darthbator

If you're talking about trello I believe you have to be invited.

This is the best thing that flappy bird has inspired! http://www.mrspeaker.net/dev/game/flappy/

I've used trello to manage game jam projects before. It actually works rather well!

Yeah I actually do agree with you. But context is king. There's a big difference between engaging with individuals and he screaming frothing mass that is current twitter/reddit. Statistics alone assure there are actual mentally ill people engauging with yo once you breach a certain volume. The context of the conversation on those sites it just... Not conducive to anything positive and in lots of ways I think that's a numbers thing.

I hope I hear awesome things and decide to play this! It's so extremely rare that DLC comes out that's good and that I feel motivated to play...

I don't actually think that interaction with the audience on a mass scale brings me anything. Pretty much anytime I even think about that I'm looking to appease my ego. I want to know people like what I make and by extension (somehow?) like me. I just prefer to steer clear from the entire mess. Even at it's best what it's offering me tantamount to masturbation.

I don't idle in enough IRC channels! We should probably make one of those so I can idle in it!!!

I honestly don't understand why creators engage the internet audience at all... This is a pretty good article on creators and internet engagement. I largely agree with the ideas therein. I used to be on twitter, now I'm not. It's really not a productive or positive thing. I can certainly understand the draw. Who wouldn't want to interact with people enjoying their work? Receive their feedback, their support, their adoration, perhaps the mutual respect of your peers whom you've never met otherwise! I do however think it's extremely naive to think people are not going to say complete horrible things to you. I'm not exactly a famous or polarizing figure but I'm no stranger to people telling me to eat the contents of the under side of my sink for reasons I'll never understand. The only thing that I really think can be done is to foster smaller communities like this one where people are generally positive and supportive. I don't think it's realistic to think that there is going to be some kind of sea change on the internet and twitter is just going to become some giant idle thumbs forum. That's why I'm here. Communities like this tend to not have the crazy social problems places like twitter has. Honestly I think a lot of it is about recognition. in smaller communities it's easier to be recognized without having to resort to being an extreme character. I think people find it hard to standout in places like twitter and reddit and end up lashing out horribly in order to just feel like someone is paying attention. I know I have behaved like that on the internet before....

I love physical games! I just think it's important to be honest about how extremely limited the exposure of physical games usually is.

Wait there are use able steam skins? Are there any really good ones? I love how big picture looks but i have thought that the traditional client could use an overhaul for quite some time!

Yup pretty much. You can totally tell that there are a bunch of Unity made platformers out there that just feel like junk cause they're using the physics engine to move the players object.

I think those sort of traditional combat design patterns can still be executed on super cleanly and enjoyably. The new Devil May Cry game has an enemy that does exactly what you are talking about (with the charge/avoid pattern) but the abilities dante has as well as the additional enemies in those encounters seems to add an additional layer of interest on top of the sort of traditional avoid and stomp 3 times routine.

How are you guys streaming? I noticed I don't have the same issues so many people are reporting. I've been doing all my streaming over 5ghz wireless N. When i pulled out the wifi tester I noticed I am actually the only 5Ghz signal in my area. I'm sure that's certainly helping my general wireless throughput!

I actually think this is most noticeable in spelunky. I've been streaming a good deal of PC games with "Steam in home streaming" lately. I actually just RMA'ed my main monitor so for the next week or so it's pretty much the only way I'll be playing. I was actually able to make it through most of the new tomb raider and through a few levels of the new DmC without feeling any really noticeable input latency. However when I switch to something like spelunky or nihdogg that input/display latency becomes totally palpable. I'm pretty sure it just has to do with the kinds of games those are (high frame rate extremely responsive 2d games). That's really the only time I could feel the streaming latency hurting the gameplay in a tangible way. I gotta admit playing Tomb Raider as rendered by my PC on my Macbook is one of the most futuristic feeling things I've done since I first put on the occulus rift! I actually think the streaming works so well I have considered building a little stream machine to live by my TV. I was thinking something like this would be more then powerful enough to decode the video stream in a timely fashion!

If I am hungover I tend to smoke some pot to kind of numb the pain/quell the stomach tumbling. Then I'm headed to the closest place that servers the greasiest breakfast I can possibly find. I prefer that they wrap this breakfast in a burrito if at all possible! Then I'm probably going home to take a nap. Maybe this is not a positive thing to say but I drink often enough that it takes a LOT to give me any kind of noticeably debilitating hangover.

What the hell is a good salad dressing? I'm trying to eat a salad at least one meal of the day but I've found that I find most salad dressings totally disgusting. I tend to just throw some oil and vinegar on there and just call it a day but that's starting to get REALLY boring. Just some background. I tend to absolutely hate creamy sauces on/in most things. Things like ranch basically smell like a bucket of mold to me...

Yup! I got the 3.0 version of that book a few years ago. Is there a version of it for Unity 4.0? Looks like no Looks like Will says that he is putting addendums to the book for the 4.0+ versions of the editor on his site (http://unitybook.net/) while he works on the 4.0 version! Really I think everything in the programming sections of the book will be fine unaltered. The real differences are in the new animation and particle systems (mecanim and shuriken respectively). The current version of the book covers what are now considered to be "legacy" systems for those 2 facets.

Sprite tiling is a pretty big one. I personally don't really use their implementation of Box2D. I have an old system that I use that raycasts off of anchor points on an object (a Sprite class here) and then detects collisions that way. It's how I was making stuff back when I was using 2dToolkit and I still find that method feels the best. Lots of Unity's examples use the physics model to do everything. I don't think there is a way to make direct control communicated to the controlled object via physics forces feel "good" in the way a traditional 2D game feels good (using either Box2D or using 3D objects and PhysX). If you want to do that I would highly recommend coding your own bounding/collision system and then moving the transform of your character.

This is out now? Do we have any community impressions yet? I should be watching that quicklook!!

I'm pretty sure I'm done with the new Tomb Raider game... I think there's a lot of good things going for that game but it's just sort of dull and it's story is EXTREMELY stupid. I do love/hate their crazy frantic camera and I think their game is absolutely beautiful. I mean that thing looks completely amazing.

I have some friends that are basically running a Native American gang in that game. They all run around together and do strange stuff like replace the doors on peoples homes with their own doors and then show up when they know they're awake in the middle of the game night and come out of the hills whooping like the savages from blood meridian or something. Then they flood into their own unlocked door and just murder everyone inside... So yeah, murder simulator....

I've worked in the game industry most of my life. Not just my adult life, pretty much my entire life. I actually dropped out of high school to take a job with THQ back in 1999. I was 17 years old and am 99% sure I am the youngest person who was ever hired by the company. After reading that sentence you should almost surely regard me as a complete idiot and maybe should not take any of my advice? I may have a twisted perspective but I think working conditions as well as the work itself is about a billion times better then when I started in this industry. However you do have to understand how to choose your jobs. I have turned down "video game" work to do far less exciting programming or technical infrastructure work because I knew what those particular game jobs would entail. Lets just say that there are a lot of studios out there who understand how enthusiastic some of us are about making games and have no qualms exploiting that. Oh yeah breaking into the industry! Here's some solid advice, don't try and be a game designer, don't try and be a producer. There is basically always a glut of studios looking for programmers, modelers, artists, audio engineers, IT people, etc. Now at those studios of the people currently doing those jobs probably 20-25% are trying to be game designers or creative directors and are simply leveraging their existing skills to get closer to that goal. The chances of you coming and landing that job with little to no experience and no history with the studio is extremely poor. However most people I talk to at conferences are looking to be designers or producers almost exclusively. My big advice to anyone really wanting to break into the industry is to work on developing actual functional technical skills that help get things onscreen and functioning inside the software, and then worrying about your perspectives on narrative dissonance and compulsion loops. Lots of people who tell me they want to work in this industry are completely in love with that theoretical angle and seem to somehow dismiss the fact that it's a HUGE amount of work to actually prototype and implement those ideas to find out if the theory you've come up with is actually something that's fun.

I'm not experienced with game maker so I can't really comment on that. Ever since Unity added a native 2D workflow I personally would recommend just using that. Unity is seriously the "baby bear" of video game development tools. They get almost everything "just right". It's powerful enough to do really anything that you can think of and is intuitive enough to actually get it done with a minimal amount of work. I think there is an initial bar of complication to get over. Even using other game dev tools for a long time the component interface inside Unity made little functional sense to me in the first 2-3 months of using it. But their youtube channel is seriously amazing. I started in Unity 3.0 by using Will Goldstone's learning Unity book. I would recommend just about everyone go through the newest edition until you get bored and feel like you can make a thing. I think I finished about 11-13 chapters of the book before I decided to just start doing my own thing. He does an excellent job of instilling foundational knowledge in that book. Will also is now one of the heads of Unity's education program so lots of the youtube stuff is him or his team.

Evil is IMO the wrong word. I think it's generally reductive, maybe absolutely so. At it's absolute best, free to play is burden less and mitigates the cost of entry. In most cases the free to play and in app purchases are considered as part of the design of the game. As was noted earlier I can't think of a case where in app purchases and appointment times have been used to actually effectively add depth or strategy to the game play loops they exist within. Therefore I would say in pretty much all observed occurrences of the model it is reductive to the joy/fun of the core game design. It pretty much exclusively frustrates most "traditional" game players in most implementations. Especially those with appointment times.

I make stuff at game jams pretty frequently. Since I started my last job I have gotten pretty lazy about actually posting any of those projects to the net (and the latest 3 are all dumb little occulus rift games so their audience is hardly huge). I would love to participate in whatever limited fashion that I can (time allowing). I have a fair amount of experience in game development both professional and independently. At this point I just recommend unity to everyone. I don't really see the point in making small indie stuff in any other engine (other then maybe twine). The editor is just so well fleshed out and easy to work with and the platform is such common knowledge with so many people. I think that competency and skill inside the unity editor and with the component system is very valuable. I think you'll find most people spinning up small/indie projects will be using unity and knowledge of the "unity way" (mainly how the component system functions IMO) will allow you to just jump into projects.