why?
I've done a number of different enemies and bosses and stuff now and so far they all work without taxing performance that I can tell
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FakeGAF 7: The Dark Thirst Rises
- Thread starter WhereAreMahDragonz
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why?
I've done a number of different enemies and bosses and stuff now and so far they all work without taxing performance that I can tell
Hmmm.
Only a handful in the Bundle were Steam ports.
Did you really need to post all those?
Sorry I misread that as adding on a bunch of extra data per frame.
Speaking of which, I want to add puppet man into a game.
Ohhh right they were mostly legal roms running in a crappy emulator right?
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
I keep starting UE4 tutorials, getting 5 minutes in then doing something else with my time.
Starting to seriously wonder if I have adhd or something. Would explain how I've struggled to concentrate on anything since about year 9.
Starting to seriously wonder if I have adhd or something. Would explain how I've struggled to concentrate on anything since about year 9.
liliththepale
Banned
It can if you're not careful, but that goes with everything in game dev.
Also, something like deep AI planning doesn't have to be run that often. Only a couple times per second or less. The reactionary stuff more often, but not route planning and the like.
I haven't fired any of them up yet, but this doesn't bode well for controller support....
Ceallach
Smells like fresh rosebuds
Emulator was fine. But if you really want you can run them in whatever you want.
From what I remember SteamGAF was saying the emulator was functional but not accurate like others. If I do get the bundle sometime I shall run it on something else.
Does it support 2 controllers?
Yes, for the love of god do so, I tried that crappy emulator and wasn't a fan of it.
the way I have it set up they make decisions when reacting to something (this could be running into something, being damaged, touching a sensor, whatever, anything) otherwise they have one routine they play to the end and hten make another decision.
honestly im kind of a hack I don't understand this stuff very deeply
What do you suggest instead?
It just has an insanely steep learning curve.
I'd honestly rather learn their C++ libraries than fumble my way through their Blueprint system. Even though it's extremely powerful.
MAME.=p
liliththepale
Banned
How/when does sight of the player interrupt that? Like I try to trigger a routine whenever the AI first sees or stops seeing the player.
Hahaha, fair enough.
Ceallach
Smells like fresh rosebuds
Final Burn.
I don't have any actual line of sight because I never really bothered to figure out how.
What I typically do if I need an enemy to "see" a player is just use X/Y coordinates being within a range and the enemy facing the player (if applicable). I can fudge this a lot by narrowing those ranges and if I absolutely need more precision I have more horribly awful solutions that combine in a carefully choreographed way to (optimally) make certain enemies appear to be smarter than they are.
A lot can be done with stuff like that and if I REALLY need the enemy to have increased awareness of player's position in the level geometry I just "cleverly" utilize sensors
It's good, but I swear it has more graphical and sound issues with the same games I used in MAME...and funny enough some games are better in Final Burn.
Cheers.
liliththepale
Banned
Oh, yeah. It's also a lot easier if you can assume that the enemy will only ever traverse flat ground, not slopes or gaps or anything.
But part of that necessarily influences your design language, like whether or not enemies can see you above their heads and beyond pits and stuff like that, so it's important to figure out ahead of time.
I'd use incredibly primitive tricks for that example. Say I had an enemy that can see you above it, but only if there's no terrain blocking. I'd just disallow them to see you above them at all unless you trip a sensor, which I would place in the terrain where they logically should be able to see you. Tada. Welcome to redneck programming.
Most enemies in the game are pretty simple and don't do a lot. There's a handful that are more complex (like the yellow crabs which can do a ton of stuff -- burrow, retreat, regen mode, go berserk, ranged attack, etc etc) and a few specific npc/boss tier enemies which have a ton more put into them (like the robot in the alien isolationy scenario).
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
haha you're right!D
BRING IT ON GIFS SHALL NEVER DIE!!!!
she's a bitch tho
that's a penis.
This is hilarious.
"So we need to go to the graveyard where your wife is buried."
"Wha-why?"
"To go into her tomb and open the coffin."
"What?! No!"
"Alright. I get what you're saying, and I see you're angry, but tell me this: can I cut off your dead wife's head?"
"FUCK NO!"
"So we need to go to the graveyard where your wife is buried."
"Wha-why?"
"To go into her tomb and open the coffin."
"What?! No!"
"Alright. I get what you're saying, and I see you're angry, but tell me this: can I cut off your dead wife's head?"
"FUCK NO!"
liliththepale
Banned
That makes sense. I prefer solving something with programming instead of data, which honestly doesn't save as much work as I like to think it does, but it gives me peace of mind and I enjoy that challenge more.
In other news... VidCon tomorrow. Woohoo. Yayyy. Oh yeah. Fuck. God save me.
Thanks for the detailed response! It does sound fun. How long would you say it takes to design and program like a standard mook enemy AI?
How many realtors/places have you been messaging a day?
Getting bloodwork is good if kind of scary. D:
oh, trust me, I want in my next game a real programmer(s) and units that actually behave dynamically. I fully admit this is a game held together by chewing gum and duct tape.
how many days of vidcom are you attending? I don't know much about it but I hope you have fun
I think that depends. For something like a platformer enemy, if you already have a character controller built then you can just slap the movement code onto a dude and use empty gameobjects to detect edges to change direction in patrol movement if you need to. That takes less than an hour if you already know what you're writing. Then there's raycasting and junk for better AI.
I spent several days on just the scripting/behavior of certain enemies. Generally I spend a day or less on scripting for a single basic enemy.
It's so weird that I would see stuff about Ghost Song and be like "Wow this looks so legit" only to find that Jobbs is a little like that golden retriever at the computer.
I've been in print Game Informer twice and my game was displayed at Pax and guests played it
I'm a dummy, yes, but there's certain things I've gotten good at and so I keep the design within those things
PAX East or West? Where you there too? Can I work at your booth next time?I spent several days on just the scripting/behavior of certain enemies. Generally I spend a day or less on scripting for a single basic enemy.
I've been in print Game Informer twice and my game was displayed at Pax and guests played it
I'm a dummy, yes, but there's certain things I've gotten good at and so I keep the design within those things
I spent several days on just the scripting/behavior of certain enemies. Generally I spend a day or less on scripting for a single basic enemy.
I've been in print Game Informer twice and my game was displayed at Pax and guests played it
I'm a dummy, yes, but there's certain things I've gotten good at and so I keep the design within those things
What I was describing is like Super Mario Bros. level of basic patrolling enemy AI. It gets crazier depending on what you're doing, but if I had all of the animations and a general character controller already made I wouldn't think that writing the the rest of the code for a regular patrolling enemy would take that long.
liliththepale
Banned
All three days, but I don't know much either. I'm just there playing a supporting role for a vendor my day job does regular printing for. I probably won't have any time to see any panels, just walk the floor for a little bit. We'll see. The WiFi and cell signal are going to be pretty starved so I may or not keep you guys posted.
As with anything, you get quicker with familiarity. Not just with the practice in general, but with different characters in a given game. I've had some that took the better part of a couple days to work out, and some that only took half an hour.
It's hard to estimate for me because I do a lot of the work at the same time. So what kind of moves the character will make informs its structure and animation, which means those things have to be designed long before they're programmed. And then when you go to write the code, you have to decide how much of that code ought to be reusable and modular, which means a little more work up front but potentially a lot less work down the road.
And sometimes what you thought would be necessary or just useful turns out to not be needed at all, whether the feature is removed or a better method is devised, so expect to waste a lot of effort up front.
It's hard to give a ballpark with so many variables, but I think a handful of hours sounds about right.
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
So does anybody think the upside down RPG can work? I keep thinking back to the idea and it makes sense to me, but when I've discussed it with a few people they weren't big on it.
It'd be like a Deus Ex type game (where you have various skills that act as "keys" to certain parts of the level and allow you to resolve encounters in a variety of ways, persuasion, hacking, jumping extra high, turning invisible and so on), but instead of building up your character, you start maxed and level down over the game. You pick and choose which skills to reduce or disable outright, starting as a generalist and being forced to gradually specialise.
It'd be like a Deus Ex type game (where you have various skills that act as "keys" to certain parts of the level and allow you to resolve encounters in a variety of ways, persuasion, hacking, jumping extra high, turning invisible and so on), but instead of building up your character, you start maxed and level down over the game. You pick and choose which skills to reduce or disable outright, starting as a generalist and being forced to gradually specialise.
PAX East or West? Where you there too? Can I work at your booth next time?
East. My game is published by Adult Swim Games and was displayed in their area. Originally they planned to have a stage inside their booth and have various devs on it all day every day demoing their games for hour long blocks -- Taking any questions, talking, etc. I was set to do an hour each day.
They scrapped the whole stage idea, though, and since my game wasn't being heavily promoted (because it wasn't coming out as soon as the rest of their lineup they were pushing) I opted to save my money and stay home. I sorta regret it because it woulda been cool. (and no, they don't pay the travel and board for their devs, at least not me!)
I fully intend to be at the next Prime and the next East after that.
If you are at either of them yes please come hang out!I mentioned it to him but he said nothing that they cooked should have smelled. It must have been from something my other roommate left in there. Ended up just taking out and being done with it.
This place is an awkward position since I will only be here until August-ish. So most things I just deal with. This was the first time something complain worthy came up.
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
Jobbs were you at PS EXpo?
Don't most RPG's start you out with generalized stats by having them all be at base and force you to specialize over time anyway? If you have a cool story surrounding it, it could be a pretty interesting mechanic, though.
East. My game is published by Adult Swim Games and was displayed in their area. Originally they planned to have a stage inside their booth and have various devs on it all day every day demoing their games for hour long blocks -- Taking any questions, talking, etc. I was set to do an hour each day.
They scrapped the whole stage idea, though, and since my game wasn't being heavily promoted (because it wasn't coming out as soon as the rest of their lineup they were pushing) I opted to save my money and stay home. I sorta regret it because it woulda been cool. (and no, they don't pay the travel and board for their devs, at least not me!)
I fully intend to be at the next Prime and the next East after that.
I've always wanted to go to PAX Prime. :/
Ceallach
Smells like fresh rosebuds
I can't attend PAX in good conscience. The PA guys are fucking scumbags. The not fat one in particular.East. My game is published by Adult Swim Games and was displayed in their area. Originally they planned to have a stage inside their booth and have various devs on it all day every day demoing their games for hour long blocks -- Taking any questions, talking, etc. I was set to do an hour each day.
They scrapped the whole stage idea, though, and since my game wasn't being heavily promoted (because it wasn't coming out as soon as the rest of their lineup they were pushing) I opted to save my money and stay home. I sorta regret it because it woulda been cool. (and no, they don't pay the travel and board for their devs, at least not me!)
I fully intend to be at the next Prime and the next East after that.
I'm [ ] this close to attending PAX Prime in spite of my hate of the PA guys, mostly because PAX Prime is so far removed from Penny Arcade at this point.
I think if Jobbs shows up to Prime I'll show up too, Boston aint' so far.
But ya, the PA guys have proven time and again that they need to develop a bit of empathy from their ivory tower.
There's a certain type of sleeping enemy found later in the game which also appear ominously in one specific room early in the game (which that user ran into).
https://gfycat.com/EnchantingThickCaecilian
They are asleep and not collidable until such time that you wake them up by going near them while having a certain property/status.
Prime's in Seattle (I think), East is in Boston
that's throw away art by someone else that I never planned to use for anything FYI
I didn't make itThoseDeafMutes
Member
It depends on the game. In Deus Ex: HR as a case study, you sometimes enhance skills (e.g. steadier aim, jump twice as high) and sometimes add entirely new abilities (e.g. take control of robots / turrets, turn invisible, become immune to poison). Vtm: Bloodlines starts your character off by having one magical skill, and no abilities to pick lock, hack computers or anything else. In the original Deus Ex, you were split between Skills such as hacking and aim, and Augs which provided extra buffs or entirely new skills. You spent XP on skills, and found aug canisters to get those new aug abilities.
In all cases, the design of the RPG is to make it so that you can tailor the experience to your playstyle as you level up, rather than simply get more powerful at combat.
Some RPGs give you a super powered character and then take them away or eliminate all their powers in the first 30 minutes. This gives you a taste of what to aspire to, while allowing you to try out some of the higher functions before you unlock them. The design I propose here accomplishes this in a more generous manner, wherein you start with the all-you-can-eat-buffet, then make choices to eliminate or reduce the effectiveness of some of your abilities over time. At first, it will be easy, you'll get rid of things you never use, but in the end game you'd be forced to make legitimately tough choices. Since it would be an action-RPG, your reduction in combat effectiveness would be offset over time as your skill in the game increases, to keep the difficulty curve roughly constant. Alternatively, if you tank your combat skills in general in favour of keeping your non-combat options open, you can either deal with the higher difficulty or find non-combat solutions to your problems. That's one of the best parts of these games... when they work well that is (cough DXHR boss fights cough VtmB boss fights).
Of course you would need to theme this in an interesting way in the story.
You might get a bit of whining out of this over people not liking having your character get powered down over time because it feels like you're locking off parts of the game instead of unlocking them. Kinda like going from Mirror's Edge's style of giving you everything you need right off the bat and Catalyst's style of locking off a lot of the abilities that were default in the original game.
that's throw away art by someone else that I never planned to use for anything FYI
Oh I know. I just searched Ghost Song on Tumblr to see if the fanart had started yet.
Please elaborate
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