Game Development

Check out a story about thought processes going awry after ecstasy born from early successes and personal issues hitting.

Still, I decided to release the result of my work so far as a prototype for Fuck Capitalism Jam 2024, to be worked on in the future until it is done. Alongside part 1, which was basically developed within the time frame anyway, and is more than fitting for the theme as well.

cross-posted from: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/16600744

My first game just entered Open Beta Test - turn based strategy with toy army men - Bedroom Battlegrounds

Hello all, I'm happy to announce that I've just opened beta test for my first Steam game release, which will be available between 30.05 and 02.06.

This is a turn based strategy game, where you play with toy army men trying to conquer your opponent on the other side of the room. Available in single player mode against the AI, or local multiplayer, also via Steam Remote Play.

Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2776110/Bedroom_Battlegrounds/

I'd be very happy to hear your feedback, which you can send over here, or through a dedicated feedback form. https://forms.office.com/r/nvt7vAz9kF Your feedback will play a crucial role in enhancing the game before releasing the demo for the upcoming Steam Next Fest, and subsequently full version of the game later this year.

Looking forward to hear your feedback. Happy conquering!

As most of us play games, we sometimes encounter elements or routines that suck all the fun from a shipped product. They can be a dealbreaker, so it's better to be aware of them. I'd exclude platinum challenges and MTX as they are their own beasts, and start with a couple of examples I hated in older titles:

• NFS: Hot Pursuit (2010). Before and after you enter a race, there are motivational unskippable cutscenes about your rating and unlocked vehicles. Instead of inspiring me to play more, it felt like visiting the web without an adblocker. Although it plays nice on Linux and I liked how vehicles drive, I deleted it after a couple of hours.

• NFS: Underground. Besides a difficulty slider you have before every track, there's a trend to make every other race longer. 6+ 1.5 minute laps become a chore and make you notice how broken and random it is under the hood. The strenght of the game in the short flashy arcade runs, but as devs couldn't find any way to make it more difficult, they make it a useless test of endurance.

• TES: Skyrim. Lots of quests are built on a premise of making you explore the global map more without any means of transportation, unlike Morrowind. They probably assumed there'd be some, or that fast travel would solve this, but I remember this one time I was to take the head from the witch and this region was completely unexplored at that time, and there was no obvious way but going there by foot.

• CoD 2+. Replenishing health is a cool mechanic, but it isn't followed by a repercussion for sitting and recharging. Finite number of enemies makes it trivial. I feel like something akin to WW2 southern front could've used the mechanic of endless onslaught before you complete the objective.

• FarCry. It've began as a tacticool shooter where you can choose where to start your infiltration, and it was good at that, but after introducing aliens it went weird. The latter levels are close-quarter skirmishes where only savescumming is a viable strategy. Game loses it's primal value to scale the difficulty in a wrong way once again.

What's your examples of wrong decisions?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/15508679

Had to share with this community, I decided for my second game to just rip off the band-aid and I entered a game jam targeted at beginners. I placed 3rd - with 1st and 2nd going to more seasoned game developers. I never imagined that, going in, I would be on the pedestal. I just have to thank everyone that participates in game development and indie gaming as a community - including you, reading this.

If you are curious and want to check it out:

The games ranked by overall score

The game itself

A devlog looking back at my first jam experience

Hi everyone, I feel like making a little tower defense game next weekend, and I figure I'll see if anyone wants to make it a party - join the jam and get in on the fun :)

A comment on one of those "What's a good game concept you wish existed?" posts got me thinking. It described a game where you start out as OP and slowly lose your stats and gear as the game progresses. They suggested a Fallen champion type theme. This got me thinking about roguelikes, speed runners, and hardcore mode together. If a roguelike added a hardcore mode where you create a character and the character is deleted on death, that wouldn't last very long. However, if the hardcore mode was flipped and a new character had every stat and item maxed out then the player would almost certainly beat the game. Now the goal is to see how many times you can beat the game without dying. The catch would be each time you beat the game you are allowed to reduce your stats or delete your gear. This will mean a Run tracker would be impressive for 2 reasons: how fast it was and how little gear was used. The hardcore aspect would take into account the number of runs risked with the same character. If the amount of power reduction was capped for each run then it would take a few times to get low enough to be impressive and each consecutive run gets more and more risky. Anyway, this seems anxiety-inducing enough to be fun to play and watch. Then the "God Gamers" (ft. Sp4zie) would compete with each other to see how weak you can be to beat the game.

Xposted on the other site

Anybody have tips for planning linear/dungeon maps? I'm currently trying to create a metroidvania map and so far, I've done a rough map of my start and my hazard areas. I'm mainly concerned with how to guide players through the map with minimal ui aid, but any help is great!

Are there testable demos for alternative game engines?

Hello everyone.

I am getting interest in alternative game engines like Open3D Engine, Godot, Flax, Stride, Bevy, etc...
But I'm surprised how hard it is to find any "playable" demos of these. The only things I was able to find were screenshots and videos, but no proper executable that shows off their performance...
Do you know any demo for any alternative engine (by alternative, I mean, not Unreal or Unity) ?

Thank you :-)
(this is my first post on an ActivityPub community, sorry if I didn't post it the right way)

@gamedev@lemmy.ml @gamedev@lemmy.blahaj.zone @gamedev@programming.dev

Are there testable demos for alternative game engines?

Hello everyone.

I am getting interest in alternative game engines like Open3D Engine, Godot, Flax, Stride, Bevy, etc...
But I'm surprised how hard it is to find any "playable" demos of these. The only things I was able to find were screenshots and videos, but no proper executable that shows off their performance...
Do you know any demo for any alternative engine (by alternative, I mean, not Unreal or Unity) ?

Thank you :-)
(this is my first post on an ActivityPub community, sorry if I didn't post it the right way)

@gamedev@lemmy.ml @gamedev@lemmy.blahaj.zone @gamedev@programming.dev

The discovery mechanisms at work behind the scenes on Steam, which inputs matter, and how Valve approaches the operation of a PC platform where any kind of game can find its audience.

PDF version available here.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/757879

Video is 7:25 minutes long. Check it out.

Does anyone plan to get Assassin's Creed Mirage as well? Anyone else a fan of Assassin's Creed like I am?

Unity frustrates devs with extra fees.

"SAG-AFTRA is standing up to tyranny on behalf of its members,” stated president Fran Drescher.

Just out of curiosity: is anyone here using Love2D and Lua for game development? I have some experience with Unity but sometime ago started learning Love2D. Lua seems to very simple language to code in and since Love2D doesn't have any graphical UI it sort of forces you to make everything work through code. As a beginner hobbyists, I really love this.

I'd love to hear your thoughts about Love2D and what it's capable of. Currently I am interested in doing asmall Snake-like puzzle game and a demo for classic Ultima type crpg. Not really full games, but I am sort of interested in seeing how well certain concepts and ideas work in practice. Lua seems to be very good for doing just that.

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/1086370

This time on my arbitrary blog: Entity component systems.

Also, highlight.js should degrade more gracefully without JS activated than last time. Note that I can't process syntax highlighting in my build step, because I don't have a build step.

EDIT: improved phrasing