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4 | How should I structure a design document? Should the design document be a continuous line of text, with real sentences, more like a description of the entire game, or should I structure it in simple points? What are the benefits, and are there more ways of structuring it? |
4 | Mathematics should I learn for 2D and 3D game programming development What mathematics should I learn to become game programer 2D and 3D. From the very basic for beginner until advance |
4 | Where should input be used? I'm working on an input system (in C ) and now I'm wondering, what is the best place to put input functionality? Currently what I was coding was a bunch of delegates which act as callbacks (i.e. onkeypress, onmouseclick, etc) and the idea is when the input manager checks for input it invokes these delegaetes. However this means that input is updated when the input manager updates and not when a game class has its own update function called. The way I see it is moving input functionality out of a classes update function and deferring them would forecefully reduce the codes complexity (particularly the update function) but on the other hand I'm thinking it might be a better idea to move update and input to the same place as it would give the coder more freedom to work with the input systems. Anyone have any ideas on this matter? |
4 | Where does game logic belong? I've always had a hard time wrapping my head around the 'high levels' of game logic and where how large components, such as collision detection physics, rendering, and user input, interact with one another. What I'm asking is how you deal with these higher level interactions. Here is what I am doing interface Stage() or a "scene" as many call it. Manages the logic for Actors init() update() update this stage render() render this stage StageManager() implements Stage a stage that manages stages ) var stages array lt Stage gt init() create a MainStage amp other stages that may be used in this specific game update() logic for checking which stage should be active render() tell the active stage to render getActiveStage() MainStage() implements Stage var mainCharacter var actors array lt GameObject gt var ... init() create the player, game world, other initialization stuff update() collision detection, check mainCharacter state, etc render() render all the Actors on this stage handleMouseClick() handleKeyBoardEvent() Main() created on game start var manager new StageManager() updateGameState() manager.update() loop renderState() manager.render() loop My main gripe with this is that the StageManager and all other Stages will become enormous and unwieldy as the game scales over time. Off the top of my head, some components can be delegated out such as a Stage uses a PhysicsManager, but there would still be all the keyboard events and what not. I was thinking of making individual Actors listen to events and giving them an update() method, thus encapsulating what an Actor should do at any given point. However, I would run into complications when an Actor needed game state information (game time, a "power up" Actor needing the player's speed) and I would no longer have Stages as Actors are now managing themselves. |
4 | How to resolve combat of stacks of units to mitigate numerical advantage I just started designing an strategy game where player's armies consist of stacks of units. For my design I was aiming to reproduce the following behaviour for a full combat of multiple turns (for simplicity assume both stacks are the same unit) 1 vs full stack the single unit is killed, the full stack hardly notices. half stack vs full stack the half stack is killed, the full stack sustain noticeable damage. almost full stack vs full stack full stack wins but gets almost wiped out. If randomness is involved, any of both may win, although the bigger one has statistical advantage. My first approach was to add up the stats and treat each stack as a single unit, resolve the combat and then calculate how many units are killed. That didn't produced the expected results, as even the slight numerical advantage in one side produced it to win by a huge margin. The reason is that after each turn, the bigger stack would kill more enemies than the smaller, widening the power difference for the next turn. This different increases exponentially until the smaller stack is quickly obliterated. As a second approach I treated each unit in a stack individually for the combat (something that I wanted to avoid), which produces much better results. However now I have many choices about how to resolve the combat. Should it be a series of 1 vs 1 or should I allow units to gang up on others? Should I pair each evenly or randomly? Should I leave extra units unpaired as "reserve", or all units should fight at least once? |
4 | two part dice pool mechanic I'm working on a dice mechanic resolution system based on the Ghost Echo (hereafter shortened to G E) tabletop RPG. Specifically, since G E can be a little harsh dealing with consequences and failure, I was hoping to soften the system and add a little more player control, as well as offer the chance to evolve player characters into something unique, right from creation. So, here's the mechanic Players roll 2 separate d12 against each of the two statistics for their character (each is a number from 2 11, and may be rolled above or below depending on the nature of the action attempted, rolling your stat exactly always fails). Depending on the success for that roll, they add dice to the pool rolled for a modified G E style action. The acting player gets two dice anyhow, and I am debating offering a bonus die for each success, or a single bonus die for succeeding on both of the statistic compared rolls. Once the size of the dice pool is set, the entire pool is rolled, and the players are allowed to assign the rolled dice to a goal and a danger, one to each. Assigned results are judged as follows 1 4 means the attempted goal fails, or the danger comes true. 5 8 is a partial success at the goal, or partially avoiding the danger. 9 12 means the goal is achieved, or the danger avoided. My concerns are twofold Firstly, is the two stage action too complicated, with two rolls to judge separately before anything can happen? Secondly, are the statistics involved going too far in softening the game? I've run some basic simulations, and the approximate statistics follow 2 dice (up to) 3 dice (up to) 4 dice failure 33 25 20 partial 33 35 35 success 33 40 45 I'd appreciate any advice that addresses my concerns or offers to refine my simulation (right now the first roll is statistically modeled as sign(1d12 1d12), where 0 is a success). |
4 | What are the code structures for storyline based game? I am curious about how storyline based games are written. For example if the character done Event A, then he meets an NPC and result in Event B. On the other hand if the character didn't do Event A, then he meets an NPC and result in Event C. From the code structure that I've thought up, the NPC should be an object of a class, and there should be a status variable that mark if character have done Event A or not. However, what if there's thousand of similar type of Event as Event A? How'd I handle huge, complex storyline game in coding? I just want to know exactly how the trick was done to keep in check of what Events have happened. Another thing that I'm curious about is how Event is kept in. An object? or just a function? For example Event A might have some flashy effect played in non fmv ,while maybe Event B is an fmv, and Event C might be a battle. and there may be variety of them. Therefore, how would I handle variety of Events with a consistence method? or maybe, at the very least, contain them in a consistence way (function? or Object?) I just want to know how the trick was done. |
4 | Why do loot drops contain (mostly) useless items? I was thinking about this and couldn't figure this out. In Diablo you kill enemies and they drop random things. But usually the drops are worthless to you relative to what you already have equipped. Why bother building a drop system that gives you crappy drops? Maybe I'm not communicating my question well so I'll provide an alternative implementation Instead of frequently dropping crappy items and rarely dropping good items, why not only rarely drop good items? I guess that crappy items adds to the addictive ness somehow, but I don't understand why. Why is dropping crappy items part of the design? What does that add? Edit FWIW, I have been referring to Diablo 2 as my reference, not D3. But it's still interesting to see answers explaining why D2 was more addictive. |
4 | Specialisation in game roles Getting better by learning vs leveling Many games have some sort of role for the players, especially in multiplayer games. Medic, Sniper, Rifleman, AT Specialist in Battlefield, Healer, Tanks, DDs in MMOs, etc. Now, in many games, there are incentives to specialize in a certain role, allowing access to better equipment for this role. Most of the time, you archive this equip by playing a certain amount of time, gather XP (by doing the roles job), or archive certain goals for that role (heal 1000 players, deal X amount of damage. Battlefield Bad Company 2 and Quake Wars are good examples for that. Alternatively the player gets "better" in the role by pure stats. They get more health, they heal more etc. In contrast to that some games have certain roles, that a player can fulfill just by picking certain equipment, that everyone is able to pick. So in theory, every player is as capable of fullfilling the same role. The difference is in the skill of the player and the depth of the role to fulfill. The game i have in mind is a coop crew game, where you manage and controll a ship, much like Pulsar Lost Colony, but much more complicated. Engineering would mean to flux the vents and stabalizing the emitters, which means to have complicated "mini games" to archive a certain goal Activating the engine and keep it running. Similiar to Space Station 13 maybe. So, either i could go the leveling way The engineer gets traits and stats, what make those minigames easier for him (make something move slower, get a better result). The other thing could be the learning way you have to learn how to do things, make it more "realistic" and with different (scalar) outcome. I tend toward learning the about the mechanics. The idea is that you might have more than one person for a certain role, like a chief engineer and many other working in engineering, teaching them the in and outs, maybe even on equal terms. It also would make the game more hectic and thus more reliant on communication. A hard level base would mean, that someone is distinctivly better, if he is a higher level. The higher levels would need to do most of the work, hence their boni are just to good to waste. On other hand, for roles with less of a learning curve, that wouldnt make that much sense, since mastering it is a lot easier. In that case, it would make sense to have one with skills in this role. But, if you have a pilot with skills for a faster ship, it would be wasted on a slower, but less manouverable ship, where a pilot with talents for better mobility would be far better. For a premade group of players, that would be alright, but if you got drop in, drop out, that would be hard to balance for. What style of role specialisation (leveling vs learning) has what advantage and disadvantage? What would fit better to that syle of game im working on? |
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 propertly send map to clients in MMO? I'm designing a game where the map has 1 M tiles. The game is simple, is a 2D game with low graphic requirements and without player movements, only change states, so I don't need to update player positions for example. But I have a doubt about how to synchronize the map. When a client connects, the server should send him data related with proximity tiles. Each tile is represented with a different picture, so I can represent them with an id (integer). Developing in c , each tile requires 4 bytes to store the id. So when the client connects, I have to send him (4 bytes number of tiles). Sending data of 1000 tiles (a 30x30 grid), I'm sending 4 kb, and this is just in the first connection. When the client player moves, I have to send him more and more data, which has not a good performance. On the other hand, if I store all the ids in the client, I will need to store 1M 4 byte 4 mb per client. This is just to store tile ids, but it seems to be ok. How can I design or optimize the data messaging ? |
4 | Sounds to describe the weather? I'm trying to think of sounds that will help convey the time of day and weather condition. I'm not even sure of all the weather conditions I would consider, and some are obvious. Like if it's raining, the sound of rain. But then I'm thinking, what about for a calm day? If it's morning time, I could do birds chirping or something. Night time could be an owl or something. What are some good combinations of sounds weather time to have a good effect? |
4 | What's the difference between Gameplay Programming and Graphic Programming? I know the answers are obvious, someone told me this Graphics Programming DirectX(or Direct3d), OpenGL, Vulkan, Metal.. Gameplay Programming Bringing everything together. From design, music, levels, etc. But could you please explain me in depth the difference? This way i can focus on a specific role in game programming! |
4 | Games where the story continues via progeny In Phantasy Star III Generations of Doom for the Sega Genesis you periodically marry and then the story carries on through your sons daughters. In Rogue Legacy when you die you again play on through your decendents (IIRC). I am working on an RPG and am thinking about a similar concept for a death mechanic. I want dying to cause some of your loot skills to pass on to your progeny, who can then pick up where you left off (more or less). What are some potential design pitfalls in implementing such a mechanic? One that I already see is that if I make it too punishing, players will revert to last save, not punishing enough and they'll die on purpose. Bonus points for referencing existing games (other than the two I mentioned). |
4 | Why do loot drops contain (mostly) useless items? I was thinking about this and couldn't figure this out. In Diablo you kill enemies and they drop random things. But usually the drops are worthless to you relative to what you already have equipped. Why bother building a drop system that gives you crappy drops? Maybe I'm not communicating my question well so I'll provide an alternative implementation Instead of frequently dropping crappy items and rarely dropping good items, why not only rarely drop good items? I guess that crappy items adds to the addictive ness somehow, but I don't understand why. Why is dropping crappy items part of the design? What does that add? Edit FWIW, I have been referring to Diablo 2 as my reference, not D3. But it's still interesting to see answers explaining why D2 was more addictive. |
4 | Player rewards in games where you normally have nothing to purchase In many games there are rewards such as gold coins, points, etc. When these rewards can be used to purchase in game items, it motivates the player to keep playing. Let's say we have an online game, poker, Yatzy etc. What type of reward would keep the players playing if there are few in game items available to buy, or none at all? What I am looking for is a reward system that entices the players to play more in a game environment where there isn't that much to purchase. For example, there isn't much to buy in a poker or Yatzy game with the gold you win. I guess having some titles that are added to the userid is one way, or maybe purchasing a logo for the id... A leaderboard is another. Any thoughts on this? |
4 | Design criteria question kids games I am currently designing a game for small kids that have not yet learned to read and would like to get some opinions, and views, on scoring? Given that these (hopefully) will be small children that cannot yet read or children that have just learned to read, between 2 5 maybe what about scoring, do you think that is needed? My idea was to avoid both any character at all and only use pictures. However, if scoring is implemented there re always other ways to do that i guess with colors, bars etc. Would someone nice just elaborate a bit on general design criteria's for this type of games and applications with this target audience? |
4 | Should my platformer have collectibles? By collectibles, I mean objects that you collect mainly for the sake of collecting them, not to power up. Think coins in Super Mario or bandages in Super Meat Boy. I've seen a few platformers that do not have any collectibles and it's the platforming itself which is challenging (my platformer itself is challenging), but I think adding collectibles will add extra challenge and re playability, especially if some of the collectibles are really well hidden. Tradition would dictate that you should have collectibles, as it's a way for players to gain extra lives or even gain points, but that would not be the only reason to have collectibles. I'm not interested in making features for feature sake. I'm purely wanting an opinion on whether collectibles should be included in a game and what should the collectibles do when you collect enough? Is a simple 1 life fine? Should there be some cool object you get? Possibly should collecting really change something hectic, like collect 100 coins and your character is invincible? How do I decide if my platformer should have collectibles? Closed. While I disagree with the closing as according to the FAQ What should be asked game design (level design, gameplay, mechanics, etc). I got some nice pros and cons from everyone. I have updated the question slightly to be more specific. |
4 | How to make fighting roster fair I plan on creating a fighting game in the future, and I'm wondering how to make a roster functionally fair, and feel fair. You see, Super Smash Brothers Ultimate is functionally fair (I think), but at certain times, it doesn't feel fair (partially because I suck at the game). Mario's up smash is one of the few that can't hit people on the lower platforms of battlefield, however, it still feels fair game somehow (up tilt is my guess). However, when playing against Ness, it can feel unfair to play because the other player can just spam PK Fire (side special) and then smash attack them at high enough HP. In other words, it is fair, but not fun. How can I avoid something being spammed feeling unfair when creating a fighting game, and all the other moves of characters feel (and actually be) fair? |
4 | Calculating complex D D style interactions So I don't even know if this is the right community to ask (as I imagine it's probably quite maths heavy) in but I figure it falls under the realm of game mechanics. I want to develop a game mechanic that utilises complex D amp D style interactions but on another level from that, but I don't really know where to begin conceptually. What I mean by D amp D style interactions is each character will have a set of attributes, strength, skill, intelligence etc and those attributes will dictate how interactions play out between characters. So for basic example, two characters battling each other and each attribute ranges from 0 20. Character A Attack 13, Defence 14 Character B Attack 15, Defence 10. So when Character A strikes at Character B I need to calculate how successful that attack would be and what the outcome would be, which would then feed back into their attributes. So maybe their attack is semi successful and produced a flesh wound, not enough to kill but that reduces Character B's Attack attribute to say 13. Now that's a fairly trivial, example where I want to try and take it to the next level is to introduce combined attributes that all have an impact on the outcome of a move. So Skill, Experience, Fitness, Attack Speed, Anticipation and even Luck (which I figure would be randomised and offset by attributes like Experience). Ideally I'd like to build an engine where I can define attributes and how they interact and can add more over time to build up the complexity of interactions. But I am at a loss where to begin. I'm not looking for a ready made solution but just to be pointed in the right direction. To add some further explanation as to where I'm struggling. Are there known algorithms, techniques or maths solutions that are used to calculate attribute based interactions? In my head I'm imagining some system of values and weights with some pseudo randomness thrown in but I'm at a loss as to how you actually calculate outcomes. When I try and think it through all I get is a massive set of 'if' statements where values go in at the top, if's are applied and modify the outcomes. So... If CharA Attack 15 and CharB Defence 10 Then Outcome Kill If CharA Speed 10 and CharB Speed 12 Then Outcome Deflected Blow If CharA Luck 14(random) and CharB Luck 7(random) Then Outcome Flesh Wound Etc... |
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! |
4 | How do I represent projectiles in a video game? I'm making a simple fixed shooter game, similar to "Galaga",) as part of a presentation I'm doing. I'm wondering what strategies and data structures would people use for tracking projectiles, like lasers fired from the spaceship. A super simple implementation that I've used, before, is to just represent each projectile as a point, and check for collisions with all objects in the scene. However, this seems costly, in large scenes with many projectiles I'm wondering what other types of strategies or implementations are used for this type of use case. What do games like FPS use for tracking projectiles (bullets, tank shells, etc)? |
4 | What would be a good sport game for a beginner intermediate game dev to make for practice? I'm interested in making a sport game for practice, but giving it some fun twists sort of like nintendo does, (super strikers charged, mario golf.) I'm planning on using unity, but since I am by no means an expert I'm trying to figure out a sport that will be reasonably easy to create. I'm aware that its not going to be easy, but, for instance I'm not going to make a game like madden, which would have a ton of difficult stuff like play calls which involve predetermined paths and intelligence on both sides, in general way to difficult. What would be a good sport to try a stylized version of? I'm aware that this is a subjective question, but it isn't a question where any answer is as good as another, so I think it's allowed according to the guideline, but correct me if I'm wrong I guess. |
4 | Level playing field Punish the better player or enhance the worse player? I am making a 1 vs 1 game where each player controls a car with an identical joystick. The objective for the players is to reach a goal destination before the other player. The players of the game are placed into categories based of the skills controlling the car e.g. Skill level 1,2,3,4,5 with 5 being the highest skill level. The players will not be intended to jump up and down in skill levels when playing the game. After a given period, e.g. a week, the skill levels will be updated. This will not be shown to the players. The objective for me is to make every combination of players in the 1 vs 1 setting be a 50 50 win loss chance for the players. Example Player 1(Skill level 5) vs player 2(Skill level 1) should each have 50 change reaching the goal destination first. I have not been able to find any research on whether the best practice is to limit the abilities of the good player or enhance the abilities of the bad player or maybe a combination. The idea is to have disabled adolescents playing against their able bodied friends or family members. It is therefore not a possibility to not let good players play against bad ones. Data from field tests have shown that the disabled adolescents perform worse than able bodied consistently due to spasms. I am looking for input on how to go about with this research, your experiences, how other games are doing it? Is there any common recommendations for this? |
4 | How can I scale player enemy stats to balance the difficulty just right? I'm creating an old school top down grid based RPG, where you enter random encounters every few steps. I want to know what kind of systems or guidelines there are for creating the leveling and stats system for such a game. Right now I'm just sort of guessing based on intuition and it's clear that that isn't going to work for very long. For example, let's say I have a max level cap of 50, and 10 dungeons. The ideal would be that the player should need to gain about 5 levels per dungeon in order to stand a chance in the next dungeon, but that the monsters in the current dungeon can't provide enough XP to skip the next dungeon (within a reasonable amount of time anyway). The easy route that I can think of would be to just define every enemy as worth 1 XP, and then set the amount of XP required for the next level in increasing increments, so that I only really have to track number of kills (level 1 2 would be 10 XP, or 10 kills, level 2 3 would be 12 XP, or 12 kills, etc.). But that's boring. As a player myself, I like to see the numbers related to my actions get larger over time (i.e. at level 1 2 as 10 XP, but level 2 3 as 150 XP, etc.). And that's not even counting for stats like Strength, Vitality, and so on. But that in itself is a whole other question are there any kinds of formulas for stats and their effects on each other? For example, enemy has 50 armor, and my guy has 30 strength. That is considerably more armor than strength, so I would expect my hit to be pretty weak...but how can I calculate those statistics to get a final damage number? Are there any guides or any kind of "standards" for such basic systems? Even if "every game is different," I still need to learn the absolute BASIC ideas for "most" games. I have questions such as, "if you have an agility like stat, what is a common way to determine dodge rate?" and so on. EDIT I found this after posting, but I'm gonna include the link here if someone else stumbles across this with similar questions. Balancing Player vs. Monsters Level Up Curves |
4 | Occupation groups for a country simulation game I'm trying to create citizen occupation groups or job classes for a country management game I'm developing. I want it to be inclusionary but also very basic. I did some research but all job lists I got contains more than 20 job types like farming, mining, education, law but It's too many for my game's setting and It still doesn't include every workforce. I need wider spectrum of jobs but I'm having trouble to categorize them, like labour, public service etc... Any help is appreciated. |
4 | Game timings and formats There are more or less standardized TV show movie formats and recommended timings 1. By the early 1960s, television companies commonly presented half hour long "comedy" series, or one hour long "dramas." Half hour series were mostly restricted to situation comedy or family comedy, and were usually aired with either a live or artificial laugh track. One hour dramas included genre series such as police and detective series, westerns, science fiction, and, later, serialized prime time soap operas. Programs today still overwhelmingly conform to these half hour and one hour guidelines. Source 2. In the United States, most medical dramas are one hour long. Source 3. Traditionally serials were broadcast as fifteen minute installments each weekday in daytime slots. In 1956 As the World Turns debuted as the first half hour soap opera. All soap operas broadcast half hour episodes by the end of the 1960s. With increased popularity in the 1970s most soap operas expanded to an hour (Another World even expanded to ninety minutes for a short time). More than half of the serials had expanded to one hour episodes by 1980. As of 2010, six of the seven US serials air one hour episodes each weekday. Source Interesting. Are there any standards of timing in game development? Well, 5 20 minutes casual games, of course. There is even a "5 minutes game" site. And 1 hour gamer site. Are there 1 week, 1 year, 1 eternity game formats? Chess and Go deep games that you can study all your life but they are played in hour or several days (pro games). Addictive long term online role playing games (without win condition) are played in monthes and, possibly, years. Replayability is an important factor to consider. It's good when game design document contains a line "A game is designed for solving in X hours". How can it be measured before there is any prototype or demo? When you know your game format, you know your audience (and vice versa). It is practical question. Are there psychological researches about dynamic of gaming interest and involvement? And is there a correlation between game format and game genre? |
4 | How to know if a game concept is "different enough"? For the past year or so, I've been designing a top down zombie shooter game. However, after playing a 2d top down battle royale game, it's given me inspiration to build a similar game. The graphics would be very similar, though there would be new things like building. I'm trying to decide if this concept is different enough there's another similar game, though it has different graphics and some other key differences. I'm wondering at what point two games become too similar, and how to avoid taking too many ideas from one game (a common problem for me). |
4 | What is the best implementation of an automated tournament? Here are the specs so far to give you an idea to the question. should be fully automate able should not inconvenience the player with regards to time should allow for a voted wild card system should involve skill will be done on a limited time frame Was thinking of using a ladder like system similar to battle net 2.0 but it would seem to need some tweaking to meet all of the above. Any suggestions on what would be an ideal tournament implementation for such requirements? |
4 | How do I portray characters with a bum leg properly in an action game like Devil May Cry, without making him a liability? Right now, I'm designing a character for a 2D action platformer game. The problem is that said character has a bum leg due to an accident a few years prior to the game's setting, but was the first one to be dragged into a dungeon formed by the newly developing incident, and had to escape on his own. What I've thought about until now about this The character will move slower than the normal movement speed, cannot double jump, and have a lower jump height than the normal jump height. However, he would use a sword that doubles as a retractable whip, allowing his melee attacks to have a wide coverage. Said sword whip has low damage by default, however. There's also that his melee attacks are less focused on launching enemies upwards and more focused on knocking them back and maybe apply bleeding (non elemental damage over time). He would also have a shotgun that can be 'charged' to maximize the damage output, very much like the Gunslinger Style Shotgun in DMC3 and 4. My problem is that this character will be one from around eight (for now), and the other seven characters don't have such a disability two of them I intend to have the ability to glide mid air. The game will have a feature of switching between three characters chosen to engage the other dungeons, so he can be switched out for sections that require double jumping, but I'm not sure that's an optimal solution, especially considering the lower damage his weapon deals (making him a non optimal pick for boss battles). Should I just make each character fulfill a specific niche in terms of mobility options, melee attack options, and ranged attack options? How does one design the map and bosses for these cases, without making it seem like giving him too much of a break? P.S. Can a grappling hook be involved, without ending up making him the best option to navigate the map (like refreshing it only after landing)? EDIT I also have a thought of integrating this grappling hook into the sword whip, being able to pull enemies towards him, or him towards them. Is it possible to use this as a melee charge attack? Because I still think that it doesn't feel right. |
4 | How to address players struggling with simple controls? I have an HTML game I built with Phaser 3, and I can't decide what to do with the controls. I've changed them several times, and now I feel like I've hit a sweet spot between usability and fun. However, I still see people struggle. The game involves a boy with a slingshot that can be pulled back and fired to knock the enemy's head off. There are two virtual buttons on both side of the screen that are tapped to turn the character. I'm considering having the character turn automatically, so that the slingshot is the only mechanic involved and the game can be picked up and played without instructions. However, I feel like this will destroy the whole point of being fast to turn and shoot the enemy. Should a simple game like mine require instructions, or is usability more important? |
4 | Score vs. Kills in a casual game I am making a simple phone game and having a conceptual argument with my partner. The argument might end up being inconsequential, but I would like to hear some opinions from actual devs who are making games. This will be a pretty standard beat em up style game where you beat up lots of easy enemies and build up a huge kill count. There will be many different types of enemies. The question emerged when we had to put up some display on the UI. Should the kill count be represented as a 1 1 number? For example, on your HUD, it will constantly show Kills 15 or Defeated 31 Or, should it be represented by a score? For example 1 enemy 100 points and it will display something like this Score 1200 This may be a matter of taste in the end. But, for the casual games market, what do you think a mainstream audience will enjoy more? I think people love big numbers, in general, what do you guys think? |
4 | What is the better way to speed up gameplay as the level rises? I started with game programming couple of weeks back. For the starters I tried to develop ZigZag (link takes you to 2 min gameplay). I am done with the logic of gameplay by now. It runs well and all. Now I want to speed up the gameplay as user passes some score. Say after 100 points increase the speed of the ball. I have two options Control the speed using time delay by varying time.delay(var). Actually increasing the speed of the moving ball Not sure which one is a good idea in long term, I'm looking for help from experienced game developers. You can checkout the source code https github.com ravi ojha zigway blob master zigway.py |
4 | Web single player 2d top down RPG background image, sprites, and new level loading I'm making a web single player 2D top down rpg using JavaScript (create js library) and have a couple questions. For the background image, I've currently loaded a 1000x1000 bitmap to represent the background for my rpg world (per level). It's drawn in relation to the camera (aka the canvas 500x500) so not all of it is on the screen at the same time. If it's not on the screen, is it still using resources to be drawn? I eventually want to have a much larger "world", which will require a much larger bitmap... What is the best way to load a background image? And what about sprites? I'm assuming if I create several sprite objects with bitmaps... even if they aren't on the camera, they are still using resources? This may slow down the game. Level loading If I walk to another level, or go inside a building, I'd like to load that bitmap... Is there a specific way to architect level loading? Thank you! |
4 | Programming the combat sequence in a role playing game I'm trying to write a short "game" where a player goes around and fights monsters but I have no idea how to handle the combat. For example, say I have a "Warrior" and a "Troll". How do the two fight each other? I know I can do something like Conan Warrior.new() CaveTroll Troll.new() Conan.attack(CaveTroll) CaveTroll.attack(Conan) But what part of the game controls the monster? Do I just stick the above sequence in a loop until one of them dies? Or does the game "engine" need to have a part that deals specifically with combat? Or is this an aspect of the Troll's artificial intelligence that needs to take care of it's actions? Also, who what determines the actions that the monster takes? Maybe a Troll can bash, kick, bite, cast spells, drink potions, use a magical item. Does the game engine determine what action the Troll takes or is that something the Troll class manages? Sorry I can't be more specific but I need some guidance on which direction to go with this. |
4 | How to create a user friendly magic spell system? I'm designing a small 2D top down open world survival ish game with a magic spell system. The way it works so far The player receives a "wand" at the beginning of the game As the player encounters new items and enemies, they gain spells to help them use those items defeat those enemies The problem I'm having is designing a way to cast the spells. At first, I just bound different spells to keys 0 10, but very soon the number of spells overwhelmed it, and you also have the problem of lower level spells not being used in the late game but still being bound to the most useful keys. So, what's the best way to make a user friendly spellcasting system? I can overhaul the way magic works in my game if needed. EDIT Just to clarify, I'm developing for PC in real time with large variation in spell type and purpose, although this question should apply to all platforms. |
4 | Is there a leveling guide somewhere? I am designing a simple game and am looking for some help designing different level ranks. For instance, starting from "Novice" to "Intermediate" to "Master". Is there are repository somewhere that records these from various games? For instance, from World of Warcraft, Diablo etc. Any suggestions? |
4 | How to incorporate (agile) user stories with specs into game development? It seems some features changes lend themselves to user stories "as a user, I want to be prompted to exit or retry the battle after the hero dies, since these are the only two common navigations". But other features wouldn't be a good fit for stories, like a detailed description of which game elements appear during an event. How are these detailed specs incorporated into the agile task system? Certainly the umbrella task could be written as an epic, but the specs seem not to fit as stories. (They are not about direct user motivation or benefit, because these specs often make the game harder, like "boss health should refill at 100 per 90 seconds".) Note we're using Jira to track bugs and tasks. |
4 | How do you come up with ideas for new games? What is the best way in your opinion to find new ideas for games? I want to invent something really new (like Gish, World of Goo, Crayon Physics etc), but I'm having problems coming up with new, creative ideas. |
4 | Beat detection and FFT I am working on a platformer game which includes music with beat detection. I am currently detecting beats by checking for when the current amplitude exceeds a historical sample. This doesn't work well with genres of music, like rock, which have a pretty steady amplitude. So I looked further and found algorithms splitting the sound into multiple bands using FFT... then I found the Cooley Tukey FFt algorithm The only problem I'm having is that I am quite new to audio and I have no idea how to use that to split the signal up into multiple signals. So my question is How do you use a FFT to split a signal into multiple bands ? Also for the guys interested, this is my algorithm in c C threshold, N size of history buffer 1024 public void PlaceBeatMarkers(float C, int N) List lt float gt instantEnergyList new List lt float gt () short samples soundData.Samples float timePerSample 1 (float)soundData.SampleRate int sampleIndex 0 int nextSamples 1024 Calculate instant energy for every 1024 samples. while (sampleIndex nextSamples lt samples.Length) float instantEnergy 0 for (int i 0 i lt nextSamples i ) instantEnergy Math.Abs((float)samples sampleIndex i ) instantEnergy nextSamples instantEnergyList.Add(instantEnergy) if(sampleIndex nextSamples gt samples.Length) nextSamples samples.Length sampleIndex 1 sampleIndex nextSamples int index N int numInBuffer index float historyBuffer 0 Fill the history buffer with n instant energy for (int i 0 i lt index i ) historyBuffer instantEnergyList i If instantEnergy samples in buffer lt instantEnergy for the next sample then add beatmarker. while (index 1 lt instantEnergyList.Count) if(instantEnergyList index 1 gt (historyBuffer numInBuffer) C) beatMarkers.Add((index 1) 1024 timePerSample) historyBuffer instantEnergyList index numInBuffer historyBuffer instantEnergyList index 1 index |
4 | Custom Content Package for Files I am about to purchase quite a few model packs from a website for prototyping my game. In the contract it states that I must protect them as to prevent the public from gaining access to them. I remember working with the Valve games, they used .gcf (game content file) that basically was an archive of all the content for each game. They packed in sound materials models maps etc. I figured it might not be a bad idea to develop something similar to this, and just write a small tool to let me add remove files from it. Problem is I really have no idea how to go about starting on something like this. I tried Google but I didn't even know what to search for. If anyone has any ideas, links that might be of use, or anything else I would greatly appreciate it. |
4 | Are games designed to be addictive? When I was younger I used to play games a lot for hours. I would say I got addicted to them. Now I'm a software developer and was wondering if games are explicitly designed to be addicting? Game developers are interested in keeping their users playing as long as possible. I've read about Operant Conditioning and Virtual Skinner Boxes. According to psychologists, most games use a fixed reward system to get the player hooked at first. For example, you can level up pretty fast in beginning. Then reward frequency gradually drops, but player keeps playing because they are hooked. In the end, you switch to variable reward frequency, which means rewards occur randomly and rarely. By this stage, the player might not even enjoy the game, but still play in order to get his reward fix and the resulting good feeling from it. This is very similar to how rats are conditioned in Skinner boxes. Rewards can be in the form of social status recognition in the game world, working hard for a virtual item therefore giving it great value when acquiring it, feeling in control and power that are not met in the real world, escaping to somewhere else, being able measure progress to some goal and getting instant feedback. If the player abstains from the game, a punishment is applied, i.e losing social status or items. After a while, the rewards will be associated with the game itself and therefore even the sight of the game can evoke craving, much like in case of Pavlov's dog In addition, there is another research which states that the immersive nature of video games, the rich visual stimulus from realistic graphics, the complex thinking required for playing, great autonomy and fast feedback loop can result in increased dopamine levels in the brain, and create a sense of flow. Combined with an effective rewarding system, games can stimulate the feel good centres of the brain. This means that after several sessions, the player needs to play longer in order to achieve the same dopamine levels as before. Some even experience euphoric feeling and relief from withdrawal when they play. They replace real world with game world and focus on in game motivations only. Players may stop showering for long time, have reduced hygiene, become socially isolated, drop out of school, become overweight, withdraw from their family, have dreams about the game, think and plan about the game while doing other activities, stop doing non game related activities, have trouble concentrating. References http www.cracked.com article 18461 5 creepy ways video games are trying to get you addicted.html http www.betabunny.com behaviorism Conditioning.htm http www.world science.net exclusives 081111 gaming.htm Can a game be simply too fun to resist? |
4 | How would you define this mechanic in narrative based games? I'm a researching a certain game mechanic that seems very commonplace in modern narrative based games. The mechanic is defined (by me) as a user action that the player can take while in a dialogue or a cutscene, which affects the course of the narrative (and sometimes has a long lasting impact on the game progression in general). The interaction can be of several types press a button click a character hit a sequence of keys button mashing. Here's an example from Game of Thrones https www.youtube.com watch?v ykq213pPD6Q amp feature youtu.be amp t 181 In Mass Effect it is referred to as an interrupt https www.youtube.com watch?v 9TgTLJXoD o Here's one from King's Quest https www.youtube.com watch?v KhOkqn6qE2g I'm looking for more info on this type of mechanic. Specifically Is there an accepted name for it? What other games have this mechanic, and use it in an interesting way? (I would appreciate links to videos demonstrating it) What types of interactions (such as the ones I've described) have you seen implemented in this mechanic? Thanks ) (BTW if you think this game design related question is more suitable for StackExchange's Arqade do let me know and I'll ask to move it there) |
4 | Optimizing the economy of a resource management game I am an amateur game designer. I am designing a resource management game involving real money. This is my first time designing such a game. I explain the design and mechanics below. I need feedback from experienced game designers regarding i) The sustainability of the core economic loop of this game, ii) Concrete suggestions to de risk or fine tune it (if you can think of any) My game is about digging up treasure. Treasure is real players can cash out. The objective of the game is to make as much money as possible. Players utilize digging machines (excavators) to unearth treasure. The attributes of these digging machines are Digging prowess Most machines are mediocre diggers. I.e. they unearth small treasure. A few rare machines can dig up really big treasure. And then there are other types in between these two extremes. Scarcity Only a finite number of machines are available in this game world. Transparency Machines' visual design varies in accordance to their digging prowess. I.e. players can easily spot which machine is better than the rest. Main mechanics When a new player joins this game, they utilize real to buy one or multiple such machines. Once bought, each machine can either be Stored away (unused), or Put to work. Note that when a machine accumulates 1 hour of digging time, it unearths treasure. The amount unearthed is always proportional to the machine's digging prowess. Putting machines to work has an upside and a downside Upside Machines that are put to work unearth treasure (actual players can claim). Downside Working machines can be forcefully bought by another player (for the machine's current value 5 profit). No permission is needed. This permanently increases the value of the machine. Which means, if you want to snatch it back, you pay a further 5 increment on top of everything. Storing machines away has an upside and a downside Upside Nobody can forcefully buy them from the player. Downside They don't help the player earn anything. How do we finance the treasure finds? There is a pool of money in the back end that finances each and every treasure finding. We finance this pool in two ways The first time a digging machine is bought, 90 of the proceeds are routed to this pool (10 are pocketed by the game developer). I earlier mentioned that whenever a machine is forcefully bought, a 5 profit is paid by the buyer to the unwitting seller. We route 10 of that profit to the treasure pool, 10 to the game developer, and 80 to the unwitting seller of the machine. It would be great to get feedback from experienced game designers regarding the economic viability of the game's core loop. How do we Make it sustainable? What are the economic risks? How can they be quantified? Are there any risk minimization tactics we can bake in? |
4 | Game Design vs Game Development What is the difference between a video game developer and a video game designer? |
4 | Why do games suggest you take a break? A lot of games will suggest you take breaks from them every 30 minutes or so, I think this is especially common in Nintendo games, but they aren't the only ones to do it. What is the advantage to this? Does this somehow help get you to play it more or does it help sell more copies? |
4 | As an indie game dev, what processes are the best for soliciting feedback on my design spec idea? Background I have worked in a professional environment where the process usually goes like the following Brain storm idea Solidify the game mechanics design Iterate on design idea to create a more solid experience Spec out the details of the design idea Build it Step 3. is generally done with the stakeholders of the game (developers, designers, investors, publishers, etc) to reach an 'agreement' which meets the goals of all involved. Due to this process involving a series of often opposing and unique view points, creative solutions can surface through discussion iteration. This is backed up by a process for collating the changes new ideas, as well as structured time for discussion. As a (now) indie developer, I have to play the role of all the stakeholders (developers, designers, investors, publishers, etc), and often find myself too close to the idea design to do more than minor changes, which I feel to be local maxima when it comes to the best result (I'm looking for the global maxima, of course). I have read that ideas game designs unique mechanics are merely multipliers of execution, and that keeping them secret is just silly. In sharing the idea with others outside the realm of my own thinking, I hope to replicate the influence other stakeholders have. I am struggling with the collation of changes new ideas, and any kind of structured method of receiving feedback. My question As an indie game developer, how and where can I share my ideas designs to receive meaningful constructive feedback? How can I successfully collate the feedback into a new iteration of the design? Are there any specialized websites, etc? |
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 | In terms of Game Design, is the definition more of designing the ENTIRE game, or can it be limited to contributing to the artwork? I am a person who desires a job in the artwork development of a video game, but the exact term for the general career often confuses me. What I want to do is Character Design, but what general career does it fall under in terms of video games? Is the overall concept Game Design, or is it just Illustration? I get confused that Game Design is just creating the ENTIRE game from the top of your head and not just a specific area of the development, like the art. Am I wrong? Does Game Design work for both the idea and the artwork, and can the term be separated between the two? A helpful answer would be much appreciated. |
4 | Pros and cons of randomised item stats? I'm working on an old style isometric RPG like the early Diablo or Fallout games. It has a central story with branching paths, and a lot of player freedom to explore the open world. The combat system is pretty integral to the game as well, considering the number of spells, attacks and enemies I'm hoping to add. Currently I'm wondering whether I should have fixed item stats, or have them randomised within a given range (say, 0 10 from a given value). But I can only see disadvantages with the randomised stats system. If the range is too large it'll become grindy, and if it's too small it'll become irrelevant. Could someone give me a list of the pros and cons for each approach? |
4 | What's the name of the "Candy Crush" style of game? I'm currently creating an engine trying to auto play games with a chess board, and I'm writing a report about it now. However, I found it hard to properly describe it for the games like Candy Crush, which has a game board, filled with "candies," and a few rules.. is there a formal classification for it? Is "board game" a proper name? What about "rectangle tile game", or "chessboard based game?" |
4 | Creating an illusion of stress and danger I'm currently experimenting with an adventure game setting where at some point the game is quite calm and the player has to solve puzzles and at some point there are enemies or environmental traps. I don't want to have any surprising danger events coming out of nowhere that would scare the player, so I would like to build up the players' tension before a section of the game starts which will contain multiple "player killing" obstacles (may they be enemies, or the ground falling apart..). My sound artist made some really good music and sound effects to slowly build up the tension, but game elements during this phase are missing. It's like the player is running from a puzzle zone to danger zone through a boring plain section. Beside sound, what are some generic ways to build up the players' tension? Can i aid with special Visuals, or do i have to improve the story or possibly invent some pre danger zone easy obstacles? |
4 | What is the term for the level progression paradigm in Bejeweled? Looking at the various level progression paradigms for my puzzle game, I decided to rule out the common ones such as 3 star per level, linear campaign like story, etc. I like the idea of Bejeweled's classic mode where the player simply keeps on going. What exactly is this paradigm called? I can't find any write ups on it so I can't quite tell what its structure is like. Is it infinite? Does the difficultly increase with each level in some shape, way or form (more likely to get "No moves")? |
4 | What are examples of games with "minimalist" models art assets When teaching game development, my student's obsess about building realistic or complex art models animation. And spending wayyy to much time trying to get accurate collision detection between two 3D models despite my best efforts However I would like them to spend more time thinking about developing the game mechanics, interaction and game play. I'm looking for some games where the visuals are simple but have good game play. Things I am thinking about are Cubes' vs Spheres or Impossible Game. What are more examples of visually simple (preferably 3D) games to help inspire my students? |
4 | How to develop multi player game without involving server side code? There have been lot of cloud based frameworks released in past few years. They provide real time communication among users but does not allow developers to write server side code. So, how can we use these frameworks to develop mulitplayer games. I want to know how we can deal with network latency and write prediction algorithm to recover network lag. |
4 | How can I discourage camping while still supporting a "sniper" style of play? I am trying to add features into a third person shooter that suit a sniper style of play, in addition to the current rush deathmatch style it was designed for. The current gameplay is similar in style to Gears of War and Battlefield, perhaps similar to Call of Duty in terms of combat ranges but a little slower paced. The levels are similar in size to large COD maps, or medium Battlefield maps. Two things which I was planning to add includes some long sight lines and also some "sniper nests". I am concerned though because these two features can open the door to a lot of camping. Sniping and camping are not the same things in my opinion, but it can be easy for campers to abuse such features for easy gain, when they were intended to promote tactical sniper use. That said, I don't believe in blaming the flaws of a game on a player's choice of play style. Sniper Uses long range rifles, may stay in a specific spot that is tactically advantageous at the time, but knows how to move to other locations good for sniping. Provides spotting and suppression for more offensive rush style team members. Camper May use any weapon, always stays in the one spot and waits for players to pass by, leading to easy low risk kills. Follows the same strategy regardless of what is happening in the game match. Is more focussed on own performance as opposed to supporting team members. So, I am trying to think of some ways in which to try to discourage camping while still allowing legitimate sniper play and preserving the original rush gameplay. |
4 | How to handle a player's level and its consequent privileges? I'm building a game similar to Mafia Wars where a player can do tasks for his gang and gain experience and thus advancing his level. The game is built using PHP and a Mysql database. In the game I want to limit the resources allowed to player based on his level. For example (Max gold) (Max army size) (Max moves) ... Level 1 1000 100 10 ... Level 2 1500 200 20 ... Level 3 3000 300 25 ... . . . In addition certain features of the game won't be allowed until a certain level is reached such as players under Level 10 can't trade in the game market, players under Level 20 can't create alliances,...etc. The way I have modeled it is by implementing a very loooong ACL (Access Control List) with about 100 entries (an entry for each level). However, I think there may be a simpler approach to this seeing that this feature have been implemented in many games before. |
4 | Calculation of a fight with many entities User A can have many entities A Entity is a object that has properties such as health, attack, defence, agility, stamina, etcetera. When User A want to attack User B with x entities I am looking for the algorithm equation to calculate the fight. I have brought some couple of ideas but they all have some pros and cons and I am not sure which one I would use or If I should use one of them at all? Model A The while loop Basically I would get all the entities that is suppose to fight in this battle, I would assign each of them (objects) in to an array (the User A array and the User B array). Now I would simply loop through until one of the array is empty. Inside the loop I would let one of the User attack first, calculate the result (If the Entity has 0 health, remove it) and then let the next User attack back, calculate the result (If the Entity has 0 health, remove it) And then continue. The Pros with Model A would be that every entity would be battling and instead of just do a calculation on all around there would be a justice fight. The Cons To loop through like 10 entities would be fine but what about 1000 2000 entities? And how about the different strength of each entity I mean how could I decide which entity should battle against what entity? This could be just an sorted array (weakest to strongest) But then I couldn't have like different types of entities is better against a different type of entity, meaning like a Gunner wouldn't mean anything If it met a Swordsman even though a Gunner would most likely win such in a real fight. Model B The idea of Model B is quite simple basically calculate all the attributes (properties) together and then If User A army has greater stats than User B army, User A army would win the fight. The Pros with this is it easy on the performance. The Cons are "Which entities would survive?" And it would basically be, the one with greatest army would win. You wouldn't even have a "chance" to win. Model B B Then I started to think what If I take the concept of Model B calculate the stat and then I have a battle between just those two single entities. This way User B actually would have a chance ( a small one but the possibility to win) even though the User A has greater army (better stats). The Cons are yet again, How would I know which entities that would survive on the winning team? The answer I am looking for to this question is what Model should I use? And how would I solve the cons in that particular Model. Or should I use some completely different model (idea) ? (If possible please provide some php pseudo code) |
4 | How to make 4 way walking animation in game maker studio 2? So I am trying to make a 4 way movement for my character, and I cant seem to get the walking animations to work for it. The character moves fine, but whenever he moves, the walking animation doesn't play. I figured it was because I made it so when the button was held down, it put it as the sprite for that direction constantly, so it could never get to the next frame. does anyone know how to bypass this? (btw I am using D amp D) |
4 | iPhone Game Sprites I have made games with cocos2d for the iphone however I am looking to move on from that, is there a good direction you could suggest? If not I was planning on using what the SDK gives me, and so for example to make a sprite, say the player on screen, rather than a CCSprite, what would be best to use? What do I need to go and learn? Thanks. |
4 | Designing score system Combos, chains, multipliers and bonuses I am making a breakout clone, I not want only want it to feel "arcade" for home users, but it will have a arcade version (although probably noone will buy, and I will only use the machine to amuse other people...), this make scoring, and high scores a important part of it, it has no multiplayer, with the community existing around how to score higher and higher scores. Being a breakout game, if the score is just linear, everyone that "finish" the game, will attain the same maximum score... Obviously this is undesirable, specially because the game DOES have a end, you cannot play it forever until you lose... So, how to design some decent score system? Currently I added a multiplier, and it increases when you kill several blocks fast, but this has the unintended side effect of creating absurdly high scores near the end of the game when you are highly powerful (yes, my game is not only about batting the ball P) and can clear a whole bunch of blocks at once... To make it more clear, you have 5 frames to kill another block and increase the multiplier, on the start of the game, only batting the ball, this only happen when you manage to get the ball stuck behind the wall (something that is desirable to reward... several players plainly have a CRAVING to attempt that), and if you are a MASTER breakout player, you can score on the first five levels something like 100k points... Yet, on one of the late levels, if you use in a mediocre way (not even good way) the powers, you can easily rack up 2 million points in a single level (and no, my game does not have points padded with 0! Some stuff DO reward you with 1 point, or 10... It is just the multiplier increase of 5 frame kill that skyrocket...) I want to add more mechanics, fix this one, and make lots of stuff rewardable, stuff that make the screen shine, blink, show pretty stuff and make the player go "WOW, DID YOU SEE THAT?" and tap his friend in the shoulder, and then when he make it on purpose he screams "HAHAAAA, I AM AWESOME AND YOU SUCK!!! DO IT TOO!! I DARE YOU!!!" Note Although the theme here is breakout, no problem in crossing genres, shmups are particularly good in this area, Radiant Silvergun for example was plainly great... But of course, it need to still be applicable on a breakout ) Meta question How I create tags? If I really can't, can a moderator put some decent tags for me? Like scoring, or chain system, or stuff like that? Otherwise we will end with thousands of stuff with the same tags design, writing and C ... or generic stuff like that. |
4 | What are the accessibility implications of requiring a button press or time out on a game over screen? For simple games, is there a de facto standard that game over screens time out after a few seconds before, or require some sort of input in order to, transition back to the main menu? Time out pros Accessibility. Mobility impaired users may have difficulty pushing the buttons so the game should advance for them. Time out cons Accessibility. Vision impaired users may have difficulty seeing any post game information displayed within the allotted time. Tweaking the time out so it's not too long as to be annoying if the user happens to game over a lot. Also quot Don't make QA mad quot Input pros Accessibility. Vision impaired users may take as long as needed to see any post game information displayed on screen. Makes time outs skippable. Input cons Accessibility. Motor impaired users may have difficulty pushing buttons. I remember reading a Microsoft article about certain best practice design decisions regarding accessibility a long time ago but can't recall the specifics. |
4 | What kinds of conflict resolution can be fun beyond combat in an RPG? As someone who grew up on the single digit Final Fantasy games and AD amp D, there are few ways of solving an rpg problem as fun as a fight. Different streams of accomplishment (object acquisition crafting, skill trees, puzzles, player strategies, team combination synergies, etc) all go into a few minutes of frenetic action, allowing for the feeling of accomplishment and progress via stat increases as the game progresses. That said, we tend to characterize rpg players as murderhobos for good reason. When you incentivize killing things, it's not long before all problems start looking like something to hit with your sword. And when you're able to steal anything not nailed down, why not do it? While other kinds of conflict resolution can be fun when in their element (farm Civ Sim games for the sense of building something, spy ninja assassin games for deftness and exploiting situations, social games for roleplaying a character or out thinking the other guy), they're often not fun outside their very narrow venue. And because we're limited to conversation with a computer (at least in single player games), social games can't even explore the whole of their venue. I'm racking my brain trying to figure out how to properly gamify the societal ideals of don't kill, don't steal in such a way that attacking or stealing becomes a conscious choice, not just a default means of action...but at the same time keep the same diversity of fun inputs that fighting stealing games have. Most games just code in consequences the town guards are sent after you and or some faction is less willing to deal with you. But this feels unnatural, and only invites further gaming of the system, producing better murderhobos at the end. My reason for doing so? The main theme of my game is a heavily philosophical one(think a halfway understandable Xenosaga) on how morality might play out in the post post apocalypse. While killing and stealing would be a part of that, I feel that our natural tendency as gamers wouldn't allow this question to play out 'fairly'. Any idea on how to put killing and stealing on a truly equal playing field with other forms of conflict resolution? |
4 | Tower Defence game scoring system I am in the process of developing my first game on android mobile platform, it s a tower defence game and I am currently busy designing the scoring system. At the end of the stage when the user has defeated all the waves of enemies I want to take his score and somehow calculate a rating out of 3 Stars. What will the best way be to calculate a score? When should I increment the score during gameplay for example when an enemy dies? And how do I calculate if the score is worth 1 3 Stars at the end of the stage? Basically I want help or any ideas on how the formula should look like and how to calculate if the user scored a 1.. 2... or 3 Stars. My variables in game Every enemy has a value Example 5 The stage has a number of life s before you are defeated Example 20 Each stage starts with money that you buy your towers with Example 120 Each towers costs money Example 30 A stage can consist of 1 or more waves of enemies. Any help or ideas would be appreciated as I am new to game development . |
4 | Keeping balance between widely different character classes So I've been theory crafting an idea for a game I think would be interesting, but I'm trying to work out the kinks in my idea. Here's my dilemma Let's say a player can choose between two classes, being a foot soldier or piloting a large vehicle like a tank. To keep gameplay diverse, there needs to be some players as foot soldiers and some as tanks. In games such as BF4, the individual soldier has so many anti vehicle weapons that vehicles are actually somewhat weak. Is there a good way to balance classes such that an endgame infantry unit is equal(not inferior or superior) to a vehicle such as a tank or ship? I was also thinking of an AI squad mechanic, where the player can command a small number of AI foot soldiers, so this might be worked into the balancing. I'm just trying to think of a way to have all classes be appealing to the player. |
4 | What category would this asynchronous production economy game fall under? I'm thinking of getting into game development and my friend and I have this idea for a game. We want to do some research on similar games, and I have noticed that games seem to fall under certain categories like "platformer", "shooter", "racing games" or similar. Our idea is a multiplayer, mobile game where you and around 4 5 other players are placed in a session. Every player is given a different role in a market (like a farmer to grow crops, miller to make flour out of crops, baker to bake bread, etc.). The players are supposed to sell goods to each other in order to earn money (or similar). The resources are produced generated over time, so it's like Travian and other city building games when it comes to stuff happening over time. You own a production facility (like a farm, mill, etc.) and if you have enough resources money it produces some good every 10 min (arbitrary time for the example). This happens even when the user is not playing. Then once in a while, you can check in, put some of your goods up for sale that others can purchase. So it's a passive loop that simply generates resources every x minutes, and in addition, the players can put up their goods for sale when they feel like it. But the game is not "infinite". When one of the players reaches a certain goal, the game session ends and the players are ranked (or something, it's still a rough idea). So in this regard, it's more like Wordfeud or Chess where your next move depends on what the other players do and there is a way to win the game (be it a winning condition or time running out). So the question is, does this kind of game fall under a specific category that we can research? |
4 | Dual Currency vs. One Currency in social games economics and monetization Not a programming question but game development related. I am creating an iPhone online game which I wish to be free to play where in app purchase is used for monetization. The important point is to make sure that this does not break the game play, my priority is gameplay first, monetization second. One popular way of monetizing the player base is to sell your in game currency, however there are 2 ways to go about this One Currency This currency can buy anything within the game, it can be earned through normal play at a limited rate. Players can, however, choose to buy this currency directly to speed up the acquisition of the currency. Dual Currency One currency can be earned through normal play and it can be used to buy a limited set of items that is required for normal enjoyment of the game. The second currency is 'premium' and must be purchased using real world money. This second currency can be used to purchase 'premium items' that gives extra abilities such as increase EXP gain, etc. The 2 currencies can be traded between players to give non paying players to exchange their time for the 'premium' currency. Both methods do not break gameplay and allows players who does not wish to pay enjoy the entire contents of the game if they put in enough time and effort. My question is, is there any reason why you would pick one over another? What are the pros and cons that I should pay attention to when implementing each alternative? Thank you. |
4 | Alternative ways to make a battle system in a mobile indie game more fun and engaging I'm developing an indie game for mobile platforms, and part of the game involves a PvP battle system (where the target player is passive). My vision is simple the active player can select a weapon item, then attack use, and display the calculated outcome. I have a concept for battle modifiers that affect stats to make it more interesting, but I'm not convinced this by itself will add enough of a fun factor. I've received some inspiration from the game engine that powers Modern War Kingdom Age Crime City, but I want more control to make it more fun. In those games, you don't have the option to select weapons or use items, and the "battling" screen is simply 3D eye candy. Since this will be an indie game, I won't be spending on a team of professional 3D artists animators, so my edge needs to be different. What are some alternatives to expensive eye candy that you or others have used to make a non 3D PvP game more fun and engaging? Did the alternative concepts survive the release? |
4 | Power, achievement and affiliation games for psychology research project For a psychology research project we're looking for short (ca. 5 minute) single player games to observe people's basic motivation. We would like to ask people to list games that provide the closest possible (even if not perfect) fit to each description. We need 2 3 promising candidates for each of the following 3 categories. We would be happy with anything we can use, build on, mod, change slightly etc. to fit our purposes. A) Game that taps into affiliation Affiliation involves being emotionally close to others and establishing new relationships. The game should revolve around meeting other characters. I.e. through simple means (clicking certain actions) one can explore possibilities to meet friends. Requests to establish relationships should be accepted in most cases, because the player is well liked. This liking not related to status or performance, but to the warm fuzzy feeling of friendliness. When getting to know each other, many commonalities between player and character emerge and are happily acknowledged. B) Game that taps into achievement Achievement involves mastering difficult goals. In achievement games you would solve several quests by using some ability (speed, spatial thinking, strategy use). It should adapt to the player's ability, so that it is always possible to solve 60 70 of the quests. Player's should be able to improve their abilities and results with some training. Results should always be related to the individual performance, so there is no high score ranking with others or some such.The goal of this game should simply be to remain focused on a task of moderate difficulty, trying to become better at it. C) Game that taps into power Power involves obtaining social status and influencing other people. A power game would involve influencing characters and yielding reactions. It should have a low difficulty and work without points (kind of like a cheat mode maybe). In other words Influencing other people should be easy, not dependent on achievement or liking. For example, the ability to change the lives of others could be due to insurmountable and unquestionable status differences between the person playing (e.g., a deity, a biologist) and the characters of the game (sticking to the example mortals, ants). Now, we hope to find resources we can re use for our games. We don't have the ambition to create new games and many games already suit our needs. We only need the game to have at least 10 events relevant to the motive and to log these events (so we can align it with the reactions of our participants). If we can change it to do that, that'd be cool too. Probably many quite simple games have been lost in the drawers of computer science students who made them as finger exercises and homework. We would only use these games in our research setting, so there is no commercial interest involved. Many thanks in advance and best wishes from the whole lab! we edited this in response to some comments |
4 | In tactical combat games, why does shooting end your turn? I was wondering about this particular game mechanic in tactical combat games, like XCOM2, where you have two actions, which may be move move reload move move reload move attack ...but not attack move, because when attacking, it ends your turn. If I compare this to tabletop D amp D 5e, with its move attack actions, it shouldn't be that different, but this restriction seems to make things completely different. What is the game design purpose for this kind of restriction? |
4 | Board Game Design in Cocos2d I am going to start a chess like board game. And for that I have reviewed a number of things available. One is http www.mapeditor.org , using which you can create a grid base games. Another option is geekgameboard for iphone available at http mooseyard.lighthouseapp.com projects 23201 geekgameboard Now I want your expert opinion on what would be better to make a game in cocos2d, using the first option or the second option? Both looks promising to me and give good control over board design. PS Sorry for duplicates, I found about the https gamedev.stackexchange.com lately after posting it on stackexchange. So I am just posting it here again as I feel this is a more relevant board. |
4 | Game Map Implementation I want to know how I can create a virtual town or city (like skyrim towns or gta4 liberty city) Should I create something on paper and copy coordinates? (Building1 floor corner coordinates are these, ceiling coordinates are these, 2nd floor coordinates are these etc, and then road1 coordinates are these...) And then apply texture on these things? Start with just 1 building and extend it in time? But this seems like a ton of work. For simplicity if we assume that there are 5 buildings on a road, this is like 90 vertices. And if I decide to make a house wider, then many things will be affected and I have to find new coordinates for every house corners. How did the developers of GTA 4 do it for example? I would like to know an appropiate method to create a static virtual map where the player can move into houses and interacts with objects in it. Please note that these buildings are not cosmetic only. I should be able to place objects in houses such as tables and the player should be able to jump on it etc. Thank you, I will vote when I have the reputation. |
4 | Continuous running vs timed tasks? I've started making a browser based game, as a hobby, where users log in via a website and can manage a soccer team. I need to have some sort of process running to handle player development, running matches, age players, generally progressing time.. I've never done anything like this before and therefore I'm putting this out there to get some feedback from other people. So, my idea was that I could have a continuously running application which can handle all the "off line" processing. But, that got me thinking that another approach could be to have, f.ex. a "PlayerTrainingTask" running daily, a "RunMatchesTask", running on a fixture based schedule, et.c. Which approach is most appropriate? or is there another option I haven't thought of? What are your thoughts? |
4 | The need your game fills. Establishing your "hook." I am a programmer and have worked on games although never attempted design myself. I am now attempting to design a game myself, working with a modest team of programmers and artists. Game designers have been telling me it is important to establish the need your game fills, in order to develop a more complete vision of the product. I think in terms of mechanics and gameplay and am having trouble finding a "hook," even in existing games. Any advice in identifying why a mechanic is fun, and what need a game fills, to help develop my own ideas is much appreciated. |
4 | Developing interesting game mechanics when not an avid gamer I've realized that though I like playing videogames, I find it much more entertaining to actually make them. This makes me wonder, if I'm planning to develop an X game, do I need to be an avid X gamer? How can I develop interesting mechanics if I play that genre sparingly? In order to get empirical answers, I'm more interested in listening to the opinion of those who have worked are working in the game industry. Are you and your co workers avid gameplayers or "casual" gamers? What about the Schafers, Carmacks, McGees and Gilberts of the industry (should anyone know any of them ) )? being X any game genre Platformer, RPG, RTS, FPS, etc. PS I'm trying to make this question as subjective less as possible, so feel free to point any improvements. |
4 | Adversarial Search AI having problems with too many choices I'm a game designer working with a set of coders trying to create a card game. Currently we're trying to implement a drawing mechanic in which you choose which card you draw, but the Adversarial Search AI can't keep up with that many choices and can only look two turns ahead without this new mechanic. I'm pretty set on finding a way to make this work, does anyone have and alternatives to fixing this problem? I've tried reducing the space down to having only a few choices out of the deck, but the problems comes from the AI having to see what the player is going to draw. I'm pulling my hair over this problem, any thoughts? |
4 | Techniques for building out a game idea and mechanics I've been finding that many of my projects fall into the abyss of my "game mechanic tests". That is, they aren't really "games", but rather sandboxes where I try out various things and find some mechanics that would be fun. Now, I'd like to actually create a game out of some these ideas. Since so many of my "games" end up turning into additional sandboxes when I get distracted by a new idea("whoa, that's cool", and suddenly the whole game completely changes.. twenty times.. sometimes back and forth between several competing ideas), I'd like to actually plan out the mechanics, how they will fit together, and altogether how the game will work as a whole, even though I know I still need to be semi flexible for when things play test differently than expected. This is compared to my usual strategy of, "Let's just get started and then I will build a game out of whatever I create" mindset. What techniques are used for planning out a game idea (even if just roughly), before actually just jumping in? Is there specific software which helps? How do I go about managing the planning phase in general and keeping things up to date if things start to change? See this great answer on a separate question for the type of actual design I would like to work on for my game, opposed to the programming focus I generally approach things with. |
4 | Scripting to block or not to block Context I'm making a little "program your robot army" sort of game in Java in which the player writes Lua scripts (which are then run by LuaJ) to program their robots to do stuff. So far there are two objectives Keep It Simple, Stupid, and React to the environment. To take a simple example of what I currently have, the player should be able to tell their robot to go to a particular location with something like robot goTo(5, 8) Like Colobot, the scripting engine effectively halts (blocks) at that instruction until the robot has reached its destination. I like this it's meets the first requirement nicely, in that you can't do anything until goTo decides to return. It's also simple on the Java side I can basically do while ( condition ) yield() and just resume the coroutine every tick (then maintaining state in local variables is trivial). But what if that resource at (5,8) disappears, or an enemy comes near, or energy runs low? There's no opportunity to bail the robot has to reach (5,8) before it can do anything else. The main other idea I can think of is to produce some sort of loop while not robot near(5,8) do if robot enemyNearby() then break and do some other stuff, presumably else robot moveTo(5,8) end end where moveTo this time sets the velocity acceleration and then immediately returns, without blocking until arrival. I could have robot goTo return the actual coroutine (either wrapped, so you just call it, or directly, which requires calling coroutine.resume and passing the coroutine), which might look something like this moveTask robot moveTo(5,8) while not robot near(5,8) do if robot enemyNearby() then break else moveTask() or perhaps coroutine.resume(moveTask) or some other syntactic sugar end end These last two approaches look pretty similar, but reusing a coroutine as in the second example makes managing state (e.g. a path) trivial, at the cost of exposing coroutines to the player. To reiterate, the goal is to allow for writing simple scripts, in which a set of actions are executed in series (sorta like queued actions in The Sims), while simultaneously allowing more complex scripts with actions that may be interrupted by arbitrary events (nearby enemy, target moved, stats dropping). Any tips or ideas would be much appreciated! |
4 | two part dice pool mechanic I'm working on a dice mechanic resolution system based on the Ghost Echo (hereafter shortened to G E) tabletop RPG. Specifically, since G E can be a little harsh dealing with consequences and failure, I was hoping to soften the system and add a little more player control, as well as offer the chance to evolve player characters into something unique, right from creation. So, here's the mechanic Players roll 2 separate d12 against each of the two statistics for their character (each is a number from 2 11, and may be rolled above or below depending on the nature of the action attempted, rolling your stat exactly always fails). Depending on the success for that roll, they add dice to the pool rolled for a modified G E style action. The acting player gets two dice anyhow, and I am debating offering a bonus die for each success, or a single bonus die for succeeding on both of the statistic compared rolls. Once the size of the dice pool is set, the entire pool is rolled, and the players are allowed to assign the rolled dice to a goal and a danger, one to each. Assigned results are judged as follows 1 4 means the attempted goal fails, or the danger comes true. 5 8 is a partial success at the goal, or partially avoiding the danger. 9 12 means the goal is achieved, or the danger avoided. My concerns are twofold Firstly, is the two stage action too complicated, with two rolls to judge separately before anything can happen? Secondly, are the statistics involved going too far in softening the game? I've run some basic simulations, and the approximate statistics follow 2 dice (up to) 3 dice (up to) 4 dice failure 33 25 20 partial 33 35 35 success 33 40 45 I'd appreciate any advice that addresses my concerns or offers to refine my simulation (right now the first roll is statistically modeled as sign(1d12 1d12), where 0 is a success). |
4 | As an indie game dev, what processes are the best for soliciting feedback on my design spec idea? Background I have worked in a professional environment where the process usually goes like the following Brain storm idea Solidify the game mechanics design Iterate on design idea to create a more solid experience Spec out the details of the design idea Build it Step 3. is generally done with the stakeholders of the game (developers, designers, investors, publishers, etc) to reach an 'agreement' which meets the goals of all involved. Due to this process involving a series of often opposing and unique view points, creative solutions can surface through discussion iteration. This is backed up by a process for collating the changes new ideas, as well as structured time for discussion. As a (now) indie developer, I have to play the role of all the stakeholders (developers, designers, investors, publishers, etc), and often find myself too close to the idea design to do more than minor changes, which I feel to be local maxima when it comes to the best result (I'm looking for the global maxima, of course). I have read that ideas game designs unique mechanics are merely multipliers of execution, and that keeping them secret is just silly. In sharing the idea with others outside the realm of my own thinking, I hope to replicate the influence other stakeholders have. I am struggling with the collation of changes new ideas, and any kind of structured method of receiving feedback. My question As an indie game developer, how and where can I share my ideas designs to receive meaningful constructive feedback? How can I successfully collate the feedback into a new iteration of the design? Are there any specialized websites, etc? |
4 | Optimal touch controls for a twin stick shoot 'em up? So we recently launched a shoot 'em up arcade type game (think Smash TV or I Made a Game with Zombies in It!). You can move in one direction and fire in another, so the ideal control scheme is probably two analog joysticks (like the Xbox 360 has). We support WASD to move and arrow keys to fire. The best way to control though is to move with WASD and aim with the mouse. We're getting a lot of people asking for mobile versions of the game (mostly for iPad and Android) and the problem is we just can't come up with a good way to translate the controls over to a touch device. Interestingly, someone actually hacked an early version of our game a while back to work on Android by overlaying D pads, and sure enough, it was almost impossible to control. The game gets really difficult later on, and the thought of releasing a game with a crappy control scheme that nobody could possibly ever use to beat the game does not sit well with me. So I was wondering if anyone has any previous experience or suggestions on how to approach this problem? Overlaying two D pads on the screen is clearly not the way to go and we're kind of at a loss for other ideas. |
4 | Resources for designing (not programming) 2D platformer mechanics I've been making a 2D platformer in Unity and it's been going great. I have the fundamentals down (and as an experienced programmer, I know how to get the results I want this is not a programming question.) I've been floundering, though, because I realize that I lack vision in terms of a game direction. I originally wanted to make a Metroidvania style game, but decided to scale back as I thought that would be too ambitious (and take too long) for my first game. As such, I've decided to create a platformer run and gun type game. I've played enough platformers to know and intrinsically understand basic mechanics, but I also realize that the best games have a core mechanic that defines the game. Megaman's core mechanic, for instance, is obtaining and using boss weapons and abilities boss battles and levels are built around this. Metal Slug revolves around weapon pickups and its tank gameplay. I guess I'm at the point where I have a code demo....but it's not a game it has no soul. I've basically just proven to myself that I can write a platformer game in Unity. I want to know of any good resources on aspects of video game mechanic design not centered around programming book recommendations would be amazing, but online resources or other types of resources would be great as well. (Worth noting that I'm not looking for guides on designing levels, but lower level mechanics, like jump height, hp limits, core mechanics to define a game, etc.) |
4 | Websocket Scalability w Player Skills About 8 months ago, I asked this question, and received a lot of valuable information from the community. I have switched to nodejs, since then, and am finishing up my game. I am deeply concerned about networking issues pertaining to the usage of WebSocket data being sent through my current architecture especially since my game uses an authoritarian server, and doesn't utilize peer to peer. My game is a Diablo 2 inspired action RPG. As we know, for action RPGs, players utilize a lot of skills, and if games are instanced based, all players in the game need to be notified. I am worried about scalability. Here is an example Shooting a fireball has a 0.5 second cool down. This is how the data is sent Client Skill id, Skill rotation Server Server Checks cooldown, notify's players skill is being used Client If fireball hits monster, send attack signal Server Server Checks cooldown, player's range to mob, calculates damage, etc amp spits out damage numbers to all players All this happens in less than 1 second. The WebSocket server is not even sending out the Monster AI update packets to do damage to the player, nor the monster's fireballs. So now, basically double the amount of data is being sent through the WebSocket and to all player's in a game. It gets worse imagine if 20 players are online attacking monsters. My nodejs server will be on fire. This method is not even 100 cheat proof, as I'm waiting for the fireball to hit the monster on the client side to send the attack signal, instead of doing all that on the server. The problem is, I would have to be running a physics engine on the server, which would bog down nodejs's event loop even more. I'm using the P2 Physics engine from Phaser, and not simple AABB otherwise, I could just check for collisions server side. To close, when a player moves around the map, the server notifys everyone else in the same game. The same goes for when a player drops an item, or when loot is generated from a monster. I just feel like I'm clogging my WebSocket server up, and am doing something wrong with all this data being sent across the pipe. So with all this said, Am I worrying too much about the amount of data being sent across WebSockets? Is this data being sent normal for a games that utilizes an authoritarian server? Would a Redis Pub Sub system be an ideal solution to my problems? |
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 | Alternatives to a leveling system I'm currently designing a rough prototype of a mecha fighting game. These are the basics I came up with Multiplayer (matchmaking for up to 10 people, for now) Browser based (HTML5) 2D ( lt canvas gt ) Persistent (as in, players have accounts and don't have to use a new mech each time they start a match) Players earn money upon destroying another mech, which is used to buy parts (guns, armor, boosters, etc) Simplicity (both of the game itself, and of the development of said game) No "leveling" (as in, players don't get awarded with XP) The last part is bothering me. At first, I wanted to have players gain experience points (XP) when destroying other mechs, but gaining two things at once (money and XP) seemed to be in conflict with my last point, which is simplicity. If I were to have a leveling system, that would require additional development. But, the biggest problem is that I simply couldn't fit it anywhere! Adding levels would require adding meaning to these levels, and most of the things that I hoped to achieve could already be achieved with the money mechanic I introduced. So I decided to drop leveling off completely. That, in turn, removed a fairly popular and robust mean of progression in games from my game (not that I would use it well anyway). Is there another way of progression in games, aside from leveling and XP points, that wouldn't get rendered redundant by my money mechanic, would be somehow meaningful (even on a symbolic level), and wouldn't be in conflict with my last point, which is simplicity? |
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 | timebased scoring algorithm for game i am developing a game where user has to find target number using 5 given numbers and 4 operators. the score depends on the type of operators and number of operators used and time. score typeOperators noOfOperators timeScore where typeOperators is the sum of score for each type of operator, 1 pt for , 2 pt for , and 3 pt for . if all the three operators are used once, typeOperators will be 13. currently, i am thinking of timeScore max(0, x timespent) But, the game should avoid the situation where the user finding target number with worst solution but with minimum time gets higher scores. so the more weightage should be on the typeOperators rather than timeScore. can there be any better approach? |
4 | Scripting to block or not to block Context I'm making a little "program your robot army" sort of game in Java in which the player writes Lua scripts (which are then run by LuaJ) to program their robots to do stuff. So far there are two objectives Keep It Simple, Stupid, and React to the environment. To take a simple example of what I currently have, the player should be able to tell their robot to go to a particular location with something like robot goTo(5, 8) Like Colobot, the scripting engine effectively halts (blocks) at that instruction until the robot has reached its destination. I like this it's meets the first requirement nicely, in that you can't do anything until goTo decides to return. It's also simple on the Java side I can basically do while ( condition ) yield() and just resume the coroutine every tick (then maintaining state in local variables is trivial). But what if that resource at (5,8) disappears, or an enemy comes near, or energy runs low? There's no opportunity to bail the robot has to reach (5,8) before it can do anything else. The main other idea I can think of is to produce some sort of loop while not robot near(5,8) do if robot enemyNearby() then break and do some other stuff, presumably else robot moveTo(5,8) end end where moveTo this time sets the velocity acceleration and then immediately returns, without blocking until arrival. I could have robot goTo return the actual coroutine (either wrapped, so you just call it, or directly, which requires calling coroutine.resume and passing the coroutine), which might look something like this moveTask robot moveTo(5,8) while not robot near(5,8) do if robot enemyNearby() then break else moveTask() or perhaps coroutine.resume(moveTask) or some other syntactic sugar end end These last two approaches look pretty similar, but reusing a coroutine as in the second example makes managing state (e.g. a path) trivial, at the cost of exposing coroutines to the player. To reiterate, the goal is to allow for writing simple scripts, in which a set of actions are executed in series (sorta like queued actions in The Sims), while simultaneously allowing more complex scripts with actions that may be interrupted by arbitrary events (nearby enemy, target moved, stats dropping). Any tips or ideas would be much appreciated! |
4 | Is there a site where people discuss game concepts and questions in general? I like making game concepts for fun, as a hobby. I don't think that all my game concepts are amazingly awesome and have to be created and would revolutionize the industry. I just want some people to talk to that have the same hobbies as I do. To be able to discuss ideas and point out the pros and cons. |
4 | Which approach is better Frequent small updates, or occasional large ones? I recently released the first publicly available free Alpha for my top down shooter Dread I'm trying to decide whether a weekly bi weekly small update release schedule is better than the more traditional monthly (or longer) large updates. The more frequent schedule would mean that players would have a new build to play more often, but the new builds would likely only have a few bug fixes feature additions at a time. Would players grow tired of the constant updating, or would they feel more attachment as they are more involved in the development process? I'm thinking that, due to the somewhat experimental nature of my game, it might be a good thing for people to have the opportunity to suggest tweaks to the new features during their infant stages. But I don't want my desire for feedback to bias my decision. What are your thoughts experiences on the matter? |
4 | xna 2.5d gravity system i currently developing a game using the xna API. now the game i am developing is 2.5d. by 2.5d i mean the character or object can move left and right and a up and down(not just by jumping) that it would look like there is depth to the level. try to think something like little fighter 2 where you can also walk up and down. now i need to develop a gravity system,so far i used the idea that i draw a shadow on the ground of the level,and it follows the object or character and when the character jumps,he moves parabolic like in the real world(using very simple physics). the gravity system detects landing if the position of it's shadow is the position of the character( or the position of the character is below the position of the shadow). is there a better way to simulate gravity in this 2.5d approach? |
4 | What does a Game Designer do? what skills do they need? I know someone who is thinking about getting into game design, and I wondered, what does the job game designer entail? what tools do you have to learn how to use? what unique skills do you need? what exactly is it you'd do from day to day. I may be wording this a bit wrong because I'm not sure if the college program is become a game designer or learn game design. but I think the same questions apply either way. |
4 | How to determine what difficulty is right for the game? I am targeting mass casual audience as I am developing the hyper casual game. The problem is that I have played Helix Jump and Color Bump 3d and those games have a pretty big difference in difficulty level (well at least for me). They are both considered hyper casual, both target mass casual audience and both have market success. If two so similar games have such decent difference in difficulty how to determine that the difficulty of my game is just right? It's easy to say that it's subjective but when you invest so much time in your project you need to have at least some benchmark to work with. How to define this benchmark? |
4 | Necessary design skills to develop games using Unity, UDK, etc With my question I want to know if DESIGN 2D 3D skills are necessary in order to create a game using some engine like UDK or Unity. I have experience as a developer, and experience with openGL, I have also some experience with 3dMax, but Im NOT able to design something from scracth. I simply dont have the skills. In this kind of engines, is there a way to create and customize levels or characters for example? Thinking in something related, I will think in the character editor of games like World of Warcraft, etc. I would like to know if the creation of levels and characters would be like that. |
4 | Why do loot drops contain (mostly) useless items? I was thinking about this and couldn't figure this out. In Diablo you kill enemies and they drop random things. But usually the drops are worthless to you relative to what you already have equipped. Why bother building a drop system that gives you crappy drops? Maybe I'm not communicating my question well so I'll provide an alternative implementation Instead of frequently dropping crappy items and rarely dropping good items, why not only rarely drop good items? I guess that crappy items adds to the addictive ness somehow, but I don't understand why. Why is dropping crappy items part of the design? What does that add? Edit FWIW, I have been referring to Diablo 2 as my reference, not D3. But it's still interesting to see answers explaining why D2 was more addictive. |
4 | Websocket Scalability w Player Skills About 8 months ago, I asked this question, and received a lot of valuable information from the community. I have switched to nodejs, since then, and am finishing up my game. I am deeply concerned about networking issues pertaining to the usage of WebSocket data being sent through my current architecture especially since my game uses an authoritarian server, and doesn't utilize peer to peer. My game is a Diablo 2 inspired action RPG. As we know, for action RPGs, players utilize a lot of skills, and if games are instanced based, all players in the game need to be notified. I am worried about scalability. Here is an example Shooting a fireball has a 0.5 second cool down. This is how the data is sent Client Skill id, Skill rotation Server Server Checks cooldown, notify's players skill is being used Client If fireball hits monster, send attack signal Server Server Checks cooldown, player's range to mob, calculates damage, etc amp spits out damage numbers to all players All this happens in less than 1 second. The WebSocket server is not even sending out the Monster AI update packets to do damage to the player, nor the monster's fireballs. So now, basically double the amount of data is being sent through the WebSocket and to all player's in a game. It gets worse imagine if 20 players are online attacking monsters. My nodejs server will be on fire. This method is not even 100 cheat proof, as I'm waiting for the fireball to hit the monster on the client side to send the attack signal, instead of doing all that on the server. The problem is, I would have to be running a physics engine on the server, which would bog down nodejs's event loop even more. I'm using the P2 Physics engine from Phaser, and not simple AABB otherwise, I could just check for collisions server side. To close, when a player moves around the map, the server notifys everyone else in the same game. The same goes for when a player drops an item, or when loot is generated from a monster. I just feel like I'm clogging my WebSocket server up, and am doing something wrong with all this data being sent across the pipe. So with all this said, Am I worrying too much about the amount of data being sent across WebSockets? Is this data being sent normal for a games that utilizes an authoritarian server? Would a Redis Pub Sub system be an ideal solution to my problems? |
4 | RPG combat and gold exp reward equations I have a game that I'm creating, but I'm running across issues in keeping the ratios between high and low level players similar in the battle and reward equations. Obviously a higher level player should receive less experience, but have the upper hand in battle when fighting lower level players and monsters. Here is how I'm calculating things currently Battle starts If player.dex enemy.dex Accuracy ((player.dex enemy.dex) 2) 20 If player.dex lt enemy.dex Accuracy ((enemy.dex player.dex) enemy.dex) player.dex Accuracy is a percentage tested against a roll of a 100 sided die. If accuracy roll Hit success If accuracy lt roll Hit fails If hit success All of the attacker's damaging items (spiked helms and shields, weapons, etc.) are added together and applied as such Damage (player.str item.damage) (enemy.dex enemy.armor) If the player is fighting a monster, I have a base amount of gold and experience which is modified according to the player Gold gained (enemy.gold rand(1,10)) player.level Exp gained (enemy.exp rand(1,3)) player.level If the player is fighting another player, then there will have to be a different equation for the rewards, but I'm not sure how to go about creating that one. As this is my first attempt at creating (though I'm an avid RPGer), I'm not sure if there is kind of an "industry standard" form of calculating these things or not. I'm also afraid that these equations won't hold up once the player reaches higher levels (say level 50 ). |
4 | Balancing a game about gladiatorial robot combat Suppose a player can construct a robot built from various parts and each part costs money. How would you balance the cost of a weapon against its capabilities? What about balancing weapons against other parts? The base case seems pretty easy imagine the player can only buy weapons and everything else on the robot is the same. A machine gun that fires 1 bullet per second costs 100. A super machine gun that fires twice as fast could cost twice as much. But what about an ultra machine gun that has four times the range? Now imagine the player can add other capabilities to the robot like better speed or armor. How do you relate the cost of a machine gun against the ability to move very quickly, or to be stealthed against radar? I understand that there's a later stage of experimentation where costs and capabilities are adjusted, but where do you start from? |
4 | How long to display each sentence? When creating a sequence where text advances automatically, is there a metric which will allow me to calculate a reasonable duration to display each "sentence"? My intuition tells me that because of the way we read, the number of words is probably more relevant than the number of characters, but I'm curious what people may have already figured out about this problem. |
4 | How do I model a gooey sprite? I happened to see this structure of a gooey player character made in flash. Can anybody suggest onto what computer science concept I should use to make a goo make it behave like a goo Thanking You, Vish |
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