GAFs Amateur Devs Chronicles

I think both, unfortunately.

Despite crafting my game along a similar path as Puzzle Quest (a game that, I feel, uses fewer total assets than almost any successful game released in the last decade), it constantly amazes me how much work goes into these damn things. A stupid menu screen takes me weeks! I'll be lucky to have an alpha of my game by July. REAL lucky.

Still, that feeling of selling my game to people keeps me going. One day. = D
 
i think what reminds me how much further i have to go is when i playtest my game :lol.


all placeholder art

i came up with the base concept and started working on jan 17th, so i'm obviously still working on the core mechanics. it's going to take quite a while to get it playing like i'd like, much less look how i'd like or offer as many options as i'd like (character selection etc). i think i need to set a shorter term goal to get core gameplay working as intended and then save some things for a + version that is more complete and fleshed out.

problem is, i fear that if i released a base version, i'd be less likely to motivate myself to continue development of the + version.
 
Checking out other works is like a roller coaster really. While your head is down, toiling away, you will think fondly of those works that did something really well. However, when you stop working for a moment and go to play something huge you feel so little and realize just how even your hardest work is not quite enough. The only thing to help rationalize is to remember these people do it full time for years and with teams of people, whereas what we're doing is moonlighting and usually not with years of experience and huge teams.

Feep, yeah, there's an immense amount of work involved here. I've been working for a year and 4 months now in every moment I can spare and it still has at least a year of development left to go. That's why you need major inspiration to make it!

dfyb, personally, I would say go for gold and bunker down for the full release. Remove all distractions and obstacles and just do it right the first time. You'll be very proud once you reach your goal!
 
lol just in time :D ?
Yeah dealing with all of the legal issues that goes into throwing this kinda stuff now which keeps pushing the release date back.
Hope to get it started by the 9th.
Don't worry i haven't forgot about the gaffers! =]
 
I'm hopping on the dev bandwagon officially at this point. The Oilpatch was getting insanely slow and I was let go, so this is a great opportunity for me.

I'm looking at creating small XNA titles at this point. I'd like to eventually release an episodic 2D platformer, but at first I need to keep it very basic. A single screen game with no scrolling, either a character running around in a screen or a puzzler.

The plan is to first go through some tutorials.

First I'll go through these Tile Engine tutorials from NickOnTech.com: http://www.nickontech.com/archive/#tileengine

Then I plan to go through Blender tutorials to get a decent grasp on 3D modelling. I'd like to use 3D models to create a 2D game, as it would make animations much easier as well as changes to my character (with the same animations) easier as well. As much as I'm a fan of hand-drawn 2D, it's simply too time consuming for me to undertake. Though I do think I can do lots of great 2D texture work so that I can have the best of both worlds.

And from there I have a list of 8 or so concrete ideas that I can pursue for the first "simple" project.
 
FightyF said:
I'm hopping on the dev bandwagon officially at this point. The Oilpatch was getting insanely slow and I was let go, so this is a great opportunity for me.

I'm looking at creating small XNA titles at this point. I'd like to eventually release an episodic 2D platformer, but at first I need to keep it very basic. A single screen game with no scrolling, either a character running around in a screen or a puzzler.

The plan is to first go through some tutorials.

First I'll go through these Tile Engine tutorials from NickOnTech.com: http://www.nickontech.com/archive/#tileengine

Then I plan to go through Blender tutorials to get a decent grasp on 3D modelling. I'd like to use 3D models to create a 2D game, as it would make animations much easier as well as changes to my character (with the same animations) easier as well. As much as I'm a fan of hand-drawn 2D, it's simply too time consuming for me to undertake. Though I do think I can do lots of great 2D texture work so that I can have the best of both worlds.

And from there I have a list of 8 or so concrete ideas that I can pursue for the first "simple" project.
Click to expand...

These are GREAT tutorials. I'm almost done with the series, and I'm working on two separate game ideas, but trying to decide on which to focus. One is a platformer, the other kinda similar to a Zelda typeish game. Though I do have some "smaller" ideas that I could work on if there is really going to be a dev contest :lol Don't think I'd have a problem getting it done by the end of the month either, seeing as all I'm doing atm is coding and submitting a bunch of different resumes to companies, waiting for a call back :|

Would be nice if the contest allowed use of XNA though :D
 
I've been working a Ninja Gaiden Black 2D-like game for about 3 months. It's actually taken me much longer than that (about a year) because I get sidetracked a lot and life also happens to get in the way quite a bit. There's a few videos on youtube but here's a good one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Euo_maS5cAM

I'm not using XNA though; I'm using GameMaker 7. I not really thinking about making the jump to something like XNA or C at the momment since I have no real interest right now.

By the way, I have a demo for the game and seeing as GAF is such a diverse gaming forum, is it allowed for someone to make a thread requesting feedback? I've been wanting to do that for a while now.
 
As a bit of an update, I found a job as a software developer. Not in the games industry, but I think my XNA game (and the website I made to show it off) really helped.

Thanks to everyone who commented on my game and the site.

ultim8p00 said:
By the way, I have a demo for the game and seeing as GAF is such a diverse gaming forum, is it allowed for someone to make a thread requesting feedback? I've been wanting to do that for a while now.
Click to expand...
It's not unheard of.
 
The Friendly Monster said:
Congrats on the job, are you going to carry on making games?
Click to expand...
Definitely. I've kind of abandoned it for now, just because between 324 Operating Systems, 476 Modeling & Simulation and my final project (Robot control based on computer vision), I have programs coming out my ears, but I hope to hammer out two half-finished projects in the month I have off between school and work.

Speaking of which, you wouldn't happen to know any C++, would you?
 
Slavik81 said:
Definitely. I've kind of abandoned it for now, just because between 324 Operating Systems, 476 Modeling & Simulation and my final project (Robot control based on computer vision), I have programs coming out my ears, but I hope to hammer out two half-finished projects in the month I have off between school and work.
Click to expand...
Cool, sounds busy! You moving for your job?

Speaking of which, you wouldn't happen to know any C++, would you?
Click to expand...
Not much, particularly not much beyond what is common with C#.
 
BTW, TFM, I am angry at you for not releasing Pizzicati on XBLCG. I don't think there are three titles up there that are as good as the most recent build I played before DBP. Put it up. I will buy it. I swear.
 
The Friendly Monster said:
Cool, sounds busy! You moving for your job?
Click to expand...
I'm an out-of-province student, so at the very least I'll be moving back home.

Unfortunately, the job is within walking distance of my parent's house. Any place I'd move into would be less convenient! But I kind of want to move out anyways just... because I probably should. </livejournal>

But it's pretty awesome. I got my dream job even as the only other employer who expressed interest in me declares bankruptcy. I got an offer from these guys in September. :lol


The Friendly Monster said:
Not much, particularly not much beyond what is common with C#.
Click to expand...
Oh well. I was having trouble using queue, but I might as well write my own. It shouldn't take more than 10 minutes to write a Queue class with circular arrays.
 
Slavik81 said:
I'm an out-of-province student, so at the very least I'll be moving back home.

Unfortunately, the job is within walking distance of my parent's house. Any place I'd move into would be less convenient! But I kind of want to move out anyways just... because I probably should. </livejournal>

But it's pretty awesome. I got my dream job even as the only other employer who expressed interest in me declares bankruptcy. I got an offer from these guys in September. :lol
Click to expand...


Whoa, Slavik, what city are you in? Are you in Ottawa as well? Nortel (and a whole other bunch of silicon valley players) are a stone's throw away from where I live. If you can throw stones upwards of several kilometers ;)
 
dfyb said:
submission deadline still going to be late feb?
Click to expand...
The submission deadline will likely be pushed to the end of March right after GDC.
Anyone going to GDC or IGF there in March?
Still figuring things out but we should have a booth there.

I'm fighting to make it open to worldwide entrants and it looks like i'll get my wish.
No XNA for now as most XNA games don't need publishing and the main goal of the contest is for indie games to get recognition and a possible platform publishing deal.
Also, it's a little tougher for regular users to play XNA stuff.
(they will be the ones making the final votes)

Need some feedback on something.
If you guys had your games up on a site to be played and evaluated,
What types of user reports/statistics/feedback would be most helpful and valuable to you?
Bug fixes, comments, # of plays/downloads, ratings...
The more specific the more helpful as I'm trying to incorporate a developer community.

Thanks guys and keep up the awesome work! Sometimes i wish i kept taking programming classes beyond freshman year :D
 
toneroni said:
The submission deadline will likely be pushed to the end of March right after GDC.
Anyone going to GDC or IGF there in March?
Still figuring things out but we should have a booth there.

I'm fighting to make it open to worldwide entrants and it looks like i'll get my wish.
No XNA for now as most XNA games don't need publishing and the main goal of the contest is for indie games to get recognition and a possible platform publishing deal.
Also, it's a little tougher for regular users to play XNA stuff.
(they will be the ones making the final votes)

Need some feedback on something.
If you guys had your games up on a site to be played and evaluated,
What types of user reports/statistics/feedback would be most helpful and valuable to you?
Bug fixes, comments, # of plays/downloads, ratings...
The more specific the more helpful as I'm trying to incorporate a developer community.

Thanks guys and keep up the awesome work! Sometimes i wish i kept taking programming classes beyond freshman year :D
Click to expand...

Hey!

It's unfortunate about XNA, but also totally understandable. Microsoft REALLY has to work on that extra barrier for the distribution on the XNA side. I think there are ways to do an installer for XNA stuff, but it's still far too cumbersome.

As for feedback, I'd personally find it great to just hear straight goods of "what did you like", "what did you dislike". The reporting for number of downloads would be awesome, as would be the a simple five star rating. What some developers want to know is (and seems to be a popular question) "is this game that you're playing worth X dollars?" Although you can't ask that directly, you can ask similar ones to get a better picture on whether or not you've provided enough value/enjoyment for what you're selling it for :)

Okay, so that probably wasn't very helpful, but it's all I've got for now. Cheers!
 
so it will depend entirely upon user votes to dictate who wins? sorta puts my game at a disadvantage, considering most people won't have multiple gamepads for their PC (my game is multiplayer-based) =/

oh well -- should be a fun contest anyway. i can't really think of other general feedback. might be nice if each game had it's own forum.
 
Right, also, forgot to mention GDC and IGF. Unfortunately we won't be able to attend either this year. Really bummed about that :/ That being said, we're going to attend next year and probably do an official submission to IGF :)

How about you guys? I'd love to do a 2010 meet up ;)
 
appreciate the feedback guys..

Multiplayer games are great. Not enough games have local multiplayer these days it seems.
The shortlist is decided by judges and we'll do our best to play it the way it's intended.
Even if you don't winthe contest, its still possible for a publishing deal to come about.

About XNA - even though it may not be in the contest, we are definitely thinking of adding support for that in the website though.
Even if some users can't play the games, they may like to see the development of the game and have ideas/comments/suggestions etc.

Also, meetups would be great if anyones coming out to stuff this year.
Jason, there's a chance I may roll out to E3 with Anthony this year (depending on work).
 
JasoNsider said:
Right, also, forgot to mention GDC and IGF. Unfortunately we won't be able to attend either this year. Really bummed about that :/ That being said, we're going to attend next year and probably do an official submission to IGF :)

How about you guys? I'd love to do a 2010 meet up ;)
Click to expand...
uni classes make it hard for me to attend stuff like this, but i'll be trying to go as soon as it's possible for me
 
This is a great thread!

I've been toying with making a game for a couple years and just haven't had the time due to University. I'll be finishing up though in a couple months and look forward possibly making this into a hobby. I toyed with GM7 awhile back and quickly decided I should learn something more comprehensive. My background is an associates degree in CIS (which had a bunch of programming classes) and I'll be finishing up a BA in graphic design shortly.

Anyways. I'm wondering if anyone has an opinion on the Torque Game Engine. I was thinking about playing around with their 2D game builder and using that to help refresh some of my programming skills (it's been years since I've touched programming at all). I think the 2D builder would suit my needs for creating basic games. ---or would you guys suggest skipping Torque altogether and just jumping into XNA.
 
rhfb said:
These are GREAT tutorials. I'm almost done with the series, and I'm working on two separate game ideas, but trying to decide on which to focus. One is a platformer, the other kinda similar to a Zelda typeish game. Though I do have some "smaller" ideas that I could work on if there is really going to be a dev contest :lol Don't think I'd have a problem getting it done by the end of the month either, seeing as all I'm doing atm is coding and submitting a bunch of different resumes to companies, waiting for a call back :|
Click to expand...

Yeah I'll be coding quite a bit. I've went through some of the tutorials...do any of them go over different gamestates and stuff like that? Look like it isn't, so I'll have to follow these up with some more tutorials.

And now this may seem like a lame way of going about it (I could take classes after all), but I'm going to read up this entire sub-website: http://graphicdesign.about.com/ to get a primer on graphic design. I may have to buy a good textbook to go along with it, but I'll start cheap and go with the site at first to get a decent basis.

I'm hoping all of this learning takes a couple of weeks initially, and then I can start projects and learn while doing at that point.
 
Personally, I'm not big on using game-in-a-box type solutions. Yes, you get to make a game fairly quickly, but you're not really learning a whole lot and, depending on what you need, you may be limited on your feature-set.

If you have the patience, and more importantly, the dedication, you should definitely just learn C# and XNA. It's probably going to be my first post on the new "beginning dev" blog, but I'd start with a) learning the language, b) making Tetris to learn game programming and the development environment, then finally c) the game you really wanted to make. The "making Tetris" step is actually some of the best advice I've been given. It really is a great test piece after you've learned a language, and when you see how tough it is you will be shocked. Then years later you will look back and say "whoa, I can't believe I thought Tetris was tough!"
 
Soakedjunk said:
Anyways. I'm wondering if anyone has an opinion on the Torque Game Engine. I was thinking about playing around with their 2D game builder and using that to help refresh some of my programming skills (it's been years since I've touched programming at all). I think the 2D builder would suit my needs for creating basic games. ---or would you guys suggest skipping Torque altogether and just jumping into XNA.
Click to expand...
Straight to XNA if you have any programming experience. You'll find the limitations of one of these game building programs restrictive and arbitrary.
 
The Friendly Monster said:
Straight to XNA if you have any programming experience. You'll find the limitations of one of these game building programs restrictive and arbitrary.
Click to expand...

I another thread (the Community Games one I believe) Ghost and m0dus were talking about how Torque has restricted them from releasing their game on CC because they've yet to patch it to support XNA 3.0.
 
toneroni said:
No XNA for now as most XNA games don't need publishing and the main goal of the contest is for indie games to get recognition and a possible platform publishing deal.
Also, it's a little tougher for regular users to play XNA stuff.
(they will be the ones making the final votes)
Click to expand...
Ah man that really sucks :( Not All XNA games are for the XBLA, they can work on PCs as well :lol

I do wish MS would make it easier to distribute XNA games for the PC though, right now you have to have three different things downloaded and installed to make the game work :|
 
The Friendly Monster said:
Straight to XNA if you have any programming experience. You'll find the limitations of one of these game building programs restrictive and arbitrary.
Click to expand...

I'll jump into XNA then. It sounds like I won't be too happy with Torque in the long run. Thanks.
 
FightyF said:
Yeah I'll be coding quite a bit. I've went through some of the tutorials...do any of them go over different gamestates and stuff like that? Look like it isn't, so I'll have to follow these up with some more tutorials.
Click to expand...
"Gamestates" are extremely easy to implement, the way I've done it was to just have a simple check in the update method that determined if it was time to switch to the next state (either timed out to a high score screen, or button pressed goto intro screen, ect)
 
rhfb said:
Ah man that really sucks :( Not All XNA games are for the XBLA, they can work on PCs as well :lol

I do wish MS would make it easier to distribute XNA games for the PC though, right now you have to have three different things downloaded and installed to make the game work :|
Click to expand...
Yeah i wish it were easier as well. They just don't want people taking the platform elsewhere I guess..
 
wmat said:
Certainly impressive! But not exactly realtime-oriented models, right? That's not such a big problem though since you can always automatically reduce the #verts..

Are you also doing texturing or are those all material settings instead of environment maps and so forth on the Audi?
Click to expand...

Yeah all those are higher poly. I've messed around with lower poly stuff and normal maps, but haven't done anything concrete. On the Audi are materials I found online. I made all the textures from scratch for the iPod though. For game assets it comes down to finding/making the right shaders.
 
It's odd this thread is on the front page again because not even a minute ago I made a MOTHER F-ING BREAKTHROUGH WITH XNA:

I CAN RENDER SPRITES ON SCREEN. OH SNAP.
 
Cheeto said:
Nice, now you can work on making it easy to draw more!
Check this article/code sample out.

http://www.adcworks.com/articles/blog/2008/04/08/using-xna-drawablegamecomponent-for-dice/
Click to expand...

Thanks, will read tomorrow.

Addendum:
See the problem for me is for the past two years I've been "using" XNA (started a little after 2.0 hit), I've read countless tutorials and watched hours of video tutorials, and I thought I had a good grasp of things. Then it came time for me to do it on my own and I froze every time. :lol I just wanted to render a sprite, but there were absolutely no tutorials that said:

Code: 
SpriteBatch batch = new SpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice);
sprite = Content.Load<Texture2D>("texture");
//...
batch.Draw(sprite, new Rectangle(width / 2, height / 2, 50, 50), Color.White);

That's all I wanted to know. :lol I dug and dug and it was always buried under all this other crap. But tonight I finally did it, so yay me.

The rest of you with millions of times the experience I have can go back to games you've been working on for months now.
 
I'd like to ask what format people make/store their levels in, I'm thinking XML? Or do you make .cs files with them?
 
Andrex said:
I'd like to ask what format people make/store their levels in, I'm thinking XML? Or do you make .cs files with them?
Click to expand...
I'm a selfmade format fanboy myself, preferably just bytes in a file with some generic structure on top, but if you want to have a human-readable format with association techniques and stuff, I'd say go with XML. It has multiple big advantages over a lot of other approaches.

Just don't forget to build a level format that adheres to some XML standard, makes parsing not a problem - already solved for you. I unmarshall objects in Java based on that idea, means that I didn't write a parser, I'm rather using one that follows my schema. Could also write XML text conforming to that standard without hassle.All based on jaxb, maybe there's a dotnet equivalent?

Might want to look at other formats also.

COLLADA supports user content, for example. And it already solves other art description and association problems for you. http://collada.org/
 
I made myself a flash game yesterday for my birthday, took me an hour or so to learn the concepts straight up and a whole day working from the ground up and making sure the thing didn't crash and compiled right. I'm so on the way to beating Nintendo.

It was a simple object collision game with coins to collect and all of the art assets ripped from the first search pages on Google search.

Cannot decide on whether to pursue a platformer or a scrolling shooter as a follow up.

Even if they are games that a cell phone wouldn't touch, I'm so proud of myself. I just want to learn more and see what else is possible with this lovely software. Already finding it a headache moving from AS2 to AS3.
 
wmat said:
I'm a selfmade format fanboy myself, preferably just bytes in a file with some generic structure on top, but if you want to have a human-readable format with association techniques and stuff, I'd say go with XML. It has multiple big advantages over a lot of other approaches.

Just don't forget to build a level format that adheres to some XML standard, makes parsing not a problem - already solved for you. I unmarshall objects in Java based on that idea, means that I didn't write a parser, I'm rather using one that follows my schema. Could also write XML text conforming to that standard without hassle.All based on jaxb, maybe there's a dotnet equivalent?

Might want to look at other formats also.

COLLADA supports user content, for example. And it already solves other art description and association problems for you. http://collada.org/
Click to expand...

Please explain the bytes in a file and COLLADA approaches...
 
Andrex said:
Please explain the bytes in a file and COLLADA approaches...
Click to expand...
Bytes in a file:
Imagine you'd describe your level with a String and then write that String into some file.
But you let out the useless parts, keep the types native instead of using a String (for example using floats when it's a float number) and you assume some kind of structure.
If you do it right, you don't even need labels for sections and so forth.

COLLADA:
Build a scene in an art program; find representations for paths, spawn points, portals and so forth that are distinct from everything else in your game in some way; export that into a COLLADA file and read it accordingly in your game.
 
Andrex said:
I'd like to ask what format people make/store their levels in, I'm thinking XML? Or do you make .cs files with them?
Click to expand...
Yeah use XML for data storage, it does it all for you. Just design your levels as a class and then serialize with XML.
 
Does anybody know of a decent and simple language/library for 2D games? I'm using XNA right now but it feels like I'm reinventing the wheel having to code a basic tile engine, simple collisions and the like. The way it handles animations and that kind of stuff is clunky too.
VS9 is nice though (except when I get BSODs switching projects...)
 
Answering myself -_- :
I found this http://code.google.com/p/gosu/
doesn't have any high level stuff either, but it's way more simple and 2d focused. Ruby also helps a lot (although a C++ version is available). I managed to redo all the stuff I had already coded in XNA like 20x faster and much tidier. Way less resource hungry too, both the IDE (notepad lol) and the actual code.
I'm sticking with this, it also seems to be under active development (unlike a lot other gaming libraries). Documentation seems scarce though.
 
wmat said:
Bytes in a file:
Imagine you'd describe your level with a String and then write that String into some file.
But you let out the useless parts, keep the types native instead of using a String (for example using floats when it's a float number) and you assume some kind of structure.
If you do it right, you don't even need labels for sections and so forth.

COLLADA:
Build a scene in an art program; find representations for paths, spawn points, portals and so forth that are distinct from everything else in your game in some way; export that into a COLLADA file and read it accordingly in your game.
Click to expand...

Thank you. Bytes in a file sounds like the way DarkBasic handles things from the small amount I used of it, and COLLADA sounds very useful for a lot of scenarios.

I think I'll go with XML though, as its name states it's very extensible. I found this tutorial particularly helpful, for anyone else wondering: http://www.ziggyware.com/readarticle.php?article_id=150 Uses a Sprite class as an example but you can change that if you want, or even add to it thanks to the way libraries work (which I finally understand.)
 
It took me 15 full minutes to figure out that the reason why my code didn't work was that 3/2 returns 1 in C#.

*sigh*

3f/2f = 1.5
 
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