The Game Development Thread!

[Crabcore]

I've been pretty inactive here over the past few years (and I'm bound to have even less free time on my hands as soon as my daughter is born, which is going to happen at any moment now) but I wanted to change that with a new project idea that literally anyone can 'play' and collaborate on together - even over the long haul.

So, I've been into really basic gamedev over the past few years (don't worry -- I'm still a noob, and nothing I've ever made in this realm has reached more than the prototype-phase), but I wanted to create a space where those of us with any inclination toward gamedev can share ideas, collaborate on projects, create assets, and learn new concepts together.

Here are a few ideas for how you can be a part of the fun (but there are no limits!):

Contributing code snippets / functions / objects
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Have a cool idea drawn up with basic reusable functionality that you think other people could use? Or, have a question about how to get up and running? Feel free to share it, request it, and delve into it so we can all better understand how to make more unique and interesting experiences!

General engine / organization discussion
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Need tips on a good engine to get started in, or a good way to organize your code / nodes / files? Post it up here and we'll try to help as best as we can (and if you've got some advice for us, please feel free to share!).

Level design and game mechanics
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Got a great idea for a level mechanic or a map sketch that you think would go great in someone's game? Post it here! Or, get some ideas through collective spitballing!

Asset creation and discussion
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Want to contribute some game audio or visuals? Post it here! Or, need help on getting started with sprite editing, sound FX design, game music, or animations? Let's get to the root of it all and explain it so that we can all get better at developing games!

Scripting and modding​

I know some of you already do some wild scripting and modding, so feel free to share your experience, too! Extending a game is definitely game development in my book, and I think we can all agree that they definitely live in the same wheelhouse.

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As always, I'll dump any nugget of information I find along the way here, probably taking all sorts of video snippets and rabbit-hole discussions along the way. I'm also available to help out with anyone's audio woes, because that's my strong point (everything else is a weak point for me!). Can't wait to see what you guys are making, and thanks for being a part of this!

 

[Misery]

I have been thinkng for quite a while about various things I'd like to make.

There's a couple of types of games I'd like to have a go at.

1. Shmup. I need no assistance to make one of these... mostly. I'll get to that in a second. But making one of these just... I dunno. Like, I already did more than one bullet-hell game, contracted. I'd rather try something different. This almost feels too easy.

2. Something first-person in 3D. I dont mean an FPS. This sort of thing would be inspired by some screwball surreal horror games I've played, I've had ideas for this sort of thing for ages. But I dont have the ability to make something like that.

3. Retro-inspired games. Mostly stuff inspired by the Atari 2600. I do have one extremely specific idea for this, but I cant really make that either.


The problem I run into is a couple of things.

First, graphics. I'll be blunt here, I'd happily just use AI to make the visuals if I could do so without people whining about it. I cannot "pick up a pencil" when it comes to digital art. I've tried that, it doesnt work out. Not with my arm & shoulder being the way they are. So that's out. And I cant use physical art, because... that's not digital, the heck am I supposed to do with it? Nothing I draw is worth using in any case.

I can make one, and only one type of usable art: Fractals. It has indeed occurred to me that I can use fractals to make game graphics, and that this would create an extremely unique aesthetic... certainly I've never seen it done before, not in the way I'm thinking of doing it. But... actually DOING it... maybe that's why I've never seen it done. The process would be maddening. For any other form of art, you need just one "structure" to use. 2D art, you just make a sprite. One sprite, probably with many frames of animation, but still, just one. 3D objects, duh, a single 3D model. Animate as necessary.

But fractals? A single entity... such as, say, the ship in a shmup... in order to make it look like something that isnt just mangled infinity, it's going to take a whole bunch of individually rendered fractals to make ONE thing. The more complicated the object, the worse that's going to be. And I dont even want to think about animating them. Oh I can do that. But my sanity says I shouldnt. All of this would be done by stitching the stupid fractals together, piece by piece, through Photoshop. There are exceptions to this, some things can be made out of one fractal, but quite a few things cant be just one.

This also rules out a lot of different themes and such. Surreal weirdness? You betcha, that's what fractals are best for. Anything else? Nada. To be fair, surreal weirdness is my favorite style of anything, but that doesnt mean it's all I want to do.


Second, music. Stock music is just... well, it's hard to find good stuff. I'm extremely picky about music. I cant make music.

Sound effects are like... honestly I dont care much about that.


And third... yeah, I cant code. And I dont think I have the patience for it anyway. Assembling something line by line, very slowly, taking a bloody month to be like "hey there's a cube on the screen, WOW PROGRESS". Yeah, no. I aint doing that. There's no-code game engines, and that's fine I guess... for making 2D games. 3D is inaccessible (so far). The math for anything like that is utterly beyond me, and I rather suspect it always will be. Even if it wasnt, I have no way of creating 3D assets. I mean okay TECHNICALLY I can take the godforsaken fractals and make meshes out of them and use those, but I've done that before, and there's no way that's viable. Besides, I cant make every bloody object out of fractals. Probably.

Without any easy-to-create-with codeless engines, I cant really make anything. There's some possibilities, but they need a lot of experimenting with before I can conclude that they are usable for stuff I want to make.

I do already have something that is extremely specifically meant for making shmups, and I understand that genre down to the tiniest detail, so that's why that's easy and everything else isnt.


At this point, the idea of doing game design occurs to me every now and then, but is quickly just buried again every time.

 

[Crabcore]

First, graphics. I'll be blunt here, I'd happily just use AI to make the visuals if I could do so without people whining about it. I cannot "pick up a pencil" when it comes to digital art. I've tried that, it doesnt work out. Not with my arm & shoulder being the way they are. So that's out. And I cant use physical art, because... that's not digital, the heck am I supposed to do with it? Nothing I draw is worth using in any case.

I might be overly-imaginative, but I could totally see hand-drawn art working in a game, even if it ends up with a kind of South Park aesthetic. I bet a lot of people thought their crude style would never fly, and it really just became their little trademark. Plus, you could always prototype with AI and worry about the details later -- some games I've played lately (like Phasmophobia) are really just asset-flips, and nobody really cares about that anymore if they're having fun with friends, and I bet this could work for other genres as well!

I can make one, and only one type of usable art: Fractals. It has indeed occurred to me that I can use fractals to make game graphics, and that this would create an extremely unique aesthetic... certainly I've never seen it done before, not in the way I'm thinking of doing it. But... actually DOING it... maybe that's why I've never seen it done. The process would be maddening. For any other form of art, you need just one "structure" to use. 2D art, you just make a sprite. One sprite, probably with many frames of animation, but still, just one. 3D objects, duh, a single 3D model. Animate as necessary

I could see your fractal work being super cool for particle systems and other visual effects! Plus, you can always reuse stuff -- change colors, flip some images, scale them, and stuff like that, and mostly nobody is the wiser. Plus, if you ever start getting down to the mathematics of it all, slight iterations on / permutations of a concept are bound to be really easy (most people hire math-savvy people for that part, and I totally would as well!).

Second, music. Stock music is just... well, it's hard to find good stuff. I'm extremely picky about music. I cant make music.

Sound effects are like... honestly I dont care much about that.

Yeah, I feel like these are kind of their own lifestyle, which is funny. This is the only thing I feel like I could totally crush on a project, just because I've spent my whole life doing synthesis and making music. I guess it goes to show that it can never hurt to have collaborators, and most projects really do need multiple minds. The solo-dev stories like Stardew Valley are really anomalies, and not so much the rule. Also, IIRC the guy didn't have much of a social life, either, so he dedicated more-than-average quantities of time to the cause.

And third... yeah, I cant code. And I dont think I have the patience for it anyway. Assembling something line by line, very slowly, taking a bloody month to be like "hey there's a cube on the screen, WOW PROGRESS". Yeah, no. I aint doing that. There's no-code game engines, and that's fine I guess... for making 2D games. 3D is inaccessible (so far). The math for anything like that is utterly beyond me, and I rather suspect it always will be. Even if it wasnt, I have no way of creating 3D assets. I mean okay TECHNICALLY I can take the godforsaken fractals and make meshes out of them and use those, but I've done that before, and there's no way that's viable. Besides, I cant make every bloody object out of fractals. Probably.

You'd be surprised that a lot of that is as simple as typing 'square(x, y, size)' in most game environments, and then just continuing to use those variables everywhere else to calculate distances and things like that, where you don't even have to do any of the math yourself. I know I have a tendency to oversimplify the process quite a bit, but I think the biggest hurdle is just structure / writing clean code so that you can work on it later, and that certainly takes some time. Math can be borrowed, though, from libraries, cookbooks, AI, and what have you.

I do already have something that is extremely specifically meant for making shmups, and I understand that genre down to the tiniest detail, so that's why that's easy and everything else isnt.

What do you use for this, by the way? I don't see engines like that to be any less 'real' (or even people who do the whole 'vibe-coding' thing), so it's pretty cool that the bar is being lowered all the time. Maybe one day, everyone will be able to make cool games - of course it ends up cheapening the market somewhat and all of that, but it certainly adds to the fun, and that's never a bad thing!

Even though I'm confident on the high-level code end, I'd still love to try out Clickteam Fusion or something just to see how fast the rapid prototyping process is. You never know what you'll come up with when playing around with the right tools

 

[JayLapointe]

My only experience from a design point of view has been games where there were lvl builders included, like Duke3d/Quake back in the day. I love the thought of a collaboration coming out of this group. If you guys ever need someone to help test, or just bounce ideas off I'll help however I can.

 

[Crabcore]

My only experience from a design point of view has been games where there were lvl builders included, like Duke3d/Quake back in the day. I love the thought of a collaboration coming out of this group. If you guys ever need someone to help test, or just bounce ideas off I'll help however I can.

That sounds like solid experience in my book! There are a lot of great game engines that still pretty much focus on that principle, where you can just sort of delve into first-person mode whenever you want, paste assets around, and build things in a more intuitive way than just writing the code that allows you to do that, for example.

Coppercube and Gameguru (if I recall!) were kind of like the modern equivalent of that, and they're really not bad tools for coming up with great ideas, either!

 

[Crabcore]

I'm doing a really crude Pong game in Processing (Java-lite, essentially) just to get into the spirit and I found this gem of a sphere designer in GIMP (I'm new to an all-FOSS process, so I'm using whatever cool tools I stumble upon!). Also, the more my first batch of games look like they came out of a Windows XP era, the better .

I'm going to have to consult some cookbooks in order to get a good handle on angles again, but the hitboxes are working great otherwise. Will post up some prototypes (although I might only be able to build for Linux now), and will gladly take recommendations for what kinds of 'twists' and weird pzazz can be added to it!

 

[JayLapointe]

View attachment 148979

I'm doing a really crude Pong game in Processing (Java-lite, essentially) just to get into the spirit and I found this gem of a sphere designer in GIMP (I'm new to an all-FOSS process, so I'm using whatever cool tools I stumble upon!). Also, the more my first batch of games look like they came out of a Windows XP era, the better .

I'm going to have to consult some cookbooks in order to get a good handle on angles again, but the hitboxes are working great otherwise. Will post up some prototypes (although I might only be able to build for Linux now), and will gladly take recommendations for what kinds of 'twists' and weird pzazz can be added to it!

Man to be fair XP had some great games in its day.

 

[Outdated]

I only really ever got very involved with one project - Minetest. Essentially it's an open source equivalent of Minecraft.

The very first release was in 2010 and I didn't come along until 2014, by then the dev team had turned in to one of the most toxic work environments I've ever come across in my life. All of them far more concerned with their own social standing within the group than they were with actual programming. They certainly weren't prepared to accept any suggestions from a new boy.

By 2015 too many bugs were accumulating and compounding each other and in essence - they broke my favourite toy. Then I met one of the original dev team that had been ostracised by the others and essentially kicked out of the team, yet he's one of the most brilliant programmers I've ever met.

So between us we reworked the whole thing starting from a release from back in 2013 and slowly added each new commit with me bug testing and OldCoder teaching me how to use Git and between us we brought the game up to modern standards but without all the bugs.

Needless to say this didn't endear us to the mainstream dev team, they banned us from their forum and also banned anyone else who dared to mention our names. In the meantime their version continued to accumulate more and more bugs, plus they kept making changes to the map generation which broke everyone's existing games so popularity fell away and by 2019 there was almost no community left.

Game engine is written in C++, actual game and mods are simple LUA scripts. Documentation is on the spartan side.

Directory Listing of . (minetest.io - Final Minetest Releases)

 

[Misery]

I could see your fractal work being super cool for particle systems and other visual effects! Plus, you can always reuse stuff -- change colors, flip some images, scale them, and stuff like that, and mostly nobody is the wiser. Plus, if you ever start getting down to the mathematics of it all, slight iterations on / permutations of a concept are bound to be really easy (most people hire math-savvy people for that part, and I totally would as well!).

Well, it sorta depends.

Most of the art I've shared on the forum here are flame-type fractals, they tend to be airy things that fall apart easily. They'd be the "special effect" sort.

What I'd be making would mostly be out of "solid" fractals... I'm not sure what other word to use here. Look up "Xenodream Software", they have a site. The apps they make... particularly Xenodream X... create things that are solid instead of airy. Xenodream X creates fully 3D things, I can pull meshes (such as PLY format ones) out of those if I need to (whereas getting a mesh out of any other type of fractal is a huge pain). I can get point clouds out of them too. But I dont need meshes or cloud things to make 2D sprites out of those. It'd end up being like that kind of pre-rendered 2D that was all the rage way back when. Except much, much weirder. I still have a bunch of experimenting to do in order to determine if the concept is viable or not.

I can also use Mandelbulber and Mandelbulb 3D for other types of 3D things, but it's harder to create very specific things with those. Like herding cats. They'd be really good for making backgrounds though.

The shmup idea that I have had would be entirely themed on fractals, which makes it even easier.

What do you use for this, by the way? I don't see engines like that to be any less 'real' (or even people who do the whole 'vibe-coding' thing), so it's pretty cool that the bar is being lowered all the time. Maybe one day, everyone will be able to make cool games - of course it ends up cheapening the market somewhat and all of that, but it certainly adds to the fun, and that's never a bad thing!

It's the imaginatively-named "Shmup Creator". Found on Steam actually, and gets updates and such pretty regularly. Kinda expensive, but as always you get what you pay for. It's not the only thing of its sort... there's a second one with a name I cant remember that goes even deeper, but is much harder to use.

My current plan is to whip up some nonsense fractal assets and jam them in there and get just SOMETHING going. Just see what happens.

I could also probably use Clickteam Fusion. I keep forgetting that exists. It's basically the old Klik & Play, I can use that.

My only experience from a design point of view has been games where there were lvl builders included, like Duke3d/Quake back in the day. I love the thought of a collaboration coming out of this group. If you guys ever need someone to help test, or just bounce ideas off I'll help however I can.

Reminds me of making levels in Doom 1 and 2. I had this 1200 page book on that, it had this goofy blue demon on the cover. Used an editor called WadEd.

That stuff has come a long way since then. I remember having to compile the bloody wad file and then load it into Doom every single freaking time I wanted to have a look at even the tiniest change I'd made in the editor. What's that? Wanna see if that texture is aligned on that wall? COMPILE THE NODES AGAIN

Duke 3D's editor, once that came out, was soooooooo much better. I've never seen Quake's editors, but I'd bet they were pretty good.

 

[JayLapointe]

Duke 3D's editor, once that came out, was soooooooo much better. I've never seen Quake's editors, but I'd bet they were pretty good.

I remember my buddies and I having gotten a hold of our Highschools blueprints. We actually built a replica in Duke3d. Those were some epic matches. Just wish I'd thought to keep a copy.

Now this isn't building a new game but I have given some thought to hosting a survey for a survival building game like Ark Survival (the one with the dinosaurs). I used to have one before and it was a good time having a chill steady building spot to collaborate on. Think I might start a new thread to see if there is any support for that sort of thing.