatory but at the same time, I don't want them to feel "tacked on" to the base game as a side content (meaning, they should be integrated into the game's world). I want them to feel like an actual part of the world. Just that they're optional. |
4 | How can I make backtracking interesting? When a player navigates a space for the first time, it is very interesting the content is new, the dangers are unknown, paths need to be found. However, various situations force the player to backtrack, or navigate the same space multiple times. Perhaps the level designers are being economical, or trying to build familiarity with a space. Perhaps the game itself is open ended, or like a sandbox, where navigating the same spaces is part of the game itself. These can make the same spaces seem tedious and sparse. Given that backtracking (or navigating the same space multiple times) is unavoidable, what are some effective, economical ways of making it interesting? Please keep in mind We are reusing levels deliberately, either for effect or to save on cost. Therefore modifying the levels beyond recognition would be against our intent. We also cannot modify the gameplay too much if we were attempting to save cost by reusing levels, incurring more costs by adding gameplay would be counterproductive. One quick fix I had in mind was to give the player some sort of powerup or vehicle so that they could backtrack faster. I'm sure there are better methods, and examples of games where they were used. |
4 | Should I use attack effect collision to detect when damage is dealt? I am wondering what a common way for actually dealing damage to different units is. Imagine a game like starcraft for example, should damage be done like this 1) zealot attacks zergling, deal damage to zergling or 2) zealot attacks zergling, create an attack effect on zergling. When this effect collides with the zergling deal damage to said zergling. The advantage of 2 is for projectiles (like a dragoon attack) will deal damage when the attack collides with the target unit. What are your thoughts about this in general? Are there other ways of doing this? |
4 | Multiplayer matchmaking algorithm I'm building a game in which there are tournaments. During the tournaments we want players to play against each other in an efficient way. What I'm looking for is a generic algorithm that will match players together in an optimal way in order to Have the lowest amount of games possible Be reasonably sure that after all games are played, the highest ranked player is the best Tricky part Games can have 2, 3 or 4 players in a death match depending on the tournament. Tournaments have two or more players, no other constraints. Does such an algorithm exist? Note For the ranking, I will probably be using an ELO based algorithm (unless you have a better suggestion). |
4 | What is the difference between "stealth" and "social stealth?" I was recently researching the stealth mechanics of several games and I stumbled across the distinction of "stealth" (eg. Splinter Cell series) vs "social stealth" (eg. Assassin's Creed series). What exactly is the difference between these two terms? |
4 | How do I implement a programming system in my game that is both accessible, powerful, and fast to code in? I'm currently working on a space based sandbox game which will heavily feature the ability to custom program your systems. I want to implement this in a way that is both accessible, powerful (bare minimum would be turing completeness) fast to code in. Text based languages generally only satisfy the latter two requirements, and while it's not to difficult to design a visual language which satisfies the first two, visual languages are a pain to program in due to requiring extensive mouse use. While there are some very accessible text based languages, I want complete non programmers to be able to ease themselves into programming. |
4 | How can I solve the problem of attacking being disadvantageous in TBS due to entering the range of enemy attacks? I noticed this thing in Age of Wonders I some time ago, but I can imagine this problem popping up in any other game system where units with equal attack range spend their move points on either moving in range or attacking. In this game, both sides start far away from each other, not being able to hit each other. They have to spend a couple of turns advancing. At some moment it happens that one player moves their units closer to the enemy units to be able to attack them, but also ends up in the opponent's attacks' range, getting damaged before being able to attack themself. Not very good! Sometimes it is acceptable and intended, like if I attack an army of cavalry with an army of archers, my opponent is essentially allowed a free attack because cavalry can usually move further than archer's shooting range. But if both armies have equal ranges, the game can turn into a stalemate, because nobody wants to move forward and be hit first. Getting the first strike is so important that it overshadows a strong unit stats advantage. Even the AI knows to abuse it, waiting for an infinite amount of time before the player attacks. While it is easy to counter this as a player against AI by flanking the enemy ranks in such a way that only one of their units gets in range of many my units and the enemy is forced to advance, a real player could just back off with this unit and wait for me to fully advance, getting hit severely and likely even losing my upper hand if I had one. Thus, it feels like an example of very bad design. How do I design TBS combat in a similar system so that it is not completely disadvantageous to move in and attack unless you have a range advantage? The only possible solution that I see is making the ranges more different, so it is less probable to see units with similar attack ranges, but even in that case such a situation r still not impossible. I am sure that some more elegant solutions exist. So, what are they? |
4 | Stuck at enemy movement I am making a TD game in unity, Initially I made all of my enemy movements frame rate dependent say I had a grid point1 at 22.65 and other at 21.1, diagrammatically ( 22.65) ( 21.1) ( 21.1 1.55) ...... so the distance on x axis between two points is 1.55, divided it by 25 jumps with each enemy jump of 0.062 of each frame. On reaching on next point of grid the enemy find again its path. All went fine until I have requirement of FastForward and Pause feature. I used timeScale property of unity but it wont work as they are frame dependent. I also tried double speed of enemy on clicking fast forward button at any time, it has some issues that enemy jumps are now less and it fails to reach on next grid point. Could someone suggest me solution to my problem. Do I need to change the enemy movement code to make it frame independent ?? I need the enemy to reach on the grid specific point I also need later to slow down any one enemy's speed when tower fires on it. Thnx |
4 | Spreadsheets in Game Design? There have been two instances from the past two weeks that I've heard from well known successful game developers that they use spreadsheets when designing games. The first being David Whatley in this GDCVault video From Zero to Time Magazine App Success The second being the guys that do Walled Garden Weekly. David said he models everything out and uses excel models to see how everything plays out. What on earth is he talking about? Is it seeing how the game mechanics react to each other? Is there somewhere where I can learn more about how to do this? |
4 | Fire Emblem Advance Wars Turn Based Strategy like Artificial Intelligence I have made a Fire Emblem Advance Wars like game, and I was wondering if there are any particular techniques in the AI's in those games. I was wondering how to let the AI make the best decisions. I have the tiles a unit can move to, I have the enemy unit positions and I have formulas to calculate battle outcomes, now I want to add those together so that, for example, the AI attacks the weakest unit, blocks a chokepoint or just moves closer to the enemy if nobody is in range. What is the best approach to this? |
4 | Creating a click and drag system in GameMaker Studio 2 I am attempting to create a click and drag system in GameMaker 2, for example a dress up game or maybe a puzzle. How would I go about getting the objects to click and drag? I'm trying to get it so I can click and drag a piece of clothing, for example, and drag it onto a character and then drag another piece of clothing on as well. |
4 | Allow Pushing Boosting in free browser MMOGs? There seems to be a set of rules (or game design criteria) common to free MMOGs, to encourage fair competition. One such rule is that each player may have only a single account (despite the difficulty of enforcing this effectively). A related issue has recently come to my attention, where a player who does not themselves play often, instead of using their limited resources for their own gain transfers them to another, stronger player. Commonly these might include spouses or disinterested roommates or children, or friends who are no longer active in the game. Does this advantage violate an essential aspect of the design of the game, or should it be permitted? |
4 | What knowledge would I need to make a good simulation game I have an idea for a game like theme park but don't know how simulation games are made. I am not on my first game so I would appreciate constructive answers instead of "its hard, don't do it". What I want is to know how simulation game mechanics are put together. I figure it would be heaver on the AI than normal games and not knowing much about AI would like to know some programming techniques I should look into for this style game. Specific techniques please not just a book on AI. What sort of architecture would be used? I guess it would have some sort of probability engine with pre designed events that are triggered based on the AI state. Would it use a Finite State Machine (FSM) or be purely event driven? Any information on how a sims game functions would be cool. |
4 | Why do games suggest you take a break? A lot of games will suggest you take breaks from them every 30 minutes or so, I think this is especially common in Nintendo games, but they aren't the only ones to do it. What is the advantage to this? Does this somehow help get you to play it more or does it help sell more copies? |
4 | iPhone Game Sprites I have made games with cocos2d for the iphone however I am looking to move on from that, is there a good direction you could suggest? If not I was planning on using what the SDK gives me, and so for example to make a sprite, say the player on screen, rather than a CCSprite, what would be best to use? What do I need to go and learn? Thanks. |
4 | How to utilize miniMax algorithm in Checkers game I am sorry...as there are too many articles about it.But I can't simple get this. I am confused in the implementation of AI. I have generated all possible moves of computer's type pieces. Now I can't decide the flow. Whether I need to start a loop for the possible moves of each piece and assign score to it.... or something else is to be done. Kindly tell me the proper flow algorithm for this. Thanks UPDATE MiniMax code Now I coded the algorithm but not getting correct moves. Please help me find out the logical error. |
4 | Is there a concept of "pasted on theme" in video games? I've prototyped an idea and so far it's quite fun to play. However, it's still abstract and uses placeholder art. I've been thinking about a theme story to add to the game, but I don't want to make it too obvious it was added almost as an afterthought. There's a concept of quot pasted on theme quot within the board game community which basically refers to a game which is easy to reskin without redesigning some of the mechanics. I was wondering how big of an issue this is with video games (indie games in particular of course) and anything else I could do about a story for my game. |
4 | What makes a game a game vs something else like a puzzle or a toy? Famously the Sims and similar games have been described by some designers as Toys and not "really" games. I'm curious if there is a good answer to what makes something a game. For example many companies sell Sudoku games EA has an iPhone one, IronSudoku offers a great web based one, and there are countless others on most platforms. Many newspapers publish Sudoku puzzles in their print editions and often online. What differentiates a game from a puzzle? (or are all Sudoku "games" misnamed?) I'm not convinced there is a simple or easy answer but I'd love to be proven wrong. I've seen some definitions and emphasize "rules" as core to something being a game (vs. "real life") but puzzles have rules as well as do many other things. I'm open to answers that either focus only on computer games (on any platform) or which expand to include games and gameplay across many platforms. Here to I'm not fully convinced the lines are clear is a "game" of D amp D played over a virtual tabletop with computer dice rollers, video amp audio chat a computer game or something else? (I'd lean towards something else but where do you draw that line?) |
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