At 9/25/15 04:10 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote:

At 9/25/15 12:23 PM, Rustygames wrote: One problem if you're working on your own a lot is that actually you'll find it hard fitting into employment as it usually involves team work and other skills you might now have picked up working independently. It's not like you can just walk into a high paid job just because you're older and have spent more time doing it, you need a certain set of skills

Yeah plus big companies want you to specialize. On my games I do: engine code, gameplay code, graphics code, game design, level design, special fx code, tools code, sound code, etc. Jumping between jobs depending on what I feel like working on. I like doing all of those things so I'd probably go crazy if I was locked into just doing 1 of them and had no control over the rest of the project.

When I attempt this form of developing, it always tends to fall flat. I enjoy touching every aspect of my games. But the quality of code/animation/art/design that I can produce varies. And even if I want to focus on Game Design for a particular project, I may gravitate towards something like programming a tool, programming some AI, direction the audio design, or making art. Instead of what I set out to do, which was to make a well designed game.

When I close certain apps on my laptop, the whole computer hangs for a bit. I think it has to do with my switchable graphics and the drivers that Win10 gave me. The flash 19 debugger makes things hang for about a minute when I close it, so I'm pretty much over flash now.

At 10/6/15 12:35 AM, MSGhero wrote: When I close certain apps on my laptop, the whole computer hangs for a bit. I think it has to do with my switchable graphics and the drivers that Win10 gave me. The flash 19 debugger makes things hang for about a minute when I close it, so I'm pretty much over flash now.

Never mind. The hang happens when the gpu switches from the good one to the bad one, so I told the debugger to only use the bad one. Not that I even use the gpu with flash.

I feel like we need a discussion on The Beginner's Guide.

There's two points I want to tackle:
1. Fact or fiction? Is this a real story?
2. If 1 is true, then why is it being sold? For money?

Dunno if anyone else here has played it or been spoiled on it yet, so I'll leave it at that for now.
Though I'd say if you're into making games you should probably give it a look.

At 10/8/15 01:27 AM, egg82 wrote: I feel like we need a discussion on The Beginner's Guide.

He's truly the Banksy of game development.

At 10/8/15 01:27 AM, egg82 wrote: 2. If 1 is true, then why is it being sold? For money?

I've no idea if the game's story is based on fact, but even if it is a work of non-fiction, why should that preclude the possibility of profiting off of the telling of the story?

At 10/8/15 02:10 PM, Diki wrote: I've no idea if the game's story is based on fact, but even if it is a work of non-fiction, why should that preclude the possibility of profiting off of the telling of the story?

The story, sure. However he's also selling his old friend's games along with it.
Not only did he not get authorization for distributing the games (in fact Coda told him not to) - he actually sold those games.

I mean, let's be honest, the game is really nothing without them. The games are an integral part of the experience, and you can't argue that they're not being sold if the whole thing is being sold.

I would be really, really pissed if I were in Coda's shoes. Coda told him (explicitly, over and over, according to the story) not to distribute his games. Not only did he not listen (and that's what caused the whole fiasco in the first place, remember) but now he's not listening again and making a profit off of it.

I dunno. I get why and the reason behind it all, but at the same time it feels like a major dick-move.

Soo, yeah. I'm kinda hoping it's fiction, even though my experience is telling me it's probably not.

At 10/8/15 10:12 PM, egg82 wrote: The story, sure. However he's also selling his old friend's games along with it.
Not only did he not get authorization for distributing the games (in fact Coda told him not to) - he actually sold those games.

Ah, okay. I don't know anything about this game nor do I know who/what Coda is so I can't offer any opinion on that. I just thought you were taking umbrage with someone selling a non-fiction story, which would be stupid, but you weren't; disregard this crazy canuck.

At 10/8/15 10:40 PM, Diki wrote: Ah, okay. I don't know anything about this game nor do I know who/what Coda is so I can't offer any opinion on that. I just thought you were taking umbrage with someone selling a non-fiction story, which would be stupid, but you weren't; disregard this crazy canuck.

Haha. I'm hoping someone I can actually talk to plays it. I'd like to hear more opinions on it, because the whole game spawns quite a lot of discussion topics.
Plus, it's cheap and pretty short. 88 minutes seems about the average playtime for this one.

At 10/8/15 10:40 PM, Diki wrote:

At 10/8/15 10:12 PM, egg82 wrote: The story, sure. However he's also selling his old friend's games along with it.
Not only did he not get authorization for distributing the games (in fact Coda told him not to) - he actually sold those games.

Ah, okay. I don't know anything about this game nor do I know who/what Coda is so I can't offer any opinion on that. I just thought you were taking umbrage with someone selling a non-fiction story, which would be stupid, but you weren't; disregard this crazy canuck.

its 100% fiction the entire point of the game is that davey and coda are the same person

also I hated the game and though it was really pretentious most of the time.

maybe I would have found it more interesting if I "bought into the story" but its kinda hard to do that when davey's a person I actually know in real life (most full-time indie devs know each other from conventions and mailing lists and stuff)

At 10/9/15 12:34 AM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote: its 100% fiction the entire point of the game is that davey and coda are the same person

Then well done to Davey! He managed to fool a lot of people.
Stuff like that still does happen, though. For one reason or another relationships fall through and good developers stop going.

also I hated the game and though it was really pretentious most of the time.

Possibly because you already knew? It really doesn't come off as being pretentious to me at all, but looking back at it with the thought of "It's actually him" in mind it really seems that way.

maybe I would have found it more interesting if I "bought into the story" but its kinda hard to do that when davey's a person I actually know in real life (most full-time indie devs know each other from conventions and mailing lists and stuff)

I figured one of you guys had to have known something more about it. Glad to know now!

The game still has a few interesting topics it brings up, anyway.
Like, do games need to be playable to other people? Can they just be art? (What defines art, really?)
And finally, is it really okay if a game isn't meant to be played? By anyone?
I mean, that's just a set of questions I had in mind during one specific part, but that's a start.

I personally am more driven by making things and sharing things with and for other people. I think games should be playable by a gamer because that's a big part of the game. Otherwise, it would just be a movie or a book. Games require player interaction, and that's what differentiates them.

Dear Esther comes to mind again, with the whole "games is/as art" topic. The problem with that game is, again, the user interaction. It told a story and it did so.. Well enough, I'd say. The problem was it was boring. Like, really just boring. I had to force myself to finish it so I could get the story, and that was incredibly tedious.
(Speaking of tedious and waiting a long time to get the full story, MMOs anyone? I mean, what makes them special? It's the same thing but with more action, really.)

Two more items on a similar-yet-unrelated topic:

1. How do we effectively teach good game design and development from the ground-up? I know when I started out I learned everything wrong and had to start again years later.
2. Why do game devs quit? I mean, this is kinda a terrible question but there's a better question hidden under this one somewhere that I can't find because it's 1 AM.

It's not often that I optimize my code, but when I do it's for quantum computers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kTDmsNumVE&feature=youtube_video_deck

How in the fuck would you even begin to comprehend optimization for Schrodinger's PC?

"ALL of my bitwise operations are useless!"

I'm making some progress on my just-for-fun multiplayer roguelike game. There isn't much gameplay yet, but you can fight stuff, which consists of some simple dice rolls.

Do you guys know where I can find a list of fantasy sounding names ? "Kevin Williams" doesn't exactly sound like a hero.

I also have no idea how I'm going to do the procedural world generation, so if anyone has experience with that I would be interested to hear about it. I was reading about this technique which sounded interesting: http://shanee.io/blog/2015/09/25/procedural-island-generation/

At 10/10/15 09:36 PM, PrettyMuchBryce wrote: I'm making some progress on my just-for-fun multiplayer roguelike game. There isn't much gameplay yet, but you can fight stuff, which consists of some simple dice rolls.

Do you guys know where I can find a list of fantasy sounding names ? "Kevin Williams" doesn't exactly sound like a hero.

I also have no idea how I'm going to do the procedural world generation, so if anyone has experience with that I would be interested to hear about it. I was reading about this technique which sounded interesting: http://shanee.io/blog/2015/09/25/procedural-island-generation/

I'd want to play as Kevin Williams.

I'm doing proc gen in my game, but I really haven't gotten to the part where I'm actually genning anything besides pretty perlin grass on the ground. My biomes are assigned by "randomly splotching color" onto the map, and lakes and hills right now are randomly sized and placed. If you find or come up with something neat, let me know haha.

At 10/10/15 09:36 PM, PrettyMuchBryce wrote: Do you guys know where I can find a list of fantasy sounding names ? "Kevin Williams" doesn't exactly sound like a hero.

these two are pretty good.

I also have no idea how I'm going to do the procedural world generation, so if anyone has experience with that I would be interested to hear about it.

I always use generators based on Conway's Game of Life. Same concept, just tweaking it a bit.
I, at one point, had a script I threw together that generated this - it's probably still on my HDD somewhere if I can find it.

Edit: Man, everyone's posting cool stuff without me.
I've actually also been finishing up my framework (fixing bugs and making improvements) while developing a game I tried to make a few years ago. Not my concept/idea, but very much my code.
Do you like framerate?

At 10/10/15 09:50 PM, egg82 wrote: these two are pretty good

Ah thanks! I think I will snag some names from that second link.

At 10/10/15 09:45 PM, MSGhero wrote: I'm doing proc gen in my game, but I really haven't gotten to the part where I'm actually genning anything besides pretty perlin grass on the ground. My biomes are assigned by "randomly splotching color" onto the map, and lakes and hills right now are randomly sized and placed. If you find or come up with something neat, let me know haha.

Yeah this is similar to how I've done it in the past. Typically I've done something like a series of functions which run to try to place something on the map in various positions and sizes. This is bounded by some min and max number of the thing I'm trying to place, in addition to some counter which represents the number of times I'm willing to try to place it.

For example I'll try to place a mountain range of some certain size, but if the place I'm trying to place it is occupied, I will try again until I run out of tries. This approach works, but the results are sometimes pretty boring.

Also, writing procedural worldgen code can be pretty infuriating to debug considering it's all pretty random. This means you could get into some weird case where the worldgen actually crashes the game, but it only happens like 0.001% of the time. Argh! *Smashes computer*

EDIT: Speaking of which, this gives me an idea. I should be printing out the seed of each random world I generate incase this ever happens so that I can reproduce these types of issues. Derp.

At 10/11/15 01:22 PM, PrettyMuchBryce wrote: EDIT: Speaking of which, this gives me an idea. I should be printing out the seed of each random world I generate incase this ever happens so that I can reproduce these types of issues. Derp.

Right now, my seed comes from my current build version, so the swf will spit out the same map each time it's run. And the builds are sequential, so I can manually plug in "the number from 3 compiles ago" if I wanted to see that one again.

How you described the mountains is exactly how I'm doing hills and lakes, though the map is big enough that I let it run to completion rather than cutting it off after a certain number of failed iterations. If I could take "not boring looking" and turn that into an algorithm, I'd use that instead.

At 10/10/15 09:36 PM, PrettyMuchBryce wrote: I'm making some progress on my just-for-fun multiplayer roguelike game. There isn't much gameplay yet, but you can fight stuff, which consists of some simple dice rolls.

Do you guys know where I can find a list of fantasy sounding names ? "Kevin Williams" doesn't exactly sound like a hero.

I also have no idea how I'm going to do the procedural world generation, so if anyone has experience with that I would be interested to hear about it. I was reading about this technique which sounded interesting: http://shanee.io/blog/2015/09/25/procedural-island-generation/

I think it would be cool to have a main protagonist named like "Kevin Williams" whereas all other guys are names from fantasy generator :D

At 10/9/15 12:34 AM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote:

At 10/8/15 10:40 PM, Diki wrote:

At 10/8/15 10:12 PM, egg82 wrote: The story, sure. However he's also selling his old friend's games along with it.
Not only did he not get authorization for distributing the games (in fact Coda told him not to) - he actually sold those games.

Ah, okay. I don't know anything about this game nor do I know who/what Coda is so I can't offer any opinion on that. I just thought you were taking umbrage with someone selling a non-fiction story, which would be stupid, but you weren't; disregard this crazy canuck.

its 100% fiction the entire point of the game is that davey and coda are the same person

also I hated the game and though it was really pretentious most of the time.

maybe I would have found it more interesting if I "bought into the story" but its kinda hard to do that when davey's a person I actually know in real life (most full-time indie devs know each other from conventions and mailing lists and stuff)

I really enjoyed the game. It was obvious very quickly that it was all made up and it was an artsy piece, like you say. A tad pretentious, true, but I think it was quite unique, well put together and interesting.

I'm not sure all indie devs do know each other from conventions etc. Conventions are for a specific type of indie dev, I think there are just as many people who don't want to be part of that scene as there are those that do. Maybe 'famous' indie devs all know each other from these things, but that's because the fame or just being part of the community is one of the key motivations for those types of guys?

At 10/13/15 03:18 PM, Innermike wrote: and any other number of reasons that could apply to any number of other hobbies/occupations

Sup Mike.

It's innermike !

At 10/14/15 08:20 AM, Rustygames wrote: I'm not sure all indie devs do know each other from conventions etc. Conventions are for a specific type of indie dev, I think there are just as many people who don't want to be part of that scene as there are those that do. Maybe 'famous' indie devs all know each other from these things, but that's because the fame or just being part of the community is one of the key motivations for those types of guys?

conventions "and mailing lists and stuff", there's a big mailing list with like a thousand people on it, and a few smaller ones. networking a ton is sorta necessary if you want to make a living on it.

At 10/15/15 12:35 AM, CodeCrunch wrote: @Glaiel-Gamer so I guess you know the Undertale guy too?

nope seems like he kinda came out of nowhere

Maybe it is possible after all... 18yo solo MMO dev: http://store.steampowered.com/app/407700

Hey, any of you cuties in need for an artist?
I wanna become more active again.

Well I'm spending some free time working on the rogue-like game this weekend. This is what it looks like when you attack a town and capture it. The g's are guards. The C is the castle.

I picked better names thanks to egg82. No more Kevin Williams. Maybe I can leave him in as an easter egg.. since he is, of course, the true hero within us all.

I made a camera shake function because no good ones existed.

Still not sure if this one's good, but it looks okay at 12 FPS on this laptop

At 10/22/15 12:56 AM, Cordyceps wrote: Have you made progress on procedural generation yet? In my case, I designate a central point and have things generate along partial circle arcs, with some eccentricity expressed as a dice range. It works particularly well since I'm talking space environments, which conveniently typically orbit a central point. Stuff like mountain ranges would be pretty convincing if you had each instance designate a point at a random distance to draw the arc around.

That's a pretty neat idea. I saw this vid recently: http://gdcvault.com/play/1021877/Constructing-the-Catacombs-Procedural-Architecture where he talks about mocking up levels to find the underlying procgen rules, and that's where we are now. I'm concerned that differently seeded runs won't actually end up being all that different in terms of game feel, but like just making any procgen work is step 1.