clyde

Amateur Game Making Night

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It's an interesting idea and I've loved the concept of stat triangles ever since I was introduced to them by Uprising, but actually trying to move and shoot while changing my stats at the same time results in a "Rubbing your stomach while patting your head" effect that I just can't deal with. Maybe if changing your stats was a special move triggered by a button press with a cooldown rather than the game allowing/expecting the player to do it in real time it would be easier to handle.

Of course, the problem could just be that I suck.

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I think this'd be more interesting if the ship was controlled by some sort of AI, and your changes in statistics would affect the priority of different actions the AI might take. That way you could also add even more stat-modification mechanics and not have to suffer the problem Lork describes (which is a very real problem).

 

Not sure if that'd be fun, though.

 

Also it'd be worlds harder to code, whoa.

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It's an interesting idea and I've loved the concept of stat triangles ever since I was introduced to them by Uprising, but actually trying to move and shoot while changing my stats at the same time results in a "Rubbing your stomach while patting your head" effect that I just can't deal with. Maybe if changing your stats was a special move triggered by a button press with a cooldown rather than the game allowing/expecting the player to do it in real time it would be easier to handle.

Of course, the problem could just be that I suck.

 

I've never heard of Uprising, but based on screenshots, it looks like their concept is really similar to mine!

 

I think this'd be more interesting if the ship was controlled by some sort of AI, and your changes in statistics would affect the priority of different actions the AI might take. That way you could also add even more stat-modification mechanics and not have to suffer the problem Lork describes (which is a very real problem).

 

Not sure if that'd be fun, though.

 

Also it'd be worlds harder to code, whoa.

 

Having the statistics affect AI is a really awesome idea, but I think it's a little bit out of the scope of my current project and skill-level. I'm definitely putting that idea in storage for future projects.

 

Also, I kind of like the 'rub your belly, pat your head' aspect of this system. I think I can design game play that makes it feel wacky and fun rather than frustratingly difficult.

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Progress Report for week #10 

 

What were my goals for the week?

What are my goals for week #10?
-Rest and enjoy my musical ball toy/game.

 

Which of my goals did I accomplish?

-I rested a lot, physically and from making games too. I slept a ton. In fact, it was weird because I couldn't figure out when I've been making games. I would get up, go to work, come home, take a nap, play a few rounds of Titanfall, eat something, talk with Capt. Hastings for a bit and go to sleep. Where is the time to make games when I am making them? 

Another thing I noticed is that I have been in a foul mood this week. I've felt impatient and angry. The hallucination is that everyone is taking advantage of each other and I just want everyone else to do everything for me so that I can sit back and do whatever I want all the time. While this is probably true, it's an overly simplistic generalization that makes me feel like a rotten miser and it's miserable. Oh look, "miser" and "miserable" are likely related; neat. 

I'm really looking forward to working on games again this week. One of the reasons is because I wonder how much of my shitty week had to do with some form of withdrawal from concentrating on making games during my free moments. It might be unrelated, but we will see. 

There were some positive effects of rest. I was able to step back and think about how much I progressed in ten weeks. I was moving the goal-posts so often for my personal expectations that I easily lost track of my general motivations to be able to create in this medium and just grow a maker's appreciation for the form. My thoughts this week were far more specific than this, but I can't remember what they were. I'll try... let's see.. I thought about monetization during the beginning of the week. This is a difficult concept for me since I think money is evil. I think this quotation by Dr Cornel West in his 2001 preface for Race Matters best communicates how I feel about the subject in general:

 

The major culprit of democratic possibilities here and abroad is the ever-expanding market culture that puts everything and everyone up for sale. The expansion of corporate power is driven by this pervasive commercialization and commodification for two basic reasons. First, market activities of buying and selling, advertising and promoting weaken nonmarket activities of caring and sharing, nurturing and connecting. Short-term stimulation and instant titillation edge out quality relations and substantive community. Second, private aims trump public aspirations. Individual success -- sometimes at any cost by any means -- downplays fair and just transactions so workers' and citizens power is weakened. And no democracy can survive, no matter how strong its markets are, without a serious public life and commitment to fairness and justice. 

 

I want to make sure that I am promoting nonmarket activities such as caring and sharing, nurturing and connecting. I want to encourage quality relations and substantive community. I thought a lot about how I could acquire funds in such a way that I do this. It's a weird thing since money is basically just the power to tell other people to do work for you. As I try to think of sources of income that would actually promote things like community and proselytism of increasing the capability of others, I have to keep my priorities clear, otherwise I end up creating a complex illusion that I am doing something that I am not doing.  I didn't come to any conclusions, I'm just trying to give y'all an example of what I was thinking about during a rest-period. I suspect that I would not have wandered into these considerations without rest. 

Accomplished!

 

-I played a ton of my musical ball game. It's really fun. I tend to place the 3/2 platform and the 1/2 platform in a funnel shape and then instantiate balls above it so it bounces back and forth. It typically creates a tune that is novel at first, but is totally stuck in my head now. I made the pitch-changing platforms into prefabs just because I wanted to be able to use more. I haven't made that build yet. I also got some responses from friends who played it. On two occasions, they did not realize that you are supposed to click on the blank green space. They spent the entire time rotating platforms and being polite. This brings me to my goals for week #11.

Accomplished!

 

What are my goals for week #11?

 

-Make some improvements to the musical ball game.

I don't know which ones I will get to, but here is a partial list of improvements I'd like to make:

. Make it so platforms are horizontally scalable prefabs that can be instantiated intuitively. I can do interesting stuff with more platforms, that's kinda how I can make songs.

. I'd like to have the capability to position the balls while they remain kinematic and then switch physics on so that they all fall at the same time, intuitively.

. I need to put something in the game that encourages people to click on the blank screen. I don't want written instructions. The best idea I have is to have something flying around that they might try to catch, a pop-up that they want to close, or a sewing pattern in the shape of a ball painted on the background. I don't have any good ideas. Does anyone have any ideas how to encourage people to click on the background so that they instantiate a ball without explicit instruction?

. I could do a lot with this game. Eventually I can design levels that dynamically create songs when solved, but right now the sandbox portion seems to be the thing to develop. I'm considering some new types of objects such as a cannon that can shoot balls away, little animated characters that walk in and steal balls or whatever, maybe a placeable object that destroys balls on contact. 

. I don't intend to do all of these this week, just start doing a few of them.

 

-I have some other things I'd like to do, but they should remain a low priority. 

. I'd like to build a sequencer.

. I still want to work on the visual novel dialogue-system. It's almost ready for general use and I feel ashamed that I haven't made a narrative game yet.

 

What challenges might I face and how can I prepare for them?

-I found mold in the attic. I'm kinda freaked out about it. I'll have to make some progress in that area this week. This is both a distraction and something that will compete for my limited time.

-The grass is starting to grow which means that someone will have to mow it.

-I've stuck to using the left mouse button and the mouse position exclusively. I can think of ways to scale the platforms such as dragging the platform (rather than the button on it), but making that intuitive is a difficult matter. I may have to simply put more things on the screen and give them simplistic idiosyncratic uses. Maybe adding a handle to the platform will inform the player that it has an additional ability to permute.

- Making a switch for balls being kinematic might have unknown consequences since the isKinematic bool is currently being used a fair amount in my script. It may not be a problem. If it is, I think I can just declare an additional bool that will allow for further circumstances.

- I haven't come up with any brilliant ideas of how to get people to click on the screen. Why do people click on empty screens? I do it just because I assume something will happen. How can I get people who are not me to assume something will happen when they click on the screen. No idea. I think other people will have better ideas for this than me, I'll ask around if I don't get suggestions here.

-As far as adding new types of things to the screen, I don't want to clutter it up. I have two potential solutions for this. 

1. If the objects that are already on the screen can be transformed by gameplay, then that would add to discoverability and keep things looking clean.

2. I could have little characters wander in forming a specific theme for the game. They could have their own abilities. This would be neat, but it would also require a lot of effort and I'm concerned that players would become frustrated by not getting the abilities they want immediately and reloading the game constantly for a preferable seed. 

 

So here we go, let's see what I manage to accomplish during week #11 yay!

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So about 6 years ago I started to make electronic music kind of compulsively. A lot of it is really weird and probably off-putting, but you're all free to use any of it in your games if you want to. I'm gonna be slowly uploading the hundred or so songs I made here on my Soundcloud.

 

I would be interested in collaborating with people and composing new stuff as well.

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You don't know the half of it. I used that as my avatar on a different forum way back when. It started as a normal Danny Glover headshot, but then I slowly changed the picture little by little over the course of months until it reached it's current melty form. People didn't notice until about week 4, and even then no one could agree if my avatar had always been like that or not. Good times.

 

I only have MS Paint, so I just used the select tool and stretch different parts out. It's amazing how something so simple and lo-fi can be so disorienting.

 

 

 

For those who are now afraid to click my link, it's just a picture of Danny Glover stretched weird.

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Yesterday I added a gun to my game, so holding right click draws the weapon and left click fires if it's drawn. Like Gunpoint. And it leaves a mark on the wall and spawns a particle effect and stuff.

 

Having trouble getting it to replicate properly though!

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Huh. I was just a couple weeks ago thinking about making a little game/toylike this. Guess I decided to read a post in this thread for the first time at just the RIGHT time so now I don't have to. (I think I still will.)

 

Have you ever seen Ball Droppings? http://balldroppings.com/js/

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Huh. I was just a couple weeks ago thinking about making a little game/toylike this. Guess I decided to read a post in this thread for the first time at just the RIGHT time so now I don't have to. (I think I still will.)

 

Have you ever seen Ball Droppings? http://balldroppings.com/js/

 

No, it's beautiful though. I think the pitch is determined by velocity? I've played Sounddrop on the iphone, which has a similar set up (though the default is much slower which seems to affect the process of composition).

I've also played

 which has different similarities (the inherent pitch of the ball changes when it bounces on the platform). But I give the
the most credit for inspiring me. The major difference in Hanenbow is that the angle of the platform determines the pitch.

 

I played a lot with my game this morning, and I really want to focus on the idea that all the notes in the chromatic scale are created by multiplying pitches by 1/2, 3/2, and 2.  I'm struggling with creating a intuitive interface with which to experiment with the toy. I'd like the game to have more of a setting-up-dominoes type of feel. 

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here's some video

 

Very evocative, I also love the esthetic of the intro. What are you going to do with it?

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There are a few avenues I'm lookin' down simultaneously with it but I'm also increasingly thinking that making games in that visual style might be just going to be my Thing now, like the way Brendon Chung's got that consistent look between Citizen Abel games. I find it super rewarding how quickly I can make stuff and just leave it and still love how it looks rather than making relatively realistic looking stuff and taking heaps of time on it.

 

One of the ideas I am looking at right now is kind of a weird first person multiplayer thing where two players have a fairly typical action movie style deathmatch, and then a third player shows up as a detective investigating the crime. I'm in a hurry right now so that is a super vague gist of the idea but I have actually fleshed it out a bit more in a doc and I really like the idea. Two dudes play it like an action/stealth game, the third dude plays it like an adventure game.

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Here's a little thing I've been working on. Early stuff. Something similar to FTL, manage a crew on a ship.

 

Little preview shot of development art:

 

htUwXEfl.png

 

Video of crew member moving around ship:

Watch HTML5 video or 4mb gif inside

AgedSerpentineBedbug.gif

 

 

 

 

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Worked on this game a bit this week.

 

You can die now! Other than that, these are mostly cosmetic changes.

 

Next on the to-do list:

- Add more things to make moving around the stat circle fun.

- Make it look good. Establish a general aesthetic.

- Start adding things which encourage you to change your stats. (Enemies, pick-ups, obstacles, etc.)

- Design a level.

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Here's a little thing I've been working on. Early stuff. Something similar to FTL, manage a crew on a ship.

 

Little preview shot of development art:

 

htUwXEfl.png

 

Video of crew member moving around ship:

Watch HTML5 video or 4mb gif inside

AgedSerpentineBedbug.gif

 

Leak management. Brilliant.

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Worked on this game a bit this week.

 

You can die now! Other than that, these are mostly cosmetic changes.

 

Next on the to-do list:

- Add more things to make moving around the stat circle fun.

- Make it look good. Establish a general aesthetic.

- Start adding things which encourage you to change your stats. (Enemies, pick-ups, obstacles, etc.)

- Design a level.

Have you played Magicka?

 

The decision to add attractive pick-ups is a good one. Currently there isn't a motivation to increase my speed at the expense of the shield or fire-rate.

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Progress Report for Week #11

 

What were my goals for this week?

What are my goals for week #11?

 

-Make some improvements to the musical ball game.

I don't know which ones I will get to, but here is a partial list of improvements I'd like to make:

. Make it so platforms are horizontally scalable prefabs that can be instantiated intuitively. I can do interesting stuff with more platforms, that's kinda how I can make songs.

. I'd like to have the capability to position the balls while they remain kinematic and then switch physics on so that they all fall at the same time, intuitively.

. I need to put something in the game that encourages people to click on the blank screen. I don't want written instructions. The best idea I have is to have something flying around that they might try to catch, a pop-up that they want to close, or a sewing pattern in the shape of a ball painted on the background. I don't have any good ideas. Does anyone have any ideas how to encourage people to click on the background so that they instantiate a ball without explicit instruction?

. I could do a lot with this game. Eventually I can design levels that dynamically create songs when solved, but right now the sandbox portion seems to be the thing to develop. I'm considering some new types of objects such as a cannon that can shoot balls away, little animated characters that walk in and steal balls or whatever, maybe a placeable object that destroys balls on contact. 

. I don't intend to do all of these this week, just start doing a few of them.

 

-I have some other things I'd like to do, but they should remain a low priority. 

. I'd like to build a sequencer.

. I still want to work on the visual novel dialogue-system. It's almost ready for general use and I feel ashamed that I haven't made a narrative game yet.

 

What challenges might I face and how can I prepare for them?

-I found mold in the attic. I'm kinda freaked out about it. I'll have to make some progress in that area this week. This is both a distraction and something that will compete for my limited time.

-The grass is starting to grow which means that someone will have to mow it.

-I've stuck to using the left mouse button and the mouse position exclusively. I can think of ways to scale the platforms such as dragging the platform (rather than the button on it), but making that intuitive is a difficult matter. I may have to simply put more things on the screen and give them simplistic idiosyncratic uses. Maybe adding a handle to the platform will inform the player that it has an additional ability to permute.

- Making a switch for balls being kinematic might have unknown consequences since the isKinematic bool is currently being used a fair amount in my script. It may not be a problem. If it is, I think I can just declare an additional bool that will allow for further circumstances.

- I haven't come up with any brilliant ideas of how to get people to click on the screen. Why do people click on empty screens? I do it just because I assume something will happen. How can I get people who are not me to assume something will happen when they click on the screen. No idea. I think other people will have better ideas for this than me, I'll ask around if I don't get suggestions here.

-As far as adding new types of things to the screen, I don't want to clutter it up. I have two potential solutions for this. 

1. If the objects that are already on the screen can be transformed by gameplay, then that would add to discoverability and keep things looking clean.

2. I could have little characters wander in forming a specific theme for the game. They could have their own abilities. This would be neat, but it would also require a lot of effort and I'm concerned that players would become frustrated by not getting the abilities they want immediately and reloading the game constantly for a preferable seed. 

 

So here we go, let's see what I manage to accomplish during week #11 yay!

 

Which of my goals did I accomplish?

-I did make the platforms horizontally scalable by dragging.

-The only other improvement I worked on was programming a background that is created with a loop. I made it so I can easily change how many horizontal strips the background consists of and I also made it so it creates a gradient of color as it iterates. 

Somewhat Accomplished.

 

What happened?

-I researched attic mold a bunch. I'm not freaking out about it anymore, I think we just need to have a few gable vents installed. there is still a question of where to place them, but after walking around neighborhoods looking at attic ventilation, I'm pretty sure that adding any ventilation will likely take care of the mold. We also drained the oil from the lawn-mower, but keep forgetting to get new oil. 

-I did add the horizontal scalability, but it is still not intuitive. I could just put an arrow on it, but I don't think that's a very satisfying solution. Maybe if I theme the ball-game I can choose to make the platforms look like an object that is typically capable of being stretched by pulling, something mechanical like a car-antennae. This could lead to a wider direction for theme. 

-Then I decided that a way to improve the game would be to add strips in the background so the player could more easily estimate height. I was had just started watching a tutorial on how to make a match-three game (which included how grids are formed by having a loop nested inside another loop (which is so fucking cool to me)), so I was like "Instead of importing a sprite, I'm going to program the strips!" I felt very accomplished once I did this. 

-I would have got more done, but I did not sleep well and so my mornings were spent catching up. I also just did a lot of other stuff this week. No regrets.

 

What are my goals for week #12?

-I'm becoming progressively interested in programming a sequencer. I'd like to move towards that. I've already conceptualized the basics, a loop that assigns pitch based on the y-value of the grid and assigns an int between 1-16 based on the x-value as it instantiates all the cubes. Then I'll need to write a script that does a public count from 1-16 over and over again so that all the cubes know when to play their audio-file. Then I'll do some OnMouseDown() magic to assign samples to individual cubes. 

-I should probably finish the match-three tutorial too. I actually really enjoy this tutorial and I don't know why. I think video-tutorials are heavily influenced by the personality of the tutor. 

 

What challenges may I face and how can I prepare for them. 

-Time. I'm just not going to have much free-time this week. I guess the best way for me to prepare for that challenge is to just get used to the idea that I will only be working in one to two hour pockets. Just because I can only work for a short period of time, that should not discourage me. 

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Have you played Magicka?

 

The decision to add attractive pick-ups is a good one. Currently there isn't a motivation to increase my speed at the expense of the shield or fire-rate.

 

Haven't played Magicka, but I'm pretty sure it's in my steam library so maybe I'll check it out.

 

Aside from power-ups, I have some other pretty specific ideas that I feel would be effective in encouraging the player to continuously change their stats.. Whether or not I can implement them effectively is another story.

Broadly, my goal is to encourage the player to continuously move back and forth between various combinations while still allowing some freedom in how to tackle the various obstacles. I want the game to feel a little bit sandboxy in that there is not always a single best stat combination for each challenge. I anticipate that hitting the right balance will be the most challenging part of designing the game.

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Have you considered having the control-gauge affect direction (actual I think I'm talking about velocity. I didn't take physics)? I wonder if tacking because you need a to shoot a bunch or are bracing for an attack would create cohesion or just be frustrating.

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I came across this super-cool thing but I don't remember where. Anyway: http://gamemechanicexplorer.com/

 

It's got a bunch of code samples for doing various basic things in 2D games. It uses Javascript, but the nice thing about it is if you can program, you can probably look at the code and see what's going on and translate to whatever language you're using, if you need to. It's super rad for beginners to see concrete examples. It even has said examples running a demo on each page, so you can see just how it should come out.

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That's an awesome resource, Twig! I especially liked playing with the flocking missiles example. :tup:

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Currently learning why most buildings in games are Bigger on the Inside. I suppose it's because of the exaggerated movement capabilities (and expanded bubble of personal space) of FPS protagonists, but I made a one-room house that looks ordinary from the outside, and inside it feels like a closet! I don't want my buildings to be separate levels, so it looks like I'm going to have to experiment until I reach a reasonable balance. Anyone have any sweet tipz / linkz about this issue (not with fancy space-warping tricks I mean, just good interior design)? I might go play some DayZ or other games with seamless buildings that don't feel too constrained, to see if I can learn something.

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