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4 | What should a game have in order to keep humans playing it? In many entertainment professions there suggestions, loose rules, or general frameworks one follows that appeal to humans in one way or another. For instance, many movies and books follow the monomyth. In video games I find many types of games that attract people in different ways. Some are addicted to facebook gem matching games. Others can't get enough of FPS games. Once in awhile, though, you find a game that seems to transcend stereotypes and appeals almost immediately to everyone that plays it. For instance, Plants Versus Zombies seems to have a very, very large demographic of players. There are other games similar in reach. I'm curious what books, blogs, etc there are that explore these game types and styles, and tries to suss out one or more popular frameworks styles that satisfy people, while keeping them coming back for more. |
4 | Portrait and Landscape Design I have a turn based game that is built with HTML 5 gaming framework and runs completely fine in Landscape mode. What I am trying to figure out is how to make the game run fine in both portrait and landscape mode such that even when the game is running and player rotates the screen to landscape the game runs perfectly or the game transition between landscape and portrait mode smoothly. I can capture the orientation change event which is fired, my question is how should I design the game for both orientations. Currently, I am trying to create a common file which then calls my separate orientation layouts created for the game but is this the right way? Thanks |
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 | Minimum Viable Product for RTS game? I'm in pre production on a strategy game and am trying to determine if the core gameplay will be fun. A good technique to determine this is to strip the game down to its minimum viable product (MVP) and see if that is fun. If the MVP isn't fun, then no amount of extra content or features will make it fun. I'm having difficulty determining the MVP for a strategy game as I'm a little too far into the weeds to see which of the many design features are core mechanics and which are unnecessary. Purely as an example, lets just say StarCraft2 is the strategy game I want to make. What would be the MVP for SC2 to prove out that its core gameplay is fun? |
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 | 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 | Designing Drops system How and where chance of drops are defined? Just found a related topic but I have different extended questions I was wondering how the implement the drop system. I have to start designing the DB model for this so I was wondering whether what I am thinking is a good practice or not. My game is like "City building" kind of browser based game (Flex Flash app) with PHP and MySQL in the backend. In my game, like in any other games, there are chance based drop rate. I want to design the drop system such a way that I can easily configure What item(s) can be dropped from which game element What is the percent chance (probability) of getting a drop (a 100 meaning there will be some drop always) What percent chance of getting a specific drop. Here I define for each item (if can drop various items) what is the chace of drop, 90 to very frequent, 5 to very rare I am wondering how the probability is determined? It might sound very noobish but just want to confirm does it mean roll a random number and compare with the odds we defined? If I am not wrong this is good for determining "how much to drop" but not for "what to drop" Example If we say drop 1 10 coins or 20 50 coins. I will simply call a random() function and generate a random numbed from the desired range. Now for other example Drop one of Bullets (95 ), Empty Gun (4 ), Loaded Gun (1 ) If I roll a random number range from 1 100 and compare with probability I defined so, a number between 1 95 drops bullet, and a number between 96 99 drops empty gun and a loaded gun when it generates 100? Is this how it has to be done? or is there a better way? Update Removed 2nd question about hack safety |
4 | Story dialogues user controlled or script driven? I'm currently working on the animations that present the story. Right now my animations are scripted. They allow me to dictate the pace of the scene. My dialogue bubbles expire on a simple "time per char" system or scripted time where needed. I was wondering that maybe i should let the user control the flow with a click for each major frame. This gives him the time he needs to read and process the dialogue. But that breaks the flow. For example when i want to create agitation, dialogues are really fast, barely readable etc.. Important stuff on the other hand is slow. So my question is, what would your approach and why? Generally speaking. What do users prefer in these cases? Platform is phones, scenes are presented in the same env as game engine, with characters only walking and talking. |
4 | Player fatigue for tablets? I'm thinking about making games for tablets. Coming from a PC console background, I'm keenly aware of the huge differences in the user interfaces, and that I need to design it with the target platform in mind. One aspect I'm worried about is player fatigue. The input devices used on PCs and consoles keyboards and game controllers are optimized for extended play and have mature, ergonomic designs. Most seasoned players can easily use them for an hour, clocking in thousands of key button presses, without suffering from fatigue. Designers can depend on this when designing the user experience, with consequences ranging from size length of levels, steps required to execute commands, pace of the game and many more. What about touch screen tablets? Do players become fatigued faster, or are unable to execute as many taps swipes per unit of time? If so, are there any resources or guidelines about this matter? |
4 | Programmers Designers working with artists Expanding on this question, what information do I need to communicate my artistic goals for a game to a professional artist? Assuming I'm an indie programmer. and I've found or hired an artist to for my game, how to I go about setting a template or a brief for the look and feel of my game? |
4 | Why do games have consumables? Thinking along the lines of this question, and the too awesome to use trope in general. Why do game designers want to include consumable items in their games? Mortal Kombat 11 got me thinking... Why include consumables that give you an edge in battle at all? I m looking for concrete answers for what it is that consumables add to gameplay, whether it be about those that one can buy with real money, or those that you just get by playing the game, or whether they are available in limited or unlimited quantities. |
4 | MMORPG game balancing I've seen a couple of examples of some game balancing techniques in books yet they are not comprehensive and not particularly aimed at MMORPGs but I'm looking for practical examples of game balancing techniques for MMORPGs. I am interested to know if anyone has documented the techniques used in popular games with proven success in this area. Ideally, any resource would cover most common types of stats and include layman mathematical models or techniques used to balance game mechanics found in advanced MMORPGs (I know it's a clich , but WoW style) Any help would be great! |
4 | How to design AI to understand its selling decisions? I am programming a game where there are 4 competitors (players) who have finished goods that they can then sell to given markets for which they have (at most a single) contracts for. Any finished goods is for a given market. Turn order is important in the game as this will decide who sells first. Scenario. Turn order Player A, C, D, B The problem I'm having is I have no idea how to make the AI players aware of the following factors they seem to need to know a lot of things which may impact on where to sell first. For example, AI needs to know. Am I the only person who can sell to a given market? If so, that's fine sell all goods to market. If not, do the following Who are my competitors for a given market and will I be able to sell first? If I sell in Market A, will I still get a chance to sell to Market B when turn order returns to me? (demand for items goes down for every sale and can bottom out) Indeed, this is one strategy I'm wanting to employ sell to a given market because i he does not he might not get a chance to sell again when turn order returns to them. If I sell, should the AI go for most revenue per selling round. Currently I am looking to order all markets for a given player based upon selling ability (who can sell first) Basically an array of people who can sell for a given market based on player order. These people then sell, and we reduce the array by one and repeat the process. Whilst this solves some problems, it does not solve the bigger problem, which is the AI will just end up selling stuff in the order that of the Markets array and not specifically to the ones where it is either advatangeous to do so, or will generate them the most money. I am wondering, how do you design an AI to make coheriant, logical decisions about what when and why they would sell to a given market? Sorry for the wall of text. Many thanks |
4 | Independent HTML5 Physics Game Any Feedback? I've been independently developing a physics based HTML5 game. I haven't used any libraries or engines all the code, including the physics, is my own. It is free for a while on the Chrome Web Store and I was hoping that I could get some feedback on it. You can get it for Chrome here https chrome.google.com webstore detail dbnmkpcomailjochphnmfklofkmgenci. I know this is not a normal question, but I'm happy for answers to be abstracted generalized for broader use. Im asking here because I don't know anyone else personally who does this stuff. Any thoughts, comments or ideas you might have would be greatly appreciated! The physics system is written in JavaScript and works by setting up the differential equations of motion (plus a few conditions) and evaluating them numerically using the Euler method. The graphics are done through the HTML5 canvas and the music is done through the audio element. (Said music is in the public domain by the way). You can see the code by going to VIew View Source in Chrome. |
4 | It is worth adding 'futuristic' features to our game, or should we put our focus elsewhere? I'm lead programmer in a medium sized indie game studio. This is our first game as a team. We're working on a futuristic FPS game, with a profit sharing buisness plan. Anyway, we have some very good programmers, who have the ability to create never seen before features (true realistic fluids, procedural mesh destruction, procedural skyboxes, etc.) And I'm wondering is there any point to implementing these things? They take a long time, but look brilliant. We're aiming for a 12 month development cycle. So should we do this, or just make a standard game. |
4 | Why do games have hats? I noticed that a lot of games tend to have hats. I was wondering why? Is it some sort of tradition to add hats to your games? What makes this trend so popular in game development? |
4 | Designing for visually impaired gamers Globally the number of people of all ages visually impaired is estimated to be 285 million, of whom 39 million are blind. World Health Organisation, 2010. (That's 4.2 and 0.6 of the world population.) Most videogames put a strong emphasis on visuals in their content delivery. Visually impaired gamers are largely left out. How do I design a game to be accessible to visually impaired gamers? |
4 | Realtime multi player game design principles for Node.js I've been reading the Valve article on multi player networking which has been adapted from Yahn Bernier's 2001 paper called Latency Compensating Methods in Client Server In game Protocol Design and Optimization. I'm making a realtime multi player game using a node.js server connected to clients through socket.io and I have a few questions regarding the principles detailed below Entity Interpolation Interpolation prevents the jittery motion this would ordinarily lead to by buffering server updates then playing them back with the gaps smoothly interpolated between. It can also protect against glitches caused by packet loss. Client Side Prediction Prediction is the notion of the client predicting the effects of the local player's actions without waiting for the server to confirm them. An entity's predicted state is tested against server commands as they arrive until either a match or a mis match is detected. Lag Compensation Lag compensation is the notion of the server using a player's latency to rewind time when processing user input , in order to see what the player saw when the command was sent. In combination with prediction, lag compensation can help to combat network latency to the point of almost eliminating it from the perspective of an attacker. Do the principles apply to TCP as they do to UDP and would there be any differences in implementation? I can see that the entity interpolation would not need to protect against packet loss but thats about it. Can I even communicate between a server and web browser and vice versa using UDP and Node.js? Since the paper is over a decade old are these principles still in use or has other technology appeared? Any help would be much appreciated. |
4 | what should the size of a flash game in Facebook be I'm developing a flash game and i want to put it in Facebook ,My question is the Proper maximum size for it. 500 KB 1 MB ?? |
4 | Balance advantage of having the first turn I'm developing a game in which two players compete for area domination. Each player can play four moves per turn, ideally conquering four tiles. Edit Here a little more detail on the mechanics Each player is given the same amount of cards (about 20). Each card has a value. The board consists of 4x5 tiles which you conquer by placing a card on it. If there already is a card on the tile, your can still conquer the tile but your card must have a higher value than the card on the tile. The problem is that player two could technically (almost) always just undo player ones moves by conquering the same areas immediately. Of course this isn't fun at all and no human player would play this way, but I'm working on implementing an AI opponent, and I've seen the above happen a few times Player one conquers four tiles with pretty low value cards player two immediately takes them player one takes them back again because not doing so would be a disadvantage player two takes them back again etc... So as you can see, this is definitely not the best strategy as it becomes ridiculously expensive to possess the tiles of interest, but there are strategies or situations in which you might play like this. How should I balance this? Are there any common design solutions for this problem? (Having player one play more moves in the first turn would give player one a huge advantage as it would allow him her to conquer highly strategic areas in the first turn. (Unfortunately, the "immediately undo player ones moves" strategy is actually not mathematically bad for player two, but that's another issue)) |
4 | How to avoid players getting lost in and or bored by the meta game? Yesterday, I noticed something that I had never noticed consciously before, but which had "ruined" more or less all games that I have ever played The longer you play a game, the more you get lost in and bored by the meta game. What I mean is that the longer you play, the more you know the meta game. Once you know the meta game by heart, you basically stop playing the game and instead only play the meta game anymore. Here are a few examples from different genres to show what I mean DotA In the beginning, DotA is super fun, although you totally suck at it. You learn new heros, you are happy when you are able to buy an expensive item and so on. After being "pro" in DotA, you basically only play the meta game anymore You pick exactly the hero that can counter the enemy and play exactly a perfect meta game for your hero (e.g., go to jungle until you are fat, time creep spawns to stack, and so on). You know basically exactly at which time you will be able to buy which item and you execute this. You no longer play the game, you just play the meta game. You execute a well thought out choreography, which you perfected by executing it 100 or more times. Eventually this gets boring! Anno XXXX In the beginning, you build an island and have to master more and more challenges to keep you citizens happy. Cool! Once you know the meta game the whole game becomes a "Oh, I need these 10 resources in these proportions, then the people are happy. I build a fleet and capture the enemy or keep on playing until my island is full". Cities Skylines (or any Sim City) In the beginning, it is fun to master what your people need. In the end, you know exactly what they need, so it becomes more or less a burden E.g., for each new residential district, I need a police station, a fire station, garbage incineration plant, crematory, a hospital, I connect everything to the highway, add a subway station and add bus lines. Done. Lame. It starts feeling totally mechanic. I no longer feel like building a real city. I feel like building a mathematically simulation of a city and just responding to optimize all parameters for this simulation. Civilizations A super nice game to explore in the beginning! So many technologies, just wow! In the end I know exactly which technology to develop when. I have a more or less complete ordering among the technologies. I know where exactly to place the next city and which units to build. Heck, I think I could even write an AI that does more than 95 of the things I do, since everything has become so mechanic. I could go on forever. Almost all games have this. For some players, this is where the game gets really cool. Some players want to play the meta game! But for others, including me, it gets boring. I want to feel like playing a game, like exploring. Not optimizing a numerical simulation. So, when designing a game, how can you avoid that this will happen? Is it possible to hide the meta game to such an extent that the player no longer feels it, even when playing the game for long. |
4 | Removing ads but maintaining opt in video ads I have a game for iOS that will show advertisements. One form of advertisement offered is a rewarded video (a video that the user can watch by choice). This is actually an important aspect of the game because watching these videos allows the user to continue playing after running out of a certain resource (balls, in this case). Now, the user can remove the advertisements via In App Purchase. Question Is there anything wrong with keeping the rewarded videos as an option for the user, even though they paid to remove ads? If I disallow the rewarded videos, the user will lose a really useful feature of the game, but I'm worried about initializing the advertisement SDK and therefore tracking users who probably think they've disabled any tracking for advertisements. Thank you for your thoughts! |
4 | How to compare different states of my game? (rpg) I'm working on a rpg, the battle system. I want to compare different scenario with each other. For example, what if I play move A then move B ? or two times move A ? or ...? I'm using a tree structure to generate all possible scenario that can happen during the battle. There is no movement involved, I'm using a battle system as in FF7, only skill choice matters. 4vs4 units Trick is, the battle is turn based but not static. There is an Action Point bar for each unit (filling at different speed based on the unit's stats) and the unit with the most Ap (only if 100) can play. If no unit is 100, a "turn" will happend and all unit will gain some AP based on their speed. If no unit can play, a new turn will happen...until a unit is 100 ap. Each skills takes a different amount a AP to use. At turns 0 for example, we may have a unit with 140 AP that will play two times in a row for 2 actions of 20 AP each. Then other units at 100 AP may play. It means that when I'm running a simulation of all possible outcome of a battle for my AI, I will have states (node in the tree), that will have a number a turns very different from other and from nodes at the same depth. I dont know how to compare these nodes at all. I was using Hp at first, but it is not enought. To prove it, consider the example 1 vs 1 match. Unit A (opponent of AI) has only 1 move, a small attack that requieres 20 ap. Unit B (AI) has two moves a small attack that takes 40 ap (and overall hit for very low damage compared to the opponent attack) and a second move that does nothing but consume 20 ap and that move can only be used during the 1st turn. I will then have to compare two states State 1 AI use its attack . Opponent his attack. Units are at 60 80 ap respectively. 20 game turns passes and they are now at 80 100 ap. Opponent use his attack. 20 game turs passes and they are at 100 100 again and we are at turn 40. State 2 AI use his move that does nothing. Opponent his attack. Units are at 80 80 ap. 20 games turns passes, they are now at 100 100 and we are at turns 20. If I compare only HP, In state 1, AI will have an overall score a lower than in state 2 since it got attacked twice in state 1 and 1 times only in state 2. If I only compare by Hp difference between AI amp its opponenent, I would choose state 2 since AI lost less Hp than in state 1. Running the simulation after state 1 and 2 will continue to show the same difference since after that point, both unit can only use one attack. In the end, it makes my AI choose a stupid move because she thinks she is less likely to loose selecting it. Granted both move will eventually result in the defeat of the AI since its main attack is weak but I'd like my AI to nonetheless select as its first move, her attack skill and not a skill that does nothing. I've tried weithing the overall gradient of score between the root state and the state I'm simulating by the number of turns but it does not work in all cases (it greatly depends on the number of turns and the difference between the root). I was thinking of adding Ap ratio to my evaluation of states but in that example, we can see that in State 1 amp 2, units are at the same AP anyway so it doesnt provide extra informations. Anyone got ideas on how to compares my states from different turns ? |
4 | Determining Player "Forward" in VR EDIT I've removed some vagueness and replaced it with more of a description of the intended use case. I'm looking for some suggestions for ways to infer what the player's "forward" vector is in a room scale 360 experience. I'm not currently worried about extreme edge cases, especially if it sounds like the user may be intentionally not doing the intended thing, but I am interested in getting a decently accurate forward vector when they could be looking or facing any direction. I also don't care about "upness" or magnitude of the vector, so it'll end up being projected onto the (Unity's) X Z plane and normalized. I'm exploring the idea of punching as a means for locomotion. The player should move in the direction that they punch, which in itself I feel is an easy solve. The problem is, much like the problem of arm swing movement, it is very hard and unnatural to punch exactly straight forward. People tend to punch at least a little across their body. This causes the player to weave back and forth through the world, like some sort of drunken master. I don't like the idea of using the headset's forward vector either. I want the player to be able to look around while playing I feel it is an integral part of the experience to be able to look ahead one punch and plan the next move. It's also important that sensor set up and room orientation should not be taken into account. I'm looking for something that could work in a large space with 360 tracking. I've considered Grabbing an average position of the hands, getting the vector from the head to this new position. This is where I've spent most of my time, I think. I've tried a weighted average, where hand position gets more or less weight depending on distance from head. In practice, this ends up exacerbating the problem Grabbing the vector from the head to the dominant hand Dropping a raycast to the floor and using the hit geometry's forward vector Getting a complicated IK rig setup, potentially hiding the geometry, and using the rig's hip placement orientation to infer "forward" None of these quite feel right to me, although the average hand position vector feels the right est. Is this a solved problem that I'm just not searching hard enough for? Anybody else have interesting solutions to this problem? Am I being too vague and should really just seek out a solution for a much more specific use case and be happy with that? |
4 | What is the design rationale behind melee retaliations in turn based games? I've seen quite a lot of turn based games in which melee attacks on another unit cause the attacked units to also damage the attacking unit, while ranged attacks do not suffer from this "retaliation" mechanic. Examples include the Heroes of Might and Magic series, the Civilization series, the new King's Bounty series, and more. Is there a specific design reason for this? What's the rationale behind giving the attacked unit an extra attack, which doesn't cost it its turn? And why are ranged attacks excluded from retaliation? |
4 | What is the design rationale behind hard content that's limited to only a couple attempts per week? There is currently a lot of discussion in the World of Warcraft playerbase about a recently added feature Horrific Visions. Visions are personal areas you can enter alone or with a handful of players and have 5 objectives with increasing difficulty plus additional difficulty options. The details aren't that important, but the core is that these Visions require careful planning of resources and time if you want to progress the harder difficulties, both during the visions themselves and in how you earn the right to complete a Vision. In return for completing these Visions, you can earn increasingly better gear based on difficulty (though repeated gear rewards decline in quality) as well as upgrades for an item you need against the final bosses of the raid that came in the same patch. Now, usually in games that have really hard content you're supposed to defeat, there is no limit in how many attempts you can do, or the limit is sufficiently high that it makes no real difference. However, this isn't the case in Visions. Visions require you to buy an item to make an attempt, and this item is so costly that even if you log in every day and do all the content that rewards the items you need to buy this item, you can at most earn 4 copies of the item per week. There is also incentive to save these tokens for later weeks because later upgrades require you to complete increasingly more runs, which you can speed up by not using additional tokens in weeks where you don't need them. This is what many people see as the biggest problem with these Visions. They're hard content, but you have only a couple attempts per week and you need to make them count. So there isn't really a safe way to practise them so you can learn how they work and what the best way to do them is. If you mess up and you don't do enough to earn the upgrade token mentioned above, it's a huge potential loss and you fall behind other players who did manage to complete them. I'm trying to understand possible design rationale behind this. I don't usually come across this design element in games, and I can't even remember another game with similar design, especially for such a core feature of the content update. in other hard game content, Soulsborne games don't really restrict you in attempts, and Roguelikes actually are built around immediately starting anew when you fail, again without real limitations. AFAIK neither genre really limits you in how often you can try them. And it has been years since Blizzard last put a hard limit on how many attempts you were allowed for the hardest content, especially such a low amount. What can be potential design rationale behind putting hard content behind a restrictive attempt limit? |
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 | How to deal with (bad?) player suggestions Every game which builds a community while still being in active development will soon be confronted with players who post suggestions for new features on its forum. Most of these suggestions, however Go into a completely different direction than where you want your game to go Would require far too much effort for the benefit they could have Are just plain awful What's a good way to deal with such suggestions? Should you tell the players honestly what you think about their suggestions so that they learn to make more constructive ones? Should you always try to maintain a positive and encouraging attitude towards player ideas, even when you secretly think that there is not a chance in hell you are following them? Should you just ignore any suggestions which you don't like? |
4 | Long distance walking and fast travel I'm developing a sort of social mmmo where people build an avatar and chat with people around them, carryout tasks together, and play team games. At the moment I have a product I want to release to beta testers but I only have 2 locations ready and they are quite far apart. I have a fast travel system in place where people can pay to ride the bus making any journey take a short period of time. If people run out of money they either have to earn more or make the walk themselves. In the beta would it be better to make the bus free, or have people walk the empty land to get to the other town if they run out of money? At the moment the land is just plain grass, hills, a river, and the odd tree with nothing of interest. The journey currently takes around 10 15 minutes to walk if you know the way. |
4 | Why is permadeath essential to a roguelike design? Roguelikes and roguelike likes (Spelunky, The Binding of Isaac) tend to share a number of game design elements Procedurally generated worlds Character growth by way of new abilities and powers Permanent death I can understand why starting with permadeath as a premise would lead you to the other ideas if you're going to be starting over a lot, you'll want variety in your experiences. But why do the first two elements imply a permadeath approach? |
4 | What do you do when you are at an impasse in the design phase? I own a small web dev shop, and in our down time, I plan on having my guys work on a game (I will be paying them anyway, right?). A few buddies and I started talking about this game, and have been going through the motions of talking designing it out. Only problem we are at an impasse, and can't seem to get passed it. The vote is at 50 50 . Compromising hasn't worked. I have though about just making an executive decision since I am funding the development design of the game, but I don't want to lose my friends support for the game, and their other opinions. I don't know what to do. |
4 | Toggle action for gamepad triggers, whilst being held down I'm doing a small fighting game project, as up now every button command in my map code is occupied with their designated functions. All except the triggers as up now they only have their basic "press n hold" actions assigned "sidestep" for the LT and "jump fly" for the RT . However there are still two more actions that I would like to implement to the triggers "if possible" they being, "Block" for the LT and "Fly up" for the RT . That being said, is it possible to somehow, add a "tap toggle action" to the triggers while they're still being held? If yes please let me know. For Tom Tsagk Yes, I'm trying to cause an event while holding down a button "this case a trigger", but 'not' by pressing another button for the execution, "since every other button is occupied doing something else". What I'm trying to attempt is when holding a trigger down, to be able to give small "taps" to the trigger without the need let go. |
4 | How to balance damage dealt by opponents in a strategy game? Consider the following situation you are developing a RTS, with different races opposing each other, with different kinds of abilities (e.g. Starcraft). How should I go about in balancing the damage, speed, cool down times etc. of the respective troops units? Are there any good resources on that or sort of test beds? |
4 | For games that time stamp a saved game (think Half Life), is the entire game state really being saved every time? It seems to me if that were the case that your directory of saved binaries or serialized objects could get massive real quick. Is there some sort of strategy being employed on top of the State pattern that is optimizing each time stamped saved game so that it isn't saving the entire game "context" all the time? |
4 | How to prevent players from getting lost during the onboarding phase of an RPG? I've created a new RPG and tested it with some players. They like it, but get lost at certain points. For example, I'm using hotkeys to open modals, T to talk, and other buttons that do various things. Moreover, some of the quests aren't entirely clear. To fix this, I'm trying to think of a good onboarding approach. I'm implementing three methods for onboarding 1) Cutscenes The cutscenes, especially the opening scene, will give the backstory and explain where they are 2) The NPC dialog Through conversations with NPCs, they will give hints as to what you should do. Right now, I include, somewhat awkwardly, things like "Hi there, I'm Bob. You can press T to talk". 3) Onscreen Tooltips These blink on screen until the player completes the current onboarding task. For example, the tooltip disappears when the player clicks their minimap I'm looking for a more cohesive strategy for onboarding users to the game, or good tutorials for this. Two things I'm weary of are I don't want to be overbearing with help, and am attempting a good Discovery Phase to let the player explore. I don't want the player to leave the game out of frustration with being lost I've seen a lot of techniques for various game genres, and even things like Google apps, where they have a glowing choice for the user to click on. I'm a sole developer, and some of these techniques seem quite complicated to implement. Thanks! |
4 | Why don't game developers change game stories after launch? Game developers have shown willing to remove and add game features, change art assets and remake parts of their games in following updates, but why don't they ever change the plot? Some times parts are added to the story, but only as attachments, never revisions. Why is plot thought as a feature beyond editing, even if it would enhance player experience just as much as any graphical update or gameplay tweak? P.S. I would like to ask for a game narrative writing story tag, and they are just as important part of game development as game mechanics. P.S. This is as broad a question as why not to release source code. Therefore I think it is not too broad for answering. |
4 | When do you have inflation and when deflation in a virtual economy In a virtual economy, you can calculate all the income and all the costs (money that sinks) from every user in the game. You can calculate the percentage of the new money on the system or the money that has been lost from the system by the income and the costs. I believe that having a small positive percentage is not inflation, but from the other side, crucial for the economy. However, I was wondering if there are any rough limits of this percentage that could lead to an inflation or deflation for negative percentage. For example, if you have every week a result of 1 2 , will not be a serious problem. But if you have 30 or 30 , obviously you will. Have you found from your experience or from any research limits that could ring a bell? |
4 | Why has it become commonplace for NPCs to have one weapon per class instead of variants? For instance, in Half Life 2 you have Civil Protection, Combine Soldier and Combine Elite. Each class has a weapon. Is there a shift away from this at all, where the NPCs are matched with the player in the sense that the weapon they choose to use is based upon their advantage, while still maintaining some sense of competitiveness? Is there a reason this became the norm? Does it have to do with all the variables and complications that can arise from doing that? |
4 | What can make a peaceful game successful? Today, the most successful games are action games like FPS, RPG, MMORPG... I'd like to make a peaceful game, but I don't know how to attract people. I can make good graphics, but that's not the main thing that makes people like a game for more than a couple of minutes. The content is important. In the game styles mentioned earlier, their main content is fighting, killing others, and generally making yourself the most powerful player in the game. But what content can attract people in a peaceful game? |
4 | What is the design rationale behind hard content that's limited to only a couple attempts per week? There is currently a lot of discussion in the World of Warcraft playerbase about a recently added feature Horrific Visions. Visions are personal areas you can enter alone or with a handful of players and have 5 objectives with increasing difficulty plus additional difficulty options. The details aren't that important, but the core is that these Visions require careful planning of resources and time if you want to progress the harder difficulties, both during the visions themselves and in how you earn the right to complete a Vision. In return for completing these Visions, you can earn increasingly better gear based on difficulty (though repeated gear rewards decline in quality) as well as upgrades for an item you need against the final bosses of the raid that came in the same patch. Now, usually in games that have really hard content you're supposed to defeat, there is no limit in how many attempts you can do, or the limit is sufficiently high that it makes no real difference. However, this isn't the case in Visions. Visions require you to buy an item to make an attempt, and this item is so costly that even if you log in every day and do all the content that rewards the items you need to buy this item, you can at most earn 4 copies of the item per week. There is also incentive to save these tokens for later weeks because later upgrades require you to complete increasingly more runs, which you can speed up by not using additional tokens in weeks where you don't need them. This is what many people see as the biggest problem with these Visions. They're hard content, but you have only a couple attempts per week and you need to make them count. So there isn't really a safe way to practise them so you can learn how they work and what the best way to do them is. If you mess up and you don't do enough to earn the upgrade token mentioned above, it's a huge potential loss and you fall behind other players who did manage to complete them. I'm trying to understand possible design rationale behind this. I don't usually come across this design element in games, and I can't even remember another game with similar design, especially for such a core feature of the content update. in other hard game content, Soulsborne games don't really restrict you in attempts, and Roguelikes actually are built around immediately starting anew when you fail, again without real limitations. AFAIK neither genre really limits you in how often you can try them. And it has been years since Blizzard last put a hard limit on how many attempts you were allowed for the hardest content, especially such a low amount. What can be potential design rationale behind putting hard content behind a restrictive attempt limit? |
4 | Can i make a Game for play store on my own I am not sure what i am asking for. Sorry if this question look stupid. I love to play games on android and pc . Some times very cool ideas strike me , but i don't know what to do with them. and they vanish over time. I got no computer science background , since i am a math student . Although i learned C for a week for a exam. In short I know C but just the alphabets. Is it possible that i can learn to make games. What should i have to learn. Is it possible to learn from youtube. Since it's like side hobby i can give it few hours a day ( not money ). |
4 | How can I scale the number and challenge of enemies in an attack wave as the game progresses? I'm currently making a defense game where enemies will spawn and attack the player's army. It's similar to a Tower Defense game, except there is only one level. The enemies will keep spawning until eventually the user dies or he amasses a large enough army that they wipe out any enemy that spawns instantly (hopefully it'll be challenging enough that this won't happen). What I'm struggling with at the moment is how to make this game get progressively harder and the probability of an enemy spawning basically eventually reach 100 . So far I've got something similar to the following if(Math.random() lt 1 (1 elapsed time) amp amp spawnTimer lt 0 ) spawnEnemy() spawnTimer rand() random number between 1 and 3 But it seems too uniform to begin with. At the moment I'm only spawning one type of enemy, the idea being that tougher enemies are spawned as time progresses as well. I also think I need to randomise my spawnTimer at bit more and make that get quicker as time progresses, but I just can't seen to get my head around what my logic should really look like for this whole section. Is anyone able to help with a rough idea of this kind of formula? I'm currently using javascript to write the game, but obviously it's more about the concept. |
4 | For games that time stamp a saved game (think Half Life), is the entire game state really being saved every time? It seems to me if that were the case that your directory of saved binaries or serialized objects could get massive real quick. Is there some sort of strategy being employed on top of the State pattern that is optimizing each time stamped saved game so that it isn't saving the entire game "context" all the time? |
4 | Game mechanics for a persistent real time strategic tactical game I am designing a game based around a fairly realistic simulation of 'Age of sail' like trading and combat, and I am currently trying to decide whether to make the game a limited on line application, in which the game world exists only while all the players 2 to 8 of them are all online, or a persistent real time mmo application, in which game events occur on a set schedule. As a game for a small number of players, uninteresting events could be time accelerated away. The trouble with a real time MMO is that the world objects would be persistent, yet the players would be transient. Since in game encounters and combat would take place on a schedule determined by the actions of all the players, not just those that happen to be online, players could easily miss an encounter or battle in which their vessel happened to be involved or at least could be involved. An idea I had for the MMO version was that otherwise idle time could be spent in training which would be simulated, not merely administrative, and that active crew positions such as gunners, helmsmen, marines and officers could be filled by players, so one ship might have many players online in engagements, each contributing to the success or otherwise of the battle. These positions would be filled by players whose vessels were all engaged in uninteresting travel or laid up for repairs, using a matchmaking system to match the players' observed skill to that of the NPC into whose shoes they would be stepping. NPC skill progression would be based upon the actual skill improvement of the players who step into the role. What other game mechanics could allow a game such as this to be playable as a persistent real time mmo, especially when vessels could spend a long time in transit, doing nothing much of interest? |
4 | How do you prevent inflation in a virtual economy? With your typical MMORPG, players can usually farm the world for raw materials essentially forever. Monsters mineral veins etc are usually on some sort of respawn timer, so other than time there really isn't a good way to limit the amount of new currency entering the system. That really only leaves money sinks to try to take money out of the system. What are some strategies to prevent inflation of the in game currency? |
4 | Turn based battle and formula I'm building a game called DVP(Digimon Virtual Pet), and in this game other than taking care of your digimon, You can also battle and breed them. I'm working on the battle system (making it first cause the actual pet system will be easy compared to the netplay, or 39DLL)but here is the problem I don't want it to be "too" simple or "too" complicated, but I do want to go by a certain formula. There are str, def, spd, and int. Strength How hard the attacking digimon is hitting Defense How much damage your digimon can defend when being attacked Speed The chance of you missing the enemy Intelligence (battle knowledge) The chance of you hitting a critical hit or defending a critical hit. I can make a super simple turn based example, but I don't know how exactly to make the formulas for what I've explained above, any help? |
4 | When pausing an XNA Xbox game and showing a "pause menu", which controller buttons should I use? I'm making a simple 2D XNA game for Xbox 360. My game can be paused by pressing the Start button on the Xbox controller. While paused, a simple menu pops up with options like Resume and Exit to Title Screen. The way I've currently programmed it, the menu options can only be selected with the A button on the Xbox controller, but I've found that I intuitively want to press Start to resume the action again. I think it's a given that Start pauses the game and displays the pause menu, but once the pause menu is displayed, I can think of 3 options for dealing with input Menu options can be selected with the A button. Start does nothing. Menu options can be selected with the A button or the Start button. Menu options can be selected with the A button. Start resumes gameplay regardless of which menu option is selected. What's the best control scheme to pause a game and accept input on a pause screen menu? Are there any guidelines or standards to help choose between these options? |
4 | Ideas for attack damage algorithm (language irrelevant) I am working on a game and I need ideas for the damage that will be done to the enemy when your player attacks. The total amount of health that the enemy has is called enemyHealth, and has a value of 1000. You start off with a weapon that does 40 points of damage (may be changed.) The player has an attack stat that you can increase, called playerAttack. This value starts off at 1, and has a possible max value of 100 after you level it up many times and make it farther into the game. The amount of damage that the weapon does is cut and dry, and subtracts 40 points from the total 1000 points of health every time the enemy is hit. But what the playerAttack does is add to that value with a percentage. Here is the algorithm I have now. (I've taken out all of the gui, classes, etc. and given the variables very forward names) double totalDamage weaponDamage (weaponDamage (playerAttack .05)) enemyHealth (int)totalDamage This seemed to work great for the most part. So I statrted testing some values... enemyHealth ALWAYS starts at 1000 weaponDamage 50 playerAttack 30 If I set these values, the amount of damage done on the enemy is 125. Seemed like a good number, so I wanted to see what would happen if the players attack was maxed out, but with the weakest starting weapon. weaponDamage 50 playerAttack 100 the totalDamage ends up being 300, which would kill an enemy in just a few hits. Even with your attack that high, I wouldn't want the weakest weapon to be able to kill the enemy that fast. I thought about adding defense, but I feel the game will lose consistency and become unbalanced in the long run. Possibly a well designed algorithm for a weapon decrease modifier would work for lower level weapons or something like that. Just need a break from trying to figure out the best way to go about this, and maybe someone that has experience with games and keeping the leveling consistent could give me some ideas pointers. |
4 | UI Main Menu options for mobile games. What options should be listed? What do users want to see? When a user arrives at your main menu on your mobile touch phone game. What do you want them to see? What do they need to see? Start, About, Load, Leaderboards, and Settings are just a few of the options that I "could" put on the Main Menu. The question really is what "should" be there and why? My game is about surviving waves of enemies to get to the next level, with a twist of course. What options could should be shown on my Main Menu and why? EDIT UPDATE Easy recognizable PLAY button. Possible buttons include, but are not limited to Options, Stats Achievements, Leaderboards, Level Solutions, and Promote Game. Choose appropriate options for your type of game. (ie. Level Solutions good for puzzle games but not FPS) Less is more, don't clutter the Main Menu to prevent users from getting confused. Weigh the benefits of an additional button against the risks of confusing users. Symbols can be used to convey the meaning of a button, be sure to reach the largest audience possible. Have as few clicks as possible to get into the game. |
4 | What is the purpose of having lives? I think in game design it is incredibly important to ask the question why about everything, especially something that has become so standard as lives. So I am asking, what is the purpose of a game having the concept of lives? Why have lives? |
4 | Interactive ways to answer a yes or no question in a VR game? Currently, I am creating a VR game with a simple AI that at certain points ask for yes or no answers. Considering the player is free to walk around, I need a sort of spawn in and out kind of solution. I would really like this to be interactive and engaging. So far, I'm thinking to animate a "terminal" from the floor with a green and a red button on it and the user simple pushes down on one with their hand. I don't really want to use a 2D UI or a controller button press for this. Are there any other potential ways to handle this situation while keeping the interactivity there? |
4 | How to manipulate 2d image as different objects Hello Im very new to this so I don't even know what this process is called exactly. Im posting image of flappy bird here in which it consist all the objects day, night, birds, font etc Here So how to use them in 2D game? this is just example i have used. How to manipulate different objects at different coordinates ? Thanks. |
4 | How do you prevent inflation in a virtual economy? With your typical MMORPG, players can usually farm the world for raw materials essentially forever. Monsters mineral veins etc are usually on some sort of respawn timer, so other than time there really isn't a good way to limit the amount of new currency entering the system. That really only leaves money sinks to try to take money out of the system. What are some strategies to prevent inflation of the in game currency? |
4 | 1 idea, 99 execution? I keep reading in the game development community that the idea of a game is 1 and the execution of the game is 99 . Do you believe that to be true? Not necessary in those percentages.. I always thought that a great idea is invaluable and it makes a game successful even though the execution is simplistic. |
4 | What makes a good tech tree? In strategy simulation games there are often tech research trees which allow players research new abilities options, improve existing options and decease negative effects. Some games seem to follow the abc approach of item 1 gt item 2 gt item 3 with minor stat changes while others make every unlocked option wildly change the way a game is played by throwing new units into the game which are able to change the balance of the game. Some make unlocking one branch block off another for the rest of the game while other will let you research everything. Some let you research multiple things while others will penalize you for switching research before it is complete. On that note tech trees can be progressive (with dedicated research over time unlocking an item) while some need you to collect enough money points in order to unlock instantly. What are some general guidelines for when to employ what strategy in a game? What games types of games would benefit more from one tech tree type over another and why? When should a linear tech tree be employed over a branching one? Edit For example a game where the main character has to build up an organisation and research technologies in secret while others are finding them and shut them down resulting in lost research laboratories, which reduce research output. The research output should increase somewhat exponentially as the game goes on as better technology is unlocked and research laboratories are upgraded. There would presumably be a very large tech tree to explore and the constant danger of losing facilities to other parties until you either unlock some endgame tech or lose everything. Why this isn't a duplicate Some people are marking this question as a duplicate because there is a related question about tech tree size. This question has to do more with the connections, cost and relationships between the technology options (of which size is a factor but not everything). |
4 | Procedurally splitting and merging paths I'm making a text based adventure which sends the player along different paths depending on their choices. Each scene is like a node in a directed graph. Each node has a time step which is equal to the number of nodes prior 1. There is a maximum of Tn nodes per time step, say 5, and so you can visualise this in this way I want to generate paths like these. Where a node points to more than one other, that could be called a fork and where two point to one, that could be called a merge. At any particular timestep there will tend to be Tn 2 paths, only rarely going down to one or up to Tn. Does anyone have ideas or know of any similar work? (One small issue paths never cross that is, those on the left stay on the left until merging to the right. And there's no wrapping from far left to far right. Because of this, it seems like nodes on the far left or far right of a timestep will have a smaller probability of merging. Is this avoidable?) |
4 | For my first 3D engine, should I go for one that is already made, or minimalistic? I've been meaning to transition from 2D games to 3D games for some time, now. I have the most experience with RTS games, so I will be doing that. On one hand, there's a lightweight renderer Irrlicht. However, considering it's a renderer and not a game engine (only basic collision, etc..) , I would have to write most of the things, myself. On the other hand, there's a full blown engine like CryEngine 3, for example. Although it is mostly complete, I would first need to understand the various parts of the engine and it's implementation enough to be able to try and transform it into an RTS engine. My question is, which would be easier for me to transition to? |
4 | Mobile game different actions based on different tap input? I am creating a mobile game in which you can destroy blocks and interact with blocks like in Minecraft. However, the problem is, in Minecraft you destroy blocks using left mouse button click and interact using right mouse button click, but on mobile I don't have 2 buttons, only 1 the screen tap. Of course, I could create a button to toggle between 2 modes, but I am sure there is a more elegant way that would not be so annoying for players. What are the options? |
4 | How to develop ruzzle game for web I am creating a game like ruzzle but i am creating for web . Initially my basic task is to display the alphabets in the html5 canvas the letters should fetched from the database randomly in the html5 canvas tiles and when the user create the word just like in ruzzle , the new words add randomly in the html5 canvas . Should I use easeljs or any other technology . I also want to include multiplayer gaming both friends can simultaneously play the game with each other. |
4 | Is a Stamina Bar (ala Dark Souls) a good idea for a casual player target group? We all know the "Stamina Bar". For those who dont Its a "Bar" (usually right below your life bar) which prevents spamming the attacks as much as you want. Attacking will also reduce your stamina and you need a certain amount of stamina to use Attacks. Usually blocking , rolling and other things also require and reduce your stamina. Its a great way to balance the a real time action battle system. You can upgrade your stamina which is cool too because gives you a feeling of progress and add a little bit of fun there. Anyway The Question here is Is this "okay" for "Casuals"? I have a game which is open world ish and you can walk around and fight enemies and fight bosses too. But the game seems "too easy" now. You can basically just spam your attack button and every enemy is easy. Even the bosses. A way the fix this is the stamina bar. But wouldnt that overwhelm the casual players ? |
4 | How do I inform the end user about cheat codes? I have added an interface to input cheats, and of course the backend of this. Current cheats include unlimited health unlimited time faster movement no need to use keys (I have a door key system) triple firing lasers (normally there is only one) grenades (changes your weapon to grenades) How will I tell the user the cheat codes? Normally, cheats would be sold by the programmer, but this isn't that sort of game currently. |
4 | Are hidden stats a good idea? I'm thinking of and RPG, FPS or a turn based game (does not really matter), where the player does not know his character(s) exact stats. Of course they exist as random variables of normal distribution inside the game engine. So no visible HP bar, Level, ATK or DEF. You can only determine it's status by it's signs of life (good mood, fatigued, dying, dead, etc...). With regard to casting spells, when your mana is running low, your chance of failing to cast a spell increases (so there is no "zero" point when you need to find the next gas station for refill). To measure your skill you can battle with monsters which has always have fixed (but yet unknown) stats. The stats would improve as you use them, but each character would have a random talent set so some skills can be improved easier than others. So my question for the game devs and gamers, is making the true self of your character a mystery a good idea? UPDATE From the answers it seems it depends on heavily the genre of the game. For RPGs, I thought finding out what's good for your character is fun. From the responses, it seems it's not so fun because the players usually have an established play style and will try force it from their character for all costs. The actual game idea I dreamed about is manager like game somewhat similar to the Pokemon game series. The main character has several champions and wanders around the virtual world and battles with others in an arena in a HOMM like fashion. And those champions would have the hidden stats. I didn't mentioned this in the original question because I don't wanted to bias the answers around this particular game concept. For the feedback to the player (in both cases) There would be ratings similar to the elo ratings that a chess player has. One for the melee hitting, melee blocking, ranged hitting, ranged blocking abilities, and one for the magic abilities. Hitting the opponent with a sword will increase the melee hitting rating, if the enemy blocks the hit melee hitting decreases. If the opponent hit us with a sword, our melee blocking rating decrease, for successful block it increases, same for the ranged attacks. For the magic skill it's a bit tricky. High magic ability means easier to cast spells successfully, harder to be affected by cursing spells, and easier to be affected by enchanting spells. The standard abilities like hit points, toughness, strength, magic power, are estimated from the performance of the champion. These determine the actual damage dealt on successful hit. There would be "standard champions" that has a fixed and known stats, and the other champions' stats can be measured against them to bootstrap the system. So if the player tries out all aspects of his champions he can find out the skillset his champions have, if the player don't like the skillset he can trade his champions to get the ones with skillset he likes. UPDATE 2 So to get straight to point Would it be fun if I center my game around the concept of getting to know your characters champions, instead of serving all stats readily to the player? It would be similar to the football players. The coach will need to see how their players perform in various positions to assign them to position that's the best for them. So he will need to try each one as a goalkeeper, defender or forward. After several matches it will be clear which position is good for them. |
4 | is a good practice to orgnize MVC classes in diferent packages? Im,working on a project where the classes are organized by subject like gameplay, menus, utilities etc... Basically this 3 packages. is a good practice to organize classes in controller, view and module packages ? games are typically visual applications. This question is regarding the viability of a particular organization and pattern in a game application, which are mostly visually oriented. |
4 | Pleasing isometric hexagons What angles and long side short side ratios give the most aesthetically pleasing and graphically regular isometric (squashed and flat side up) hexes, that additionally resolve to whole pixel sizes for several sizes when rendered? |
4 | How to schedule 'events' inside a game? Within a game I want to schedule 'events', like a resource is running out, some storage is full, or a person is born. I see two ways of achieving this Check on all the parameters every fixed time interval. At that given time, the number of persons are adjusted, the resources are calculated... Calculate the time at which something happens and use a database to store all these events. Create a 'scheduler' which sleeps until the first event happens, and do something. However, if one piece of data changes, all the other items also changes and need to be recalculated. Is there a general approach how to solve this problem in game design? I hope my question is somewhat clear... |
4 | How can I make the "Strength" attribute more attractive to Wizard Caster classes in a RPG game? I have a game where, among many attributes, is Strength and Constitution. In Ultima Online, Strength was used for hit points. However, I would like to avoid this as Hit Points are so incredibly important, every class will want to have a lot of them in any game you play. In almost all MMORPG's and in many RPG's, players stack constitution almost as much as their primary attribute. I have a plethora of ways in which INTELLIGENCE helps a WARRIOR type. It is the problem of the attribute STRENGTH helping a WIZARD type that is giving me so much difficulty. Strength can more easily be an important statistic for Warrior and Rogue types, as they are both melee damage and players tend to love stacking high damage. However, Strength is all but useless to a Wizard who casts spells from afar, and relies on Intelligence as their damage attribute. What can I do to strength, to make it more appealing to wizard types, or any class that does not perform any melee combat? Correct me if I am wrong, but I do not feel as though Spells Magic should be more powerful because someone has more physical muscles and capacity to lift more. It makes sense to give Magic more power if the caster had a lot of fortitude or a overall healthy body, but that is already defined as Constitution. I want to make Strength as attractive as Intelligence, to Wizard types than in stereotypical RPG's. I was able to find balance between a "Dumb Brute Warrior" vs "Intelligent Warrior". How can I find a balance between a "Buff Conan Wizard" vs "Intelligent but Frail Wizard" without introducing melee combat? Adding unique gameplay features or altering the traditional RPG style of play is more than welcome. |
4 | Why would one have "waves" in each stage of a tower defense game? For example, in Plants vs Zombies, the zombies come in waves. If I recall, there's always at least two waves. The first and easier wave and then when you get 90 through the stage there's a "final wave" which is shorter, harder, and has a bunch of zombies all come at once. My question is, why would a game decide to announce when you change from one wave to the next? They could have just let the level progress from start to finish without this if they wanted to. Does this make the game more fun for some reason? Where can I learn more about this technique (eg does it have a name)? |
4 | How to map changing stances (southpaw orthodox) to gamepad controls? I am developing a third person hack n slash style game which features a variety of melee and projectile weapons as well as unarmed combat. The player will be able to dual wield any combination of the above weapons eg. a sword and a pistol, or a knife and a bare fist. I'm trying to work out the gamepad controls based on the game mechanics, but I've come to a dilemma regarding the movesets. Originally I had the left and right triggers mapped as the left and right hand attacks. However, some of the attack moves that I have planned involve the player taking a step forward. Meaning they may have started in orthodox stance (left foot forward) but will end up in southpaw (right foot forward). For some weapons like firearms the stance makes no difference, since the attacks will be the same from either. But for some melee weapons and especially for unarmed combat this is a significant difference. For example, from orthodox stance the left trigger should logically do a jab attack from the front hand, while the right trigger should do a straight punch attack from the back hand. If the player now does a lunging attack in which they take a step forward, they end up with their other foot infront, meaning that now the left trigger cannot do a jab but must perform a straight punch since the left hand is no longer in front. So the question is how to resolve this without having a controls system that confuses the player. There are a few options I have considered after studying other games, but I am looking to see if a better alternatives exists. 1) Seen in Elder Scrolls, Dark Souls, Tekken Use 2 attack buttons but have the player always stay in a single stance. This way they the left and right limbs will always perform the same move. The downside of this is that attacks which would normally leave the player in another stance have to either be avoided or the animation has to include the player returning to their original stance. While this solves the problem it can look unrealistic. 2) Seen in DOA, VF Use only 1 attack button, instead of one for each limb. This will mean that the stance of the player is irrelevant since a single button will play the correct attack animation of either the left limb or right limb depending on the stance. While this is more realistic it makes it difficult to have dual wielding weapons with only one button controlling both. For example, consider if a pistol and sword are being dual wielded, the left trigger may swing the sword while the right trigger may fire the pistol but if both weapons are mapped to only the right trigger what attack should happen? The sword, the pistol, both? Here lies the problem. 3) Seen in MK Use 2 attack buttons which refer to the front or back limb, not the left or right limb. This method allows for the player to switch stances, since for example the left trigger may refer to the front hand irrespective of which stance the player is in. In a side scrolling game this may not be a problem, but in a third person game where the camera is behind the player, I am concerned that this type of controls will be confusing. Especially since the convention (correct me if I'm wrong) for dual wielding seems to be that the left and right triggers control the left and right weapons limbs. So are these the only options, or is there a better way of mapping the controls for this use case? |
4 | How do i get the drawing to loop automatically with out need for user input scrolling? include lt iostream gt include lt time.h gt include lt iomanip gt include lt SDL.h gt include lt stdlib.h gt include lt string.h gt include "screen.h" include "Stars.h" include "Allstars.h" int main(int argc, char argv ) seeding random number generator srand(time(NULL)) CREATING SDL WINDOW CREATING RENDERER amp TEXTURE CREATING A BUFFER Screen screen1 screen1.init() GAME LOOP UPDATING buffer with texture information Allstars allstars1 while (true) int num 0 screen1.screenClear() allstars1.updateStarPosition() Allstars class to retrieve m pstars from the Allstars class into the main function. const Stars const pStars allstars1.getStars() for (int i 0 i lt allstars1.NSTARS i ) Stars star pStars i here is where i tried to loop each star back to the bottom of the screen when they reached the top of the screen. if(num gt 3 amp amp star.m y star lt 0.97 amp amp star.m y star gt 1) star.m y star 0.99 star.m x star star.m x star each star is given a random location by giving co ordinates m x star amp m y star a random value using a function in Stars.h You can't get negative co ordinates on the screen so we map from 1,1 to 0 to SCREEN WIDTH and 0 to SCREEN HEIGHT int x (star.m x star 1) ((Screen SCREEN WIDTH) 2) int y (star.m y star 1) ((Screen SCREEN HEIGHT) 2) screen1.setPixel(x, y, 128, 0, 255) UPDATED USED TO UPDATE TEXTURE and RENDERER and PRESENT DRAWING ON SCREEN screen1.update() Check for messages and events Quitting SDL through clicking 'x' button event if (screen1.processEvents() false) break num FREEING MEMORY amp QUITTING SDL screen1.close() return 0 END OF MAIN I tried to get use a for loop to change the vertical position of the star once it draws close to the top of the window but that doesn't seem to influence the program. Stars (purple dots) seem to drift off the screen and don't appear from the bottom of the screen again. No errors occur and i have incorporated checks to prevent the stars being plotted off of the screen. Can someone help me make these purple dots loop infinitely without the need for scrolling. |
4 | How to make difficulty progression in my endless runner game? I want to further develop this game I created for a game jam. Currently spiders chase squirrels with the same speed. Tree branches are randomly generated. Even if you perfectly time your jumps the spiders will eventually catch you. Squirrels are able to pick up randomly generated acorns to throw at the spiders knocking them back. I want to implement some kind of difficulty progression. Any ideas are appreciated. My main idea is to accelerate the spiders, but the squirrels can't jump any quicker because of physics. They are propelled by one of two jump strengths, and gravity. The question is Would it be a good idea to increase the jump high and or gravity accordingly to the speed of the spiders? (allowing the player to continue to evade the spiders) Please take into consideration that other obstacles will be added for example a bat attacking the squirrel from a hole in the tree trunk. |
4 | stats or profit give away result of game Think of a coinflip game, whose logic looks as follows Server sends websocket message (RESULT MESSAGE) to frontend with result of a game (won lost) Server sends websocket message to frontend with updated aggregated stats (STATS MESSAGE) (think all time profit after the new coin flip, or updated all time stats) Frontend reacts to RESULT MESSAGE by playing an animation (coin flipping). It also updates the all time stats and profit in response to STATS MESSAGE The problem with this logic is, responding to STATS MESSAGE (updating profit and stats) gives away the result of the coin flip before the animation finishes. Solutions I cannot use Merging RESULT MESSAGE and STATS MESSAGE together, and only updating the stats profit after animation finishes. Because those 2 messages are produced and sent by different services. Linking a particular RESULT MESSAGE to a STATS MESSAGE and only reacting to a STATS MESSAGE when its corresponding RESULT MESSAGE has been processed and its animation completed. Because in reality I have several kinds of STATS MESSAGES (trophies updated, stats updated, profit balance updated, etc), and it's just not practical for the frontend to hold onto all those messages until their respective RESULT MESSAGE is processed Solutions I've tried successfully before, but I'm trying to avoid Having the backend send STATS MESSAGE with a delay, to make sure it doesn't reach the frontend before the coinflip animation has finished. This sort of encodes frontend behavior (animation) on the backend. All ideas and suggestions appreciated. Thanks a lot! EDIT I made the coin flipping example for simplicity, but it's not precisely con flipping. It's a multiplayer game where dozens of games animations per user per seconds are going on. So queuing a bunch of stuff on the frontend might be less than ideal (I'm still looking into performant versions of this solution though). Pulling the STATS data via an API call when the animation finishes (instead of using websockets data) is another alternative that I've considered, but for the same reason described above it might not be feasible (dozens of API calls per user per second). Plus there's a chance that an API call is triggered by game 1 finishing, but while game 2 animation is still going on, giving away the result of game 2 |
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 | Game Programming Junior Demo Design Consider the following demo http www.ashereinhorn.com post 11140243390 short capture from the last xna version direct3d (It has now almost been converted to C and DirecX10, and so the code is not important here, it's the substance I'm interested in) Basically the little agents move around killing each other, their states are displayed in a corner and you can select one so as to see the items it can see, it's field of view and the things it is holding in memory. I showed it to someone that works in the industry and they said I should focus on tracking a single agent and make what's going on more clear so maybe animate each state with simple animations or model swapping to make it more obvious when they are searching in combat running away. The other thing they said I should change was the fact that the agents simply disappear when killed, and reappear when spawned because again, it's not clear what's happeneing. As a result I'm going to implement a simple particle system so that agents 'shatter' when killed and possibly reassemble when spawned. My question is, are there any really obvious changes that I should make to this demo with a view to getting my first game programming job? If you work or know about the industry, is there anything that jumps out at you that should be included? Or is bad? or good for that matter? Are there any things that would particularly impress or grab your attention in a game demo? Thank you very much for any help you can give! EDIT The walls are actually solid in the C version |
4 | How to manipulate browser pixels on different mobile devices I'm creating a board game using HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript. It's working fine on Desktop browsers properly. But when i load it on Windows phone it's not behaving properly. The resolutions and the game board are not matching. I'm targeting Windows and Android platform. Game Board is 1050x650 px which is implemented using HTML and css3. now what i want to know is most browsers don't support certain CSS3 features like rotations and key frames animations so will it be better if i use photoshop to make the board for different resolutions or is it possible to do the same as i did using HTML5 and CSS3. And in the above image, let's say distance between B and a red dot is 200px and i use JS to manipulate the movement of B from one point(red dot) to another point(red dot), now will the distance 200px be the same in all the devices? If not how to write a proper code to manipulate the movement in all mobile devices? |
4 | How to calculate players engagement? What metrics could be used to know what certain people think about the game and how much they liked it? I would prefer parameters that don't need players to rate by themselves. Would hours of playing in a single seat be a good parameter about how much players wanted to spend time on game? |
4 | What type of document for game design? What type of support format do you use to store and diffuse your game design documentation? Wiki? Doc files? Files in Repository? Shared folder? Google Doc? Please provide pros and cons for each one. |
4 | Handling non automatable, repetitive, game tasks A problem I'm currently having with a project of mine is deciding how to handle repetitive, but important, in game tasks. As an example (Though there will be many other instances of this), earlier in the game, the player must smelt and shape iron without modern tools. After iron ore has been smelted, it must be shaped into tools, this requires manual labor. So how are some ways I could handle the shaping process (A repetitive, time consuming, task)? Having the player sit in a GUI until the shaping process is complete is obviously not a great idea. I don't want to make the process instant and simply rely on the speed of the smelting process to cull production, as the player could just utilize a huge number of furnaces to bypass that. For other reasons, it would be incredibly difficult and time consuming to create a short mini game for each of these situations. Is there an easy way to solve this? |
4 | When do you give in game advice? I'm interested in the process of automatically generating advice when a player is consistently struggling through parts of a game. Suppose I already know what advice I want to generate (e.g., "Press A twice to double jump across long gaps"). My question is twofold Has it been shown that this intervention can be useful to gamer experience? Has it been shown that excessive intervention will be ignored or will cause frustration? References to game design or psychology research papers is a plus! |
4 | Is there a purpose behind the tediousness of most MMO RPGs? As most of you probably know a lot, if not all, MMO RPG games have some element of "tediousness" in them. By "tediousness" I mean elements in the gameplay that feel both unpleasant and needlessly complicated or long (note that grinding is simply unpleasant and therefore I do not include it in this question). For example introductory quests. I don't mean the idea of introductory quests, which I think good. I mean their implementation. For example in some games, where you can have several characters per account, each time you create a new character you have to go though the same introduction. You are not offered the option to skip it, regardless that you might already have a high leveled character. Surely there must a point to this? For another example in some games the introduction is needlessly long. It could take an average player a few days to get past it, it doesn't add anything storywise and the game concepts have long been explained by the time the player reaches even half. What is the rationale behind putting the player through all this, instead of giving him the option to skip the intro and or making it only as long as it needs to be, etc.? |
4 | Styles of games that work at low resolution I'm taking a class on compilers, and the goal is to write a compiler for Meggy Jr devices (Arduino). The goal is just to make a simple compilers with loops and variables and stuff. Obviously, that's lame, so the "real goal" is to make an impressive game on the device. The problem is that it only has 64 pixels to work with (technically 72, but the top 8 are single color and not part of the main display, so they're really only useful for displaying things like money). My problem is thinking of something to do on a device that small. It doesn't really matter if it's original, but it can't be something that's already available. My first idea was "snake", but that comes with the SDK. Same with a side scrolling shooter. Remaining ideas include a tower defense game (hard to write, hard to control), an RPG (same), tetris (lame).. The problem is that all of the games I like require a high resolution screen because they have a lot of text. Even a really simple game like nethack would be hard because each creature would be a single color. tl dr What styles of games require a. No text and b. Few enough objects that representing them each with a single color is acceptable? EDIT To clarify, the display is 8x8 for a total of 64 pixels, not 64x64. |
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 | Patterns on preserving players progress across all player's devices I'm writing cross platform game that is requested to store player progress across all their devices. I'm not talking about implementation details, but overall picture What are the patterns for preserving player progress in the least intrusive distruptive way? Logging in requires players to make account or share their facebook gmail address It is strong entry obstacle when someone wants "just to try the thing up" I can make account for player after they played a bit... This way, the user already tried the game and if he like to have his progress saved, they can make an account now. If not the progress will be saved only locally I can experiment with some information taken directly from device (when playing from mobile, for example) I believe I can easily access their gmail on Android, and use it for account merging later on I can give them codes that unlock their progress. They can type them on different machines They can manually move save file I don't need to keep it online They can move save file via cloud provider (like Dropbox Skybox GoogleDrive) Anything else...? |
4 | How can I find the valid words in a grid of characters? I am creating a game similar to Tetris, with two main differences the screen already begins filled with tiles (like in Puzzle Quest for Nintendo DS and PC) and each individual tile has a letter in it. The player's objective is to eliminate tiles by forming valid words with them. Words are formed by placing letters next to each other, in any direction, except diagonally. The player can move an entire row of tiles to the left or to the right or an entire column of tiles up or down, for as many spaces as he desires (if the movement of a row column surpasses the limits of the board, the letter that crosses the limit will "cycle", appearing at the other end of the row column). After the player's action, the game should check the entire board to look for valid words and remove the letters that form those words from the board. The letters above those that were removed will fall down in the place of those letters that were removed and new letters will drop from the top of the screen until the board is filled up again. I have already written a linear algorithm that, given a sequence of characters, determines if it is a valid english word. The problem I am having is how can I check for valid words on the board? Is brute force the only way? Testing all possible combinations from the board to see if they are valid is very slow, even for a small (5x5) board. Any help will be very appreciated, thanks! |
4 | What is the easiest genre of game to make? Before you down vote let me give some restrictions. I like RPG but they seem long and hard to make but after you make the framework the rest sort of falls into place where as platformers never get faster as each map starts from scratch. So under these conditions what is the easiest genre of game to develop as a hobby project. I am on my own. The style of graphics must be available. Can be ripped (not publishing). Not bothered about commercial quality. Must be real size game, multiple levels and stuff. Thanks Edit I build games in C and Direct x 9.c |
4 | What is the logic behind these design decisions regarding difficulty levels? In some games you are unable to play on the harder difficulties before complete it on a lower difficulty. Why? Achievements are popular. In some games you do not get an achievement for completing the game on the hardest difficulty (e.g. Bethesda RPG's) but for just about everything else, Why? |
4 | How do I get players to say "no" when they are afraid of missing out on sidequests or XP? In my RPG, I have a companion NPC who is overconfident in his abilities and lacks self control. I wanted to create a few situations where the player needs to reign them in and tell them quot no quot . One such situation basically boiled down to this Companion Hey boss, I want to do this really stupid thing that will almost certainly make things harder for us down the road and possibly jeopardize our goal. Is that okay? Player Choices Yes, go ahead! No, don't do that! My hypothesis was that the vast majority of playtesters would choose quot No quot . To my surprise, the vast majority chose quot Yes quot ! And then when the consequences played out and indeed made things worse, playtesters wanted to reload from an earlier save point and pick the other option (choosing quot Yes quot wasn't game ending, but it did mean that a perfect outcome wasn't achievable). When I asked the playtesters why they chose yes, they made it clear that they understood that saying yes was undesirable and saying no was desirable. They also weren't seeking a challenge or anything. Instead, the most common thing I heard was I was afraid that if I said quot No quot , then I'd miss out on a sidequest or XP. One of them even said that in other RPGs he played, the only way to get a 100 playthrough was to say yes at every opportunity, and so they assumed that was the case for mine. I don't want players to assume that saying quot yes quot is always the right answer, and for now, I'd like to keep the situation of having to tell the NPC quot no quot every once in a while. But I don't know how to overcome these player expectations and their fear of missing out of content, especially without just flat out saying quot this isn't like other games, you won't miss out if you say 'no' quot . So how do I get players to say quot no quot when they are afraid of missing out on sidequests or XP? |
4 | How to make a game from the ground up I've been using unity to make 2d indie type games for a while now. However, i've tried to branch into different genres and unity cant do some of the things that i want it to do(although it is still very good). I really want to make a game from scratch were i have complete control over what happens, although i wouldn't have the slightest clue were to start. tldr what resources do you need to build a game from the ground floor. or more or less. what resources software libraries did most well made indies such as super meat boy, braid or limbo use. |
4 | Single handler vs multiple handlers for the Command Pattern I'll be soon implementing for the first time a Command pattern to catch general events about the world of the game I'm developing Since I haven't found much info about this particular issue, I'm asking if it makes more sense to have a single 'catch all' class which will eventually process any type of event or to offload events to different types of Queue e.g. player related Commands will be offloaded to the Player class, enemies related commands will be offloaded to the Enemies class, and world terrain related commands (such as chunk creation) will be handled by WorldGen Normally, this would break the idea of having a 'receiver' object as a constructor parameter of an instance of a Command, but does having just a single 'catch all' class more maintainable than partitioning the command handlers? Is it maintainable in a convoluted game to have just a single catch all class to execute every type of Command? Wouldn't it be easier to optimize the usage of more threads by having different command handlers? |
4 | Regarding physics engines and the GPU The rigid body physics engines that use a "bounding box" for collision detection, I am aware of how they are created. What I want to know is, is there a physics engine that does not use "bounding box" but actually uses something like vertex data to do the physics calculations? What type of physics engine is this called, and does it use the GPU? |
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 | How to prevent players from forcing the veto holder to give up their veto power? In this game there is a President and the members of the Senate. Most are good, but a few are evil pretending to be good. Each day the majority attempts to figure out who is evil (using clues), takes that player to court (where they may argue in their own defense), and then the entire Senate votes on whether to convict that player (eliminate them from the game) or acquit them. Only 2 such trials are allowed per day (at night, the evil players murder someone), but only 1 conviction per day. The President may secretly be good or evil, and differs from the rest only in that he has a veto ability. If someone is taken to court, the President may at any time before the verdict is declared, instantly acquit or convict them. He may do this only 1 time. IMPORTANT EDIT The President must exercise his veto power while voting is in progress, before the decision of the majority has been made public. The problem is, the other members of the Senate, unwilling to risk the possibility of an evil President overriding the majority decision to convict an evil player at a crucial point later in the game, have developed a meta where the very first time everyone agrees to convict or acquit someone during the first trial of the game, they vocally demand the President to "waste" his veto power in agreement with the majority vote. If the President refuses they simply take him to court and convict him, eliminating him from the game. This effectively reduces the President to a normal player. How can this sort of meta be prevented? I've tried giving evil players the ability to temporarily disable the President's veto power, in order to give the President a plausible excuse for not using it immediately. This was an unsatisfactory solution because the evil players did not use it enough for the President's excuse "I was disabled by an evil player" to be convincing. Evil players simply did not care whether the President could veto because it's too early for them to tell whether the President is on their side or not. |
4 | What is the purpose of a guild bank? I've seen guild banks in Wow, or Dofus, and other MMO games. In the guild I've been a part of, we mostly used the bank as storage resources stored that end up not being used are wasted. Sometimes there is a free share policy, but there is always that one guy who will take stuff he does not really need and sells it. This led me to wonder what is the original purpose of a guild bank, what do players like to use it for, and how can a game help them do it? |
4 | Can inflation exist in a fixed price Mmorpg world? Assumptions Crafting materials are infinite. Limit is player boredom. Players can only trade through the auction house. All prices are fixed. Players cannot decide arbitrary prices. Goods in auction house stay stored for infinite duration and cannot be withdrawn by auction creator (except if he pays 100 item price 10 auction fee). Sell algorithm is FIFO (First item placed by any player is first item sold). Crafting and gathering professions have a cool down of 10 craft points per day. Questions Points to talk about All players will be happy, fair 100 prices, scam free, no need to play stock exchange market to make a profit through crafting. New Players would have the same experience even if they arrive too late to the game. Money never loses its value, you could store money in a bank, arrive after 10 years to the game and buy everything at the same price. In contrast in WOW, a simple copper ore was worth 10 silver at the game start and now has ended as 200 silver. That's 2000 inflation. By having fixed prices, you guarantee that even if all players in the universe have 99999999999g in their pocket, the goods are worth the same. So that's guaranteed 0 inflation. Hackers may cry all they want, but goods prices will never change. Why didn't WOW Diablo III used this model? They would have become billionaires with the 10 money grab technique. Btw my previous question on economy overflow was never answered, probably that site is dead. https economics.stackexchange.com questions 14609 understanding inflation in a video game |
4 | Most Efficient way to read a Settings Configuration File I have been working on a game for quite a while, and I am using Ogre3D for the rendering engine. It is getting to the point I need to move adjustable settings to a configuration file such as video settings options, player keybindings, etc. I am using RapidXML for parsing and loading my scenes, but I am not sure this is the best way to go about doing configurations. As a long time fan of Valve games, I know there's are just a long list of settings, basically no grouping, just a list. Where as UT games do something like VideoOptions ... ... GameSettings ... ... Anyways, I am just wondering what the best way to go about this is. |
4 | Why should I choose to design a health bar rather than heart containers? When designing any hero based game, be it adventure, RPG, brawler, or similar, you eventually need to decide on your health system. Barring any regenerative systems with zero UI (like Call of Duty), should you use a discrete set of heart containers, Zelda style, or a continuous health bar, like Street Fighter? Here are some points of contention that I've been thinking about Hearts are easier to understand (very clear how many hits you can take) Hearts give a better sense of accomplishment when expanding (A whole extra heart! Rather than just a slightly longer bar (or worse, no change)) Hearts grow to take up a lot of screen real estate, while health bars can stay compact Health bars allow for really fine control over health damage balancing (using float rather than int) Since I haven't been able to find any relevant game design articles on the subject, I'd really appreciate if everyone with some knowledge on the matter, or even just some insightful links would contribute, thanks! |
4 | What should developers do when they receive conflicting feedback about their game? I've been working my first mobile game (I have done a lot of web and PC games before). I wanted the idea to be simple but fun. The thing is, I received feedback from friends and family and I have heard a lot of contradictory opinions about my game. Some would say that the game is addictive, challenging and fun, while other didn't see it as a fun game and said it was boring or not really good enough. Now that I have these two opposite opinions I don't know if my game is good or not. What opinion should I listen to, and how am I supposed to know if the game is fun or not when people's opinions are mixed? |
4 | Real Time Strategy Gameplay I am working on building a HTML5 RTS game, and my current state is that I am building the Campaign mode of the game, and want to define the gameplay (The Scoring, Unit Behaviors Attributes). I am searching for links articles books about how to define the gameplay, for me this The scoring Figuring out levels of control (in any RTS game, there is units, individuals and squads) Unit action attributes properties point timing (how long it will take to play?) Achievements ..etc I want to see how they usually define these areas in RTS games, I expect to see general document discussing this concept that I can use to build the gameplay. Any idea? Is my question clear or I need to provide more details? |
4 | How does an iOS developer get his app game on the AppStores main page? I was looking at the front page of the AppStore, and they display a new game and a new app every day. I was just curious, how does an iPhone developer get their game or app onto that front page? Does Apple choose what goes on there? Or do you pay money? I was just curious, I don't develop games for iOS. |
4 | How does one measure and reward social aspects in virtual worlds? Well this sounds like a pretty vague question but please bear with me. I know of how Gaiaonline gave gold to people who participated in forum posts. I'm curious if in theory these could be applied to social aspects of games like Second life or Sims Online. The question what would be specific quantifiable actions interactions could be measured tracked for rewards and achievements that would help build a community? (this'll probably end up as community wiki though) |
4 | Newbie game programmer Where do I start? Okay, so I have been really inclined towards game programming this past few weeks. I have primarily been a web programmer and know a fair number of lanugages like PHP, Java, javascript, python, etc. I also know a little bit of C as I heard that it's used heavily in the game industry. I have no experience in game development, but I am a fast learner.(I am 15 so I guess I still have a lot of time.) So, is there any language I should learn to develop 2d and 3d games? Also which IDE(free) is a nice place to start compiling your ideas(something like Polycode http polycode.org ). I looked up Polycode but it was a little confusing for me to build it. I have a fair idea about what DirectX, OpenGL, SDL and shaders are but I have absolutely no clue about programming them. I know it's a little early to start jumping into this stuff already but you gotta start somewhere right? Please help me as I really want to get into serious game programming. Thanks! I am running Windows 8 Pro 32 bit. Please suggest me any software accordingly! |
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