Support NeoGAF

[Blizzard]

This has literally never happened.

(It helps that VS does auto indenting for you, which means that any second line added would jump back by one tab and alert me to the mistake. Er, not that I ever make them >.>)

If you've never done that, how would you know VS helps you catch it! ;p

I'm just OCD about it especially from when I worked on embedded systems stuff, where we had code standards and reviews intended to prevent those sorts of accidents, and we really didn't want something like an aircraft system having bugs like that. (We were also working in environments that didn't have Visual Studio, so fair point.)

Another one I like doing if possible is "if(SOME_CONSTANT == whateverVariable)" instead of the other way around. Dropping an '=' will result in a warning on some compilers the other way around, but this way dropping an '=' will produce an error on ALL compilers.

We also used the option to treat warnings as errors in order to force everyone to address warnings. I'd like to think this helped in some cases so people didn't just say eh, those warnings are probably fine.

 

[Feep]

If you've never done that, how would you know VS helps you catch it! ;p

I'm just OCD about it especially from when I worked on embedded systems stuff, where we had code standards and reviews intended to prevent those sorts of accidents, and we really didn't want something like an aircraft system having bugs like that. (We were also working in environments that didn't have Visual Studio, so fair point.)

Another one I like doing if possible is "if(SOME_CONSTANT == whateverVariable)" instead of the other way around. Dropping an '=' will result in a warning on some compilers the other way around, but this way dropping an '=' will produce an error on ALL compilers.

We also used the option to treat warnings as errors in order to force everyone to address warnings. I'd like to think this helped in some cases so people didn't just say eh, those warnings are probably fine.

I just mean I've never lost hours or even more than a minute on it. I do rarely make that mistake, but like I said, I notice it very quickly when VS tries to ruin my beautiful, beautiful formatting.

VS2012 will drop a warning on your above scenario, which is good enough. Saying

if (7 == x)

looks so wrong to me. ; ;

But I do like warnings as errors. I try to clean them up as often as possible.

 

[Jobbs]

nerds!

 

[Theanine3D]

Messing around with UE4. Is it advisable to buy blueprints from the marketplace in order to get your foot in the door when creating your first game?

For example, I see an "RTS Creation kit" and "2D SCI-FI shooter" blueprints for sale.

Thoughts?

The Blueprint templates do help a lot, especially since you can see the code and learn how it works yourself. But personally I've only ever needed the free templates built-in to the engine by Epic. The ones Epic provides are general enough that you can adapt them for almost any genre. The third-person platformer for example can be turned into an RPG if you add the RPG mechanics on top of what's there.

You're still going to need to know how to script with Blueprint if you want to do anything beyond the most basic things, even with those paid Blueprints.

 

[liliththepale]

If you've never done that, how would you know VS helps you catch it! ;p

I'm just OCD about it especially from when I worked on embedded systems stuff, where we had code standards and reviews intended to prevent those sorts of accidents, and we really didn't want something like an aircraft system having bugs like that. (We were also working in environments that didn't have Visual Studio, so fair point.)

Another one I like doing if possible is "if(SOME_CONSTANT == whateverVariable)" instead of the other way around. Dropping an '=' will result in a warning on some compilers the other way around, but this way dropping an '=' will produce an error on ALL compilers.

We also used the option to treat warnings as errors in order to force everyone to address warnings. I'd like to think this helped in some cases so people didn't just say eh, those warnings are probably fine.

I usually respect the braces, but I'll drop them for multiple similar one-line items in a row, conditionals or loops.

Putting the constant before the variable looks really weird, too! I get why you're doing it, but IMO every compiler should throw up an error. Every compiler except GameMaker that is, because in GameMaker's infinite wisdom a single equals sign is treated as a comparison operator in the appropriate context.

 

[Blizzard]

I usually respect the braces, but I'll drop them for multiple similar one-line items in a row, conditionals or loops.

Putting the constant before the variable looks really weird, too! I get why you're doing it, but IMO every compiler should throw up an error. Every compiler except GameMaker that is, because in GameMaker's infinite wisdom a single equals sign is treated as a comparison operator in the appropriate context.

I agree, they should. My old-fashioned habits probably stem from using a variety of weird compilers in weird environments and not trusting them to save me, and future maintainers, from ourselves.

I've even had a program compiled by gcc do different things at different optimization levels because of pointer aliasing.

 

[electroflame]

You don't use curly braces for single-line blocks? You madman! It's only a matter of time until you accidentally add a second line to one and forget to also add curly braces, resulting in a few hours of agony and confusion until you find it.

I actually do this too. I didn't use to, but as I've become more proficient I've realized that vertical space really makes a difference as to how much code I can see at a glance (which, coincidentally, is why I have my "coding monitor" turned sideways/vertical).

It looks cleaner to me, generally speaking. And, as Feep mentioned:

I notice it very quickly when VS tries to ruin my beautiful, beautiful formatting.

I spend so much time looking at formatted code that when things are slightly out-of-line I notice it quickly.

Spoiler

Please feel free to refer to this post later and laugh/point at me when I have some error related to an errant space, though.

 

[liliththepale]

I agree, they should. My old-fashioned habits probably stem from using a variety of weird compilers in weird environments and not trusting them to save me, and future maintainers, from ourselves.

I've even had a program compiled by gcc do different things at different optimization levels because of pointer aliasing.

I wonder how much of that comes from taking short cuts in compiling. Like, with computers from 20+ years ago, not checking for X errors meant the compile time was halved or something. Unless I'm missing some case where if (foo = bar) is a legitimate construct, of course.

 

[Jobbs]

This thread (you people) is going to teach me C# after this project is done.

 

[electroflame]

This thread (you people) is going to teach me C# after this project is done.

Is that a challenge, or a threat?

Spoiler

 

[DocSeuss]

All this programming talk bums me out. Pretty sure there's no way to make what I want to make without programming. Are UE4's Blueprints robust enough to get a game out the door, or am I going to need a programmer eventually?

Are there any particularly good ways to recruiting people in general, money aside?

Spoiler

and before anyone says "learn how," I used to know how, and then some brain trauma happened, and I spent a year trying to re-learn how, and I was unable to do so

I really wanna make my game happen.

Here's some art from it, done by a friend of mine.

 

[Jobbs]

Is that a challenge, or a threat?

Spoiler

Pick one

 

[liliththepale]

All this programming talk bums me out. Pretty sure there's no way to make what I want to make without programming. Are UE4's Blueprints robust enough to get a game out the door, or am I going to need a programmer eventually?

Are there any particularly good ways to recruiting people in general, money aside?

Spoiler

and before anyone says "learn how," I used to know how, and then some brain trauma happened, and I spent a year trying to re-learn how, and I was unable to do so

I really wanna make my game happen.

Here's some art from it, done by a friend of mine.

Just look around and you'll probably be able to find someone. For example, JNT posted this a couple days ago.

Hi! I'm dropping in to say that I'm available to help out with programming for anyone interested.

I mainly specialize in C++ (been working with that language for ten years). I am also familiar with x86 ASM, C#, and Python. I can get accustomed to most C-family languages within a reasonable amount of time however. I have access to Unity, but only the 4.6 free version.

I'm doing this free of charge on my free time. This means that I'm not suited for tasks that require full-time commitment. I retain no rights over the code I'm writing for a specific project of course. All I ask in return is acknowledgement on the credit roll.

PM me if interested.

 

[DocSeuss]

Just look around and you'll probably be able to find someone. For example, JNT posted this a couple days ago.

I've had extraordinarily bad luck, in part because of payment. Last year, when I originally started, literally friends people who'd agreed to work with me moved within the space of a month, each for better jobs that ate their time.

Read that JNT post in utter disbelief. Never, ever seen anything like it.

 

[Jobbs]

I've had extraordinarily bad luck, in part because of payment. Last year, when I originally started, literally friends people who'd agreed to work with me moved within the space of a month, each for better jobs that ate their time.

Read that JNT post in utter disbelief. Never, ever seen anything like it.

Back end collaborations are exceptionally hard to get going. Even if your art is good (which it seems like it might be based on your concepts) it can still be hard. People are just flaky and it's so incredibly, incredibly common to have an exciting introduction where everyone is pumped up to do this big idea, and then it just kind of flames out within weeks or even days, as people start being unpredictable and unreachable. Hell, even front end collaborations can be hard! I've had people tell me that they hired artists/whatever and paid them -- and the artist didn't produce, or didn't produce in any timely manner.

So -- You're not alone. I've had my share of bad experiences too. I began thinking the world would be my oyster because I was pretty good at art and therefore anyone would want to collaborate with me, but it just never turned out to be that simple. What I ended up doing is trying to learn game logic myself, through Stencyl (which principly is not a lot different from blueprints, the main difference being that blueprints seem to be MORE powerful/flexible!) so fi there's hope for me then I'd say there's hope for just about anybody, especially if art is their forte and they have some ability to figure out game logic.

I've always been bad at critical thinking, holding a train of thought --- I'm hyper, I barely made it through high school algebra, and I'm just generally kind of learning stunted (I feel). Through determination I was able to learn game logic and get my head around a lot of programming principles, using Stencyl, and even learned a little Haxe (Haxe is the language Stencyl uses -- BTW, how do people pronounce it? Long or short A? I still don't know). From here I think I'll be able to learn C# once I have the time.

 

[liliththepale]

What I ended up doing is trying to learn game logic myself, through Stencyl (which principly is not a lot different from blueprints, the main difference being that blueprints seem to be MORE powerful/flexible!) so fi there's hope for me then I'd say there's hope for just about anybody, especially if art is their forte and they have some ability to figure out game logic.

He already addressed that.

Spoiler

and before anyone says "learn how," I used to know how, and then some brain trauma happened, and I spent a year trying to re-learn how, and I was unable to do so

Spoiler

Spoiler

But yeah, working together with people online can fall apart pretty quickly. But there are also a lot of people interested in getting something going, so hopefully eventually something sticks.

 

[Jobbs]

Oh! I didn't read the part where he said he had a head injury. My bad. I wasn't kidding when I said I'm hyper and have trouble with paying attention.

My part about collaborations being a horrible crapshoot stands, though, I think almost everyone has run into this problem. I hope it works out for you.

The only people I've met online and collaborated with that have stuck are people I worked with on smaller things first and kept a relationship going over time. Diving head first into a huge project when you have no history with someone just seems like a big risk.

 

[DocSeuss]

Oh! I didn't read the part where he said he had a head injury. My bad. I wasn't kidding when I said I'm hyper and have trouble with paying attention.

My part about collaborations being a horrible crapshoot stands, though, I think almost everyone has run into this problem. I hope it works out for you.

The only people I've met online and collaborated with that have stuck are people I worked with on smaller things first and kept a relationship going over time. Diving head first into a huge project when you have no history with someone just seems like a big risk.

I put it in spoiler tags 'cause I didn't want to get some big conversation about my health going. Had to get it deleted on GAF last time because a guy was stalking me because of it and things were getting out of hand.

Collaborations, I feel like, are literally the only way I'm ever going to get anything done because of my health limitations. I mean, crap, I've got a degree in this. I'm a freelance writer whose discussions on games have been shared in several big studios. I might have gotten a job as a consultant with one of the bigger firms in the business. Still waiting to hear back on that.

I know what I'm doing, I just kinda... ended up losing the most invaluable skill. So I'm trying to figure out how to get people on board and getting this out the door.

 

[Jobbs]

I put it in spoiler tags 'cause I didn't want to get some big conversation about my health going. Had to get it deleted on GAF last time because a guy was stalking me because of it and things were getting out of hand.

Collaborations, I feel like, are literally the only way I'm ever going to get anything done because of my health limitations. I mean, crap, I've got a degree in this. I'm a freelance writer whose discussions on games have been shared in several big studios. I might have gotten a job as a consultant with one of the bigger firms in the business. Still waiting to hear back on that.

I know what I'm doing, I just kinda... ended up losing the most invaluable skill. So I'm trying to figure out how to get people on board and getting this out the door.

I'll try to not stalk you. No promises.

BTW, the art designs you posted earlier are pretty sweet. What kind of game is this?

 

[DocSeuss]

I'll try to not stalk you. No promises.

BTW, the art designs you posted earlier are pretty sweet. What kind of game is this?

first-person adventure game. Was gonna release it in two halves--first would be a sort of mechanical sandboxy horde mode thing to fine-tune the mechanics and make sure I actually felt like I could make a game, then the second-half would be the story proper.

I said "I wanna do things super low poly, like Garbage Day or something," and he was like "yeah well I'ma take your descriptions and make them super sweet anyways."

And he did. I just wanted to talk concepts and he bangs 'em out like that. I was impressed and grateful.

 

[Jobbs]

I'm doing some late night streaming. Going to do a little stencyling and maybe a little art. Come hang if you also don't sleep at 3am.

http://www.twitch.tv/ttpete

first-person adventure game. Was gonna release it in two halves--first would be a sort of mechanical sandboxy horde mode thing to fine-tune the mechanics and make sure I actually felt like I could make a game, then the second-half would be the story proper.

I said "I wanna do things super low poly, like Garbage Day or something," and he was like "yeah well I'ma take your descriptions and make them super sweet anyways."

And he did. I just wanted to talk concepts and he bangs 'em out like that. I was impressed and grateful.

Very cool!

 

[Jobbs]

I put together this room on stream from scratch and also wasted a bunch of time messing around. Notice smoke generation and color banding, my two greatest feats.

http://www.gfycat.com/LargeBigAustralianshelduck

thanks for hanging out -- mabec, lilith, jack, jack's artist, itodragon, and we even heard from the great feep. I think there were a few others but I forget who.

 

[AusRoachman]

I know a few people in here have had experience with kickstarter and I would love to know the best way to approach it, as well as things like early access e.t.c

I am a 1 man team using paid assets from the unity store e.t.c for art, so I don't have a team to show off , but I do have a demo. Personally I hate kick starters that are just devs talking about there vision of the game , rather then the game itself. So think my pitch would just the demo and future plans.

What's the best way to approach kickstarted campaigns. Do you find having lots of stretch goals work in your favour. I'm also a little unsure how much I should initially ask for, as I don't want to go too high and people dismiss it as a solo dev trying to steal money, but I also don't want to go too low and then later realise that artist I need is ALOT more expensive then originally expected.

Anyone here successfully done a 1 man Kickstarter?

As for my game it's a turn based mech game similar to mechwarrior tactics, but it still has a lot more features to add to make it a more strategic game (I.e mech weapon system management, heat management , mech customisation e.t.c).

 

[titch]

Picked up RPG Maker VX Ace in the recent humble.

Also got 90% codes for the XP, 2000, 2003 versions.

What what i can see its possibly worthwhile picking up the XP version as there are some features better mapping etc

Anyone have any thoughts on this also the 2000/2003 any reason for picking either of those up instead?

 

[mStudios]

I know a few people in here have had experience with kickstarter and I would love to know the best way to approach it, as well as things like early access e.t.c

I am a 1 man team using paid assets from the unity store e.t.c for art, so I don't have a team to show off , but I do have a demo. Personally I hate kick starters that are just devs talking about there vision of the game , rather then the game itself. So think my pitch would just the demo and future plans.

What's the best way to approach kickstarted campaigns. Do you find having lots of stretch goals work in your favour. I'm also a little unsure how much I should initially ask for, as I don't want to go too high and people dismiss it as a solo dev trying to steal money, but I also don't want to go too low and then later realise that artist I need is ALOT more expensive then originally expected.

Anyone here successfully done a 1 man Kickstarter?

As for my game it's a turn based mech game similar to mechwarrior tactics, but it still has a lot more features to add to make it a more strategic game (I.e mech weapon system management, heat management , mech customisation e.t.c).

If you're using store assets, forget about reaching your goals. People like to see original stuff and know that their money will be well spend.
Get a few concept arts, few original assets and show off a nice gameplay.

That's my only advice, since I haven't done any KS.

 

[Ito]

Picked up RPG Maker VX Ace in the recent humble.

Also got 90% codes for the XP, 2000, 2003 versions.

What what i can see its possibly worthwhile picking up the XP version as there are some features better mapping etc

Anyone have any thoughts on this also the 2000/2003 any reason for picking either of those up instead?

XP is the superior version.

2000/2003 are only advisable if you wish to work with a really low screen resolution (which makes easier making your own sprites and tiles).

 

[Peltz]

Seeing as how some great games seem to be getting made by people who aren't very into coding, am I wasting my time starting out by learning C# and Unity?

Is it better to just try to make a 2D game at first in something like Gamemaker or Stencyl, or is it really better to really learn the ins and outs of programming at first if I'm just a one-man operation?

If I learn C# and Unity, will the skills transfer over into less code-heavy (or script-heavy) engines like the ones I mentioned above?

I'm currently enrolled in a 45-hour long "learn Unity" course on Udemy, and it's been extremely helpful so far. It starts off with a lot of C# and teaching about Unity's overall interface. It's made me realize that this stuff is hard, but not impossible to do.

But, I am now wondering if Unity is overkill for making a small portfolio of freeware/shareware to start out. I'm down for learning the fundamentals, but I'd love to take advantage of some streamlined engines if they make sense for what I'd like to make.

 

[Unain]

Did a lot of work yesterday on figuring out UMG in Unreal Engine 4. So added the first part of combos into my game as well. Here is some gameplay from my package delivery game:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcOar8G5JBY

Things I am happy about:
- The Driving feels really good on keyboard/gamepad
- Shooting mechanic
- Combos

Things that need fixing:
- Collision on the car needs tweaking
- Some aerial physics need tweaking
- Combo UI is still a bit buggy

 

[Alienous]

Did a lot of work yesterday on figuring out UMG in Unreal Engine 4. So added the first part of combos into my game as well. Here is some gameplay from my package delivery game:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcOar8G5JBY

Things I am happy about:
- The Driving feels really good on keyboard/gamepad
- Shooting mechanic
- Combos

Things that need fixing:
- Collision on the car needs tweaking
- Some aerial physics need tweaking
- Combo UI is still a bit buggy

That's a clever concept. Good luck, I can definitely envision playing a game like that.

 

[SquirrelWide]

Seeing as how some great games seem to be getting made by people who aren't very into coding, am I wasting my time starting out by learning C# and Unity?

Is it better to just try to make a 2D game at first in something like Gamemaker or Stencyl, or is it really better to really learn the ins and outs of programming at first if I'm just a one-man operation?

If I learn C# and Unity, will the skills transfer over into less code-heavy (or script-heavy) engines like the ones I mentioned above?

I'm currently enrolled in a 45-hour long "learn Unity" course on Udemy, and it's been extremely helpful so far. It starts off with a lot of C# and teaching about Unity's overall interface. It's made me realize that this stuff is hard, but not impossible to do.

But, I am now wondering if Unity is overkill for making a small portfolio of freeware/shareware to start out. I'm down for learning the fundamentals, but I'd love to take advantage of some streamlined engines if they make sense for what I'd like to make.

Considering the people making said games have been seen here compla... describing how they hit the upper limit of those tools and wishing for a platform that had more power (read: requires coding), no - you are not wasting your time.

 

[Jumplion]

All this programming talk bums me out. Pretty sure there's no way to make what I want to make without programming. Are UE4's Blueprints robust enough to get a game out the door, or am I going to need a programmer eventually?

Are there any particularly good ways to recruiting people in general, money aside?

Spoiler

and before anyone says "learn how," I used to know how, and then some brain trauma happened, and I spent a year trying to re-learn how, and I was unable to do so

I really wanna make my game happen.

Here's some art from it, done by a friend of mine.

It's the same thing for me, but in reverse. I can't draw to save my life, but I'm decent at programming (PM me if you're interested, I can't promise anything, but I'm always looking for projects to do). Being at university, you'd think I'd find a bunch of people to help me for free, but it's tough since everyone wants to do their own thing. Sometimes you just got to post around (like in this thread for example!) and hope for the best.

 

[diddykong13]

Considering the people making said games have been seen here compla... describing how they hit the upper limit of those tools and wishing for a platform that had more power (read: requires coding), no - you are not wasting your time.

In all honesty though i'm using Game Maker Studio, and have used things like Unity etc in the past too. Once you stop using the drag and drop stuff and begin using GML correctly (and game maker makes it very easy to mix and match between drag and drop and actual code) there is a lot more control and depth over everything. I've yet to find something I can't do with it and my game isn't exactly the most straightforward of things and certainly couldn't be done using drag and drop.

But, I would say it's always helpful to learn a language no matter what, the fundamentals apply everywhere in almost all other languages.

 

[Peltz]

But, I would say it's always helpful to learn a language no matter what, the fundamentals apply everywhere in almost all other languages.

That's all I needed to hear. I will continue on this path then. Thanks both of you.

 

[Jobbs]

That's all I needed to hear. I will continue on this path then. Thanks both of you.

I agree, learning C# and Unity is just smart -- This is the stuff to know, this is going to be insanely useful stuff to know, so if you're already going down that path it'd be smart to stay on it.

 

[domino99]

Hey guys, some new screens of my game.

Gameplay video
http://beyondhumangame.tumblr.com/post/124156362535/beyond-human-pre-alpha-demo-basic-combo-link

 

[SpacePirate Ridley]

Hey guys, some new screens of my game.

Gameplay video
http://beyondhumangame.tumblr.com/post/124156362535/beyond-human-pre-alpha-demo-basic-combo-link

Looks pretty excellent. I really like the blu lights in your shots that are not present in the video. They give the background a lot of live.

 

[Jobbs]

re stream last night, I did some more work putting the glowy bits in, and now the room looks closer to what it was intended to be like (still not totally done).

http://www.gfycat.com/JitteryGloriousIndianjackal

The glowing elements are multiple actors layered on top of eachother, that's how they have that subtle look as they move in and out of the light radius.

 

[Prophet Steve]

Hey guys, some new screens of my game.

Gameplay video
http://beyondhumangame.tumblr.com/post/124156362535/beyond-human-pre-alpha-demo-basic-combo-link

Haha, this reminds me a lot of a game I worked on in my study. You were some cyborg ninja guy and was able to dash for invulnerability to get in close and do combos on enemies.

It was much more basic though and there wasn't really a combo system yet. This already is much more polished than my project was.

 

[anteevy]

Hey guys, some new screens of my game.

Gameplay video
http://beyondhumangame.tumblr.com/post/124156362535/beyond-human-pre-alpha-demo-basic-combo-link

Looks cool! The Twitter links on your site didn't work for me btw.

 

[domino99]

Looks pretty excellent. I really like the blu lights in your shots that are not present in the video. They give the background a lot of live.

Yeah was working on parallax effect and forgot to add the blue lights back in.

Looks cool! The Twitter links on your site didn't work for me btw.

Oh thanks for letting me know kinda weird because I updated it this week.
It should be https://twitter.com/BeyondHumanGame.
Could you tell me were it redirects to?

 

[mStudios]

Does anyone knows if this is re-drawn twice? or just an effect?

 

[SquirrelWide]

Domino, just rewatched your devlog #2. I forgot how satisfying the sword slash sounds.

 

[BlazeHedgehog]

Does anyone knows if this is re-drawn twice? or just an effect?

It could be an effect, I guess. I know Guardian Heroes on XBLA had sort of a pencil shader mode that looked vaguely similar to that.

But for something like Hotel Dusk, where you don't usually have tons of animation, I would assume it's just drawn twice.

 

[Five]

Does anyone knows if this is re-drawn twice? or just an effect?

Drawn twice. You can see the angle of each set of lines roughly matches the patch it's in. If you were doing a post-process effect, all the lines would be parallel like the Guardian Heroes effect above. I mean, in theory, you could write a shader to do the same effect, but it would be exorbitantly difficult to devise and bad for performance.

For a slightly different effect, what you could do is make a base image and an alpha mask to go with it, and then use the mask to apply a line texture in post, but it wouldn't be quite the same, and it'd still be a lot of work. That'd be slightly easier in grayscale because you could collapse the colors to a single channel, then put the alpha mask in one of the two freed up color channels, and thereby use a single atlas for each image, but again the effect would never be identical to what's shown in the GIF there.

 

[Jacksinthe]

Does anyone knows if this is re-drawn twice? or just an effect?

Taaaaaaaake oooooooon meeeeeeeeee (take on me)
Taaaaaaaake meeeeeeee oooooooooon!
etc

 

[Peltz]

Does anyone knows if this is re-drawn twice? or just an effect?

Definitely drawn twice. The top right outline of the hair is different in the two frames.

 

[TheHollowNight]

Fiery particles for a fiery demon boy

 

[electroflame]

Hoooly crap. My absolute favorite new feature of Visual Studio 2015 has to be the Lightbulb formatting/hints. More specifically, one aspect of that is that if you rename a variable that you've declared already it'll have a Lightbulb where you can confirm if you want to rename it.

I thought that was dumb, until I realized that it meant rename all instances where that variable is used. It evens goes as far as finding references to it in other files and changing those as well, automatically and instantaneously.

Basically, I started out like this:

and ended up like this:

The code-cleanliness hints are pretty great too, but this renaming thing totally blew my mind. I used to hate renaming things, but now when I realize that I named something poorly I can change it in a snap.

Overall this has to be the first Visual Studio update since 2005->2008 or 2008->2010 that doesn't feel like it's worse! (Although, that could be due to how crappy VS 2013 was...)

 

[ken_matthews]

All this programming talk bums me out. Pretty sure there's no way to make what I want to make without programming. Are UE4's Blueprints robust enough to get a game out the door, or am I going to need a programmer eventually?

I would not underestimate the power of Blueprints in UE4. My Dev partner is an experienced coder, but as a personal challenge he is doing everything with Blueprints. So far, hes got procedural level tile streaming and prop placement, procedural item mesh and stat generation, a crafting system, item inventory system, combo system with AI lock on, character attack system with item stat augmentation (effects, buffs etc.), and a character ability and attribute system. I don't think those are fluffy game systems, and so far, we haven't come across anything that could not be done via Blueprints.

Frankly, Epic did it correct with their Blueprints, and I do not think any other engine is doing something better.

 

[HellBlazer]

Hoooly crap. My absolute favorite new feature of Visual Studio 2015 has to be the Lightbulb formatting/hints. More specifically, one aspect of that is that if you rename a variable that you've declared already it'll have a Lightbulb where you can confirm if you want to rename it.

I thought that was dumb, until I realized that it meant rename all instances where that variable is used. It evens goes as far as finding references to it in other files and changing those as well, automatically and instantaneously.

Um, what? Am I missing something? Auto-renaming all references to a variable has been in Visual Studio for a long time...?