GameDev

I working on an open source life simulation game with the working title Project Harmonia using Bevy.

Now walls are separate meshes and take full advantage of ECS, including change detection to rebuild only changed parts.

The new approach also automatically fixed some bugs and enabled instant update of other walls that were affected by currently spawning wall.

I working on an open source life simulation game with the working title Project Harmonia using Bevy.

It was an interesting task and I learned a lot about how meshes are represented internally.

Initially I used 8 vertices for each wall. But then I discovered that if I needed a different color and normal for each side, then I needed a different vertex! So I reworked the mesh generation to make 20 vertices per mesh (for each side with no bottom).

I have finally finished made my website. Its not perfect but its decent at best to get my devlogs out there. So for the mean time i will be posting there instead of lemmy unless its for stuff like getting people to try out builds n such. But ill be posting links to my website when a new one comes. Website https://geartowarddev.xyz

After a bit, I got more motivation to work on my own game. It is a Cyberpunk Metroidvania. Story is still being made but it won't be very detailed. Very basic story. I am going for the mix of Dead Cells and Hollow Knight but the combat very close to Devil May Cry with weapon switching (Or styles). There isn't much to go through but just concept art and sketches. I'm making my own website so I can do a devlog on it. Very slow progress but I can't wait to continue working on this. More art here: MC: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/868977206838321193/1196292661288636556/2024-01-14_21-01-1705288760.jpg?ex=65b7195c&is=65a4a45c&hm=9bc0c2a20b612aa37296e9fb5dbf69e72f0455403210653e4a8274bc9e00acb4& UI concept art: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1180669367244046357/1196556452265996331/2024-01-15_14-01-1705351670.jpg?ex=65b80f09&is=65a59a09&hm=4f177a463de342dd5c7fa0d7b46cd3b54abb4b687819b4e92c0f913ad0428b17&`___`^___^

The page was just made so not a lot of sign ups, but last year was a great success and I hope lots of people join this year!

https://itch.io/jam/games-for-blind-gamers-2

(I'm not an organizer, I just volunteer to help)

Hello all, I hope this doesn't count as spam or promotion. If that's the case please remove the post.

I finished a couple hours ago a little game for a jam, and I'd like to have some feedback on it.

It's a bullet hell game, where your ammo is also your health. Absorbing enemy bullet to multiply your own reserve is fundamental, as it will increase both shooting time, damage and survivability.

Some friends tried it and they liked it, but their opinion might be biased. Having strangers evaluate it might actually be better.

Here's the link if you have some free time, it's free! https://zenmar.itch.io/power-wings

Thanks!

Plus switching from the subscription model to a one-time fee for commercial PC-only license. Nice.

I enjoyed this part of the announcement:

We have seen other platforms making awkward moves with their pricing and terms, so we thought, what if we did the opposite

I wonder who they could possibly be referencing 🤔

I've been working on this game as my hobby project the past week

I decided to stop abandoning projects and discipline myself on actually making one. I'll show more info soon

For people who want to read instead of making coffee while listening (or more details), the actual release notes: https://bevyengine.org/news/bevy-0-12/

This was a fun game to make, it's short, and you'll probably finish it in an hour or so. I think it's good some good scares and tricky puzzles! If you try it out, let me know!

Usually coats $19.95.

I slept for most of this offer apparently but it's still available for nine and a half hours as of time of posting! You can claim it with your Itch account then download it later.

As the man himself says, "Get all my game assets in a single bundle, great for learning new engines 👀"

Looking for good resources on scanning mostly flat textures. Tried to use a photograph of a tatami mat and had a lot of problems with the lens distortion. I don't own any professional photo equipment so I have to use my Pixel 6 camera. I have a couple of Ideas but I'm not really sure how to tackle the problem. Using a 3d scan app / photogrametry could be an option, but I have yet to find a fitting application. Another approach could be using a handheld scanner, but the surface has to be relatively flat. A brick wall for example would be problematic.

What is your folks workflow for capturing textures?

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/2647820

Full release notes here

Eldiron is currently under active development and a v1 is planned for 2023. Eldiron is open source and licensed under the MIT.

Features of v1

• Support games similar to Ultima 4 / 5 or any game which uses a rectangular grid layout.
• Either render tiles directly or in 2.5D using the built in raycaster. Games can switch between the two modes at runtime or display both at the same time (for example use the tiles view as a mini-map).
• Eldiron comes with integrated tile-maps or your can use your own square tiles with up to four levels of transparency.
• Single-player or multi-player experiences. Eldiron has a sophisticated multi-threaded server architecture to allow for as many player or NPC characters as possible.
• Procedural dungeons and regions using a dedicated node system.
• Cross platform. Eldiron is written in Rust and can nearly run everywhere, i.e. on the Web, macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android etc. Eldiron Creator can run on any desktop.
• A sophisticated behavior node graph makes creation of AI behavior for NPCs easy. The node system is backed by a full-featured scripting language.
• Eldiron Creator has editors for tile-maps, regions and node based graphs for character behavior, systems (like crafting), items and the overall game logic.

Retro top-down and isometric perspectives as well as low-poly meshes will be supported post v1.

Join the community on Discord to get in contact.

Goals

• Being able to create games similar to the RPGs of the 80's and 90's.
• Support single-player or multi-player games and even MMOs.
• Over time support more perspectives like top-down and isometric.

I'll start.

I worked for an audio company for about twelve years, called Sensaura. We were developing device drivers for Windows, back in the days of Windows 95 etc.

Our software allowed games to use 3D audio on different speaker configurations including stereo and headphones. We'd get sent hardware to test on, and eventually games in beta to see if our drivers would work with them.

When the audio sound card market dried up - as sound cards became integrated onto motherboards - we switched to game audio API, we called it GameCODA. Black and White used it, and we might have been a competetitor to FMOD and wwise.

However, Creative bought us and shut us down after two years and some of us moved on. My next job was in audio at Codemasters - I was there for four years!

After a decade I'm back in the games industry, just not in audio.

Games as an industry did not exist when I started; it was all text based games like adventure, moria, rogue and nethack. I do remember early consoles with pong, asteroids and so on.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/292225

Wtf that hairdo at the beginning...

WHAT IS WITH THAT HAIRDO?!?!?!?!!

Anyway, it was 'ight.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/286900

Anyone played the game yet?

If so, how is it?

I have this idea for a certain game development tool, but before I start another side project I want to check if something similar already exists.

An important part of game development is fine-tuning numeric values. You have some numbers that govern things like character motion, weapon impact, enemy AI, or any other game mechanic. For most of these there is no "correct" value that can be calculated (or even verified!) with some algorithm - you have to manually try different values and converge to something that "feels right".

The most naive way to fine-tune these numbers is to have them as hard-coded values, tweak them in code, and re-run the game every time you change them. This, of course, is a tedious process - especially if you have to go through long build times, game loading, and/or gameplay to reach a state where you can test these values (that last hurdle can often be skipped by programming in a special entry point, but that too can get tedious)

A better way would be to write these numbers in configuration file(s) which the game can hot-reload - at least while in development mode. That way you can just edit the file and save it, and the game will reload the new values. This is a huge improvement because it skips the building/loading/preparing which can drastically shorten the cycles - but it's still not perfect because you have to constantly switch between the game and the configuration file.

Sometimes you can use the game engine editor to tweak these while the game is running, or create your own UI. This makes the context switches hurt less, and also lets you use sliders instead of editing textual numbers, but it's still not perfect - you still have to switch back and forth between the game controls and the tweaking interface.

Which brings us to my idea.

What I envision is a local fine-tuning server. The server will either update configuration files which the game will hot-reload, or the game could connect to it via WebSocket (or some other IPC. But I like WebSocket) so that the server could push the new values to it as they get updated.

After the server deduces the structure of the configuration (or read it from a schema - but providing a schema may usually be a overkill) you could use its webapp UI to configure how the values would be tweaked. We usually want sliders, so you'll need to provide a range - even if the exact value is hard to determine, it's usually fairly easy to come up with a rough range that the value must be in (how high can a human jump? More than 5cm, less than 5m). You will also decide for each slider if it's linear or logarithmic.

The server, of course, will save all that configuration so that you won't have t reconfigure it the next time you want to tweak values (unless there are new values, in which case you'll only have to configure the sliders for them)

Since this would be a server, the tweaking of the values could be done from another device - preferably something with a touchscreen, like a smartphone or a tablet, because tweaking many sliders is easier with a touchscreen. So you have the game running on your PC/console, gamepad in hand (or keyboard+mouse, if that's your thing), and as you play you tweak the sliders on the touchscreen until you get them just right.

Does anyone know if a similar tool already exists?

This one goes out to the hobbyists and the solo devs, as I’d guess anyone employed in the industry is already using such basics.

But it does seem to be a particular problem among less experienced game developers, to avoid using version control (also known as source control) and risk losing progress if not their entire project.

Just in the last few weeks I’ve seen a video from a well-known indie dev admitting he got himself into a tangle through not using it, another one with a guy trying to make a game in a weekend only to have his files irretrievably corrupted on the last night. And endless Discord conversations in which someone has lost a significant amount of work and needs to be talked down from a ledge.

Plus it came up in the game jam advice thread, so it’s been on my mind and I thought it deserved its own post.

Why is this so prevalent in game dev? I have a few ideas, mostly around misunderstandings and perceived complexity. But it’s a bit heartbreaking to see people lose such huge chunks of work, not to mention demotivating for the person involved, so a PSA it is!

Why you should be using version control

• Backups - Each commit is an emergency backup of your code at a particular point in time. Hard drive fails? Well, luckily you’ve only lost the work done since you pushed the last commit. Note: I do recommend taking regular backups to store elsewhere and not relying on just this, but it’s a good start.
• Experimentation & rollback - You can feel free to try new things, break stuff, safe in the knowledge that if it all sets on fire you can just roll back to the last commit and pretend nothing happened.
• Teamwork - Sharing code and working together without overwriting stuff can be a bit of a nightmare. Version control helps to prevent issues and keep things running smoothly in a team situation.
• Branches - Maybe you’re working in a team and want to try adding a new feature without bothering anyone else. Or maybe you’re working solo but want to keep your wild experiments separate to your stable codebase. Either way, sorted.
• Paper trail - Ever discovered an obscure bug and wondered when it crept in and how (or maybe even whodunnit)? Now you can find out.
• Versioning - Clue’s in the name really, but once you start thinking about game releases and versions the ability to differentiate between stable release branch and work-in-progress branch is gonna come in clutch.
• And probably plenty other reasons that I can’t think of right now off the top of my head but hopefully you get the idea.

How to get started

There are two things you’ll need to start, the actual version control software and a place to host your project.

The most popular source control software is Git, and the most popular host is Github. Honestly you might as well learn these first because even if you decide to move to an alternative later, they’re massively popular in the industry and most teams and places of work will expect this knowledge anyway.

This post is long enough already without trying to add an actual tutorial in here but info on the exact process is easy enough to find. You’re smart, you’ll do fine.

You can interact with your project through the command line, but you can also install a more user-friendly GUI. The two most popular tend to be SourceTree and Github Desktop.

You can also find engine-specific help and .gitignore files etc online, so do make sure to search for those.

Before you start your next project. Before you work on that new feature for your work-in-progress game. Before you lose something you’d really rather not have lost. Please, please use version control.

End post.